The work camp I had attended at Salford in Manchester was an important occasion for me because I had only met Ruth briefly at her home, Barns Close, at New Year. We found we had so many interests in common, ranging from German songs to child psychology, that I picked up courage to write and enclosed the letter in a thin pamphlet of the Margaret Lowenfeld’s Institute about child psychology. Then an extraordinary event took place. It was my first letter to her and I got no reply. I assumed that she wanted no further contact and that she must have other people in whom she was more interested. What had actually happened was that the pamphlet had remained unopened. To my astonishment a letter came two months later explaining that she had only just read mine when it slipped from the pamphlet as she was putting it in the waste paper basket. I was glad that I had written on sufficiently slippery paper! It was a chance, which changed my life.
To add to my astonishment she invited me to join her family on a skiing holiday. This presented me with a dilemma. The dilemma was that, after making one mistake by making a friendship with someone with interests different from mine, such as putting skiing before work camps, I was firmly convinced that I should avoid repeating it. Would I accept, or would I be true to my own values and refuse? I was well aware that you live according to the company that you keep. I also pondered on the thought that the history of religions shows how much easier it is to give lip service to high standards than it is to live up to them. I had no one from whom I could seek advice, though I was in great need of it.
Even my favourite motto was no use to me; it states simply 'When in doubt, say Yes.' In this case it was not quite clear whether that would mean accepting the invitation or sticking to my principles. Had I not written a warning to my sister when she joined the privileged on sunny ski slopes? The following poem was my caution:
To a Sister Taking a Skiing Holiday.
Mountain pleasures few may know,
Some ride o'er the winter snow,
But, however great their art,
They can but grieve the mountain heart.
Others smoke a cigarette,
Forgetting mountain etiquette.
Rain baptizes. Bear in mind
To leave the city's joys behind.
With rocks and cliffs the heights are fraught,
For mountain wisdom's dearly bought,
Bought with many a sigh and so,
Mountain pleasures few may know.
It was indeed a very difficult decision, although Ruth was also a member of Jack Hoyland’s work-camp committee. However, when she attended I had been absent, and vice versa, so we simply missed each other. After tossing the question about for as long as was reasonable, it took some determination to write and say that I had made plans to join a work-camp in Salford would she too like to join? To my great delight she agreed.
At one point the lady organiser at Salford, Hilda was looking at Ruth who had a circle of little children around her, who were completely absorbed by what they were doing under her direction. We could not hear what was being said because we were outside the building, gazing down its longest corridor to a room beyond. Hilda commented 'Just look' and I just looked for fifty years even though at times I upset her, by taking my work too seriously.
On April 20th 1938 Ruth and I were married in the peace and quiet of Jordans Quaker Meeting House, which Ruth had attended as a child with her two brothers and two sisters, and where William Penn lies buried. We became acquainted by sharing not only the Salford work-camp, but also a Clarion Campaign on behalf of the Labour Party in the constituency near Windsor and right up to our marriage she worked there for a hostel for Spanish children, refugees from the Spanish Civil War.
By this time she had played a big part in my life by persuading me that I should give up thinking of banking as a career, despite the very good offer to follow my father by serving as a local director in Oxford. She also persuaded me that despite my bad degree I could become a teacher by taking up gymnastics as a main subject. At that time there was a great shortage of gym teachers, especially of those qualified to teach the new-fashioned Danish Gymnastics. Consequently I was accepted for a one-year course at Carnegie College in Leeds.
On top of this I was attracted by the idea of forming a Labour or Socialist Youth Service, by John Parker MP who commented when I consulted him 'We've already got enough people to deal with banking.' The Youth Movements in both Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union were a warning that the ideals of young people are a powerful force and need to be tactfully harnessed by governments, particularly if society is adapting to new developments, such as the decline of the influence of the family.
Ruth and I spent our first summer doing some practical teaching, she in the primary school, and I in the secondary school, of Bottisham Village College. It was a remarkable new idea to envisage schools' purpose as being the education not of individuals but of communities. It is an idea, which might be compared with the Bruderhof, which educates its own children who live in the previously mentioned ready-made communities.
George Cadbury, Ruth's grandfather, was the founder of The Bournville factory and The Bournville Village. The factory was run by some of his sons. George Cadbury had strong political views and so at the time of the Boer War, which in reality was being fought over gold and diamond mines, he bought the Daily News, to bring this to the attention of the public, because none of the other papers
put the Boers’ case positively. As a consequence a series of local newspapers mainly bought by Joseph Rowntree, but including George Cadbury’s Daily News became known as the ‘Cocoa Press.’ The war propaganda had been left unanswered: 'We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do, we've got the men, we've got the ships, we've got the money too.'
The phrase 'by jingo' dates from 1878 but achieved common currency in the Boer War. The Daily News under the editorship of the novelist Charles Dickens had exposed the sad and seamy side of British life at home and now was to attempt to paint a more truthful picture of the Empire, but truth is elusive in times of war. My parents met at Cambridge University over opposition to the Boer War. Ruth's father, who had read agriculture at Cambridge followed by a short period farming, was asked by George Cadbury to take over responsibility for the Daily News. It later became the News Chronicle, but by then Henry Cadbury's eyes were failing and he had to find other work to do.
Henry and his wife Lucy became wardens of Woodbrooke College in Selly Oak, Birmingham, we lived close by, first in Witherford Way and later sharing the large house 'Westholme' with them, which used to stand a short distance away on the other side. Henry and Lucy were able to act as hosts to Mahatma Gandhi during his visit there in 1931 at the time of the Round Table Conference and his bedroom remains in demand. A young student visitor begged to be given this room. When asked how he had slept, he replied, 'not very well. I couldn't decide how Gandhi would have slept, so I spent half the night in the bed and half the night on the floor.' The poet Tagore also visited, and Kenyatta studied there, these visitors all helped to create an atmosphere of non-violence and peace at Woodbrooke.
Ruth's father Henry was such a humble host during his time as Warden of the College that on one occasion a young newcomer from the Far East mistakenly offered him a tip for carrying his luggage! Ruth took after him in this respect and wished to disassociate herself from her famous family. I often teased her for telling me on the first day we met, that she would really like to change her name. I don't think she had realised the implications of such a suggestion!
Two years later when I was looking for a teaching post and I wanted her agreement in advance, she said 'I don't want to be in Birmingham, anywhere else will do.' I replied 'But the School Inspector who examined my work recommended Birmingham very strongly.' 'All right' she answered, 'As long as we're not in Bournville.' In fact we ended up in a house in Bournville so that I could bicycle to work in a new school nearby. Bournville is best understood by standing on the Village Green, where we used to gather for Christmas carols. Surrounding the Green, revealing the hopes of the founder, were the primary school, Ruskin School of Art, the Continuation school for young factory workers who were released from work for one day each week, the Quaker Meeting House and a short line of shops.
For some reason, despite the remarkable eloquence of Ruth's step-grandmother, who remained very active in her old age, the hopes of the founder were not understood by many as a means to a better way of life among people both friendly and public-spirited. The Director of the Bournville Village Trust remarked one day that our starting of a vigorous Parent-Teacher Association was the best thing, which had happened in a decade. It brought even those often tied to their houses by children to meet and learn from each other. Ruth and I never knew what great-grandmother thought when she made an unexpected visit after the war and found us parents away at a meeting and the two great-grandsons not only out of bed, but out of the house, bicycling up and down the street dressed in pyjamas. She lived on to the age of ninety-six and died of catching a cold when sea bathing.
Ruth's mother was Lucy Bellows, daughter of John Bellows, the printer of Gloucester. I was glad to be able to speak about her with enthusiasm at the Memorial Meeting at Bournville. She was herself a person of great enthusiasms, which ranged from polar exploration to individuals such as Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya. As she had known him well when he was studying at Woodbrooke College, she went to see him in Kenya where he was in prison, after being found guilty of leading the 'terrorist' organisation Mau-mau. He claimed he was not guilty and she believed in his honesty and wisdom. He survived to become one of the highly successful and admirable leaders of newly liberated African states.
Lucy Cadbury played a fine part as grandmother of our family of six. From 1951 until the time of her death we shared the large house 'Westholme,' formerly belonging to uncle Edward, which we divided into two but with a well-used connecting door upstairs. It was a big adjustment for the children to move from a very small house to a very large one. One of our sons was described as the boy who lives in the park. On the other hand he was embarrassed by the old age of our 1938 Austin and asked, on the rare occasions he was driven to school, to be put down round the corner where he could avoid being seen to have any connection with it. Bournville School being in the state system, non-Quaker children attended it, though it was partly built at George Cadbury's expense. He wanted the classrooms to be so small that it would be impossible to have large classes and travelled to Whitehall to obtain permission. He may have missed out some of the factors affecting desirable class sizes and classroom sizes, but it was a brave effort to apply educational principles.
However the demand was so great, after school building had been suspended during the war, that at least one of our children was in a class of over fifty, and another son of ours commented when out walking with me 'That boy over there is in our class.' When asked why he did not wave to him, added: 'No. I don't know him, he's on the other side of the class.' None of the rest of the eighty descendants of George Cadbury had attended the school, partly because their name would have made relationships difficult, partly because smaller classes were available in private schools.
As social distinctions can turn into a form of unjust apartheid and lead to violence in the longer run I was lecturing both before and after the war on the harm done by larger classes and large schools in keeping the private schools in business. In this connection I wrote an article and leaflet headed 'Law-breakers in School,' giving the statistics for over-size classes; because there were legal restrictions on the size of classes, the children appeared to be 'aiding and abetting.'
The size of the gap between well-to-do and working class homes, I should admit, can be shown by describing the household in which I grew up. Ruth's family name added to the oddities of our well-to-do Quaker homes. Our Quaker ways would astonish those of later generations they
might well be described as not easy to reconcile with Quaker beliefs. In those days it was considered desirable to employ servants as much as possible for those who could afford the wages, especially if the workhouse was the alternative. Moreover a banker had to live, not extravagantly but not as though he was hard-pressed, for fear of losing the confidence of his customers. If that happened the house would have had to be sold and we would have been 'out on the pavement.' Although, my father could print and sign his own bank notes they would not have been accepted when his customers lost their confidence. His bank was one of the last four private banks to be bought up by the large banks and the risks he ran led to a breakdown in his health.
During my childhood we had two or three servants living in and a gardener who came by day. With the exception of the gardener they all came to the reading of the bible or similar book before breakfast. In the evening my mother came to us one by one to 'say blessings' on family and friends and from time to time she would read a story or more likely a poem and this has left a lasting impression on me. I have often felt that life should be led with a poetic rather than a matter-of-fact quality. This would mean that feelings could be both a better guide and a better experience than pure academic reasoning; that a better balance between the two sides of the brain should be sought. The Quaker silence before meals was both a reminder to be thankful for our good fortune and blessings and a time to remember that many children were hungry.
It was difficult at that time to reassure Ruth that we were making the right choice in sending the children to Bournville School, but Dame Elizabeth Cadbury was delighted as chair of the governing body. I hold firmly to my belief that unless socialist principles are allowed to reduce social inequality, the gap between the rich and the poor, and the social oppression among the deprived will drive some of them to violence. Fraternity or solidarity can reasonably be the goal for all. Justice is a vague term, which changes in import from generation to generation and place to place, if society has to wait for all to feel satisfied with the social system it might wait for ever, so it is necessary to question the wisdom of those who claim that they are fighting violently for peace with justice. In the USA discipline in some areas is so lax that children may be allowed to take guns to school for self protection and armed men police the schools. The statistic in the USA that a
school child dies every two hours from gunshot wounds indicates the size of the problem caused by the gun-lobby, which maintains the law allowing everyone to carry guns for self defence, and by the excessive size of schools, which are very difficult to control.
I remember once deciding with Ruth that, as the headlines of the News Chronicle were worrying our older children some ten years after the war, we would change to the Guardian. We were sharing our home with the children's grandparents at the time. I did not realise how much it would sadden the old man. He felt that his life's work had failed. He was characteristically gentle about it. The Cocoa Press, as the collection of Cadbury and Rowntree newspapers were called, failed in the end to raise the level of journalism, but for fifty years they had been at least partially successful.
Headlines are chosen to draw the reader into reading further, a paper's headlines affect its readership, and the editor has the important task each day of checking the effectiveness of the selection and wording of headlines. The variety of front-page headlines each day is a fascinating introduction to the subjectivity of truth and can be easily studied at any newsagent's. I was always interested in what Henry had to say about the day's papers. I had assumed that the day's news somehow dictated the headlines, though left-wing and right-wing papers might put different gloss on them. There is, however, much more to it than that. At Leighton Park School, Michael Foot repeated the old ditty, which refers to two Press Lords:
He who would drink at the well of Truth
And quaff its waters clear,
First he must dam the Beaver-brook
And drain the Rother-mere.
It was difficult to accept Michael’s decision, to work for Beaverbrook later in life, as a journalist, even though he claimed that he was given freedom to write what he wanted.
My father-in-law Henry Cadbury and I had always enjoyed our conversations very much. At the end of the war our shared interest in farming led to his offer of a partnership, and believing that I could give as much time to it as I chose, I accepted the offer. A
farm was purchased on hills in Worcestershire facing towards the east and it had a huge cherry orchard part way down the slope in front of the house. Unfortunately, he had a severe heart attack and had to change his plans; otherwise my life would have been quite different.
Ruth herself was much of his way of thinking. She favoured country rather than town, corresponding with his interest in farming. She always looked to mountains for holidays in Wales the Lake District or Scotland as a refreshment of the spirit. This provided a life-long interest for our children and has established quite a strong family tradition. Our daughter Jean has insisted on living near the Lakes most of her life and loves these desolate and open spaces, which appear empty but in reality very enriching. In the same way, a Quaker meeting can have this appearance. David and Bevis who each have two boys have passed on their love of challenging expeditions and wild landscapes. Jonny, my youngest son, took a post-graduate degree in Landscape management.
In social work they all, Henry and Lucy Cadbury included, shared a social-democratic opinion that the world can be made a better place, and that it is right to devote one's life to the attempt. They, both young and old, have had little idea what a strength they have been to me when the going was rough.
Ruth's family also passed on to her a sense of the value of help for refugees. Her grandfather John Bellows, with crucial help from Tolstoy, had succeeded in gaining permission from the Czar, for the pacifist Doukhabors to be allowed to leave the country and thus avoid conscription. It was a long story ably summarised by Ruth's sister, Kate Charity, in her biography of John Bellows . Ruth's parents had housed Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and Ruth began early in life before our marriage by working in a Spanish children's home for children from the Spanish Civil War. I still remember one of them, the young Alberto, son of an Austrian miner whose big round black eyes led us into giving the top storey of our wedding cake to share round the many children. 'Is it all for me?' he asked.
German refugees followed, Ruth and her friend shared a hat for visiting the appropriate official in Whitehall after finding work for each one as well as a financial guarantor. It was a hard job unrewarded by personal contact, but she was persistent. Later in life
she corresponded with a prisoner in Chile; one day a mysterious message arrived that she should fetch a parcel, and on one of her visits to York, a complete stranger handed the brown paper parcel to her. 'It comes from my friend in prison' he said 'I went back to Chile to visit him. It is something he made in prison.’ It was a beautiful crucifix with carved, painted and embossed emblems, which appear to carry a coded message saying 'My home weeps for me. My head may be struck from my body, but my soul goes marching on.' How that was achieved and brought to England remained a mystery.
In the course of bringing up our six children Ruth became adept in helping parents to cope with their own problems. Ruth and I had a common interest in the care of emotionally disturbed children and enjoyed being governors at New Barns School, she as a Psychiatric Social Worker and I as an educational psychologist. She visited homes and talked with parents, who were often part of the trouble. She would come back with wonderful reports of conversations such as Michael's mother who remarked: 'Michael's such a liar; why, you wouldn't be believing the Lords Prayer if you heard it coming from between his lips.' She also often worked with refugee children and due to her reading was in sympathy with these hopes of psychiatry, so she was delighted when her closest school friend married Ranyard West.
In my first book Parents Only I tried to capture some of her spontaneous skills in managing the family or household. She did not always say 'Now it's time for bed.' After there had been strong complaints at going to bed during the previous week she asked: 'who is going to turn the tap on tonight?' which soon created a competition among the children as to who was going to go upstairs first! On another occasion, when Ruth wanted to help the children in dealing with their individual fear, she would endeavour to help them look at it from a different angle such as when a four year old called downstairs in fear, 'I know there isn't really, but I can't help thinking there's a fox under my bed,' she replied at once, 'Is there really, ask it to tea.'
Changing the agenda like this such as discussing the best ways of abolishing nuclear weapons, instead of the value of nuclear weapons, should become almost a recognised way of advancing
business. As circumstances change this is a very necessary device, but it depends on some very creative thinking by someone well versed in the subject or in lateral thinking, to use de Bono's term. It was a great help to me to be in situations both at home and at work where there was scope and some encouragement for this creative way of looking at the world.
The children were indeed an influence to be compared with that of our ancestors in helping focus on the main peace issues, though the ancestors, some of them looking down augustly from their picture frames, seemed to set impossibly high standards for emulation and a certain cold remoteness, as though they had nothing to say to small children. The children and their friends were the opposite and prompted a much lighter view of life, full of laughter, fun, and games. Once, in a game of hide and seek, they had heard me go upstairs and were almost indignant at finding me sitting in the living room after complaining that they could not find me. They had never thought that I might jump out of an upstairs bedroom window. No wonder they accepted our having no television set. To most of them, especially those who remember the war, it was obvious that peace was an important matter, as when one five year old remarked: ‘We have friends in many other countries, don't we? It would make a muddle of a war wouldn't it?'
At a later age a game of football broke up almost in tears with accusations of breaking the rules. The very next day as one of the boys passed by he remarked 'we're going to play football again. This time we're going to see if we can play without quarrelling with the referee.' The value of childhood games, which depend on rule keeping, has not yet been investigated. It is necessary to plan to develop an automatic tendency to keep rules and therefore laws, if international law is to be properly respected. Unfortunately some people regard laws as a challenge to their ingenuity to find ways to evade them. I am convinced that, if a public relations approach is ineffectual, it is necessary to do much more about keeping the rules during games in Nursery Schools and Classes, while making the reason explicit.
The National Curriculum does not interfere so much in Nursery Schools so it is possible to provide Social Education, which includes Peace or Negotiation Education. As clearly stated this
takes the form of coaching through knowledge of what part a teacher should play. It is certainly not leaving the children to knock off rough corners by themselves.
It is a long delay for a social change, waiting for the children to grow up, but it is likely to be more successful than persuading adults to change their deeply rooted habits. I am making a strong plea for the new Peace Education Centre in the bombed church of St Luke in Liverpool, to have a section for research and education among Nursery School children.
I once tried to interest the Red Cross in Nursery School education and found them quite willing to listen that the failure to respect the Red Cross and its workers is best dealt with during training teachers for this age group. Just laws deserve support from sports coaches too. Jeering at referees should be seriously discouraged. My own research into the testing of social attitudes, which I did for my degree in Education, suggested that the respect for regulations, rules and laws is developed early in life, mainly in the homes and only confirmed at secondary school age.
Even when they were quite young the children made comments and asked questions, which we found very thought provoking. When asked 'Do doctors go to hospitals to help the nurses?' I replied after a pause for thought 'Yes, you could say that.' One son was very troubled by death and dying and frequently asked questions about old people. It was wartime and we wondered what conversations he had overheard. Fortunately he linked the idea of death with old age. Thinking he was too young for a discussion about war, I tried variations of 'When people get old they get very tired and need to rest. It must be very nice for them to be tucked up under the daisies.' I was glad that the news had not reached him that a ferret at our neighbour’s house had climbed into a pram and killed the baby.
It is interesting to speculate whether his excessive interest in death was connected in some way with the air raid during his birth. His mother as it happens was born in London during a Zeppelin raid. One night, when he may have been five or six he called out 'I want to be near you.' 'You are very near to us.' I reassured him being in a large room for three beds at my parent's new house. 'No,’ he
replied, ‘ but I want to be as near you as you are.' To avoid anxiety, shyness and fear one has to strike a sound balance between expressing confidence and taking reasonable risks on the one hand, and warnings about dealing with fire, electricity and traffic, and similar dangers on the other.
Another son commented that when he grew up he would gather all the bombs and drop them to the bottom of the sea. When asked about his plan for housing the homeless in armchairs, regarding wet days he said 'Oh, but they'd all have umbrellas.' His concerns stretched further at the age of five, and he suggested finding the lonely mummies and taking them to the lonely daddies. There seems to be a need for parents and teachers to deal with serious social problems at the level of childhood and no occasion to worry so long as hope is not undermined by ridicule or contemptuous dismissal. In other words, children should be given enough respect like other people and their questions on life taken seriously. At all costs ridicule should be avoided.
Unfortunately television programmes give little help to parents; they tend to enhance the effects of playing with toys. Producers sometimes excuse themselves by saying that we live in a violent society and that their job is to show it as it is. Over a space of forty years those responsible for programmes for children for the BBC have told me that their brief includes encouraging children to spend less time watching television by providing suggestions for other things to do. If children's worries about violence have to be acted out in one way or another it is at least better for them to be active. I am indebted to Miss Rosa Wake, a former colleague at the Dudley Teachers College for her reply to students who kept asking what to do when boys insist on changing drama lessons into gun battles. 'You may have some shooting' she would say 'but then you must have burials, mourners, and maybe prayers for the dead. For the wounded you will need doctors, nurses and ambulances. Shooting is no game. It is deadly serious. We cannot have corpses lying about our school, can we? Do you know how to put a bandage on a leg or make a splint?' Acting out in this way has proved very effective and is accepted by most teachers.
Parents and teachers need to encourage cooperative games now that most argue that our society has grown excessively and
aggressively competitive. Some children come to hold the absurd conclusion that a game must have a winner and a loser. There are now a number of books of cooperative games, when we did not have them to suit the beach, the garden or indoors, we invented them. I wish we could have made a film of some of them; it would have helped Children’s Television Programmes to implement the BBC brief. Of course, uncertainty still encompasses the acting out of these aggressive scenarios, and it becomes questionable at to whether or not it would be better to encourage the children to act negotiations rather than playing at war, showing them alternatives and prevention rather than always simply fighting. When two of the children rode home in a bicycle sidecar one day from their nursery school, armed with toy guns given to them by a mischievous member of staff, they shot at every pedestrian along the way. ‘They needed to do that to get it out of their system and balance their Quaker upbringing’ claimed the teacher the next day with tongue in cheek. There is no agreement about this among educational psychologists whether, or how acting out one’s aggressions is a satisfactory process that leads towards peace or not?
As the children grew older their ideas about peace became less childlike. The elder ones persuaded the whole family of eight to take part in the Easter Marches between Aldermaston and Trafalgar Square. One year the boys and their friends made a black coffin, marked ‘Bury the Bomb,’ and carried it all the way. Another time one of the girls aged fourteen walked the whole way, refusing each of the three days all offers of a lift.
We marched up Whitehall in our thousands, the place where government and the armed forces nestle together and the horse guards do their quaint propaganda. The statues often honour the wrong man. We felt a fresh dawn had broken, as though we had come to negotiate a peaceful take over from the militarists. If there was no need for an army in Costa Rica in Latin America, perhaps people could be persuaded that there was no need here on an island. When Michael Foot was Secretary of State at the Department for Employment, I went again to see him. It was at the height of the Aldermaston marches when by sheer numbers we felt as though we, not the government, felt ourselves to be the voice of Britain. Despite their success, which was obvious to the tens of thousands
who took part, the daily and Sunday newspapers gave us little space. Michael took a prominent part often heading the huge procession and I knew he would give me a hearing. “To avoid being neglected,” I said “we must do something more sensational.” On several occasions I had lain awake at night trying to screw up courage to have my hands fixed with nails on a crucifix. I was to wear a mask so as to remain anonymous and there would be some words of explanation such as: ‘Father forgive them; for they know not what they do.’ However, before I explained these details, Michael’s voice rang out “Crucifix! We cannot do that. The religious people would howl.” I did not press the matter further, but I would guess that the religious people may have been better than he thought. A clergyman blessed the first atom bomb but now most of them associate nuclear weapons with genocide and wish the governments would accept the Advisory Opinion of the World Court. The campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has made steady progress. At that time I had no vision of how the forces could find a new role in dealing with the defence of the environment. That was to come later when I made a joke of the armed forces failing to achieve what they claimed to be able to do.
For the army this was to defend every inch of British soil, but they did nothing when the soil of the uplands in the war was ploughed and cultivated each time allowing vital humus to be blown into the North Sea. The navy claimed to guard every mile of the coastline but allowed the sea to become so filthy with radioactive waste and sewage that bathing will soon be dangerous. Similarly the Royal Air Force given the task of defending British airspace has added to the pollution of the air instead of preventing it. Lord Judd was so pleased with this that he sought permission to borrow it, and meanwhile I tried to catch the theme in verse.
Recruits for Real Defence
The army claims to fight for every inch of British soil,
But they don't shoot down the farmers: who, let centuries of toil
Be blown to sea from uplands, which their fathers never ploughed,
But kept the thin turf sacred and their heads by greed unbowed.
When soldiers will not do their work, they'll hear the grumblers say,
They may be brave and all that, but they haven't earned their pay.
The tax-man need not come our way, until the job is done,
Poor children will have more to eat at the setting of the sun.
The sailors in the navy, likewise, made an idle boast.
That they would be the guardians for each mile of British coast,
But they turned their eyes - well blinded - to the foe they failed to spot,
From nuclear power pollution to the sewage left to rot.
The RAF may be better? Our whole island they can scan,
So they know more of the problems, which beset the fate of man.
Their task is much more simple and they look a likely crew,
The airspace overhead is theirs to see what they can do.
They fly high and low and often, they fly by day and night,
They must think the roar of warplanes is a reassuring sight.
Someone needs to tell them we can drown in CO2,
It's just one of the gases which their planes are adding to.
If you want to be secure and safe from such defence
It's no use to stay and grumble, while sitting on the fence.
Be bold and seek a bunker in an island still unmanned,
Unless you think that's just the place for nuclear bombs to land.
Come then join peace builders' own defence against defence,
To wear transparent royal robes makes very little sense.
We'd like to fan your hopes and your many skills and flair
There's a future for your world, for you we'd also care.
A.N.G, Jan 99
The armed forces need to be subjected to the challenge of the expansion of the ethical movement, a movement that merits an historian of its own. Already it has secured a strong position in
investment and soldiers are provided with some knowledge of the laws governing the conduct of warfare. It should certainly be applied to the bringing up of children. I remember with great regrets a period which stretched out to two years when I was working in Cheltenham while our home was in Birmingham and returning on Fridays to be pummelled by a tiny daughter for being away too long. At this time it was very difficult to find both a home and schools to suit us all. Sometimes I wonder whether the absences and preoccupations of parents during wartime sow the seeds for the next war.
In our case it was certainly not a lack of attention from adults, which affected our children. From the point of view of education for international understanding they were highly privileged. One scene I shall never forget. Before he could talk one of the boys paired with a visiting politician from the Ukraine who had no English. They went on walks together, one speaking Ukrainian and the other Double Dutch, with maximum expressiveness to compensate for the lack of meaning. The two eldest met German prisoners, some of whom made toys for them.
Mainly however they got to know the young women who were glad to come to learn English when the war was finished and to help Ruth coping with what nowadays would seem a large family, six in all. They made a sound basis for our children's education for international understanding and they also provided an encouragement to the children to learn second and third languages. One of our sons even had a reputation for having cow's language as his sixth. I have been glad of the arrangements, which my mother made for me, to have additional French and German lessons during the holidays and I now wish more of the grandchildren had the same.
They absorbed from them almost without knowing it that we can have friends in other countries, and that we can have close friends in other countries although languages and customs may be different. There was competent Trudy who came as a Nazi but left otherwise, the children still visit her family when they go to Germany, she had been in charge of a hospital ward at the age of sixteen. Later she came back with her husband-to-be for a holiday with us in the Lake District. Then there was Violette from Paris, in the course of time we also got to know her family.
Pepi came as a small boy from our friends in Vienna. He looked lean and hungry and he came to escape the harsh post-war conditions in that city. The value of speaking another language was evident to our children, Ruth and I slipped readily if not easily into French and German and the children have become far better than we were. Some of Pepi's remarks are still quoted 'Du siest aus wie einem Bauer in ein Wirthaus' (You look like a farmer in a pub.) he said to one of the boys. Then, on another day, he hung a notice on the fire-guard or high fender 'Diese Tiere muss nicht erfuttert sein.' (This animal must not be fed) Then he tried to keep the cat in the cage he had made for it. We also had Oba Awolowo from Nigeria for Christmas. He enjoyed our family custom of roasting sausages outdoors and laughed when his sausage fell off his stick, as only Africans can laugh; the whole of him shook and laughed. Later on he was runner up in the presidential elections in Nigeria. He was an extraordinary man whom the children loved immensely.
These contacts for the children were not specially arranged by us, rather they could be said to have happened without our being fully aware of the likely results. It was a very culturally cultivating time in their lives and as a consequence they find it easier than most people to undertake international work owing to the culture of peace, in which they were brought up. This culture of peace was something that was taken for granted in previous generations of our two families. This may be described as treating everyone with respect, expecting, that friendship can be developed despite differences, and that people from afar are often more interesting to us than conventional English people.
This was a very enriching time for us all as a family and we were often reminded of that hilarious family, the Gilbreths, described in Cheaper by the Dozen . The Gilbreths had a family double the size of ours, and if they wanted to have a day out, an event as simple as getting into the car, was no small feat for them. Guided by their father, a time and motion expert, the entire Gilbreth family somehow all managed to find their seats in the family car, despite there being no less than fourteen of them including the parents. The whole operation took place in strict order and with the utmost precision despite the fact that there was much sitting on laps for them all to fit in. However, these events necessitated the calling of
the roll when going on expeditions and other curbs on the more curious members of the Gilbreth team. Individual attention had to become subservient to cooperation. Our family, though we had no television, derived very enjoyable fun from the games we played, many of which involved our international guests and friends. The games were often spontaneously invented and I do not mean invented by me!
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