| NOTES |
Early in 1970, before the reappearance of Jock at the end of his great trek, Hank and I had two tense visits at our Duke Street office. The first was from an unofficial committee of Brighton Hostel volunteers, led by Carolyn Holland, the only member of the original, properly constituted committee who was still taking some interest in the Hostel. It was absurd, they said, that I was still in control of Brighton Hostel funds, and still withdrawing money for personal use (and Hank's), when I no longer did any work in the Hostel itself. Furthermore, they were having problems because I hadn't been paying some of the Hostel's bills. Yet it was obvious that I had been using Hostel money to finance the harebrained scheme to mount a fundraising campaign for a chain of hostels that didn't yet exist. They therefore demanded that I should transfer the bank account to them. I protested that I was still the Chairman of the Hostel, and that my role was to ensure that it continued to be run according to my founding principles, by sending Hank round there occasionally to check. They retorted that no-one had ever recognized my self-appointment as Chairman, and that I had effectively relinquished all responsibility for the running of the Hostel when I had appointed Dave as warden in my place. Furthermore, they revealed, Hank was permanently barred from the premises for being obnoxious, so hadn't been able to act as my inspector at all (he hadn't told me that). |
| I should perhaps have experienced a strong sense of injustice that I was being kicked out of a project that had been entirely my idea in the first place, and that wouldn't have come to eventual fruition but for my hard work (well, initially), my perseverance and my willingness to break the law. The fact is, I only began to feel that way about it two or three years later, when I strode into the Hostel one day, expecting a hero's welcome as the Great Founder. I was horribly deflated by the discovery that no-one there had ever heard of me (Dave had left) and no-one was in the least interested in knowing who I was. Soon, some po-faced short-haired mumbler in a suit and tie who now seemed to be the warden, asked me to leave. I wasn't even offered a cup of tea. |
| However, my true feeling at the time of the Carolyn-led coup was one of glee, because I had outwitted the plotters by foreseeing their intentions and secretly opening another bank account with the name 'National Hostel Fund'. Expenditure on my grandiose national scheme had all been coming out of the Brighton Hostel account, but the takings - mostly the results of the continuous stream of begging letters to celebrities - had all been going into the new account. The junta had made it even worse for themselves by not coming prepared with documents for the transfer of the account. The take-over was thus not formalized until I had had time to drain the BH account completely. |
| The second tense visit was by none other than Tom Gifford, who features largely in various paragraphs of Chapter 48. I was astonished and alarmed when he telephoned me one day. He'd been given my number by the Hostel, news of the existence of which had reached him via the dosser grapevine. He had by now parted company with Anton and the Simon Community and started a rival organisation called the Cyrenians. It had the same philosophy as Simon, as far as I could tell, and Gifford had soon founded a number of 'units' in various cities. He was on a great high of empire-building and had been disturbed to hear that I had similar ambitions. "Registered as a charity, are you?" he asked sarcastically, knowing that the answer would be negative. ""Well, I tell you what," he rasped and blustered, "I'm coming over there to see you in a couple of weeks and if there's any sign that you're still trying to run this venture of yours, I'll bust you to the Charities Commission there and then". He sounded as though he might well bust me more literally, as well. "Unless, of course," he added contemptuously, "you've managed to register as a charity by then!" |
| What I did then was a masterpiece of simplicity, although I can assure you it wouldn't work today. I went to the library, looked in the Charities Digest for a fundraising charity and copied its constitution word for word by hand, on hastily designed National Hostel Fund headed notepaper. I merely changed the names of the Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer to mine, Hank's and a that of a wholly non-existent person, and sent this effort straight off to the Charities Commission. They replied within a few days, with a registration number! The National Hostel Fund was now a legal fundraising charity. Gifford carried out the threatened visit, accompanied by two 'assistants'. He looked like a tiger about to make a kill. "So, you're still in business?" he panted. By way of reply I handed him the certificate of registration. He turned beetroot and spluttered "How the hell did you manage this?" "I just asked for it", I replied with a taunting degree of understatement. His fist came down hard on my desk. "This is what I've been saying for years", he roared. That Charities Commission is a load of rubbish. They need shaking up from top to bottom." This, of course, was exactly what happened to them a few years later. The ease with which they had been handing out registrations became something of a scandal. |
| Like the Simon Community (and, indeed, Brighton Hostel), the Cyrenians are still going strong, but they seem to consist of a loose federation of separate projects these days. | I saw Tom Gifford and, indeed, Anton Wallich-Clifford one more time. They both turned up at the end of some stunt I had organised - something like a march of dossers, I think. They wanted to divert some of the publicity to themselves. The Cyrenians had by now become better-known than the Simon Community, and had more 'units'. These two rival giants of the dossing industry had clearly swallowed my hype and thought that I was now a third force in the business. It didn't seem to occur to them that, as yet, I had no units at all. Tom Gifford eventually went back on the booze after years of abstinence, was barred from his own units as a result, and ended up on the road again. He died in 1999, aged 79. Anton died of TB in Ireland in the 1980s, allegedly after refusing treatment. |