[2009]
UNIVERSITY
0133 Jon Power
My room-mate in the first year at university, and one of the most influential people in my life, was Jonathan Power. He had come to Imperial in order to transfer from an arts background to science courses. This foundation course lasted and year and was supposed to enable him to start studying a science at Imperial. In the event he didn't succeed and he went off elsewhere to do geography!
John's influence on me came about because he was so intense about the things he was involved with. He was not the usual teenager, living for the fun things in life. Rather he was very serious -- quite religious -- and intent on rectifying the problems of the world. For the first few months, however, I tended to visit the fleshpots of London with Harvey and Martin; that was fun. Ultimately, though, Jon introduced me to his world.
In particular, at that time, he was heavily into anti-apartheid. Thus it was that I found myself on demonstrations with him - on behalf of the anti-apartheid movement. I certainly believed in equality, and was against any form of discrimination, but I had never done anything about it. Now I found myself in the middle of the setting up the anti-apartheid movement in the West.
At first all of us went on demonstrations. I well remember, having spent the night picketing South Africa House by Trafalgar Square, driving home to our digs. The four of us were in the car but Martin was driving it, and – as a result of his tiredness - was seeing snakes crossing the road!
Ultimately, though, it was just Jon and myself.
Our demonstrations tended to be at South Africa House. We used to march, with our placards, along the pavements; attracting attention from all the tourists there. We rarely had trouble, but it took only one policeman to start a near riot. I well remember one sergeant coming on duty and harassing us with an obscure law which said that, within a mile of Parliament, if you were on the pavement you had to get off it when the division bells sound -- since you mustn't block MPs rushing to vote! When we moved from the pavement he immediately harassed us again, saying that as we were standing in the road we were causing an obstruction to traffic. Hopping backwards and forwards, the level of irritation gradually rose -- until an inspector arrived who had good sense to remove him, whereupon - in minutes - everything returned to normal.
One thing I learned was that demonstrating, and especially organising demonstrations, was an art-form. I normally handled the interface with the police. I found it easy enough to get them to trust me and this defused many possible situations. But I also learned how easy it is to make a demonstration look bigger than it is. When the Foreign Minister of South Africa came across, we had a number of demonstrations during the daytime; but – as most of our supporters had full-time jobs - we were unable to muster many demonstrators for these. Therefore, in the afternoon, there were perhaps only 20-30 of us outside South Africa House. Although we were making a lot of noise we clearly did not seem very representative of the public at large. Having said that, as soon as our chanting started, literally hundreds of tourists crowded round to see what was happening. The result was that the papers, which fortunately were sympathetic, reported a demonstration of several thousand outside South Africa House. What's more, as I had got separated from the main demonstration but was by myself on the steps of St Martin's, I was alone in doing my bit up there. Even so, the papers reported that another group of several hundred on the steps of St Martin's - that was me (and a lot of tourists!) - were also demonstrating!
The best example of this PR leverage had come the previous night. The Foreign Minister was being smuggled into the Dorchester Hotel in the middle of the night, in order to avoid demonstrations. The problem for the government, as it turned out, was that we were well-organised. We even had people at Heathrow to warn us when he was on his way. In any case, we always were better able to muster people, almost 100 in this case, in the middle of night than we were in the daytime! There were no problems for him, though, until he entered Park Lane and approached the Dorchester, where he was to stay. At that point, however, he found that he had to pass through lines of massed pickets. This time we didn't have banners, they would have been invisible in the darkness. Instead we had torches, with flames roaring up into the night. What is more, we had two torches each; so it looked as if there twice as many of us. This was an incredibly successful tactic. As most of the press assumed that there would be one torch for – say - ten people in a normal demonstration, they assumed that there were perhaps 20 times as many demonstrators as were actually there! Indeed, all hell broke loose. There was, of course, the loud yelling of all of us demonstrators, and as this happened all the camera crews opened up with their bright lights. At this point I saw windows in hotels all the way along Park Lane come alight as people leaned out of them to see what on earth was happening. On television, the following day it was spectacular. It looked like, as the media reported, several thousand of us demonstrating in the middle of the night -- instead of the hundred or so actually were there -- and it achieved an immense impact.
As I got more involved, I was taken by Jon to meet the leaders of the global anti-apartheid movement. I met Father Trevor Huddleston, who was one of the great heroes of the fight in South Africa. I also met, albeit the rather briefly, Oliver Tambo who was President of the ANC (African National Congress) while the other leaders (including Nelson Mandela) were in jail. In fact, overshadowed by the charismatic Mandela, he was later unfairly overlooked as being the main driver of the anti-apartheid movement!
I also started to meet people within university. Although I thought I was a Conservative at the time -- where my parents read the Daily Express newspaper -- I found myself on the committee of the IC Socialist Society; but only because I felt sorry that they were short of members and didn't want them to lose out! I also used to write letters to IC Union newspaper starting "...as an ardent Conservative" and then propounding the most radical socialist ideas -- though I didn't realise this at that time. All of this set me up for the second year at Imperial.
I think I may have for responsible for John failing his course. When he complained to his tutor, about the amount of time I was expending on the activities, she made the remark "...if he continues to work like that, and he passes the course, he will be another Einstein". I have always claimed since then that the Imperial College rated me a second Einstein!
I also started to get involved with the anti-apartheid movement within London University. Indeed, I was the one who had to go to you ULU (University of London Union) Social Committee to propose the formation of the society. This was named ULSARD (University of London Society Against Racial Discrimination) - nobody has ever accused such radicals of having an ear for poetry. I had prepared a nice little chat for a handful of committee members. Remember, I had never spoken to an audience before - except for a disastrous appearance in the debating society at school. As I walked through the door I was suddenly confronted by a Social Committee something between 100 and 150 people strong! Thus was I thrown into public speaking at the deep end. Fortunately I held my nerve and the motion was passed - and we had our society.
We, Pat and I, both were very friendly with him and with his girlfriend - Jeannie -- around whom his private life revolved. We had a very memorable meeting with them in the Christmas break, walking in the moonlight around Raby Mere. It was very romantic, two sets of lovers strolling through the moonlit countryside.
Jon was, though, rather like the Vicar of Bray. When I said that society should be against all discrimination, he agreed entirely -- with the sole disclaimer and we must oppose Communists! Not long afterwards he got involved with CND, which I never joined (since it was too dogmatically political for me), and was invited to a student Congress in Moscow. After that jolly he no longer thought we should discriminate against Communists!
Jon Power left at the end of the year, which was very sad. I saw little of him after that; though I did persuade him to be best man at my wedding.
Having completed a geography degree in the UK, he went off to an Ann Arbor, Michigan, to do a masters a degree in agriculture. He then was one of Kennedy's Peace Corp in the US. He was proud of the fact that his earnings from this paid for a Volkswagen car. I saw him when he got back, when he was living in a flat over the Africa Centre and working with various voluntary organisations. Regrettably, he had forgotten about Jeannie (as perhaps I had forgotten Margaret) and had married girl called Ann who was a Roman Catholic -- John had joining the Roman Catholic religion as the result. Indeed he soon became a member of staff of the Catholic Herald.
I haven't seen him for years, but I now know from the Internet that he moved on to be a freelance author - somewhat like me - writing about a variety of charitable organisations. Most recently he was photographed with Amnesty international -- which is one of his projects (he wrote the official biography of it) along with Paul McCartney at its anniversary celebrations. I should add that Jon regularly used to write about his contacts. The most important of these was in fact that he was in the same class at school with Paul McCarthy and George Harrison. He also met Martin Luther King just before he was shot -- and I remember hearing him on radio describing his time with this modern legend.
Last year his web site showed that he had married again. His latest wife is a Swedish opera singer! To a certain extent I suspect our careers have paralleled each other; we are both great dilettantes.
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