The extract from Concourse that follows contains the second published column. Unfortunately, I either failed to keep or mislaid my carbon copy of the submission. That second column was cruelly edited, as my whinge in the third column (May 1984) attests.
Unless I find the carbon copy misplaced amongst other papers (vaguely possible but unlikely 40+ years hence) we shall never know the detail of the scurrilous scribbles that were edited out, nor shall we discover which good jokes were cruelly pinched and inserted into other people’s articles in that March 1984 edition of Concourse. Naughty Uncle Quentin (Quentin Reubens, then editor of Concourse).
Anyway, here is the column that did get published on Page Seven of the March 1984 Concourse.
Answer: They all strangely find their way into one week of my diary.
Quite a week, that first full week of March 1984. Once the decision was made that I’d run for Education & Welfare, the campaign went into overdrive. What could possibly go wrong?
Sunday 4 March 1984
Rose quite early – worked a little – spent afternoon in dark room with Annalisa [de Mercur] etc. Popped over to Bobbie’s in eve.
Monday, 5 March 1984
Busy working on manifesto today – got quite a bit done – constitutional committee in the evening – went over to Bobbies after.
Tuesday, 6 March 1984
Not feeling very well today – worked on manifesto today – almost done – went over to Bobbie’s – really felt ghastly!
Wednesday, 7 March 1984
Worked on manifesto today – covered in German Measles. today. Took it fairly easy.
The reason the manifesto was such a time consuming matter was a decision, taken jointly with my campaign manager, Malcolm Cornelius, to produce both the manifesto and leaflet (known as a supplementary manifesto) using digital technology. I wrote this up several years ago in the following piece, click here or the image link below:
Word processing on a University mainframe in 1984 was a non-trivial matter, believe me. Malcolm, who was pretty geeky back then and possibly remains so, could probably explain in excruciating detail what we had to go through to get that job done. Ask him. Go on, ask him.
I merely remember a lot of trial and error and also remember not feeling at all well throughout the process, probably because I had Rubella, commonly known as German Measles.
Younger readers, please do not berate my parents for failing to have me vaccinated – our generation didn’t have a vaccination for Rubella. What was supposed to happen was that you had the disease as a child and then never got it again because the instance of having the disease effectively vaccinated you. Some of us were careless enough to avoid the disease until the fourth year at University – or even longer in some cases – then get it at an inconvenient time…which for me this unquestionably was.
It would have been so much worse had the Rubella presented before the photo shoot. Any spots you might detect on the images from the shoot are either dust or my regular spots and blotches, which were quite numerous when I was in my very early twenties.Please let us not discuss THAT tie.
Thursday, 8 March 1984
Still not very well – spots disappearing – busyish, but took it fairly easy. Finished manifesto etc. Bobbie came over later.
Friday, 9 March 1984
Feeling a bit better today – Bobbie went away – manifesto’s in and supp’s out.– Social Sec election & big appeal over VP internal.
Saturday 10 March still quite tired – has an easy day today – went to Andrea’s party in eve – on to union briefly.
Right, so not only did Bobbie abandon me to run that election…the one I had hoped she’d be running for…but she went away for the weekend ahead of my campaign proper starting. In retrospect I don’t blame her at all, but I do remember feeling a bit miffed at the time.
Although I was a candidate for the following week’s election, I was still Chair of Election Appeals for that week’s election. I sense that the Social Secretary election went smoothly…
Here’s me with Pady Jalali, who won that election. Image Summer 1985 with thanks to Mark Ellicott
…whereas the VP Internal election had some element of hoo-ha attached to it, probably long-since forgotten by all concerned. Hayward Burt won that election and it is just possible that he remembers the hoo-ha.
Me and Hayward in the summer of 1985 – thanks Mark Ellicott for the picture
Ironically, the challenge probably came from the Tories, as Hayward was, in those days, one of the “Liberals with infeasibly strange names”. Hayward now can be found through more Conservative channels. I wonder whether he remembers what the shenanigans were on this occasion. I’ll send this piece to him and ask him.
Update: Hayward Replies…
Thanks for the heads up and the photo (I used to be thin! who knew?)
The controversy rings no bells at all, the result was v close between me and the Labour Club chap and I remember being absolutely knacked with all the door knocking.
“Andrea’s party” on the Saturday will have been Andrea Collins’ (now Woodhouse’s) party. Strangely, a Facebook birthday reminder for Andrea popped up on my FB tab while I was in the process of producing this piece.
Malcolm might have been unusually geeky back then but in many ways we are all geeks now, forty years on.
I’ll send Andrea a “Happy Birthday” message by dint of a link to this piece – Happy Birthday Andrea!
I was a reluctant candidate for the union sabbatical post of Education and Welfare officer. I thought I had done a grand Machiavellian job of ensuring that the 1984/85 committee would be just fine. The last piece of the jigsaw, in my mind, was to persuade Bobbie Scully to run for Education and Welfare.
Unfortunately, Bobbie was quietly more Machiavellian than me (the fact that she was studying politics as well as law probably helped), so I found the tables turned and I somehow succumbed to peer pressure to run myself.
Here is the manifesto, now in pieces but thus scan-able in three parts.
It is not easy to fool WordPress into more or less presenting the thing as it looked. I probably could make it look a bit better, but for now the above presentation will have to do.
Intriguingly, in similar context, I believe my manifesto was the first ever union manifesto to be word-processed. Hence the bold lettering etc. It was a devil of a job using the University mainframe’s text editor software. If my diary is to be believed, we spent serious chunks of four or five days to get this seemingly trivial job done; it was a non-trivial task back then.
My friend and campaign manager Malcolm Cornelius deserves all the credit for the idea and the hard yards to get the job done. I believe that Malcolm went on to a glorious career in IT consulting; perhaps his work on my manifesto was an important staging-post in his career.
Here’s the supplementary manifesto, which was similarly word-processed and formed part of that multi-day task. Another innovation was the use of DL size for these supplementaries. People tended to go for A5 two-sided and ration their allocation of one ream of A4 accordingly. I thought that DL, yielding 1,500 rather than 1,000 leaflets, was a good idea.
At some stage, I’ll pull some memories and diary notes together on the election campaign itself. Suffice it to say at this stage that the campaign succeeded and I was elected.
In truth, the first week of this two-week write up is not the most exciting week I spent at Keele. But for the record:
Here’s a translation of that week’s scrawl:
Sunday, 19 February 1984
Rose, quite late – ate – took Jilly to Stoke – returned – Malc [Malcolm Cornelius] came over in eve – went union
Monday, 20 February 1984
Busyish day – UGM etc. to prepare. UGM went quite badly at first – went back to B’s [Bobbie Scully’s] after.
Tuesday, 21 February 1984
Busyish day – did some work etc – went shopping. Cooked K 41 meal in eve. Popped over to B’s in eve.
Wednesday 22 February 1984
Not bad day – worked on Constitution etc – did some work also. B came over quite late – stayed.
Thursday, 23 February 1984
Not bad day – in union – distributed AP [Alternative Prospectus?] quite a bit – did little work. Came back. Went over B’s for awhile.
Friday, 24 February 1984
Busyish day – got lots of odd ends done (??). Went to see Strolling Bones in eve – B came back here.
Saturday, 25 February 1924
Easyish day – went shopping. Didn’t work – went over to Bobbie’s in eve – stayed
I’m struggling to remember who the K41 crowd were. I think possibly Andrea Collins (now Woodhouse) and her gang. Or possibly Viv Robinson’s mob.
Malcolm Cornelius recently commented, when matters of revising the constitution came up on a facebook posting:
I remember spending hours with you going thru line by line and rewriting it into plain(er) English. Pretty advanced for the time. I also still recalling moving procedural motions 38b2 and the like !
That comment of Malcolm’s might qualify as the geekiest comment ever on the Forever Keele Facebook Group 🙂
Regarding the Strolling Bones, or perhaps I should more accurately say Mick Swagger & the Strolling Bones, in truth I didn’t remember having seen them until I found that diary entry. But the description of them – in particular Mick Swagger’s gyrating, brought it back to me.
An extraordinary thing about this act, I suppose, is that part of the conceit of that tribute act playing the student circuit back then was that the Rolling Stones had been going for nearly 22 years – i.e. since before I (and almost all of us) at Keele at that time had been born. Who would have guessed that, 40 years after that, The Rolling Stones would still be going?
Lazyish day – Malcolm came over – wrote essay early eve – went over Malcs -> Bobbie’s for eve.
Monday, 27 February 1984
Busyish day – rotten cold – busy round union etc. Constitutional Committee in eve etc – Bobbie stayed.
Tuesday 28 February 1984
Fairly busy day – did some work etc – popped over to Bobbie’s for a while in eve.
Wednesday, 29 February 1984
Busyish – shopping – working – etc. Popped over to B’s, briefly, in eve.
Thursday, 1 March 1984
Busyish day working etc. Did quite a lot of things. With J-Soc in eve – worked after – B came over late.
Friday, March 1984
Busyish day – election today – and EAP [election appeals] committee – went over to Bobbie’s for while after.
Saturday, 3 March 1984
Shopped etc today – easyish day – photo session in afternoon etc – went to Hanley for Chinese with B– went back there after.
At some point around that time – I think probably on that Sunday in late February, Bobbie and Malcolm turned the tables on me and persuaded me that I should run for Education & Welfare Officer. My plan had been for Bobbie to fulfil that role – she’d have been bloody good at it and was certainly popular enough to get elected – but she had no intention of sticking around at Keele for another year.
I remember at one point hedging, by saying that i would only do it if the right people got elected in that week’s elections. That meant John White as Secretary and Pete Wild as Treasurer.
“I won” says John – photo thanks to Mark Ellicott“So did I” says Pete – photo also thanks to Mark Ellicott
That election on the Friday confirmed their election and I had run out of road with the Malcolms and Bobbies of this world.
I’m pretty sure it was Annalisa De Mercur who did the “photo sesh”. The Hanley Chinese with Bobbie will have been the same one we went to before Christmas with Malcolm and Ruth. No-one remembers the name but Malcolm recalls:
That Chinese was for the time pretty good, I remember red flock wallpaper and the first time I ever had fresh lychees was there. No idea what its name was!
Next time I’ll share with you the results of the photo sesh and other ephemera from that era. I’ll also explain why my campaign was nearly nipped in the bud by an attack of the Germans. Watch this space.
Truda Smith, Kate Fricker & Mark Ellicott, with thanks to the latter for the photo
Another week in which the diary only tells a small part of the story, as my memory dredges other details too, not least the fact that Kate (now Susan) Fricker was elected SU President that week.
Sunday 12 February 1984 – Took Bobbie [Scully] to Health Centre in the morning – not at all well. Odd day clearing up etc – saw film – went Union in evening.
Monday 13 February 1984 – Funny day – tried visit B etc. – let her out in afternoon – went there & Constitutional Committee eve – met Jula [close friend of Bobbie’s] et. al. afterwards
In order to cover my tracks, I was as visceral about myself in that initial piece as I had been about the students’ union protagonists. I particularly remember Annalisa de Mercur approaching me in the Chancellor’s Building, worried that I might be upset by the coverage. So concerned was she and so seemingly unconvinced by my shrugging it off, I confessed to her that I was H Ackgrass and adopted her into the small inner sanctum of spies henceforward. This proved to be a useful tactic, as Annalisa was a bit differently connected to people on the periphery of union politics than my other spies and was unlikely to be suspected as part of an underground H Ackgrass network.
Tuesday, 14 February 1984 – Pleasant day – prepared talk for evening – fairly lazy day – gave talk to Careless Talk in eve – Bobbie came back.
Wednesday, 15 February 1984 – Busyish day about place – shopped – worked etc. Popped over to B’s for a while in eve.
…but I did not in truth remember ever giving a talk to Careless Talk. Ashley Fletcher and/or Sally Hyman might remember what I talked about. It might have been something to do with the economics I was studying (I was deep into the pharmaceutical industry for my dissertation that year) or something to do with my view that reform is universally preferable to revolution.
Thursday, 16 February 1984 – Busyish day – worked, union etc – didn’t get much work done. Went over to B’s – stayed.
Friday, 17 February 1984 – Hectic day – shops – classes, etc. Election count etc – Jilly [Black] arrived – went home and had meal.
Saturday, 18 February 1984 – I showed Jilly around – went to Newcastle – came back – cooked a big meal – stayed in after.
Jilly visiting Keele, but I think this photo was on a subsequent visit later that year.
Kate Fricker winning that presidential election was the first peg in the ground of a seemingly suitable committee for 1984/85. Good people, such as John White and Pete Wild, had already put their names forward for the next round of elections by then too. In my mind, Bobbie would be the final sabbatical peg as Education & Welfare Officer, but Bobbie had other ideas.
Unconnected with union politics, I think Bobbie went away that weekend to see her family. That will have been one of the reasons that it was a suitable weekend for Jilly to visit Keele. I’m not entirely sure who would have participated in “the big meal” I describe for the Saturday, but it might well have included people like Annalisa de Mercur and/or Michelle Epstein. It might well have included my flatmate Alan Gorman, who enjoyed the sort of food I cooked, as did Vivian Robinson, with whom I was very much on dining terms by then. My other flatmates, Pete Wild and his regularly visiting girlfriend Melissa Oliveck were strict vegetarians, as was, I think, Chris Spencer, the other actual resident.
Whoever it was who dined, given that I described it as “a big meal”, Barnes L54 will have been buzzing that evening.
I was rummaging through an old copy of Concourse looking for something completely different, when I came across this “freshers” account of the late January UGM.
I was transported back to the event in ways that my diary entries and my own pieces could not transport me.
I hope that this piece pleases some other people as much as it has pleased me. I smiled…I even laughed at one or two 40-years-old jokes.
Alistair (Ali) Dabbs soon went on to become part of the Union, of course, as my “forty years on” account will soon reveal. He was at that time, after all, one of the “Liberals with infeasible names”. He then went on to a career in journalism – who would have guessed on the back of a deft debut of this quality.
Any thoughts on this Ali? – they’d be most welcome.
By way of contrast, my H Ackgrass column, which mentioned the same events in the same edition of Concourse, did so like this:
Vivian Robinson, picture by Andrew Thacker “lifted” from Concourse
My diary is useless on some of the memories I retain from this period, so my pieces will, by necessity, be more impressionistic and in some places possibly even vague.
I recall that my discussions with Vivian Robinson (Union Secretary 1983/1984) at that time revolved around so-called Keele apathy and a desire to encourage more students to vote and get involved. Viv was the returning officer and I chaired election appeals, so this was, in essence, our gig.
One wheeze we came up with, I think quite early in January 1984, was to put up a sample manifesto for president, showing people what a manifesto needed to look like.
Being me, I ran with that idea to also make our sample a spoof, in which the fictitious candidate promised a ridiculous amount of infeasible stuff. The tag line at the end of the text below the sample, which explained how the election system worked, read something like:
Whatever your views on the candidates, please vote and please vote wisely.
You can see why I didn’t go into advertising.
We originally called our candidate Piers Witherspoon or something like that, but Eddie Slade, then Senior Tutor, came to us (before term started I’m sure) loving the idea but worrying that there was a real student with a name that was too close for comfort to our fictitious one.
We decided to change the name of the character to Nigel Wisely, enabling a tighter tag line:
Please vote and please vote Wisely
Unfortunately, some students didn’t realise that Nigel Wisely was a spoof and complained to Vivian when the election came around that they wanted to vote for Nigel Wisely but his name was not on the ballot.
Apropos to nothing other than some light relief in this union-heavy piece, who from that 1980s period remembers these two? And who can name them?
Two very familiar, smiley faces. From the same stack of Andrew Thacker pictures as Vivian Robinson’s above (Xmas Ball 1983).
My other labour of Hercules in early 1984 was to redraft the Students’ Union constitution. The extant document had been around since 1970, which, in 1983, seemed, like, for ever. It had more holes than a Swiss cheese and the mischief-makers were able to do smelly things with those holes.
Buried in my personal archive, I have found a copy of the 1970 thing that I consigned to the scrap heap (with the consent of a UGM which was, of course, the sovereign body of the Union). The print within it is miniscule – it must be something like 6-point – accessibility hadn’t been invented back then.
Smaller than A5 per page, the print really is tiny
There are those who might say, cruelly, that making the constitution unreadably small was an act of mercy on the students who might otherwise read it. I am not of that view and “my” revised version was in larger print. You’ll have to take my word for that, because I did not retain a copy of the thing I slaved to produce and get through a UGM. Again, some might say “that’s a mercy”.
Compared with the miniscule print of the 1970s constitution, my diary pages for January 1984 are surprisingly readable. There’s not a lot in there. What little there is, mostly comprises either me or Bobbie being a bit poorly, spending a lot of time together nevertheless and the struggles I was having to get as much done as I wanted to get done.
Yes, the UGM that adopted “my” new constitution was 30 January 1984. They probably still refer to it as Independence Day in Keele Students’ Union circles…or perhaps not.
I shall return to topics such as food and newspapers separately, in a future piece. That’s enough to be getting on with today. Anyone would think I was paid by the word…like Dickens.
Ian Harris aka H Ackgrass…or is this Charles Dickens?
John White in the SU Secretary’s Office which was, in December 1983, Viv’s office. “Wouldn’t have happened on my watch”, says John (SU Secretary 1984/85). Photo by Mark Ellicott.
Monday 19 December 1983 – Rose quite late – laundered. Got drunk in Viv’s office – then ate ->Veras [Veera Bachra’s] – pub crawl – stayed in Wolstanton
It’s a bit of a miracle that I’m still alive. I remember even less about the Wolstanton pub crawl than I do about the Barnes L54 one. If Veera was there I’m sure her friend Debbie was there and I guess some of their crowd. Ashley, Bob and Sally might have formed part of that “off campus” excursion but I don’t remember those two social circles ever overlapping…not that absence of remembering that level of detail is evidence of anything.
I’m guessing that Veera and co were living in Wolstanton at that time. My main memory of them is from Barnes but I think they moved on after 82/83.
The pub crawl would no doubt have taken in The Archer and The Plough… perhaps we ventured further than Wolstanton on that crawl.
Tuesday 20th December 1983 – Got up early – left Wolstanton went to ‘Castle – then Keele – packed and left – arrived at Marianne’s [Marianne Gilmour] early evening – stayed in.
Wednesday 21st December 1983 – Rose fairly early – did a few chores in afternoon etc – went to see Rear Window at Hampstead [Everyman] – most pleasant.
That was my first ever visit to the Everyman and I remember it most fondly. The Rear Window showing was, if I remember correctly, a recently remastered print which showed the superb cinematography of that movie in all its glory.
Clearly I was not in a mad rush to visit my folks that Christmas, as I spent three nights at the Gilmour residence in Stanmore before returning to the bosom of my own family. I think Marianne’s folks were away, which is why she and I ran around after her grandparents a bit.
I think Christmas dinner “at The Benjamin’s” was still in Woodfield Avenue that year, but perhaps they had already moved to Putney by then. I expect there were just eight of us around the table – four Benjamins, Doreen’s mother (named Jessie Jackson) and us three Harris folk. Possibly Lisa was already with Nathan by then.
These images of Keele thanks to Graham Sedgley. How can you be in a blue funk in a place with red skies like that?
Something irked me in the penultimate week of term that year. The diary has more than its usual smattering of negativity.
I cannot remember what would have led to the phrase:
…UGM in eve – sabotaged…
…but that will for sure have irked me.
I sense that I was pretty busy that week with both studies and union stuff and I suspect that, whatever the sabotage was, I thought it disruptive and a cause of uneccessary work on my part.
I know I was already sensing that the 1983/84 committee on the whole was not very good and that there were aspects of the Union that mattered to me that felt out of control.
I also recall planning with Viv Robinson to promote the election season to try to ensure that the students engaged with that process – more on that will follow early in 1984. Similarly, I took it upon myself as Chair of Constitutional Committee to attempt to revise the constitution in order to remove some of the procedural loopholes that were enabling sabotage. More on that anon too.
Thursday – A Liberal Array Of Activities
A moving story if ever there was one
One of the more strange collections of activities is listed for Thursday:
V busy day – odds and ends – helped Ashley [Fletcher] move bed in afternoon – went J-Soc -> Liberal party in evening
I don’t think I am a good candidate for helping anyone move a bed from one part of Stoke to another, especially not a team comprising me and Ashley.
Just the thought of it brings to mind the following short film:
As for the “Liberal Party” later in the day, that would not be the actual political party, of course, but a party thrown by the bunch of Liberal activists who had arrived at Keele that year, who included my flatmate Pete Wild and Hayward Burt, both of whom depicted in the following picture:
Tony Roberts (Conservative), Pete Wild (then Liberal) and Hayward Burt (then Liberal, now Conservative), photo thanks to Mark Ellicott (formerly Conservative but subsequently radical)
My Barnes L54 flatmate Chris Spencer would no doubt have been there, as would Melissa Oliveck, who was Pete’s girlfriend at the time and a regular visitor to Barnes L54.
Friday 9 December – Busyish day – really pissed off today – went Hanley in eve with Ashley – Bobbie’s for a while in eve
I wonder what pissed me off. The Union business? Writers block for one of those pesky essay deadlines? Back ache from helping Ashley to move his bed? Head ache from overindulging liberally at the previous night’s party? Whatever caused it, I don’t suppose Bobbie enjoyed the experience of my mood on such days. Relatively rare in my case but I must have been REALLY pissed off to have noted such in my diary, which was normally spared such emotions.
Saturday 10 December – Busy sort of day. Shopping etc. Helped Ashley move in evening -> Black Lion -> two parties in eve. Stayed B.
I had two Kitchenware tracks on an NME sampler cassette, Mad Mix II, namely Small Town Creed by The Kane Gang and Lions In My Own Garden by Prefab Sprout.
If you click the above link or the picture below you can see and hear tracks from Mad Mix II – some kind/keen person has done this – thank you
My diary entry for 30 November is brief but precise:
Busyish day – union and work – went to see Kitchenware package in eve – B came back
B is Bobbie – we’d been seeing each other for a few weeks by then. My guess is that I dragged her to this gig on a “you’ve got to see…” basis. I’ll ask her if she remembers anything about it.
I remember that the package had been billed as “The Kane Gang plus Prefab Sprout plus…[either The Daintees or Hurrah!]”. But on the day it was Prefab Sprout plus The Daintees plus Hurrah! I was very disappointed not to see The Kane Gang.
I remember all three bands being very good, but Prefab Sprout was the standout for me, not least because of the variety in their material.
Prefab Sprout’s gigography doesn’t list this gig at the time of writing (September 2019) – I’ll send them a heads up on it – there are several Kitchenware gigs listed around that time and I guess this one was missed.
Parenthetically, I remember Truda Smith Immediate past president) at that gig irritatingly referring to Prefab Sprout as “The Brussel Sprouts” repeatedly, which she seemed to think was very funny…it wasn’t.
I’m hoping this Ogblog piece willbe bulked up with other people’s recollections, so I shall be shouting out to the Keele alums and Kitcheware aficionados. We’ll see.
