The Thing Itself

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?

I went down to the Skylark to see if Charteris had anything to report but he wasn’t around. I hadn’t seen him in Brighton for a while.

Then the trunk was discovered at Brighton station’s left luggage office and bedlam broke out. On 19th June I spotted Charteris hurrying along the prom. He didn’t have time to talk — couldn’t wait to get away in fact.

‘What does the Galloping Major have to say about Olympia?’ I said.

Charteris was darting looks left and right.

‘Look, it’s doing my reputation no good being seen with a bobby in public.’

‘What does he say?’ I insisted.

‘I haven’t seen him for ages. That was just, you know. .’

‘What do you think?’

‘I wasn’t there. Sounds like some Reds got what was coming to them.’

‘Are you down here for long?’

‘Two or three weeks,’ he said. ‘I’m staying with Jack Notyre.’

The next couple of weeks were hectic as we dealt with the avalanche of information coming our way. The next time I saw Charteris, he was at least a witness and possibly an accomplice in the second Brighton Trunk Murder.

The one thing he hadn’t told me was that Jack Notyre’s other name was Tony Mancini and for six weeks he’d been carting around in a trunk the corpse of Violette Kay. Violette Kay, the woman I’d once seen dancing as one half of Kaye and Kaye on the Palace Pier and again as Mrs Saunders in the Skylark.