A Tribute To My Parents

A few hours ago (Sunday) my Mother passed away. She was just a few months short of her 89th. Birthday, and she had outlived my Father by just over 17 years, who died in 1991 at the age of 71. Today when my Mother died, although I felt the normal sorrow I was able to accept her passing with some composure, whereas when my Father died I was grief stricken for weeks. That is not because I loved my Mother any less than my Father, or because she was much older, or even that I am older. My Mother had been bed-ridden for the last five years, after having been in hospital for several months, due to coming close to death from pancretitis, brought on by a trapped gall stone. She had been living in a Nursing Home, almost in solitary confinement, in her room, apart from visits by my sister and I, and occasionally other relatives and the time that staff could give to her. As a result of being bed-ridden, she suffered numerous urinary infections, and had to be readmitted to hospital several times. This last time she contracted septic shock as a result of an infection, again caused by a trapped gall stone, and, basically, her body shut down. It was a release from suffering, and one both me and my sister were prepared for. In contrast, when my Dad died he was an extremely fit man not just for his age. But, he was struck down by an aneurism in the brain, and the suddenness of his passing made it very hard to come to terms with. In 1991, there was no Internet in order for me to pay Public Homage to him, and, to be honest, as long as my Mum was alive, at least a part of my Dad was alive too. So I now want to pay tribute to them both.

My Mother’s grandfather was Swedish. He came to Britain and worked originally as a journalist. He also learned and taught shorthand. For a time he lived in Ireland, and my Mother’s Mother was born in Dublin toward the end of the 19th century. But, the family moved to Carlisle where my Great Grandfather set up an electrical engineering business, A.J. Crawford, which specialised in supplying conveyor belts. My Grandmother had all the benefits of a middle class upbringing, being sent to a private School and so on. But her Mother died, and relations with the stepmother weren’t very good. At the outbreak of WWI she was working in a Munitions factory in Newcastle on Tyne where she met my Grandfather who was a fitter. Due to her education my Grandmother worked at a number of places including Farnborough as she and my Grandfather moved around the country in search of work. Mostly, my Grandfather worked as a fitter in collieries, and was an active Trade Unionist. It was on these travels, and whilst he was working in a colliery in Wales that my Mother was born in Aberbargoed in 1919. She was the oldest in a family of 6 children.

Eventually, the family arrived in Stoke and my Grandfather worked at one of the local collieries. He was also for a time Secretary of the Branch Labour Party. I think it was while he was working there that he lost the end of his thumb, which my Mother said always came in handy for his Grandchildren to suck and chew on when we were teething. They lived in a row of houses, which, for the time, must have seemed quite luxurious having a small front garden, all of which were owned by the Colliery and rented out to employees. At the end of the road was a sizeable spoil heap, which as kids we all knew as the “Starvation Banks”, because during the 1926 Strike, and afterwards in the Depression people would go to pick what bits of coal from there they could find. During the Depression, the colliery, where my Grandad worked, closed, and like millions more he was out of work. My Grandma who was just a little dot, but from all accounts very feisty – my Mother says the local Bobby came round to tell her off one day after getting into a fight with another bigger woman from round the corner – also suffered from TB, which was eventually to kill her. At about this time my Great Grandfather’s business was divided up between the children, but according to my Mother because her Mother had basically been pushed out by her stepmother, they ended up being shortchanged. My Mother says there was something of a commotion in the street when this large car pulled up outside bearing her relations from Carlisle. As part of her share from what my Mum told me they got £1,000, which for them in the 1930’s was a lot of money.

But, it didn’t last too long. My Grandfather spent some of it buying incubators and other equipment, with the idea of rearing chickens and other livestock on his allotment, but a lot also went on looking after his friends who were also unemployed, in the Pub. Mt Grandma had suggested they could actually use some of the money to buy their house, but Grandad didn’t trust the idea of buying the house from the colliery. All of the kids in the family benefited from my Grandmother’s education. My Mum’s sister even came top of the City, obtaining the highest score of all students, in Stoke, in the 11 plus exams, for her year. My Mum went to work in the village chemist’s shop where she learned how to make up medicines, and so on, at a time when they were not all simply bought from a wholesaler. Typical of the time, as well as working in the shop, and although its only a small village, she was also expected to live in the house of the chemist and his wife, and to act as effectively a domestic servant.

I know very little about my Dad’s lineage other than that his Father had been brought up on a farm. When I grew up in the village, it was surrounded by fields and farms, but, when my Father was a child there were even fewer houses. He told me that he would often be walking with his father in the fields, and his Father would grab hold of a horse and open its mouth to inspect its teeth, which he said was the best way to tell the condition. The other story he told me was that when he was a child he was afraid of the dark – I found it difficult to believe he could ever have been afraid of anything – and my Grandad had said that he would cure him of it. He took him out into one of the fields one night – and then it really was dark in the middle of open fields – and told him to walk across it. My Dad began to walk across the field until after a few yards there was a terrible clamour that sent him scurrying back even more afraid than before, as he had fallen over a horse lying down in the field! In fact, my Grandad had a particularly interest in horses, but he only ever managed to break even from it at best. Unlike, my Mum, my Dad was the youngest of the family of 7, though a number of other children died.

I did find out one piece of lineage by accident. In 1983, I was in hospital for some time because I had to have a big operation for a detached retina. In fact, it’s the only thing I can thank Maggie Thatcher for, because if she hadn’t had one at the same time, I wouldn’t have known the symptoms, and according to the hospital Consultant I was probably only 24 hours away from having lost the sight of my left eye. For some time after I had to pay regular visits to the hospital, and one day I was sitting next to an old lady. Its common for people to get our name wrong either inserting an R to make it Brough, or coming out with all kinds of variations of pronunciations of Bough. So when the nurse called out Brough both me, and the old lady, rose together. “I think they mean me,” I said, “People always get my name wrong.” “Is your name Bough as well then?” she asked. It turned out that she was the Auntie of one time TV presenter Frank Bough, who is also from Stoke. She told me that her daughter had traced the family tree, and had found that we were all related, and that the name actually was a corruption of a French name. So, Swedish, French, Irish, Welsh. What would the BNP make of that?

My Father’s Father also worked down the pit, but this time using a hand drill, and pick and shuffle in tight seams. He too lost his job during the Depression, and I remember my Dad telling me that having been out of work for a while when he did get some work labouring on the roads, he came home with his hands bleeding from using the shovel, because they had by then gone soft. My Dad also left school at 14 at the height of the Depression. Like many other school leavers who couldn’t find work he was sent to “Dole School” where they were taught some practical skills, but much of the time they were just thrown a pair of boxing gloves to pass the time. He got a job working for a firm making road signs where he learned some useful skills both in glazing, and painting signs. In fact, it came in handy when as a kid I hit a cricket ball through a neighbour’s window, and he was able to go and glaze it.

But, shortly after he got a job as an engineer – in fact he’d really wanted to be a mechanic. He worked at Rolls Royce at Crewe making Merlin engines for Spitfires. Despite, the fact its about 8 miles to Crewe he used to walk there and back everyday. That was fine, but on one occasion he was a bit late because he’d been courting a girl from Crewe, and found himself being stopped by military police as he took a short cut across some fields – obviously his Dad’s help eventually worked – who were looking for German paratroopers sabotaging the local ordnance factory. He told me that a lot of the stuff about wartime spirit was a load of rubbish. For example, he said that they used to test the engines on a testbed, and walking down the shop one day he commented to another engineer that the engine on the testbed was vibrating a lot, to which the other engineer simply said, “It’ll shake a lot more when its over the Channel.”

As an engineer, which was a reserved Occupation, he couldn’t go into the army when War broke out, as his other brothers had done. Over the next few years he worked at pretty much every car manufacturer going. Even though, he was still only young, he found himself continually being the spokesman for other workers grievances, and each time he upset the management he was moved to another company. Eventually, the management of the last company literally blacked his cards with ink so he couldn’t get a job, and he was able to join his brothers in the army. He joined the Staffordshire regiment, but was seconded to the Shropshire Light Infantry where he became a Motorbike Dispatch Rider spending most of his time in Italy.

My sister was born on Christmas Day 1945, so she managed to get her picture in the paper more than 25 years before I did. My Dad was in the army until 1947, and they all shared a room in an old terraced house with a nasty landlady, who kept telling my Mum that she would lose my sister. It was far, far harder to get a house then than it is today. House prices were sky high. Having tried living with other family members, in desperation they bought the old terraced house where I was born. In 1949, it cost them £1,000! Nearly 30 years later when the house got destroyed in a gas explosion they got back - £1,000. By comparison within just a few years of them buying this house a number of semi-detached houses with gardens back and front were built that were sold for just £250 each. Such is the degree to which workers lives are affected by the mere chance of the capitalist casino economy.

After the war he got a job with a local engineering Company. Given the times he had only had a basic education. In fact, until the day he died he never knew the alphabet. He never found the need for it. He could read and write perfectly well. He could also convert obscure fractions into decimals in an instant, because as an engineer he was dealing with them all the time, and learned them off by heart. Yet on the wall at the side of his Milling Machine was a huge Chart he’d made with them all listed, because he said it was quicker to just look. That was the kind of practical approach he had. It was his time so if he could cut it down all the better. Over the years he made lots of tools. At this first place he made a tool that even in the 1940’s saved the company tens of thousands of pounds. Yet he got just a tenner for it off the firm.

Shortly after that he got a job in the engineering shop of a local tile manufacturing company, where apart from a few short intervals where he went to work for English Electric and a small engineering Company he worked for the rest of his working life. He also became shop steward of the AEEU at the Company, and came into contact with a member of the CP. I grew up from an early age in a political background. The main “discussions” I remember between my Dad and my Mother’s father were about politics and Trade Unionism. Every night my Dad would take the dog for a walk, and I would go with him. From where we lived literally within a matter of about 300 yards we were in fields and open country. In the Summer we’d walk up through the fields to Newchapel churchyard where the great canal builder James Brindley is buried. When the night’s drew in we would walk to the top of Kidsgrove Bank – by the “Starvation Banks” mentioned earlier, which marks a clear demarcation because stretched out beyond it is the great expanse of the Cheshire Plain, and from where you can look across to Manchester and to Liverpool, and see clearly the large dish of Jodrell Bank. So it was not surprising that on these nightly excursions we would talk either of politics or else of science and space travel. If my Mother gave me some of the basic tools of literacy, and an encouragement to put pen to paper, my Father was the greatest inspiration on me to accept nothing, and to challenge everything.

The house we lived in was built in 1870 according to the plaque that was situated next to the outside of the front bedroom window. With no cavity – in fact half of the house was built just in single brick, and no damp course, it was perpetually suffering from damp running down the walls. Every time simple decoration needed to be done it became a much bigger job, as damp plaster came away. The walls in the back-kitchen – in those days for some reason we all called the living room the kitchen, and the kitchen the back-kitchen – continually ran with moisture. And, of course the only heating – especially in a mining village – was from a single coal fire. There was a fireplace in the front parlour, but again typical of the times that room was only every used on special occasions like Christmas.

From, when I was three years old I suffered badly – and given the conditions not unexpectedly – with asthma and bronchitis. Again in those days there was no adequate medicine to treat it. It was fortunate that my Mother had worked in the chemists, because she was able to dose me with all kinds of concoctions. In fact, I was ill so much, and for so long that it was impossible for my Mum to work, because she spent so much time looking after me. That meant that they only had my Dad’s pretty low wages coming in, whilst they were still paying a significant amount on the mortgage for an overpriced house. For a long time, I can remember my Dad saying that he had argued and argued with the blokes at work not to be conned into accepting offers from management of more overtime in place of a decent pay rise, but to no avail. So I can also remember for a long time that he would go out to work at 7.30 in a morning, and not get back until nearly 9.00 at night, as well as often working half a day on Saturday. It wasn’t until almost the mid 60’s that his wages rose to £20 a week, and he was able to begin to stop working over time.

Especially, when I was ill either when I was very young my Mum would read to me, and later I was able to read what seemed an inexhaustible supply of books on all manner of subjects. My Mum would also get me to write stories, and my Sister who is eight years older than me, used to set me maths questions, or teach me how to calculate wages. My Mother was also a good cook, and encouraged me to help her with baking and so on. It was a way of making money go further. Don’t get me wrong we were not living in abject poverty by any means, there were others living in the same street who were worse off. In fact, even in the 1950’s we had something no one else in the street had. We had transport, in the form of a motorbike and sidecar. My Dad had a BSA 500, and having got a chassis from the scrap yard made a sidecar out of orange boxes, Perspex, and canvas. Its distinctive square angles earned it the nickname from neighbours of – “the coffin”.

Nevertheless, in the period of rising prosperity of the 1950’s and 60’s there were certainly many more who were better off. Until I was about 10, or maybe a bit more, we all had to bath in a zinc bath in from of the fire. It was only one Summer that my Dad purchased an old cast iron bath – the kind that are now very fashionable – from a farm nearby that sold old stuff from all the demolition and slum clearance that was taking place. Even then, we didn’t have running hot water. Hot water for the bath had to be boiled up in an old gas boiler next to the bath, and tipped in with buckets. Right up until the time I left home in 1974, we never had running hot water. Yet, when I’ve spoken to my Mother in recent years she has said she loved that house, because it was hers, and the first house she had had for her and my Dad.

But, we never went on holiday other than day trips to the seaside on the motorbike. Later, my Dad replaced the BSA with an Ariel Square Four. It was his pride and joy, but continually had something wrong with it. At work he always had young friends, because he was a good engineer, and always prepared to teach them. One of them, who was also interested in motorbikes had a Vincent Black Shadow, and I remember him and my Dad stripping the Ariel down completely, reboring the cylinders, and rebuilding it. But, my Dad still wasn’t happy with it, and eventually as he was getting older and suffering with rheumatism decided to sell it. But, I remember during the 1960’s having some great times on it going to places at one time we wouldn’t have considered, especially as motorways and better roads opened up. We went to lots of National Trust places too.

Although, my Dad worked long hours for many years I can always remember that when he came home he’d spend ages playing with me. Fortunately, my parents never insisted I went to bed early, and I can’t remember ever going to bed before 10.30. At night time we used to play cards, and on a Sunday we would all play cards or some other game. He was also very good at sport, all kinds of sport. He had been the Captain of the Staffordshire Schoolboys football team, but he was good at Cricket and other sport too. Even in retirement he was remarkably fit – he used to do 100 press-ups strictly every morning and evening – and won several trophies for bowls.

It was fortunate for me that he was so fit too. When I was about ten I was ill. The Doctor came out and said there was nothing wrong with me, that I was just avoiding School. My Mum gave the Doctor a right telling off, which ended in me being sent to hospital for tests. It turned out I had silent pneumonia. The Doctor didn’t show his face again for several years. A few years later I came down with pneumonia again, but this time much worse. Especially, suffering with asthma I had terrible time breathing. My Mum told me later they thought I would die. One of the few things that enabled me to breathe slightly easier was that my Dad would put me on his back – I was 13 at this stage – and carry me round the house, jogging me up and down. This would go on for at least an hour at a time. And for hour after hour day and night my Mother would sit with me rubbing my back. But, it wasn’t just me she used to care for. I know that she used to regularly go to help various old people in the street with their cleaning and other tasks without any consideration for wanting anything in return. Its no wonder I have considered myself a socialist from as early an age as I can remember.

In a class society we are what that society makes us, but setting that aside whatever I am that is good I owe entirely to my parents, whatever is not I take responsibility for entirely myself. Goodbye Mum and Dad, rest in peace, you more than deserve it.