Interviewed by Peter Ruffles (PR)
Date: 31/05/1996
Transcribed by Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O1996.16
Interviewee: Arthur Clough (AC)
Date: 31st May, 1996
Venue: Hagsdell Road, Hertford
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Jean Purkis (Riddell)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PR: This is Peter Ruffles reporting for the Hertford Oral History Group from the home of Arthur and Molly Clough in Hagsdell Road and it's the 31st of May. Beautiful day in fact, although it was forecast to be stormy and not so nice. but it is, a sunny warm day. The last day of the half term holiday for me. And I've come to ask Arthur one or two preliminary questions and he may say as much or as little as he wants to. about his time in Hertford. And Arthur Clough was the Town Clerk of the old Borough Council from when, Arthur, when did you come?
AC: I came here forty years ago, almost exactly, and naturally during the intervening time there have been a huge number of changes. The old council tended to be dominated by the Longmores firm who in fact had organised a number of their nominees in the whole area. The council consisted of the old city fathers who were nominally not political, they were Independents. The merit they had was that they were all in the town on the spot and quite accessible. They were quite careful with the rate payers' money, they went to very great lengths to check every item of expenditure.
Later on the younger members came on to the council and tended to have much more liberal views and were much more easy going in the matter of expenditure. So one got the impression that the old council did not allow rate payers' money to be squandered. on the other hand later on there was not the firm check on expenditure that there had been before.
If I can go on to some of the changes that I've just been recalling. For example the Christ's Hospital has disappeared; Addis's, which was a very important industrial element in the town, has gone. The Kingsmead School disappeared: a new large police district offices were erected. A fire station, the fire headquarters was built. All of these were not here when I first came.
The Webbs Glove Factory has gone, Danesbury School has disappeared. Another important change is that you have the Crown Courts over at St. Albans now. In the older days when I first came here there were the Assizes and it was a most important event about three or four times a year when the Assizes' Judge came, held a service in the local church, in the parish church, and then went off to the Shire Hall to deal with the agenda there of cases.
Bengeo had much more of a village atmosphere. It is now much more part, an integral part of Hertford. The town had two cinemas. Those are both gone, of course, like as happened in so many towns. Christ Church was demolished and we now have a University of Hertford.
In the old days, when I was here, trains still ran from the old Hartham Station going right out towards Welwyn, then later on it merely became a goods service and then after that it was completely abandoned.
PR: So, forty years, that was 1956, you came, so it's exactly forty years. So where did you
come from? How did it happen that you arrived in Hertford?
AC: Well after I came out of the army I went to Margate as Deputy Town Clerk. But after being there ten years I came to Hertford as Town Clerk and that's how I ended up here.
PR: What sort of professional training had you had, then for the work?
AC: Well, I was articled to the Town Clerk of Gloucester originally in 1934. In 1939 I became an assistant solicitor to Gloucester City Council for one year, then I went into the army for six years, then to Margate for ten years then to Hertford as Town Clerk.
PR: And did you respond to an advertisement then?
AC: Yes, yes, I was trying to move on. It wasn't easy, but especially after six years in the army having to start right at the bottom again.
PR: So Hertford was just a name in an advertisement column
AC: And I found it totally different from a much larger seaside town which had nine miles of beaches, whole mass of activities on the sea front, concert parties to engage. It had a huge number of completely different functions going on, with a Winter Gardens. It had three restaurants which were all organised from the.., by the staff. And coming here was completely different to a rather, slightly sleepy town as it was then, rather quiet, very fixed in their ways.
One thing I noticed when I first came here was the housing shortage. Coming from a town where houses were vacant, quite a large number of houses were vacant. Coming to Hertford I found it extremely difficult to find a house at all. Houses seemed to be passed on by a number of the very old families who had been here quite obviously for generations and later on of course, the housing estates started to be developed. But at that time there was very little in the way of house building. Sele Farm was only just starting. There were very few private building estates being developed at all as far as I can remember and it was a very hard job to find a house at all.
PR: Where did you move to, not into Hagsdell Road immediately?
AC: No, I was in Bengeo.
PR: Oh, Westfield Road yes, I'd forgotten that.
AC: Yes, and then here but it really was hard work finding a house.
PR: So, you presumably came to Hertford for interview, or did they interview you?
AC: I came to Hertford.
PR: And where were the interviews, in the Castle?
AC: In the Shire Hall.
PR: Oh, Shire Hall. Now, that was never really a Borough building, was it?
AC: No, it was a County building. It was a County Shire Hall built by the old County Council probably about a hundred and twenty years before, probably two hundred years before, and it was an all purpose building.
PR: Yes, two hundred I would think 1750 [1769-71]
AC: Yes, the Assizes were held there, of course.
PR: So, why did the Borough not interview in their own premises?
AC: Well, all council meetings were held in the Shire Hall, committee meetings in the Castle,
council meetings in the Shire Hall, and this was a council meeting. I think it was the whole
council I had to see.
PR: Oh, really {in hushed tones) oh gosh!
AC: Yes!
PR: And were there others up for interview at the same time?
AC: Yes. I haven't the faintest recollection of who they were or what they even looked like, but
there were other candidates.
PR: So, how did the vacancy occur? Was it a retirement or…?
AC: No, the previous Town Clerk died.
PR: Was that Harry Bentley, or…?
AC: Bentley, yes. He had recently died and they had advertised and I wrote off and it wasn't the only one, I'd been on a number of short lists, all over the country as people were moving about quite a bit in local areas in those days.
PR: So you went into a meeting of quite a large number of people prepared to ask you questions?
AC: Oh, yes. The Mayor, the Aldermen were there, the Councillors, pretty well the whole Lot. (laughs)
PR: And you had to give a little…?
AC: Well, I got asked a whole number of questions and I was appointed to the job.
PR: And what sort of team had you to work, well, control and work with?
AC: Well, there was the Borough Engineer was my next colleague.
PR: Who was that at the time? Was that Mr. Weeks, Phil Weeks?
AC: The Borough Treasurer.
PR: Now, let's think of names, was that Abbott?
AC: Yes, Harold Abbott. He was Borough Treasurer. The housing manager who died about two years ago and lived out at, on the road to Watton-at-Stone
PR: Oh yes, yes Waterford.
AC: Carter.
PR: Carter, yes, at Waterford, yes.
AC: And the staff in those days was not as large as staff had become later on. One can argue that it was better to be small but have people on the spot arranging, deciding and dealing with matters, rather that, for example now, to have people....councillors in Bishop's Stortford deciding on matters in Hertford and vice versa. It can be argued both ways that one is more efficient that the other.
PR: Were the senior members of staff we've just mentioned autonomous in a way or were you, as Town Clerk a sort of chief executive figure at the top of the pyramid over them or…?
AC: Well it was a loose arrangement, there was nothing laid down that one as chief executive one tried to co-ordinate the efforts of the council and move matters along the whole time.
PR: But the staff we've mentioned would have been in post quite a long time before you came.
AC: Yes, they were all here when I arrived and we got on extremely well.
PR: And they would have, as you say because the patch was a smaller one, they would have known it intimately as officers as well as…?
AC: Yes, some of them had been here very many years. In those days we had arranged for the raking of properties and we had a very long established raking office, I think it was Jack Doyle and his father before him had been raking, dealing with the raking department. We had our own waterworks, our water department which…
PR: Oh, of course, yes.
AC: Which was run at a very cheap cost because we could keep costs down, so being a small authority, we could keep costs down. The moment you get a much larger authority you'll find that you can't keep costs down. You get more expensive. And we had our own library. That of course was taken away by the County Council. Before I came they even had the Fire Brigade in the old Fire Station near the present East Railway Station.
PR: So things had begun to develop, let's say before you came and you were there to preside over further things. And then in '74 the big local government reorganisation of recent times.
AC: Yes, that really was a very, very vast shake-up for the whole country. Everyone suffered from that. It wasn't just Hertford. In fact there's been a swing back to, one or two county councils had been taken out of existence. They've been dissolved and their powers have been divided amongst district councils. But it is an arguable point which is better, to have a larger number of smaller authorities or a smaller number of much more powerful authorities.
PR: And in '74 you bowed out then at that point, did you?
AC: Yes, yes. I left and on the 31st March we were actually listening for the first stroke of midnight and on the 1st April '74 we disappeared from history and all our powers were taken over by the authority meeting over at Bishop's Stortford.
PR: Which was made up of seven, I think, authorities: Braughing Rural, Bishop's Stortford Urban District, Ware…
AC: It was just a melting pot and East Hertfordshire District Council took over.
PR: And all of your chief officers stopped at that time, did they?
AC: They all stopped at that time.
PR: Because they were mature, as it were and…
AC: None of them were taken on. l don't think they particularly wanted to because they would all be used to working in a central small area, in Hertford town and the sheer effort of travelling would have been quite a problem straight away. Because Bishops Stortford is thirty odd miles there and back and it would have meant quite an extra amount of energy would have been needed to get used to a new system. And again it would have meant getting used to an entirely different mode of working with the East Herts Authority scattered over the whole of their area.
PR: And I think very few members of the old Borough Council stood for election to the new authority, did they? It seemed to be from where I was standing really as if the staff and the elected members had said that's enough, you know, we've put our time in on things so far here. John Forrester was one who did stand again and Les Foster.
AC: Yes, he was on, I think, only about three or four, at the most and of course over the course of time they left: and their place taken by other councillors.
PR: Now what about, Arthur, about some of the characters who were elected to the Borough Council that I can remember so well. Well first of all we've mentioned Aldermen a moment ago. We ought to explain to people who may be listening to this in due course and won't know of that system, how did you become an Alderman?
AC: The system was that every three years Aldermen, all of them, were up for re-election and they were elected by the councillors and the system seemed to work quite well. The whole idea of Aldermen was that you had continuity. In councils where the whole council comes up for election means very severe changes
PR: Yes, which we've just suffered locally a year ago.
AC: Yes and the… it is important to remember that councillors do acquire a great deal of knowledge. They get used to the problems and the answers to the problems, whereas a young councillor coming on, they often, has ideas but he has no idea of the great difficulty of implementing his ideas whereas one did find, for example, on town planning matters, councillors get quite knowledgeable about how the system works.
PR: So an Alderman was, how many were there? Six Aldermen or…?
AC: No, no, no, ten at least. Ten and one had, I remember the Mayor at that time was Councillor Winnie Brooks, her husband was also an Alderman, and one astonishing character was a member of the Dye family.
PR: Dan, Dan Dye.
AC: He was really an astonishing old fellow who caused from time to time a great deal of amusement. He was quite a canny individual. He always used to amuse everybody because he couldn't seem to tackle the word 'negotiate.' He always used the word 'negotiate' and in the end all the other councillors started using this word 'negotiate.' It used to be quite amusing.
(Much laughter.)
PR: Yes.
AC: But his whole family was part of Hertford. It was a really old family going back probably a hundred years and they had some astonishing stories to tell.
PR: Now when he came up for re-election as an Alderman by his fellow councillors he failed to
muster enough votes in the end didn't he?
AC: In the end yes. Well he was getting on and he'd been on the council a very long time.
PR: And through the war years when other men were away and presumably elections were suspended, were they. during the war?
AC: During the war, they must have been. I can't quite remember what happened, but just as elections for Members of Parliament nationally were suspended and I think, co-opted, probably. I think they had a system of co-option. And they kept their numbers up by co-opting.
PR: Looking around for suitable persons and that must have led to an older council because the able people would have been away in many cases, wouldn't they?
AC: Yes. I think, in those days. a lot of the younger members weren't being recruited. They didn't seem to be so interested in council work. Quite obviously, younger people probably up to the age of forty had other interests. They had their families. They had their own work, profession and so forth. And I don't think a lot of them became interested, and to become members of the council, until a bit later on in life. And then, of course, when I first came, I was much younger than all the old Aldermen and must of the council. They were all much older than I was. One day, I got quite a shock after the elections suddenly to find that they were coming on the council younger than I was!
PR: Startling for you!
AC: Quite a startling development and it put quite a different complexion on council work because they came in with new ideas. They were much more active. The older members were obviously not so active. They were getting on but they had quite a lot of knowledge. They knew how things worked. They knew the history of things. They knew the history of problems. They knew why certain things hadn't been done and the younger members came along full of new ideas but lacking in a great deal of useful information.
PR: So you had, this is a very interesting chat, you had chairmen of various spending committees that would have met between full council meetings. How often did, I mean finance for example, was that Eddie Bennett in your day?
AC: Eddie Bennett, and one member I particularly remember was Councillor Keeble.
PR: Oh, yes.
AC: He kept a very tight rein on the finances.
PR: Was there a separate Finance Committee then?
AC: Yes, oh yes. We had Finance Committee, Housing Committee, Planning, a General Committee
PR: And Keeble was Highways I remember at one time.
AC: Oh yes, they changed like musical chairs, a little bit, from time to time. They changed over and moved around, which is a very good thing of course. It's a bad thing to get one particular person in one particular job, too long.
PR: Did they squabble much? Or…?
AC: Well. not in public. What happened privately obviously being human they obviously did have their ideas and they obviously did have their squabbles and problems and little quarrels but I never really heard of them at all.
PR: And these were the days when the political labels were coming in or
AC: Yes, there was no politics at all although one began at what political party they supported,
they were all Independents. That's what they called themselves. And of course later on it became, as in so many councils, very much more marked, the politics. And it rather spoiled things because from my point of view, because my job was to advise on legal matters and I had to be very careful not to tell the council what they ought to do from a matter of policy. That was their function, and I had to keep well away from that. I also had the unenviable job of telling them what the legal position was, very often.
Well, a councillor would come along from time to time and he'd have some pet scheme. After I'd delved into it I would find out that it wasn't legal because they mustn't do anything ultra vires and this was most embarrassing because it put the councillor out and he wasn't very fond of my advice.
PR: No! Don't shoot the messenger, but…
AC: Most embarrassing! Sometimes they got the wrong end of the stick. They'd say, well, why can't I do this? Why can't we do this? They do it in such and such a town. Well, next morning I'd phone up the Town Clerk of the town mentioned and find, Oh, he'd got the wrong end of the stick completely. It's totally different.
I eventually could persuade them that it wasn't legal and wasn't lawful because I could get into difficulties with the District Auditor if I hadn't told them of any problems, and it made life a bit difficult. By and large it wasn't easy working and presumably it still isn't for any person working in that position. To work, you've got to keep the council on a rigid even keel. Mustn't let them do anything illegal and yet, if you don't mention it, the District Auditor picks it up several months later and so forth.
PR: We're nearly to end of a side of tape would you believe! Yes, I'll ask you in a minute when we turn over, about people you had, because people are always interesting to listeners or people in the future. They like to hear about how people were and what attitudes they took. You had a deputy Town Clerk who was a Hertford person, I think/
AC: Yes. He was Hertford born and bred and he knew the history of so many people which of course I wouldn't be aware of that and that was quite useful from time to time.
PR: He was one of the Neals wasn't he? The Neal brothers, I'd forgotten what Christian name now.
AC: Yes. He, and his brother was also in the Treasurer's Office, I think.
PR: And there is a connection I think, between the Neals and the Dye family/
AC: Oh, yes, they all knew a great deal about each other.
PR: So that adds to the cosiness of the old Borough pattern which is what we are describing. So, Aldermen, there was towards the end, Alderman Forrester, Les Foster; Vance Packman, Patmore, Les Patmore. I'm just trying to think along the, but I think Winnie Brooks was never an Alderman. Her husband was but I don't think…?
AC: I'm not sure, I think she might have been.
PR: She was our first woman Mayor and given the…
End of Side A
Side B
PR: Father Keeble so, the political thing I suppose began when, was it right when Labour candidates first stood, and then the others came out as Conservatives having been independent?
AC: Yes, the parties seemed to accuse each other of making it more political. I don't know how it happened, or what brought it about but all over the country, the whole country was getting more politically conscious and one could see that all over the country politics was coming in much more so. And it did make life a bit less convenient from the point of view of getting work done.
PR: Yes. I've just thought of an Alderman that we ought to have mentioned and you'll probably tell us something of your reactions to him and that's Alderman Mansfield.
AC: Yes, now he was one of the really old school, an extremely nice old fellow.
PR: Oh, was he?
AC: Yes, he was and he was very easy to get on with and, but again he really did remember and know a great deal of the work that was going on. He lived in Bengeo. He'd lived there nearly all his life, I think pretty well. And he seemed to know everybody and everybody seemed to know him and think a great deal of his work on the council.
PR: Yes. The Addises were not there in your day were they? I think Addis is…
AC: Well, Robert Addis wasn't on the council. He was an OBE. He was on one or two charities that I became involved with and he was one of the trustees on a couple of charities and that's how I came to meet him.
PR: Yes, so it was his mother presumably in earlier years that was…?
AC: Yes, I knew her. I can remember her and his mother. Course they lived out at Hertingfordbury and they were quite important, obviously because of their connection with the Addis factory. It was a great blow to Hertford when that left from the employment point of view.
PR: We've never had McMullens on the council, have we?
AC: Not for some time. The, if you look on the panels on the library you'll find that they were quite involved many years ago, but that's probably going back to 1900 or even before. They had been quite important in running the town.
PR: And the Purkiss-Ginns family that came in in more modern times to…
AC: I think Mrs. Purkiss Ginn was an Alderman at one time.
PR: Yes, Henrietta, Alderman Mrs. Henrietta Purkiss Ginn.
AC: Henrietta Purkiss Ginn, yes, she was an Alderman and again she was getting on in years even when I arrived, but she still stayed, but she still stayed on the council for some time and she was very knowledgeable about everything that was being dealt with by the council.
PR: The lovely speaking voice. I've forgotten. Was it Australian? There's a sort of, I don't know
how long she'd been in this country but her voice had a sort of musical sound to it which sounds as if it was antipodean or something but perhaps I just imagined that or [ She was Miss Mary Henrietta Johnston of Moira, Co. Down] she was chairman of the libraries committee at one point I remember,
AC: Yes, yes. They moved around so much that it's quite impossible to remember.
PR: Yes, and you were there for quite a lot of it. I've just got isolated snapshots.
AC: Yes, twenty years and in twenty years they'd come and go quite, sometimes a councillor would get on the council, it was a by election, he's probably only on for six months and then the next election, the regular election, he'd lose his seat. And so you didn't get to know them very well. Some members seemed to be able to survive. They were real survivors, in spite of other people having a go they remained and went on and on which is fair enough. They had the gift of surviving.
PR: That would be Percy Brooks, presumably?
AC: Yes, he'd been on the council for a great many years. He was of course a hospital administrator.
(bell rings)
PR: Ah! Is Molly in? Oh, yes we did hear you but we had to untangle ourselves and er, come and sit down because I've just got a little more to ask, ah well.
Yes I'm trying to think if there's anything else. If we don't say it, will be lost to history but I think probably, we've looked at the people, the families, the dynasties, almost, of things. The Keeble link, Tony Bentley, we haven't mentioned Tony…
AC: No.
PR: Em, just trying to think who used to stand up and present these reports when I sat in those sharply tiered seats in the public gallery at the Shire Hall and I can remember Mr. Keeble for Highways particularly but, and of course an Alderman could be the chairman of the committee as well couldn't, and took…
AC: Oh, yes they, the allocation of committees was obviously something they struggled over quite a bit, long before the actual meeting. We had a General Committee where these chairmanships had obviously been parcelled out long before. There must have been quite a lot of work behind the scenes to work out which Alderman or councillor was going to be chairman of the committee for the whole year. Because it's quite important, once a chairman was there, he was obviously there for quite a long time. Chairmen appointed their vice-chairmen and again that was thought over quite considerably.
PR: Oh, I see. That was the nomination of the, they chose a partner as it were?
AC: Yes, their running mate and again that was quite important. We had quite a lot of contact with architects. For some time, quite early on, we were building a great number of council housing estates and it was quite common to have huge orders of say seventy houses at a time being built by one building contractor and one firm of architects. Gradually that got less and less as council housing became pretty expensive and council couldn't really tackle the huge housing estates they'd been building before. I think for instance Sele Farm was built in about six or seven huge council contracts and that made quite a lot of activity from the planning point of view and of course from the housing point of view.
PR: Was there any difficulty at that stage with Des O'Connor who was getting his company under way? It was clearly a tricky position for him I should have thought.
AC: Yes, they had a system whereby councillors had to declare an interest. We had standing orders of course, which are quite effective and detailed after a matter arose in a committee in which a council member had an interest, he had to declare it. He could stay in the room unless he was specifically requested to leave. That was rather delicate because councillors didn't like to be told to leave the room. They liked to stay and hear what was being discussed. But very often councillors didn't like them staying because they felt it might influence, particularly as the councillor in question could see how other members voted on a matter in which he was particularly interested. So that I could sit back and just enjoy what was going…
.
PR: Yes, because that was the time that the Rialto Builders were really developing, er…
AC: Yes they were getting very active and they, er, I'm not sure whether they, they must have done work for the council. I can't remember any detailed contracts. We had a great deal going on and I think by and large looking back on it I think the council did a pretty good, a reasonably good job of work. They struggled hard to keep the rates down and of course rate rises weren't their fault very often.
County council declared the precept and made a demand on every local authority as to the money they were to collect. They left the wretched job of collecting the actual money to the district councils and the district councils got the backwash, the backlash of the grumbles of the rate payer. The county council decided on the figure they needed. They precepted their local authorities. The local authority was then left to decide upon what expenditure they needed and the, because the county council precept was of a certain amount the district council often put off work which they badly wanted to do and needed to do because the county precept was too high.
PR: And was there any limit on the amount the borough could raise?
AC: There was no rate capping in those days. The borough council did try hard to keep it down. They had to to walk a tight-rope at the time between keeping it down and not doing things they needed to do and wanted to do. For years, for example, they needed a new hall. Castle Hall was built right at the end of their term of office. In fact it didn't come in use until after they'd been dissolved.
PR: No, I think it began to be built just a week or two after the demise of the old authority and it
was about '78, I think. Before Princess Margaret came and…
AC: And yet looking back on it, it probably ought to have been built a few years before because it was needed. It was badly needed. The only other building there was was the Corn Exchange and that was not a very satisfactory building for the events that Hertford needed to put on.
PR: What about ceremonial things. Mayor making was a big occasion/
AC: That was a big one. The Assizes when the judge came, that was quite, cause we attended the church service.
PR: Ah. Robed?
AC: Yes, in robes and that was quite a solemn, quite an interesting solemn little service which the judge of course attended.
PR: I don't think, I don't remember as much parading in robes as there is now with the little parish council.
AC: We did go round to quite a number of the churches.
PR: Oh, did you?
AC: Yes, there was the Remembrance Sunday in November. The Civic Service in May after the elections. We went around to the Holy Trinity Church in Bengeo on Trinity Sunday. Then I think we used to attend the Baptist Church, Cowbridge. What is now the United Reformed Church in Cowbridge, the Methodist Church in Ware Road. We went around to all, so my Sunday mornings were mortgaged.
PR: Yes! Did you wear a legal wig as ours do today?
AC: Yes, a wig and gown and, I did, yes.
PR: And the selection of the Mayor each year? Was that, did it ever involve any difficulties or was
there a pattern that meant that people could see what was coming?
AC: I could happily keep well out of that. It obviously didn't affect me at all and I had no say whatsoever in, it later on became political, of course to some extent and it was a very political matter. I don't know how it was done at all. Obviously, in the run up to the May elections, they
obviously got together privately and worked out the candidate they wanted to become Mayor. And it was to my recollection, always unopposed. I can't remember anyone voting against the election of a Mayor.
PR: And then the Mayor's diary would be, a personal matter, or did he or she have a member of your staff to tell them where to go, receive invitations and things like that? How did that happen?
AC: Well, do you mean the Civic Dinner or…?
PR: No. just when invitations come to go to Millmead School or Port Vale School as it would have been and that sort of thing. Would it go to the home address of the Mayor in those days or was it an office function at the Castle?
AC: It was an office function at the Castle. I think one tended to invite similar people every year unless there had been changes, obvious necessary changes but it worked out quite happily.
PR: Yes. well, and here you are. You didn't go back to Margate, the seaside when you retired but you've stayed in the town you'd been a big part in the life of…
AC: I've been quite happy in Hertford. It's a nice pleasant town and very pleasant and some of the changes have been the same kind of changes that every town gets anyway. We've had a shopping centre which lots of towns have had, supermarkets. It was all quite different but we've gone from the…, into the electronic age. When in an office in the old days it was the old fashioned typewriter. Then it became the electric typewriter then word processors and digital electronic instruments and it's changed. Whether I can say it's changed for the better I don't know. It just has changed.
PR: But there is quite, well, l think, and you obviously do to a large extent, a lot of good things have remained. haven't they, really in terms of the size?
AC: Yes, yes. After twenty years I've got used to being governed from Bishop's Stortford.
(laughter)
It'll never go back again to being a small authority, I don't think. So it's chopped and changed throughout history. Going back to about 1825, you had a whole lot of ad hoc authorities like paving commissioners and the police authorities and so forth, and by about 1930s you got authorities like county boroughs that had every single function. They did everything, the police, the fire brigade, gas, water electricity. Then they all started scattering again. Then you got going back to the old system whereby they have been fractionised and it’s part of life. It's chopping and changing the whole time.
PR: Well. I think we can turn off the tape and thank you very much. I'll leave you with a form
which you could post
AC: No, I'Il sign it now. I'm quite happy to.
PR: Well, there are little bits you may just want to read or consider.
AC: Oh, right. Date of birth, that's a naughty one.
PR: You could do that without too much thought.
AC: You want to know how old I am?
PR: The, yes, I don't think there's anything that we've said. Well we certainly haven't said anything which was libellous.
AC: Or that anyone could take exception to.
PR: No. So the second form isn't very well designed but it needs a tick or an overall thing but have a look at it some time. There we are.