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Introduction
In
the beginning there was the Workers Educational Association,
founded by Albert Mansbridge in 1903, to provide adult education
classes for working people. The WEA movement covered the whole
country and its voluntary branches sprang up in many localities
run by its student volunteers who democratically organised the
chosen classes for themselves. Some of the class tutors came from
university extra-mural departments and other educational institutions.
Later the WEA became organised into Districts to help the Branches
with professional advice, funding and finding the tutors. Today
it is the WEA Oxford Levellers Branch (up until 1997 the WEA Oxford
Industrial Branch) whose Levellers Day Sub-Committee runs the
Levellers Day at Burford held on a Saturday in May each year.
The
WEA Oxford Industrial Branch, whose motto was 'Knowledge
is Power', with other Industrial Branches across the UK, was
set up in 1972 to take the movement back to its working class
labour movement roots and its educational arm, largely organised
by tutor organisers and University extramural tutors, who felt
that those most in need of further adult education were not taking
advantage of the subsidised WEA classes.
1975
The first Levellers Day organised by WEA Oxford Industrial
Branch, was a branch meeting held in Burford Church on 17th September
1975. Alan tells us that Dudley Edwards, an Oxford Trade Unionist,
with a passionate interest in the history of British socialism,
had written a pamphlet 'The Last Stand of the Levellers', which
was an account of the capture and execution of the Leveller Soldiers
in 1649 in Burford Church who had mutinied because they did not
wish to fight in Ireland. I myself had taken part in a military
mutiny in Bavaria at the end of 1944/beginning of 1945, and was
very interested in the 1929 Geneva Agreement for the Treatment
of Prisoners of War. After demobilisation and returning to the
WEA as a branch member I was interested in this aspect, so when
Dudley Edwards rang me and said "Last Stand of the Levellers
at Burford", I said to the monthly meeting of the WEA
Oxford Industrial Branch: "Wouldn't it be fun if you allowed
me to ring or write to the Vicar, Gilbert Parsons, lovely lad,
and hold that month's branch meeting in the place where it happened,
in Burford Church, where they (the Leveller soldiers) were imprisoned
for four nights: and they said well, it was worth a try, and so
I did and he wrote back and said by all means, that sounds very
jolly."
On
17th September 1975, Dudley came and stayed with a Tutor at an
Oxford College. We had done a little bit of publicity for the
event. In fact, about 80 people came, some of them from as far
away as London and a jolly evening was had by all. In the euphoria
of the time, I said to the Vicar, who was standing by the font,
"Did you enjoy that?" He said "Oh yes."
I said "Do you think we could do it again next year, but
on the proper date, the Saturday nearest to the execution?"
(I had Christopher Hill in mind who was still Master of Balliol
then to give the talk on the Levellers...). The Vicar said ,"Yes,
I don't mind that, use the pulpit again".
And
so I was duly sent to Balliol and saw Christopher Hill. He was
very keen indeed, and said: "Yes, I'd love to do it".
Then he looked in his diary and found to his disappointment that
he was due in Paris that weekend. So the Committee said, well
it was worth a try but forget it, it is obviously unrepeatable
. So I said to the Committee, "How about Tony Benn?",
and they all fell about laughing: "Don't be ridiculous,
he's a government minister, he's too busy." I said "Can
I try?" "Well, oh yes, go on then".
I wrote to Tony Benn and he first class stamp replied by return
mail: "Yes please, and would you send me a reading list",
which Ed Coker (branch member and WEA tutor) and I duly did. What
we did not have the nerve to do of course was to make it public,
or worse, tell the Vicar until it was almost upon us - far too
late, we had to tell the Vicar, and tell the public of course.
We had to advertise, and all hell let loose as you can imagine.
Almost
at once, when the awful news broke, there was uproar in the national
and local letter columns. The MP for Burford, Douglas Hurd, in
the House of Commons, accused the WEA of misappropriating public
funds for political purposes. Tony Benn disclosed that (very wisely)
he had sent copies of his intended sermon to the Bishop of Oxford
and the Archbishop of Canterbury. He read their replies to the
House - they both complimented Tony on the content of his sermon
and both expressed sadness at not being able to be there in the
Church to hear it. Collapse of Douglas Hurd's case. It was published
jointly by the Branch and the Spokesman's Press Pamphlets and
sold in the churchyard as The Levellers and the English Democratic
Tradition for 20p. Over the next 20 odd years the annual event
has grown in stature and importance within this great labour movement
of ours. It has now been televised three times and some of its
speakers have since gone on to be members of parliament.
Douglas Hurd, who was then the local MP wrote to the Labour Secretary
of State for Education in May 1976.
"Dear
Secretary of State, I shall be grateful if you could look into
the event which the Workers Educational Association are organising
in Burford in my constituency on Saturday May 15 (1976). I understand
that the Secretary of State for Energy, Mr.Wedgewood Benn,(Tony
Benn had a copy of this because in his own terrible handwriting
he has put a bit round the word Wedgewood because there is an
'e' in it. Can't spell he has written) has accepted an invitation
from the Association (he has got it all wrong) to speak in Burford
Church to commemorate the execution on May 15 (that's wrong,
it was May 17) 1649 of three of Cromwell's soldiers who had
led a mutiny nearby. It is not reasonable to ask you to comment
on the use of a church for this political purpose (I mean
he's already saying it is political you see) or on the curious
reading of history which promotes these mutineers into martyrs.
Since however the Workers Educational Association receives substantial
grants from your department amounting I understand to more than
£500,000 in 1973-4, it does seem reasonable to enquire how
you view the organisation by the Association of a party political
occasion. It is clear from the promotional material that this
is the essence of the event. Certainly, no one suspects that the
Secretary of State for Energy is coming to talk to my constituents
about North Sea oil. I notice that the latest report from the
National Committee of the Workers Educational Association begins
with the sentence- the Association is now facing the most severe
financial crisis in its history. It seems all the more strange
that its money should be wasted in this way".
Alan
Hicks recalls a lot of interest from the national and local press
- it was reported in the Witney Gazette of 20 May 1976 - Crowds
gather to hear from Mr. Benn with a great picture. In the Daily
Express of 21st April there was a cartoon depicting a vicar with
a secretary around a desk, captioned: 'And a note from Mr. Wedgwood
Benn to ask if he could borrow your pulpit for a service of thanksgiving
for the life and work of Karl Marx'. "Shocked and dismayed
that the Church is being used as a political convention with Anthony
Wedgwood Benn in attendance" - March 1976, letter to
a local paper from a local resident.
There
was tremendous opposition locally to Mr. Benn speaking in the
church and just before he was due to speak some local hooligans
had desecrated the wall to the right of the main church door with
graffiti saying 'BOLLOCKS TO BENN' 2ft high
letters in bright yellow gloss paint. All the committee members
saw it, as well as Tony Benn. Alan reports: "The poor
old Vicar went mad, he was really shaking, but we told him told
him 'don't panic' and we rushed up the High Street, bought wire
brushes, turps, and cloths, and scrubbed it all off".
To
return to the formation of WEA Industrial Branches in the 1970s,
and Alan Hicks' association with Dudley Edwards, Alan recounted:
"...Within the WEA all over Britain, here and there, mostly
in the north, there was organised a conspiracy of tutor organisers
and University extramural studies organisers in an attempt to
take what had become a middle England version of WEA back to its
working class labour movement roots with the setting up of Industrial
Branches. Now Dudley had retired to Hove, but he was aware of
this conspiracy - well it was not really a conspiracy - but it
was, as I said, a deliberate attempt to restore the WEA to where
a lot of people thought it ought to have remained - i.e. part
of this great labour movement of ours - its educational arm."
Dudley
set up in Hove, of all places, a WEA Industrial Branch. Right,
and having done so and learning of another Industrial Branch (WEA
Oxford Industrial) being set up in late November 1972 (actually
in 1973), Dudley thought Oxford would be a good place to advertise
his new pamphlet. Now do you see the connection. If he had not
done that in Hove, and if he had not learned about other industrial
branches, for all I know he might have given his talk elsewhere,
maybe in the North. There were about a couple of dozen brand new
WEA branches formed, all of them called either Industrial Branches,
Trade Union Branches, or Women's Studies Branches. For instance,
there is only one Industrial Branch left in our District - and
that is the one in Southampton - which wears two hats. It meets
once a month as the mirror image of my Transport and General Retired
Members Association Southampton Branch. And then at other times
of the month it meets as a part of the WEA Southampton Industrial
Branch. Right, so there is still one there, and that is the original
connection of why Dudley wrote to me as the Secretary of the WEA
Oxford Industrial Branch. I read Dudley's second pamphlet. When
he retired to Hove, he became interested in the Oxfordshire and
Buckinghamshire Light Infantry whose predecessors were stationed
in Hove during the Napoleonic era and tells the story of a lad
from Chipping Norton and a lad from Witney who were executed on
what is now Hove Golf Course standing on their coffins. (And now
buried, as usual, just like Thomas Plowing, just like Che Guevara,
just like our three lads in Burford, in unmarked graves in what
is now the Golf Course.) They were executed as the ringleaders
of this mutiny in 1795.
Alan
reflected that Levellers Day 1977 was a
somewhat smaller and low key event, not without incident. The
Branch visited William Morris's Kelmscott Manor in the morning,
and the procession took place in Burford in the afternoon, with
the wreath being laid by Julie Bingham, the Branch treasurer.
But the event was attacked by Revd. Moody, on the staff of Burford
School. Alan takes up the story: "Revd.
Moody made an attack on us. He also let loose his 6th Form on
our procession. But he boobed and he should have waited until
we moved off and then attack it with his 6th Form; he did not.
He let them go and watch the Civil War Society who gave this lot
a display of arms at the top of the High Street, the field at
the top right - he let them loose there. Good old Julie Bingham
got chatting to them and said, of course, you are perfectly entitled
to join in our procession, we'd love to have you - so she got
the 6th Form to join in our procession. The Revd. Moody was not
amused."
Levellers
Day May 1978, with Revd. Tony Williamson, Oxford's famous
worker-priest laying the wreath in Burford Churchyard, was a combination
of a class on Real Ale and Architecture with a visit to the Old
Swan at Swinbrook. Alan tells us that the Branch visited the grave
in Swinbrook churchyard of Valkyrie Mitford. (Unity Mitford was
a friend and admirer of Hitler!).
1979
saw the return of Tony Benn to Levellers Day in Burford. Alan
Hicks recounts that the then Branch Chairman, Peter Fryer and
he collected funds for a proper memorial plaque for the Leveller
soldiers to be placed on Burford Church wall. Alan recalls: "I
was still Branch Secretary, and did not give up for a few years.
It was necessary to do a Luther on the church door with a hammer
and a nail and bang into it a notice for a month later. Unless
anyone had any objections a plaque would be fixed. I finally got
from the Church Commissioners Office in Gloucester Green, Oxford,
the document agreed by the Bishop of Oxford. I got in my car with
30 minutes to spare because it had to be up for one calendar month
- roared over to Burford, ran to the church door with about 5
minutes to spare. No one objected so we got Tony James and Son,
Stonemasons of Oxford, to make the plaque... The plaque, commemorating
Corporal Perkins, Cornet Thompson and Private Church, was unveiled
by Tony Benn and dedicated by Revd. Gilbert Parsons. Caroline
Benn (Tony's wife) laid the wreath
.
Tony
Benn has a continuing involvement with Levellers Day and returns
to Burford every three years or so. He has become known as the
Father of Levellers Day.
From
May 1980 to 1982, the speakers included E.P. Thompson,
David Selbourne, Dame Judith Hart and Cllr. Tom Richardson. In
1980 the event was filmed by Mark Karlin for a BBC2
programme. Alan recalls that the second time it was filmed was
in 1985 for Channel 4 television.
1983
saw a revival of Tory angst in Burford, when Levellers Day encountered
opposition from the local Conservative Association who had booked
the Church Hall for a non-existent jumble sale on the Saturday.
So a Torchlight Procession was held on the Friday night led by
Joan Ruddock, the then Chair of CND, later to become an MP. One
of the Branch members, Fred Porter, had an unfortunate mishap
and set fire to himself. Tony Benn returned in 1984, accompanied
by Ken Livingstone, the then GLC Leader, and Joan Maynard. Levellers
Day in 1985 was a busy event, with speakers in the morning, workshops
in the afternoon, and a barn dance in the evening. The midday
Procession, chiefly organised by Denis Manners, became a colourful
and interesting feature of Levellers Day with Morris Dancers and
all manner of labour, peace and green movement banners with their
members.
Roger
Woddis, the Radio Times poet, first came to Levellers Day in 1986,
and returned annually until his sad death in 1993. His particular
brand of political poetry was partly ironically biting and partly
madly funny.
In
the 1980's Levellers Day evolved into a national public education
forum for ordinary people with different themes appropriate to
public interest and became a notable event in the calender of
the Labour movement.
Alan
Hicks also caused two more Leveller plaques to be placed in the
city of Oxford. One in Gloucester Green, was unveiled by Andrew
Smith, MP for Oxford East and a speaker at many previous Levellers
Days and Betty Standingford (Oxford's Deputy Mayor at the time)
in 1989. This plaque commemorated the execution of two Leveller
Soldiers, Private Biggs and Piggin. The second was to honour Henry
Marten (1602 - 1680), a great soldier, member of Parliament and
republican of Oxford, at his birth place at 3 Merton Street, unveiled
by Sir Keith Thomas, the President of Corpus Christi College,
in 1992.
The
1990 theme was 'A World Turned upside Down' with speakers Anne
Clwydd, Ken Livingstone, Betty Heathfield, Linden West and chaired
by Liz Kearney. That year, the mayor of Brighton, Pat Hawkes,
laid a wreath in memory of Dudley G. Edwards beneath the plaque
he initiated all those years ago.
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