1964

In 1964 the USA passed its official verdict on the Kennedy assassination when ‘The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy’, known unofficially as ‘The Warren Commission’, produced an 888 page report that concluded that the gunman Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of John F Kennedy. The Commission's findings have since proven extremely controversial, and have consistently been both challenged and continuously reaffirmed. Debate and speculation however refuses to go away.

Kennedy wasn’t the only US President to be assassinated and before him Presidents Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881) and William McKinley (1901) died at the hands of assassins, while many other presidents have survived attempts on their life. But not only is being US President a high risk job because this is an occupational hazard for other high profile people. In Russia for example, four emperors were assassinated within less than two hundred years of each other, Ivan VI, Peter III, Paul I, and Alexander II. In Europe the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 by Serb nationalist insurgents started World War I and soon after achieving independence from British occupation, Mahatma Gandhi, the leader of the freedom struggle was gunned down. In Britain the Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was shot dead by a madman in 1812 but happily remains the only British Prime Minister to suffer this fate.

1964 was a busy year in all respects. In politics there were a lot of changes around the world; in the USSR Khrushchev was deposed and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev, Lyndon B Johnson became the elected President of the USA with the fourth highest ever presidential victory and in Britain the Labour Party won the general election and returned to power after thirteen years of Conservative rule. The new Prime Minister was Harold Wilson who was one of the most prominent modern British politicians. He succeeded as Prime Minister after more General Elections than any other twentieth century Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, with majorities of four in 1964, ninety-eight in 1966, five in October 1974, and with enough seats to form a minority government in February 1974.

In the world of entertainment Radio Caroline became the first pirate radio station which played continuous popular music and directly challenged the BBC light programme for radio supremacy, the Rolling Stones released their first album and BBC2 was introduced. These exciting developments meant that we needed new entertainment equipment around the house and it was at about this time that we had our first record player to replace a creaky old radiogram that was difficult to tune in and only played 78 rpm records. Now for the first time we could play singles and long players and the first two records that were bought to accompany the new record player were a Jim Reeves single and a Black and White Minstrels EP. Later that year Jim Reeves was killed in a plane crash so we never added to that collection and thankfully I don’t think we added any more Black and White Minstrels either.



I used to hate the Black and White Minstrel show that was generally shown on TV at Saturday teatime and was one of the most politically incorrect programmes imaginable with white men ‘blacking-up’ as negroes and singing songs from deep south Dixie. And this was at a time when the Civil Rights movement in the US was moving up a gear or two in the US and demands for social justice were leading to violence and confrontation. During this time there was one of the last great efforts by white supremacists to frustrate the introduction of equalities. The Ku Klux Klan was a bunch of racist bigots that dressed in white cloaks and pointy hats and advocated white supremacy, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, racism, homophobia, anti-communism and nativism. This was a bunch of genuinely nasty people who often used terrorism, violence and acts of intimidation, such as cross burning and lynching, to oppress African Americans and other social or ethnic groups.

BBC2 was the third UK television channel and unlike the other channels available at that time was broadcast only on the 625 line Ultra High Frequency system, so was not available to viewers with 405 line Very High Frequency sets. This created a market for dual standard receivers which could switch between the two systems and anyone who wanted to receive the new channel was obliged to go to the expense of upgrading their television sets. This sort of thing still goes on today. Last week I was looking for a new computer and was advised that I would have to buy a PC with Windows Vista which has replaced XP. This sounded all well and good until I was told that I would have to replace most of my software as well because it would be incompatible with the new operating system. What a con! On the subject of computers the computer language BASIC was first introduced in 1964, which was a real breakthrough and led to the greater accessibility and later the introduction of home computers.

Also this year the Sun newspaper was first published to replace the old fashioned Daily Herald. At about this time I had my first paper round and earned fifteen shillings (.75p) in return for getting up at six o’clock, six days a week, to lug a bag of newspapers around the village before going to school. Thursday was a bad day because of the Radio and TV Times magazines but Fridays was by far the worst because the addition of the Rugby Advertiser doubled the weight of the bag. Later I had a Sunday round as well and that paid fifteen shillings for the one day but that stared an hour later so that thankfully meant a bit of a lie in. One of the occupational hazards of being a paper boy was dogs, and I really don’t like dogs! One I can remember used to scare me witless when it would jump at the letterbox and pull the newspaper through whilst I was delivering it. One day I hung on to the other end and the dog shredded the outer pages. I think it must have got a kick up the arse or something because it didn’t do it again for a while. I would be surprised if Sunday paper rounds exist anymore because to deliver to fifty houses or so would need a dumper truck to replace the old canvas bag on account of the size of the newspapers and the weight of all of the supplements.

The paper round was important because towards the end of my career I used to assist the newsagent, Mr Dalton, to sort out the rounds and this taught me new skills that I was able to put to good use later in life when it was my job at the council to organise the refuse collection rounds.
Before this year going to the pictures had been restricted to Saturday morning children’s picture club at the Rugby Granada Cinema but by 1964 I was old enough to be taken to see proper films in the evening. I am sure that we went to see Mary Poppins that year but the two films that I remember most were 633 Squadron and Zulu. 633 Squadron was a war film where the RAF carried out a daring bombing mission to destroy a Nazi armaments factory. The planes were mosquitoes and this quickly became my favourite Airfix model after seeing the film.

Zulu was much more important. These are the facts: On 22nd January 1879 the Imperial British army suffered one of its worst ever defeats when Zulu forces massacred one thousand five hundred of its troops at Isandlhwana in South Africa. A short time after the main battle a Zulu force numbering over four thousand warriors advanced on a British hospital and supply garrison guarded by one hundred and thirty nine infantrymen at Rorkes Drift. The film tells the true story of the battle during which the British force gallantly defended the hospital and in doing so won eleven Victoria Crosses, which is the most ever awarded for one single engagement. Dad liked military history and tales of heroic deeds and he took me to see the film and then probably watched it every year after when it popped up on TV at Christmas. The film takes a few historical liberties but it remains one of my favourites and of course I have a copy of it in my own DVD collection. Interestingly one of the Black & White Minstrel singers had a singing role in the film!



What else is interesting is that the if you buy the DVD now, Michael Caine is billed as the star but if you watch it Stanley Baker had top billing and he was the film’s producer as well, the film simply introduces Michael Caine in his first big film role. That’s how easily history is rewritten.

Later that year dad bought the theme tune to 633 Squadron single and I got the Zulu soundtrack LP for Christmas to play on our new record player. I’ve still got it but I don’t play it any more. I’ve also got dad’s book on the Zulu wars and his favourite Royal Doulton water colour painting of the defence of Rorkes Drift.

After the summer holidays I went back to school for my final year at Hillmorton County Junior School which was going to include preparing for the eleven-plus exam next year. No one was very optimistic about my chances of success because to be fair I wasn’t the most gifted child at the school. My reports consistently reported to my parents how I didn’t try hard enough, didn’t show interest and could do better. The Headmaster, George Hicks, advised my parents to buy me some clogs and prepare me for working life in a factory as he was certain that I was destined to be one of life’s academic failures. I blame the school because they simply didn’t make it interesting enough. Going to Chapel on the other hand was quite stimulating, I enjoyed that and with the helpful guidance of the Reverend Keen and Sunday school teacher Christine Herrington I got a First Class pass in the Methodist Youth Department Scripture Examination for the third year running. I wasn’t worried about working in a factory I was certain I was going to be a vicar.

Danger

When I was boy there were exciting places to explore and play and there was lots of time to do so because parents were not nearly so paranoid about children wandering off to enjoy themselves as they are today. In those days it wasn’t uncommon to go out in the morning and only return home when you were hungry and there certainly weren’t search parties out looking all over the place. It’s a shame that these days children are confined to their back gardens or have to be taken back and forth to school by car because there was so much more fun when young lives were not subject to so many safety restrictions.

It wasn’t that our parents were irresponsible or didn’t care about us it’s just that they were somewhat oblivious to risk. I suppose when you have been brought up in London during the blitz when Hitler’s bombs were dropping every night and there was always imminent danger of sudden death then life in the 1960s almost certainly would have seemed a whole lot more sedate and certainly less dangerous. This didn’t mean that there weren’t hazards of course and as boys we used to like to hang around the dangerous places.

First of all there was the railway line and you don’t get much more dangerous than that. It was relatively easy to get up on the tracks and put half pennies on the line for the trains to squash and expand to the size of a penny in the optimistic hope that this would double the value of the coin and shopkeepers wouldn’t notice. (This never worked by the way). A couple of miles from home we used to dare each other to walk into the inky blackness of the Kilsby Tunnel but I seem to recall that none of ever got more than a few feet before beating a hasty retreat for daylight and safety. The Kilsby Tunnel is near the village of Kilsby in Northamptonshire on the West Coast Main Line and was designed and engineered by the engineer Robert Stephenson. The tunnel is two thousand two hundred and twenty four metres long yards long and took one thousand two hundred and fifty men nearly two years to build. It was opened in 1838 as a part of the London and Birmingham Railway and is today the eigteenth longest tunnel on the British railway system. We used to think it was cool to play there but I realise now that it was totally stupid.

Sometime in the early 60s the line was electrified and this made it even more dangerous. I remember a man from British Rail came to school and addressed morning assembly to warn us about playing on the railway. He looked a lot like Norman Wisdom in both appearance and stature and was a bit like the railway equivilent of the Green Cross Code Man, without the muscles. His name was Driver Watson and he proudly wore his navy blue uniform with red piping and told us that the electricity was so powerful that we would need to wear wellington boots forty-two feet thick if we were to be safe from electrocution if we were to touch the overhead wires. That sounded convincing enough to keep me away from the tracks in future and anyway British Rail started putting up fences so it was difficult to get there anymore.

Running parallel to the railway line was the Oxford Canal that had been commissioned in 1769 and built by the canal builder James Brindley. The canal was an incredibly dangerous place really but of course we didn’t realise that at the time. During the summer we used to wait at top lock and offer to open and close the gates for passing canal craft in the hope that we would receive a few pennies for our labours. If the canal was dangerous then the locks were doubly so but this didn’t stop us from daring each other to jump from the elevated tow path down about three metres and two and a half metres across to the central section of the double locks. I shudder to think about it now. We used to swim in the canal too and that was a stupid thing to do as well. Not only was the murky water about two metres deep and lurking with danger but it was also full of bacteria and germs especially in the black cloying mud on the bottom that would ooze through your toes so it’s a miracle that we didn’t catch typhoid or something else really, really awful.

Talking of catching things, we used to go fishing down the canal and this wasn’t quite so dangerous except when my friend Colin Barratt (who was forbidden to go to the canal on account of not being able to swim) fell in while struggling to land a four-ounce Perch with a home made rod and line. We fished him out and took him home and didn’t see him again for about three months after that but to make him feel better we told him that it was a monster Pike that had pulled him in.

Water always had a special attraction and when we weren’t messing about on the canal there was always Sprick Brook where we used to fish for minnows and red-breasted Sticklebacks and take them home in jam-jars in the days before goldfish. Sprick brook ran under the railway bridge on Hillmorton Lane and was just the sort of place where you could have an accident and no one would find you for days.

One place that wasn’t nearly so dangerous as it is today were the roads and we used to play on our bikes without any real sense of danger and certainly without those silly cycle helmets that kids wear today. Cycling however did get me into trouble once when I was about ten and persuaded some friends to tackle a cycle ride one afternoon to Leicester to see my grandparents without checking with anyone first. I have to confess that this was both ambitious and thoughtless especially on a Raleigh Junior bike with 18” wheels and no lights and not in any way suitable for a fifty mile round trip. Getting there was reasonably straightforward but the return journey was a bit more difficult on account of it being dark and us being completely knackered. There was a search party that night for sure and I can remember being astonished about how much fuss was made over such a trivial incident when Dad intercepted me at Abbots Farm and sent me home immediately for a good telling off from Mum which turned out instead to be an emotional and tearful reunion and I can remember being thoroughly confused by that.

Apart from the dangers presented by the transport system there were other equally hazardous places to play as well. Building sites for example. There was a building boom in the 1960s and this presented all sorts of opportunities. Especially good fun was climbing ladders and playing on the scaffolding and hiding in part constructed rooms. There were piles of bricks to build camps (much better than Lego), sewer pipes to crawl through, sand and cement to kick around and oil drums and bits of timber to take away and use to build rafts to sail on the canal but this never worked either. Once a passing police patrol car stopped to watch us building a waterways craft. They teased us by asking to see our boat license and then told us to hurry up and get on because they wanted to see us fall off before getting on with their duties. We clambered aboard and didn’t disappoint them. I can still hear them laughing as I write this.

Most of these dangerous places are closed off to children these days, the railway line is fenced, building sites are fenced, the canal locks have wooden guardrails and you would have to be just plain daft to take a bike out on a main road. Given the modern restrictions it’s hardly any wonder I suppose that today children have to stop at home and watch the television or play computer games and are denied the pleasure of real dangerous activity and that is a real shame.