John White Guest Piece: Graduation Day With Princess Margaret & Viscount Tonypandy, 3 July 1984

John White mid-1980s – with thanks to Mark Ellicott for the picture

While I chose to graduate in absentia and write something indecipherable in my diary about that day (more on that anon), John White, without the aid of diary postings, recalls that day well and has written a cracker of a guest piece about it.

Many thanks, John.

THE DAY WE WENT TO HANLEY

It was graduation day 1984. As the newly elected Keele Student’s Union Secretary, I and President, Kate Fricker, found ourselves in the unexpected position of joining Keele’s Chancellor, Princess Margaret, and other University luminaries for lunch before that year’s Graduation Ceremony.

Uncomfortably dressed up, Kate and I were stuck on the end of a long line to be introduced to the Queen’s sister as the least important of the guests on display. She slowly made her way down the obsequious line of bowers, scrappers and curtseyers until she eventually arrived at the end where we were introduced. As a republican I was a tad nervous the security service would be on my case for any signs of protest. I did not plan to make any and frankly just felt I had to do what I had to do – and in any case I would get some free alcohol and some nice nosh.

After the “what did you study?” conversation, there was a pause as no-one seemed to know what would happen next. This presented Kate and I with a few extra seconds of air time with royalty, much to the chagrin of the people back up the line, who were clearly bothered about the shorter amount time they got with Keele’s very own Royal. I distinctly remember jealous heads leaning forward and eyes staring at the two uppity and undeserving students who were only there because they had to be. It made me smile and I can’t remember at all what was said. Sadly The Crown did not capture this moment so, unless Kate can remember, I think the no-doubt-erudite-and-witty [verbal] jousting with Princess M will have to remain lost to history.

Lunch was good. Lamb I think and a few glasses of vino. I was smoking then and extremely miffed that a waiter kept offering the Princess a fag from a nice looking box but never looked like flashing the ash to the rest of us. I kept my own Bensons [other brands of cigarette were and still are available…but not recommended – ed.] safe for later – maybe she would fancy one if I got the chance to offer, I mused. Well there was no chance as she got whisked away as soon as lunch was over for a chauffeur driven ride to the Victoria Hall in Hanley, Stoke, where the degree ceremony took place.

“By George!” George Thomas c1955, aka Viscount Tonypandy by the time John White met him.

Kate was not graduating that year so went back to the Union whilst I was placed in a coach with the other lunch guests to be taken to Hanley. I got to sit with George Thomas, Lord (Viscount) Tonypandy who had been a well-liked and respected speaker of the House of Commons up until the June 1983 election when Mrs Thatch won a landslide after the Falklands War. He took genuine interest in me, was not in the least bit patronising and spoke eloquently about the value of democracy and the privilege of being elected, congratulating me on my recent election. I felt like I had just made it to the House of Commons. His kindness has stuck with me.

The rest of the ceremony was mundane. All the students were lined up and marched across the stage to bow with varying degrees of enthusiasm to Princess Margaret and we got handed a certificate if I remember correctly by someone else before shuffling off the other side of the stage.

Photo from 1983 ceremony by Caroline Sene (Caroline Shannon) “borrowed” from the Keele Oral History Project site, with thanks.

I met mum and dad afterwards and we drove to a lay-by on a country road near Madeley to consume a bottle of champagne before they dropped me back at Keele and went home. There were a bunch of people drinking in the Union that night but I guess with all the mums and dads around and the sense that this really was the end of student life it wasn’t at all raucous, unlike results day.

Ah yes, results day. I’ll cover that and my own indecipherable graduation day activities in my next instalment.

Many thanks once again to John White for this lovely guest memory piece.

Mark Ellicott Guest Piece: A Right Royal Keele Ball, Starring Princess Margaret, But At What Price?, 3 December 1981

Mark Ellicott has managed several of London's iconic venues, including Dingwalls, The London Astoria and more recently Heaven.  He cut his teeth as Keele Students' Union Social Secretary in the mid 1980s. But Mark arrived at Keele as a clean-cut, Tory-boy. The Royal Ball in December 1981, Mark's first term at Keele, might have seeded Mark's dramatic transformation. I am thrilled to host Mark's guest piece, in which he reflects on that starry night, forty years on.

The naiveté of youth!

As a Fresher in my first term at Keele, in the autumn of 1981, I was weirdly excited, as were many others, about the prospect of the Royal Ball in the Students Union almost exactly 40 years ago to the day.

At the time Princess Margaret was Keele’s Chancellor and she had periodically in the past ‘graced’ the Union with an attendance at one of its events. I wasn’t particularly pro or anti monarchy at the time, but as an eighteen year old still adjusting to an independent life it did appear to be a vaguely thrilling thing to be a part of. So I eagerly bought my ticket and a day or two before the event headed into Newcastle to hire an evening outfit.

Ticket holders – the cost was £8- were advised to arrive before HRH at a certain time – ostensibly for security reasons but I suppose also because it would have looked a bit weird if Mags had had to jostle her way into the Union building competing with hundreds of students and getting asked by the SU porters for some photo ID in order to gain admission. 

Everyone was  dressed in outfits that veered from the completely over the top to the over formalised absurd.  I count myself in the latter category. Sort of Primark meets Brideshead Revisited meets a downmarket magician about to perform in a provincial working mans club.

Some unsavoury looking guests at the ball

HRH arrived resplendent in pink at eight and the then Social Secretary Eric Rose, dressed in a natty black and white suit, introduced her to the Union Committee.

Margaret Rose & Eric Rose

Some members of the Committee, like Treasurer Steve Townsley, took a stand objecting to the whole circus and stayed away boycotting what they and many others felt to be shameless kowtowing to a discredited person of enormous privilege. That was not my view at the time but it was a view that I came to share.

Margaret, once she had worked out who the VP Internal and NUS Secretary and the Chair of Constitutional Committee etc. all were, was then led onto the dance floor by SU President Mark Thomas for an awkward ‘dance’. Mark, a genial Welshman who it was impossible to dislike, looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him up whilst HRH just looked indifferent and blandly into the distance with a thousand yard stare etched into her face no doubt having had much experience of similar situations. She shimmied around the floor quite fluently but would periodically flap her arms  so that she semi resembled a goose or a swan  preparing for flight.

Mark & Marge – Mark wasn’t normally the clenched fist type

I’m not sure she was entirely aware she was doing it but it did look quite funny.  I tried to get close to the couple but I got too close and  a burly looking security man intervened  and shot the sort of look at me that you would normally reserve for those things you see laying on their back at the bottom of a pond.

The intention was I suspect for the look to reduce transgressors to a pile of smouldering ash and to think twice about any possible future  spatial intrusion. My friend Paul, a Wolverhampton lad, and already drunk intimated to me he was going to try and ‘get off’ with her. He was optimistic about his chances following her recent fling with a twenty something young man called Roddy Llewelyn. Naturally I encouraged Paul to pursue his dream but I was not confident of his success given the goons around her.

Once five or ten minutes of this nonsense was concluded Margaret was led upstairs to meet the star performer for the event, Newcastle born Alan Price.

Alan Price a few years earlier

Price sang sort of music hall stomping pop anthems that in the 60s were inexplicably  popular and who retained for whatever reason some popularity on the student circuit long after his heyday had come to an end. Rather like Gary Glitter and Edwin Starr  in that respect. Although I obviously was not invited myself to join Mags and Pricey in their enclave away from the masses downstairs, I was a witness to her much later emerging onto the balcony to watch his performance wobbling unsteadily and needing to be supported by one of the security men, who had shot me the filthy look a while earlier. I’m told she and Mr P indulged in a vast quantity of whisky and that she was flirtatious to the point of nigh on asking him to unzip her dress at one point. That I would have paid extra to see.

Alan Price’s performance was immediately forgettable. Just turgid tuneless fairground ditties that like those bubbles kids make with those bubbles machines which  are there one minute and then……pah…just disappear the next. Five minutes after he had finished his entire show had been forgotten.

HRH was supported out of the building looking a little bit like she found something hilariously amusing. It was very apparent that she was pissed out of her head. She seemed to be cackling at one of the bins at one point. This sort of thing happens when you are drunk. I have been there myself. For some reason when off your nut a banal everyday inanimate object can suddenly appear like the most amusing, laugh out loud, clutching your stomach thing ever.

She dropped her cigarette holder as she left. The holder was about a foot long and looked like the sort of thing Noel Coward would have used. One of her flunkies picked it up for her and as he got up he lightly banged his head on her chin. She was peering down at him watching him retrieve it and stood just a little too closely. She smiled at the collision, although again this would have been because she was soused. Had she been sober he would no doubt have been whipped and beaten and made to crawl around on all fours for a month or two.

The Ball continued without her but it was by now a rather dull anti-climax. I went home whenever it finished feeling vaguely deflated.

It wasn’t my last interaction with our Chancellor.

Barely six months later as an indirect consequence of me and a friend trying to sack her from this titular position I got myself suspended for a year from the University.

But that is a different story. For another time.

Ellicott transforming…

…Ellicott transformed.

Ellicott, the hair presumptive

My First University Of Keele Students’ Union UGM, Starring Princess Margaret, 20 October 1980

I have no idea why Princess Margaret loomed so large at Keele University, but throughout my time at Keele our titular Chancellor was the source of countless controversies in absentia…which is indeed the manner in which I chose to receive my degree in 1984.

I knew nothing about this when I signed up for Keele. I knew more or less nothing at all about the place, other than the fact that Simon Jacobs had been to visit Keele in August and liked the look of it.

Indeed, it was along with fellow fresher Simon Jacobs that I took my seat at my first Students’ Union UGM…the first of a great many as it turned out…on 20 October 1980.

I don’t remember all that much about that first UGM, other than the hoo-ha that was the Princess Margaret controversy.

There were no doubt student political machinations involved in the matter dating back to before our time. But in short, it seemed, the new union sabbaticals had invited Princess Margaret to the Union’s Christmas Ball without seeking approval for such a manoeuvre from the whole committee nor from a UGM which is (or at least was) the sovereign body of the union.

Trying to recall how I felt about it, looking back on the event almost exactly forty years later, I don’t think I saw the matter as especially newsworthy or even all that controversial on the night itself. It just felt like good debate with some political theatre thrown in…and we even got to vote. The argument that the student ball would be far more restricted if HRH attended and that anyway she probably didn’t really want to come to our student ball seemed the most convincing to us and indeed to the majority of those who bothered to turn up, listen and vote.

Extract from The Daily Mirror Diary Page, 22 October 1980. Click the picture link above to see the whole page, including a piece about Mick Jagger describing him as an ageing rock star…he was 37 back then.

The Daily Mirror saw it a little differently. We’d been at Keele for less than a fortnight and already we were “bolshie students” and “little devils”. Yay!!

A week or so later, the student newspaper, Concourse, covered the story in a far more balanced manner:

The controversy rumbled on and had an impact on several of my activities in the first couple of terms, as my unfolding story will reveal. Within a few weeks, Simon and I and others were lampooning the whole affair through a street theatre skit which I wrote up a year or two ago – click here or below:

Not even two weeks after coming through those Keele gates for the first time, I felt that I’d well and truly arrived by the night of 20 October 1980!