Kidnapped: Being Memoirs Of A Curious Night At Keele In the Company Of Neil White And Toby Bourgein, 15 & 16 October 1984

Maya Angelou, American writer and civil rights activist, famously wrote:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

The details of this strange story from 40 years ago are lost in the mists of time and the sad fact is that I am now the sole survivor of that late evening, as Neil White (Lindsay Hall resident tutor) and Toby Bourgein (former Students’ Union Secretary and Postgraduate grandee by that time), have both since died.

I eulogised Toby in the following piece when I learned, in September 2020, that he had died:

I wrote about Neil White and Toby when I wrote up, forty years on, a memorable snowed-in evening or two from December 1981:

Ah, the Neil White home brew. I suspect that was also involved in the October 1984 kidnapping incident.

Here is all that I recorded in my personal diary for 15 October 1984:

Monday, 15 October 1984 – Very busy today – went to McDonald’s for tea and on to Marston tasting in KRA and on to Chalky’s [Neil White’s] flat.

That is not very revealing, but I remember that night 15/16 October, impressionistically, very well.

The context of all this is the Tommy and Ralph saga, which had come to a head that August when we dismissed the Students’ Union bar managers, Tommy & Ralph…

…and which was about to come to a head again, as their appeal to a Students’ Union EGM was to take place 10 days later, 25 October.

Ironically, our purpose at the KRA (postgraduate bar) on the evening of 15 October was to finalise the choice of main real ale for the new Real Ale Bar, formerly – and in location terms still – the Ballroom Bar. After searching high and low for an alternative to the KRA’s choice of Marston’s Pedigree, we bowed to the inevitable and chose to offer that brew also in the Students’ Union. The fruits of our research did mean that we also offered Banks’s Mild as a regular beer in that bar, which I found particularly pleasant as a brew for the remainder of my sabbatical year.

Neil and Toby invited me back to Neil’s resident tutor’s place for a chat and some home brew. This did not seem an odd invitation, as I had spent the occasional long evening that way with them over the years, see Snow White article and other such evenings.

But it soon became clear that Neil and Toby had a serious purpose to their invitation. I knew that they were friends with Tommy and Ralph. I also knew that they did not approve of the actions we had taken. But they made it very clear to me, as we downed some of Neil’s home brew, that they were going to support Tommy and Ralph’s motion of appeal to the EGM and that it was their view that the appeal would succeed and that the dismissals would be overturned. They certainly had precedent on their side to support their confidence that the appeal would succeed. No such appeal against a dismissal had ever previously been denied by the student body.

I explained to Neil and Toby the deep thought and heart-wrenching that had gone into our decision, but also that I/we were resolute that we had done the right thing in law and for the good of the Students’ Union. They disagreed and tried to persuade me to recant and change sides ahead of the appeal. In their minds, THAT would be for the good of the Union and also for my own good, as they saw my position and Education & Welfare Officer, having chaired the August dismissal meeting, as untenable once the appeal had been upheld and the decision to dismiss forcibly overturned.

I responded that such a change of position would make it even more untenable for me to continue in my role. I also felt (and still do) that such a U-turn would have been ruinous for the Students’ Union. We had, after all, made the decision because the status quo with those bar managers was unsustainable; the Union would have been financially ruined by or even before the end of that academic year.

Once we reached the point that, to my mind, we had established that our views were diametrically opposed and that there was no “third way” that might reconcile our positions, I got up to leave.

My memory is not entirely clear about how they prevented me from leaving, but I do recall at least one of them, if not both of them, blocking the door and at least one of them, if not both of them, saying:

we’re not going to let you leave until you change your mind.

It is that aspect of the evening that has, for all these years, made me associate the word “kidnap” with this event.

I’d like to make a few impressionistic things clear. At no point was there a threat or even the vaguest suggestion of serious violence, other than the aggression that might be supposed when people block a door to prevent someone from leaving. I recall that it was sort-of well-humoured, despite being sinister.

I recall giggling at one point and telling Toby, as he would well know, that they were technically falsely imprisoning me. Neil and Toby asserted that this was for my own good, that they liked me, and that they wanted me to put my own position (and that of Tommy and Ralph) right, and that they couldn’t possibly let me go until they had persuaded me to follow their guidance.

This odd event went on until really quite late. My appointment diary for those two days provides a clue as to how I escaped.

Nothing as exciting as a Robert Louis Stevenson Kidnapped adventure. I squeezed in a meeting with Toby Bourgein the next day. My escape was achieved through the expedient of promising to think very carefully about what Neil and Toby had said and to meet Toby the next day to continue the conversation.

The meeting on 16th at 1.00 was not very long and not very pleasant. I told Toby that reflection had only firmed up my view that the decision we had made about Tommy and Ralph was the right one and that recanting would neither be right nor in the interests of the Union.

The words in my personal diary of 16 October are quite revealing.

Tuesday, 16 October 1984 – Feeling rather ill today – meetings galore – all unpleasant – John Boy [John White – no relation] came back in eve to do policy document.

I found the whole Tommy and Ralph matter painful and emotionally draining. Finding myself up against old friends who were so sure of their position that they were prepared to kidnap me in an attempt to persuade me only added to the pain.

I’m not sure whether I even told my colleagues what had happened that night, John might remember if I did tell them, as might Kate (Susan) Fricker and/or Pady Jalali.

I still have fond memories of Neil and Toby from the many happy occasions I spent with them. I also firmly believe that they had the interests of the Students’ Union and their friends Tommy & Ralph genuinely at heart. But I believe that they were wrong-headed over this matter. I also believe that their conduct in the way they went about trying to persuade me to recant – was inappropriate and out of character for those two.

Toby Bourgein: Persuasive…but not THAT persuasive

Snow, White & The Seven Draughts: An Extra Ten Days Snowed In At Keele, 12 to 21 December 1981

With many thanks to Dave Lee for the “loan” of this snow picture from 1981.

Even before the extreme weather set in, I had pre-arranged to return to Keele immediately after the Christmas Bank Holiday, during the period that we now call Twixtmas. I was to stay in Rana Sen’s flat, which I think was G Block Barnes, until the halls of residence reopened. I’ll write up that fag end of 1981 and start of 1982 soon enough.

So when the snow made it very difficult to travel, with The Beat concert cancelled for weather reasons on 11 December, I decided, on 12 December…

…to move into that same Barnes flat and await better weather before travelling. I think Rana had already gone and I stayed in his room pre Christmas. I ended up staying at Keele for an extra 10 days and only going to my parent’s place for a week at Christmas.

Sunday 13 December 1981 – Blizzards – stayed in all day in flat – amused ourselves. Stayed in for evening then…

Monday 14 December 1981 – …saw off Jenny. Went to Newcastle shopping – cooked. Went to Union in evening – Neil White’s for some home brew. Up late.

I’m starting to smell a rat here. It seems to me that, with Jenny able to travel, me able to go to Newcastle shopping and the Union boozing, that my “snowed in” excuse had run out of steam by the Monday.

It seems to me that I was now simply enjoying some extra Keele lifestyle outside term time. This might have been the first time I did that, but certainly it wasn’t the last.

Snow Black & White – thanks again to Dave Lee for the “loan” of this picture

At this point I also want to eulogise Neil White, who died in 2005 after spending 30 years at Keele. There is a wonderful tribute to him on the University website – click here. I cannot better those tributes, but I can add a personal note of fond memory and thanks.

Neil was a junior lecturer in those days – he had just completed his doctorate and started teaching full time when I arrived at Keele in 1980. Computer Science was not my thing back then, but he was a friendly fellow with many interests. He would quite often invite the several stragglers in the bar back to his campus pad for some after hours drinking and deep conversation about life, the universe & everything. His home brew, as mentioned in my diary for that December 1981 visit, was legendary.

There will be further mentions of Neil in my diaries I’m sure and I’ll report further memories as those mentions arise. The story of the night that Neil and Toby Bourgein kidnapped me in 1984 will make for an interesting conversation piece when my forty years on series gets that far.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It seems I had a couple of quiet days on the Tuesday and Wednesday – perhaps I needed them after the night of Neil’s home brew – but I did enjoy “Tony’s party in evening” on the Wednesday night.

Making students sign on the dole even for short holidays was one of the dafter ideas back then!

I have written before about the ludicrous bureaucracy back then, which required students to sign on and off the dole even for the short holidays in order to claim a pittance of additional money, because the grant only covered certain weeks.

What a waste of paper – what a waste of time. Mind you, the unemployment rate was so bad back then, I suppose it at least provided some honest work – even if such employment was merely bullshit jobs – for many people who would otherwise have been signing on along with us students.

Thursday 17 December 1981 – Signed on today – shopped for this evening – dinner – food good – but Jon & Tru did not get on too well.

I mentioned Jon [Gorvett] & Truda [Smith] traumas the previous week. I have now had an exchange of correspondence with Jon about this and his own recollections are expressed below:

Seems rather ridiculous now, but I recall that her dumping me for Toby B [Bourgein] was quite traumatic, with the backdrop of snowy wastes and blocked roads that it took place against a rather excessive use of metaphor, I now feel. I do recall that both you and Simon [Jacobs] were brilliant company at the time, though – many thanks for pulling me through. First serious girlfriend I’d ever had, and so I think it was the hardest knock (‘first cut is the deepest’, I recall, was a line repeated at the time, ad nauseam..)

I believe that my “dinner party” on 17 December was a futile attempt on my part to help Jon and Truda rekindle their romance. I don’t think I ever again made the mistake of trying to help friends that way. I learnt a lot and quickly from my experiences age 19 at Keele.

Simon Jacobs, who was absent “without leave” for much of the intense part of this unfolding, says the following, forty years on:

And of course, I remember the drama of Jon’s relationship break-up that happened during that winter term before I stomped back down to London to be present (if not correct) at a very annoying family moment.

So it was 1981 and I knew remarkably little about relationships and how they’re supposed to work. So for Jon this was clearly very traumatic. Even for me, one place removed, I remember being quite shocked at Truda’s behaviour. I think I’m right in saying that her dumping of Jon was somehow inextricably linked to her ambition to be President (or at the very least, someone important). I don’t think I’d ever come across this type of ruthless ambition close up before and I suspect it had quite a profound effect on me. I think I learned how not to be. It was pretty unforgivable. And of course, it was all set against a backdrop – as Jon points out – taken straight from Ken Russell’s ‘Women in Love’, which you’ll both recall ends with a dead body in the snow.

Oh dear! They look like a right poncy bunch of students – not like Keele folk at all

I’m pleased to report that the Keele mini-drama did not result in any dead bodies in the snow. Indeed, all of us protagonists found ourselves campaigning against the cuts at the UGC in London three weeks later. I have a feeling that my planned early return to Keele during Twixtmas was primarily to help plan that 6 January 1982 protest.

Photo from the Evening Sentinel l to r: Toby Bourgein (kneeling), Jon Gorvett, Jon Rees, Mark Thomas, Simon Jacobs, Heather [Morgan?] (kneeling), Me (also kneeling), Lovely Lass Whose Name Escapes Me, Truda Smith

But I’m getting ahead of myself again – let us move on.

It seems as though I mostly took it easy for the last three days of that extended stay at Keele, spending Friday evening in the Sneyd, Saturday evening in the Union, having undertaken a rather ominous sounding:

Jon search in afternoon…

…I don’t think we were searching for his body in the snow.

Sunday 20 December 1981 – Lazyish day. Did some work. Justin came over in evening.

Monday 21 December 1981- Left Keele – fortunately got lift home. Lazy evening.

With apologies to Justin – I cannot place you just now but by all means get in touch and trigger my memory. Also apologies to the unnamed driver who sponsored my journey from Keele to South London.

For those who have a strong stomach, the next story in date sequence, which I wrote up three years before this “forty years on” series, requires a trigger warning about Hitler and the National Front. It’s strange but completely true: