The Area

SCARBOROUGH CHAIRMAN OF THE AREA COUNCIL
1936-7 S. D. McCloy Area 10
1951-2 W. L. Woodcock Area 15
1955-6 A. Slater
1964-5G. T. V. Pindar
1968-9 C. M. Thorpe (Vice-Chairman)

Note: Eleven Areas came into being in 1933. The North-East Coast was No. 10 with two Tables, soon becoming four: Hull, Bridlington, York and Scarborough. In 1950 the growth of the movement made it necessary to organise existing Area boundaries and to create many more Areas. No. 10 became No. 15, with the addition of an increasing number of new Tables (now totalling 16), extending up the coast from the Humber to Whitby, across to Ripon by way of Thirsk, south to Harrogate and down to Hull by way of York and Pocklington/Market Weighton.

Although this book is intended to be an account of one Table in the great network of British Tables, reference has been made from time to time to the Area of which it is part. In the Area a wider fellowship has developed beyond the confines of the Table. This has affected not only the Area but the Table itself.

In the pre-war years the Area made less impact than it was to do in the post-war years. Area Councillors were duly elected and met at infrequent intervals at convenient hostelries in East Yorkshire. Area meetings, dinners, rallies, golf tournaments and other social events were held, but in those early years most Tables were more intimately concerned with their own development and affairs and incursions into social service.

When war came, the Area was the first casualty (see Chapter 2) and from 1939 any infrequent Area business was conducted by correspondence. The next war casualty was the whole of the Area records, minute book and Chairman’s jewel. The Area Secretary, W. R. Irving, kept them at his office at Reckitts, and on the night of 5-6 May 194 they were destroyed by enemy action, together with much of Reckitts and a lot more of Hull.
Fortunately Rob Irving was on duty elsewhere at the time. [83]

Post War
On the resumption of peace the activities of the Area were largely concentrated on extension (see Chapter 5) and as new Tables formed and began to play their part it gradually became apparent that a new and closer relationship was developing between Table and Area – which is another way of saying between Table and Table within the Area – and between Area and the National body.

At this point Mick Thorpe, present Vice-Chairman of the Area and a member of the National Executive, has been prevailed upon to take up the story, an eventful story in which he has played a great part in more recent years:

* * * *

In the post-war years there began to develop an administrative side to Area affairs, and with it came a gradual awakening to the possibilities of Area as a bridge between Table and National

A significant contribution to this development was the introduction in 1960 of the Area Sales Scheme whereby National publications, badges, ties etc. were distributed through Area Sales Officers and no longer directly by National headquarters to Tables. The Publications Convener responsible for pushing the Area Sales Scheme was Colin Sedgwick. Besides providing Areas with a specific administrative function the scheme provided funds, through the 15% discount allowed to Area, which assisted the financial running of Area affairs and helped to keep down the cost of the annual contribution made to Area by Tables.

Along with many other Areas throughout R.T.B.I., Area 15 developed strongly in the fifties and sixties. Area rallies were resumed, and later the Tom Park Trophy stimulated inter-Table contests*. The more outlandish the game, the better fun for all concerned; but it was not always funny. It was at a Tom Park football match with Beverley that Brian Heaps sustained a serious injury to his wrist, and in the best traditions of closing the stable door a National Personal Accident Scheme, to insure against such mishaps, was instituted a few months later.

*This trophy, presented in 1964 by past Area Chairman Tom Park, of York, is subject to an extremely interesting set of rules. No. 2 says ‘The Trophy shall be competed for between two or more Tables in any competition that the challenging Table shall decide.’ No. 5 says ‘If the Trophy should change hands by any other means than by competition, it shall be returned to the holder at an inter-Table meeting held for that purpose.’ The word any’ in these rules permit many ingenious interpretations, which Table minds have not been how to think up.

Inter-Table visiting prospered and Tablers, seeing one another at Area meetings, had in all likelihood met already at a respective Tables. A shot in the arm was given to inter-Table visits by the presentation of a Trophy in 1968 by past Area [84] Chairman Mike Hollingbery of Hull and Humberside, to be competed for annually and to be awarded to the Table whose members had on a proportionate basis made the most inter Table visits within Area during the year. In the first year Scarborough were placed second.

By about 1964 it was found that there was not enough time available at Area dinner meetings to discuss and decide upon the increasing number of items of business channelled through Area.

The business meeting was accordingly introduced. Three or four times a year the Area Officers, together with two Councillors from each Table, met at the Talbot or the Green Man at Malton, and, fortified by pickled onions and chunks of cheese, coped with substantial agendas of Round Table business. Sometimes the stimulation of argument and the consumption of beer made the discussion extend towards midnight. However keen the argument and outspoken the criticisms there was never any rancour afterwards to upset the harmony of fellowship at the end of the meeting.

In all these growing activities Scarborough took a prominent and often a leading part. They organised the first post-war Rally at the Royal Hotel. Following subsequent visits to Bridlington, Whitby and Harrogate, the Rally returned to Scarborough, and looks like becoming a permanent fixture. Area Rallies are basically, almost exclusively, social affairs – a formal dinner and dance on Friday evening, sporting and energetic pursuits on Saturday, fancy dress party in the evening, and farewell lunch with a guest speaker on Sunday.

Scarborough Table has usually featured in the cabarets* and through its members serving on the Area Executive or Rally committees has helped to achieve a growing participation in these week-end events. Over the years Geoff Heselton, Tom Pindar, Peter Cooper and Geoff Winn, to name but a few of many, have made valuable contributions in this field.

*Not infrequently in the person of Mick Thorpe himself, whose forensic eloquence can rarely have been heard to better advantage, even in higher places.

Until 1965 the choice of Area Chairman was by tradition determined on a rota system by which each Table in turn nominated the Area Chairman, and he usually selected a Secretary and Treasurer from his own or a nearby Table. This system was supported on the principle that it gave each Table in turn an equal chance of having the honour of providing the Area Chairman from its ranks, and also that by so doing it stimulated interest in the Area within that Table. These were sound arguments when the Aren comprised only six or eight Tables, but with its growth in numbers it could not go on prospering in a system that could fortuitously prevent a member from becoming an Area Chairman during his Table career if his own Table had produced an Aren Chairman a few years earlier. [85]

Colin Sedgwick attacked the rota system with vigour both in Scarborough Table and at Area, but during his era the rota system remained. After a vigorous debate at a business meeting in November 1965 it was decided that the Area Chair should be elected by a free democratic vote of every Table in Area. Nevertheless the rota protagonists achieved an element compromise by the provision that ‘no Table shall provide Area Chairman more than once in three years.’ This compromise amendment to the Area standing orders failed to achieve the approval of National, or indeed the lasting support of the Area. In November 1968, on a proposition from Scarborough Table, this last remnant of the rota system was formally buried. Thus the arguments of Colin Sedgwick, unacceptable to the Table at the time, were eventually carried in Area five years later by the efforts of the Table to which Colin had pleaded in vain.

Area now offers possibilities in Round Table which would not be open at Table level. For example, during 1967-8 Gerry Strefford, acting as Area Community Service Liaison Officer, obtained the approval of Area to the support of a Voluntary Service Overseas student and raised the £250 necessary to send the student on a teaching project to Malaya. In the international field, also, the efforts of the International Relationships Officer, currently Peter Cooper, can weld together the minority in each Table interested in international affairs and give local Round Table an injection of the spirit of internationalism.

The most recent innovation in Area 15 has been the quarterly news sheet which grew up at Christmas 1968 into a fully-fledged printed magazine, surely the forerunner of many such issues.

Area provides the forum for the preliminary expression of a Table’s views on matters of Round Table policy or rules. A proposition by Scarborough Table to amend the classification rule to allow a Table with a membership of over 30 to include any three members from the same classification passed from Scarborough’s Membership Committee to Council, to Table and to Area Council. It was there debated and approved and was included in the National Council agenda. Although opposed at that level by the National Membership Convener and Committee, it found favour with the National Council, achieved the necessary majority and went on the agenda of the National A.G.M. at Pwllheli. It was accepted by that meeting and found a place in the National Rules – possibly the first time that Scarborough Table has achieved that distinction, if an alteration to Rules can properly be called a distinction!

In 1966 Area 32 decided that Areas should be known not on by numbers but by names, and a resolution to that effect was accepted. After suggestions had been invited and a number of possibilities discussed and discarded, the name ‘The Ridings’ was eventually adopted to indicate that Area 15 extended into all three parts of Yorkshire, to say nothing of York itself. Within [86] Area the name is not much used, but as one moves around the country one finds it increasingly common for Areas to be known names, which all have a geographical connotation and ate with a fair amount of accuracy the location of each Area.

Louis Marchesi famous words about the idea of Round Table, ‘It’s going to get bigger and bigger – it’s true, you know,’ could be applied with great accuracy to Area 15. That it has prospered, developed and become an important part in the affairs of every Table within it has been due in considerable measure to the efforts of all those who have seen in Area an extension of their enjoyment of Round Table. It is the aim of the present members of Scarborough Table, and it is hoped of their successors, that Area 15 will be in its own sphere as enjoyable, as much fun and as significant as its constituent Tables have already made it. [87]

Community Service

[81]

[82]

Members of the Scarborough Table holding National Office

Year ending 31st March
1955 A. J. D. Lygo National Council (until his departure for Lagos in October 1954)
1955 G. Rowbotham National Council (Deputy)
1956 P. C. A. Pedley National Council
1957-60 C. W. Sedgwick National Council
1961-63 C. W. Sedgwick National Executive*
1965-68 C. M. Thorpe National Council
1968-69 C. M. Thorpe National Executive

*References in Council minutes are sparse and succinct. One of the fullest occurs on 5th November 1962 as follows:
‘National Council Report. Colin Sedgwick briefly reported the goings-on in higher places’.

[79]

What Now?

HERE, AT THIS POINT IN TIME, we reach our deadline. We have followed the fortunes and policies of the Table over the past 34 years. What lies before it can be seen only in part, perhaps darkly, perhaps inaccurately. Whatever else it may be, it will certainly be interesting.

It is interesting for instance, to remember that in 1934 there was some doubt whether Scarborough, with a population of some 40,000, could turn up enough eligible material for a Table to be formed at all. In 1969, when the population of the borough (excluding suburbia) is much the same as it was in 1934, national expansionist thought inclines to the view that such a population should carry two Tables.

It is interesting, too, to reflect that the intake or ‘bulge’ of young post-war members is now at or near the end of its Table life. Already the wind of change is blowing through many Tables, for the views of the younger end do not always coincide with those of their Table seniors. This, in itself, is nothing new. What is new is the certainty of losing an exceptional number of those seniors over an exceptionally short period. With them will go certain ways of thought, and the three words of the R.T. motto will gain a greater domestic significance.

Big Business
What, perhaps, will be most interesting in the Scarborough Table, in the light of the preceding paragraph, is the long-term effect of the tremendous community service active of the past decade. Community service, particularly since the inception of the Wishing Well, has become big business. [72] The domestic problems involved are quite serious, for community service is but one of the foundations on which Round Table is built, not the only foundation nor necessarily the most important foundation. If it is allowed to dominate the fabric, some sort of instability is inevitable.

As has been mentioned earlier in these pages, fellowship is not an end in itself, nor is community service. They are mutually complementary. Should either dominate the other there are dangers. There were dangers twenty years ago, in the five immediate post-war years, when fellowship dominated everything else. Since then the pendulum has swung, with growing momentum, until it has almost reached the opposite end of its swing. Not fully, perhaps, but quite near.

Round Table was never, nor was it ever intended to be, per se, a charitable organisation. It has, however, no set terms of reference, as most charitable organisations have. It has no governing Rule or Object. Its decisions are not wantonly capricious, nevertheless, but they are governed by a curious set of factors – views, energy, ambitions and personality of successive Community Service chairmen, current Table opinion, feasibility of execution, conflicting needs, emotional feelings and Table support. It is not surprising that these can give an overall appearance of capriciousness to otherwise sound decisions.

The Wishing Well may aggravate the problem, for it has achieved what nothing else has achieved, the virtual certainty of substantial continuing annual income. Whether additional annual projects are undertaken or not, the Table has become one of the major charity-distributing organisations in the town. For a club that is not a charitable foundation there is a paradox somewhere.

It has been suggested that there is little true charity in raising money and then looking round for something to spend it on – that, in fact, this negatives the idea of community service. Community service obviously cannot be given until it has been established what service the community needs.
When a need is assessed, as has happened many times in the history of the Table, and a project is undertaken to remedy that need, then true community service is being given. As we have seen, the project may be a money-raising effort or a service-giving effort, or both. In any case, the object of [73] need comes first, and the Table in fellowship works together to fulfil it.

When, however, money-making projects are entered upon for their own sake and the Table has subsequently to look round for ways in which to spend the money, the cart has somehow changed places with the horse. The Table in its objects is neither a Carnegie Trust nor a Gulbenkian Foundation. It is a club in which it has been found over the years that community service is something, like vocational service, that has evolved from the fellowship of a membership that exists not for what it can get out of life but for what it can put into it.

The Objects
Here we may profitably have a look at the Objects of the Movement, the first five having stood from 1927 and one (No. 5) from 1933.
1 To develop the acquaintance of young men through the medium of their professional and business occupations.
2 To emphasise the fact that one’s calling offers an excellent medium of service to the community.
3 To cultivate the highest ideals in business, professional and civic traditions.
4 To recognise the worthiness of all legitimate occupations and to dignify each his own by precept and example.
5 To further the establishment of peace and goodwill in international relationships.
6 To further these objects by meetings, lectures, discussions and other activities.

Of these two are fraternal, two are ethical, one is social and one, the controversial Object 2, is vocational. We have all been brought up within their framework.

Around Object 2 there have been forty years of argument, discussion, controversy and defiance, ranging from a strict interpretation that it means what it says, to a wide interpretation that it means anything you care to read into it. In Round Table, the First 25 Years, John Creasey wrote of the first great national controversy of 1930-35, which was raging during the present editor’s early years in the Table.

The one established principle laid down by the National Organisation was that each Table must decide for itself. [74] Having said that, the leaders leaned towards the negative or vocational side, but almost certainly with their tongues in their cheeks: for everywhere Tables were doing exactly what they thought they should. They were raising money, helping this charity and that, becoming established as valuable and respected organisations within their own communities,

The Future
This typically British compromise was eminently satisfactory. It is perfectly clear today what the founders meant by Object 2, for the concept of service through vocation has made enormous and much publicised strides in the inter evening forty years, at least in some strata of the professional and industrial pyramids, but it was not so clear in the early 30’s. The Stourbridge member who said, ‘This object may be clear to the founder members, but the new recruit always wants to know what it means, and no one can ever tell him,’ was speaking for a large section of the then membership.

The National Council, prior to ceding the ground resulting in the established principle mentioned above, was exercising the caution of a movement barely five years old. ‘There is good reason to believe’, says Creasey, that its reluctance to approve of expansion in Community Service was largely due to the fear that Tables might overreach themselves by trying to do more than they should.’

This brings us straight back to Scarborough’s own domestic problem, the full effects of which may not be felt for another couple of years. It is a problem compounded of three factors:
1 A heritage of enormous community service activity, accelerating over 10 years, and often dominating other Table activities.
2 A reasonable certainty of a substantial future annual income irrespective of further Table projects.
3 A certainty of losing senior members comprising a quarter of the Table’s membership within two years. [75]

It must be emphasised that any views here expressed a those of an onlooker. It is no part of the present writer’s duty to express purely personal views, but he has inevitably had to discuss Table matters with many past and present members, and he has endeavoured to put down something of what is going on in minds other than his own.

It is a profitless exercise to attempt to look into the crystal ball, but it is a highly profitable one to face known facts, to interpret them with the wisdom that Round Table has always, and sometimes astonishingly, commanded; and to go on from there in strength. In other words:

ADOPT ADAPT IMPROVE [76]

Roundabout

The Secretary was authorised to inaugurate the
circulation of a weekly bulletin of Table news,
provided the cost of distribution is kept to a minimum.
– Cautious Council minute of 5th January 1953

THE FIRST CYCLOSTYLED weekly bulletin was written and published five days later by the then Secretary, Ron Horsman. So came into being what was to become yet another Table activity that has continued without a break for sixteen years, and shows no signs of old age. Within two months of its inception it wisely became a fortnightly bulletin, and so it has remained through the years. It took another eighteen months for it to receive its present name, and a further six months to achieve the dignity of a printed heading.

Every aspect of the Table’s work and play has been reflected in its columns. Programmes of events, particulars of new members and their wives, reports on local, Area and National activities, ‘profiles’ of Table members and occasional illustrations – all these things make a new sheet that, unlike much Table literature, is actually read.

Personalities have been described and discussed with varying degrees of accuracy, defamation and lubricity, but long practice had enabled members to disentangle fact from fiction, and no editor has yet found himself defending an action for libel.

The hard-working editors have so far been:
1953 Ron Horsman
1954 Philip Pedley
1955 Ron Huggins
1957 Basil Young
1959 Michael Plows [66]
1960 Mick Thorpe
1961 Steve Lee
1961 Tony Price
1962 Harold Wilson
1963 Bill Shield, Tom Pindar, Tony Price and Paul Collins
1964 Peter Cooper
1965 Tony Price (assisted by Geoff Dennis)
1966 Harold Wilson (Sub-editor, Geoff Hill; Distributor, Jeremy Woodcock)
1967 Clive Pickles
1968 Maurice Finnigan

The 200th edition was remarkable for several reasons. Published in December 1962 it embodied a commemorative front page, four foolscap pages of bulletin and miscellanea, a retrospective account of the history of the journal, five pages (duplicated on yellow paper and therefore described as a colour supplement) of ‘Ten Years of Table Highlights’ and a page of 10 portraits looking somewhat like the Police Gazette but entitled ‘Council Gallery’.

This particular edition was the 10th issue of a new editor who admitted that for various reasons he preferred to remain anonymous, ‘but had made every effort to bring Roundabout in tune with the world’s leading literature (e.g. Lady Chat., Lolita, and others) by introducing Sex with a capital S’.
No doubt this editorial policy was responsible for the following highly libellous story fathered upon a past Chairman of the Table:
The other evening in a Soho bar a rather shy friend of ours spotted a really remarkably stacked young lady drinking alone a few stools away. He moved over and sat next to her, but was embarrassed about striking up a conversation with a total stranger; so instead, when she ordered her next drink he ordered another for himself and paid for them both. She nodded her thanks, but still he could find no way to begin a conversation. This continued for nearly an hour and the consumption of four more rounds.
Finally, emboldened by the liquor and aware that the girl seemed to be getting a bit restless and might soon drift away and out of his life, he blurted out, ‘Do you ever go to bed with men?’
‘I never have before’, she said, smiling, ‘but I believe you’ve talked me into it, you clever, silver-tongued devil, you!’ [67]

It is hardly surprising that the printed heading of Roundabout bears the words, ‘Confidential – for Use of Members only’. Many tides have flowed in and out of the harbour since the day when, a quarter of a century earlier, Max Miller was pulled off the stage at the 1936 London Conference.

Roundabout is a miscellany, a fascinating picture of the Table, its personalities, its thoughts and its actions. It is subjective, not objective, and reminds us once again that all history is made by people. Earlier in these pages, for example, the chopping of wood has been mentioned, briefly and historically as one of a number of Community Service activities that do not figure in a material balance sheet. In Roundabout we see it being chopped, and who is chopping it. Whilst we may wonder, from Roundabout‘s style of journalism, how it ever got chopped at all, we are nevertheless on the site.

No. 117, 27th November 1958. One of the new ideas of the Community Service Committee for Christmas is to deliver logs and firewood to needy persons. A large amount of this has been given by Frank Judson from the buildings being demolished in St. Thomas Street. All strong men please report with axes, hatchets, meat knives and any other form of cutting implements to Alec Cusworth at County Garages on Sunday morning the 30th November at 10 a.m.
No. 118, 12th December 1958. By 10.30 ten bods were on stage and the panto began. ‘Which lot do we chop?’ Axes were flying in all directions; staircases, doors, window-frames were all reduced to splinters. In the meantime Stew (Leslie) wheeled out a dirty big mechanics’ bench and the mechanisation appeared, but before we could operate a bit of rewiring was needed at County Garage; then the thing revolved in the wrong direction, so they rewired again and at last ‘We’re off!’
Tom Bishop and Stuart Leslie were now ripping through timber and stacking large lumps ready for the choppers. By time they were cutting them the right side the saw was tired and needed a rest. Bill Ellis was sorting out all the easy ones for himself and throwing large and knotty pieces to Joe Pickup and Ken Lobb. Tony Squire and Mike Plows were using a whacking big cross cut to reduce 9 in. x 3 in. joists to handy sized logs. Then they discovered we weren’t supposed sawing them up anyway. Of course, after Alex Cusworth had shown us where everything was kept, he disappeared to bring us coffee – without flippin’ sugar. Then he had a customer, actually interested in buying a car, and all Tablers helped the sale with remarks about the roadworthiness of this vehicle.
By this time there was quite a pile of chopped wood. Colin Sedgwick was wielding a cruel looking chopper, Tony Squire [68] was showing his skill at bayonet throwing, and Bill Ellis was collecting woodworms in a matchbox.
Bagging operations began at this stage and results of the morning’s efforts could be seen. Browell was the chief stacker, and he would insist on stacking them high – 3, 4 and 5 high and all that room on the floor! (Cor blimey, Charlie Drake has nothing on this boy). Of course, when the lot collapsed he started all over again.
At 12.45 the team retired to the ‘Sun’ for a well-earned glass of wallop, well satisfied with their efforts, but alas the pile of sacks could have been higher. However, there is still one Sunday to go.

Twelve months later St. Thomas Street was still being knocked down, and the activities of the woodchoppers were again chronicled:
No. 139, 3rd December 1959. There was another good turn out on Sunday, when eleven members gathered together at County Garages as a preliminary to going across to the Sun Inn later. Over 45 sacks have been filled on the two mornings – about the limit that we can cope with for delivery.
Last Sunday disaster overtook the choppers; the rum never arrived and the coffee had to be drunk neat. Peter Dean was maestro at the electric saw, whilst John Scott swung his lethal weapon and David Dennis demonstrated how to chop a stake. Frank Browell was in trouble again; he should have known better than to keep near Stuart Leslie. Mike Plows, as usual, got in the way, Alec Cusworth was in stitches, Tom Bishop was voted chief cook and Steve Lee must take credit in filling the biggest bag. He must have been studying the man with experience of chopping – Ken Lobb. Bill Barthram arrived in time for refreshments.

Occasionally hot news makes a fleeting appearance. The following item is particularly interesting:
No. 105, 2nd April 1958. The Table Secretary received from the National Hon. Secretary on Tuesday a circular letter concerning a character who had been making a practice of calling on Round Tables and obtaining cash and clothing after trotting out a suitable sob-story. We are pleased to report that the gentleman, after visiting Basil Young’s office on Tuesday morning, was arrested by the local C.I.D.

Self-criticism is not absent. At a time when the Table was having rather more than its usual domestic differences of opinion, a contributor, after dealing with the officers and Council, writes:
No. 131, 18th June 1959. The remainder of the Table is divided into three halves (evenly). One half is permanently [69] agin everything, one half is permanently for everything, the other half, which really should not exist, is both for and agin at the same time, which is a very difficult feat, but executed by this half with skill and dexterity. Surely, then, this Table should prosper. As a cross-section of humanity it is surely the crossest.

At the time this history was being written, if there had been a complete, bound and preferably indexed collection of Roundabout in existence, the task of covering the last 15 years would have been lightened. Copies of Roundabout have come to light in the most unexpected of places, some individually, some in chronological order, and some resembling piles of paper awaiting their chips.

It is hoped that sufficient back numbers have now been found to collate a complete run. There are already more than 300 of them. As the years go on, so must Roundabout, for it must not be allowed to die.

Then, in another twenty or thirty years, when the Table decides it is about time to bring out the second volume of its history, the task of the future historian will be immeasurably eased. By then the present historian will be taking a more detached view from a vantage point not yet determined.

The editor of the 316th edition of Roundabout, in a reflective editorial, discusses some of the vicissitudes of editorship.’One is often asked,’ he says, ‘what it is like to be in the editor’s seat of power.’ His answer, I think, may well be quoted here:
As I was sitting in my chair,
I knew the bottom wasn’t there,
Nor legs nor back, but I just sat,
Ignoring little things like that.

Looking Back, by an Elder Statesman
In Roundabout 330 ex-Chairman and now President Ron Huggins (entirely without collusion with the Editor: see page 38) writes:

‘When I was in Table, and indeed subsequently when I heard of Table activities, it did seem to me that some members were becoming very intense about its activities and functions and I do think it is, therefore, most important to remember that Round Table is a spare time social [70] occupation. It is not a full-time job, nor is it a religion; it is something which it is hoped you will enjoy in your leisure hours.

‘There have been to my knowledge occasions in the past when certain members of Table have insisted that everyone should put into a particular activity, either social or community service, their whole energies, both physical and mental, to the exclusion of their family life, and indeed in some cases to the detriment of their work. This is, quite obviously, wrong. Enjoy yourselves, but do not let the quite proper ambition to make your Table the best in the country override your life.

‘I speak with some authority on this point since I am quite sure the reason for the extraordinary general meeting which distinguished my year of office was caused simply by this over-intensity of certain people who seemed to be of the opinion that Round Table, its decisions and its policies, were of paramount importance and that no other consideration should be allowed to interfere with their ambitions for Table and their decisions to implement those ambitions.

‘Please, therefore, enjoy yourselves and if you can do some good along the way for your fellow men, then jolly good, but remember that long after you have finished your connection with Round Table you will still have a very useful life to live which will not be helped if all your energies, all your interests and all your thoughts have been given exclusively to Round Table.’ [71]

Further Projects, 1963-68

APART FROM A Midnight Matinee of “The Ladykillers’ in 1963, which raised £138.11.7 for the Scarborough Council of Social Service and £46.3.11 for the Cinema Trades Benevolent Fund (accountants will notice a ratio between these figures) the first major post-conference project was the second Garden Party at Wykeham Abbey, held in 1964.

Hitherto in these pages we have relied on the memories of eyewitnesses or participants or both to give us a picture of various Table projects. This time let us trace the growth and development of a project through the pages of the Community Service minute book, starting under ‘Any Other Business’ with the initial idea and finishing with the completed project.

20th January 1964. It was suggested that consideration should be given to another event at Wykeham during 1964.
15th April 1964. Much discussion was given to a suggestion that a Garden Party and Barbecue be held in the grounds of Wykeham Abbey. It was pointed out that when this was held previously the Barbecue lost money and it was therefore proposed by D. Chapman, seconded by G. Dennis and carried that a Garden Party only be held at Wykeham Abbey, the date preferably between late June and mid-August, dependent upon the feelings of Lord Downe. It was proposed that the money raised be donated to the National Campaign for Cancer Research, subject to further information regarding administration costs which P. Fox undertook to enquire about.
Proposed M. Finnigan, seconded G. Dennis and carried, all subject to Council Approval.
20th May 1964. The Chairman, Peter Fox, reported the reaction of the Council to our proposal that a Garden Party only be held. After discussion Council asked this Committee to reconsider the question of holding a combined Garden Party and Barbecue. Reference was made to the fact that the [51] Barbecue had helped considerably in raising the sum of £450. Much discussion followed.
A date of 29th July 1964 was proposed by Dennis Hart, seconded by Paul Collins and carried. The discussion then dwelt upon which charity to support. Lord Downe, it was believed, would prefer a local charity. Alice Brooke Homes and Abbeyfield Society were two local charities suggested.
Peter Fox said he would enquire if there was any possibility of York University having a medical side as it had been su that we guarantee a sum of money annually for research into deafness,
The meeting then returned to the all-important question of whether to have a combined Barbecue and Garden Party and at 10.57 p.m. it was proposed by Dennis Hart, seconded by Geoff Dennis and carried ‘that the major annual event be a Garden Party and Barbecue at Wykeham Abbey, provided that the whole-hearted support of the Table be guaranteed. Failing that, the event should be a Garden Party only.’
23rd June 1964. The Chairman reported formally the Table’s decision to hold a Garden Party only without a Barbecue. Lord Downe had been visited and had expressed a wish that the event did not go on too late in the evening, and had offered the use of a miniature railway for giving rides to the children. Lord Downe was also endeavouring to obtain for us a Police Dog display.
It was reported that our earlier idea of furthering research into deafness was quite out of the question financially. Proposed by Fred Coopland, seconded Maurice Finnigan, it was then decided that we should support Alice Brooke Children’s Homes and other local charities.
Opening celebrity – it was decided to approach in order of preference:
Arthur Haynes, Nicholas Parsons, Dickie Henderson, Joan Regan.
Car Park: It was proposed that no charge be made for parking,
Admission: Adults 2/6. Children 6d.
Teas: To be charged separately. Stables available for use – wives and W.V.S. to organise this.
Publicity: This was left in the hands of Paul Collins and Fred Coopland.
Transport: Dennis Hart was appointed O.C. of transport.
Tents: not required.
Bar: Proposed by Harry Robson, seconded by Denis Chapman and carried on a vote that we do not have a bar.
Stalls: A list of proposed stalls using as a basis suggestions put forward at a previous meeting. (Thirty of them, ran from a cake stall to throwing crockery). Harry Robson agreed to act as organiser for all the stalls. [52]
30th June 1964. It was reported that Dickie Henderson had accepted an invitation to open the proceedings. Whether in these circumstances Joan Regan would attend was doubted by members in the theatrical ‘know’.
Police Dogs: Uncertainty existed over the presence of these animals, but it was decided to refer to them in the publicity and hope for the best.
Poster sites: Denis Chapman offered 10 poster sites in the town for publicity.
Posters: It was decided to print 200 posters, 400 car stickers in ‘dayglow’ (half with gum), 500 pseudo-summonses, 2,000 handbills and 1,000 tickets. Fred Coopland suggested the colour of the posters should be cloudy-grey-russett the colour of a mouse’s foot.
Newspaper Advertising: It was decided to spend £25 on this item and in addition to use such additional space as could be scrounged from advertisers.
Transport: Dennis Hart agreed to consult with United and Hardwicks, to lay on adequate buses to the grounds.
Car Park: The minute of the last meeting was revoked and after some discussion it was resolved to make a charge of 1/- per vehicle as a minimum.
Celebrities’ Tickets: Tickets for artists appearing at the Floral Hall would be made available to them through Geoff Baines.
Public Address System: The use of amplifying equipment was confirmed, and Nev. Gray would be invited to co-operate.
Teas: The Chairman reported that the W.V.S. had kindly agreed to provide teas, and Colin Sedgwick his equipment. Fred Coopland undertook to supply ice-cream and minerals.
Sideshows: Jobs were allocated to those members not present, and the Chairman prepared a complete list of side shows and those responsible for them.
Rain: In the event of inclement weather it was resolved to press on regardless.
Cavalcade: A publicity drive was planned for the preceding Sunday and Tuesday.

14th July 1964. It was reported that due to the lack of time the programmes and posters had to be printed announcing that Dickie Henderson would be opening the Garden Party. No reply had been received from Joan Regan as yet.
Publicity: Paul Collins stated that all Tablers had been circularised with posters, handbills and car-stickers for distribution and it was hoped that strenuous efforts would be made to sell the tickets.
Advertising: Fred Coopland informed the meeting that he had received numerous promises donating advertising space. [53] It was also reported that advertising space had been booked in the local press.
Cavalcade: Discussion took place on the possibility of having a cavalcade using cars, or alternatively using Dave Chadwick’s boat, or even towing round an old car. This was left for further investigation.
Car Notices: It was decided to proceed with these notices providing the wording was carefully thought out and that Lord Downe had no objections.
Transport: Information received from United and Wallace Arnold stating their proposals, and Dennis Hart was asked to investigate the cost of running a mini-bus from the road end to the grounds.
Public Address System: Neville Gray was unable to oblige; however, Mr. Shaw of Victoria Road was willing to do the work for the sum of £5.5. It was agreed that 2 microphones would be needed – one for Bingo.
Records: Mick Thorpe to be approached.
Stalls: Supt. Ward had agreed that Roulette would be permissible, but advised against any fruit machines.
Teas: The plan was outlined and approved, using Lord Downe’s equipment if available, Harry Robson having overall control for the food, etc.
Chairs: Geoff Dennis agreed to make enquiries regarding the possibility of borrowing these from Wykeham. Request was made for any pieces of hardboard for the stall signs, Tony Squire was asked to obtain poles; all were asked to save broken crockery and egg shells.

22nd July 1964. Publicity: It was reported that considerable space had been donated and in addition to the small advert there was to be a quarter-page advert on the Friday and a half-page on the Monday preceding the event.
Cavalcade: This was to take place on Sunday, 26th July, starting from Westwood at 7.30 p.m. All spare posters were required.
Police Dogs: This show would last approximately 20-30 minutes and will require an area of 50 yards. 5 p.m. was suggested by all as a draw for keeping people until the end.
Raffles: These were to be stationary on tables.
Food Arrangements: Harry Robson reported that these were well in hand
Collection of Furniture: Geoff Dennis reported All Saints Church had promised 12 forms, 18 tables, 25 chairs, and 50 chairs had been promised from Wykeham Village Hall and 7 or 8 tables. Queen Street Methodist Church had also number of tables and chairs they were willing to loan us.
The Rev. A. Branagan (St. Mark’s) had a number of complete side-shows and tables and chairs which he was prepared to loan. [54]
Stalls: Each member to be responsible for his own stall decorations. Help required to erect these on Tuesday, 28th.

20th October 1964. The Chairman, Peter Fox, thanked all members for their splendid effort in raising over £600 and whilst not wishing to single out individuals extended a special vote of thanks to Paul Collins and Fred Coopland for their excellent advertising which proved so successful. Furthermore, a letter had been received from Lord Downe expressing his satisfaction at the way the event had been organised.

The casual reader might be forgiven for assuming the last Minute tied up the project, but there was still much to do. At that October meeting, under the heading of ‘Spending of the £600 raised’ a detailed discussion regarding the needs of the Alice Brooke Home followed, occupying two closely written pages in the minute book. Finally:
It was proposed by Denis Chapman, seconded by Geoff Dennis and carried that a sub-committee comprising Peter Fox (Chairman), Paul Collins, John Poppleton and Jack Knowles be empowered to spend a maximum figure of £400 for the renovation, decoration and equipment of the games room of the Alice Brooke Children’s Home, Scalby Road, Newby; this sum to include the provision of toys, etc.
Proposed by Maurice Finnigan, seconded by Geoff Dennis and carried, that £200 be donated to the Abbeyfield Society to use locally at their discretion.

These resolutions were approved by the Council and by December the work was well in hand. At last, on the 23rd February 1965 it was reported that all the work had been completed and the question of an additional heater was being discussed.

These extracts from the Minute Book of the Community Service Committee relate to but one of the many major projects undertaken in recent years. We see the project, from inception to conclusion, from the inside, and we realise that work on a project does not necessarily end when the last stragglers have gone home and the stalls have been dismantled and cleared away.

The Charity Spectacular
The following year, under the chairmanship of Paul Collins, the Community Service Committee decided to stage another open-air event as their major effort. It was planned to take place at the height of the season, when the town was full of [55] resident stage celebrities who might be persuaded to make personal charity appearances or otherwise take part in the proceedings.

The Directors of the Scarborough Football Club kindly made the Seamer Road Athletic Ground available on Wednesday afternoon, 11th August 1965. The weather was fine and a large crowd turned up for Scarborough’s ‘Charity Spectacular’.

Few such events can have had such a star-studded cast. The main attraction was a football match, Show Biz XI, captained by Ronnie Carroll v. Scarborough Football Club, After an inspection of the teams by Mrs. Bessie Braddock, MP, Miss Susan Lane kicked off.

Further attractions included a display by the North Riding Police dogs. A gymnastics display by the Scarborough Y.M.C.A. was ably assisted by Jimmy Savile. The Tiller Girls, attractively turned out in rugby kit, not only entertained the crowd by their antics on the field but also sold a vast number of raffle tickets. The first prize, a Dansette record-player, was won by a holidaymaker from County Durham.

The Ippon Judo Club gave a demonstration. Freddie, the baby elephant from Kirby Misperton Zoo was a popular attraction.

The boys of the Y.M.C.A. ran an excellent balloon race and there were a number of ancillary side-shows. With the help of the W.V.S. several refreshment stalls were operated, and the small bar provided by the Table in the Directors Board Room for the hard-working celebrities and V.I.P’s was much appreciated.

Many of the celebrities then appearing in the town, including Harry Worth, Jimmy Savile, Susan Lane, Clinton Ford, the Patton Brothers and the Morton Fraser Harmonica Gang, helped by uncomplainingly giving autographs.

At the end of a fairly hectic day a net profit of £538.4.3 was available for division equally between the Scarborough Society for Mentally Handicapped Children, the Y.M.C.A. and the National Society for Cancer Relief. [56]

The Third Wykeham Abbey Garden Party and Open Day
Among the big Community Service projects mentioned in these pages it is perhaps fitting that the last and biggest should be fully reported in the 300th edition of Roundabout. Without the editor’s permission various extracts are here given.
This was the main fund-raising event for the Table year 1967-8. It was a great success due to the unflagging endeavour and enthusiasm of G. Strefford, chairman of Community Service, and also to the individual efforts of every single member of Scarborough Round Table. Purpose – to provide a mini-bus for handicapped children at Woodlands School

The new Lord Downe, who succeeded in 1965, was as gracious and helpful as his father and mother had been. He and Lady Downe not only consented to the use of the Abbey grounds, but generously agreed to open the house as well. It was to be a two-day effort, held on Saturday, and Sunday, 5th and 6th August 1967. Saturday was wet, Sunday was fine. Nevertheless on the two days over 1,700 persons attended at 6/6 per head (5/- admission to the grounds, plus 1/6 for an illustrated brochure giving admittance to the house).
Stewards, two to each room, were on duty in the house, and both Rotary and ’41 Club gave admirable support. Tea and refreshments were provided in the stable yard by H. Robson and the W.V.S.
Six sideshows were operated in the grounds and also a balloon race. The cake stall, thanks to the great persuasive talents of the Tablers’ wives who obtained supplies from innumerable relatives, was the most lucrative of the stalls, making £70 clear.
In spite of a disappointing attendance on Saturday, a total figure of £432 was taken at the gate and £130 for admission to the house.

The result was a net profit of £744.8.8, a record for the Table, and it more than covered the cost of a Bedford Dormobile. It is interesting to note that in the course of John Mitchell’s advertising campaign, use was made of the now defunct pirate Radio 270. It was felt that Granada T.V. at £40 for seven seconds or £56 for fifteen seconds was a trifle too expensive. [57]

Black and White Cricket Match and Fete
Once again, on 18th August 1968, the Black and White Minstrels, again playing at the Futurist Theatre, took part in a ‘Sporting Spectacular’ organised by the Table in aid of the fund for those suffering from cystic fibrosis. Held in the grounds of Bramcote School, the main event was a cricket match, Scarborough Round Table v. The Black and White Minstrels, 1 1/2 hours per innings. As every six to be scored was sponsored to the extent of some £10, lively play was ensured.

During the interval it was announced that Kanga (John) Priestley and Wogga (Chris) Thompson would demonstrate ‘for the very first time in Scarborough’, their remarkable talents with ‘real Australian boomerangs’. Side-shows did continuous business, and the Mitchell Maids and T.V.
Toppers sold great quantities of raffle tickets for a cricket bat autographed by the entire Minstrel cast.

Roundabout, in congratulating Gerry Strefford for organising the event, adds that he would have been stumped without John Mitchell, who organised Gerry.

The Table batted first and were all out for 141 (including 3 sixes). The Minstrels passed the Table’s total for the loss of 5 wickets (Alan Hampshire 105) and hit a further 5 sixes, with consequent profit to the fund.

In all, the event yielded a net profit of over £350, in spite of rainfall half way through the afternoon.

The Wishing Well
The last project to be mentioned in these pages is one that is likely to continue, public psychology being what it is, for a long time.

Rooted firmly in the animistic beliefs of primitive man, who felt it necessary or prudent to placate the spirits that dwelt in natural features and phenomena, especially water, is the ‘good-luck’ custom of throwing coins of low denomination from the Forth Bridge into the firth below.

Rivers, torrents, lakes and the sea have demanded their tribute for many centuries. Thus the throwing of pennies into fountains, and the making of associated wishes, are no [58] new phenomena, as the Romans well knew, and when ‘Three Coins in a Fountain’ was filmed some years ago the mania for dropping loose change into water became some thing of an epidemic.

The same principle, fortunately for Round Table, applies to wells. How the Scarborough Table ensured that a well should be provided for the purpose is told by Brian Heaps:

‘In August 1966. when Community Service Committee were faced with a deficit of £25, a minute appears, “That it is time Table could rely on some continuous source of income for its C.S. projects”, and it is in this minute that the origin of the Wishing Well can be found.

‘Peter Cooper, Table Chairman in that year, had just returned from a holiday in the Lakes. He was certain that the answer to our problem was to be found in a wishing well similar to that at Windermere from which the Windermere Table was having outstanding success.

‘The idea was received with enthusiasm, and at that meeting it was little realised that it would not become reality for some 20 months, or that it would create almost a political issue in the chambers of local government.

‘The siting and plans were of paramount importance, and the latter were entrusted to our own Table architect, Paul Collins. It was agreed that the best site and setting would be Peasholm Park, most popular for the holiday crowds, and it was this decision that nearly wrecked the scheme. The desired site lay on Corporation land.

‘Looking back, it is difficult to understand why the Town Hall found so much opposition to both idea and site. Nevertheless, plans were prepared and submitted. The official wheels ground slowly and reluctantly as the months went by. At last, on 5th August 1967, the project was approved by one vote.

The tender of £400 by A. W. Sinclair & Sons Ltd. was accepted, and construction began in March 1968. A dance held that month at the Scene One discotheque raised £103 which, together with the proceeds of the annual carol singing and jumble sale, gave us over £300 towards the cost.

‘The following month the well was completed and ready for its official opening. The 10th April dawned clear and sunny, and at 3 p.m., in the presence of representatives of [59] the Borough Council, Rotary Club, 41 Club, Lions Club and the press, the well was ‘opened’ by the Mayor of Scarborough
ex-Table Chairman Ernie (Don’t ‘ee worry) Pilgrim. The ringing of the bell by the first coins to be thrown in made sweet music.

‘There is no doubt that the Wishing Well is the most profitable venture undertaken by the Table. In the 1968 season it took into its depths coins totalling over £900. It is to be hoped that their collection, washing, drying and counting will continue for many years’.

Wishing Week
Concurrently with the establishment of the well an annual Wishing Week was envisaged, during which individual wishes were to be invited from the public. The first of these weeks took place at the end of 1968.

Some 70 wishes were received, surprisingly few for a town with a population of over 40,000. Many of them were not for personal benefit, but for the fulfilment of someone else’s needs. There were wishes from organisations as well as from individuals for transport of elderly, handicapped, sick and lonely people to see friends and relatives, locally and in other towns, to make hospital visits, and even just ‘to have a drive in a car’. There were wishes from the elderly or incapacitated for help in cutting hedges, tidying gardens, decorating, and digging potatoes. Several wishes were for full-time or part-time employment, others for equipment to assist the physically handicapped in the working of their own homes.

Owing to the timing of Wishing Week there were inevitable ‘Father Christmas’ wishes ranging from toys for children and grandchildren, Christmas cheer and fuel for the elderly and sick, to refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, bicycles, radios, T.V. sets and a bottle of whisky. The largest wish came from the W.V.S. for a new mini-van for their meals-on-wheels service.

All wishes were passed for investigation to members of the Table, each of whom was given details of two or three cases for him to visit and report upon. It would be interesting to know the outcome of one instruction to visit a certain lady ‘re wish for husband with bad leg’. [60]

The Second Scarborough Conference, 1956

IT IS A GENERALLY ACCEPTED fact that the 1956 Scarborough Conference started the previous year in Torquay. In the sedate days of the first Scarborough Conference, the invitation had been given with becoming decorum by Frank Winn, who merely stood up at the London Conference and invited everybody to come to Scarborough the following year. And without any more ado they did.

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis (our dads were not the men we are). Things were different at Torquay, twenty years later, but the proceedings started decorously enough. Eleven pillars of the Scarborough Conference and ten of their wives went to Torquay, ostensibly for guidance and information on the problems of conference organisation, actually to persuade as many as possible to come north in 1956.

They took with them some thousands of sticks of Scar borough rock, in Table colours, looking not unlike charges of hygienic gelignite, which they distributed with a prodigality that in London a generation earlier would have amounted to electoral bribery. It was, however, merely a foretaste of better things to come. Less popular were the reams of stickers stuck by the Scarborough contingent on all cars in sight.

The theme of Scarborough’s Conference publicity was to be ‘The Frozen North’. This was a sufficient reason for Peter Boyes, Basil Young, Ian MacGregor, Geoff Heselton, Arthur Slater, Philip Pedley, Geoff Rowbotham, Ken Dix, Ernie Pilgrim and Bill Ellis to turn themselves into cavemen, with Colin Sedgwick as a penguin dragging a large sledge.

In the closing stages of the final night’s Fancy Dress Ball the northern troglodytes made a dramatic appearance on [33] the floor of Torquay’s immaculate Town Hall, with intention of capturing the newly elected National President and putting him on ice for 1956. If they had stuck to of rock, all would yet have been well, but on the sledge were five boxes of Scarborough kippers.

‘These’, writes Colin Penguin, whose experiences of their culinary properties was greater than his appreciation of their ballistic potentialities, ‘were thrown to the waiting hundreds, who in true R.T. tradition, threw them back. In less than a minute coveys of kippers were flying to and fro.
slapping against flesh, slipping behind radiators, staining costumes and smearing the windows and walls of the pride of Torquay. When order was restored their aromatic juices were still being trodden into the boards. They lingered there for many weeks, and when the central heating was started up the following winter Scarborough’s fragrance was renewed from hidden sources.’

The R.T. National Conference has not been back to Torquay since. The politely accepted reason is that the town is no longer large enough to accommodate it.

The Frozen North, and to 5th May 1956
After the preview at Torquay, Scarborough had to justify the promise it had held out. Peter Boyes, then Chairman, considered that, as usual, a professional cabaret should be staged. In this he ran into opposition from Bill Ellis and others of like ilk, who saw no reason why the Table should not stage its own cabaret. To prove it they mounted a show at the Chairman’s Ladies’ Night which was so successful that nothing more was heard about professionalism.

Arthur Slater was Area Chairman, and at his Conference Reception at the Royal on the Wednesday, the cabaret got off to a good start. ‘The cabaret spot provided by Scar borough Table’, reported News and Views, ‘bettered the London professional chorus line … These boys were coached by Tabler Neville Gray, who was also responsible for the expert sound engineering needed for the miming act and who, incidentally, as Councillor Gray, Chairman of the Borough Entertainments Committee, contributed to the success of the Conference in other respects. Even the Conference Committee, when introduced, looked as if they had [34] just been through an air raid, for the Scarborough Table just refuses to take itself too seriously about anything’. The Committee’s battered, bloodstained, bandaged and be-splinted bodies may have hampered movement, but they got the Conference off at a cracking pace. It was described by the National President, Eric Bliss, as ‘fabulous’, a word he was to use again on the Friday. By Saturday night (vide News and Views) he was speechless.

It was at the Civic Reception the following evening, Thursday, that Bill Ellis and Ernie (‘Don’t ‘ee worry’) Pilgrim (‘who also found time to be Chief Steward without exceeding a steady walking pace’) burst upon the National scene with ‘Water can’t quench the fire of love’. Thus they ensured for themselves a reputation that, as they have, has gone beyond the confines of the Table, the former for his inexhaustible rhymes of the thymes, the latter for his pawky* impromptus.

*This word has no vocational significance.

The Rotary Club’s obstetric functions have already been mentioned in these pages. On the Friday, at the National President’s Ball at the Olympia, the Club displayed other aptitudes by presenting a dead-pan excerpt from ‘Swan Lake’, the third cygnet from the left being Peter Boyes.

The President’s Ball went on until 1 a.m. By 7.45 p.m. the following evening the hall had to be ready for the farewell fancy dress party, naively named ‘Native Nite’. The preparations for this party had been going on for months, and many hundreds of Table-man-hours had been expended, under the direction of Stan Bradley, whose premises had been constantly in use as workshop and store. The quantity of scenic decoration that had been made and painted was enormous. All through the Friday night the Table worked, and gradually what had been an idea at last became reality.

Ken Higgs had designed and made four mammoth ‘mobiles’ to hang from the ceiling, representing the four quarters of the globe. Murals on stretched hessian covered the walls. The pillars were transformed into totem poles.
The entrance to the Polar Bar on the balcony was an igloo with its curtain of icicles, and the Jungle Juice Bar was appropriately decorated. [35]

‘The impact on the Tablers as they entered the hall,’ writes Colin Sedgwick, ‘was electrifying, and the scene was set for a magnificent event. Spirits ran high* and high jinks were the order of the day.

*There were four bars.

‘Towards the end of the evening, over-enthusiastic Tablers began to take down varying items of décor as souvenirs, not as carefully as they might have done, and the recently-decorated hall suffered a little. Many of the items were seen leaving Scarborough on the tops of cars the following day.

‘Finally, at midnight, one party tried to launch a totem pole as a canoe, and got the inevitable ducking, which didn’t dampen their spirits at all and delighted the onlookers.’

As guests left for their hotels, 90% of them in the St. Nicholas Cliff area, there to whoop it up until dawn, they were each, through the careful organisation of Meredith Whittaker and his staff, presented with a special Conference Edition of the Mercury. This included three full pages of Conference photographs together with a picture of the President of Round Table International, Peter Myers, being sacrificed by druids at Stonehenge a matter of minutes earlier.

As was usual, a certain amount of business was done at the Conference, but nobody seems to remember much about it. In any case, it is all (one hopes) in the national archives.

The Cabaret
This was the beginning of the golden age of the Table Cabaret, for what it had done at the 1956 Conference established it as an important ingredient of the Table’s future social activities. In Bill Ellis the Table had a script writer who, after months of mental anguish, would come up with lyrics fresh with the dew of inspiration, not infrequently with a little earth still clinging to their roots. In Ernie Pilgrim the Table had an urbane compère and raconteur whose polished impromptus have already been mentioned, and in Neville Gray, an electronic perfectionist. On this trio the brunt of all cabarets fell, except in the year when Bill Ellis was Chairman, when Derek Towle deputised for him.

John Secker recalls the time after the purchase of the Spa by the Corporation in the late 50’s, when four members [36] of the Table – Ernie Pilgrim, Peter Boyes, Bob Quinlan and Neville Gray – were also members of the Borough Council. The following quatrain from The Councillors’ Song was inevitable:

I’m Quinlan, I’m Pilgrim, I’m Boyes and I’m Gray.
We’re stuck with the Spa and we can’t make it pay.
The Council decided the men for the job
Were Peter and Ernie and Neville and Bob.

The basis of the Ellis-Pilgrim partnership rested on:
1 A topical song relating to members of the Table, their various activities in and out of the Table – e.g. “The Councillors’ Song.
2 A mime of some popular song pre-recorded by Neville Gray – e.g. ‘Whispering Sands’ with Bill as a dying prospector and Ernie as a highly successful angel. The partnership became a trio occasionally, as with Fred Coopland in the Ying Tong Song.

No member of the Table was safe from Bill Ellis’s lilting pen. It is, however, not the aim of this history to publish libels, however long ago they were perpetrated, or however great the temptation. Nevertheless one classic stanza has remained with varying degrees of accuracy in the minds of many members of the Table, and in the interests of scholarship the definitive version is here given. Its subject combined a directorship of a large department store with rural, agricultural and equestrian pursuits.

Percy Pickles, they say,
Is a horseman at heart.
He goes riding, jolly well riding.
The horse would be better
Off pulling a cart,
When he’s riding, jolly well riding.
In his new riding jacket,
His new riding cap,
He really looks handsome,
A most dashing chap.
In the fields as he passes
The cows stand and clap.
When he’s riding, jolly well riding.

The Dancing Girls
The more physically energetic section of the Cabaret was the sextet of dancing girls in the later 1950’s. Ex- or old-girls of the troupe are Colin Sedgwick, Basil Young, Geoffrey Heselton, John Bradley, John Secker, Tony Squire, Michael [37] Plows and Derek Towle. The costumes were made by long-suffering if not altogether approving wives.

These girls performed (in spite of a Council resolution that they shouldn’t) at the 41-Club Conference in 1960. At this performance it was decided that the turn should be delicately guyed. Colin Sedgwick suggested that it should be built round John Secker, as he was always half a beat behind everybody else. John’s comment is that by the time the performance took place he had arthritis. How far that was attributable to Offenbach is not clear.

The Great Storm of 1958
Here, perhaps is the place for a brief word on the most important of the Table’s occasional periods of self-examination mentioned on page 68. Council and membership had fallen a little out of step, and Tom Pindar has had the task of putting his recollections on paper:

When a storm breaks, one often wonders why the signs of its approach had gone unheeded, but is then comforted to remember that once events are moving its arrival is as inevitable as the delightful freshness that succeeds it.

Thus it was with Table year 1958-9. Events flowed along pleasantly, but there was an ill-defined feeling that some thing was due to happen. There was talk of another Conference, and Council met to discuss the formation of a Shadow Conference Committee.

Peter Boyes, Chairman of the 1956 Conference, attended the meeting and after discussion it was agreed to invite Basil Young to be Conference Chairman, John Secker to be Secretary. Further appointments would follow later. This was on the 24th November,

By 22nd December the storm was rumbling loudly and a letter reached Ron Huggins, Table Chairman, offering criticisms of and suggestions for the running of the Table. Covering three sides of foolscap and signed by 10 Table members, it could be taken as indicative of serious discontent.

A special general meeting was called to discuss the letter and the 2 1/2-page Council point-by-point reply bore the signatures of all its 9 members. One Council member had [38] the distinction of signing both letters. A blood-bath was expected, and there was a good turnout to see the sport. The meeting was remarkable for the skilful chairmanship of Ron Huggins and the readiness for sense and reason shown both sides as well as by the non-combatants.

So, the storm was over. It was a milestone (if not a landmark – Ed.) in Table history, for after it there was a greater sense of unity and of respect for Chairman and Council. Some reforms began to emerge, but the Conference Officers appointments, which had caused much of the storm, came to nothing, because Scarborough was not selected until 1962, by which time a new method of appointment had been devised.

It is a curious coincidence that, as we go to press, Ron Huggins, now as President, should be writing in Roundabout from which, on page 70, we have filched an extract. [39]

The Developing Years, 1953-56

IN LOOKING BACK over the years it becomes possible to see trends and events in a perspective not readily apparent at the time they are taking place. There is a danger in measuring a Table against the yardstick of its own social fellowship and activities; there is an equal danger in measuring it solely against that of its service to the community. The full strength of a Table lies not in either one or the other, but in both. Without fellowship service suffers; without service fellowship is incomplete.

For five post-war years fellowship had been developing and strengthening and the average age of the Table had fallen. The younger members were beginning to shoulder responsibility and, as was right, were to become the increasingly active members of the succeeding years. The first of these succeeding years brought a large measure of fulfilment to their apprenticeship, for it marked the Silver Jubilee of the movement and it was the year of the coronation of H.M. Queen Elizabeth II.

Already, earlier in the year, the Community Service Committee had recommended that the per capita annual ‘voluntary’ charitable donation of 10/- should be raised to 15/- ‘with the proviso that the Council be authorised to use 5/- per capita of this amount for the National A.G.M. Travel Pool* if such scheme be adopted.’ The Table, however, resolved that in lieu of adopting the Committee’s recommendations the amount of £1.5 (annual subscription) in line 1 of rule 9 be deleted and £2 be substituted’. The [26] result was that in the 1953-4 accounts the ‘Charity Levy’ was replaced by a transfer from Table funds.

*This was a scheme whereby the expenses of two members from each Table attending the National A.G.M. would be paid from a national pool to be fed by a per capita annual levy from each Table.

The Silver Jubilee, 1953
This year was marked by the discovery that the Table’s Charter had not been seen for about 15 years, and nobody knew where it was*. On the other hand, three years previously, Swinney had produced the Area Golf Cup, which apparently no one had then missed.

*It was never found, and a new one was issued by R.T.B.I. The original, however, had been issued during the year in which the Founder had been National President, and it was felt that the replacement should also bear Louis Marchesi’s signature, which it does.

Considerable discussion took place in the Community Service Committee, then under Frank Judson, to determine a suitable means of commemorating the movement’s Jubilee. The outcome was a recommendation that £50 worth of camping equipment be presented to the Scarborough and District Boy Scouts’ Association.

By now the leisurely pace of the first five post-war years had gone for good. Already Roundabout, a fortnightly bulletin of Table news, was being issued. Extension was still in the air. With E. V. Appleton as Area Extension Officer and D. I. Steel from the Table, contacts were made with a view to the formation of a Table in Whitby. Eventually, after a great deal of work, a successful dinner meeting was held there on 21st April 1954, and at the inaugural meeting on 29th July 16 founder members were elected from the 27 who had attended various preliminary meetings.

The Whitby Charter Night at which the Scarborough Table was to present Whitby with a Chairman’s jewel, took place seven months later on a wild February evening, and was attended by Sir Alec Spearman, M.P., Arthur Slater and Maurice Plows, respectively Chairman and Vice President of the Scarborough Table, together with several carloads of supporters. The journey is graphically described by the Vice-President, who was a little older than anyone else, as follows:

‘We assembled at the Pavilion. The streets were thick with snow and it was freezing like hell*. Arthur Slater came in and said, “My word, there has been a smash!” A car had [27] skidded into a bus. Tom Pindar came in with a story of another smash. He had got a load of freestone plus several pairs of wellingtons in the back of his car and also a pick and shovel. I had rung up Philip Pedley in the morning (Saturday) and asked if they were going. He said yes, had I got cold feet? I replied yes in both senses, so he said I need not go if I didn’t want to, so I went.

*Hardly an appropriate simile.

‘We followed a hearse with a coffin in it from Falsgrave to Cloughton. The road was shocking and it was blowing a gale. We didn’t know if the roads were wet or black ice, so we tried it. It was the latter.

‘When we got past the Flask we stopped for a bus, and for half an hour the four of us tried to get the car back on the road facing the right way. We eventually got to Whitby.

‘We arranged to come home in convoy, ten to fifteen cars. Sir Alec Spearman led the way and Ted Appleton brought up the rear, so that everyone got home safely in due course.’

New Zealand Ladies
At this time a New Zealand Ladies’ Cricket Team was to visit this country and fixtures were arranged in Scarborough early in June 1954. The Yorkshire Women’s Cricket Association had approached the Table to see if hospitality could be found for the 17 members of the New Zealand team.
The Council agreed to undertake the task. Table members and their wives not only provided the basic hospitality in their own homes, but the Table ensured that the visiting team had an enjoyable social time and saw something of the surrounding countryside.

Membership Policy
The strength of the Table was increasing, and early in 1954 earnest discussions were taking place on the whole question of membership, its size and quality. The Table was, in fact, having one of its periods of self-examination.

The outcome was two Council resolutions, the first decla ring that the ideal strength of the Table was 40 to 45. and therefore no effort should be made to increase membership for its own sake. The Membership Committee was instructed to concentrate on quality and to bear in mind that, after allowing for retirement due to age and possible transfers [28] and resignations, it would be necessary to elect no more than four or five new members a year to keep the Table up to strength.

There has from time to time been much argument, both in and out of the Table, for and against membership of an organisation by invitation, the social equivalent of a closed shop. Inevitably accusations of snobbery, exclusiveness and favouritism are not infrequently made against such an organisation by those who would like to join, perhaps for purely social reasons, but are incapable of assessing their own qualifications for all that membership demands.

Nevertheless the Council’s second resolution was one common not only to many Tables but to other organisations. The odd feature about it is its late appearance in the history of the Scarborough Table, twenty years after its inception. It usually appears much earlier.

When a member of the Table wishes to propose a new member he shall complete a proposal form without notifying his nominee. This proposal form, if duly seconded, will be considered by the Membership Committee and, if the nomination is looked on favourably, the nominee may then, and only then, be approached and asked if he would like his name to be considered.

Five years later, at a time when the Table strength was 40 with four prospective members and another six nominations in the pipeline, the procedure was further extended and codified:

Procedure for Introduction of
New Members as from April 1959

1 The sponsor, who should have been in membership for at least two years, should first advise the Membership Chairman that he has a prospective member in mind.
2 If the current programme of the Committee permits and the man is basically suitable the sponsor may bring the prospect to two lunches and a social function. He should then be introduced to the Table Chairman, Membership Committee and as many members of the Membership Committee and Council as possible. The Committee will then decide whether or not the prospect is acceptable.
3 An Information Meeting will be called. This will be attended by the Table Chairman, Committee Chairmen and Table Secretary. This will be informal and will take the following pattern:
The Membership Chairman welcomes the prospective member and introduces the Table Secretary who will [29] outline the history, aims and objects, strength of the R.T.B.I. and affiliated organisations and the method of government of the movement.
Each Committee Chairman then sets out the functions of his Committee and the prospective member has an opportunity of asking questions,
4 The Membership Committee then pass their recommendation to Council. Following its approval and 14 days notice to the Table, the new member is inducted. (It is obviously better to bring in a group of members at a time to avoid having a vast number of extra meetings).
5 The ceremony of induction should be rather more impressive than it has been and it is agreed that the sponsor should ‘stand by’ on this occasion.

There has always been what is loosely termed a freemasonry amongst members of Round Table wherever they may be. This impressive procedure almost suggests that the ancient Craft has exerted its influence in other directions.

A further result of the 1954 increase in membership was another change of luncheon venue. For the preceding six years Rowntrees had housed the Table. Now arrangements were made at Boyes Restaurant, and there the Table met for the next eight years until the restaurant was discontinued.
Thereafter from 1962 meetings have been held at the Victoria Hotel, birthplace of the late Charles Laughton.

The Novice
So far we have looked at the question of membership from a purely Table point of view. New members often had opinions of their own, which they usually had sufficient tact at the time to keep to themselves. Two once-new members have been persuaded to put their thoughts down on paper. In each case it is interesting to see how those thoughts reflect matters that have already been discussed in these pages.

Michael Plows came into the Table in the early 50’s, at the beginning of the Table’s renaissance. At the time he had the distinction of being the first son of an earlier member of the Table, the first of the second generation. He was to be followed in the 60’s by Geoffrey Winn, Jeremy Woodcock and Clive Pickles.

‘I had given very little thought to Table, or coming into Table,’ he writes, and there seemed to be very little activity [30] at that time. I had heard of long walks across the moors, and swimming competitions, but absolutely nothing as far as Community Service was concerned. I understood the Table was a luncheon club with speakers, mainly members of the Table who occasionally had to talk about subjects that they knew nothing about. I had no close personal contact with any member, although I knew most by sight.

‘Asked to join Table one Thursday, I accepted, and the following Tuesday was a member. It was rather a horrifying occasion. I was asked to sit at the top table, the room being packed with what to me were very much more senior citizens. I found that the members were extremely friendly, and although most were over ten years my senior, I was soon brought into Table life.

I found that the system for speakers had been recently changed and that some most interesting men were invited along to speak. Community Service, which had been mainly a collecting-box passed round at meals, had become a levy, and attempts were being made to raise funds in various ways. No publicity was allowed on any charitable work.

‘On the social side things were changing quite a lot. The Table Cabaret was about to be born, and dances were more like parties, with various games and interruptions!* Table Council were very serious men. I found this when I came on to Council in my second year in Table. Meetings were on unlicensed premises, usually started at 5.30 and went on until late in the evening. One in particular, when we wrote the Table Rules, went on until 11 p.m. without refreshment.

*Of a previous function he says: I had been to the Annual Dinner in (I think) 1947, which was a very stuffy function, the evening being dinner, half an hour’s dancing, then supper, the supper menu being almost larger than that for dinner. I think this must have been due to the fact that we were rather obsessed with eating after the restrictions of the war.’

‘However, I think that this period was probably the most important in the Scarborough Table. Roundabout was born. Council meetings moved to Arthur Slater’s house, committee meetings to some hostelry. Community service grew much more ambitious, and the Table really sprang to life. Looking back now, I think the way Scarborough Table developed during that period was quite remarkable. A collection of men, enjoying themselves, quietly giving pleasure to a few, [31] became a Table enjoying itself quietly and giving pleasure to a lot.’

The Table was 13 years older when Jeremy Woodcock followed in the steps of his father William (who had been Table Chairman in 1949), 13 years in which the Table had been host to two more National Conferences, had gone into Community Service in a big way, and had formulated the 1959 membership procedure:
What he expected:
1 A collection of young professional men who met regularly to promote fellowship between themselves.
2 That out of the meetings a considerable amount of fellowship and entertainment would be forthcoming and that the entertainment would take the form of several rather expensive dances, with satirical cabarets, and
3 That Round Table was like a secret society in that one did not join in the normal way but was invited by those already In the Table.
What he found:
1 Membership was not confined to the professions, but Tablers from the professions tended to keep themselves separate.
2 However, there was a strong feeling of fellowship between all Tablers, irrespective of age, and an immediate bond of friendship.
3 The amount of entertainment was not as much as he had expected, but this obviously depended on the Entertainments Chairman of the year.
4 He had not expected there to be as much Community Service as there had been in the last few years. Again, this depended on the Community Service Chairman, and some people seem to have high sights, especially with regard to fund raising.
5 ‘Membership is by invitation, and you get the odd situation wherein non-Tablers are examined as to their suitability for membership without it being established whether or not they want to become Tablers’.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (our sons are just like their dads). Many of these thoughts are nostalgic echoes to many of the old brigade, long superannuated from the Table, who still remember their own thoughts and feelings as novices. [32]

The Ladies, 1937-39

AT THIS POINT we must briefly look back two years, and in so doing remember a sphere of Round Table activity in which the membership of the Table had no immediate part.

Although the early ideas of Round Table took no account of femininity, it was perhaps inevitable that the ladies should make an impact on its work. Many a wife did much and endured much for the sake of Round Table, and this fact was early recognised by Round Table in the holding of Ladies’ Nights, Christmas Luncheons and Annual Dances. Any male organisation owes a debt to the wives, sisters and girl-friends of its members, particularly an organisation in which community service plays an important part.

Wives were roped in by husbands to help, individually or collectively, in one Table job or another; alternatively those with young families were holding the fort at home while their husbands were about Table business.

The first Ladies’ Circle, however, arose from a pre-conference situation. The 1932 Conference was to be held at Bournemouth, and nearly two years earlier the Bournemouth Table began to get ready for it. Here it was that the members’ ladies got together to raise funds to provide a gift for every visiting lady. The Conference came and went, but the Ladies’ Committee remained and eventually became Ladies’ Circle No. 1.

By 1935 there were another seven – Manchester, Hastings, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Wolverhampton, Doncaster and Southampton and so numbers remained until early in 1937. This was the year of the first Scarborough Conference. History repeated itself, the imminent conference bringing into being the Scarborough Ladies’ Circle, No. 10, on 3rd [18] March 1937. Sunderland Ladies’ Circle had come into being a week earlier, beating Scarborough for 9th place.

At this date there were 27 married and 9 unmarried members of the Scarborough Table. The inaugural meeting of the ladies, attended by 12 wives, elected its first officers:
Chairman: Mrs. H. D. Tesseyman
Vice-Chairman: Mrs. G. E. Pearson
Hon. Secretary: Mrs. F. Winn
Hon. Treasurer: Mrs. N. L. King
Committee: Mmes. Dalzell, Hanlon and Hopwood
The other founder members were Mmes. Evans, Forward, Jackson, Plows and Simcock.

Mrs. Tesseyman was elected to represent the Circle at the
A.G.M. of the National Association of Ladies’ Circles, which had been formed the previous year. The following year she was elected National Vice-President.

Active membership was limited to wives and sisters of members of Scarborough Round Table, nominations to be made by an existing member of the Ladies’ Circle. Power to elect honorary members was vested in the Committee, such members being ineligible for either voting or holding office.

At the date of the Circle’s first Annual General Meeting on 29th March 1938 membership had risen from 12 to 16. In the year a great deal of assistance had been given towards the Conference. Members acted as stewards, and Mrs. Tesseyman responded to the toast of ‘The Ladies and Guests’ at the Conference Banquet in a brilliant speech that is still remembered by many of those present.

The Circle assisted with the Hospital Collection at Pickering, this time as a Circle; its members had done the same thing the previous year as individuals. Small social functions were held to raise funds for Christmas donations to the Scarborough Clinic (at which volunteers were helping) and to the Langdale End Unemployment Centre. Monthly meetings were held throughout the year, with speakers on a wide variety of topics from beauty-culture to first-aid. ARP classes followed in the following year, the year of
Munich.

At the second Annual General Meeting, held on the 14th March 1939, the Circle was having difficulty in carrying on. Several of the more active members had left the town, [19] replacement recruiting had not been forthcoming, National Service obligations, including those of husbands, were intensifying, and membership had dropped to nine. Nevertheless in that year several members had qualified for their silver A.R.P. badges and two had produced babies. Assistance had again been given to the Table’s Hospital Collection and occasional charitable efforts had been held.

The meeting resolved to suspend operations until the end of the summer, when a special meeting was to be called to discuss the future of the Circle.

For reasons with which we are familiar that special meeting was never called. [20]

From National Conference 1937, to International Conflict 1939

THE OPENING OF THE Table’s second year was marked by the resignation of Singer on his removal to Warwick. His enthusiasm and hard secretarial work had done a great deal towards building a firm foundation for the Table, and he was ably succeeded by H. T. Jackson.

Almost the first task of 1936 was preparation for the 1937 Conference. A strong Conference Committee was set up, with appropriate sub-committees, and the whole strength of the Table was deployed. Yet the domestic work of the Table also had to go on, and the result was that for more than twelve months heavy calls were made on virtually the whole of the Table membership in one capacity or another.

On the home front the first major activity of the New Year was the first Dance, arranged at the Pavilion Hotel on Friday, 7th February but, owing to the death of H.M. King George V, postponed until Tuesday, 25th February. It is interesting to reflect that the hotel provided band and running buffet at an inclusive charge of 5/-, the Table to guarantee a minimum attendance of 6o. The attendance was in fact 58.

Then, in addition to the Fraternity, Membership and Speakers’ Committees, a Community Service Committee was formed (27th April 1936).* Requests for assistance began to come in. The first big job, in which the Table enlisted the assistance of the ladies, was to organise a Rose [10] Day in Pickering for Scarborough Hospital. This was so successful that before the end of the year ‘next year’s Hospital collection’ was already being discussed. It became an annual event until it was cancelled in 1939 on the outbreak of war. The conveyance of crippled Scouts was continuing on a rota basis. The Table became represented (3rd December 1936) on the committee of the Scarborough Boys’ Club, and later H. D. Tesseyman represented the Table on the Basque Children’s Relief Fund.

[*The Vocational Service Committee was set up a year later (20th April 1937). Each of these five sub-committees submitted half-yearly reports to the Council and Table, where comments and criticism were forthcoming. Late in 1938, for instance, the Table felt that greater latitude should be given to the Speakers’ Committee with regard to political subjects.]

The Donations Box, which had now become the Charity Box, found a continuing outlet. The decision was taken to create a Round Table annual Scholarship, or Grant, of £5 for award on the recommendation of the Director of Education ‘to help a boy who, after obtaining his County Scholar ship, cannot afford the necessary school caps and sports clothing.’

This continued to be awarded until 1942, when, in circumstances beyond control of the Table, it was suspended.

At the First Annual General Meeting of the Table, held on 17th April 1936, Mr. W. E. Harland was elected President in succession to Mr. G. H. Fawcett. Whether or not he considered existing methods of calling the membership to order unsatisfactory or outmoded is not clear, but at the end of his year of office he presented the bell on which subsequent chairmen have performed with varying degrees of expertise.

The disciplinary function of a bell is transient, but not that of the Council, which learned that it had a continuing disciplinary function of its own. It had to hold the balance between liberty and licence. It was at the 1935 Hastings Conference that Lord Eustace Percy said:

The salvation of the world lies not in politicians or politics, or negotiations, or societies, or administrations; but simply on the fundamental constitution of democracy – men living together and, out of that joint life and joint service, evolving a way of life that is worth living.

This concept applies as surely to an organisation as to the world. That is perhaps why so very much of the time of Round Table, nationally and locally, has been taken up by the discussion and formulation of rules.

A recurring item at Council meetings was the occasional submission of the names of those members whose attendances [11] fell below the 50 % mark. After suitable reminders and in the absence of reasonable excuse, the offending member was advised that he was disqualified from membership under the Attendance Rule.

By the end of 1938 two further disciplinary matters had, in the end, to be dealt with by the Council. The first was by no means peculiar to Scarborough. The chronic reluctance of the rank and file membership to occupy vacant seats at the top table is a peculiarity of human nature by no means confined to Round Table itself.

The second matter was one not uncommon in a membership that meets for a function on licensed premises, and is of considerable importance if a strict timetable has to be observed.

The matters were eventually dealt with on 4th April 1939 when the Fraternity Committee was requested ‘to appoint two members to be on duty at each luncheon – one to see the top table is filled, and the other to round up members from sundry rendezvous’.

The 1937 Conference
There is no question that the first Scarborough Conference, coming as it did so soon after the Table’s formation, contributed more than anything else to the Table’s maturity. High standards had been set at previous conferences, and national membership was growing from year to year.

The Conference committees appointed early in 1936 were:
Conference Committee, 1937
G. E. Pearson, Chairman
S. D. McCloy; G. S. Hazell; R. K. Rowntree: H. D. Tesseyman;
J. C. Whitfield ; N. L. King; H. I. Dennis
H. T. Jackson (Assistant Secretary)
F. Winn (Secretary)
Chairman, Secretary and Assistant Secretary Ex-officio

Sub-committees:
Entertainments:
S. D. McCloy, Chairman
H. I Dennis
J. Johnson
M. L. T. Plows
W. E. Hopwood
W. C. Sloan
Registration:
G. S. Hazell, Chairman
J. C. Whitfield
N. L. King
E, P. Evans
J. Sinclair
W. Nockels [12]
Hotels:
R. K. Rowntree, Chairman
E. Gibson
C. N. Mountford
W. L. Woodcock
E. Webb
Transport:
H. D. Tesseyman, Chairman
J. A. T. Hanlon
J. C. Newsome
J. Newton
A. deG. Elliott
N. W. Pearson

These committees promptly got to work, and within six months were arranging for an overdraft on Conference Account at the Bank, for which four members of the Table stood as guarantors. It is pleasing to relate that they were not called upon.

At this point the Council had little idea that the Conference was to be a historic one for the National movement. It had become apparent that Round Table had outgrown its organisational strength, and Conference accepted a report from a Special Committee which aimed at ‘putting Round Table on a sound basis as a National Organisation. The fact that the Committee had been set up is a true indication of the movement’s internal weakness at the time.’

‘That year at the Scarborough Conference,’ wrote John Creasey, ‘the Report “was considered”. There were 29 recommendations, and among them the suggestion that there should be:
A central headquarters.
A paid Secretary.
A proper allowance for National Officers.
Travelling expenses for National Councillors.
A general readjustment of finance, including the setting up of a central register of members.
An increase of Capitation fees to 6/6.

‘And, if this were not enough, the National Executive briskly announced that it had set up a Special Committee to overhaul administration.

‘Seldom has there been more vigorous argument against any proposals. Delegates jumped to their feet to protest, prophecies of suicide and bankruptcy were thrown at the top table, some suggested that it would put the Movement into the hands of a salaried individual who was not a member. Let the work be carried on as before, they cried, by voluntary officers; otherwise, ruin.

‘The Executive was adamant and received sufficient support from the less vociferous delegates to have all the [13] recommendations approved. Soon afterwards a small office was opened at Ludgate Hill and Captain Chambers, a retired Regular Army officer, was installed as a salaried Organising Secretary. Another thing happened which to have great significance later; Cyril Marsh, of the Wimbledon Table, was appointed to the National Executive “to keep an eye on things”.”

The later significance was that it was very largely due to Cyril Marsh, National Secretary during the war, that there was a strong National Movement still in being at the end of it.

He was elected afterwards the second of Round Table’s National Honorary Members. The first was Louis Marchesi, the Movement’s founder.

At the time of the 1937 Scarborough Conference the membership of the Table was 36. There were 118 Tables in existence, and the national membership was 4,000. The total numbers attending the Conference were approximately 360.

The highlight, as usual, was the Conference Banquet at the Royal Hotel at which the Mayor and Mayoress, Alderman and Mrs. J. W. Butler, attended as official guests. The cabaret, ably compered by Alan Forward of the Scarborough Table, included the popular Leonard Henry as its star and a trio of acrobatic dancers. Although the function officially ended at 1.30 a.m., it was not until nearly 3 a.m. that the subsequent fun and games came to an end and the Mayor and his Lady went home.

It is pleasing to reflect that the Conference made a profit which was distributed early the following year as follows:
National Funds £5 5s 0d
Hull Table £5 5s 0d
York Table £5 5s 0d
Bridlington Table £5 5s 0d
Scarborough Table £14 15s 9d

Total £35 15s 9d

The Cardiff Conference followed in 1938, and subsequently the National Conference Sub-committee circularised all Tables asking for suggestions for the improvement of the National Conference in order to make it more popular and useful.

Scarborough, in the light of its own experiences of the [14] many problems involved, suggested:
a Centralisation of headquarters and accommodation
b Expenses to be kept as low as possible.
c A seaside or inland spa should be the venue
d Too much should not be attempted in the time available
e In addition to the Annual Conference, Area Conferences should be held.

War
The 3rd September 1939 caught the Table in the full spate of seasonal activity. There had been the continuing Social Service activities, the usual summer events including an evening meeting at Ravenscar in July, and the usual Area meetings. There had been a much overdue reprint of the rules, representation at the Cardiff Conference, discussion on the question of endowing a hospital cot and a paternal interest in the Scholarship boy; Geoffrey Hazell had been appointed Area Vice-Chairman, John Jaram was busy arranging teams for an Area golf tournament, and arrange ments were well advanced for a Rally to be held at Ravenscar later in the month.

At the Table luncheon on the 8th September the Chairman, the late Howard Tonks Jackson, announced that he had considered it advisable to cancel the scheduled talk so that the Table could discuss the situation. It was already known that in the event of war certain members would have civil or military commitments and as time went on active membership would inevitably dwindle. Bert Dennis had already gone. The National President, Rodney Lillicrap, had lost no time in writing to all Tables, hoping that they would carry on as far as possible, and wishing every member success in whatever he might be called upon to undertake. He himself later went into the R.A.F. and resumed National Council work on his demobilisation.

A year earlier, as Munich approached and it was obvious that war would follow sooner or later, the Chief Constable was anxious to build up his Special Constabulary.

‘I. E. Thomas, the Weights and Measures Superintendent, was a member of the Table,’ writes Maurice Plows, ‘and when war was nearing us before Munich he began to [15] re-form the Special Constabulary in Scarborough, as we were then the Borough Police. It was through Round Table members that this was commenced, and we had many members sworn in. Unfortunately there are none ere are none now except myself.’

Maurice Plows, joining the force from the Table, remained in it for thirty years, retiring shortly after he wrote these words.

The first Table activity to suffer in 1939 was the Hospital collection at Pickering, then imminent, which had to be cancelled, as were all ‘existing arrangements and recommendations’. It was agreed that fortnightly luncheons be continued, but that no speakers be engaged and the time utilised for discussion.

War conditions made it impossible to hold Area meetings, and any Area business was thereafter conducted by correspondence. An invitation to the Table luncheons was issued through News & Views to any Table member of H.M. Forces who might find himself in Scarborough.

The Secretary wrote to H. I. Dennis, then a Lieutenant in the 5th Bn. Green Howards, to ask what would be most useful and acceptable as Christmas gifts to his men, ‘Scarborough men preferably’. As a result 24 vests and 24 pairs of shorts were sent to France. Dennis, now Captain, received them safely.

Numbers were dwindling. At the first wartime A.G.M. (the Table’s fifth) on 19th April 1940, 18 members were present. At the 1939 A.G.M. there had been 31. The Council and sub-committees were still nominally functioning, but circumstances made it necessary at the next ensuing Council meeting a few weeks later to resolve that ‘in view of the constant withdrawal from active membership of the Table on account of the war, no sub-committees be appointed’. Individual Council members undertook responsibility in their place.

At this meeting, quorum or no quorum, only three members were present. It is worthy of note that at the infrequent Council meetings an attendance of five was usually possible, though they were not always the same five.

Attendance at meetings had dwindled drastically, and even those who did attend did not find it easy to do so. Early [16] in 1941 the Chairman, Ralph Rowntree, joined H.M. Forces, and Nockels took over. ‘In this year £25 was invested in Defence Bonds during War Weapons Week.’ In 1942 the Secretary, H. W. Moss, resigned for the same reason, and there was nobody to take over. At a Special General Meeting of the whole Table on 16th October 1942 seven members managed to attend, and passed this curiously moving resolution:

“That as from today the activities of the Round Table be suspended until the signature of the Armistice or such other time as is deemed desirable by the members, when a meeting of all available members shall be convened for the Friday next following, to consider the resumption of activities, the books in the meantime to be deposited with W. Nockels for safe custody.’

This resolution immediately followed the last item of Table business to be transacted for four years, which was to approve the 1942 Scholarship grant of £5. It visualised a termination of hostilities on 1918 lines, in which it was wrong. It assumed, with inherent optimism, that at some time in the years to come there would be somebody who would be able and willing to call a meeting, in which it was right. [17]