Interviewed by Frances Green (FGG), Trish Goldsmith (TG)
Date: 01/02/2024
Transcribed by Trish Goldsmith (using Otter.AI for initial transcript)
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording No: O 2024.1
Interviewees: Glenn Sexton (GS), Sue Sexton (SS)
Date: 1st February 2024
Venue: The Sextons’ home
Interviewers: Frances Green (FGG), Trish Goldsmith (TG)
Transcriber: Trish Goldsmith (using Otter.AI for initial transcript)
Typed by: Freda Joshua
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
FGG: So it's Thursday, the 1st of February 2024, and Trish Goldsmith and myself, Frances Green, are here with Glenn and Sue Sexton. And we're here to talk really about Glenn's career in local politics and associated matters and to focus then on twinning. And we're doing this partly because we want to talk to Glenn but also because there's an exhibition coming up very shortly in Hertford Museum about Hertford's experiences with twinning, so it's very timely interview. So, Glenn, we are throwing the floor open to you. We'll come in with questions, but over to you to begin,
GS: Right. Well, what I think ought to be understood about twinning and how Hertford, rather crab- wise, became eligible or willing to do a civic twinning as distinct from merely a people's twinning. You've got to remember the situation, I'm sorry about this, the great political situation at the time in 1979. The Conservative Party was very, very strongly for Europe, for the Common Market. In fact, little footnote, it was said that the Conservative manifesto section on Europe had been written by Derek Prince, who was at that time, the principal of the European Information Office in London. So it was very much a commitment to the European ideal. Inside the Conservative Party, there were uncertainties, shall we say: some people had the old-fashioned idea that Britain has no permanent alliances, only permanent interests. Other people after the war, perhaps lost relatives and things like that, that were very worried about being part of Europe, what would Europe do again? And yet there were, there was a big section in the Conservative Party that was quite keen, that this was the future. Auberon Waugh was quoted as saying that the Young Conservatives were the new preachers of this new religion, and I was one of them. I used to go around as a Young Conservative, giving talks about how Europe was such a good thing.
The Labour Party was in a very uncertain state. First of all, there was a very strong internationalist element in the Labour Party, and they were very keen. Then there was, we don't want to tie it with modern politics, but some Corbynist view that this was a rich man's club, and Britain would go into a rich man's club, and the workers will be completely down-trodden forever. Then there was a third section: that was, again, well, the two parts of it, affected by war. One was, yes, lost relatives, had been bombed out, ‘We don't want anything to do with these people’. But the other one was, the men and women who had fought in the war, particularly who had actually been in Europe and fought through Europe. And their view was, ‘We never ever want to have Europe able to do this again’. Henry Sargent was a very fine example of exactly that, he fought through Italy, terrible war, and he said, ‘I never want to see Europe destroy itself like this’.
The Liberals were very simple, they were in favour of European unity, and there was no nuance in their position. So, when the new Council was elected in ‘79, of which I was a member, we had to some extent this mixture among all of us, and we had Henry Sargent, ‘Yes, I want to stop Europe destroying itself again’. We had Andy Andrews, a similar position, he used to wear his medals on Remembrance Sunday, and say, ‘I never want any of my Town Council colleagues to have medals, or have a chance of getting a medal ever again’. So there was this very strong, we must stop Europe destroying itself, position. And you can see that it's not a political divide on the Council, it is not quite even an age divide, but it is a deep philosophical divide. Now the Council came in, it sounds … you may feel this is over writing it, but this was serious politics and feeling among the Councillors. Now we go outside the Council and the town twinning idea, so far as I understand it, started with Sele School and Bill Maxwell. Now, I understand that Richard Hale had a penfriend relationship with somewhere in France, but I don't know anything about that, that was very much Richard Hale’s thing. The Sele School one, I believe, was started when a French assistant from Evron came to work at Sele School, and then sort of suggested penfriend relationships, which began. Then people wanted to go and see this place in France, the French wanted to come and see this place in England. And so it began to be a social thing, as well as a school thing, and then began to build out into the wider community. Even people who had no connection with Sele School began to be interested in this idea. And it was very much something that was in the wind and very current at the time.
Now, I can't give you a date, you possibly know when the Friends of Evron was set up, but it was certainly when Sue and I first came to Hertford in ‘74, the Friends of Evron were quite prominent. It got a good few column inches in the Mercury, always good for a photograph, and Charles Nesbit-Larkin, who was Mayor, spoke excellent French. So he was very, very welcoming to the French and they warmed to him. And the Council in that town, the year before me, were quite friendly towards the idea of twinning. But they'd actually done no research into what a civic twinning would imply. There was mechanism for private, public, say public, twinnings to go ahead where charters and parties met in the two towns and things like this, but civic twinning is a bit more complex. So that was one question. So when we came in, Jill Geall, of course, was a prominent member of the Council at that time, she came in with me in ’79, and the, the position was that there was quite a strong feeling a) that we wanted to support the Town Twinning Association, which was very strong, making a big profile in Hertford, but at the same time, we had all of these worries. One was, how many people would it alienate? I mean, we were thinking politically, how many people would it alienate if we actually went into a Civic Twinning? I mean, how was the country feeling? Thinking, you know, thinking in big terms here. The second one was that, rather unfortunately for the idea of twinning, there was a lot of newspaper chat and headlines about Councils that had got it wrong.
You had to, again I'm going to be political here, some Labour Councils, very internationalist, wanted to twin with the whole of universe. And you got silly photographs, and I remember this, in the press of one, not particularly big town, which was twinned with about 20 places on the continent. And there was a signboard, you know, a Little Puzzlington twinned with bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, a whole list of places, and of course, that simply attracted ridicule. You can see from a philosophical point of view -we’re internationalists, we’re being international, but looked at from an outsider, this was ridiculous.
Then there were the other towns, I'm not going to say that Conservative Councils were free of this, which went overboard. They regarded it, have to go to the twin town, mob-handed in full Council. We go over there, it’s an all-expenses paid trip and we're spreading international joy. And likewise, we invite them over, we have a big municipal banquet, all-expenses paid and aren’t we doing our job for internationalism, for twinning, for the Conservative position that we are European. So, if you looked at a newspaper you saw on one side, someone twinned with 40 towns and thought how ridiculous, and someone then getting pulled up by a District Auditor, ‘How can you spend all of this money? How do you account for 54 crates of wine’ and this sort of thing? And, again, that made the thing ridiculous, but it made it politically dangerous. So if the Town Council went out to the people of Hertford and said, ‘Yes, we've heard the Town Twinning Association, we want to do a Civic Twinning. How much of our vote, whether ours, Henry Sargent, or ours meaning me, would say, ‘Oh, all you want to do is go to France, on someone else’s money and have a jolly time. And, bottom line, ‘And what is in this for me? I don't have children still in school. I've never been to France, don't want to go to France. I would go to France, if someone would pay for me, just like they're going to pay for you lot on the Council’. So, there was a strong element of that. We actually, so to speak, felt it on the doorstep. and we had to tread very, very carefully.
So, in the council itself, there was a very delicate majority for the idea of a) supporting the Friends of Evron who are twinning, and yes, we could be persuaded to make it Civic Twinning. But we really had to do everything to make it as legit, shall we say, as it could possibly be. So, this was a situation that we had and we scratched our heads over it and, and so on. Now, of course the Council had a big upheaval, in the early months after May sometime, it must have been getting towards the autumn, when Charles Nesbit-Larkin had a massive stroke, and Andy Andrews was his deputy, because he had taken two years. It was his second year in hos Mayoralty, and Andy Andrews was his deputy Mayor and Andy had to step into this, and he took on the mayoral position. So that upset the balance a little bit, and, er, we didn't have to have a by-election because Charles was still alive, theoretically he could come back, and so the situation was slightly unbalanced. But we then hammered this down, and I think I've got to tell you that Oscar Cunneen, the Town Clerk at the time, was very instrumental in refining what we really thought.
So this came out, that the Town Council was open to the idea of a Civic Twinning, big pressure for this from the Town Twinning Association, of course, Friends of Evron, is open to the idea. but one needed to know that this was really a public wish. How many members have you got in Friends of Evron? Are you fully funded? Do you fund yourselves when you go over and see the Evronnai? Do you …we will welcome them to the Castle, but are you going to pay for all of this? What stability is there in this desire for twinning? So we tested the Friends of Evron quite sharply and quite deliberately. They stood up to all the tests. I mean, they had a lot of members, they were very solvent, they had a sensible programme, and they had a very good and deep relationship.
Now, our next thing was that we'd done some research. At that time, the Council of Europe was in existence, I mean it’s merged now into the European Parliament, which I don't agree with, but that's another matter. The Council of Europe actually had a marriage bureau, and so, if you wanted to twin, if your civic body was prepared to twin with another town in the Council of Europe's area, you wrote to the marriage bureau, filled in a very, very detailed form, about the size of your town, where it was, what kind of industry it had, what kind of population it had and so on. A very detailed form, and asked the Council of Europe to do a marriage bureau job of matching you against where they thought your best link would be. So we said that we were willing to do this, if Evron would do it, but we had no means of loading the dice. This was the Council of Europe, it was going to produce a report to both towns to say who they thought we ought to be twinned with. So we were, so this went out, it was a research exercise. And so we did this, we completed the form, we set up a Twinning Committee, we made the thing run, and we sent off our paperwork to the Council of Europe. Meanwhile, internally in the Council, we've now got a certain amount of stability. If people really wanted this, if the Friends of Evron were strong enough to support a town twinning, a Civic Twinning, then we would go ahead, but we would not go ahead with Evron if the Council of Europe said that we weren't compatible. So we were invested ourselves whether or not we will go ahead with anyone else, any other town, we didn't take any decision. We needed to have that research done by the Council of Europe.
It actually happened that I was in Oscar Cunneen's office, I popped in occasionally because I was Chairman of the Finance Committee, and I popped in on occasions to talk to Oscar and set up things for the next Finance Committee, and he said, ‘I've just got the memo back from the Council of Europe. ‘That’s jolly interesting’. Then he said, ‘I've also got a letter from this place’ and it was, it was, I can't remember now, I think it was a town in France, the civic letter heading had about five different coats of arms of towns all over Europe, all over England and, ‘We like to be twinned with other towns, we'd like to be twinned with Hertford. We've seen that you've been in the Council of Europe twinning office’ or whatever they called it.
And, a little footnote, slightly unkind, but that was one of those debates that we had er… Oh,there was another faction of the Labour Party I didn't mention, which was the Wedgwood-Benn faction. Who were really, er - Antony Wedgwood-Benn had actually read the Treaty of Rome/Rome 1. And he formulated the famous Five Principles: what power do you have, who gave it to you, what limits are there to your power, in whose interests do you exercise this power, how do they get rid of you? And his position was - you cannot get rid of the Commission. Therefore, no democratic country can accede to Rome 1.
There was this faction in the Town Council, represented by a man called Bob Perrett, former deputy headmaster, strong figure in the Methodist Church, a bit of a quiet firebrand in one way, and he put forward a motion that Hertford, if we were really keen on cementing friendship among mankind, we ought to look for a suitable town in the Soviet Union. He didn’t get a seconder. But, but that makes a bit of a joke of it, but in fact, that was a genuine section in political and social opinion at the time. Shouldn't we be casting our view wider than simply our cosy Europe, and why not be internationalist at the same time? So it wasn't a big faction, but it, er, he raised it and we had to, we had to debate it. But the, er, so coming back to me sitting in Oscar’s office, this is it. Nice full file of papers from the Council of Europe. And they said, ‘Yes, there are three towns who are a suitable match for Hertford. But the one that we would say was the prime case is a town called Evron in the Mayenne’. That's it, so that comes from them. You Councillors have said that you would go with the Council of Europe, if it wasn't Evron you wouldn't twin with anybody, but here we are. And then the better news came up. Inside the pack was a couple of pages on grants available from the Council of Europe in order to facilitate twinning. So I think it was the magnificent sum of £400 to facilitate travel to the town, to facilitate people from your twin town to come to you, entertainment and so on, and there was a general expenses element of, I can’t remember how much, let’s say a couple of £100. Well, I mean, this was wonderful. I, as the stern guardian of finances, had refused to put a budget item into the budgetary plan and said, ‘I can’t put anything in as twinning budget, because we don't know what's going to happen, that we've got no basis’. However, here we were, the Council of Europe, talking about real money. So we were able to go to the next General Committee with this, the Council of Europe says number one, Evron, and I can’t remember numbers two and three, but they were quite pleasant places and very similar to ourselves, but Evron was the top recommendation. Therefore, I have received a request, also 3 because Hertford’s number two, actually, but this is talking from memory, but I think I'm right, but Evron was so keen to twin with Hertford, what the heck, whoever number one is we want Hertford. But it was the case that this fairly detailed exchange of information said that these two were very compatible towns. So there it was. We had a strong Friends of Evron, we had evidence that there was a good proportion of the electors who wanted this, we now had done our research with the Council of Europe. and it was a reasonable proposition. I mean, it wasn’t going to cost us any money. And so, the Council said, right, this is it, this is what we're going with.
So this was actually, of course now, Andy Andrews was the deputy Mayor, we were moving towards the following May when Andy became Mayor, in fact. So it was Andy Andrews, who signed the twinning agreements and things like that. So lots and lots and lots of communication and diplomacy, so we teed ourselves up for a Civic Twinning. I went to, let’s see, we signed the first document in Hertford. Andy it was, oh, and John Forrester was Andy’s deputy mayor. And little footnote again, Monsieur Guinnifrey was there, of course, and so he signed for Evron. The document was passed over, John Forrester picked it up and handed it to Andy and he was heard to say at the time, ‘You're going to make history here, Andy’ when he signed the twinning document. So that was it. And I was on the on the bus that went to Evron to see the counter-signing, I've got some photographs of that. And, er, so we had a, a good time was had by all socially, it gelled very well and very quickly. There were people travelling with us who hadn't really, I mean we had people from Ware, who hadn't really been part of the Friends of Evron, but had actually joined the Friends of Evron on the basis that they wanted to see town twinning happening. And so they came over to Evron, again, so the relationship struck not only within Hertford, but also round about, very successful. Therefore, I did a – I’ve got photographs of that, sort of a tableau sort of thing, of the Adventures of Joan of Arc in the Mayenne, because the Mayenne has been the sort of place where the English have been racing around for several centuries and besieging castles and buildings and owning land and being lords of the manor and things like that, so that's the very interesting political and historical relationship between England and the Mayenne. And, of course, the English ended up by burning Joan of Arc at the stake. So that was, the whole town was involved in a presentation of her life, the battles that took place in the Mayenne, and finally, Joan of Arc burnt at the stake. So, I've got some photographs of that as well, that was rather a jolly thing.
So the, I think that everyone went with a certain amount of, I'm thinking about it from the Hertford perspective here, I think everyone went with a certain amount of, I’ll use the word trepidation, perhaps, but less uncertainty. We had done this big political thing in Hertford, now we're going to do a big political thing in Evron and how would this gel. But I thought it gelled really well, everyone was very happy, I remember coming back and we felt we'd done the right thing. Little footnote: Oscar did a very careful, Oscar the Town Clerk, did a very, very careful accounting of what the, what the Councillors spent on all of this and he, he said, ‘Well, we’re £150 under-spent’, because the Council had actually, with my support, voted something like £200 or something on top of the Council of Europe's offer, in order to make sure that any overspend didn't cause a problem. Actually it turned out that we’d under-spent the Council of Europe's money, and we hadn't touched the Town Council's budget, we’d underspent the Council of Europe's money, something like £150 or say £125, something like that, was under-spent. Oscar said, ‘We need to return some of your grant, please give us bank references’. Bit of a silence, prompt them, ‘We do need to do this, to close this before our year end on our books’. Finally, ‘We've never had anyone offer to return any money before. We don't know how to do it’. [Laughter]
I think that Oscar finally bullied them into accepting their money back. So, in fact, I think that the Council of Europe grant was renewed for the second year. I think we had two or three years of Council of Europe support money to get the twinning really off the ground. And I think in the latter year or two they made specific things about sport exchange, choir exchange, youth exchange, things like that were the focus of the expenditure. But at that stage we had then a full committee on the Council as the Twinning Committee, we had the relationship established, we had the visits, the exchanges set up and it continued like that. So I think that you probably talked to Jill Geal, I mean Jill, Jill was absolutely a pivot of the whole thing and she was then of course a Councillor, and played a pretty good hand, I think, as a Councillor, sort of declaring an interest as being a pretty strong member of the Friends of Evron Committee, but on the other hand accepting that the Council had got a delicate balance to do, that there were so many negative stories and so many, I mean some quite understandable, negative currents about getting involved with Europe coming from the war, and then coming from, as I say, the fact of the stupidity of some Councils and the game-playing that went on. So I think that some people looked on it as being a bit narrow and perhaps even too concerned about how much it was going to cost. Well, the cost was a consideration, but I think that the bigger fear in the Council was that we had to feel that this was something that a sufficient mass of Hertford wanted and was going to be a public thing. Not just us kind of presenting Hertford to the world, but also, not just us doing something which was pleasurable and entertaining. And I must say that Evron, the Evronnai and also the civic state of Hertford when they came here, was in very great style. They, they thought that this was all pretty good stuff. And also we’ve got to include the South East Herts Country Dance Society, the Scottish dancers, Highland dancers, including, of course, Ann Kirby and David Kirby, important names. And when we signed the twinning in Evron, they created, of course, the French always seem to have a new street or a street that they can give a new name to, and so we got Rue d’Hertford. And so the Scottish Country Dance Society, as its proper title, Scottish Country Dance Society, actually created a Hertford street dance. And when the curtain was drawn from the street sign, then the Country Dance Society did the Hertford Street Dance down the Hertford street.
FGG: So we'll try and video a few moves from you later, Glenn, to recreate that dance [Laughter]. Can I just jump in? Because I - (go ahead) - that's really eloquent in terms of outlining the political and local terrain you had to cross and a lot of things that I hadn't realised at all. Do you have any insight into what it was like for the Evron equivalents in their journey towards a twinning decision?
GS: Very sketchy. At some point, a couple of points, I think, the Friends of Evron, before the Civic Twinning, actually sat in as observers in the Evron Council, Council meetings. Afterwards, they were - again Jill Geall was very much instrumental in this - there were almost joint Council sessions in Evron. We never did this in Hertford, because, constitutionally, that would be very difficult, but much more flexible in France. The feeling I get from being there, now, I'm going to look at Sue here very, very deliberately, the feeling I get was that the French were very, very keen on establishing these twinning links, and that they didn't have the negative feelings that we had, neither in the sense of: Good grief, look at those people with 40 different twinning, town twinnings, not on the same but on the opposite side, and look at these people making pigs of themselves on the rates. It was much more mainstream: we like this, we're interested in this and we want to establish this kind of relationship. So I think that as I'm not, I've never sat in on one of these Evron Council meetings, but my feeling would be from everything that we've experienced, that they had, they had a, er, to say they had a positive view from the start would be limited. I think, I think I would say that they were more than positive they, the whole civic atmosphere was that they wanted this to be a success, and they wanted to be friends. I think that was, that was fair.
FGG: And the official agreements that are signed, great and glorious looking as they are, how did you come to that layout and design? Or were you told this is what it looks like?
GS: Well, that's a very good question, actually. Yes, there's a Council of Europe standard twinning Charter in French and English, and, er, English and other, other languages throughout Europe. So, yes, we took that, we took the standard model the limming or the presentation of it. Again, the Council of Europe had given us money for it, so we did it. We had, of course, Hertford. from time to time has, has done things like that. Hartford in Connecticut is one place, so we pretty much went to the same shop.
FGG: Fantastic. Okay, so we've just had a little break in the recording and assessing to where we go from here, and we think we'll go towards Germany now and ask Glenn to talk about Wildeshausen.
GS: I wasn't really as deeply involved in Wildeshausen, as I was in Evron. Again, Jill Geall was pretty much a promoter of this. What had happened was that Evron had decided that they would like to have a twin town in Germany, specifically in Germany, you can see the background to that. And they had done a Council of Europe marriage bureau, and it had come out as this place called Wildeshausen. There was some connection between Evron and Wildeshausen, which I think may have been again, school exchanges. So, so there was some relationship there. but they, but they got the thing up to a level of being a Civic Twinning. Now this was very, very delicate in the Town Council. You remember? Again, thinking of the factions, as it were, we had the internationalist ‘I’ll twin or do anything with any anybody, because that is philosophically the thing to do’. We had, again, the old men, the warriors, let's call them that, who really wanted to do anything to stop Europe doing that to itself again. Then we had, and this was, in fact, not party political but it was across parties, not too sure about this depth of involvement with Europe. It's, it's committing us too far, we're closing out opportunities and options. And then there was a very serious feeling that we really don't want to get too close to the Germans, at least for another 20 years. So that was very strong, and I think, I’ll say this, Jackie Gudgeon was very uncomfortable, because of course her father died in the Navy during the War and she was very uncomfortable about a relationship with a German town and having to meet Germans and so on. But on the other hand, she was very open minded. And she said, quite frankly, it was a bit of a, let’s say shudder down the spine, the thought of having a relationship with Germany, but she was being prepared to be open minded about it.
FGG: So where was the drive for the link with Wildeshausen and Hertford coming from? Was that because Evron was forging the link and saying to Hertford, do you want to join in as well? Or ….?
GS: Yes, Evron asked the Friends of Evron In fact, if they could move Hertford to make it a tripleting. And that was where the impetus the, the invitation as it were, came. And so the Friends of Evron then setup, the Town Council did the same thing: do you have public support? Are you financially viable? Can you support a public twinning? And then we will look to Civic Twinning. So we put these tests, the Friends of Wildeshausen was set up, Friends of Wildeshausen matched the tests and passed them, and then the next step was…does the Town Council accept a Civic Twinning? The debate to that extent, had already been had. We’d set up the criteria, there's no point in our debating about what town we were talking about, it was going to be the town that Evron had already done a form of twinning with. When we heard that they’d done it, racking back a little bit in history, there was a bit of a, er, an intake of breath when Evron twinned with a second town, in Hertford, and sort of what do we make of this kind of thing. But then, as I said to the …, as the thing developed, and eventually, we said, right, well, we will take on twinning with the, the town that Evron has already signed twinning charters with. And I recall, we, did we go for the Evron signing of the tripleting agreement?
SS: For the initial signing.
GS: Yes.
SS: You went, and my recollection was that the twinning, the ceremony of the twinning with Hertford took place at the same time, and I can't remember whether it was on the same day, as you were there, as the signing of the twinning charter or what - not treaty, what, what is the technical word?
GS: It is the charter.
SS: It is the charter with Wildeshausen, because there were joint celebrations. You would remember that because you were there and I wasn’t. I’d just, in a minute when you finish, like to say something about the moving towards the Wildeshausen ….
GS: Go ahead, please do.
SS: Okay? Right. My feeling was that this all along was, that this was a gradual thawing, or perhaps more recognition, that it would be a good thing to do. I think that of certain groups within the town, particularly the Rotary and the Choral Society very strongly, were exchanging for the performances, I think, in either town helped a lot. Also, we went at least twice to the Beef Festival in Evron, and the Wildeshausen delegate group, of course, there was always a special group from Wildeshausen, were there, and we got to know that we, that Friends of Evron, got to know them increasingly. We got on very well with Herr Voller, who was very friendly, obviously, had in mind that there would, or that it would be a good thing, for there to be a twinning with Hertford. And so it was a gradual process of sort of getting to know you, getting to like you, and then it became almost an inevitability that we would have a, make a formal partnership with Wildeshausen and the two towns, again, meshed very well.
TG: Yes, I was going say, I can't remember which year it was, but it was when I used to get invited because I was really working with the Youth Council, I used to get invited to Mayor Making which happens every year at County Hall in those days. And I was allowed to take guests, and I took Derek Harrison, who was the conductor of the Choral Society, and had been to Wildeshausen, obviously with the choir, and I think it was the year that Henry Sargent was made Mayor. And I know after the reception afterwards, I think Derek went and lobbied poor Henry, that it's time we were officially twinned, or at least that's the story that Derek tells. And it was not long after that, that it all happened. So I think there was pressure being brought, as you say, from the various groups that had already formed friendships, and were already doing exchanges, to make it more official and make it a triple twinning. That's my take on it anyway.
GS: Yes. I think you're right, and as Sue said throughout the town in general, there was this thawing to the idea of the, there was actually some objection to the idea of having two towns, I mean, going back to the town with 40 twins, there was a bit of you know, if we're going to do it properly, we'll only need one if we have two it gets silly, sort of thing. But I think that, that thought, because again, as Sue said the, the relationship was a good one, and, er, yes, the, the Council position was as I described it, er, yes, if it's, particularly if it enhances our friendship and relationship with Evron then this is what we're going to do. So it's a, it's a less dramatic story than the original twinning with Evron, but it was certainly, er, It was a development of its own. And, of course, I was not on the Council when the actual charter with Wildeshausen was signed. I do remember when it was agreed that Hertford, this was I think before the elections when I left the council, when we were in Evron, the local paper had the headline Evron becomes bigger ….
TG: I think it was about 10 years later wasn't it ….?
SS: It was it was mid- early 90s. I ought to remember. The 90’s it would be and Jackie was there, wasn’t she? I can’t remember
FGG: Just thinking, it happened exactly the right way round, didn't it? Because if you’d started with Wildeshausen you might never have got this thing going
GS: Perfect. Yes, yes, it would have been politically difficult/
SS: …. was a lot of feeling it
GS: I know it may sound grandiose to talk about these things in terms of the Town Council, but, in point of fact, there was a lot of very serious political and social discussion in the Council about, from high politics as to was this was going to make for a safer world, down to what will people feel about this. And then all the other things came in about, we didn't want to look like a set of clowns with 40 other towns listed as being twinned with us on town signboards. We certainly are not going to be the kind of town that takes the Council off on jollies twice a year and slaps it on the rates. So, it’s true to say, it was a very mature discussion, very thorough. And, of course, by the time that Wildeshausen, that Evron twinned with Wildershausen and told us this, it was very much a case of: well, to some extent, because we're twinned, we have to do this. This is a logical thing to follow on with, and this is, this is what did happen, what happened, how it was done.
TG: I thought, throwing in a slight sort of aside… My father was very concerned about me going over to Germany because he was involved in the war in the Medical Corps, not in a fighting role, but he met some Germans and not, not, not in the best circumstances, and, um, but he sort of accepted the fact that we, you know, I was involved with this. And when the family that I always stayed with, their14-year-old daughter came over and stayed with me, and I was visiting my father regularly because by then he was in a care home in Hitchin. And so I took Louisa to visit my dad in the care home. I thought, I'm not sure how this is going to go. I had warned Dad that I will be bringing this girl. And he absolutely amazed me by shaking hands with her and saying, ‘So you're a German fraulein are you?’. I didn't even know he knew the word, you know, and he was so nice. and she was lovely, and they had a lovely chat together. And I thought that for me has closed the circle. And that's, that meant a lot, it was very emotional
GS: Oh yes, I understand, and there's a lot of that. Again, even after Evron, people not sure about how they would react with the French and, of course, it's always the language question. So, but nevertheless, it picked up remarkably well.
FGG: So did you have that sense, as Trish has described, as sort of a healing, almost a sense of reparation? Some sense of a coming together?
GS: Yes. I do actually agree that obviously, the, the early exchanges were, were done with some background but often via Sele school. So there was a certain amount of background there. But yes. I think reconciliation certainly, we've got to say this, with the second twinning with Wildeshausen that was particularly noticeable. It was, er, I’m being very careful, there was a certain amount of, there was a certain amount of joint prejudice against the Germans between the French and English. Oh, it bonded us wonderfully. This bit is terrible, I'm going to say absolutely terrible. Germans unfortunately, produced, Wildeshausen produced, a band which was very militaristic, very militaristic band, very oompa oompa, and the French did not like this at all and you had the farmers muttering to the English: I used to know Germans like that.
SS: I don't think it made any difference to the personal relationships between those who were actually there who came to represent Wildeshausen and the English or the French.
FGG: No, but it’s interesting slice through, isn’t it?
GS: But it's an interesting thing diplomatically. It was a Youth band and the Evronnai decided to get the band drunk. Were you with me on this occasion?
SS: No, no that was. that was ….
GS: That would be with Martin Weill? That's right, that's right. I was Martin Weill’s bag-carrier. Give someone, give something to him and … decided to get the German band drunk ,and, er, so when the bandmaster called them to attend, there was one chap who was actually stiff as a board leaning at a 45 degree angle from the floor and his comrades had to sort of set him up on his feet, and the others were sort of draped in chairs, the players that kind of stood them up, the man who was stiff as a board was, er, it was the man with the symbols, and [laughter] he started playing and he crashed his symbols] [laughter]. The French liked that, they thought was good [laughter]
FGG: Yes. That is a fantastic memory. Yes, there was probably a post get-together review at the German end! [Laughter]
GS: Yes, I’don’t think we’d do that again.
FGG: Well, I mean, our experiences are that the Germans are fantastically willing to throw themselves into stuff.
TG: Yes, I mean, in both towns, the hospitality and friendliness is amazing, and we always feel we never quite do it as well. But they say, ‘We always feel we don't do it as well as you do’. So, it's a mutual sort of… we want to, we want to make you as welcome as we can, which is lovely.
GS: Yes.
TG: However we do it.
FGG: Exactly. So, if we can just, maybe for the listener and reader in the future, who might think - Glenn Sexton, how did you fit into things? If you can kind of just zoom back in time. If you could very lightly sketch in a bit of background about where you grew up, and how you came to be in local politics. That will be very helpful.
GS: I was born in Keighley in West Yorkshire in July 1943. My parents were in small business, corner shop, then baker, then ran a little chain of petrol stations and car repair shops. And that was my background. I went to the local primary school, St. Joseph's opposite the St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Keighley, And in St. Joseph Catholic Church in Keighley. And as I was growing up my family was Catholic. Pretty much although my family was Catholic, we had to be careful about the religions that you're talking to because some of them weren't Catholic. So they didn't know some of the key words that one would use, they didn’t sort of react to it. So we had to be diplomatic, even as a small child. Nothing negative, all very open atmosphere.
I became an altar server at St. Josephs, straight after my First Communion about the age of seven. There's stories about that, but that's another story. That was a, that was a wonderful… I was on the rota for a long time and I was serving during the week, marvellous, but I, I stuck with it. And it's been one of the core points of my life, one of the pleasures of my life as an altar server, tenuously doing it now whenever I'm well enough. So that was, that's a current in my life. I left St Joseph's to go to St Bede’s Grammar School in Bradford and had a sort of normal grammar school career, again continuing as altar server at St. Joseph's.
And then I had the idea, I wanted to be an architect. So I left grammar school and went to the Hull School of Architecture. I have to say, that was a mistake. I spent five years demonstrating a) that I wasn't getting involved in the family business and b) that I wasn't going to be an architect. So that, eventually common sense, and to some extent, the death of my mother, put a point to that self-indulgence, and I joined the Civil Service in 1970. And that's a little story in itself. I saw an advertisement for a job in the Bradford office of the Export Credits Guarantee Department. So I went along with it, you know, and I'm doing HNC because I had to completely re-qualify myself. I didn't know for what but I’d got to rebuild, whatever I was. And I went along and said, ‘I'm doing HNC Business Studies as the sort of chap that you want’ to which the office manager said, ‘You don't want my job. You want to go to London and go to our headquarters’. ‘Oh, do I?’ ‘Yes’, he said. ‘You want to do the civil service open competition. I thought ‘Right’. ‘And assuming that you pass, which I'm sure you will, the department, ECGD, will ask for you by name, provided that you set out your options in the way that I tell you’. So I did that, and he said, ‘Oh, and by the way, I'm going to be the Head of Staff Administration, as it was called, from the end of this year, so I'll be at headquarters and I’ll be the man doing the requests for you’. So I did the competition.
FGG: I’m just interested, is this an early model of how to choose your town for twinning!?
[laughter]
GS: Pretty much! I was tutored. So I put down Export Credits, number one department, number two Central Statistics Office, which is the old Cabinet Office, nobody got that, and the third was Foreign Office Overseas Service., nobody got that.
So I, er, when I had my Board, final Board, interview. ‘You don’t want to go to this little department… if you want to go to a nice big department like Inland Revenue... So, lo and behold a) I got a my Certificate of Qualification and then b) immediately after it I got a letter from Export Credits Guarantee Department, you are appointed to Export Credits Guarantee Department, report in London. So then that took me from Keighley, to London and, er, I then had a jolly career in ECGD, didn't I? Yes, until it was time to move on to other things. Now, we ought now to go back. I'm talking about the political. Yes. What to do, because it obviously led to being on the Council here.
Well, my parents, were both Conservatives. My, my father did once stand for the Borough Council, he was very much persuaded to do so. But he didn't like that sort of thing, it wasn't the sort of thing he liked. My mother would have done it in a flash, but she never did. So, at the age of 15, at the first point that I could, I joined the Young Conservatives in Keighley. So, then I got more and more into politics, general and local politics. Bit of brushing shoulders with national figures, erm, I met Sir Alec Douglas-Hume and Ted Heath. I once danced with a girl who danced with Ted Heath.
FGG: There’s a song in there somewhere!
GS: At a Young Conservative conference, Ted Heath was there. I don't think he was prime minister and I think he was he was Leader of the Opposition, and I was moderately going out with a very, extremely attractive, but very tough, very Yorkshire, woman. In fact, I think she'd been to Yorkshire Ladies’ College in Halifax, in Harrogate rather, now called Harrogate Ladies’ College.So she was pretty posh. And the lady said, excuse me, she said, ‘Right, we're dancing’. Next thing, she'd left me, straight to Ted Heath, she was dancing with Ted Heath. The photographs were in the Yorkshire Post. What could I do? So, yes, I've danced with a girl who danced with Ted Heath.
So I was Divisional Chairman in Keighley, of course. At one point I was Vice Chairman of the Yorkshire area. We had a certain amount of, amount of fun. When I joined the Civil Service I actually talked … in my entry interview, I said that I'd like to work, because I was living then in Swiss Cottage, in fact, just behind John Lewis on Finchley Road, the Hampstead Young Conservatives. I liked it because this would be a way of making friends. And they said, ‘No, at your level. there's no political restriction subject to you not putting your name in the paper as being a civil servant’. Not going to do that! So I was a member of the Hampstead Young Conservatives for a bit, and then I thought I wanted to get back to Yorkshire, so I applied to join the ECGD regional organisation. Up to this point, I've been heading a small administrative group, so I thought I could head an administrative group in a regional organization. That was regarded as, that was a plum post in ECGD. So you had to …be a couple of interviews and the right sort of stuff to be allowed to go into regional organisation. So I, I was picked for the regional organisation, and then it all went wrong. They're appointed me to the premium collection section. So I actually said to them, ‘Have I done something wrong?’ No, no, no, this is a big secret development that we're going through, we're going to… computerisation was on happening behind the scenes and we’re going to put the premium collection out to the regional organisation. And we want someone to be the guinea pig to lead a special section, which is going to make this work, and then you'll be appointed to regional office because you've said you want to go to Yorkshire. We, we can tell you, unofficially, you're going to go to Leeds with your section and you’re going to make this work inside regional office. ‘Oh, oh, all right then!’
TG: May I just interrupt to ask what ECG ………
SS: I was going to…
GS: Credits, export credits guarantee department - credits with an S, we were quite keen on that. And it… basically it's an insurance, it was, it still floats around inside British business, but it's not what it was. Basically, it was an insurance company, it insured trade and political risks for British exporters. And it ran on a very commercial basis. We had a profit and loss account and we charged all our office space and so on to the profit and loss account. We were we were pretty bushy-tailed and fighting with a tiny department of 2000, a tiny department, 10 regional offices, office in London, where there were underwriters. So I started out running a little administrative division. But of course, the cream was to go out to regional authorities, because the regional organisation eventually, smart young chap, you would become part of the regional sales organisation.
And we were very keen that we weren't Inland Revenue going in kicking people's doors down, we had to make an appointment, meet Managing Director, sell the ECGD policy to the Managing Director and service that company as if we were an ordinary commercial insurance company. So we were commercial, we were profitable, and just to say, were jolly bright. If you, regrettably, if you didn't have the intellectual weight in ECGD you didn't get on. In fact, a lot of people didn't like it when they came into it, thinking it was just another government department: no, we were different. So I, I took, sorry I, I was given a section of the building actually and half-a-dozen hand-picked people and we had to test the system. Was it going to work? If I had a problem, I couldn't just go across the corridor to someone, I had to telephone them because I'm miles away out in the country. So, talk to computer people, make things work and so on.
So, I then took this out to Leeds with my special section. And then we had someone, each person had someone sitting next to them to learn it and be part of the permanent payroll, and I would have to go on somewhere else and then come back to Leeds and carry on my leadership. I messed that one up because I had a promotion board, annual promotion board, nothing unusual. And I was on the board mooted, so I was told quite frankly, there's, there's no room for you in Leeds I'm afraid. The next step up is fully filled, vacancies are all filled. But we do need you to do this installation job, so I did that. Then … I still haven't got my promotion through and it got very, very embarrassing. So, they sent me to Manchester over Christmas and New Year because the man who was supposed to be doing the preparatory work in Manchester, had just had a nervous breakdown. So I came to Manchester, to find this kind of demoralised crew who were looking forward to being trained. However, it was Christmas, so I had a great time. And so when I came back to Leeds, there was the, ahh, promotion and ‘you're going to Birmingham’. So, after six months in Leeds, perhaps a bit longer, I was off to Birmingham. Right, well, this is it, you can’t go before a board for another three years. So Birmingham is where you're going to be.
FGG: Doing the same job?
GS: No, now I was promoted. So now I was doing part of --- I’d now become to be an underwriter. Which meant that I, I had the information coming in from the salesmen, and I had to produce a policy and rate it and things like that and sign it. So I was, again, a policy underwriter. Not quite such a big job as it sounds, but it was all right, and time to buy somewhere to live. So I'd been about five months in Birmingham messing around looking for places to live, found a nice little maisonette and had to see if I could afford that …. stop me when this is such an idiot story. And I did mean to stop it from point to point. I um, so I decided on this property, I'm going to buy this. So, got everything set up, the Civil Service Building Society provides the mortgage for me. Ticking on quite nicely, completed and, er, in the same week as completion, we had an inspection by the head of the regional organisation, a deputy secretary, quite senior in the Civil Service.
And he'd been going coming to Birmingham. Birmingham was one of the biggest branches. I think it was the biggest branch outside London. So we've got a lot going on. And the deputy office manager, one above me, said to me, one afternoon just leaned over my chair and said ‘[…] wants to see you in the manager's office. Just don't make a fuss, just go and just go in’. ’Oh, all right then’ and so I trotted down. He said, ’This meeting hasn't happened. To start off with, are you happy? Are you happy?’ Yes. ‘This meeting hasn't happened’. ‘Oh, all right then’. ‘We have a problem’, he said. Now before I… I had skipped something before. I'd actually got out to the regional organisation and I’d been moved from being an administrator to being a real underwriter. Tiny limits, but I could actually commit the department to real money and lose the department real money if my decisions were not good ones. So bit of a swagger there. So the Dep Sec said ‘we've got a problem. We've got a large number of retirements coming up and every division has been asked to provide some bright young people to be new underwriters and to fill the gaps. You had underwriting authorities before you left London’. ‘Yes.’ Only a low level. Yes, that's right being an underwriter. Now, I want you to go back to London at the higher level.
FGG: You’d only just bought your house!
SS: Yes!
GS: Oh, yes, I thought I could see my career disappearing like sand down an hourglass. Well, would you like that? I said, I did actually like underwriting, making decisions. ‘Right’, he said, ‘So if you got an order to move, you wouldn't make much of a fuss’. I said, ‘Well I've got a problem. See, I’ve got this house thing. I've got another problem as well’. He said, ’What’s that?’
See, having moved about a bit, I was an expert on movement expenses. I became an absolute encyclopaedia of movement expenses. So I said, ‘See, I've not been here six months, and the expense instruction doesn't click in until you've been in your post for six months and then you get compulsory permanent transfer. ‘Oh. Six months? What, what date is that? Right, so this conversation hasn’t happened. If you get a compulsory permanent transfer order in six months’ time, you’ll move without any comment?’ ‘Yes!’ So I can't tell anybody about this, I can't, I can't give an indication. So I just worked steadily and then went to the estate agents to collect my keys, and I said, ‘Oh, yes, that's nice’. Went to have a look around the maisonette, made sure the windows were closed then came back to the estate agent and said, ‘jolly nice maisonette, and now sell it again, please’.
You have never seen so many happy estate agents.So, so back to the office. I couldn’t say anything at all. And then, come one day after six months, click, order from headquarters: you are now on compulsory permanent transfer to London. Just down the corridor from when I started out higher authorities, a bit more swagger, bigger chair, bigger chair. Yes, we've got all of that. Rather tiresome really to actually reorganise the job a bit. Gave me a couple of submission… what were called submission sections to handle, who wrote up the submissions for me to take decisions on, that was a bit tiresome. But anyway, so I, I worked through that. And of course, I went back to living exactly where I'd been living behind John Lewis and Finchley Road and with my buddies that I made there and left and then came back. And we went out on our Tuesday evening - out for a night in the West End, having nice meals and again, a bit of swagger because we could afford this kind of thing. During the IRA bombing period it was absolutely marvellous - you go anywhere, completely empty. They would be delighted to see you so we …..
FGG: Pick of the town, hit the town
GS: Yeah. So we could hit the town.
FGG: Had you met Sue by then?
[Laughter …….}
SS: Ah, I was going to come in…. just say that at the same time you were quietly keeping your political interest ticking over.
GS: I was a member of the Bow Group and…
SS: You might not have heard…It was independent, officially independent, research group of conservatives with a small c conservatives. It deliberately kept its, its affiliations to the main party. Sir Geoffrey Howe was one of the founders. Yes, but it had been set up by leading politicians after the war, to, or at least needed, budding politicians, it needed politicians after the war, to, I think, to keep a general interest on social … but certainly the economic side of government with the social leanings, such as education, the economic policy generally but particularly regarding employment, commercial development, etc. We get the idea of being for the open-minded to the, what was seen as the future. Anyway, this interested us both, and we joined independently, and we met at ……
GS: …. Committee room 13 at the House of Commons
SS: Yes. The lecture was, at least the talk was Lady Pakenham and the Duke of Wellington, probably
GS: It was. Wellington as a Tory Prime Minister. And the Committee Room 13 you or may not know, is one of those parliamentary style committee rooms. There's a dais and then against the window side, there is the government benches, on the right, and then the opposition benches on the left, and it set out pretty much like the House of Commons, a mini version.
Now, Sue, at that time, having been Philosophy Lecturer at Exeter University, I mean she is far more important than I am, she was - decided to get out and become a solicitor so she was doing …
SS: Trainee articles as it was then. I was about halfway through.
GS: That was at Oxford. So I mean, that's pretty convenient really, isn't it! You're bound to cross each other's path and er, she was actually from time to time sent to the London office to, to fill in and do things, so …
SS: Well, to run around with pieces of paper for court and for counsel.
GS: Committee Room 13 House of Commons. I was a bit late arriving, so I sat near the doors on the opposition side as it were, opposite the windows. So I came in and slipped in and, and in fact, sitting at the very front as always, there's always room at the front, and almost directly opposite me was this extremely fascinating young woman.
FGG: Cue Sue. We are talking about Sue aren’t we? I just want to make sure] [Laughter]
SS: Yes. No two-timing!
GS: And so I, I heard a bit of the Longford lecture. Very interesting, very informative, and she put more into it than things that she'd been putting in her book. And, er, ‘I’ve got to speak to that woman. If she isn't engaged, she's bound to be married. We're that sort of age and so on. So all my er, I’ve got to speak to her, I really must speak to that woman, I don't know how to do so’.
So at one point, Sue held her hands like this or something and crossed her hands in front of her. There’s no ring there! Oh, ah, that's interesting. Then at the door….I came out I, I hung about the door. Sue came out with a young woman from the Bow Group I knew a bit. I’d danced with her at a Bow Group do not long before. ‘Hello’. And she said, ‘Oh, I want you to meet my Philosophy Lecturer from Exeter, but she's a solicitor now’. ’Oh, hello’. So that's how we met.
FGG: Marvellous. There we go. The rest is history.
SS: The rest is indeed history. And you were at the same time buying the flat in Trinity Grove in Bengeo because you had done quite a lot of research to find where there would be a good commuting base that was outside the bustle of London and on one of the lines that would save time travelling.
GS: But one of my buddies who used to go out with us to our West End bashes, dead now unfortunately, was an engineer and he had applied an engineer’s mind to… he had actually moved down from Manchester and, er, he'd sold his flat there and he wanted to buy somewhere, living in temporary accommodation like me.
But I was too idle to move, he wasn't, he wanted to get somewhere. And, he did a brilliant research job about commuting times: which is the most, most and least loaded quadrant for travelling, how do you get to main motorways, what possibility is there of a place holding its value or losing it. Oh, it was, I mean he had charts all over the wall and he handed the whole file over to me. He got a place in South Woodford, as a matter of fact, a nice flat in South Woodford. His job involved, he was a civil servant as well as an engineer, his job involved him travelling about a bit. So question: - where can I get my car onto a motorway? Where can I get out quickly, and normal commuting, what's the best commuting route, so it was on the central line.
So he handed this whole pack over to me and said, ‘Well, time you were moving out. Erm, I've done all the work. So I sort of checked up the quadrants and the northeastern quadrant was the lightest loaded most frequent trains and season ticket versus average mortgage price, good value. And so it happened. Actually again, racking back, when I came to Swiss Cottage with my, er, met my friend, Tony McCarthy, also Catholic, we went to St. Thomas Moore's church, just across the road up the hill, we met some of the Jesuits from Savile House on Fitzjohns Avenue. And they… just sort of general chatting and things, ‘We would like to set up a discussion group a Savile House, would you chaps like to be involved with it? We said yes, so we joined the discussion group. That was a wonderful collection of people, it was a great thing to be in. And we also met the great Father O’Callaghan, who celebrated our wedding.
SS: I wasn't involved in this at all.
GS: This was before Sue’s time and she met Father O’Callaghan later. But somehow in the course of that somebody said, ‘Oh, there's a monastery near a place called Ware that does very good retreats, we can organize a retreat’. Oh, well oh, let’s do that. That would be nice. Didn't know Ware. The only thing I knew about Ware was ……..
SS: Well I think you probably would have known the name but not much else.
GS: John Gilpin, of course, was the inn in such a place called Wareside so Wareside that we chaps went to and the Fathers, we got on very well with them, liked them very much.
Way back now in the 1970’s …it started this, I suppose slightly odd thing. Every four to six weeks I’d get bored. I don’t want to be in London. I wanted to be out of London to do something. So I got into the habit of picking up the phone and saying to chaps at Wareside, ‘Doing anything this weekend?’ No, no. ‘Fine. Can I come out - so treat me as if as I was just one of the household, do the monastic hours and things like that. That was wonderful. Back to work on the train from Ware.
Then I got another thing. Tony put me up to this, Tony McCarthy my friend.. my friend again one of the gang at, Swiss Cottage. The Civil Service does a travel club. Tony was very very British. Not too sure about this, foreign places kind of thing. He wanted to go and said something about doing a weekend, they’re advertising a weekend in Paris. That sounds like a nice idea. So we went off and had a weekend in Paris. I like this, it was all organised and we sat on the coach and it all, it all sort of unreeled in front of you, as it were. So we came back – we like this. I really got the Paris bug.
SS: First time that you would have been in France?
GS: It was first time I'd been out of the country.
FGG: No, not Evron by any chance!?
GS: Paris! Yes. I got the Paris bug. So every alternate six weeks when I was thinking, I want to be out of London, I would then telephone Paris Travel Service in Ware and say, and they advertised instant Paris. Right, yes, when? Thursday, Friday evening? Yes, we can do that. Tickets couriered to the office and off I went. So, I was alternately going to Wareside and being a monastic for the weekend or, alternatively, lounging around Paris for a weekend, and this was this was my pattern of life. And that continued right the way through and I met Sue and Sue knocked that on the head, I mean, no! I proposed. So, then we come to the point where I bought the flat in Bengeo Court.
SS: When we first when I first got together and I knew about Herford through my mother, whose father, who was a vicar, had a parish in St. Albans in her adolescence. So she spent her school holidays there…Just a lot of local St Albans things such as dramatic societies and running guides and getting to the country and following the South Herts beagles. So she got to know Bishops Stortford, Broxbourne, Hertford, Bengeo. She knew Bengeo, she actually knew how to pronounce it. And so that was a further personal name. And I also had a brother, who also went in to the church, and was rector of what is now Hunsdon and Widford, it was Hoddesdon then, and as a small child I used to go and stay there. And I thought the countryside was beautiful. I heard larks, I remember, on that high land, that high plateau the other side of Ware, and big open spaces and cornfields and larks singing in the air. And although I was living in, we were living in, another part of the country, in the country, it was a different sort of experience, a different sort of atmosphere
FGG: Very nice. Now I'm just conscious, so ……..
SS: Yes, I know, yes, I'm conscious ……
FGG: My stomach has started rumbling! I just really want to bring it back, just maybe because we've brought you now to Hertford and got you married, and you are settled in Bengeo. And so I wonder if we can just sort of move to the closing section of the recording. and just quickly ask you to look at the concept of twinning now from the perspective of 2024 eyes, and just comment on the benefits to Hertford now, as you see it, still being in the twinning arrangement?
GS: I think that it seemed to lose its steam. I remember that at mayor-making, the mayor of Wildeshausen made quite an impassioned speech just before the Brexit vote, saying that he wanted us to remain within the EU, and that's a different question. But I think that, generally speaking, the passion and the impetus, which was definitely there in the late 1970s, has gone. I don’t know whether that means it has gone in the future, but that steam has gone out of it.
I think that I would be delighted to see Friends of Evron and Friends of Wildeshausen rebuilding themselves. And I think that the social and the cultural benefits of twinning, towns twinning, civic twinning are still very great. So, I think that we, we, in the UK as much as I think, in Europe generally, by which I mean beyond the EU, I've travelled quite a lot in Europe, in my career from Finland, Italy and Israel, in fact, and I've travelled fairly widely, and I know that there's a great deal of social warmth in just about everywhere that I've visited, to the UK. I've been very much welcomed, very much.
I don’t know what the word is really, but certainly more than welcomed and greeted with interest. I don't think that we should treat leaving the EU as something terminal, to these relationships. I think that's quite important, I think for both sides. If I may say so I don't think that the EU was either wise or generous in its negotiations. I think that they were very narrow and short-sighted, which has obviously done damage to both sides. But I think also that whereas not only is travel easier, but it's also something that's now regarded as part of people's entitlement. I mean, our son James lives in France, he's now got Carte de séjour. He's pretty much established, I think, for the rest of his life in France. The breadth of the twinning thing is important because it makes it personal. And I think that if we can make this personal and social, then a great deal can come out of it. I'm not thinking economics, I'm thinking socially, culturally.
FGG: Well, I've always, since I first joined the choir and Trish introduced me to the concept of twinning with Wildeshausen, what always has struck me is the depth of the friendships that are made. And often, despite not sharing a language, people get on famously well, and it's a real deep bond.
GS: I think that’s really important.
TG: Because, as I've pointed out many times, we may have left the European Union, we have not left Europe.
GS: Exactly, yes. And I think that, again, as a political point, I think that it's, it's a terrible mistake or a terrible misjudgment to keep talking about leaving Europe. The EU is not Europe. It may, again going back to Rome having intended to become Europe, but it hasn't become Europe. I think that also the philosophical idea of Europe, going back to my friends at the Council of Europe, it was very much more, it was wider than that, wider and deeper. So I agree with you I think, er, let's not confuse these two.
FGG: Yes, well, that seems a good note on which to end things.
GS: Have a look at some photographs?
FGG: Yes, definitely. I'm going to turn off the recording device now. Unless, Glenn, you think there's anything you really wanted to say that you haven't had a chance to say?
GS: No, I don't think so. No, no. I think I've talked too much.
END OF RECORDING