DAVID IRVING’S Churchill’s War, vol. ii your index to these reviews by Giles Coren A SCHOOLFRIEND of David Irving calls to say: “I stood against Irving in the Brentwood School mock general election of 1955. He was representing Labour and because nobody would listen to him he grabbed a megaphone and began playing slogans across the playground.” Such as ” Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”? “No, Labour slogans. But he made playtime feel like a Nuremberg rally.
It did him no good though. He lost to a fellow who had made up his own party. It had a rather apt name, in retrospect.” Oh? What was it called? “It was The Intellectual Extremist Party.” [see Co r en’s earlier guffaws: Write off, July 14, 2001 ][ and July 24, 12001 ] : THE Times publishes yet another sneering diary item today (above).
If anybody talks “about Nuremberg rallies” again at Brentwood School, I shall feel tempted to produce the 16mm film taken by Sidney Burgin , our geography teacher, showing me haranguing the crowd (the film is now in Brentwood Public Library). I was attending speaking classes organised by the Co-operative Movement at the time. At least The Times has not published again the photo, allegedly showing me at school, which they used last time.
It was actually a picture of J I Bowden (right), the head Boy, who distinguished himself by failing all his “A” levels. The mystery is, who could their source be? My brother Nicky , who aided David Handley Hutt , now a high clergyman at St. Paul’s Cathedral I believe — I last saw him on television officiating at the Diana funeral — who stood for the Right Wing National Party? Nicholas Irving, D Handley Hutt, N A Maryan Green B. Merritt , the Communist candidate?
N A Maryan-Green , who stood for the conservatives? B Everitt , the Liberal? R S Rehahn , the Social Democrat? D A Dallas , the flamboyant candidate for the Intellectual Extremists (who were mostly praepostors) — they swept the election in a landslide. I have burrowed through my old boxes of pictures, for the first time in forty years. The photo I have found shows somebody standing for Labour, namely me; I fared rather less well than the I.E’s.
But that was the Labour of Aneurin Bevan, to whose oratory in Trafalgar Square I thrilled in October 1956; and of Ernest Bevin , not the wimpish, Gucci-clad, gangle-mouthed Blairite females, males, and hermaphrodites of today. Interesting 1955 “Old England” note: the crowd in the school playground hearing the speeches is all White. There was one Indian boy, Chaudhury , at the school; one Catholic ( K W Murray ), and, as a loud mouthed and belligerent Mr.
M A Franks enlightened me at Miami airport two or three years ago, two Jews. 2001