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	Home The Times September 2010 - 1 The Times September 2010 - 2 Chris Mullin Daily Mail Article Boris Johnson interview 1998 The Jones Family Michael Chronology Hedgeman - The Book The Berlin Wall Into the Roaring Nineties 1991 Stanton Turns Really Nasty Annus Horribilis The End Of The Annus But Not The Horribilis The Judgement The Hand Of Peace Fame The Big One No Carte Blanche Come On Stanton Pay Up April Fool Niniteen Ninety Seven A Little Help From The Lord	FAME Friday, 7th October 1994. Radio WM rang at six in the morning: they wanted me live on the seven o'clock news. At that hour the outside broadcast van is ten minutes from Pebble Mill. Leave it much later and the journey takes half an hour through the worst traffic bottleneck in Britain. When it pulled up at the bottom of our croft, I wasn't surprised to see the radio mast extended to its full height. Our corner of Bournville is a reception black spot. Bournville Village Trust hates aerials, so we have none, and even twelve years on we can't get the WM digital signal. We were, however, the first spot in the country to let the cable company dig up the pavements and lay fibre optics. Walk two hundred yards up our steepish croft and reception returns to normal, without an ugly contraption in sight. BBC Radio suffers from what I call the Perfection Syndrome. They refused to interview me by phone, because being at the scene adds atmosphere, even on radio. It was the first of many broadcasts from that spot outside my house. Other BBC regions soon wanted me too, but they insisted on a quality line from Pebble Mill rather than the phone in my hall. There is no peace for the wicked. I had barely retreated indoors, dying for a cup of tea, when Central TV rang to say they'd be with us in a couple of minutes. This was the only time in all my media days that I felt true panic. "Butterflies" would be a severe understatement. Millions would watch, and I would be judged by it. Maureen and I had been beamed to millions from the Esther Rantzen show, but so had the Stantons, and the pigs-ear of their ill-tempered performance made it easy for us. Now my mind went blank. I told myself I could conduct a spirited defence in the High Court without counsel, and that nobody knew the facts of Stanton v Jones better than I did. Then panic again: would the interviewer wreck me? Would he accuse me of shortening the life of a poor old man, put up to it by the Stantons' thespian talents? The cameraman went to work, shooting our living room and the glorious garden view, then contrasting it with the gloom and closeness of the hedge. The reporter was a cigar-smoking old pro who loved his job and the people he worked with. He sensed my tension and called a halt. He put down his cigar, which was mostly never lit, took both my hands and said: "Relax. Let your arms go limp. There's no hurry. I'll ask you one or two questions, and you point out what you're talking about." I did the interview perfectly, and so confidently that the first take was accepted. It always was. I did so many interviews with just one take that I can't count them. By the time BBC Midlands Today arrived I was relaxed and practised. They cared less about the subject (me, the Stantons and the hedge) than about technical perfection, which they pursued with infinite care. They shot the hedge and me from every range and angle. They didn't much mind whether they portrayed my cause accurately, so long as it was brief, but if my performance was bad they would make sure the technical job of showing it was excellent. From that day I appreciated broadcast quality, and you really can tell the difference between ITV and BBC. I also learned a vital lesson: win the sympathy not only of the interviewer but of the technicians. Maureen and I had done that on the Esther show without trying, which is why the technician blokes cheered us as we left the studio. Then they went away. I was tired and wanted breakfast, and I still hadn't answered yesterday's calls. The answerphone was full, so I emptied it to make room for the new flood. Breakfast? You must be joking. The professionals knew perfectly well that reaching me by phone was hopeless, so they simply turned up. The Birmingham Evening Mail arrived in the person of Suzanne Virdee. She would become very important to me, though she didn't know it then. She is a brilliant girl and a complete professional, to whom inaccuracy for the sake of a headline is anathema. She saw the years ahead this story would run and gave me her private number. In return I gave her copies of legal documents, details and advance warning for all the years to come. The photographer, Roly, took thousands of click-zips of me over the years. The front-page main headline appeared later that day. I had been too busy to collect my papers from the newsagent, who had delivered the Guardian earlier and put a Daily Telegraph aside for me. Friends and family had seen Kathy Mark's exclusive, the Birmingham Post's headline and the front-page pictures, and heard me on the seven o'clock news. They had to wait their turn to ring with congratulations. Then the Daily Mail rang asking if I'd be in at two, and the Times immediately after. It was only eleven. I was hungry and exhausted after five hours of an experience completely unlike yesterday's High Court drama, this one demanding exacting personal concentration. I popped up to the newsagent to see what had appeared. Astonishingly, there was nothing in depth, though the Telegraph was a day ahead with its exclusive and followed it up on Saturday and Sunday. It didn't matter. The story was made for the weekend press, and my way of releasing it had squeezed the best out of the media. Gulping a coffee, I realised that everything I'd been discussing all morning had nothing to do with the law. Every question and answer was about this appalling neighbour feud. The calls went on and I began to go silly. The answerphone took the strain. Then a London taxi arrived and the driver was told to wait. Maureen spotted the non-stop London-to-Birmingham bloke hovering outside and fed him coffee and snacks. Luke Harding of the Daily Mail (later the Guardian's leading overseas correspondent) and Dominic Kennedy of The Times had shared the fare. They sat on our settee, I sat opposite, and they couldn't see the sky. Both jumped up, rushed to the window and cried: "So that's the hedge!" By now I was giddy with tiredness, but Maureen brought us some of what their taxi-man was shovelling down. They all needed the loo at once and came back to ravage the food. I entertained them with crabby old Stanton spraying his hose over the hedge for days on end, Maureen picking raspberries under an umbrella, and the water company arriving to stop it. He would defend his property against my secateurs, but not to the extent of having his water turned off. It only needed a phone call to Severn Trent. Then there was the time he dislodged me from my ladder by thrusting an iron conduit through the rung next to my goolies. The policemen had roared at that one, and now it was the reporters' turn. My silly mood was infectious. What about being up among the birds at the crack of dawn to saw down a five-foot spike of hedge? They roared. Then Luke Harding giggled: "What colour is your dressing gown?" The idea that I'd climb to those heights in a dressing gown, with a saw, was ridiculous. How long does it take to slip into gardening clothes? I don't own a dressing gown. With the Leylandii at that height we have complete privacy, so I get up, make the tea, take it to Maureen starkers, then shower and dress. True, on the dawn raids on the hedge I skipped those latter processes in my urge to get out and make progress before the Stantons came out screaming. Luke sensed the intrusion into my married privacy that would become his centrepiece. He charged into the other room. "Mrs Jones, Mrs Jones, what colour is your husband's dressing gown?" Maureen, sensing she might expose her husband's primitive nature to the tabloid press, answered instantly: "Blue." That is how six million people read it next day, and how false facts become history. Dominic Kennedy, in The Times, reported more legalistically and horticulturally. We were soon to be awarded second prize in the Bournville Garden Competition, judged in mid-summer, having held first place the year before. We sadly relinquished the cup. Non-gardeners should know that a garden goes through phases, and the only fair way to judge it is every fortnight through the year. Sometimes a single plant at a single moment is its owner's pride. On my walks I love a pink standard rose in high summer, or an orange climber entwined with a dark blue clematis when they happen to flower together. In spring there's an aubrietia tumbling over a south-facing wall, three weeks ahead of its north-facing cousins. As a schoolboy I used to alter my route home just to stand opposite one, because the blue was more vibrant than any I've seen since. I can't grow mildew-free asters, Michaelmas daisies included, which is a sorrow because I adore the blues and purples. No part of my garden gets all-day sun, thanks to the trees. But there's a wild one that seeds itself round our locality, mildew-free. The fastidious gardening elite weed it out, and I admit it's a wishy-washy blue. But as a perennial, en masse, it's striking, especially in the first week of October. My first consideration in designing the garden was the creation of views, despite the loony Leylandii constrictions imposed by barmy neighbours on my east and south. Views are not vistas. As you walk down the croft your eye is drawn to our wrought iron gate set in an ivy-clad arch. I planted a small golden yew, Taxus baccata 'Standishii', fifteen yards inside the garden, exactly in line with the approaching beholder. I also had one more advantage on my way to fame: the garden-loving photographer who made the whole front page of the Daily Telegraph Weekend Garden Supplement. My deliberately contrived perspective was a path winding from the left of the patio window, with light blue daisies with lemon centres spilling either side. He enhanced it into a royal garden winding off into the misty distance. It was a sight for sore eyes. None of this was judged at the summer prize-giving, nor was it what Lord Justice Butler-Sloss praised two days earlier, when she remarked: "Oh, he has a bee-yoo-tiful garden." We were treated to a weekend feast of headlines, court reports and gardening articles, and above all the introduction of the word "Leylandii" into the common language. There were pictures of the hedge from the Jones side, of Maureen and me in our garden, of me outside court, and of the surly old man Stanton. There was nothing of his son, or of their side of the hedge. My disagreeable neighbours had vanished and repelled all reporters. Monday's post was huge. The Loire Valley coach party, to whom we'd said goodbye only a week before, were generous. We had known each other for five days, by first names only. The couple who sat behind us apologised for bearing the name Stanton but were as delighted as the rest. We read the letters, displayed the cards and then there was nothing. The holiday, and probably the most exciting week most of us would ever have, were over. Exhilarated? Yes. Still excited? Yes. Happy? Yes. But what of the impact on the neighbourhood? John Clay, our dear neighbour from two doors away, took early retirement and called in two or three times a week with his tiny Jack Russell, Holly. A keen member of the Men's section of the local Bowling Club (in those days gender segregation was complete, and twelve years on it is still rigorous), he told me Stanton v Jones was almost the sole topic of conversation, particularly since the Esther show. If they gossiped now, they'd have five or six more years of it. Bournville is a vibrant village for a minority. At any time, I'd guess, the vast majority scarcely know the neighbours on either side. The bowling club is elitist and exclusive, whatever its eighty members say. There is a tennis club, a cricket club, scouts, guides, and a hall for events, but no pubs: none allowed on Cadbury land. The URC church is central, the C of E, Methodists and Quakers on the periphery. Our window cleaners drank in the pubs just outside the area, and told me I was known there as the "Hedgeman". Paul Terry, old man Stanton's son, lived at the top of Tillyard Croft. He swept down in one of his Jaguars, casting a deprecating eye on what lay beneath him. Little love was lost between him and his left-hand neighbour, and tree trouble lay ahead there too. His right-hand neighbour was a Mr Twist, a real Stanton buddy and no dispassionate observer. What I'd heard of him was not good gossip (nothing sexual or violent) but pub talk, and I told my informant not to tell me. Twist told Pete Spybie, the neighbour who knows everything that goes on, that the Stantons had won the appeal. So many will believe anything, particularly the tabloids. Nearer still were Mr and Mrs Williams, to the south, growing a Leylandii hedge as objectionable as themselves. I was reserving action until we'd rid ourselves of the Stanton nuisance, since it was impossible to fight on two fronts; that was Hitler's downfall. Mrs White, the old man's next-door-but-one neighbour, supported him too. That anyone disliked me hurt Maureen, but I enjoy being hated by pathetic characters unable to recognise truth, and the whole media was on our side, speaking for their countless millions. Around this time I joined C.A.S.I.A., the Campaign for Independent Adjudication of Solicitors, sending a £5 subscription and a £5 donation. I was told I couldn't donate, so I signed Maureen up too. It was an act of principle; the money was only for the organisation's support, and I had no intention of going to meetings. By now my experience had taught me that, however corrupt, vile or incompetent a solicitor might be, his colleagues would back him, with one exception. If he was convicted in a court of law he was shunned as a leper. The Law Society had no intention of imposing ethical discipline, and its own governance was wanting, if not legally then morally. The media were full of anecdotes about misdeeds, and in my own good time I'd add mine, though the press had to be careful lest a writ landed on the presenter's breakfast table. The judiciary seemed to have an innate sympathy for the closed collegiate of the law. Ask any talk show host: solicitors' letters are their most common mail, and I've had my share of insidious, bullying ones. Ask any solicitor, and an honest one will tell you the exertion of power is the most satisfying part of the job. We were at the fag end of four tired, hated Tory governments. The last had been elected by mistake, for no one admitted voting for it, and it staggered on, split and unloved, with discredited ministers, some of whom had politically assassinated their own leader. In sharp contrast, Labour under a brilliant new leader, Tony Blair, strained at the leash to seize the fruits of office. It was virgin territory for single-issue politics, and C.A.S.I.A. thrived for a while. The media were always happy to have a go at lawyers. But the organisation was signally bad at exploiting its chances. Reluctantly I joined a demonstration in Victoria Square, Birmingham. It was really a lot of private demonstrations against miscarriages of justice caused by people's own lawyers. Some made my heart bleed, with family members serving life sentences, and they needed TV documentaries, not placards. Most cases were less serious. A reporter recognised me and I explained that my solicitor was serving me well at the moment, but that there would be complaints about my earlier representation. The media gave it the most cursory attention on the local news. I kept up my membership for years, and the organisation achieved worthwhile reforms, particularly once Geoff Hoon became Solicitor General. Perhaps its very existence curbed the Law Society's tolerance of its members' worst excesses, and the Lord Chancellor's Department did enact tighter rules. It was sad when leading members quarrelled so badly that it went to court. Registration as a limited company restricted their freedom of manoeuvre, and meetings multiplied while a tiny membership dwindled. I was phoned by both sides and sent copious bitter papers, but I was too busy with my own affairs to travel to any of them. Then came news of the sudden death of a leading contender, and I remember no further communication. C.A.S.I.A. now has an excellent website. Ray Burford scarcely needed pushing, but I pushed. He phoned the opposition and got some feedback, though how much I can't say; no doubt it's in his files, since those calls went on his expense sheet. We expected to win now. The Stantons would never agree a settlement, but I urged Ray to claim my costs of the appeal, which had been awarded. He failed. Eventually we got a date for the remainder of the trial, which had begun two years before, directly after the preliminary judgement: I had the right to reduce the height of the hedge. The whole two years had been eaten up by the Appeal listing. Now it was the end of January, and at the end of February we called on John Wetherell, our tree expert, for a supplement to his court report. His new photographs showed six years of growth since I first lopped five feet off the top to produce those lurid pictures. A year later I'd sawn off another four feet. Since then the trees had burgeoned back to the original height. In March the listing clerk lost track of Recorder Woltan, which might have meant another judge. I gave the media notice the moment I got a date, and again when it was cancelled; there was always a bit of instruction on Leylandii and bullying neighbours in my news releases. By mid-April the Recorder was found and the 13th and 14th of July were listed. By June, the court had changed it to the 25th and 26th of September. Meanwhile Stanton didn't waste time. He wanted to dig deeper in his hole, and spend more money, and he took us to court on a tortuous diversion. Was it meant to frighten or punish me, to weaken me financially or in negotiation? Or was it just the old man's irrepressible urge to keep digging? Or was Freda's ghostly maternal voice still nagging her son from beyond the grave? A notice came of an application to re-re-re-amend the particulars of claim. Now they wanted "aggravated" and "exemplary" damages: a fine so stiff I would never attack the trees again, plus compensation for the old man's wounded emotions. It was ill-thought-through legal advice, as the judgement later said. The estimated hearing time was ten minutes, which made anyone with a scrap of commonsense wonder what planet the perpetrators were on. I arrived at court with stacks of time to spare. The Birmingham County Court had at last left its musty, oak-panelled Victorian building for new premises converted from Lewis's. My mother had taken me there at three years old to see Father Christmas. Since the turn of the century, through two world wars, Midland families came to Lewis's on the tram, because there was no need to shop anywhere else. The imposing architecture remains, washed and clean, but the interior has been gutted and is white, light and modern, with offices round the edge to catch the windows. I sat on a bench near the court door. Nobody went in or out. I rechecked the summons. It was nearly time and Ray Burford hadn't arrived. Then I saw Mr P., the fresh-faced Stanton barrister, approach the door without hesitation. "My solicitor hasn't arrived," I said, "so I'll oppose you myself." The court was really just an office. A plain-suited judge sat submerged behind his desk, typing on his laptop. An out-of-breath Ray burst in, and we were told to sit on any of the few chairs. The barrister introduced us all, said little, and addressed the judge as "Sir". Ray said little too, since his objection was already in writing. The judge said he had no alternative but to give judgement for the plaintiff, but he allowed us costs. These covered Ray's appearance and the reconstruction of my three-year-old defence, this time by professional counsel. Costs awarded against a judgement are unusual. Here it was because the claim was an earlier omission, and the barrister accepted this without opposition. I was appalled. Four years after the original charges, resting on six-year-old evidence, the claimant was allowed another bullying bite of the cherry. It wasn't an omission, it was second thoughts. My brief, clever but amateurish defence, hammered out five years earlier from legal advice gathered here and there, had stood the test of time. Now it would be redrafted by top counsel in light of the plaintiff's decline over his painful, losing years. Our barrister wanted the trial to start afresh. Ray didn't, and I agreed. We desperately needed the same judge, whose judgement the Court of Appeal had backed in glowing terms and even slightly enhanced in my favour. We all had the transcripts, particularly of the more-than-half-a-day's trial, two years earlier, devoted only to the Stanton witnesses. John Wetherell's addendum presented robust growth, especially in the hideous view of the hedge from my side that the Stantons had taken six years ago to get the case into court. It was a horrific picture then, but much of my skilled work, and the natural regrowth since, had changed it. He had also taken samples of fungal growth from a stump, in case it signalled disease. The laboratory found it benign, and we held the evidence back for any challenge in court. Had Ray not turned up, I might have been rude to my own disadvantage. The court system was being trivialised by a nasty neighbour dispute. It was vexatious litigation exploited by lawyers, and it needed a courageous judge to say so. Then, out of the blue, came another tricky little challenge that would assume far greater importance. Our opponents wrote asking to see all our correspondence with Bournville Village Trust. My first solicitor, whom I'd sacked, had produced a couple of letters, and when I represented myself I exhibited more. Now Stanton was exercising his legal right to the rest, and there were precedents for such disclosure. My gut feeling was "let him have them", since I couldn't see what he'd gain. Then a stronger feeling grew that he should be refused. The Stantons disliked the Trust, as residents did. Later I learned it was a pathological hate, for they believed the Trust had conspired with me. There had been much early resistance to the development of Tillyard Croft, and it hardened into nasty prejudice. We were the first residents, twenty-five years earlier, and endured patronising hostility. Its residue was the only, but still powerful, local support the Stantons had, passed on a little as the oldies died, went into care and sold to younger families. For our first ten years we kept open house. Trust officers popped in for coffee (and, defying the George Cadbury tradition, often something stronger) and openly criticised their own trustees for giving way to existing residents' capricious demands. One described the old man as a crook. What I hadn't realised was that the succeeding generation of officers hated him even more, because he was surly, ill-mannered and rude, and his son inherited these attributes. However, all BVT's correspondence was careful and neutral. So we refused, and told the Trust of our decision. Ray had a phone call and a letter: the secretary said that if a court ordered him, he'd have to comply. In any case, why couldn't we simply give them the letters I already had? Then we threw an unintentional spanner in the works. Philip Kremen couldn't take the case on that late September date. A year earlier we had accepted his colleague in chambers for the Court of Appeal. Since then too much had happened, and both the legal and arboricultural issues were so complex that counsel and expert were geared up and I was not. My knowledge as the participant was so precise and detailed that it would clutter things. Our tree man suggested a schedule of my work, which I'd support in the witness box. Apparently that was exactly what the opposition wanted. But we had to have our brilliant barrister, who desperately wanted to finish his challenging case and had mastered the latest research on tree growth. John Wetherell said he'd been on a course with the Stanton expert where it was expounded. So we beseeched our opponents to seek another date from the court, giving the reason as Yom Kippur. They graciously accepted, and were actually pleased, since they wanted to go back to court yet again. We heard later that the judge was displeased. Towards the end of October he called a tripartite meeting between himself and the two solicitors, to fix a final, irrevocable date: the 29th and 30th of November. Ray rang to say this was most unusual; he had never heard of it. He was obviously chuffed. I was angry to be excluded from something of such vital concern. Now let me go back fourteen months. Abe Lincoln, the Stantons' solicitor, was either not a straight sort of guy or totally incompetent. He should have lost his licence, or at least been suspended or severely reprimanded, for failing to produce that vital document in the Appeal Court. Nothing happened. After the case was over, the Law Society told me I should take him to court. We did not know that the Stanton property was, or had been, conveyed to the three sons. If Abe's own firm had done it, that was very serious, and the court should have been told. The trial would have had to be stopped, for the action was in the old man's name as owner. I never learned the date of the tripartite meeting, but Ray told me the Recorder asked whether there was anything else he ought to know. He wasn't told about the property transfer, or about the intention to go back to court on disclosure. I hope Ray was unaware and there was no collusion. Go back to court they did, on the 8th of November. I was completely in the dark, and only a couple of years later did the full picture emerge. Then I was furious that nobody had told the small court or the trial judge. Maureen came with Ray and me to Lewises, with only the barrister representing the Stantons. Yet another judge decided we must disclose all the BVT correspondence, and awarded costs against us. He was kind, and when he accidentally met Maureen afterwards he was courteous and sympathetic about the strain we were under. One side had to win and one to lose, he explained, and the precedents were stacked against us. Ray lodged an appeal at once, to be heard by the trial judge before the final resumption, now three weeks away. The Recorder was part-time and his diary was full. Only two days had been set aside for the trial, so we faced the embarrassment of starting with the appeal. Hence the judge's initial fury at not being told, and at the lack of communication between the court system, the solicitors and himself. Recorder Woltan had ordered that the trial would not start afresh but continue where it left off two years before. We all had the transcript, which ended with the examination of the Stanton tree expert, the end of the plaintiff's case. Our tactical and psychological advantage was supreme. Now Philip Kremen could get to work on him in cross-examination. My job was to assemble the BVT letters received over twenty-five years and photocopy them five times, numbered, with an index describing each. About seventy of them. It took a lot of time. Most were inconsequential, out of date and private but not embarrassing: approval of a greenhouse, permission for a lean-to conservatory, inspection of foundations, disapproval of residents burning garden rubbish, congratulations on getting conclusive action against Stanton from Environmental Health. Hardly the stuff the plaintiff needed disclosed before a court, and one reason I'd wanted to refuse. To swear I had included everything, I had to add the chunk about winning the first-prize gardening cup, the judges' visits and the presentation details, repeated for this year's second prize. I kept the original file and a copy, and took the other four copies to Ray, for himself, for the court, for the opposition should they win the appeal, and for our counsel. Boy, did he make use of them! I also took along the enlarged photograph, about two feet by one and a half, that the Esther technicians gave me at the end of the show. Ian had taken it two years before from the garage roof. I was looking at the camera, ten feet from the end of the hedge at the point where the ground sloped and the treetops reached their maximum height above it. My bald head contrasted sharply with the dark green foliage, with a mountain of hedge above me, which had since grown another seven feet. At the start of the show the TV camera had been on me, then slowly moved from the top of my head to the top of the hedge, giving viewers the actual scene. The audience gasped as the camera climbed higher and higher, and sharply introduced what it was all about. Seven million people saw it, though probably not the judge or the legal teams. It is now on my website. The exhibit was borrowed for a TV show and never returned. In my next chapter I will call it simply "The Picture".