Personal Fragments – Page 3 – Stumbling with Confidence

Not a story I usually tell: the Yorkshire Ripper and me

This is not a story I usually tell, but the news of Peter Sutcliffe’s death takes me back to 1979-80 when the police regarded me as a potential suspect.

I had been living in Leeds and Bradford from 1977-79, working for a touring theatre company. In late August 1979 I moved to Peterborough to join another touring theatre company. That first weekend I borrowed the company van to drive up to Leeds to collect all my belongings and those of a Leeds friend who had also moved to Peterborough. I stayed with friends and parked the van in Chapeltown, which had a somewhat notorious reputation in those days, and had been the scene of some of Sutcliffe’s murders. I had also briefly lived in Chapeltown when I first arrived in Leeds in 1977, having lived in Hull from 1975.

That weekend Sutcliffe murdered Barbara Leach, a student, in Bradford.

In early 1980, in Peterborough, the police called the theatre company to ask who was driving the van that weekend in Leeds back in September. They had obviously and regularly been noting registration numbers in the areas connected to the murders.

I was asked to report to Peterborough Police station and was interviewed by two local CID officers. They asked all the obvious questions – What I did? Why was I in Leeds that weekend? Had I ever lived in Leeds/Bradford?

I answered their questions and I thought that was it. But no.

They were clearly thinking: worked in theatre, travelled around West Yorkshire late at night, my time living in Hull, Leeds and Bradford coincided with the period of the murders, etc. This was also the time when the police were still obsessed with the ‘Wearside Jack’ tape and letters. So perhaps they thought I could also do accents.

I was called in again a few weeks later for another interview, and this time it was rather more formal. It was the same two local CID officers. I was asked to provide examples of my handwriting and to speak into a voice recorder. They asked me my shoe size (Size 7….the same, as it turned out, as Sutcliffe’s!). If DNA testing had been available in those days (it was introduced in 1985) no doubt I would have been asked to provide a sample. They also asked me what I was doing on various dates over the past few years. That wasn’t easy, but I could check against touring dates. But even that still left me often driving home late at night from all over West Yorkshire.

I also, at that time, had dark bushy hair and a dark beard….which also matched the few descriptions of the killer.

For the third interview, the two detectives came to my house. I half-joked about being arrested. They half-joked back that if there was a fourth interview it WOULD be under arrest!

We went through virtually everything we’d been through before and they left saying that they’d be in touch.

I never heard from them again.

Sutcliffe was arrested in January 1981 for driving with false number plates. When interviewed in connection to the murders, he confessed.

We now know the police completely bungled their enquiry. They not only interviewed Sutcliffe several times, but were tipped off about him, but that tip-off disappeared into their dysfunctional indexing system. They were also told by a number of experts that the ‘Wearside Jack’ stuff was a hoax but ignored that advice. The perpetrator of the hoax – John Humble – was eventually caught in 2005, having been identified through the DNA left on the envelopes he used to send the letters.

The tracing of car and van registration numbers led to thousands of interviews. The vast majority of those contacted were eliminated right at the start. It just so happened that I wasn’t.

In all the focus on Sutcliffe it’s essential to remember his 22 victims and those close to them, and the fear that deeply affected those living in and around West Yorkshire and beyond.

And in a weird bit of tragic serendipity, I’ve just discovered that one of my regular cycle rides around my local area in Manchester takes me right past the small wasteland site where the body of Jean Jordan, Sutcliffe’s sixth victim, was found.

A stone for Rocky

On a visit to the cemetery and the kindness of strangers. Our story for Baby Loss Awareness Week.

The cemetery where our baby son is buried is a relatively new one, and for a number of years his grave lay alone in the children’s section, by the fence on the far side of the cemetery, well away from the small but slowly increasing number of adult graves.

If we decide to visit – which we do once or perhaps twice a year – then we’ll bring our thoughts, some cleaning materials, and four small stones. Our thoughts are our own, but we’ll use the cleaning stuff to clear away the debris and discolourations left by the seasons, the overhanging trees, and the local wildlife – both animal and human.

And when we’re ready to leave, and as flowers are not encouraged, we’ll follow Jewish custom and place the four stones on the grave: one each for my wife, myself and our two surviving children as a sign of respect and remembrance.

Some time ago, at the same cemetery, I attended the funeral of an elderly member of our community. At the end of the service, as people drifted away, I headed across the open expanse of grass towards the childrens’ section and our baby’s grave. We hadn’t visited for a long while, and I was expecting to see the usual untidiness. However, as I approached I noticed that the grave looked particularly clean and tidy. As I got nearer I saw that someone had left a single stone by our son’s name. This perplexed me as I knew that the stones we’d left ages before would have disappeared, and I knew of no one else who might wish to visit.

Standing there, lost in thought, I became aware of someone approaching. I turned to see an elderly lady who must have been at the funeral. She touched my arm and asked, in a precise English still tinged with the German of her youth “Are you the father?”.

Managing to suppress the urge – even in that situation – to make a smart-alec and totally inappropriate response, I answered simply that I was.

She smiled and said, “I’m so glad. I wasn’t sure if there was family, and I couldn’t bear the thought of this little chap all alone over here”.

It turned out that on her regular visits to her husband’s grave, she would come over to our baby’s grave, clean up what she could, say a little prayer, and leave a stone as a sign that someone had visited , that someone cared.

In a time of increasing fear for ourselves and for the world at large, it is all-too-easy to turn in on ourselves and focus on that which is ours. We forget at our peril that it is so often the kindness of strangers, the selfless reaching out to help others, that is a real force for good in the world. If, when doing nothing is by far the easier option, we each made that extra effort to help the stranger, to welcome the ‘other’ then we might go some way to mend at least some of the many wounds and sorrows of our age and our planet.

(We were wonderfully supported by and have supported Sands, the Stillbirth and Neo-Natal Death charity http://www.sands.org.uk)

It’s the same old story: Labour and Israel/Palestine

When Labour’s ‘antisemitism crisis’ erupted after Jeremy Corbyn’s election as leader of the party in 2015, Ken Loach, when interviewed on TV at the 2017 Labour Party conference in Brighton, stated that he had never experienced antisemitism in over 50 years of Labour Party membership. Loach’s denial was echoed by Ken Livingstone who added that because someone was offensive to Jews didn’t mean they were being antisemitic.

Then again, neither of them, as I recall, attended the meeting that I attended over 40 years ago.

In 1983, following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon the year before, there was significant anti-Israel and boycott Israel agitation on the Left (plus ça change!). A particular focus for the protest and anger was the Sabra and Shatila massacre, when Israeli soldiers, under orders, stood by as the Christian Phalangists entered the camp and slaughtered hundreds of Palestinian men, women and children.

I was living in Manchester and attended a pro-Palestine meeting that took place at the regional TUC HQ in Salford. It was a well attended meeting, and the speakers were senior trade union and Labour Party officials. There was also a speaker who was announced as a member of the PLO’s national committee, who would speak at the end.

As the meeting progressed, I and some others in the audience – Jewish and not Jewish – began to feel increasingly uncomfortable. The entirely justified anger and criticism emanating from the platform from various speakers about the actions (or non-actions in the case of Sabra and Shatila) of the Israelis was accompanied by familiar and increasingly virulent tropes about the ‘Zionist controlled media’, ‘the powerful Jewish lobby’, ‘Jewish finance’, ‘replacing Israel with a Palestinian state’, etc.

Eventually the PLO representative stood up to speak. He first turned to the speakers sitting up on the platform and roundly criticised them for their blatant antisemitism and their betrayal of socialist values. He pointed out that the Palestinians were involved in a political not a religious struggle, and that their struggle for national determination was with the Israeli government not world Jewry. He reminded them that 20% of the Israeli population within the old Green Line were Christian and Moslem Palestinians – at which point, in order to demonstrate the nuanced complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, he reached in to the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out his Israeli passport.

There is a long, ignoble and well-recorded history of antisemitism on the Left*. Ken Loach may never have experienced it, and the Labour Party likes to think it is immune from the virus. It isn’t.

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* Colin Talbot -The Left’s Problem with Antisemitism

https://colinrtalbot.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/the-lefts-problem-with-anti-semitism/

Steve Cohen – That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Antisemitic http://you-dont-look-anti-semitic.blogspot.co.uk/

On the loss of a child and the kindness of strangers

(This is an adaptation of a piece written for BBC Radio and first broadcast in 2000 as the Radio 4 Listeners’ Christmas Message. At the time we received wonderful support from Sands – the UK charity that provides support for bereaved parents and their families, which we now, in turn, support.)

Thirty years ago, on a bright, blue, cold winter’s morning, I walked out of the maternity hospital in the city where we live, and headed towards the registry office in the centre of town. I went there to register the birth, and death, of our first child, a baby boy who had been born and who had died a few hours previously. I had to be there in order to complete the paperwork that would allow us to bury him within 24 hours according to Jewish custom.

I remember, in that rather dark, forbidding wood-panelled waiting room, sitting next to a happy young couple who had come to register the birth of their new baby, who lay sleeping happily in his mother’s arms, and opposite a family, all dressed in black, grieving for a close and dear relative. I also remember, with immense gratitude, the kindness of the official who carefully and sympathetically took down all the necessary details. She was only doing her job but doing it in a way which make me feel – for the moment at least – a little bit easier with myself and with the world.

Now, thirty years later, though the number of years is wholly immaterial, amidst the hurly burly and complex logistics of daily life – juggling home, work, family, friends – rarely does a day go by without something or someone causing me to think back to that cold, blue morning.

The death of our child made me acutely aware of just how thin and fragile is the surface covering everyday normality, and how easily the fabric of that covering can be torn and ruptured…sometimes in seconds.

In particular I’ve come to understand the real importance of small acts of kindness. Those spontaneous, generous, unselfish acts that help to maintain that fragile fabric. I’ve learned – though sometimes it’s still a struggle – to give people the benefit of the doubt, to try and be more tolerant, to try and listen more. I’ve learned that others, too, may have large cracks and holes in their lives, and they – like me sometimes – are relying on that fabric not being torn in order to just get them through the day. The smile, the greeting, the welcome, the thank you, the helping hand, the small talk before getting down to business are all, in their way, small acts of kindness that bind us together and strengthen the fabric of our lives.

But before I am accused, in the face of a harsh and sometimes brutal world, of a utopian let’s-just-all-be-nice-to-each-other idealism, our baby’s death, conversely, made me less tolerant…of arrogance, ignorance, triviality and sheer stupidity. If there’s one quality we need, sometimes desperately, to develop, it is an active, rigorous tolerance, which is not the same as prejudiced silence or passive indifference. Understanding and respect for others grows out of a willingness to engage actively with the world. But it also means knowing, recognising and, importantly, doing something positive about not only those things that will make the world a better, happier place but acting to prevent those things that make it worse.

May the support of friends and family, and the kindness of strangers bring some comfort to you at this sad time.

Grief crept up on me on Christmas Eve….unexpectedly.

As a Jewish family, we don’t really do Christmas. Yes, we’ll gather together, have a big meal, play board games, and watch far too much television. But that’s because it’s a holiday, everything is closed, and there’s not much else to do. Coming up to Christmas that year we’d just had some building work done, and there was still loads of cleaning up, making good, re-decorating to do. So it was looking like a DIY Christmas and new year.

As it happens, the builders had found an old, crumpled newspaper stuffed into the gap between the window and the wall our bedroom. When I first saw it lying on the floor where they had dropped it, I thought they had found a dead bird.

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve I decided to have a go at ‘uncrumpling’ it using our steam iron. It turned out to be the Lancashire Post from 30th September 1943. The paper was very fragile – I suspect they didn’t use the best quality newspaper during the war years – and I became absorbed in the task of slowly but surely flattening the paper one careful centimetre at a time. I wasn’t even aware that the radio was burbling quietly away on the other side of the room.

As each piece revealed its flattened secrets, I read about the Fifth Army’s losses in North Africa, the Russian advances along the Dneiper, a successful bombing raid over Germany (only eight missing in action). I also read about a local woman fined for fiddling ration books, and a Polish aircraft man convicted of drunk driving.

There was also a small item about how the German U-boats had failed to sink a single ship in the previous month. 70 years later, on Christmas Eve, the newspapers and television were full of the news about the Royal pardon given to Alan Turing, the man who had ‘cracked’ the German Enigma code used by the U-boats and, by doing so, had in no doubt saved thousands of lives and perhaps helped to end the war. But Turing was gay at a time when it was illegal, and had been found guilty of gross indecency, jailed, chemically castrated, and forbidden to undertake any work linked to national security. He was and should have been hailed as a national hero. Instead, he committed suicide two years later in 1954.

Those U-boat failures, reported on the front page of that 1943 Lancashire Post, were a direct result of the work Turing had undertaken at Bletchley Park.

Absorbed in the task and on this fascinating window on history, I suddenly became aware of a beautiful, solo treble voice filling the room, singing ‘Once in Royal David’s City….”. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and the start of that wonderful, traditional Christmas Eve ‘Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols’ from King’s College Chapel in Cambridge. And as that pure, high voice soared…..I burst into uncontrollable sobs. A veritable tsunami of grief poured over, into and through me; disturbing and disruptive in its power and intensity.

It took me a while to realise what it was.

When my mother died the year before, I cried no more than a couple of times, and that was around the time when it all happened and in response to an individual’s kindness and sympathy. But nothing like this.

Though, obviously, Jewish and very proud of her traditions, my mother also had a deep love for many things that were quintessentially English. Among them she had a particularly high regard for and interest in the great cathedrals and churches of England. After she passed away I discovered, amidst the thousands of documents she left, a neatly stacked pile of guides to virtually all the English cathedrals and some other churches, all neatly annotated with her distinctive handwriting. I always smile when I see those guides as my father did not approve of my mother’s interest in Christianity, and I know he would not step inside a church. So I have a very clear picture of my mother wandering around inside with her guide, no doubt quizzing whoever she could find about the history of the building, while my father is sitting on a park bench nearby doing his Times crossword.

Just before three o’clock in the afternoon on Christmas eve, without fail, and though Jews – on the whole – don’t do Christmas, my mother would sit herself in her favourite chair, turn on the radio, quite loudly, and wait until that beautiful, soaring, solo treble voice filled the room, singing the first verse of the carol, followed by the choir and then the congregation. Earlier in the day she would have called me to remind me NOT to call her between 3pm and 5pm.

As that deep pang of grief and my sobbing subsided, and I was able to collect my thoughts, I wondered how that boy’s voice could trigger such intense emotion. I remembered the reports of how some of Mark Rothko’s last paintings, those gigantic fields of deep colour, have a similar effect on some individuals. I recalled that in some therapeutic contexts music and song are used to enable individuals and groups to confront severe trauma.

In my case, it triggered an intense ‘remembrance of things past’ and a huge sense of both loss and love. I suspect we all have those triggers, those Proustian ‘Madeleine biscuit’ moments, when something – perhaps completely unexpected – plunges us into the deep well of memory, love and loss.

That afternoon, as I ironed that old newspaper (something my mother would have loved – the newspaper not the ironing!) and listened to that young boy singing those famous words, I probably missed her more than I’ve done at any other time.