I wonder how many people who take their children to see the ducks at Holden Pond in Southborough, or go fishing there, stop to read the memorial to Walter Clary. 

Sadly, although I did once encounter Walter, I missed the chance to get to know a truly memorable man.  He had knocked on our door canvassing for the Labour Party. I told him that my husband and I had always voted Labour, but that in the light of Tony Blair having led Britain into the Iraq War by relying on flawed intelligence (and against the wishes of the majority of the British people, including those of us who took to the streets in unprecedented numbers to protest) we came to the conclusion that we could not in all conscience vote Labour in the next election. Walter was quite noticeably distressed at this, and said he too opposed the War, and Tony Blair, but that the body of the party was greater than one man. For some time afterwards, Walter posted copies of the Labour Party newspaper through our letterbox.

I thought of Walter again, recently, when I reflected that a man like him, whose values and principles underpinned a lifetime of service to the many, not the few, and core Labour till the day he died, would surely be a supporter, were he alive today, of Jeremy Corbyn.

Walter was born in North London in 1920, and left school at 14. He cycled 14 miles daily to and from work in the rubber industry at Kingston-upon-Thames. At 16, he wanted to go to Spain to fight with the communist forces opposing Franco's fascists, but was prevented by his mother, who judged him too young. 

During the Second World War he served with the Royal Engineers in the 20th Bomb Disposal Division, and travelled around Kent clearing mines and disposing of unexploded bombs and shells. The work, and the death of many of his comrades left an enduring mark on him. He met his wife Joyce in 1941 when he was stationed in Tunbridge Wells. Walter was awarded a medal for his six years in bomb disposal, having continued this dangerous work for two years after the war. The family moved to a council flat in Islington after demobilisation in 1947, and the lack of affordable housing at the time fostered Walter's belief in the need for social housing. During an interview in 2002 he said "having a decent home is the basis of a good society". He was also a vocal advocate for the National Health Service, having been a witness to its birth.

After moving to Seal, in Kent, and later Southborough, his day job was with Cable and Wireless as a telegraph operator and then with the Department of Health and Social Security, but it was in his spare time that, throughout his long life, Walter dedicated himself to working for the welfare of others, including the following:

• active member of the Labour Party
• Parish Councillor
• PTA, Scouts, Tenants' Association supporter
• Town and Borough Councillor
• Branch Chairman, Secretary and Conference Delegate, British Legion
• active supporter of Age Concern
• Chair of the Pensioners' Association
• Southborough Town Mayor

Walter was respected by members from all parties in local politics, and was renowned for his kindness, social conscience and straightforward opinions. He was well-known for his letter-writing efforts. In 1990 he hit the headlines when his anger at Margaret Thatcher's imposition of the flat-rate Community Charge (aka the Poll Tax) led to an appearance before local magistrates (his first ever!) for refusing to pay. He said "It was a bad law, and caused great hardship to so many people. I had to speak up on their behalf. It would have been easy just to pay, but I felt I had to go and speak up, I couldn't funk it." To further ram home his point in this fight which he could not win, he wore his war medals to underline his loyalty to those things in which he did believe.

In early 2003, Walter wrote to the Queen asking her to halt the attack on Iraq, and Britain "being dragged to war by the USA." He was a staunch republican, and was disappointed by what he saw as the bland reply from the Queen's Chief Correspondent Officer. He vowed to write again to the Queen, saying that he thought the situation "too serious to wash your hands of."

Walter was also deeply concerned with environmental issues, and his daughter Coral recalled that even as a youth, he would take home stray animals. In Southborough he campaigned successfully for the establishment of a local nature reserve, Barnett's Wood, plus a rolling tree-planting programme. Every year in all weathers he would go out to save migrating frogs from being killed on the roads adjoining the grass around Holden Pond, their ancient spring breeding grounds. He was also a keen supporter of the Kent High Weald environmental project. Walter never owned a car, but instead used a bicycle and public transport to get around.

Walter described himself as a Christian Socialist, and held the view that he should help those in need. But he was no holier-than-thou stuffed shirt, clearly. Martin Betts recalls: "Walter loved people and he loved life... he laughed a lot - particularly at his own expense - and had that rare gift of making people feel good about themselves and had an amazing number of friends."  He kept fit by swimming and weight-lifting, and described himself during a BBC interview, when he was identified as the oldest serving Councillor in Kent, as "a recycled teenager ... inside an old bloke is a young bloke trying to get out!"
 
Walter died on 21 December, 2003 following a stroke. On the day of his stroke, he was planning to distribute funds to pensioners for Christmas. 

Sources:
Press clippings collected by Maxwell Macfarlane, President Southborough Society
Obituary by Martin Betts, Southborough Labour Party
Obituary, Kent  Courier, 2 January 2004
Warwick Diary by Jane Bakowski, Kent Courier, 15 March 2013

I’ve voted Labour all my life, except for a period after Tony Blair led us into war on Iraq, and even then, could not have voted Conservative. We watched the news as a family when I was young, and I have a clear memory of the Labour politicians of my youth: Harold Wilson, Barbara Castle, Dennis Healey (I bumped into him once on Charing Cross Road and he gave me a lovely twinkly smile from beneath those bushy eyebrows). They were the bright young things when Clem Attlee was Prime Minister, and although I knew his name, I was sadly unaware of the extent of this man’s huge contribution to the quality of life for British people over the last 70 years. After reading Francis Beckett’s beautifully written and accessible biography of the man, I feel better informed.

Clem Attlee was a small, quiet man, from a middle-class background. He was educated at Haileybury, a boarding school, and Oxford,  following his father into a law practice. Had it not been for some voluntary work  he undertook in the East End of London, this ex-Major, who saw active service in the First World War (he was the last but one soldier to leave Gallipoli when it was evacuated), might have lived an altogether different life.

One evening in 1906, Attlee went along with his brother on a visit to a youth club in Durham Road, Stepney. Haileybury House had been built by old boys of their former school who had decided, in 1890, to do something to help clergy active in the working-class areas of the big cities. One of the growing influences leading to this work was a pamphlet published by the Revd Andrew Mearns in 1883 - The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry into the Condition of the Abject Poor.

A shy young man, Attlee found the evening uncomfortable, but he learned enough to want to come again - the start of a process which opened his eyes to the appalling conditions suffered by those less fortunate than the prosperous Edwardian middle and upper classes, and the real meaning of poverty. His involvement increased from that night on - he felt for the first time in his life he was doing something with a purpose. He realised, as Andrew Mearns had written, that only large-scale action by the state could have any serious impact - unless society was organised so as to eliminate it, the wretchedness he saw around him would continue for ever.

By 1907, Attlee was a socialist, and he began his political career as a member of the Stepney branch of the Independent Labour Party. He very quickly took on the onerous and painstaking duties of branch secretary, giving his time and skills unstintingly. His closeness and work with the ordinary East End people and orderly upward progress through the rank and file of the local Labour group gave him an invaluable insight into their real problems, aims and ambitions. As Beckett relates:

'He took on all the humble, time-consuming jobs which have to be done, and which ambitious politicians generally consider are for lesser mortals, because, like Jim Callaghan, Clem Attlee liked all that. He cut up loaves to feed dockers'  children during the 1911 dock strike, and stood at the bottom of Petticoat Lane with his brother Tom holding collecting boxes during the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union strike in 1913. He carried the Stepney Independent Labour Party branch banner on demonstrations through Central London. He went to court to plead mitigation when a half-starving boy was caught thieving.'

Beckett’s book outlines the life of a man who dedicated himself to working, for 16 hours a day for 45 years or so, for the good of the many, not the few. He became Mayor of Stepney, then its MP in 1922, a junior minister in Labour governments in the 20s and 30s, and party leader in 1935.

Attlee's commitment to realising his ambition of bringing about fundamental changes for the working-classes achieved, with his fellow Labour party workers, the radical creation of what we benefit from today. Most people of my generation (born in the 1950s) and those since have no knowledge or experience of what life was like before the welfare state - we’ve taken it for granted.

He was in many ways, a very unusual man. He led a quiet and modest home life, dedicated to his wife and children, never ‘taking work home’ to his family. He liked mending things in his spare time. He never read the papers or watched television. He worked steadily towards his aims, not swayed by the opinion of others. He was not a pacifist, though his older brother Tom was a conscientious objector, but  had been appalled by the waste of life he witnessed in the Great War, and was a passionate supporter of the League of Nations and later the United Nations. His early experience of social work contributed to his writing The Social Worker,and  teaching the subject at the LSE. He had very definite views about charity: he thought that if a rich man wanted to help the poor, he should pay his taxes willingly, not dole out money at whim. He wrote:

Charity ‘tends to make the charitable think that he has done his duty by giving away some trifling sum, his conscience is put to sleep and he takes no trouble to consider the social problem any further’. 

Attlee served in Churchill's coalition government as Deputy Prime Minister during the Second World War, effectively running the country while Churchill concentrated on the business of fighting the war. Attlee was a staunch patriot, but once the war was over, he had an iron resolve to ensure that, unlike the aftermath of the First World War, when so many were thrown onto the streets, this time the opportunity to effect real change in the social welfare of the majority of the British people would not be lost.  After the war, Attlee led the most influential reforming government of the last century, implementing the recommendations of the Beveridge Report, establishing the NHS and nationalising a fifth of the UK economy including the coal mining and steel industries.

There are many similarities between Clem Attlee and Jeremy Corbyn - both suffered/suffer at the hands of the media - in Attlee's case, the rich owners of large-circulation newspapers. Both had to contend with members of their own party complaining that they weren't  leadership material, and regularly plotting to replace them. The more things change, the more they stay the same, as the saying goes!

I believe that if Clem Attlee was alive today, he would be horrified at the way his life's work has been steadily undermined in the intervening years, a process begun during the Margaret Thatcher years, of course, and now being greatly accelerated.

If you need just one out of many reference points from a welter of current revelations about how the welfare state and NHS are being relentlessly deconstructed, please read this article about the Naylor report, about which many of us had been ignorant until this week!

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/naylor-report-tory-nhs-privatisation-healthcare-flog-off-conservatives-theresa-may-election-2017-a7766326.html    

​If you have more time available, and I can promise you, it will be very worthwhile reading it, I highly recommend you read Francis Beckett's book. Towards the end of it, there is a little story of an incident, near the end of Attlee's life, which illustrates his modesty and humility. In 1912, the London School of Economics initiated took over a small School of Sociology, and Attlee was appointed its very first lecturer. In 1962:

'The LSE's Social Administration Department, where he had once taught, sent round a standard invitation to all of its former staff to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. The organisers thought that the early staff members had died, but just as the platform was settling down in the Shaw Library, someone noticed a small, elderly man arriving inconspicuously and taking a seat at the back. Bernard Crick remembers: 'One of the platform party ran to the back in embarrassment to apologise and try to persuade him to come up to the front. He refused, or rather demurred. The audience, as he was recognised, rose to its feet and applauded. Only then would he join the platform. Afterwards they asked when his car was coming. "No car, came from Kings Cross on the 68 bus. A very reliable route." They had great difficulty persuading him to take a lift back.'

When I saw that Professor Iain Hutchison was giving a talk on his work with Saving Faces at Hall Place (where there was also an exhibition on the related subject of Faces of the Great War) I realised that to go and hear him would mean taking a day off work. It was well worth it.

Professor Hutchison specialises in diseases and injuries affecting the face. He is based at the historic St Bartholomew’s Hospital and the Royal London Hospital.  He spoke of  the relationship between art and medicine, mentioning Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo amongst artists who made representations of the anatomy of the human body, and also spoke of William Hogarth, whose murals of The Pool of Bethesda can be seen in the Great Hall at Bart’s Hospital.

The professor related some of the history of surgeons who worked on restoring faces ravaged by injury or disease, including:

• Harold Gillies, who worked on pioneering  plastic surgery in the First World War 
• Italian surgeon Tanzini,who  invented a technique of using  a pedicled flap of skin and underlying latissimus dorsi muscle. The development of his work was held back for some decades after being somewhat denigrated by Gillies, but his ideas are now very influential.
• Dr Varaztad Kazanjian, a refugee from the Armenian genocide, and Professor of Dentistry, who worked on the front line in WW1, was knighted, studied medicine at Harvard, and became a founding father of plastic and reconstructive surgery in the USA

Professor Hutchison was brought up by two refugees: his mother and aunt, both Viennese Jewish doctors whose father was also a doctor. They fled from the Nazis in the late 1930s, were taken in by Quakers, and worked at the beginning of the Second World War as chambermaids, initially in Tunbridge Wells. After the war they set up as GPs in the Midlands.  When the Professor’s mother, Dr. Martha Redlich, died, he set up a charity in her name, initially used to purchase occasional pieces of surgical equipment. However, by 1995 he decided to use her legacy to create something  in the spirit of the work done by Harold Gillies and Henry Tonks. In 1998 he established the Saving Faces Art Project, employing Mark Gilbert as artist-in-residence within his surgical department.

Their shared aim was to help bring about acceptance of changed faces not only by patients themselves, but also by members of the public. The belief that people could find a painting of such damaged faces much less shocking than photographs, was borne out by members of our audience, who looked away from coloured photographs projected onto a screen in front of us. Mark Gilbert’s practice, which included taking a selection of photographs of operations, was also to ask patients if they would be willing to sit for portraits before and after their operations.  The sitters, Professor Hutchison told us, were proud of these paintings, and wanted them shown to others. They must have had a profound effect on visitors to a travelling exhibition of 100 portraits. One person wrote 6 pages of comment in the visitors’ book, and another wrote  “Testino showed the beautiful people, but these are the really beautiful people”. 
 
The professor told us that  in his experience, returning to normal life is what people want. The late actress Sheila Gish returned to the stage in The Seagull just six weeks after surgery, having lost bones of her face and an eye to melanoma. Courage indeed.

Professor Hutchison wants to raise four x  £5m to endow four professors  to lead the Centre’s work into the future. Saving Faces will control (and protect) their funding, not the hospital. JK Rowling has already promised to match £1m donation if it can be raised. One of the fellowships will, he hopes, be named for Alan Rickman, who was a patron.

If any readers of this blog can help with crowdfunding, he would be glad to hear from them.

Postscript:
Interestingly, Hall Place was the birthplace of another surgeon, Julius Jeffreys, who may well, I like to think, have crossed paths with my great-great-grandparents, John Howard Wakefield and his wife Maria Suffolk.

Related Links:

Saving Faces
www.savingfaces.co.uk

Hogarth Murals at Barts
www.bartsgreathall.com/index.php/the-great-hall/the-hogarth-murals

​Surgeon Julius Jeffreys
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Jeffreys

John Howard Wakefield & Maria Suffolk
http://www.judithjohnson.co.uk/blog/the-indian-princess

Readers of this blog and my book will know that I have an abiding interest in the lives of those who fought in the Great War. One particular aspect which has always aroused my deep compassion is the fate of those who survived, but were badly disfigured. Some lived as recluses for the rest of their lives, and others braved the looks of horror they encountered when venturing out in public.

There is a historic relationship between those injured and the skill, not only of surgical teams, but of artists too. The German artist Otto Dix was one of those who portrayed the unpalatable face of war that, while disturbing, allows us to look at an image which, in a photograph, is so much starker.

I have a copy of Ernst Friedrich's 1924 anti-war book Krieg dem Kriege. I have actually stuck a post-it note on the fly-leaf, inscribed 'Warning! Contains very graphic images', and I keep it on a high shelf as I would not want little ones to come across it while exploring our bookshelves. The photographs are shocking. It was Friedrich’s aim to bring to readers' attention the true cost of war. The only other place I’ve seen images like this is at the tatty profit-making private exhibition next to a cafe  near Ypres, behind which is a wood including what is  claimed to be  an original trench system. It has made a fortune for its owners, and is abhorred by the local museums, although some teachers leading trips prefer it, feeling it shows pupils something the others have sanitised.

I recently visited the Faces of the Great War exhibition at Hall Place in Bexley, Kent (and heard there a talk on a related subject: blog to follow).  The exhibition told the story of the pioneers of plastic surgery in Britain from the point of view of the medical staff led by New-Zealand born surgeon Harold Gillies and their patients, based at the Queen Mary Military Hospital in Sidcup, which opened in 1917. Gillies, who moved here from the Cambridge Military Hospital , was inspired by the pioneering skin graft French surgeon Hippolyte Morstin, and in the next World War, Gillies' cousin Archibald McIndoe went on to reconstruct the faces of badly burnt airmen at East Grinstead.

Gillies recruited leading artists, including Henry Tonks and sculptor Kathleen Scott, widow of Scott of the Antarctic, to help in the work of rebuilding the ruined faces of the severely-wounded.  More than 5,000 wounded men from Britain and its Empire came to Sidcup, and more than 11,000 operations were carried out.

Henry Tonks,  a trained surgeon himself, went on to become a celebrated Professor at the Slade School of Art. Gillies asked him to make a record of men's facial injuries which could be referenced for operations and subsequent recovery. Tonks chose to work in pastels, as it was a quick medium that could be easily blended with the finger, and he wanted the men to sit for the shortest time possible. Today, these pastels can be viewed, upon request, at the Hunterian Museum in London. A number had been loaned to Hall Place, and they were displayed in a curtained-off section, again with a warning that the images might disturb. If today, with all we can see on the media, this notice is still considered necessary, how much harder it must have been for those with disfigurements to step out from the safety of their hospital wards or homes. 

I found these portraits, accompanied by biographical detail, very touching. They included the following:
 
Private Robert Davidson, RAMC Orderly, was wounded in April 2016. He was initially reluctant to mix with his fellow patients, but after his discharge in 1919 he continued to work at the Queen Mary Hospital in Sidcup until the 1960s, having married Sidcup resident Alice Wise.

Private George J Stone, 1st Newfoundland Regiment, suffered a gunshot wound to the upper lip in France on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, aged 21. He contracted a severe infection six weeks after wounding, so his first operation was delayed until three months after the initial injury. He underwent six operations at the Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot and at Queen's Hospital, Sidcup. By August 1918, Private Stone declined any further treatment for facial injury, and returned home to Bell Island, off Newfoundland, to work as a machinist.

Private S Gardiner, a 35 year old New Zealander serving with the 7th Canterbury Regiment, suffered a gunshot wound on the First Day of the Somme which fractured his jaw. He underwent three operations, and ten months after his injury, surgeons tried to graft bone to bridge the gap in his jawbone. Because he lacked teeth, the wound didn't heal properly, and the graft was removed. In 1950, Gardiner returned to visit Gillies in the UK, reporting that six of his seven sons had served in the Second World War, all returning to NZ with their jaws intact.

Sadly, Lieutenant Dudley Grinlington, of the 48th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force, did not fare so well. He was admitted to the Cambridge Military Hospital, Aldershot, in August 1916 after a gunshot wound to his left cheek nine days earlier. Discharged in March 1917, he returned to active service and was killed in action on 17 October during the Battle of Passchendaele. Having been shot in the knee, he perished, in the same casualty clearing station he had passed through a year earlier. He is buried in Nine Elms Military Cemetery, near Poperinghe.

The exhibition was curated with a sure, light touch - not overwhelming or overstuffed. I was glad to see and learn of some new things, among them:

The GRI Silver badge, first issued in 1916, was worn by those not able to fight: discharged owing to wounds, ill-health, or had reached the age of 51. Hopefully these helped to fend off the advances of the white-feather brigade...

Steel helmets were not standard issue to soldiers until 1916; before that they had soft caps.

Blue benches were provided along the road from St Mary's hospital to the village of  Sidcup exclusively for recovering patients to sit on when out for a walk, which could be avoided, presumably, by more squeamish local residents (though many treated the soldiers with great kindness).

Ironically, the MG08 machine-gun, which could fire up to 400 rounds per minute, and was used by the German Army in WW1, was an adaptation of Hiram Maxim's original 1884 Maxim Gun, manufactured in Crayford (6 miles from Queen Mary's Hospital)  by Vickers at the time when Maxim was resident in Bexley.
 
 
Further reading:

Krieg dem Kriege: Ernst Friedrich - Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munchen (reprinted 2004)

My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You by Louisa Young (grand-daughter of Kathleen Scott)
A wonderful novel which I also learnt from.
​
War, Art & Surgery: The Work of Henry Tonks and Julia Midgley (Ed. Samuel JMM Alberti, Royal College of Surgeons, 2014)

Related Links:

The Tonks Pastels  (Please note: graphic images)
http://www.gilliesarchives.org.uk/tonkspastels.htm

Otto Dix - article with images from The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2014/may/14/art-apocalypse-otto-dix-first-world-war-der-krieg-in-pictures

Vickers Factory, Crayford
http://www.crayfordhistory.co.uk/index/history-of-vickers-crayford/

When I was researching the names on the Southborough War Memorial I discovered many touching stories, a number of which featured men who lost their lives in training, no less poignant than those who were killed in action. George Jones died   in an air-crash 100 years ago this week, on a fine May morning in Kent.
 
George was born in Bolotwa, a town in Eastern Cape, South Africa. He came from a line of men who had served in the military. His father, WC Prime Jones, a Government Magistrate in Whittlesea, South Africa, had previously served with the Cape Mounted Rifles; his grandfather was Captain Richard Walker Jones, of Park Place, Sevenoaks Common, and his great-grandfather was Captain Richard Jones, RN, of Warehorn, Tenterden.
​
George lived with his aunts at ‘Ampthill’, 46 Pennington Road, Southborough,  and he was educated at Skinners' School in Tunbridge Wells, where he had been a member of the Officers’ Training Corps. George was well-known locally, particularly as a sportsman. A keen cricketer and footballer, he had played for Tunbridge Wells, Southborough, and several times for the Rangers (his prowess as a goalkeeper was “envied by every custodian in the district. Standing 6 ft 4 ins, his reach is a great asset, and he knows how to make the best use of it”). He had been asked to play for Tottenham Hotspur, and soon after joining the Army he had turned out for Brighton and Hove Albion.

He obtained a commission as Lieutenant in the 8th Battalion of The Buffs (East Kent Regiment) soon after the outbreak of the First World War, and went to the Front on 31st August 1915. He was wounded on 26 September in the Battle of Loos and promoted to Captain the following day. The Courier of 8 October reported:

‘He had an extremely narrow escape, a bullet striking his belt and glancing off, inflicting a flesh wound. A few minutes after - before he had recovered from the shock - a shell burst just behind him and rendered him unconscious for half an hour from concussion.’

About six months later, in the early Spring of 1916, George was attached to the Royal Flying Corps, then in its infancy, having been formed just four years earlier in April 1912. The Courier of 2 June 1916 reported that he "entered into the study and practice of aviation with the same enthusiasm that he has shown in everything else.  He had gained his pilot's certificate, and in about a fortnight or three weeks would probably have gained his 'wings'."

On the morning of 28 May, 1916, George went up as a passenger with Lieutenant Tennant, who had 20 hours flying time under his belt, for a practice flight from a local aerodrome in Kent. A police constable was on duty at the field being used by the authorities as a landing site, and at the inquest held two days later he reported that at 11am he "saw the biplane descend with Lieutenant Tennant acting as pilot, deceased being in the observer’s seat. They got out, had a smoke and a chat, and were both very cheerful, commenting on the fine morning. They stayed about a quarter-of-an-hour, and then prepared to return. The machine was not more than 100 feet up, when it appeared to gradually turn to the left, and then side-dipped, taking a nose-dive to the ground. Witness got to the spot two or three seconds after the machine fell, and found that Lieutenant Tennant had been thrown two or three feet clear of the machine, and was apparently badly injured, but was still living. Captain Jones was still in the machine, but was quite dead. It took about three-quarters-of-an-hour to get him out. Witness described his injuries, and said death was absolutely instantaneous. His wrist watch was still going when he was got away from the machine."

George Jones was given a military funeral at Southborough Cemetery, his coffin borne from his home on a gun-carriage drawn by six black horses. The mourners included his uncle, aunts Florrie, Leila and Maud, and officers and men of the Royal Flying Corps, but sadly, several members of his family  were unable to arrive in time. There are several other airmen buried in Southborough Cemetery, but Captain Jones must surely be the earliest.
​
As regards Lieutenant Tennant, this link indicates that he survived this accident, only to be killed one year later on the Somme.

His photograph can be seen here. 

For an account of the conditions encountered by RFC airmen in France, I can highly recommend this link, featuring Fighter Pilot Cecil Arthur Lewis, one of the founders of the BBC (unless the current Government's commands to the BBC have meant dismounting this section from the BBC's superb website!).