Britain is no longer a country for and says "Goodbye" to an indefatigable old film and tv scriptwriter called Brian Clemens

* Brian, as prolific in his creations as his childhood hero Edgar Wallace and best remembered for entertaining Britain with 'The Avengers' and 'The Professionals' in the 1970s and 80s has died at the age of 83.

What you possibly didn't know about Brian, that he :

* was born in Croydon, Surrey in 1931, the son of East-End Londoners, Susanna ( O'Grady) and Albert, started writing at the age of five and produced his  'Brocky and The Black Adder', developed and recovered from pneumonia and was considered 'delicate' barred from swimming and riding a bike and, eight years old when the Second World War broke out, was evacuated to Hitchin, Hertfordshire where he didn’t go to school due to a bureaucratic cock-up and recalled : "My education was simply reading a lot of books and going to the cinema.”

* was given a typerwriter by his Father who he told, when ten, that he wanted to be a writer, not an engine driver like other little boys and was fed an eclectic range of discarded library books by an uncle, from manuals about bookbinding to Edgar Wallace, Somerset Maughan to Proust and at the age of thirteen, in 1944, was paid a guinea for his first story in 'The Hospital Saturday Fund Magazine'.

* grew up with great respect for his Father, an engineer who, before he was born, walked up to 22 miles a day looking for work and he himself left school at fourteen in 1945 and, thwarted in his ambition to be a journalist because of lack of qualifications, started work as a messenger boy for a Fleet Street advertising agency and worked his way up to become a packer.

* was called up for National Service in the Army in 1949 at the age of eighteen and despite never having fired a shot, recalled "found I was a natural shot. So they made me a training instructor and I spent two years training people how to kill other people. It’s been useful to me in my writing because, in the course of that, I went to the Army Small Arms School where you get the chance to fire everything. I’ve fired flintlock rifles and flamethrowers and Thompson sub-machineguns and everything.”

* on leaving the Army, was offered, but didn't take a job as a private eye in London with 'John Smart’s Detective Agency' because he didn't fancy going to Leeds for three month's training and instead worked as a copywriter at the 'J Walter Thompson Advertising Agency'.

* at the age of twenty-four, in 1955, had a thriller screenplay about two men in a railway carriage,' Valid for Single Journey Only', accepted by BBC TV and then, as a result of a lucky break, became a film scriptwriter for the 'Danziger Brothers', because he could be depended on to turn out one cheap, but worthwhile, 30-minute 'B' feature a week and also started tv scripts with one episode of  'White Hunter' in '58 rising to nine episodes of 'The Man from Interpol' in '60.

* also combined his Danziger work with writing for 'ITC Entertainment' for ITV and two episodes of 'The Invisible Man' in '59, nine episodes of 'Danger Man' starring Patrick McGoohan in '60 -61 http://ow.ly/Hghfi and using the pseudonym, 'Tony O'Grady', co-scripted the film, 'The Tell-Tale Heart' in 1960 : http://ow.ly/Hgjvm

* enjoyed his work for the Brothers and recalled that : “The Danzigers were smashing because they used to move from studio to studio and use old sets and props. If they moved to MGM, they might have a submarine, The Old Bailey and a dozen Father Christmas outfits. So they’d say: "Write an 80-minute film that incorporates all three" and "They paid me a flat sum every week; I didn’t get paid by the script and there were no royalties. But they were very kind to me and the nicest thing was that virtually everything I wrote was made” and later related his work with them in a BFI interview ( half-way through clip) : http://www.bfi.org.uk/live/video/406

* at the age of 30 in 1961, was picked up by ABC Television looking to re-vamp their series, 'Police Surgeon', starring Ian Hendry and co-staring Patrick Macnee, as 'The Avengers', because Ian's screen fiancée had been killed and together they were out to find her killers and avenge her death, but left after writing five episodes and recalled : "There wasn’t really a format for the series. It was just a doctor and a special agent and was quite terrible – a million miles away from what the series became."

* rejoined the series after Ian had left and Honor Blackman, playing the man's part,  had joined Patrick who had "put on a bowler hat and picked up an umbrella and I think it was him who said to Honor Blackman : "Why don’t you wear trousers and boots? I like them." Then it kind of escalated and the writers really caught up with it ...We overtook the trend and made it even more consciously trendy after that.”

* became 'Script Editor and Associate Producer' on the new Avengers series which ran until 1969, starring Diana Rigg and later recalled : “What they wanted was someone who knew The Avengers and knew film and I was the only person who was qualified” and described the making of the series in 2008 : http://ow.ly/Hg4ek

* had fun with the inversion of the dramatic cliché : "We had a marvellous teaser once with the body outline marked out on the floor and this chap comes in, they shoot him and he falls into the outline. We were always doing that sort of thing” and in addition worked with scripts which "got more and more bizarre and, as well as debunking Sherlock Holmes, famous film plots started turning up – High Noon, The Maltese Falcon and Tarzan movies were just some." http://ow.ly/HglEC

* squeezed in the film script for 'Station Six-Sahara' in 1963 https://swarm.tv/t/RXo and on tv, in parallel with and beyond 'The Avengers', brought the same spirit of  burlesque to his other series, poking fun both at the genre they were imitating and the sources of their inspiration with 'Adam Ant Lives' for the BBC in '66 http://ow.ly/HgnHv , 'The Baron' as 'Tony O'Grady' for ITV in '66 http://ow.ly/Hgq5b

*in 1971, for ITV, suggested the idea and wrote three episodes of 'The Persuaders'  and was pleased with the way "Roger Moore and Tony Curtis got the spirit of the series and as it progressed, honed their characters to perfection" and followed with 'The Protectors' and 'The Adventurer' in '72.

* in films, in 1967 scripted 'The Peking Medallion' and in '70, 'See No Evil' starring Mia Farrow http://ow.ly/HkdKB and also wrote and produced 'And Soon the Darkness' http://ow.ly/HgrEY hammered out over two days on his typewrite and filmed without a word changed in '71, after which his business partner, Albert Fennell, said :"You should have directed it " " and suddenly I thought 'Yeah, perhaps I should have done'. I knew I could have directed it better. Then I wrote and produced a film for Hammer – Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde in 1971."
http://ow.ly/Hkent

*  got his chance to direct when Hammer accepted his storyline for 'Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter' in 1972 : http://ow.ly/Hgtaa and enjoyed the climax : "a three-minute sword fight between Kronos and the vampire. It’s got this marvellous moment where Kronos stabs him with the wrong sword and this vampire walks around with this rapier through him. There’s quite a bit of humour in it”, but then saw Hammer shelve it until 1975 and give it poor distribution as part of a double feature.

* later lamented  : "I really enjoyed Kronos. I was on a peak then. I was ready to go into another thing and make it better, but it didn’t happen. I was hoping to make another Kronos adventure, but then I got into 'Thriller 'for TV – I did 43 of those, which is quite a lot, really. They’re 90 minutes each in America – 72 minutes running time – which is quite a lot of writing.”

* also lamented the number of editors and quality of direction on ITVs 'Thriller' : “It offends me, because it means that what they’re putting on screen they don’t really give a shit about. If they really did, they’d say We can’t have three editors! It’s got to be one man. There are some film directors… Lean, Ford, Kurosawa… if I see a shot of their work I can tell it’s theirs. You can’t say that about many television directors. If any.”

*  in 1972, devised, but did not script write the BAFTA award winning sitcom, 'My Wife Next Door' http://ow.ly/HgtJM about a divorced young couple played by Hannah Gordon and John Alderton, who buy cottages in the country and find themselves unwitting neighbours and in the same year co-scripted the American tv movie, 'The Woman Hunter'.

 * in '74 scripted the film, 'The Golden Voyage of Sinbad ' http://ow.ly/HjJBN
with Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion effects and 1976 with his own company created 'The New Avengers' http://ow.ly/HjM4u and to cast the central female role of Purdey considered about 700, before choosing Joanna Lumley saying that he knew she was the right one : "good to look at, witty, charming, elegant, but can knock you through a plate-glass window." http://ow.ly/HjNEm

* with his company, 'Avengers Mark One Productions' from 1977 - 83, produced 'The Professionals' for ITV http://ow.ly/HjOXY , which made stars of Martin, 'ex-copper', Shaw and Lewis, 'ex- SAS soldier', Collins and the Ford
Capri, based on the adventures of the crime fighting unit, C15, instructed by the Home Secretary to use any means possible to deal with serious crime and put its success down to the fact that Brody and Doyle were modern heroes who male viewers want to emulate and with whom women wanted to sleep.

* had some success in the USA in the 1980s writing episodes of the tv series, 'Darkroom' and 'Remington Steele', scripted the film 'The Watcher in the Woods' in 1980 and in Britain worked on BBC TV's 'Bergerac' and ITV's 'Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense' and  adapted Gavin Lyall's  espionage thriller 'The Secret Servant' as a 3-part drama for BBC TV in 1984.

* in the 1990s, in his sixties, wrote for the BBC's 'Bugs' series  http://ow.ly/HjQAu and in the USA scripted the film 'Highlander II : The Quickening' in 1991, which saw his work suffer from recuts and reshoots : http://ow.ly/HjPDa

* 1n 2008 at the age of 77, wrote the play 'Murder Hunt', performed at 'The Mill at Sonning' and starred David Montieth as Captain K'Maka, a native African policeman who has to find the murderer amongst a bunch of guests stranded at a remote safari lodge, possibly an echo of the Edgar Wallace he had read seventy years before recalling : "Sanders of the River were fascinating to me as a kid."

* when he was forty-six said : "I gave up playing cowboys and Indians when I was twelve, but I do get good ideas. I don't know where they all come from, but I know I won't live long enough to write all of them down" and later, when asked about the 'creative process', understated its complexity and said that it was hard to pin down "I usually 'fix' the characters in my mind, put them in the most difficult situation and when I have three or four high spots I start to write. I have to know what page 60 is, before I write page 1" and working on a horror film with his sons, George and Samuel, at the time of his death, watched an episode of 'The Avengers' and made, with perfect self-effacement his final comment  :    
                       "I did quite a good job."

Britain is a country which forgets to say "Thankyou and Farewell" to an old Second World War veteran airborne soldier called Lieutenant Frank Moore

Bernard Jordan died in hospital aged 90 on December 30th – six months after he captured the nation’s hearts when he travelled to the June D-day events in Normandy wearing his war medals. Bernard's disappearance, without notice, from his care home in Hove, East Sussex, where he lived with his wife Irene, triggered a police search and his whereabouts emerged only when a younger Second World War veteran phoned to say he had met him and he was safe. He had decided to join British Service veterans, most making their final pilgrimage to revisit the scene of the Allied invasion of German-occupied France. On his return Benard said that his aim was to remember his fallen “mates”.

On his 90th birthday, days after he returned from his escapade, he was inundated with more than 2,500 birthday cards from around the world and he was later made an 'Honorary Alderman' of Brighton and Hove in a special ceremony at Brighton Town Hall.

Like his disappearance, his death, has been covered by tv, radio and coverage in the national newspapers and generated hundreds of tweets.

Having joined the Royal Navy in 1943, Bernard initially took part in the Battle of the Atlantic on a destroyer protecting convoys against German U-boats and on one occasion was part of a boarding party which captured one of the Enigma coding machines from a submarine forced to the surface. He also served in the Italian campaign, transporting and supplying the Allied troops fighting their way up the spine of Italy. Finally, in 1944, as a 19-year-old junior officer, his ship was one of  the D-Day flotilla of 6,939 vessels assembled to create a bridgehead to get thousands of troops and equipment into Northern France and  provide covering fire for the thousands of troops and tanks wading ashore on the German-occupied beaches of Normandy.

On the 7th January, just over a week after the death of Bernard, the  :

announced :


Beaminster World War II veteran dies aged 90

It recorded the passing of Second World War veteran, Frank Moore. Unlike Bernard, Frank's death went unrecorded on radio and tv and in national press and generated just one tweet by BridportNEWS.

Unlike Bernard, who spent his war behind the steel walls of a destroyer, Frank spent his War out in the open, in gliders and parachutes and fighting on the ground and his death merits more than a single tribute in a provincial newspaper, because he :

* began his war at the age of 18 in 1942, in 1st Airborne Division, a British Army Infantry Division formed in 1941, served in the North African campaign and then in the Sicily operation, prior to the invasion of Italy, which he described as "fairly disastrous" because "The Americans let their gliders off too early and 600 men were drowned before firing a shot. The only thing I can say is that the 82nd Airborne division hated their pilots more than we did. They were basically civilian pilots stuck in a uniform, they were not very good at that stage.”

* narrowly escaped death for the first time when he was posted as a 'junior dogsbody' to HQ and had been promised by his Commander Royal Artillery, that he could fly in its glider, but in the event couldn't, because it was overloaded and when it subsequently crashed in a river bed, heard that everyone on board had been killed.

* by 1944, at the age of 20, was a Lieutenant and Leader of F Troop, commanded by Captain Tudor Griffiths, consisting of a gun position officer, a troop sergeant major and four sergeant gun commanders and took part in the disastrous 'Operation Market Garden' http://ow.ly/H0JzS  as one of 35,000 troops dropped 160 km behind German lines in an attempt to capture a series of bridges over the Maas, Waal and Rhine Rivers, in order to outflank German fortifications and invade Germany. http://ow.ly/H0JPB

* took part in the British 1st Airborne Divisions daylight assault, which met with little initial opposition and had his role later recorded in Martin Middlebrook's book : 'Arnhem 1944 - The Airborne Battle' with : 'The very first to arrive was F Troop with Lieutenant Frank Moore in charge' and later recalled : “We landed 63 miles into enemy lines but the ground Army never did reach us. I was very lucky I was hit in the legs – only mortar splinters and a couple of chaps helped me” and narrowly escaped death a second time, when shot at in a church tower at Arnhem because the tank guns were pointing just a few feet too low.

* found one soldier's death particularly poignant : “ He was from a Dorset Regiment and he was standing next to me when a machine gun opened fire. It missed me and hit him in the neck. We cut his jacket off him and tried to put something over the wound. He said he didn’t feel any pain. At the aid post you virtually had to tread over people, with corpses stacked up outside. We put him in the back of the church where sadly he died. I never knew his name.”

* witnessed, after strong German counterattacks, his Division all but destroyed, in the nine-day battle and believed his guardian angel was based in the church at Osterbeek, in which he sheltered and around which much of the fighting he took part in took place.

* after the War, by a set of unlikely coincidences, found out the unknown soldier whose death he had witnessed was called 'Tom Rose' and made contact with his sister and her husband and son who were "very happy because I was the first person they’d met that knew what had happened to him. There were hundreds like that.”

* in the post-War years, built up a business as an agricultural engineer and in 2004 presented one of his 'Moore Mowers', which had been specially adapted, to the War Graves Commission and the Airborne Cemetery at Arnhem, complete with its Pegasus emblem, the badge of the 1st Airborne Division.

*  said at the time, that he was proud to make the donation, his way of paying his respects to his fallen comrades because 40 of the 44 in his Regiment who were killed in the nine-day battle were buried at the cemetery among the other 1700  who took part in the operation and had also died.

* headed a committee in the town of Beaminster to get its War Memorial returned to its central location in the Town Square, a project which took years and returned to the town, having moved with his wife to West Sussex and despite failing health, to open the memorial in July,2014.

* was said of by 75 year old Rear Admiral Musson, who had taken over from him on the Memorial Committee : “It was a huge joy for him to be able to come along to the dedication in July. On the way back they had an accident in the car but he was completely unconcerned because he had achieved his aim. He’d clearly been marked for life by his experiences of the War.”

* was also said by the Rear Admiral, to have been driven in his determination to have a memorial in Beaminster  
"because he was involved in the Battle of Arnhem in 1944. He had a pretty tough time, well they all did. He had people killed all around him. He spoke very movingly at the dedication of the war memorial. He was talking about one chap who attacked a German tank, his anti tank weapon didn’t work and the tank targeted him with a flame thrower. It took him three weeks to die. Another chap was wounded and taken down to the cellar of a Dutch house. The Germans came and threw a grenade in and put himself in its way, dying instantly, to protect the Dutch civilians.”

* was remembered by fellow memorial committee member, Tony Greenham (right),from the Royal British Legion because :
 “It was his idea way back to have a memorial and he said it was to remember people who had no known grave and this is a way of remembering them. What a man he was, he was very determined. He made it out in his wheelchair to sell poppies for two days for the Poppy Appeal this year and wanted to go on parade for Remembrance. After that he told his son he’d achieved everything he wanted. He was a true gentleman and will be greatly missed by all who knew him.”

                         'A true gentleman'
What better epitaph might a selfless, albeit forgotten, old infantry airman have ?

Britain is no longer a country for and says "Farewell" to an old composer called Patrick Gowers

Patrick, a member of a family of high achievers who forged a successful career as composer of film, television, as well as choral music, but spent his last fourteen years in the shadows after a devastating stroke, has died at the age of 78.

What you possibly didn't know about Patrick, that he :

* born in 1936 in Islington, London, the son of Stella, a church minister's daughter and William, a Cambridge educated solicitor and eventually senior partner in an Oxford law firm, was educated from 1947 at the prestigious, independent boarding school for boys, Radley College in Oxfordshire, where Peter Cook was in the year below him and was already enthralled by music having fallen 'in love with French Church melodies as a boy, from their use in the English Hymnal, researched and edited by Vaughan Williams.'

* was conscious, as a boy, that, in the Gowers family, he had some famous predecessors and that Great Grandfather, Sir William, who had died in 1915, had been a pre-eminent nineteenth century clinical neurologist, described by neurologist, Macdonald Critchley, when Patrick was 13 in 1949 as "probably the greatest clinical neurologist of all time."

* was also conscious that Grandfather, Sir Ernest, a distinguished civil servant, in charge of the Civil Defence of London when Richard was growing up during the Second World War and who the 'Times' was described as : 'Energetic, forceful, always cheerful, with an unfailing eye for the essential, he gave the impression of being master of every unexpected development and, as a result, infused confidence into all who came in contact with him' and who, when he was 12 in 1948, saw his 'Plain Words', a pamphlet on the correct use of English for civil service servants published and remain in print to the present day.

*  was 18 yeas old when his Father was elected Mayor of Oxford in 1954, received an honorary law degree from the University and the 'Freedom of the City' and would go on to become the Chairman of the Oxford Area Health Authority at the age of 63 and receive a CBE in recognition of his service in 1976.

* left school in 1954 and then after two years National Service, went to his Father's old college, Clare College, Cambridge and studied for a Bachelor of Music degree and in 1959 took part in the Footlights Revue,'Last Laugh', directed by John Bird, of which Alistair Cooke wrote in the Manchester Guardian : 'The whole show is directed with never a fumbling line or gesture. If the West End does not hear soon of John Bird, Patrick Gowers, Geoff Pattie and Peter Cook, the West End is an ass.'

* married Caroline Maurice in 1961 and continued his 60's post-graduate studies at  Cambridge with an M.A, followed by PhD and taught composition on a part-time basis while completing a doctorate based on 'Eric Satie', French composer, pianist and colourful figure in the early 20th century Parisian avant-garde and precursor to minimalism, repetitive music and the 'Theatre of the Absurd', which he completed at the age of 29 in 1965.

* having set his course for a career as a composer, served as assistant conductor of 'Bill Russo's London Jazz Orchestra' and saw its 'Stonehenge' album released in 1965, then became Music Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of' 'The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade' which ran for two seasons at Aldwych Theatre in the West End and one in New York.

* in 1966, when his Grandfather Ernest died, was instrumental in rescuing his Great Grandfather, William's library, papers, sketch books, family memorabilia and shorthand diary for posterity and two years later in Denmark, was responsible for the music for Jesper Hom's film, 'Thomas er Fredloes', about a 10-year-old boy's visual fantasies of tv and cartoon heroes and in 1969, Lene and Sven Grønlykke's  comedy : 'Balladaden on Carl-Henning' : http://ow.ly/GLbCm


* back in Britain in 1969, worked for Tony Richardson to produce the music for Nichol Williamson's 'Hamlet' : http://ow.ly/GPxSg and in 1970 was commissioned by Simon Preston to produce a Toccata for the 1970 Cheltenham Festival and later recalled : 'He asked for a flashy piece with which to end recitals, featuring some Count Basie chords. When he gave his magnificent first performance in the Festival Hall, the author of the programme note thought Basie chords must be a misprint; so he changed it to the totally inappropriate Basic chords' and in the same year, provided the music for 'Giv Gud en Chance Om Soendagen', 'Give God a Chance on Sunday' in Denmark and 'The Virgin and the Gypsy' in Britain : http://ow.ly/GPqIc

 * composed the music for 'A Bigger Splash', based on the private life of David Hockney in 1973 : http://ow.ly/GP5Wm and two years later for Arthur Seidelman's 'Children of Rage', the story of a young Palestinian who ends up in a hospital after the bomb he set to explode during a party for the Israelis explodes before he leaves and a sympathetic physician tries to convince him to give up on his destructive ways while he still can.
 

* at the age of 52 in 1978 scored the music for Robert Enders 'Stevie', the biographical film, with Glenda Jackson portraying the poet Stevie Smith with her attendant emotional problems : http://ow.ly/GP9tz


* by 1980, had made the transmission to television with the score to the mini-series of 'Therese Raquin', followed by 'I remember Nelson' and the appropriately portentous score for 'Smiley's People' in 1982 : http://ow.ly/GPBdx and 'The Woman in White' http://ow.ly/GSQfk and found himself best remembered in popular music for the 1984-85 Granada TV series 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes' starring Jeremy Brett : http://ow.ly/GSdkN

* was back to film, in 1985, with Simon Langton's 'Anna Karenina' : http://ow.ly/GPD0b and Tom Bussman's 'Whoops Apocalypse' in 1986 : http://ow.ly/GRWHe

* in mid 80s met Richard Hatties who commissioned 'Viri Galilaei' for his consecration as Bishop of Oxford http://ow.ly/GRQlQ which in turn led to 'Cantata' and 'Advent Sequene' commissioned for the Southern Cathedral Festival :
 Cantata : I. Each inmost peace : http://ow.ly/GSJ4W
Cantata : II. But loe, thy love : http://ow.ly/GSHq4 ,
Cantata : V. Ev'n before kings : http://ow.ly/GSKMQ

* recalled that he wrote 'Libera Me', the Roman Catholic 'Deliver Me' responsory sung in the 'office of the dead', in 1986 : 'as a piece of background music for a tv realisation of the Sherlock Holmes story, 'The Priory School', in which a little boy is kidnapped from the school. In this production it was made a choir school and they needed something to sing. So I made this version of the title music in the style of a sixteenth century motet and the words 'Libera Me' sound vey germane.' http://ow.ly/GSeby

* also recalled, that in 1988, of his earlier Toccata for the Cheltenham Festival : ' I chanced to hear it as a closing voluntary in Worcester Cathedral, played by Adrian Partington. When I spoke to him afterwards, he commissioned a Fugue to go with it. It is probably quite an oddity to have a fugue written 18 years after its toccata. It means that while the toccata is very definitely young man’s music, the fugue is more staid and middle-aged. Nevertheless, the best way to understand either of them is to try to beat time, which is harder than usual because this music does not have a regular metre. It is not based on singing, dancing, walking, running, heartbeats (or even machines!) but on a boulder falling down the side of a steep mountain, sometimes spinning round in the air, and between whiles, coming down to earth with a bump.'

* followed 'Forever Green' in 1989 http://ow.ly/GRYzL with 'Mother Love' in 1991 http://ow.ly/GS3Gb which starred starring Diana Rigg and was Winner of the 1990 British Academy Television Award for 'Best Drama Series or Serial'.

* was commissioned by the Federation of Old Choristers' Association and produced 'Veni, Sancte Spiritus' for their 2000 Congress at Canterbury : http://ow.ly/GSjyS

* in 2000 at the age of 64, was commissioned to write a large-scale choral work for the 'Three Choirs Festival' for the Summer of 2001 in Gloucester Cathedral, but halfway through the work, suffered a massive stroke, from that day forward did not write another note of music and in the years that followed managed to walk a little with support, but didn't regain the use of his left arm, had surgery to remove his bowel and after a family decision was moved to a nursing home.


* sadly spent his last years in a state of depression and frustration despite the fact that when he was 75 years old, his 16 year old Grandson, Richard, performed his 'Toccata and Fugue' on the Hill Organ in Eton College Chapel during the Windsor Festival in 2011 http://ow.ly/GSrdO and in 2012, his son Timothy was knighted for his 'Services to Mathematics' and his daughters : Rebecca had made her way as an author and journalist and Katharine as a violinist.

 * will live on in his music and continue to inspire and give pleasure. What better legacy ?
           Chester Lullaby
  http://ow.ly/GSFOQ




   

  

Britain is a country which bestows honour on an old and deeply prejudiced Northern Irish Alderman called Maurice Turtle Mills

Ballymena is a large town in County Antrim with a population of 30,000 and the eighth largest in Northern Ireland and the seat of Ballymena Borough Council and Maurice is a seventy-four year old Alderman in the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party on that Council, who has been awarded an MBE for 'services for local government' in the Queen's New Year Honours List for 2015.          

Maurice first became an elected member at the age of 32 in 1972 and during his 43 years of service has served as 'Mayor' three times in 2007, 2008 and 2010 and 'Deputy Mayor' on 10 occasions between 1979 and 2006. Having said that, Maurice hasn't come cheap and in the financial year 2009-10, his £19,916 in expenses at £383 per week, was the second highest claim after the Mayor among the 24 councillors, with the Independent member, James Henry chalking up a modest £9,738 by comparison.

Due to retire in March this year, he said: “I don’t see this honour as being for myself – rather I see it as an honour for the Borough and for local government and the recognition of the role it has to play in the affairs of our country.”

As a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Maurice will join an order of knighthood first instituted in 1917 by King George V, when Britain still had an Empire, for 'meritorious service to the government in peace as well as for gallantry in wartime.' There are five classes within the order and Maurice has been awarded the lowest and will therefore not be a full knight with the title of 'Sir'.

It is astonishing to note, however, that in recommending Maurice for an honour, the Honours Secretariate at the First Minister's Office in Belfast has taken no cognizance of his political and religious views and have stuck only to his service to the community.

To the Office, it has been of no importance that Maurice :

* back in 2000, objected to Ballymena Council writing to the film actor Liam Neeson, who was born in the town in 1952 and had just been awarded the honour of an OBE, to offer him the 'Freedom of the Borough' on the grounds that he was quoted as saying in an American magazine that he had felt "second class" as a Catholic boy growing up in the mainly Protestant town and felt he had to stay indoors during the loyalist July 12 Commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne. 

* told 'BBC Radio Ulster' that he felt DUP leader and North Antrim MP, Ian Paisley and the disbanded Ulster Special Constabulary, the 'B Specials', should be honoured instead with :  "There has been no due recognition of Mr Paisley and the Ulster Special Constabulary by the Council. Mr Neeson has vilified the people of this town and in particular the Protestant people of this town and he has also questioned the celebration of the 12th of July. I don't think someone who expressed words such as that could be described as one of the leading 'Sons of Ballymena'."

* said in 2005, that Hurricane Katrina, which killed 1,300 people, was 'God’s revenge' for the planned annual gay pride event called 'Southern Decadence' and “The media failed to report that the hurricane occurred just two days prior to the annual homosexual event called the Southern Decadence festival which the previous year had attracted an estimated 125,000 people.”

* had his comments prompt gay rights activists stage a protest in Ballymena in early 2006 and demand that he apologise, but refused to retract his comments and saw his party, the DUP resist calls to condemn them with him saying : “There is a principle at stake here and that is homosexuality is a sin before Almighty God” and “If I were to apologise for my comments then God would have to apologise.”

  * also blamed the spread of Aids in Africa on gay people with : “This abominable and filthy practice of sodomy has resulted in the great continent of Africa being riddled with Aids.” 
 

* was said by NIGRA's President, P. A. MagLochlainn, that he did not adhere to the “true British spirit” of tolerance for others and that Jesus never condemned homosexuality and he had misread the Bible.
 
* hit back at MagLochlainn, claiming that men would be judged by God for their sins : “What an executor Christ will be on that awesome day. Christ alone died for my sins on Calvary’s cross and my personal faith exercised in His finished work upon that cross and by the cleansing of His precious blood I have the assurance of sins forgiven and peace with God.”
 

* has his local paper in his pocket with :
 “Alderman Mills has courted controversy in his long career in local politics but was always known at a local level as a hard-working community representative with a keen appreciation of the need to keep in touch with the party’s grass roots.”