Is The UK heading for divorce? An interview with James Hawes

I referred to James Hawes's The Shortest History of Ireland the other day, and I've just sent Liberator a review of the book by fast orphan. Here Hawes raises wider issues about the future of the United Kingdom, and he's well worth a listen.,

Among his insights are that "England", to the Conservative Party, ultimately means the South East of England and the elite institutions to which it is home. And that the Reform vote is not working class, but a vote for a more hard-line Tory party. I suspect, though, that a good chunk of it is the sort of protest vote that we Liberals used to benefit from.

A word too for Adrian Goldberg, who was one of the most welcome voices in the early day of BBC Radio 5.

Britain's worst road traffic accident took place 50 years ago today: The 1975 Dibble's Bridge coach crash

Today, 27 May, is the 50th anniversary of Britain's worst road traffic accident. In it, 32 coach passengers and their driver lost their lives when a coach lost braking power while descending a steep hill in North Yorkshire and crashed through the parapet of a bridge at the bottom.

The passengers, all women, were on a day trip from the town of Thornaby-on-Tees in North Yorkshire to Grassington in the Dales.

Strangely, I have no memory of hearing about this disaster on the news at the time, nor have I ever heard it referred to since. It's odd how some such events are remembered and others quite forgotten.

There aren't even any photographs of the aftermath of the crash on the Getty Images site, where I look for such things. So instead I have added a video made for Thornaby Town Council in 2019.

As it explains, the design of coaches has changed out of recognition since 1975, partly as a result of this accident.

The crash site is less changed though. It had been the scene of a similar bus crash in 1925, and the video tells of two cyclists who died here in separate incidents more recently after failing to negotiate the bend at the bottom of the hill.

Later. BBC News has an article today marking the anniversary.

Lincoln Seligman, who is interviewed in it and in the video above, was a barrister at the time of the crash and is now a sculptor. He was also a godson of Edward Heath - his father was a Conservative MEP and a strong supporter of Heath's leadership.

The Joy of Six 1138

"Leicestershire is home to the Lib Dem’s safest and longest-run council Oadby & Wigston (some might say best run too). After widespread gains in May the party achieved a safe hold in O & W, also in Hinckley & Bosworth, flipped the status of Harborough and Rutland (which we now lead), entered into an NOC coalition in NW Leicestershire and left the Tories hanging by a thread in ultra-marginal Blaby." Matthew Pennell celebrates our successes in East Anglia and the Midlands.

Laura Thompson backs the campaign for union recognition at Amazon's Coventry depot.

Nurbek Bekmurzaev says Kazakhstan is still haunted by Soviet-era political repression and famine.

"Today, rather than pay a playworker’s salary (however ludicrously small that is), local councils are probably more likely to use their resources to pay for expensive fixed devices on soft-surfaced ground. These are obviously great risk-free fun for your lively five-year-old, but totally dull for a twelve-year-old." Ben Highmore on the rise and fall of adventure playgrounds.

"Each possessing a cosmopolitan collection of friends and drawing lifelong inspiration from the devastation of the entire continent that they witnessed first-hand during service in the Second World War, Heath and Ustinov shared a passionate commitment to Europe." Tom Chidwick reveals an unexpected friendship.

Bus and Train User manages to catch the West Ealing to West Ruislip 'ghost bus': "I was greeted by a smiling driver who seemed a bit surprised to see me explaining it was her first time driving this route and she wasn’t entirely sure where she was going."

Lib Dems gain Dacorum, but where is it and why is it called that?

Dacorum local election 2023 results in full as Liberal Democrats earn majority with six seats gained while Tories fall

says the headline.

Below it is a picture of Ed Davey driving a tractor and demolishing a blue wall of straw bales. Let no one tell you that our now-traditional cheesy media stunts don't work.

But the headline also invites two questions; where is Dacorum and why is it called that?

Those of you who follow the minutiae of Lib Dem campaigning will remember that Ed's stunt was filmed in Berkhamsted. So Dacorum is in West Hertfordshire.

And one answer to the question of why this district council is called Dacorum is: "So that people in Berkhamsted don't have to say they're from Hemel Hempstead." Because Hemel Hempstead is by far the largest town in the district, but for some reason has not lent its name to it.

Though I lived in Hemel as a boy, I've always assumed that Dacorum was a name made up during Edward Heath's reorganisation of local government. 

In fact, it's the name of the hundred covering the west of the county - it's much larger than today's Dacorum District Council. 

Flags of the World says that at the time of the Domesday Book there were two hundreds here: Danais and Tring. They were merged (presumably by an ancestor of Heath's) and the name Hundred of Dacorum was first recorded in 1196.

As to that name, the same site says:

The name Dacorum is thought to mean the 'Hundred of the Dacians' in Medieval Latin. Daci was mistakenly used for 'Danes' in the Middle Ages. According to legend certain tribes from Dacia migrated first to Denmark, then to Angleland in the 9th and 10th centuries. 

And Dacia, says Wikipedia, roughly corresponds to the present-day countries of Romania, as well as parts of Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

Well, you did ask.

Returning to more local matters, I'm pleased to see that the Lib Dems hold Boxmoor, where I spent the brief middle-class period of my childhood. Warners End and Chaulden, the ward we lived in before that, remains Conservative.

Actors demonstrating against the 1971 Industrial Relations Bill at 10 Downing Street

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This is a real early 1970s Who's Who of the profession. From left to right they are: Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Derek Nimmo, Edward Woodward, Ernest Clark, Peggy Mount, Robert Morley, Andrew Cruickshank, Ian McKellen.

The only one I had to look up was Ernest Clark (erroneously called "Clarke" in Getty's caption), who played Professor Geoffrey Loftus in ITV's Doctor in the House. He was a poor man's Sir Lancelot Spratt, to those who know Richard Gordon's books or the films from the 1050s

I have a new admiration for Edward Heath as "the man who faced down Peggy Mount".

Derek Nimmo and Edward Woodward were supporters of the Liberal Party and the Liberal Democrats. Dame Peggy Ashcroft, or so Lord Bonkers tells me, was the latter party's first leader.

The Joy of Six 1046

Ukrainian victims of Russian war crimes should not be deployed as a human shield to keep a discredited Boris Johnson in Downing Street, says an angry Euan McColm.

Jonathan Meades argues that war and famine offer opportunity to the spivs: "It doesn’t matter how catastrophic, how terrible, how morally squalid, how globally imperilling the circumstances, there is nothing that cannot be shamelessly exploited by the descendants of Stanley Baldwin's 'hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the war'."

Josie Giles recalls Orkney's short-lived anarchist newspaper The Free-Winged Eagle.

Arundells, Edward Heaths former home in Salisbury, is open to the public. Richard Smith finds a visit intriguing.

"Blyth might not look much like ancient Sparta, but the locals shared a similar devotion to hard work and athleticism, and there can’t be many football grounds where Plutarch is quoted above the grandstand: 'Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy, but where are they.'" Dan Jackson on how he fell in love with the Northern League.

Richard Williams pays his tribute to Doris Day: "I imagine that back in 1963 I was not the only teenaged boy to be stirred by 'Move Over Darling', a 'girl group' record sung by a 41-year-old woman, co-written and produced by her 21-year-old son." Richard Williams pays his tribute to Doris Day.

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Darren Hughes on the lessons of this month's voter ID trials: "Aside from showing a worrying distrust for voters, the ID trials are riddled with flaws. They must not be a fait accompli for a national roll-out."

"The fact that I have lost contact, irrevocably, with so many of the people with whom I grew up tells me we are not doing enough to ensure the future of care leavers. People who feel loved and cared for, who are full members of society, do not simply drop off the map." Daniel Lavelle sets out to trace the people he grew up with in care.

Miriam Mirwitch, the chair of Young Labour, explains why she is calling for a Labour Conference vote on Brexit.

Rory Cormac lifts the lid on Edward Heath's dirty war in Ireland.

"More than 100 years after the villages of Musa Dagh waged a successful resistance and survived the mass killings of Armenians during World War I, Vakifli is the last remaining Armenian village in Turkey." Kirsten McTighe on a remarkable story of survival.

Jenny Uglow visits the Tate Britain exhibition 'All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life'.

Andrew Bridgen, Edward Heath and Wiltshire police

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North West Leicestershire's Andrew Bridgen is the ultimate rent-a-quote backbench Conservative MP, ready with an ill-informed right-wing opinion on any topic at the drop of a hat.

Only last week he was in the Daily Mail complaining about a National Trust exhibition at Kingston Lacy:

Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen said of the Kingston Lacy exhibition: "This is totally inappropriate. It’s not what people visit the National Trust for. If I want moral guidance I go to church – not the National Trust."

Perhaps Bridgen should have spent more time in church, because today his excruciating performance at a family court hearing has been all over the papers.

My readers are, of course, much too sophisticated to be interested in such matters - I recommend Fleet Street Fox in the Mirror for the best account.

Even before that story broke, however, I was considering a post about Bridgen because of the extraordinary context in which his name cropped up on Sunday.

A Sunday Times report headed "Fresh doubt over Heath sex inquiry" contained this passage:

The Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen, who has seen an early draft of Wiltshire police’s report on Heath, described its findings as "credible and disturbing". 

The MP for North West Leicestershire said: "I have never known any other police investigation that has got as much media attention and where such efforts have been made to discredit it before publication. 

"I have the utmost confidence in his [Veale’s] integrity and the professionalism of his team, and I would urge people to reserve judgment until they have read the report."

It is right that accusations against of sexual abuse Edward Heath should be investigated. But if it is true that this investigation has failed to contact Sir Timothy Kitson, who knew Heath for 35 years and was his parliamentary private secretary during his time at No 10 from 1970-74, it is hard not to be sceptical about it.

Above all, you wonder who decided to give Andrew Bridgen a copy of the the report, particularly as it seems that this report will remain confidential.

I hope the journalists reporting the publication of a redacted version of the report on 5 October will ask that question.

Wrangling over Edward Heath's house

In June 2010 I reported that Edward Heath's home ("one of Britain's more unlikely tourist attractions") was to be sold at the end of the year.

It turns out that things were not that straightforward. A report on the Third Sector website today reports that the former Conservative Robert Key has resigned as a trustee of the Sir Edward Heath Charitable Foundation. He says that a new proposal to raise money for its restoration has "thwarted" the board's intentions:

"The house should be sold and the money spent on young people, not on old buildings," he told Third Sector. "We have consulted everyone, including English Heritage, and all the advice is that Arundells will never be financially viable. The commission told us it would have to consider the new plan and that will mean a delay of about two years so I think the will of the trustees has been thwarted."

Third Sector also reports the views of the remaining trustees and of The Friends of Arundells, "a grass-roots campaign group that wants the building to stay open to the public".

Meanwhile, a mystery remains. How did someone from a humble background, who made his career in an era when MPs were less generously paid than they are today, end up owning a large house in the Cathedral Close at Salisbury?

The February 1974 general election campaign

Jeremy Thorpe, Edward Heath, Harold Wilson, a butcher from Kingstanding, Margaret Thatcher, Cyril Smith, Hester Smallbone, David Steel, Enoch Powell...

And proof it was true even 38 years ago that, whoever you vote for, David bloody Dimbleby gets in.

Sir Edward Heath's former home to close to the public

One of Britain's more unlikely tourist attractions is Arundells in The Close at Salisbury, the home of Sir Edward Heath for the last 20 years of his life.

Unfortunately, the trustees of the Sir Edward Heath Charitable Foundation have announced that the house is to be sold at the end of this year and will no longer be open to the public.

So hurry to visit it while you can. Arundells will be open to visitors in 2010 each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday from 12.30 to 5.30 p.m. until Wednesday 27 October and on Sundays on selected the August Bank Holiday weekend. Further details of these arrangements with dates and times are available on the house's website.