A journey through education 2

I joined the union, USDAW, the Labour Party and the Labour League of Youth. I attended classes run by the Workers' Educational Association and the National Council of Labour Colleges. I became involved in an organisation called the Socialist Fellowship which, among other things, opposed the Korean war, as I did myself. That's why I joined it in the first place. It seemed to me that the the entanglement of our Labour Government with American foreign policy would eventually destroy it. That , I believe, is what happened. We couldn't afford both warmongering and the Welfare State. I sold copies of Socialist Outlook, the paper of the Socialist Fellowship, at Labour Party meetings. I was alight with the flame of socialism. It burns just a little lower these days. This organisation was, it emerged, a Trotskyist entryist group which was proscribed by the Labour Party, after a while, and then disbanded itself. My brief, rather unconscious, flirtation with Trotskyism was over at the age of 15. However, whilst deploring their sectarianism, I continue to admire their consistent internationalism.

Who the hell would want to learn about being a grocer when there were much more exiting things to learn about ? 

However, the year I spent with the International Tea Company's stores was certainly a learning experience. I learnt about about obsequiousness and to know my place in the scheme of things. One day the shop's delivery van broke down and I had to get the old delivery bike out and cycle to that part of town where the driveways were long and the houses were large. Exhausted I rang the door bell of a formidable house. A person appeared and stared at me in utter disbelief. It seemed that I had transgressed in some way. 'The tradesmen's entrance', she spat, 'is around the back'. I was still a boy, but increasingly angry with it. 

I wanted to leave this demeaning job. Surprisingly my mother and father went along with my decision. Perhaps it was the stock-taking incident. Staff were required to remain behind once a year, after working hours, for several consecutive days, checking the stock. Apprentices without additional pay. On the third day, at about 10 pm, my father banged on the door, entirely without warning, and demanded my liberation. He explained , in his rough working class way, that as I was under the age of 16, it was actually illegal to keep me working for so long. The manager said that she had thought that I was enjoying myself. I sarcastically wished her  a good morning, as I walked through the door. She exacted her revenge the following day.

Unbelievably, the International Tea Company's Stores didn't want to let me go. Apparently, it was a bad precedent to allow apprenticeships to be broken, but for me it was a battle I couldn't afford to lose. If I had stayed I could have got my National Service deferred for a couple of years, but I didn't appreciate that at the time.

I got another job, working in the printing department of the urban district council next door to my own. I had no problem leaving them. They sacked me. I was collating the papers for a council meeting when the union branch secretary arrived for a chat. I got involved in a political discussion with him and made a mess of the whole thing. My next job was in an office in the East End of London, as a general lackey. It's amazing how easy it was to get a job in the early fifties. I enjoyed that job, particularly walking out of the office and just looking around the East End. Very different from south London. Then came National Service.

My view is that conscription is a form of slavery. Nobody asked us at the age of 18 if we wanted to spend the next two years of our life in the Suez Canal Zone, defending the interests of a country in which we were certainly not stakeholders. My generation had spent our early years in the Great Depression, much of our childhood in the years of bloody war and post-war austerity and now a key part of our youth was to be stolen from us.

I never cared much for the officer caste. I only ever met one that I liked and he was gently drunk for most of the time, which is probably why I liked him. He had served as a major and company commander during the war. Now, in reduced circumstances, he was a captain and regimental officer in the company in which I reluctantly served. I saw him a lot, as I worked in the office of which he was notionally in charge. He had other odd jobs. He was the treasurer of the officers mess, which greatly facilitated his predilection for a more than occasional alcoholic beverage.

More importantly for me, he also served as the battalion education officer. This bizarre fact was an indication of the importance given by the army to educational activity for conscripts. Actually the ramshackle education centre was run by a handful of sergeants in the education corps. An officer had to be seen to be in charge, even if he was pissed for most of the time. My captain friend, whom I familiarly called Sir, said to me one day that they were short on numbers on a course for the Army Certificate of Education- Third Class, so, '.... just trot along and make up the numbers, there's a good chap.' It had never occurred to me to join any group at the education centre. I thought that they were all about killing people, which has never interested me. However, orders is orders, so trot along I did and ended up with my first ever educational qualification. An achievement, however unpremeditated, but I have never ever bothered to put Army Certificate of Education-Third Class after my name. That's modesty, even if I do say so myself.