…this was a short but much-needed break at my parent’s place for the festive season.
Not that it turned out to be all that festive.
Come on, hands up – how many of you have ever attended a funeral on Christmas Day?
Here’s my diary for those few days:
Friday, 21 December 1984 – had a lazy day indoors today. Stayed in eve – spoke to several people.
Saturday, 22 December 1984 – got up quite late. Went to Knipes and shopping in the afternoon. Met Jim [Bateman] in Rose And Crown in evening.
I have previously written up the bizarre Knipe Christmas gift experience – click here or below if you haven’t read the story before…or if you fancy it again:
In 1984 I would have refused to enter the diabolical living room, so I think Don and I would have had a relatively sort chat and tipple in their Third-Reich-free dining room.
Sunday 23 December 1984 – Rose quite late – went to Surbiton – had lunch and visited Grandma Jenny. Went on to meet Jilly for a drink and a meal – nice evening.
Monday, 24 December 1984 – Lazyish day today – stayed in – taped and watched some telly. Stayed in evening also.
I think I might have focussed on taping classical stuff from my old records that Christmas. I’ll return to that subject in a future piece.
Tuesday, 25 December 1984 – went to Ruby Casper’s funeral in morning. Went over to Benjamin’s late afternoon/evening – ate too much and watched TV there.
Wednesday 26th December 1984 – lazy day – Indian lunch – slouched around. Watched television etc – Airplane! and The Third Man
In truth I don’t really remember Ruby Casper. I think she might have been from Auntie Francis’s side of the extended family. I’m not sure why I went to the funeral, other than the obvious point that mum and dad were going and it would have seemed rude for me to absent myself on Christmas Day. What else might I have been doing that day?
“Eating too much and watching TV”, I hear you cry. Well yes, but there was still plenty of time to do that as well.
Postscript/clarification
Cousin Angela, Auntie Francis’s daughter, has set the record straight on Ruby Casper:
We were away in Brazil and Ruby Casper was in fact a man! He was married to my Aunty Sophie, my mother’s sister, who was known for her Edna Everidge glasses. How were you dragged along? Was it because it was Xmas day and they thought they wouldn’t get enough people?
Ruby Casper was a man? No wonder I didn’t remember “her”. My bad for being fast and loose with my pronouns. In truth, I don’t remember Auntie Sophie and their Edna Everidge glasses either.
As for me being dragged along just to make up the numbers, Angela…DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? 🤪
And Now, Back To the Main Story
I’m glad I also pursued that great Twixtmas tradition, which I have long since left behind, of watching movies that I had seen before. Indeed, two of them on Boxing Day.
“Surely you must be joking”, I hear you cry. I’m not joking…and don’t call me Shirley.
On the Thursday morning, I returned to a freezing and almost completely depopulated Keele, ahead of the next day of the Tribunal hearing on the Friday.
We ended up spending four days at the Industrial Tribunal in Shrewsbury. The court had scheduled just these two days for our case, but the case ended up stretching to four.
…after which it was more or less inevitable that their NUPE representative, Derek Bamford, would drag us all through an application to the Industrial Tribunal for unfair dismissal.
Here are my diary notes for those first two days of the tribunal and the aftermath:
Tuesday, 18 December 1984 – To industrial tribunal Shrewsbury today – ate with UC [Union Committee] after and went home for early night.
Wednesday, 19 December 1984 – Gave evidence all day at tribunal – very gruelling. Very tired in evening – UC ate, drank and played charades together.
Thursday, 20 December 1984 – Got up quite late – EUC [emergency Union Committee] in morning – dossed around and drank in afternoon – cooked John and Kate meal – came down to London in evening.
I’m finding it hard to put into words just how mentally exhausting and emotionally draining I found the whole process. I have just a few specific recollections and a few impressionistic ones.
I remember sensing that this was an ordeal for absolutely all of us…with the possible exception of the legal leads – in our case the solicitor John Cheatham and in Tommy and Ralph’s case the NUPE rep Derek Bamford.
I remember Tony Derricott, the Students’ Union Permanent Secretary, telling us that one of the applicants was being unwell in the toilets, as a way of reminding/informing us that the event was an ordeal for everybody. He counselled us to be gentle with everybody involved.
I don’t remember much about that first day at the tribunal. It was, if I recall correctly, all taken up with the applicants setting out their case. I’m not sure whether both Tommy and Ralph gave evidence; I think Derek Bamford did most of the talking. The gist of their case was that we hadn’t really been through a proper process, we had merely gone through the motions of a proper process, having reached foregone conclusions prior to the process. Their case also placed much emphasis on the fact that the bar stock losses had not ceased on Tommy and Ralph’s departure.
The second day of the tribunal was the truly gruelling day for me. My evidence in chief took less than an hour. Derek Bamford had clearly latched on to me, as the person who chaired the dismissal meeting and announced the dismissals, as “the person to go for”. He proceeded to cross-examine me for several hours – i.e. what turned out to be the whole of that second tribunal day.
It didn’t help that I had a nasty head cold by this stage of the proceedings, which I had tried to mask with cold remedies at the start of the day but which was increasingly unmaskable as the day went on.
Bamford’s barrage of questions in my direction went through every element of the case.
DeepAI has produced an artist’s impression of the exchanges. Derek Bamford was smaller and more wizened than that. I was (and still am) less well-groomed yet better looking than the character depicted.
Derek Bamford’s main line of attack on me was the notion that the decision had been made before that final hearing. He asked how it was possible for me to announce the dismissals with such detailed notes on the day. I had provided in my evidence bundles the notes I had prepared, ahead of the meeting, with bullet points to help prompt myself. I had prepared notes for both possibilities – that we decided to dismiss that day or that we decided not to dismiss that day. I explained that we, like the applicants, were nervous ahead of that meeting and that I felt the need to prepare with speech notes for either eventuality. Bamford poo-pooed that line of argument as a mere device on my part.
Then the following exchange, which I remember almost verbatim.
BAMFORD: OK. But then how come we received detailed letters confirming the dismissals on the Monday morning after the Friday afternoon meeting? They must have been posted on the Friday evening or Satursday morning.
ME: They were posted on the Saturday morning. The Constitution requires us to follow up dismissals in writing as soon as possible. I got up early on the Saturday to write and type the letters and catch the midday post, so that you would have the details in writing as soon as possible.
BAMFORD: (With a dramatic wide-armed expression of disbeief) Do you expect this Tribunal to believe that story.
ME: Yes I do. It is the truth. It is my sworn testamony.
BAMFORD: (As if catching a fatal flaw in a witnesses argument) Ah, but you didn’t swear, did you? You chose to affirm.
ME: You know what I mean.
CHAIRMAN: We all understand what Mr Harris means…
Actually, John Cheatham had advised me, ahead of the tribunal, to swear rather than affirm, when I told him that, as an atheist, I would choose to affirm. I had explained to John that I couldn’t in all conscience heed his advice, as swearing on a Bible would feel untruthful to me, which is not exactly a great start in giving faithful testimony. But I felt truly awful when the other side tried to make capital out of that decision.
I also recall Derek Bamford asking me a lot of questions about the EGM meeting, not least whether I was comfortable with that process. I remember stating clearly that I was not comfortable with the process but that we had to abide by the process as laid down in the Constitution, which gave the dismissed staff the right to appeal to that body. Derek Bamford implied that I and the committee had gamed that process to our advantage, which was really not true and not fair in the circumstances.
I remember I was thoroughly drained and feeling very low when we got back to Keele that evening. The diary says that we ate, drank and played charades that evening, so we must have done.
Back at the ranch…except there was no-one else around apart from Union Committee & the staff
We convened an emergency Union Committee meeting on the Thursday for two reasons, as I remember it.
First and foremost, to discuss the two choices the Tribunal had offered us for the resumption:
28th and 31st December 1984 (the default dates agreed on the day, subject to confirmation of our availability);
two days in late January 1985, if we asked for the dates to be moved.
Although some of the non-sabbaticals had unmoveable commitments over “twixtmas”, those of us who were most bound up in the matter – not least me, Kate and John, were all willing to come back straight after Christmas and wanted the thing over with as soon as possible. The applicants had already made it clear that their preference was to return soonest. We all agreed it would be for the best to get the matter concluded before the end of 1984.
The other reason for the emergency Union Committee meeting, though, was to discuss what we would do if we were to lose the tribunal. I made it clear, as I had in the matter of the EGM Appeal, that I would resign if we lost but I didn’t feel that anyone else need do so. I’m not sure what else, if anything, came out of that emergency meeting.
By the time I left Keele on that Thursday, we were all over Page 5 of the Evening Sentinel.
That Evening Sentinel report made us feel quite pessimistic about our chances at the time. On re-reading the report forty years later, I’m not sure why it made us feel so. Perhaps it was because Derek Bamford had briefed all the Union staff that we were certain to lose and that we had put all of their jobs at risk, so the above newspaper article read, to them, as confirmation that the case was going the way of the applicants. The staff certainly gave us the impression that the paper was suggesting that we were likely to lose.
The headline cartoon brings back to my mind the way that the early part of those Students’ Union discos were – especially when John and I were on the record decks.
The truth of the matter was that the discos only really started to fill up after last orders in the Main and Allright bars. For many of the punters, attendance no doubt had more to do with the fact that we had licence extension in the Ballroom Bar for gigs and discos, than a burning desire to dance. Plenty of people were up for the dancing of course, but the place was pretty quiet for the first 90 minutes or so of the show.
John & I tended to take full advantage of that early section, playing stuff that we and a handful of devotees liked leaping around to. And yes, I suppose, occasionally, John would have been the only one (or one of only two) dancing. I mean, one of us needed to look after the decks if the music was to be continuous.
I asked DeepAI to replicate the scene – not a bad depiction.
Here are the diary extracts for that end of term period.
Wednesday, 12 December 1984 – Busy day – office and Senate in afternoon. Very tired in evening. Petra [Wilson] came over distressed – Annalisa [de Mercur] coped.
I don’t recall why Petra was distressed – I think it was just a “parting is such sweet sorrow” thing at the end of her first term at Keele. Both Annalisa and Petra had put a lot of energy into being my Education and Welfare (respectively) No 2s that term – and indeed for the whole year. There is some irony in Annalisa (Education) despatching the welfare solace to Petra.
Thursday, 13 December 1984 – Bad day. Very tired today – meeting with solicitor in morn – have to sleep in afternoon – ball in eve – Ringroad and slave auction went well.
I cannot remember who played that Christmas Ball – John White and/or Pady Jalali might remember. And I absolutely dread to think what a “slave auction” might have been in that context. I feel like cancelling myself for something I don’t remember and possibly didn’t really play much of a part in.
Friday, 14 December 1984 busy day etc – got up late and UC in afternoon – celebration after – UC takeaway my place – JW [John White] and I did disco – then Petra came over after.
I have a feeling that several members of the committee joined us early in the piece for that last disco of 1984, a little unlike the ones described in the first few paragraphs of this article. I think a lot of students had already gone down by that Friday, so we would have had a lot of space to leap around for the whole evening.
Saturday, 15 December 1984 – Went shopping with Kate [Fricker] in morning – then worked all day for IT [Industrial Tribunal – now known as an Employment Court]. Had meal in evening over at Annalisa’s.
Sunday, 16 December 1984 – Kate came over fairly early – worked and had lunch together and worked some more. Cooked Annalisa a meal in the evening.
Monday, 17 December 1984 – Did very little today – got ready for tribunal – went out for Indian meal with sabbaticals.
The next episode will take us to Shrewsbury for the start of the Industrial Tribunal. Watch this space.
The Hackgrass column as published in December 1984
Despite the embarrassment of the Ringroad performance when supporting Lenny Henry in late November, my diary notes that we did a couple more performances that term. Get straight back on the bike after falling off and all that. It was probably part of the deal for having our Lenny Henry support show pruned.
And on the subject of pruning comedy, the headline picture is the entirety of the Hackgrass column as published in that December issue – much shorter than the piece submitted.
“Uncle” Quentin
This was to be Quentin Rubens’s last swipe at Hackgrass with the editor’s pen, as this was his last Concourse issue.
To be fair on Quentin, I think I had more or less completely run out of gas with Hackgrass by then. It was one thing to snipe pseudonymically at the committee from the side lines, but as sabbatical hidden in plain sight, it made no sense. In an attempt to disguise myself still and to “up the ante” some of the stuff I threw into that piece were both visceral and unfunny. Whereas some of my earlier griping about being pruned was fair, I think Quentin actually helped me to dodge bullets when he edited that column.
There are one or two not so bad jokes in there.
Actually I think the funniest stuff from that Concourse was in the letters. Annalisa de Mercur, who had done a two page spread on the miner’s strike (see below) wrote a coded letter which she now thinks was something to do with mushrooms (non-psycho-active ones)…
Cryptic to say the least
…while Richard “Wally” Hall, in his epistle, slagged off H Ackgrass for being the sort of person who snipes at those who speak at UGMs while not participating himself. Clearly he, like most folk, still hadn’t guessed who I was.
Lacking awareness of all kinds
Here are the extracts from my diary:
Saturday, 1 December 1984 – Shopped and did some work today. Went over to Kate’s [Kate, now Susan Fricker] for dinner – stayed late
Sunday, 2 December 1984 – Rose quite late – did some work in afternoon. Performed Ringroad in evening – went to Petra’s [Petra Wilson] briefly after.
Monday, 3 December 1984 – worked hard today – stock report came through [still losses, although at least the new bar managers had some ideas on what to do about it] – meetings. Early night.
Tuesday 4 December 1984 = Lots of committees etc – very busy in office. Went to Annalisa’s birthday party. Petra came over later.
Wednesday, 5 December 1984 – busy day with lots of meetings etc. John Boy [John White] came over for dinner in evening.
Thursday, 6 December 1984 – Busy day – solicitors in morning – committees – very busy afternoon. Went to KRA and Lindsay Ball. Petra came over later.
Friday, 7 December 1984 – Up early. Worked before UC in morning – very busy afternoon. Went down to London in Eve.
I have written up that weekend in London separately – it was an absolute corker and well worth a read if you like London, theatre and/or the 1980s.
Saturday, 8 December 1984 – Got up late – had late lunch – bummed around all day. Went to Royal Court to see The Pope’s Wedding – on to Mayflower after.
Sunday, 9 December 1984 – Got up quite late. Went into West End – had meal in Swiss Centre – came back to Keele – Petra came over.
Monday, 10 December 1984 – very busy day in office etc. Last UGM of term in the evening – went well.
Tuesday, 11 December 1984 – Very busy day today – work and meetings (Residential Services etc). In evening rehearsed Ringroad till late.
For the completists and/or deep readers amongst you, below are scans of Annalisa’s extraordinary piece about her visit to see the Silverdale Miners – for those of you who remember Annalisa and remember what Silverdale miners looked like, I can imagine Annalisa standing on a stepladder in order to interview those guys face-to-face:
If you are brave enough, you can also read the unexpurgated version of that H Ackgrass column. I apologise unequivocally, with the hindsight of age and better comedic judgment, for the visceral rubbish that got edited out.
A moment in my personal history on that visit to London; my first visit to The Royal Court Theatre.
I was blown away by this production – Bobbie and I returned in the new year to see Saved as well, which was being performed in rep along with The Pope’s Wedding. After that, I returned to The Royal Court many, many times. Most recently at the time of writing (forty years on), strangely, as a facilitator for the Royal Court rather than as an audience member. A strange but true story:
But returning to The Pope’s Wedding, I am sure I have Bobbie to thank for seeking out the opportunity to see that production. She was doing her Bar pupillage in London by then and had no doubt spotted a review and/or an advert for the production. I think we got in on some sort of special deal, which possibly involved queueing up for “on the day” tickets. What I do recall is that we saw both The Pope’s Wedding and Saved from the best seats in the house for very modest ticket prices.
The Royal Court has benefitted from this “drug pusher style sales technique” for many decades since; I got addicted to watching theatre from the best seats not any old seats. In fact, many other theatres have benefitted from The Royal Court’s foresight at snaring potential theatre addicts young.
I quite often say “what a cast” in my theatre visit write ups, but on this occasion I think that phrase deserves a shout: WHAT A CAST!
Tony Rohr, Adrian Dunbar, Mark Wingett, Peter Lovstrom, Joanne Whalley (prior to her becoming Joanne Whalley Kilmer), Gerard Horan, Lesley Manville, Peter-Hugo Daly and Gary Oldman – directed by Max Stafford Clark. Here is a link to the Theatricalia entry for this production.
Have I mentioned that I was blown away by this production? (Yes you have, let the reader see what some real experts say – ed).
Returning to that weekend, the diary reminds me that we went to The Mayflower (Chinese restaurant on Shaftesbury Avenue) after the theatre – one of those places that we knew would still be open at that hour. I’m guessing that we had fancied trying The Swiss Centre but were too late for that, hence we returned the next day to take lunch there.
One habit that I think we started that Pope’s Wedding & Mayflower evening, which we/I continued for several years after, was to pick up the Sunday papers on Saturday night and start reading them on the Night Bus home if in town at that late hour on a Saturday.
I remember back then thinking that this weekend was the height of sophistication which, for the 22 year old me, it probably was, at that time.
