Invited c.2010 to supply anecdotes about the 1960s,
a former member of Aberdeen YCND came up with the short compilation of memories below.
Individuals’ names have been replaced by YC1, YC2
etc. (for Young Comrade/ Young Campaigner).
Sometimes you just had to
be there...
Singing on the bus going to a demo, to tune of ‘We
Shall Overcome’: ‘Aibirdeen for the Cup – some day...’
YC1 selling anarchist newspaper, singing sotto voce ‘Oh Freedom over me..’ and
adding ‘It was raining at the time...’
YC1 going in to Lodge Walk [police station] to be questioned by
local CID about some incident: ‘If I’m not out in an hour, call the police.’
YC2 used to denounce British subservience to US
policy, saying ‘’We are tied by the balls to America’. Once he was giving
the same speech to the Student Christian
Movement at a joint meeting with Students’ CND and caught himself in mid-flow:
‘’We are tied to America by the -- strings of finance!’
A custom arose for a few people to stay over at a
comrade’s house at the weekend when his mother was out. One week YC3 was
stopped on the way by police and had to empty his pockets, which contained a
toothbrush among other things. ‘I always
carry a toothbrush on Fridays,’ he explained (pause, dead-pan) ‘
- Religion.’
Sometimes irrelevant or absurd slogans were
frivolously added to the serious ones in the interests of general confusion,
such as ‘Restore the Stuart Monarchy’ among the anti-war messages, or SEX
alongside SAW (Scots against War) – later rationalised for public consumption
as Society for the Extermination of Xenophobia.
Student on a grant, faced with a fine to pay: ‘The
state giveth and the state taketh away...’
The Press and Journal (or was it the Evening
Express) did a write-up on YCND and the anarchist connection, which YC4 read out
with great gusto substituting ‘Aibirdeen’s ‘YC5 and YC3’’ as the subject, in
extracts like (adapting a quote from police)
‘We are interested in all YC5
and YC3’s nocturnal activities...’
Flower power had a certain appeal c1967; there was
even an attempt or two to put it into practice by presenting the forces of law
and order with assorted specimens (‘Hae a floo’er’), possibly with the dubious
(from a peace-and-love point of view) motive of annoying them more than
anything.
The fashion for eastern mysticism had some echoes
too, notably on a demonstration advertised as ‘Coulport-Come-All-Ye’ (1967? [1966])
which ended up with some desultory chanting of ‘mantras’ after a lot of fairly
pointless wandering about the countryside. This episode was satirised in
‘Megaton: the [short-lived]’magazine of Aberdeen YCND’ under the heading ‘Om Sweet Om, or Coulport-Where-Were-Ye’… ’
We (YCND and anarchists) used to meet in the Trades
Halls, Adelphi, off Union Street on a Sunday afternoon. One week a couple of
lecturers from the university came along, apparently out of curiosity. They
were surprised to find how youthful the gathering was, and one of them, a
psychologist, offered us [the anarchists] his cellar as an alternative meeting place (perhaps he
wanted to observe us). We tried it but it didn’t really suit, although our
standards weren’t high. At one point someone was investigating one of the holes
in a wall, and someone else yelled ‘Dinna dae that, it’ll be all full of rats
and mingin mice!’
YC5 wending his way homewards after a convivial
evening in a student residence, flourishing a stick: ‘Death to lamp-posts!’ ‘Death
to Corporation things on wheels!’
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| On the plinth |
