I only remember the name of one of the men on the other side of Mosley. Captain Ralph Morrison, the BUF’s quartermaster. I knew him better as the Galloping Major.
I glanced back to where Charteris was sitting. He caught my eye but sat there as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Then gave a quick wink.
Mosley launched into a long speech about the parliamentary system having failed us. Mosley wasn’t a natural orator — I’d heard he practised in front of the mirror and had taken lessons in voice production. His voice was shrill. He yelled at us as if he was at a mass rally of thousands instead of in a small room with forty people. It was exhausting.
At the end there were cups of tea, but somebody — Joyce, I think — produced a couple of bottles of whisky so we all toasted Mosley and the party out of chipped cups. Mosley went round speaking to each of us in turn. Joyce and Knowles came over to me.
‘Are you in work?’ Knowles said.
I nodded.
‘You’re a big lad,’ Joyce said. ‘Can you look after yourself?’
‘So far,’ I said.
Knowles gestured to a couple of the big men at the door.
‘We’re always looking for fit fellows to join our leader’s praetorian guard. Are you interested?’
‘In theory,’ I said. ‘But I like to work my brain too.’
Both men looked at me but I held their look.
‘Do you?’ Joyce finally said. ‘Do you indeed?’
‘What’s your name?’ Knowles said, taking out a small pad with a pencil sticking out of one end.
‘Victor Tempest.’
‘OK. Well, we’d definitely like you to attend the Olympia meeting on the seventh of June. We’ll be in touch.’
Just then Oswald Mosley joined us. I didn’t know what the form was so I stood to attention. He appraised me for a moment.
‘Do you box?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He suddenly feinted a left jab at my head. I swayed out of the way and automatically got my fists up and shifted my feet. He smiled and opened his fist to give me a pat on the arm.
‘Quick reflexes.’
‘He says he’s got a brain too, sir,’ Joyce said drily. ‘Name is Victor Tempest.’
‘Mind and body — that’s good. That’s what we should all aim for. Where are you from, Tempest?’
‘I was born and bred in Haywards Heath, sir, but the family is from Blackburn.’
‘A fellow northerner,’ Mosley said in his upper-class drawl. ‘My family is from Manchester — Rolleston’s our home. Got to protect our cotton.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What did you father do?’
‘He was a weaver, sir, but he died in the war. I never knew him.’
I was aware that during this conversation both Joyce and Knowles were staring at me intently, weighing me up.
‘A lot of good men died far too young.’ He looked from Knowles to Joyce then back at me. ‘We could do with a good man in the north-west. A man with a brain.’
‘He’s in work,’ Knowles said.
‘Quick advancement for the right people in the BUF,’ Mosley said, his eyes still fixed on me. ‘I promote on merit. What’s your job?’
I lowered my voice. Unless Charteris had blabbed, nobody in the branch knew Simpson, Ridge and I were policemen.
‘I’m a bobby, sir. A constable.’
Mosley tilted his head to one side.
‘Are you? Are you? Good man — I already know then that you stand for law and order — as do we.’
He exchanged glances with Joyce and Knowles again.
‘Stay where you are for now but let’s talk again after Olympia. That rally will be the making of us. Eric, make a note.’
‘Already done, sir.’
And that was it. I left that meeting thinking this day could mark the start of a new life in uncharted territories for me — 10th May 1934. The same day the first Brighton Trunk Murder was committed, though nobody knew it then.
THIRTY-FOUR
Victor Tempest exercise book two cont.
Over the next few weeks I talked with Charlie and Philip about what I should do. I had a nice little number in Brighton. Did I want to chuck it in for the uncertainties of the northern wilderness? I was keen to get on, but Charlie pointed out that in the police that didn’t have to mean promotion. Getting on financially, being able to afford the good things in life, was more important.
I thought I saw Eric Knowles in Brighton once, going into the Grand. I wondered about having a talk with him but I wasn’t sure it was him, I didn’t know what to say and I was a bit discombobulated after an unexpected sexual encounter underneath the West Pier.
The thing was, I enjoyed my time in Brighton. The girls were easy, for one thing. I decided to put a career with the BUF out of my mind until the Olympia rally.
The days before, the newspapers were full of it, especially the Daily Mail. On 6th June, though nobody knew this at the time either, the trunk containing the torso of the second murder victim was deposited at Brighton station left luggage office. The next day Philip Simpson and I took an early train up to London. Charlie Ridge couldn’t make it — he’d suddenly been given a double shift. We were in our civvies, our Blackshirt uniforms in bags. We intended to change at Olympia. A couple of dozen from Brighton were going up on a later train.
That Olympia meeting is now famous. This vast conference hall with about 12,000 people in the audience. A lot of society people and nobs. About 2,000 of us had been bussed in from all over the country. There were also around a thousand people out to disrupt the meeting.
Blackshirts around the auditorium were chanting: ‘Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? M-o-s-l-e-y. . MOSLEY!’ It was several years before the opposition came up with a counter chant: ‘Hitler and Mosley, what are they for? Thuggery, buggery, hunger and war!’
When Mosley came on, there was an enormous roar and a discernible amount of booing. He yelled his speech without notes, head thrust forward, fists on hips. I didn’t really catch a word of it. Reading about it in the Mail the next day, he said once in power he would pass a bill to enable the prime minister and a small cabinet of five to bypass parliament to make laws. He would also abolish other political parties.
Whilst he was saying all this, hecklers were being ejected. The stewards were forceful. I was stationed with Simpson at one of the upper exits on to the foyer. I helped drag some of the interrupters out but I’d been clearly instructed not to leave my post.
However, I didn’t like what I was seeing once the interrupters were outside the auditorium. Some were hurled down the stairs. Others had their heads banged repeatedly against the stone floor. Stewards were ramming fingers up their nostrils so they couldn’t easily move or breathe.
All the stewards were armed with something — rubber piping, coshes, daggers, knuckledusters. I saw something I hadn’t seen before. Razors set in potatoes. The other thing I’d never seen before was that the stewards used razors to cut the braces or belts of the interrupters so they couldn’t fight back because they were trying to hold their trousers up.
I was disgusted. I intervened a good few times to pull my comrades off the ones receiving the worst beatings. The stairs grew slick with blood. Broken bodies lay huddled everywhere. And all the time, on stage, Mosley postured and grimaced, stepped forward pugnaciously and then back, fists on hips, head tilted back, bellowing his message.
Going back on the train, the stewards took their uniforms off because they were frightened of being set on. I’d lost Simpson in the crowd in Olympia so I travelled back alone. I took mine off because I was ashamed.
After that, decent folk ran a mile from the BUF, whilst the violence attracted all these other supporters looking for trouble.
I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t that I hadn’t seen violence before. I’d turned a blind eye many a time to bobbies putting the boot in. But what kind of organization was I in?