12:11pm Monday 22nd March 2010
Harry Mead enjoys a collection of essays by Roy Hattersley... and discovers that the former Labour deputy leader has led a strangely deprived life.
AS confessions from politicians go, it has to be up there with the most shattering.
Defence Minister John Profumo admitting he lied to the House of Commons over his dalliance with Christine Keeler? No contest.
And should Tony Blair suddenly blurt out that he knew all along that Saddam Hussain didn’t possess a single weapon of mass destruction, you would still have to hand the palm for a sensational disclosure to Roy Hattersley.
The former deputy leader of the Labour Party opens an essay on Scarborough with these mind-blowing words: “Two weeks ago, I went to Scarborough and saw the North Bay for the first time in my life.”
The year was 1990, when Sheffield-born Roy was 58. His statement reveals that, unlike virtually every other Yorkshire man and woman – and probably a majority of North-Easterners too – Roy had never visited Peasholm Park. And that means he had never rowed round its lake, enjoyed the band playing on the floating bandstand, or - serious deprivation this – witnessed the dramatic mock naval battle, a source of joy for generations of Yorkshire boys.
But far, far worse, cricket-addict Roy, passionate about the county team, had never set foot on Scarborough’s cricket ground, the county club’s most popular venue and home to the world-famous Festival. Roy, what wert tha thinking of, lad? Tha mun hang thi head i’ shame.
Roy explains how, on outings to Scarborough with his parents, during holidays at Filey, “we never escaped from the hinterland above South Bay”. Later Scarborough visits, usually for party conferences, were similarly restricted.
But, in 1990, round the headland Roy went. Or rather he didn’t – merely up to it. For he describes climbing to the castle, from where “the North Bay made almost a complete halfcircle”, while “to the south, the town – Spa, harbour and hotels – looked like the model of a holiday village”.
So we can infer that Roy has yet to walk the Marine Drive, the classic link between the bays, and discover both Peasholm Park, Yorkshire’s best-loved pleasure ground, and the cricket field. Get yourself there this summer, Roy, especially to the cricket ground, where Yorkshire CCC’s visits could be in their dying days.
Yorkshire readers of this collection of 80 or so of Roy’s essays, published over the past 40 years, might well keep returning in disbelief to Roy’s Scarborough confession. Did he really admit that? Yes he did. But he can be forgiven.
For Roy is a man of wide tastes and interests, and not a little erudition, which he can, and does, communicate in a deceptively easy style. His subjects range from Shakespeare to soccer (he’s a Wednesday fan), by way of churches and churchyards, wanderings in the Dales and Peak District (his favourite landscape, the traitor) and other agreeable diversions.
Under the title Also England, a few are not so agreeable. Roy says: “A celebration of the real England, not the chocolate box and Christmas card caricature, requires proper homage to be paid to the places where… smoke and dust brought prosperity.”
So he visited Consett a year after its steelworks closed. He found that “neither batteries nor ball bearings have provided the promised redemption.
Everyone is slightly bewildered about the future”.
Roy also reports on two sorties among the homeless with the Salvation Army. Overall, he delivers a thoughtful man’s impressions of a changing England. And the delights of Scarborough’s North Bay still await him. Don’t miss the miniature railway, Roy.
© Copyright 2001-2012 Newsquest Media Group
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/trade_directory/