Transcript Detail
| Transcript Title | Clay, Cllr. Frank (O1996.36) |
| Interviewee | Cllr. Frank Clay (FC) |
| Interviewer | Peter Ruffles (PR) |
| Date | 19/08/1996 |
| Transcriber by | Jean Riddell (Purkis) |
Transcript
Hertford Oral History Group
Recording no: O1996.36
Interviewee: Cllr. Frank Clay (FC)
Date: 19th August, 1996
Venue: Sawbridgeworth
Interviewer: Peter Ruffles (PR)
Transcriber: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
Typed by: Jean Riddell (Purkis)
************** unclear recording
[discussion] untranscribed material
italics editor’s notes
PR: I'll let you sit down Frank.
FC: Notice this, you'll see, have strengthened the knee. I won't throw them away because they're my gardening trousers, 'til they're totally out of use. I don't know whether you are as bad as I am?
PR: Yes, worse probably.
FC: But what I don't like is spending money if you don't have to.
PR: Yes, yes. Right, now, Frank, I say little piece into the machine myself, and then if you're comfortable, nothing special, I'll ask you a few questions that I already know the answer to,
but, if you know what I mean, or some of the answers, where can I clip this? Can you remember the date?
FC: The date today is the 19th.
PR: Right. This is Peter Ruffles, recording in the home of Cllr. Frank Clay in Sawbridgeworth and it's the 19th of August (l996), quarter to ten in the morning. Frank is up and about. He's had a hard day yesterday because of ecclesiastical duties. And Monday morning comes, he's just picked up his post, the doors are all open and we're sitting in comfortable chairs, but, Sawbridgeworth! And the reason this little recording is being made with Frank is because the Oral History Group recently in Hertford has been interested in civic, municipal life in the town of Hertford and quite recently we've spoken to the last living alderman of the borough, Alderman Les Foster, who was on the borough council for some long time and did serve, you may remember at the beginning of the East Herts.
FC: Faintly faintly, remember him.
PR: He just, I think, did one term. I've lost your thing again. Where did that go? Em, yes, he
just did one term
FC: I tell you who I did meet the other evening, you probably met him. The chap that was the
mayor when was it the Queen Mother visited you?
PR: Oh, yes!
FC: He was the chairman of the constituency. I followed him. He had a factory. Two of his
sons were killed.
PR: George Stoten.
FC: That's him, yes.
PR: Oh, you met him!
Well, here we are in Sawbridgeworth, and the reason we've asked Frank to give us twenty minutes of his time, is because he has been Chairman of East Herts District Council which presides over Hertford. So he has a link with the county town as well as having his home base in Sawbridgeworth, and he is currently the Mayor of Sawbridgeworth, not for the first time, Frank?
.
FC: No for the fourth time! In fact it's the fifth time of presiding over the council, because when we were an urban district council, I was the chairman so many years ago. It's rather interesting, the date I was elected to the council, which was April 1st with a by election. I always thought that was appropriate. That was in 1960.
PR: And we are now in 1996!
FC: It's about thirty-six years, but, em, local government changes and one learns from every meeting.
PR: Yes.
FC: And I'm happy to learn.
PR: It's changing greatly and that's why it's important for us to make a few recordings with people who've been involved with continuing transition. And you're in an ideal position to have seen and then to tell us about some of the different patterns of local government that you've been through.
FC: Well, I suppose the modernists would not agree with my view that the old urban district councils and the rural councils were a very good way of running their localities.
PR: Ah.
FC: Planning: we had a reasonably free hand in those days. The County Council was the ultimate authority. Every plan we had, had to be sent to the county but unless it had a fundamental refusal, to use a colloquialism 'we could do as we liked,' pass or reject. We built council houses. The biggest estate we built was down West Road, the Crofters Estate. We built old peoples' flats. We ran it as a local council and we appointed the people to the council houses. We knew the people. We knew about the people but I suppose we've got to accept that something had to be done. That things had to get bigger, bigger was supposed always to be better. In some people's minds it isn't. But I liked the way the old UDC ran. We had our chief clerk, chief financial officer, surveyor. I suppose the staff was then six or seven and we ran it as a family, but I think very successfully. And we were very sad when we were left with the cemeteries and underneath the footpaths!
But the local, as it is set up now, the local council is a good sounding board for the planning but l'm glad that all the plans for any particular part of the district go to the local or very, local council or parish meeting. It does, I believe, give the people who deal with it at East Herts, an idea of the feelings of the local people.
PR: Just after this last election, on the Herts and Essex Observer emblazoned was 'Watch Out. Clay's About' because you had a little planning issued over a fence recently.
FC: Yes, I think a lot of controversy was stirred up among the older people. Not that I'm young myself. But the fact of the matter is, either we have rules in planning or we don't have rules and we all do as we like. I'm a great green belt enthusiast, I'm a keen conservationist, but I don't think it's right that in a very pleasant environment like Bell Street and Knight Street and all round there, a person, without reference to the local authority should put up a fence that is not pretty in an sense of the word. It's a controversial point. It still rumbles on and we're waiting for the inspector's result. It eventually went to appeal. I'm still convinced it should not be there. We shall have to wait and see what the inspector says.
PR: The stuff of life for a local town councillor in a sense, isn't it, making a very immediate small
scale but important judgment.
FC: Yes, it did upset a lot of people. The situation was unfortunate, but it could have been easily
resolved by a little thought on the part of the applicant. This is my view. Others took a different
view.
PR: Yes, in a small town, if I can call Sawbridgeworth that
FC: Certainly it's about eight thousand.
PR: That sort of issue surrounds the town in a way that it doesn't in a much bigger community. especially with a town centre small like that.
FC: It's a Clochemerle thing really, but this was a fence and not a lavatory!
PR: Yes! Of course, the last election eighteen months ago, or something like that, saw some big changes. And you were notable in this end of the district, Frank, because while Tory heads were rolling all around you, you alone in Sawbridge kept yours.
FC: Are you talking of the district or town?
PR: Either. ~
FC: Well, on the district yes, I was the only Conservative head that didn't roll, but on the town we have five Conservatives and six Liberal Democrats, one Independent. It's sad but it's the way politics go. The tide was sweeping over the whole of the country. We know from the rest of the district how it went. It's just a question, I mean, I've lived long enough to see Labour get in just after the war. Well, it was like an earthquake, wasn't it, when they got in. We saw that go,
The Conservatives have been now, is it sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years? Then in Macmillan's time it think it was, the country wanted a change, didn't they. So they sent the Conservatives out and then Socialists got in for a short spell. I t happens. It will happen again. Every dog has his day.
PR: How do you account then, for the fact that your head, this is an awkward question did not roll. Why did they vote for Frank when they were not voting for other Conservatives?
FC: Well, it's an interesting thing, looking back at the result. Each Conservative, strangely enough, lost between four hundred and five hundred votes, but being second in the previous poll, four years previously, I was on a higher vote quota before I started. So if I lost four hundred or five hundred, which I did, I remained reasonably high in the poll. It was amazing the way it went right through. Those that failed, those that got in. Between four and five hundred. The Lib Dems' vote came out almost solid to what it was four years ago. They retained their vote. We lost ours. To my way of thinking, it wasn't because the Lib Dems were more popular. It's because the Conservatives didn't vote. That's what I put it down to. Those with greater knowledge than me may have a different view.
PR: Yes, but the figures bear out your judgment and you'll know your electorate well. People in
Hertford will need to have described to them the fact that Sawbridgeworth is not warded, is it. It's a one town electorate unlike Hertford and Ware and the Stortford people you have to look after as an elected member, the whole town. I think that must be rather nice. We have to look after a segment, a quarter, in Hertford's case of our town. We are still all present when whole town issues are discussed but a member of the public from anywhere in Sawbridgeworth can come to you.
FC: Mm, I rather like it. It is interesting. I'm connected with a lot of other things here, but I will
say, that I can start one end of Bell Street talking about the church, and talk about something else all the way down Bell Street to different people. I think Sawbridgeworth is a lovely place to live. We're not over commuterised. I suppose one could say a lot of people go into Harlow,
Well that's hardly commutering is it, but and there's a fairly large number go up to London. But the majority, I would think, work round about Harlow, Stortford and that sort of thing. Because we've no industry here whatever. We used to have a very big joinery built or helped to build the Mosquitoes during the war but what people don't know, actually, it was in Sheering, which was just over the river.
PR: Yes, but Sawbridge claimed it and presumably provided much of the workforce, did it?
FC: Yes and we had an aerodrome down towards Bishop's Stortford over on the lef. We had an
aerodrome which was used by the Lysanders to take the spies, not spies, I don't know what you call them, our people over to France and pick up other people coming back.
There has been a book written about it 'From where the Lysanders Were' I think it's called and it's also mentioned in some novels. I think the novel was called 'Two Fried Eggs for Breakfast' or something like that.
PR: Frank, now we talked about the present time, and a little bit about local government history but we ought to just, em, find out about your own life outside local government and before it.
You weren't born in Sawbridgeworth, were you?
FC: I was born between Clacton-on-Sea and Holland-on-Sea in the County of Essex.
PR: And have you spent all your life in this county then, in Essex and Herts borderland as it now is?
FC: I was married at Great Clacton Church in 1935. 1lived in my father's house 'till I got married. He died some years previously. And then we went to live in Loughton, Essex. We built a house there, and went to build in Loughton, Essex. I don't know whether you are interested in my romantic history.
PR: Oh, yes! Was Mary a Clacton girl?
FC: No, she came from, have I knocked it off again?
PR: Yes. They keep doing this. I shall lose mine again. They are a nuisance but, em, right, OK Frank.
FC: She came from Linslade, in Buckinghamshire and they moved to Clacton, oh, goodness knows when. And she attended, shall I say the leading girls' school there. And I attended, shall I say the leading boys' school there. And boys and girls have an instinct to get together and I saw this beautiful schoolgirl and I thought to myself I could spend the rest of my life with her! I was only about fifteen. And I did fifty four and a half years.
PR: Wonderful.
FC: But she was beautiful.
PR: Well, yes and she was beautiful in her maturity as well, so one can imagine that as a schoolgirl the attraction would not have been a difficult one for you.
FC: It got to a state where the headmistress got in touch with the headmaster of my school asking that we didn't meet anywhere near the schools.
PR: That's a lovely beginning to what was going to be a very fruitful and good life together.
FC: We had a wonderful life together absolutely wonderful. I suppose I was lucky. I, there were five members in our family and my father was reasonably well to do man. He owned his own business and had his own factory in Stratford, London. And it was naturally thought that the sons would follow in, which two of us did. And I spent the majority of my life in the horticultural industry. A lovely industry to be in, really.
PR: What was the business - your father's then, that you worked in?
FC: This will probably interest you horticultural fertilizers.
PR: Yes, the famous Clay's fertilizer used to be advertised every year in the National Rose Society Annual.
FC: That's it. We officially started in 1864 but there were papers showing that my grandfather, that's my father's father, that's right, had experimented in the l840s agriculturally but then he turned into horticulture. And this is the horticulture you may be interested in. He was the first person that grandfather, to see the value of blood as a horticultural fertilizer. We used to collect blood. We had the right. We were given the right to collect the blood, from Islington Market, which was I think in north London. And we treated it at Temple Mills, Stratford where our factory was. But it was a most interesting business to be in. We exported to America, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Norway, Sweden and Denmark and to the Rajah of Sarawak! And because of the, em, humidity problems there, we had to have special air tight tins made with screw lids for His Highness.
PR: Well!
FC: It's interesting how things come out, talking like this, but there it is. I loved the job. I was the, I did all the advertising and publicity and the sales side and my brother was in charge of the factory. Yes, it was really good.
My younger brother was a doctor. He was called up, Having spent some of the war in that very beautiful place in India where we are always quarrelling about, somewhere up in the hills in India (Kashmir?) and then he came home and went into practice in Newport Pagnell where he remained until he retired. Strangely enough he went into politics some years before I did. He also was chairman of his urban district council and he always used to say quite a lot at the urban district councils' conferences.
PR: Oh, did he.
FC: It's funny, because my older brother wasn't interested at all in polities. He didn't want to know. And the second and third, my younger brother and myself, we just loved politics, still do.
PR: So, you're not the only surviving member of your family, of that generation?
FC: No, it's a race between my younger brother and myself! Two sisters have died, my older brother was killed in a road accident and it's a race between the two of us. We're, what is it, eighty-two and eighty-three and one of us will last out, should be the younger, I think!
PR: Yes. So the family business sold out, did it?
FC: Fisons took us over and one couldn't complain about the takeover financially and we started another company, Clay Investments Ltd. And we had an accountant who was exceptional. He was a businessman with it, which was quite an unusual thing in the professions. And he saw another of his clients which were a family business who'd been in the milk business, and they were the first people to introduce milk bars in London.
When the war broke out, of course, the business went and they were left after the war with an ice-cream factory and other properties and the milk bars of .course had gone. And he saw an idea for us to join forces, two family businesses. And after a lot of haggling we were amalgamated and we formed quite a substantial company and we've got factories, warehouses and investments on the Stock Exchange. We all get on well together, two families.
PR: Yes, yes. Now, back in Sawbridgeworth, your other big prong of public life, as it were, activity, is through Great St. Mary's Church.
FC: A lovely old church, got a very old pulpit. It's rumoured, I mean rumour tells you all sorts of things, some of which are right some of which are wrong. There's supposed to have been some sort of place of worship there for a thousand years. Whether that's right or not I don't know, but the church is very old. I've seen one, two, three, four clergymen, each one different.
PR: And you're currently churchwarden and have just had an interregnum, haven't you.
FC: That's right. I finished my three year stint just before the previous vicar went, and so it landed on the new churchwarden and the old churchwarden that was serving with me. They were remarkable. They did wonderfully well. There'd been changes in services over the years, there always is, but we've always been fortunate that we've had good preachers, and the last two including the present one, have got beautiful singing voices, which is quite unusual, isn't it.
PR: I remember Rupert Child being here. He nearly came to us at St. Andrew, Hertford
FC: Did he really?
PR: Yes. I actually had him to supper, when I was churchwarden, with some others and you know, we had a series of people, my co-warden and I and we just happened to prefer one of the other candidates. There was no slight, or nothing about Rupert that put us off him, but there was a younger chap coming back from America. He'd been in the Episcopalian Church in America and it looked, and he had a young family, and it looked right. He looked right for the parish but just within a couple of months, Rupert's appointment here was announced and so he came.
FC: He was a delightful person. What I liked about him, everything had to be on time. The
service went like clockwork, PCCs started at the proper time and I like that sort of thing, people
don't, but I do. It's one of those things.
PR: Mm! Now, Frank sitting here with my brain going round hearing what you say, I remember now I lost the thread by interrupting you about how you came to be in Sawbridgeworth. I think
we left you, newly wed in a newly built house in Clacton didn't we?
FC: No, no.
PR: Where did I leave you?
FC: Excuse me a minute, if you are interested in birds, there's a blackbird on, taking the berries. I leave that shrub there so they can do that. But that's interrupting you. No, we married and went to live as I think I said, in Loughton.
PR: Ah, yes.
FC: And our factory was in Stratford so it was an easy run up there. Well then, the local borough before the war had been to Parliament to acquire the land on which our factory was built and after the war the negotiations started again and we had to move in Stratford. Then I forget what it was, for some reason we decided we'd move out from Stratford to Harlow. And we moved out to Harlow and so we moved from Loughton to Sawbridgeworth. That's how we got out here.
PR: Yes, that was the move, and without wanting to take an awful lot of your time, we've been going half an hour
FC: Really?
PR: Um, which is a little longer than our usual interviews but it's a lovely flow we've got. You preceded me as East Herts District Council's Chairman and it was, in your time as chairman which I know you enjoyed, Mary became ill didn't she?
FC: Yes. towards the end of it, she was diagnosed cancer and they operated successfully and said as far as they knew had been removed but you know what cancer is. It occurred again and it was fatal. It got to the liver and that regrettably was death. But I can't speak too highly of the care that she received at Princess Alexandra Hospital from the surgeons, her local doctor the nurses. They were fantastic.
PR: Yes. And you'd enjoyed together that final big job really at East Herts. I mean she'd been with across the whole of the two hundred square miles of our district
FC: Poor girl, she had to listen to every speech I made!
(Laughter.)
PR: I expect she had an idea of the kind of thing you might be going to say.
FC: Well I used to write it out and then read it to her, and she'd say, "No, you ought to put more emphasis there! I think if you put a full stop there and started a new sentence." and that sort of thing. Because I would never speak more than four minutes, never and I won't bore you with
this. I'll tell you very quickly. I was at a reception at the big school in Hertford (Richard Hale School) when I was chairman, and a lady, and I knew this lady disliked speeches and I said to her, "I'm only going to speak for four minutes." So when she said goodbye after the reception she said to me, "You're the first politician l've'met that isn't a liar!"
I said 'What makes you say that?"
So she said, ''You said you wouldn't speak for more than four minutes and you spoke for three minutes, fifty-eight seconds!"
PR: Aah, yes!
End of Side A
Side B
PR: Life, you know as a mark of our…
FC: Well, my daughter's in Cornwall and we talk for about two hours every Saturday, five and seven o'clock. And then on Sunday my brother and I talk between four and half past four for about half an hour or twenty minutes.
PR: What, do you, if it's not too personal a question what do you talk about?
FC: What, with my daughter?
PR: Yes.
FC: We talk about politics, strangely enough. I ask her how her friends are because her friends down there are my friends. They all know me and we talk about the garden. How the bungalow she's improving is going on. Has she been out in the boat? You know, how are the cats? Is the dog still as good as it was? It's just family chit chat but it's lovely to talk.
And my younger brother, it's politics. If I don't feel well, which isn't very often, I ask him what it
might be and he says oh, you go and see your doctor, you know! And then we reminisce about our school days and sport. Do I remember when such and such happened. Do I remember old so and so in the Fourth Remove? You know, all this sort of thing. It occurs and builds up as you go along. He's a keen gardener, a great sweet pea grower and we talk about that and how to get rid of streak in sweet peas and how unsuccessful my garden is this year. How's his…
PR: That kind of, cor, I'm glad I've, l'd unplugged and was just about to go when Frank thought, “Thank goodness!" and then realised that of course if we're preserving a little flavour of the age as it were, in fifty years time, or even a hundred, when this tape will be still in Hertford Museum, cared for by the curator with special humidity control and things like that, it'll be nice for people to
FC: To think we talked to our families.
PR: And we're using a telephone that doesn't have a television beside it, so we don't see the
person. We're talking to which possibly in the future they will…
FC: Be quite old hat then
PR: We'll be curiosities. Now, one last thing. I hope it is, Frank, because you'll want to get on with your civic and ecclesiastical and personal duties. People that have been elected members of authorities. Have you had any colourful characters? Any tricky people to work with in Sawbridgeworth or at East Herts. Lilian Lloyd Taylor was a colleague of yours at East Herts
FC: Oh, she was a fantastic woman, fantastic woman. Well unfortunately I seem to be able to get on with them all. I've not quarrelled with any councillor in thirty-five years. I don't think we're there for quarrelling. I think we're there to do whatever good we can for the people. That might sound a bit high and mighty but it's not meant that way. My view is that I'm a servant of the people and as such if they ask me to do something, I do my best to do it. And that's that.
PR: Lilian represented several villages, didn't she? A very different sort of…
FC: Braughing Rural
PR: Yes, yes, and Little Hadham and Furneux Pelham was in her patch.
FC: Lovely area
PR: Yes, very different in a way from a councillor's point of view, because you're the only one representing those people whereas you share with two others at district level that responsibility. So if need be you can share a work load if someone is ill or there is an item that you're not very good at but the other person is
FC: That's how it should be.
PR: But they don't have, the village members, that facility really, do they? Everything has to come to the one member and if there are planning applications where two neighbours are in dispute, you as the local member are going to fall out with one of them, aren't you, if you support either side. Whereas that's the same for us but I found with John Sartin in Hertford and other members that we could play box and cox with things a bit and one could champion a cause while the other one just kept quiet.
FC: I have a great deal of sympathy with the rural members that are not on planning. Time and time again they come to meetings to put the point of view but in some way there's something lacking. I don't know what it is. But I don't know whether you've noticed the same thing
PR: Yes, they come and ask for the chairman's permission to speak and often don't put it persuasively for all of us. There's, I'm not sure what it is. I know exactly what you mean. I can feel that. Within planning because politics are generally not playing a part in the debate, we get a very co-operative understanding feel between members that we're all doing the same job, that you don't get as readily on other committees someone who isn't used to the way we talk and haggle over little details. Yes, doesn't actually, on a visit to the committee, fit in and speak in a way that we accept.
FC: You get to know, being on a committee, you get to know how people speak, don't you, members of your committee. And the way they speak and by putting emphasis on certain things you can get things done. But they don't put the emphasis, some of them, in the right place. And, I mean, Edward Carter, he's good at any committee and he's particularly good on, or he was particularly good on planning and an excellent chairman. But he, if he went to the planning committee now, not being on it he could by his own ability, could win cases that he chose to fight but others haven't that experience.
PR: And the rural members, it's all down to them if something big is happening in their patch. They've a duty to attend and must find it quite a formidable challenge. The one who used to come quite often to Hertford meetings, and struggle really with his case, but often got a sympathy vote and support really was Eric Pearman. do you remember. He wasn't a good speaker and wrote everything down very carefully and read it and didn't deliver it well but, I think because he spoke so infrequently
FC: They listened to him
PR: They listened to him
FC: He knew his area like the back of his hand. But I always think they are at a disadvantage. I dare say you get telephone calls and all sorts of things. There's a lot of lobbying goes on now and my answer invariably to them is, I listen to the debate and I'll make up my mind after I've heard all sides of the debate and I won't pledge myself to anybody before we start.
PR: No. Some members do, don't they and come in with a…
FC: It stands out a mile.
PR: Yes, yes. No, I agree with you. I offer my people in my ward help if they feel they're not getting a good hearing from officers before a thing is put forward. I can say that I will make sure
that they get the right deal out of local government. But I never say, well, almost never, that I will make sure that I speak up for them in the meeting. I have to say that I can't promise that. Sometimes there are cases where you really do know that they're suffering quite an intrusion and then you can, but not very often.
.
FC: Well I try to avoid, and always have, getting in touch with officers before the meeting because you may hear something from the officer and then hear something in the debate which is of more value than the officer said to you. And then what can your reputation be in the eyes of the officer, having spoken to him, and then going against him when it comes to the debate. So I'm very careful and always have avoided getting myself in that position.
PR: My very first memory, proper memory of meeting you, Frank was in Baldock Street in Ware.
FC: Yes, it was a lovely hot summer Sunday.
PR: Yes, and we'd both just been, er, elected probably for the first time. Well, it was for the first
time for me, and that was in 1976, I think. And you said to me, "I don't mind what job I do. If they
want me to do a job I'll do it, and if I'm not asked, I'm happy not to be asked." And that was because we were just going into a meeting of the Conservative newly elected group and I thought that's an ideal attitude. Someone willing to do anything but not angling for it, and not pushing for position. But subsequently you were asked to become Chairman of the Works Committee
FC: And enjoyed every minute of it. Tony Whatisname is a grand director.
PR: Tony, Walker
FC: Yes, he was a grand director.
PR: And he succeeded David Anstey who'd become the chief executive and they'd worked together for some time
FC: He was a grand fellow, too.
PR: Yes, we've been well served by many of our officers at East Herts.
FC: I saw David about a year ago. I went to his house, beautiful farmhouse. The position isn't all
that, but the inside. They've made it a palace. And he's still the same David.
PR: Lovely person, whom you could trust. He at first gives you the impression that he's not tough, but he actually is. He's quiet and gentle and unforceful, but I heard him talking to a group of striking dustman in Hertford. He went down to the depot when they'd laid down their bins, or whatever it is and addressed this, I think it would be unfair to call them a mob, but they were a rough crowd of angry workers. And he went I think as the Deputy Director of Technical Services
either in the end of the borough or the beginning of the district council days. And I would have
thought this slight figure, mildly mannered and quietly spoken would have been the last person to send into that meeting but he spoke to them well, and thev accepted and he cooled…
FC: Got a way with him, hadn't he, yes. Would trust him with anything. I liked him. He was a great man.
PR: Yes. So I'll go on, now to Bishops Stortford and see if I can persuade the district council print man to print my Christmas letter for my Christmas cards. It's in the back of the motor bike outside, and he will, in August. There isn't so much council printing to do, usually, and he will just put a run of five hundred copies, or whatever it is, through for me. So that's the second part of the day. And this afternoon I'm going to Len Bowyer who was a former churchwarden at St. Andrew's to sort out, 'cos, every four years at St. Andrew's Church I'm being asked to take a picture of everyone in the congregation and that goes into an album, labelled. And newcomers can borrow these albums and say ah, you know, that's Eileen Page, and now the two albums back are now. Quite interesting! Like your family album would be in your home, monitoring the changes and departures and the arrivals and the children who are very little, hanging onto skirts eight years later, you know, are very different. And it's a nice document. But we are sorting them out. I've been taking them this year, and Len is the one to put them into the albums and I'm afraid one or two names I don't know and so between us, and he's got one or two as well, and he doesn't know. Between us we've got to do the labelling. That's this afternoon and then a planning meeting for the town council. where I'm the only wicked Tory tonight.
FC: I've got a staff and management tonight, young people's recreation and planning meeting
PR: You're chairman of the young people's recreation?
FC: I was. I got turfed off
PR: Oh, got the boot from that!
FC: Yes, they played some very dirty tricks. It's not recording
PR: No, no,
FC: They played some very dirty tricks. Tony Dodd who'd done a tremendous amount for the Hailey Day Centre was the chairman right from the inauguration. They chucked him off the committee and everything.. They chucked me off as chairman. They didn't even tell him. It just came out in the annual general meeting. Two minutes before the meeting started they told me that they were putting up somebody else for the chairmanship of the young people. I said, “That's OK, it doesn't bother me at all.” But I made it known to them afterwards that trying to insult me wasn't any good at all it. It was like throwing tennis balls at a brick wall. It just bounced off.
They can do what they like. l can't do anything about it. The best thing to do is accept it.
Quite honestly it's an old, old thing isn't it? It's better to ignore than answer back. Ignoring people hurts them far more than answering back.
PR: So it was a political thing really.
FC: Oh, yes, oh, yes. If it hadn't been that we honoured our obligation to the Lib Dems when it came up to their turn to be mayor, I doubt whether I'd have been mayor. Because they have the control, six/five with the Independent voting with them. And one of our members, Tony Dodd, he wants to be more aggressive. My argument is, about what, what's the point of being aggressive, if you can't win. Save it all up. The time will come. Am I wrong or?
PR: I would think you're right and I would think the proof is that you're still here to do that whereas Tony got his marching orders by the electorate as well at district level. I think the attiitude to it becomes well known and if you're not going on a collision course because you think that's the way to do it people respect that.
FC: But don't you think that being a churchman yourself that this is basically back in your mind.
This is what the church teaches you, to be sensible, to be reasonable, not to be, you know, this all the time. People can insult me about that, em, business that you quoted in the paper. It didn't bother me at all. I just walked up Bell Street on the Friday when this all comes out. I just walk up Bell Street and stand by the fence, and that sort of thing. I'm not hurting anybody.
PR: No.
FC: 'There was a case over here. I'll keep you here all day, but I must shut up. But a chap wrote a very scurrilous letter. It was about ten years ago, an election about ten years ago, to the paper about me. So I thought, right monkey, there's an election coming so I didn't do anything. I never answer anything in the paper. So I topped the poll. I was either first or second. So the first thing I did the following morning, I went to his house, knocked at the door. Nobody answered. The lawn mower was on the front lawn, the windows were open so I rang the bell and I knocked and I rattled and nobody came. And in the end the lady of the house came and I said, “Good morning Mrs. Bloggs and I said my name's Frank Clay. Your husband wrote a scurrilous letter to the paper hoping I wouldn't be elected. As he hasn't the face to see me as I know he is in the house, would you give him my compliments and tell him I was second in the poll!
PR: Oh, nice one, yes!