|
I have briefly mentioned the Socialist Party before and
I think it is worth a little more space, like I said we
had six members to cover the whole of Yorkshire. Albert
Yarrow was a signal man on the main line at Wakefield, he
was a very handsome man and was involved in amateur operatics,
he was a very good friend and was my best man when I married
Barbara, sadly he died quite young in the early nineteen
seventies. Vera Barrett was a school teacher in Bradford,
she had a fine presence being tall and very smart with a
cultured speaking voice, what they made of her when she
tried to sell them the Socialist Standard I don't know.
Then we had a member called Terry, he was a family man and
lived on the Buttershaw estate in Bradford, he was a fanatic
on Boogie Woogie piano players and used to drag us all to
some very seedy pubs to listen to them playing, of the other
two members only one was a regular member, he was older
than the rest of us and had a Jowett Bradford van in which
we all got in the back to be driven round to our meeting
places or on visits to pubs. When we went down to London
to the annual conference London members used to put us up
for the week end I used to stay with a family called Stovolds
who lived in a big terrace house in Balham.
We had a HQ in Clapham High St. which was in a converted
shop with a back room together with rooms upstairs. It was
in the smoked filled back room that all the learned veterans
used to have sometimes heated debates on Marxism and related
topics. I felt very humble in the presence of these learned
elders of the Party. There was one of these senior members
who was very impressive with a powerful speaking voice linked
with very strong opinions who used to sit at a table and
thrash all comers at chess. Well on one occasion the seat
opposite him was vacant so I sat down in order to do battle,
he gave me a withering look and without a word moved his
Kings pawn forward to start the attack on this young upstart
from God knows where. Well I must have being on form and
irritated him because he made a silly mid game move and
exposed his Queen which I promptly took. He let out a sort
of moan and silence fell on the room as members gathered
round to see his downfall. But alas he was too quick for
me, he said "it looks like I made an error, he then
placed the queen back on the board and remade his move.
Well that seemed to put me off my stride and he was able
to overcome me. I had lost my moment of glory but at least
from then on he knew who I was.
I am going to tell you a secret, Barbara was not my first
wife, in the early nineteen fifties I married a girl called
Edith Wharton. She was a rag sorter and lived in one of
the mean streets of Batley Car, but don't let that mislead
you, she was a fine looking girl, smart with a good speaking
voice, she had a sister called Ann who had a fine classical
singing voice and Edith was no mean singer herself. We set
up home in a cottage at Shaw Cross which was on the Dewsbury
Leeds Road, the cottage was part of a back to back terrace
and was round the back away from the main road. Facing the
house was the Shaw Cross pit, on the right there was a farm
and to the left there was a butchers shop where they used
to kill their own sheep and pigs and on killing days you
could hear the pigs in particular screaming out, the butcher
had a fine reputation for his pork sausage by the way.
Edith had a very happy disposition and given that there
was not much spare money we got on very well together. I
by the way was into photography and was active with the
Dewsbury Photo club with which we were able to have one
or two trips out. Marriage in those days was mostly visits
round the family, Saturday night at the pictures, a big
Sunday dinner and work. At least it was better than before
the war when you were lucky to find work, I remember when
I used to go out into town with my dad who worked at the
Batley Labour exchange, in those far off days that he knew
almost every man in the town by name.
He told me that they had all been unemployed at some time
or other most of them seemed to know his first name. Funny
thing about my dad I never heard him talk politics or religion
and I never did know how he voted, I asked my sister Margaret
who was part of his second string and she said that although
he gave the impression to people that he was labour she
felt that he was when it came to the vote a conservative.
Any way even if that were true he had a laid back and friendly
way with him which seemed to be appreciated by the blokes
that signed on as many public servants could be a bit on
the superior side in their dealings with the less fortunate
to say the least.
Well to get back to Shaw Cross and Edith, it was at this
time that I left the Railway and went to work at the Post
Office. I must tell you this story, I used to do a letter
and parcel delivery up Bradford Pd towards Birstal and I
had a parcel to deliver at a house where they had gone on
holiday. There was an outside toilet with a small window
that had been left open, on the house door there was a letter
which said "Postman please put any parcels through
the toilet window", which I did and it went splash,
they had left the toilet seat up. The toilet door was locked
so I took the letter and put it safely in my back pocket
and it was just as well I did for sure enough a week later
came the letter of complaint, it appears the parcel contained
a new pair of shoes and they were ruined by the silly Postman
dropping them in the lav. if I had not held on to their
letter I would have been a silly Postman
Well once again back to Edith, I put in a request to move
to Leeds as my brother Bob now worked for an estate agent
in Leeds and was able to get us a house with an inside toilet
and bath. We had just got settled down when I received a
letter from a bloke in London, he said that he was a member
of the SPGB and that he got a part in the Pantomime at the
Leeds Grand Theatre and could we put him up for a few weeks.
I must have been a bit daft as I said we could, well to
cut a long story short he must have been one of those extremists
I have told you about and believed that Fredrick Engles
stuff about marriage just being a property based thing,
together with the SPGB thing about a free life for the working
class and he buggered off with Edith one day while I was
out at work. Well it was a bit of a blow to arrive home
to an empty house and to go upstairs and find all Edith's
cloths gone from the wardrobe. Its funny really for I was
eventually to meet Barbara and start a new life and no doubt
Edith went on to find a life with someone who did not spend
all his life at work or going to union meetings.
Now I will tell you a real coincidence about twenty years
later I was visiting my step mother who was very ill in
the Dewsbury hospital and I decided to pay a visit to the
house we lived in before the war which was on Chapel Fold
not far from the hospital. Well I went to the back of the
house and was looking over a wall into the a little yard
at the back of the house when the door opened and out came
Edith's sister Ann. She was now married and this was her
home, we had a laugh about the circumstances of our meeting
and talked about old times over a cup of tea.
|
