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THE BERLIN WALL

On 2nd February 1989 my dear brother Roger died of heart disease. A few days after the funeral, his hospital appointment for by-pass surgery came through the post. He had been taken from his home to Queen Elizabeth Hospital while my sister-in-law was out, and luckily our telephone number was found on him. We were there within minutes, but it was too late. The nurse at his bedside had deep faith and was moved by his inner peace in his last seconds, when he told her he was about to embark on a great journey. Roger sat at the centre of what I call my "concentric sphere of Peace": the inner self, radiating outwards to family, neighbours, community, town, country and the world. But my brother would never have stopped at its edge.
I wrestle with my conscience. Should I have been kinder to people who were nasty to me, and more patient before embarking on confrontation, if it was even necessary? Hurtful and unjust things have been done to me. I forgive and have no bitterness, but forget, never. Most of those who wronged me are dead, and I can only hope that guilt afflicted them before they went. My neighbours? I have seven in the legal sense of sharing a boundary, far more than most people, and for such a small plot it seems ridiculous. Four are private and three corporate, but this chapter concerns the Stantons, who became nationally notorious as bad neighbours. With the inner rings of my "Peace Onion" causing me difficulty, one of my retirement aspirations was to work hard for world peace. Let me tell you about the seventh year after I stopped work.
The Peace Festival
On Easter Saturday, 25th March, the "Life Style Movement" sponsored my seventh consecutive Selly Oak Easter Peace Festival at George Cadbury Hall. I say "my" because I put a hundred times more thought and effort into it, all year round, than any other individual or sponsoring organisation.
I was supported by devout Quakers such as Barbara Panvil, by the Rev. Irwin Barnes, a long-time Labour man with that original, core socialist conviction, and by ministers of various denominations. Irwin visited me the previous October with a petition he wanted me to head, to end the village Bonfire Night celebrations. He hated the waste of good timber, the effect of noise on the elderly and pets, and the symbolism of burning Guy Fawkes at the stake. It was hard to turn down his gentle approach, but I would not lead it. I had taken a strong line in the neighbourhood over smoky garden fires, but always extolled the November 5th event as a community occasion, as long as the fire burnt brightly, the noise stopped before 8 pm and garden refuse was rigorously excluded.
Two months after Irwin's visit, just before Christmas, Bernard Stanton was issued with a Smoke Abatement Notice. His fires were regular and notorious, and he had always got away with them despite protests and final warnings from Environmental Health Officers. His enraged frustration was an ideal present to delighted neighbours. On the day, his fire was innocuous, for the first time as close to his house as mine, and I heard him shrieking at the officer that it was another fire the day before that had caused the trouble. This time he was right, but I enjoyed it anyway. Mr Henslowe at the Bournville Village Trust (BVT) congratulated me that my campaigning had at last led to action, not just threats. The Stantons blamed me totally, and hated BVT and the council officials who had backed me. Little did we know it would boil over into pathological hatred, retaliation and tragedy.
George Cadbury Hall is a unique, imposing building in the centre of Selly Oak, adapted for disabled access, and ideal for my purpose. Its gallery screen can be opened to double the capacity without altering the atmosphere. There was constant pressure to move the festival to another date, since Easter Saturday was the first clear break of the year for the white middle-class professionals, who sent abject apologies. Who could blame them? No meeting could end the Cold War. Loyal supporters who never attended nevertheless delivered leaflets and contributed funds, and the festival was only the focal point of a year's activity and the launch of the next.
Professor John Ferguson, retiring President of Selly Oak Colleges, agreed to chair Selly Oak Peace Council and ran the 1989 meeting skilfully under the theme "One man's greed is another man's need". I had written to Tony Benn, who instead sent a Peace message on his vision of European Unity that still rings true. Neither of us knew that within seven months he would sit at a campfire with Petra Kelly of the German Greens among the ruins of the Berlin Wall. Euro-MP Christine Crawley responded brilliantly, along with speakers from Life Style and the Woodcraft Folk.
I had designed a yellow and green Peace Card with the Life Style logo of a burning candle and the caption "Peace Means Life For All". On the back was a text from Gandhi: "Recall the face of the poorest and helpless person whom you may have seen and ask yourself if any step you contemplate is going to be of use to him." There was a slight transcription error for which I take the blame, and I had tapered the candle that should have had parallel edges, which caused irritability. Every year something flawed absolute satisfaction. Each year a different sponsoring organisation felt overwhelmed by a hundred other groups sharing the limelight, but as they did not pay the bill they could not moan while I begged for money and provided publicity and labour free. CRIS (Community Resources and Information Service) printed several thousand cards at commercial price, which supporting groups sold for their own funds, and twelve thousand leaflets listing all the participants. Helen Stanton, my neighbour's daughter-in-law, helped deliver them to every house in Selly Oak, and packs went to constituent groups nationally. Some people travelled hundreds of miles almost on pilgrimage. Each festival cost £500, since the Colleges made no concession for a kindred group.
Fifty-seven years earlier Mahatma Gandhi had stayed a week at Woodbrooke, George Cadbury's birthplace, three minutes' walk from the hall. American tourists claim to have seen his bed, but he slept on the floor. I walk past it daily. Gandhi freed his people by non-violence from the greatest empire the world had known, but would it have worked against a more cruel power than a patronising one? He was shot dead by one of his own after his movement took freedom from a willing Attlee Labour Government, for whose 1945 election success I had worked hard as a seventeen-year-old.
George Cadbury, pacifist and benefactor, gave part of his fortune in 1914 to the Independent Labour Party because it opposed the war. His bust in the foyer seemed to give me a wry smile, then frown, since I would have a couple of pints that evening. The Cadbury charities responded to humble, handwritten begging letters. One reply was plainly rude and exasperated, and I nearly answered in kind until a cheque for £100 fluttered out. The local Transport and General Workers Union always sent £25 and brought its banner, represented by past militant Longbridge trade unionists including the much-maligned Red Robbo, an educated, cultured and compassionate man, though politically naïve in still supporting the Berlin Wall. Walter Hillman, a retired butcher and Quaker, was our treasurer and kept impeccable accounts in his own bank account, since we had none.
The ladder
Five days earlier, on 20th March, I had carried my double aluminium ladder to the end of the hedge, extended it, and begun sawing through a conifer trunk five feet from the tip. I was sixty-one, fat and arthritic, and the saw was tiny. Eighty-year-old Bernard and Frieda Stanton appeared on the far side within seconds, unseen behind the hedge. Bernard called out,
"We know exactly what you are doing and how much you are taking off. Let me offer you a bit of friendly advice, you can't do that."
"But you are not my friend," I said, and carried on. Frieda cried hysterically that they had phoned their solicitor and would take out an injunction on Monday. I was perched twenty-two feet up, one hand sawing, the other pushing the trunk away from the blade, with no hand free to hold on. Bernard thrust a long piece of iron conduit up through the hedge and between the rungs of the ladder. It sprang up and struck me with excruciating pain below a sensitive place. I dropped the saw and slid down the ladder, landing winded in a heap.
I got to my feet, pushed aside the vegetation and caught Stanton's eye. His face was contorted with rage. "Make sure that never happens to me again," I gasped. I took painkillers and treated my cut hands with TCP. The pipe had not pierced the skin, but it could have ripped through soft tissue and been fatal, and my back gave me trouble for a week. When calm, I phoned Frieda and told her things had reached a critical stage and Bernard's violence was actionable. She replied that this was what I would get every time I trespassed and damaged their trees. I told her that if they would not control their trees, I would.
My house insurance gave thirty minutes of free legal advice: see a doctor and tell the police. The police superintendent asked what on earth BVT was doing about it. I got an appointment with the Trust's legal secretary and wrote to him in capitals: YOU MAY ADVISE ME IF THE TREES WHICH MR STANTON PLANTED ON THE BOUNDARY LINE ARE A HEDGE.
Two young constables called at the end of their shift. When I pointed to the half-sawn timber, one said he would have cut them off at five feet from the ground. I poured us all a scotch, and we chatted football like old friends until they took my statement. At the part about the pipe and my goolies, we shared a moment of silent, mutual, male agony, then exploded with laughter. That night I could not straighten up, and a terrified aversion to ladders was creeping over me.
Life was hectic. Friends of the Earth were doing vegetarian refreshments and keeping the profits, though there were moans about the cost and the absence of meat. Trivialities assumed too much importance: the missing "most" in the Gandhi quotation, the tapered candle. Some Life Style members, one from East Anglia, complained that they had never been told of the festival, though the sponsoring organisation was the only peace group not to notify its own members. Why did I bother? Professor Ferguson answered it: "If an angry baby throws its doll outside its pram in a rage the ripples of anger will travel throughout the universe for all time." Perhaps our message would too, for at least a new local Woodcraft group was born. George Cadbury insisted that "the spirit rather than the law shall govern his estate", the estate he built ninety years earlier as an example to the world. My name was on all the leaflets as publisher, and one was delivered to the Stantons' house.
Maureen and I saw BVT Secretary Thomson on the Friday. He was concerned about my injuries and said the Stantons were in another part of the building. We said the stress was appalling and BVT held the key. I would continue maintaining the hedge if the Stantons agreed to a permanent, reasonable height. He would not rule on the status of the trees but would send the surveyor.
More than two hundred came to the festival: old regulars and many new groups, the Labour Party with its old banner, Liberals, and the Greens who were about to take third place in the local election. We had two Communist Parties not speaking to each other. Red Robbo sold the Morning Star, the only British paper on sale in Moscow, which would report our event in full on Monday. His party loyally supported the Moscow line that the Berlin Wall was a state boundary, though only for a few months longer. The other party, which ran the old bookshop, displayed our leaflets and sold our cards, and accepted German reunification. The Tories did not come. I rang them, but they patronisingly dismissed me as a nut case, and they would accept our invitation only two festivals later. Local churches displayed our publicity. John Ferguson, a prominent United Reformed Church man, was about to be accepted as a Quaker just before his early death from cancer. Many people assumed I was religious and addressed letters to the Rev. Michael Jones, though I had not made, and might never make, the leap to faith. Humanists supported us for the first time, through Maureen, an active Humanist, which was another link with the Stantons, long proclaimed humanists.
Round one with the Stantons
Was the festival a success? Maybe waves were generated that will ripple through space and time, though I wished a few would start now with my neighbours.
On Easter Monday I wrote to the Stantons' solicitor, copying the police superintendent and BVT. I would continue levelling the trees at the height where Stanton had knocked me off the ladder, then maintain them at a suitable height until a permanent agreement was reached. I would never meet violence with violence and therefore needed their protection. I would give two hours' telephone notice before starting. On 2nd April the last major Cold War CND rally took place in Hyde Park. The main parties were locked into NATO and Trident. Neil Kinnock, born for that moment, flunked it, reneged on his past and never regained his credibility. I made my own way back alone, leaping on a train at Euston as it pulled out.
Three days later the Stanton solicitors replied about their client's pole launch at my testicles: "We have been advised by Mr Stanton of the incident and given him certain advice and do not propose to make further comment."
On Friday 7th April I phoned the police inspector, BVT's legal man and Stanton's solicitor. All three secretaries said their bosses were out, in conference or had a virus, and I did not believe them. I told them I would cut the trees at 2 pm. When the time came I was shivering with fear. This was taking the law into my own hands, an irretrievable act. I clanked the ladder deliberately, hoping someone would come and have the showdown without my climbing. Nobody did. So I took a deep breath, clambered up at astonishing speed for an arthritic of my size, and finished the cut I had started fourteen days earlier. The five-foot heavy top tottered, and I pushed it over the Stanton side and clung to the next piece of tree. A few weeks later Bernard was photographed holding it up, only his head showing above it, and the picture appeared in a Stanton affidavit two years on.
The Earth did not move. Nobody was in sight. I made a cup of tea and looked with grim satisfaction at a chunk of sky not seen for years. Maureen came back apprehensive. I had not told her, and arranged it for when she was out.
Two constables came next morning and expressed astonishment at this "Berlin Wall", the first use of an expression that would be repeated for years by police, lawyers, experts and judges. They could not see my house from Stanton's downstairs, and had to look through his attic window. Reading the solicitor's letter, they warned me that I would be arrested for criminal damage if I touched the trees again. I said I would finish the job, with notice, and that if they took me to prison I would go on hunger strike with the media watching. Maureen bravely added, "You can count me in. We will cut the trees, go to prison and starve together." This touched and angered me, as I wanted this to be my personal battle. We later laughed that, being overweight, an enforced diet was no bad thing. I asked about the assault. The police, they said, would take action only if Stanton did it three or four times and seriously injured me, and I should use the civil courts. I told them wasting money was just compounding the injustice. We laid the ladder on its side.
On Sunday 9th April we went out for the day and left the answering machine on. On our return the phone rang, a caller said "Mr Jones", I answered, and the line went dead. Twenty minutes later two police cars and a dog van screeched to a halt outside. When we opened the door the agitation turned to confusion, and we all had tea. The constables were ashamed of their colleague's over-reaction and said the police would look absolutely barmy arresting me. One said that when the old man went on holiday I should get it all down. The anonymous call had been a test to see whether we were home. I had the call on tape, replayed it many times, and confirmed my suspicion: it was Paul Terry Stanton. I reported him to British Telecom for anonymous calls, then to the police, BVT and his solicitor.
Paul Terry Stanton, the eldest son, was born in 1941 and grew up at 47 Weoley Hill. He was thirty when we moved into Tillyard Croft, a new development on the virgin countryside that had been his childhood playground. Just after we arrived he sneered at me over the chain-link fence, "What are those things for?", meaning a tripod of canes over late runner beans. It was the most calculated piece of rudeness I had ever heard, and my offence was possessing his playground. Our other new neighbours were hostile too, though not so stupid as to say it to our faces. Eighteen years later his voice was on my tape, escalating a dispute that would end in tragedy for which only he was responsible. Had he said, "I am coming round to have a talk and put an end to this silly nonsense", it might, by his own criteria, have saved his mother's life.
We had always been friendly to the changing beat officers. On 14th April our conscientious beat officer, PC Symonds, back from leave, assured us without being asked that we would not be arrested. He was appalled at the conifer screen so close to our house and concerned about my mounting ladders at my age. He would follow up the assault and visit BVT. I often wonder whether things would have gone differently if he had been around earlier. I wrote up the conversation and copied it to the superintendent, the Stanton solicitor and the Trust.
The BVT surveyor who called had made the survey before the original conveyance twenty years earlier and confirmed the chain-link fence had not moved. He had not been given the right brief, which should have been the status of the boundary, the fence and the hedge, as I had asked in capitals. The visit was a waste of time and money.
On 2nd May PC Symonds rang to say the police would prosecute neither me for trespass and criminal damage nor Stanton for assault, since without a doctor's evidence I had given them nothing to pass to the Crown Prosecution Service. The Stantons had told him, "There is to be no compromise with that man", and were going to the Chief Constable and the CPS, and failing that would go to civil action. I welcomed the decision and told him I would resume cutting at 2 pm.
I repeated the procedure exactly, with the same evasive secretaries who knew I knew they were lying, and that beautiful afternoon I bounded up the ladder like an experienced tree surgeon and dropped another couple of treetops on my side. Next dawn I was up among the birds again, and more light flooded in. Maureen was amazed but apprehensive, since we did not know how the Stanton rage would show itself. We had pacted to take the consequences.
On 5th May two BVT officials brought the surveyor's report and were dismayed at what we had endured. They too used the words "Berlin Wall". They thought I was aiming at BVT's own guideline of six feet six, and coaxed me toward admitting I was a little unreasonable. I did not disabuse them, and was delighted, though I hid it, to agree to a "compromise" of ten feet, with another eight feet off with their backing. I was really aiming at fourteen. They were proud of wringing this concession from me. The Stantons refused any compromise and denied I had any rights over the trees, and for the first time the Trust ran full square into the Stanton hate. It was the turning point, and the Joneses had won it.
Acting Sergeant Cox rang after spending three hours with the Stantons, who had filed a new complaint without mentioning the existing one. He was astonished to hear of the beat officer's involvement and the CPS. The dispute was well known in the station, and it was said to be unknown for so many senior officers to be tied down by such trivialities. He spent a couple of hours with us, said even the reduced hedge must come down, and asked why the Stantons insisted on no compromise. He cautioned me and had me sign a statement, which alarmed me, and then one about the assault.
Clive Wilkinson, a dear and loyal friend who had just resigned the City Council leadership and become an Honorary Alderman, was the City's representative on the BVT board. He told me the Trustees were 100% behind us but had "no legal teeth". Ian, our elder son, rang Mr Thomson about the strain on his parents and was told the file would be re-opened, which puzzled and pleased me, as nobody had told us it had been closed. I never accepted that the Trust could not assert itself. Its real fear was opening a can of worms and being forced to act hundreds of times on precedent. On 23rd May I wrote again to Mr Thomson.
Over the following month I made a series of "dawn raids" and removed the remaining spikes, a thirty-foot strip five feet high, all carried to the front and hauled to the council tip in Ian's car and trailer. The men at the tip separated the logs for their own illegal fires, which was what Stanton wanted them for, and he moaned about theft of his property. I levelled some new Leylandii that had emerged in the beech hedge to BVT's guideline height of six feet six. All was peace and quiet.
Summer
On 4th June our grandson Chris had his eighth birthday party at the Gillette Centre baths. A parent there, a solicitor who had given us useful free advice on garden fires ten years earlier, was delighted by the hedge saga. "I could get rid of those trees in a week," he said. I told him it was over for this year and that I would take another four feet off later. I took his firm's address, but inwardly pledged not to start paying lawyers again.
At the AGM of Nuclear Trains at the Selly Oak Institute, yards from the track where twice weekly ghostly white trucks of radioactive rods rumbled to Sellafield, I was a close adviser on campaigning, though I always declined elective office. The group drew cross-party sympathy on a single environmental issue that people power could win. Local CND had evaporated, its activists burnt out now the Cold War was nearly over. I had quietly let my Labour Party subscription lapse after 44 years without resigning, and sent it instead to the Green Party, the only party opposed to nuclear weapons. It eased my anger at Kinnock's turnaround, though I kept Maureen's membership up.
I can now reveal, for the first time, that I had been in confidential negotiation with a Green Party solicitor and a sympathetic barrister who had agreed to sue the Government and British Rail pro bono on my behalf as a private citizen. It was kept secret even from my Nuclear Trains friends, to avoid a premature news scoop. I was gathering evidence, guarded under the Official Secrets Act. The Fire Brigades Union donated because the emergency services had been given no information about the cargo. A railway enthusiast bought old timetables at a sale of British Rail memorabilia, which let activists plot the trains. With a wealthy backer I was prepared to devote the rest of my life to a lone citizen's action against the state, but it would be a year or two in preparation. The AGM planned a midnight torchlight procession, and I was embarrassed to have to excuse myself from the convening point because of a prior commitment, which did not go down well.
On 6th July I went to a staff party at my old school, seven years after my retirement. The staff looked young enough to be pupils, and it was sad to remember those who had died. Afterwards I went to Moseley and joined the procession, and we waited two cold hours past midnight for the train. The earth trembled, hairs rose on the back of my neck, we shouted, and it passed. Everyone left was less than half my age and not ready for bed.
The next Friday I attended the memorial service for Professor John Ferguson in a packed Birmingham Cathedral. His counsel and knowledge of Peace matters were formidable, and his loss was a dreadful blow. I asked his wife Elnora to take his place as Chair, and she accepted. A fortnight later we attended a British Soviet Friendship Society reunion to plan hospitality for Nicolai, our Leningrad guide.
The camera and the tower
Two days later, on a Sunday afternoon, I noticed activity in the lower part of the Croft and, peeping through the vegetation, saw two people behind a camera on a tripod pointing at me. A ginger-haired youth of nineteen or twenty was walking down the road to join them, the Stanton grandson. I told him I had no objection to his walking past, but that I hoped he would ignore what was going on between his father, grandfather and me, and learn from it. "I have learnt a lot already," he said. Ten minutes later I walked down to the tripod and said they were welcome to walk through and even chat. Paul Terry Stanton sneered, "Oh thank you sir for giving us your permission to use a public right of way." When I told him he was abusing that right, he gave a mock salute and a mock-army "Yes sir." I walked back. "I better do as you say," he called, "or you will smash my camera."
It took two years to dawn on me that this was meant as a pose, evidence-gathering for court and deliberate intimidation. The photographs produced in court were not taken that day, but photographs taken from the sub-station, side by side with others, would give me a great deal of trouble.
The following Sunday, Maureen's Welsh cousins brought Frank and Nancy, elderly cousins on their last visit from a Florida condominium. It was a beautiful day, with tables and chairs outside and the patio window open. Ian brought our grandsons Chris and Andrew, who was looking forward to his seventh birthday. I was puzzled by metallic "clunk clicks". Frank pointed at the trees: "That is an ugly pig of a thing, spoils your whole garden, you should have it out." Then he asked, "Who is that bloke stuck up there taking photographs of us?" We were astonished to see Bernard, in profile above the knees against the sky, aiming a camera at us, with PT Stanton beside him with another. The boys ran to us. Ian went to the hedge and said, "If you don't stop terrorising my children immediately, make sure you never meet me in the street on a dark night." I took the cordless phone to the hedge and told them to pack it in, but they strutted about pointing and clicking from a platform just below the treetops, with a woman's voice, presumably Frieda's, intervening throughout. I rang 999, describing the situation aloud so they could hear, because their threatening position made their intentions unpredictable.
The police arrived in about fifteen minutes. One showed his dog and withdrew. Two officers asked the Stantons to come down. PTS sneered, "If you had done your job properly we wouldn't need to be up here." The officers withdrew to my garage furious and told me, "We are watching that bastard carefully and the moment he comes half an inch over on your side we'll take him." Bernard, eighty-one and kept going by hate and adrenaline, obliged by letting me photograph him while he photographed me. Eventually he climbed down, and his son followed. The police said the tower was not a police concern.
Frieda Stanton was seventy-nine, a very good vegetarian cook, and married to Bernard for fifty years. Her sons were Paul Terry, divorced, at the top of our croft, Julian, married to Helen, in Bournville, and Barrie in Solihull. They espoused "progressive" causes, but their only membership was the Vegetarian Society. We had met at the post-box some months earlier, and I noticed her grey pallor and transparent skin, which I put down to under-nourishment. We did not speak, and I was glad, since I would confront the Stantons only when both were present, not her alone. I felt only irritation that three years earlier she had invited Maureen into her home and given her a false promise that they would do something about the fires and the trees. Maureen believed her. I told her at the time it was a con-trick.
Our American cousins left, having taken many photographs and unconvinced that such scenes were not typical of urban England. Later I looked over the beech hedge from a stepladder and saw the poles of a steel scaffolding tower and the underside of a platform with a ladder secured to it. We sat on the patio until dusk. Just after Maureen went in, a silhouette rose above the trees with an arm raised holding a pole-like object. I hurled myself to the ground and shrieked "Get down". It vanished, Maureen came back and reprimanded me for a false alarm, and Ian, when called, did not favour phoning the police. My non-violence would mean the end of my campaign, I argued, and Stanton the mugger would have won. We reminded ourselves that we had pledged to take whatever came.
Next morning I phoned the Trust, and the legal secretary visited, agreed that the tower infringed the covenants and promised to have it removed. The rest of August passed uneventfully, but I was always alarmed by a metallic clank. In seventeen years the apprehension has never gone away, as those who lived through the Blitz still hear the throb of bombers. Ian and the children lived two hundred yards up on the opposite side, and rang if they heard a bang. We could only see the tops of four poles, but their presence was felt, which was the reason for the tower. I phoned the solicitor who had promised to remove the trees within a week. He took away the BVT scheme of management and guidelines and phoned and wrote to the Trust, as did I. Clive Wilkinson pressed as a Trustee. On 9th September a letter from the solicitor told me I had no right to "lop" the trees until we had established nuisance, and to desist. I was upset by "lop" instead of "maintenance", and I had made clear I had finished cutting for 1989. My confidence began to wobble. At Andrew's seventh birthday party at a sports centre I pressed my friend on the illegal tower.
Frieda's death
The next day, Sunday 10th September, Andrew's actual birthday, we walked round the block to give him his present. A line of parked cars stood outside the Stanton house. "They are cooking up something devilish against us," I said. "Or he has died," said Maureen. "No such luck," I said. At 2 am the next morning we left for Zurich. We walked the long way round the block that night, and all was peaceful.
After a day's coach journey through Switzerland we spent nights in the Tyrol, then the Italian lakes, with a day trip to Venice. When we got home on the 18th there was a letter from the Trust, sent a week earlier, saying the Stantons had been ordered to dismantle the tower within a week. The tower was still there. The answering machine had recorded thirty-six calls, its maximum, all for me.
That week I attended the Green Party Conference in Wolverhampton, handing out peace cards, and a "Just Defence" meeting sponsored by the Bishop of Dudley. At the weekend we met Nicolai at the British Soviet Friendship social, and on 12th October he stayed with us for four days, along with Leo, Eva's ex-husband, who was born in Leningrad and had not been back since surviving the siege in 1943. I took Nicolai to talk to the sixth form at Hillcrest Comprehensive, a delight. A different school visit the week before had been used by anti-Soviet demonstrators, and Nicolai was devastated. There was also a Nuclear Trains public meeting with trade union speakers, where I helped a panicking trainee reporter turn each speech into three accurate sentences and phone in her story. The next evening a retired Air Commodore from Generals Against Nuclear Arms, a technical adviser at the Helsinki Accords, spoke at Woodbrooke. He put us on the spot over our ignorance of the strategic anti-nuclear case, and argued that Trident was of political, not military, value.
Maureen kept up her own life: reading with pupils at our grandsons' school twice a week, her voluntary work for the Birmingham Health Authority, and the Humanist Society. At their meeting on Wednesday 27th September she brought back astonishing news. Frieda Stanton had died on 8th September of a clot in the lung from deep vein thrombosis, following the dropping of a full bottle of Ribena on her foot. A Humanist had conducted her non-religious funeral. When she asked Bernard about the tower, he had said, "That is another story", so the hedge dispute never emerged at the funeral, and the family laid no blame. We were the ones breaking the news locally, three weeks late, and the Trust did not know. We were appalled that Frieda had been dead two days when we walked past the house, and I was sorry for my jocular remark. But I had been sure that gathering was a meeting to punish us.
The next day the solicitor asked for £200 up front to instruct Counsel and prepare a writ. I sent the cheque and the news of the death. He advised waiting a month in case Bernard sold up. I knew Frieda's death would only unhinge the family, and with the tower in place it was an intimidating threat I could not tolerate. Then Maureen received a handwritten letter from PT Stanton, accusing me of contributing to his mother's death "from my vindictive and savage attacks". I slung it in the bin, but Maureen said it proved the writer was unhinged. We photocopied it and drove to the solicitors, and the libel was added to the instructions for Counsel.
On 20th October my solicitor sent me Counsel's dismal opinion. In three and a half pages it devastated my morale. Injunctions might be sought against the Stantons to stop assault, but I had broken condition three of the BVT covenants by lopping timber trees without permission, and reducing their height was a trespass with no defence. I could not sue the Stantons to force them to remove the tower. BVT could, but was not obliged to. I was at risk of private prosecution. The letter was libellous, but the cost of a defamation action would not be worthwhile. I did not read the solicitor's brief to Counsel for another three years, and when I did it made me angry, as Counsel said I had taken the law into my own hands. I could not see how they reached condition three without condition one, which made a hedge along the boundary a party hedge. The solicitor had photographed what any normal person would call a hedge, a high one, but a hedge.
I plotted ways to grapple the tower with ropes and haul it down. In mid-November I remembered Mr Thomson's early suggestion of digging a ditch alongside the trees and pushing them over onto Stanton land. I wrote to the solicitor in desperation and was asked for another £80 and advised to await the sale of the property. I decided my expensive barrister and a solicitor who had not grasped the situation were best forgotten as a learning experience.
The Berlin Wall was breached on 9th November, and the Cold War was at an end, an event of mind-boggling proportions that Francis Fukuyama called the end of history. It is too big for this chapter, but it was the reason I had dedicated my retirement to the Peace Movement for seven years. On 25th November my sister Connie and her husband Cyril held a combined 70th birthday and 35th wedding anniversary party. Writing seventeen years on, both have died, and I shall write about them later.
As Christmas 1989 approached, people suggested decorating the tower with a skull and crossbones, coloured balloons or blown-up condoms. The season came and went. We were almost happy, and the Stantons decidedly not, in their first Christmas without their matriarch. If her death was due to stress, as her eldest son alleged, they could only blame themselves, yet who would begrudge them the gratification of the tower? I was getting used to it, though different ways of demolishing it filled my boring moments, and the minutes before I slept. At midnight on 31st January a new decade began. We had just returned from seeing in the New Year at Ian and Rose's, and I looked out at its menacing, irritating presence. The tower was still there.