Conning was the accepted way of earning some extra money. You simply went up to people in the street and asked for their loose change. It was surprising how many folk obliged, but then cynicism was not a popular mindset in the mid 1960`s. This was an era when the charm offensive worked a treat. We asked for the money politely, we did not shove out our hands and beg. We were being cheeky, and having a good deal of fun. Life was a game to be relished, but beneath our joie de vivre lurked a shadow, we could all be blown to bits by an atom bomb next week, or so we thought.
Some expert practitioners of the con game did not simply ask, but then they were after more substanstial earnings. They entertained their victims before fleecing them, much like cobras swaying out of baskets. They told wonderful hard luck stories. A certain amount of acting was required to accentuate the verbal skills. These were the professionals who relied on their wits to survive. My favourite story, one that I heard many times from hopeful con artistes, revolves around the fate of a sick child in Edinburgh. The gentleman requesting the money is the forlorn paterfamilias. He is trying to raise the rail fare to visit his dying child. Over several years this child not only never aged nor died, she acquired a host of remarkably different fathers.
Conning was the accepted method of acquiring food and drink in the pub. Ray was the expert at this. If he found himself having to buy a drink he would almost die of grief. He would seek a stranger willing to lap up his tales of Old Ireland, ancient Libel Cases, and for lovers of history, the Peninsular.War. If the required stranger failed to materialise, he would fix a cronie with a fierce stare and bellow, "Get up to the bar Now!" The appointed cronie usually obliged. But Ray was by no means a cynical creature, he was angry with God for being a spoil sport, and therefore he partied and partied. God did not appear to like excess, Ray could not get enough of it. He was in fact a very old fashioned person. Born two hundred years too late, he would have been at home in the Covent Garden of Hogarth.
Perhaps the makers of Primitive London understood that Ray was not truly modern, and that is why they did not feature him in their movie. Besides he was nearly thirty, and teenagers were their prey; but we kids knew that we were being exploited and laughed at. So when the interviewer asked, "Do you believe in free love?" the answer was always a resounding "Yes". We knew the rules of their game, and so we played it with gusto. The film makers thought that they were conning us, but as far as we were concerned we were conning them.
I first learned the phrase "free love" from an essay written by Eleanor Marx in the eighteen eighties. Writing as a socialist she was considering the possible alternatives to Victorian marriage, a type of domestic entrapment for too many men and women. Eleanor was not advocating promiscuity, but in the nineteen sixties and seventies a number of self publicists were. These people were often a generation older than us and had lived through the Second World War, that time of terror and permissiveness. Many worked in the media and influenced public opinion. For this reason the sixties are remembered as the era of Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll, not as the decade when censorship was curtailed, homosexuality decriminalised, abortion legalised, racism opposed, feminism gained support, the Wilson Government stayed out of the Vietnam War, the voting age was reduced to 18, and capital punishment abolished.
The media guys were decades behind the government, but tried to look young and trendy. We kids despised those people, but had some respect for Wilson, despite his chameleon nature.
The so called sexual revolution shocked the pants off the pure and good. They thought that the devil had taken to the skies over England to bombard the young with evil ideas. This vision was more terrifying to them than the prospect of nuclear winter. A group of evangelical missionaries actually flew to London from Texas to fight this dark invasion. They roamed the streets of London collecting waifs and strays who seemed in need of salvation. The fact that these missionaries were armed to the teeth with cash made them attractive to the teenagers. London kids always know a good thing when they see it, and their ability to hit the jackpot is remarkable. Apparently all the young of the capital were addicted to sex and drugs, and this Texan money, stitched to the Gospel of St. John, was an inducement not to be sneezed at. Salvation suddenly became madly popular now it was seen to be allied to financial gain. The Catholics among the kids were a little puzzled by this, but they too came along for the ride. This crude amalgam of Christianity and capitalism was morally opaque, a neat education in double standards, but worked wonders for the weight of the purse. For a month or two the Pentecostal Churches of Central London became flush with young and eager faces. The Orange Street Mission was particularly popular. It`s Youth Club full to bursting on Sunday evenings. But when the missionaries returned to Texas, overwhelmed by their great success, the size of these congregations rapidly dwindled. They were no longer the flavour of the month. Some young people genuinely got involved with the evangelical movement, but the others were looking elsewhere for spiritual guidance and the benefits attached.
Like many people of an older generation, the Texan missionaries had completely misunderstood the youth of England. They were particularly outraged by what they perceived to be the decline in moral standards. But this apparent rejection of old time sexual taboos was primarily about individual people taking control of their personal lives, and therefore not being dictated to by restrictive custom. These social changes were very much a part of sixties feminism, a fact that is usually ignored. The advent of the Contraceptive Pill may have speeded up the process, but did not instigate it. The fact that certain unscrupulous persons took advantage of the new won freedoms is a profound tragedy, but this must not detract from the genuine benefits that this revolution has brought us. At the time we felt that we were witnessing the advent of an era bright with hope.and promise. The pristine Age of Aquarius. An enlightened age, fairer and kinder than the era we had been born into. That post war period when homosexuals were jailed, or chemically castrated; unmarried mothers treated like dirt; black people vilified. This was the world that the missionaries felt nostalgic for. A world superficially good and moral, but with all the awkward stuff swept under the mat. But this was the world that had hurt many of us during childhood, and therefore we were glad to be rid of it. One little story will explain why I hated the post war era. Having been born into unconventional families, my school friend Myrtle and I were fair game to the self righteous. A neighbour attempted to throw a pot of urine over us as we played outside her house. We were about five years old at the time. This neighbour believed that she was on the side of the angels, a guardian of public morality.
This woman had already wrought havoc in my family. When my father returned from the war in the summer of 1946 she informed him that I was not his son but the offsprng of an actor.
"Look George, his eyes are blue, he was born two months too late".
She had stopped him on the street while he played with me on my tricycle.
He dragged me into our house, threw me across the front room then slammed the door shut. I crashed head first into the dinning table. He then attacked my mother in the kitchen. Tipped the hot dinner over her. Punched and slapped her. Swore he would kill her. Further violence was halted by my grandmother. She had been visiting our next door neighbour and was alerted by the shouting. She was a strong woman in her mid fifties, a political activist who had been widowed young with three children to support. George was no match for her. She promptly sent him packing, back to his mother.
"Don`t you come back here for two weeks!" She demanded.
George did not argue. He left straight away. He stayed with his mother until the storm had passed. But from that day on he burned with resentment. He loathed being put in his place by a strong brave woman. He also felt in his bones that he was not my father, and tried from that time on to mould me in his image. But my talents are different from his, and it took him until the last months of his life to accept this fact.
"I do enjoy the articles you write for the magazine", he whispered. And you are a good speaker at the meetings, better than me. Perhaps you should have gone on the stage".
I did not know how to reply. I just stared down at his hospital bed and mumbled some words of thanks. He had never encouraged my writing, and was hostile to my interest in acting. He had wanted me to be an office bod, just like him.
Myrtle`s family was more obviously strange and exotic. Her father shared his home with wife and mistress, a brood of six children, and an ugly mongrel bitch with orange hair, the mother of several pups. Only one of the children was male, a spotty faced youth disinclined to do National Service. All five girls grew up to be intelligent respectable women, disinclined to discus their origins.
Trevor John Karsavin Potter.
May 16th. - 19th. 2014.
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