Today is the 30thanniversary of one of the most important events of recent British history: the Battle of Trafalgar Square. This event changed not only the course of national history, by contributing to the defeat of the hated Poll Tax (or Community Charge), it also changed the course of my friend Alistair’s life. Alistair died just over a year ago, and now seems an appropriate time to tell his remarkable story here. In fact, intertwined as it is with that of my own family, this is long overdue.
This box of pencils, with my name on them, were a gift one childhood Christmas from the children of the family next door. Myself and my brothers got a box each, and I remember being thrilled to see my full name printed in gold on my own pencils – so much so that I saved and hoarded them carefully which is why these last three pencils, slightly chewed, survive in the Usmeum today. Alistair, Danny and Briony were the same ages as my two older brothers and me, and our homes were interchangeable during my childhood years; they moved house when Briony and I, who until then had been inseparable companions, were 12. This post is about Alistair, the eldest.
I never met their father, a famous writer and darling of the post-war left-wing peace movement, because he abandoned them when Briony and I were babies and they rarely saw him. Their mother, like mine, worked as a secretary, and took in lodgers, as we did, to make ends meet. Her family and friends also helped out, and my own Dad became like a surrogate father in some ways. I remember him building the kids a Wendy house in their garden, and doing various other odd jobs. We all attended Westfields Primary School (now Barnes Primary) and spent much of the summer holidays out on Barnes common with our bikes and their dog, while those long balmy summer evenings were spent playing games in our street, a quiet cul-de-sac, with gangs of neighbourhood kids. As well as standards such as Hide and Seek or British Bulldog, we invented our own game which combined various elements of the others with complex rules involving the “Kickstone” – the gatepost of the Hobsons opposite our house – which had to be kicked by anyone who escaped from their hiding place without being caught, whereupon they had to shout out “Kickstone Releasio One Two Three!” and first to do it was the winner. I think. I’m sure Brother 2 can enlighten me of the actual rules, but we all have very fond memories of Kickstone Releasio, so much so that it was mentioned at Alistair’s funeral.
Alistair and siblings – his and mine – in our garden, 1964; the go-karts were made by my Dad.
After their family moved a few streets away and we all attended different secondary schools we saw each other less, found new friends and interests, and drifted apart. I kept in touch with Briony by letter for many years but this too dwindled, and when in the 1980s she moved to the United States and got married, and I moved to Scotland for university, we lost touch altogether, easily done in those days before the Internet. Our mothers exchanged the annual Christmas card so we had some news over the years.
Life rolled on, and in late 1990 I moved back to London; I lived in Brixton and would visit my parents in Barnes most weekends. On one visit in 1991 they told me they had read about Alistair in the Guardian (their daily newspaper of choice since their split from the Communist Party and Morning Star some time before). He had been arrested during the poll tax riots in Trafalgar Square, charged with assaulting two police officers, and spent some time in prison. The Guardian article argued that the arrests were unlawful and the protesters innocent of the charges brought against them; that in fact, it was the police who had brutally attacked them. Tributes to Alistair by friends and family, including the novelist Maeve Binchy, testified to his gentleness: he would never bite anyone, let alone a policeman, as had been claimed. My parents, who shared this view and wanted to help, wrote a letter of support to him via his mother Maureen. He wrote back, enclosing amongst other items a copy of Stand Firm, the newsletter of the Trafalgar Square Defendants campaign.
I found these documents in the archives. His letter is charming, full of Alistair’s usual wry humour in spite of his circumstances. He wrote that he was “very touched and it really brought home to me all the memories of the folk I grew up with.” He gave them a summary of what he’d been up to in the intervening years, and I was surprised to learn that he had lived in Brixton for most of that time, running the Wholesome Trucking wholefoods delivery service whose vans I often saw out and about; perhaps he was even driving them. He also enclosed a copy of the speech he gave at Maureen’s wedding the previous year. The extracts below give a flavour of his affectionate humour, and of that unconventional childhood:
“ Maureen has been a tireless source of strength to all who meet her. Whether bringing up some of the wildest children this side of the Gaza Strip or, in her latter years, working [and] rediscovering some of the sparkle and initiative she once displayed as a P.A. to W. H. Auden at Oxford. Maureen has demonstrated time and again that there is no substitute for ‘guts, determination and a tranquil demeanour as life hurtles by regardless.’
My upbringing, and that of Maureen’s subsequent children was a treat we weren’t, I think, aware of…. The freedom she gave us to act as latter-day Visigoths as we three explored and pillaged the New Worlds of Barnes Common. Till our heads ran over with childhood tomfoolery – returning to wolf fishfinger suppers and hurrying to bed where we merged our dayplay into our dreams.
An added bonus was that the mystified neighbours, mostly well-to-do doctors and the odd communist, engineering shop-steward [my Dad!] were so thrown by Maureen’s serenity that we were able to take advantage of many, real, two-adult family homes and their children’s toys almost un-noticed.”
Alistair reveals another bit of Barnes history in this speech that was news to me: apparently it was only thanks to Maureen’s persistent campaigning that we got our lollypop man, who I remember fondly, to assist us across busy Station Road on our way to Westfields.
The Trafalgar Square Defendants campaign succeeded when the High Court overturned their convictions at judicial review in 1993. Private Eye, covering the case, described Alistair as “the only man in British legal history to be convicted of biting a policeman – with someone else’s teeth.” Alistair inevitably suffered some trauma as a result of his experience. He turned his experience of the criminal justice system to good, however, by undertaking a law degree at London South Bank University. On winning a civil action against the police, he used the compensation payment to study for the Bar, to which he was called in 1997. He and Alex had by then started a family, and later moved out of London to settle in Bridgnorth in Shropshire, where they raised their two sons.
I learned most of this at a distance, through my parents, taking an interest but not really getting involved. Then in the mid-1990s I found myself back living in Barnes: my Dad had died suddenly, my partner lost his job, and we moved into the family home with my Mum and Brother 2 until things were straightened out. This took longer than anticipated and we ended up staying for years; but that’s another story. The point of this one is that Mum answered the doorbell one day to find a young man standing there carrying a baby in a sling. It was Alistair, just passing through and wondering if any of the family were still living at 21 Laurel Road. I think he got a surprise to find that so many of us were!
It was wonderful to see him and baby Arthur after all those years, and this time we kept in touch, and remained friends for the rest of his life. At long last I was reunited with Briony, my childhood partner in crime, and the rest of the family. I was delighted that Alistair made the effort to attend my 50th birthday in 2011, staying the weekend with me in Brixton, and we wondered why we’d never met in the years we had both lived there, involved as we were in much the same social and political/activist circles.(A political activist and ardent campaigner, he was a source of endless advice and help to his Brixton community).
Alistair at my 50th birthday in 2011
Another fond memory was the occasion he invited me to a school reunion – his, not mine – although, bizarrely, both schools had occupied the same building, some years apart. Alistair attended Sheen Grammar School for Boys whilst I went to the newly established Barnes Comprehensive School. When my school closed in 1977, however, we were merged with another to form the new Shene Comprehensive (sic) – in the building formerly known as Sheen Grammar School (and before that, as the grammar school attended by my own mother in the 1930s; it is now an Academy). It wasn’t just the opportunity to revisit the old place that appealed to me, however: the main attraction was a special performance by Sheen old boy Vic Godard. I was astonished to learn that Godard, whose music and gigs with Subway Sect I had enjoyed for many years, had also attended our primary school, in the same class as Alistair and my oldest brother. So it was an extra special reunion party in the old gym hall, considerably more fun than the last event I had attended there: my “O” level exams. I suspect Alistair’s former teachers may have been surprised to find him now practising law.
Alistair was a brilliant barrister, as if he was born to it. His socialist principles never left him and, when legal aid was unobtainable, he was often known to take on cases for no fee. His obituary in the Times, published on 2nd March 2019, noted: “Excelling at sensitive family cases, Alistair was often asked to represent people who claimed to be victims of a miscarriage of justice. With his cockney accent and aversion to golf, Alistair did not perhaps fit stereotypical images of the wealthy barrister…[He] continued to work on legal cases until a week before his death – even from his hospital bed he answered the legal queries of nurses and fellow patients.”
Times obituary
He was also a devoted husband and father. Having suffered from the desertion of his own father, he was determined to be a good parent to his own boys – again, turning a bad experience for himself into a good one for others. I am proud to have been able to call this remarkable man my friend, and I only wish the friendship had not been lost for so many years.
We never know what life has in store for us, and Alistair’s life was tragically cut short by myeloma at the age of 61. He fought this terrible blood cancer with courage and his indefatigable wry humour for years, outliving expectations with fierce determination in order to see his youngest son start, and eldest finish, university.
I’m glad I got to visit Alistair a few times in those final months. Despite his increasing frailty the humour and kindness shone through, and I learnt for the first time just how much my own parents had meant to him in those fatherless childhood years. I treasure the memory of the lunch we shared together the last time I saw him.
Alistair died on February 10th 2019, and on March 8th many friends, family and colleagues, including myself and Brother 2, gathered to celebrate his life. Even after death, he made us laugh: his coffin was borne to its final resting place on the back of a flat bed truck, according to his own instructions.
Alistair’s hearse
Thank you Alistair. Your immense presence in my life, as in so many others’, will never be forgotten.
The Usmeum of Ordiments: A history of my family in 200 objects (plus) 