The Second Scarborough Conference, 1956

IT IS A GENERALLY ACCEPTED fact that the 1956 Scarborough Conference started the previous year in Torquay. In the sedate days of the first Scarborough Conference, the invitation had been given with becoming decorum by Frank Winn, who merely stood up at the London Conference and invited everybody to come to Scarborough the following year. And without any more ado they did.

Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis (our dads were not the men we are). Things were different at Torquay, twenty years later, but the proceedings started decorously enough. Eleven pillars of the Scarborough Conference and ten of their wives went to Torquay, ostensibly for guidance and information on the problems of conference organisation, actually to persuade as many as possible to come north in 1956.

They took with them some thousands of sticks of Scar borough rock, in Table colours, looking not unlike charges of hygienic gelignite, which they distributed with a prodigality that in London a generation earlier would have amounted to electoral bribery. It was, however, merely a foretaste of better things to come. Less popular were the reams of stickers stuck by the Scarborough contingent on all cars in sight.

The theme of Scarborough’s Conference publicity was to be ‘The Frozen North’. This was a sufficient reason for Peter Boyes, Basil Young, Ian MacGregor, Geoff Heselton, Arthur Slater, Philip Pedley, Geoff Rowbotham, Ken Dix, Ernie Pilgrim and Bill Ellis to turn themselves into cavemen, with Colin Sedgwick as a penguin dragging a large sledge.

In the closing stages of the final night’s Fancy Dress Ball the northern troglodytes made a dramatic appearance on [33] the floor of Torquay’s immaculate Town Hall, with intention of capturing the newly elected National President and putting him on ice for 1956. If they had stuck to of rock, all would yet have been well, but on the sledge were five boxes of Scarborough kippers.

‘These’, writes Colin Penguin, whose experiences of their culinary properties was greater than his appreciation of their ballistic potentialities, ‘were thrown to the waiting hundreds, who in true R.T. tradition, threw them back. In less than a minute coveys of kippers were flying to and fro.
slapping against flesh, slipping behind radiators, staining costumes and smearing the windows and walls of the pride of Torquay. When order was restored their aromatic juices were still being trodden into the boards. They lingered there for many weeks, and when the central heating was started up the following winter Scarborough’s fragrance was renewed from hidden sources.’

The R.T. National Conference has not been back to Torquay since. The politely accepted reason is that the town is no longer large enough to accommodate it.

The Frozen North, and to 5th May 1956
After the preview at Torquay, Scarborough had to justify the promise it had held out. Peter Boyes, then Chairman, considered that, as usual, a professional cabaret should be staged. In this he ran into opposition from Bill Ellis and others of like ilk, who saw no reason why the Table should not stage its own cabaret. To prove it they mounted a show at the Chairman’s Ladies’ Night which was so successful that nothing more was heard about professionalism.

Arthur Slater was Area Chairman, and at his Conference Reception at the Royal on the Wednesday, the cabaret got off to a good start. ‘The cabaret spot provided by Scar borough Table’, reported News and Views, ‘bettered the London professional chorus line … These boys were coached by Tabler Neville Gray, who was also responsible for the expert sound engineering needed for the miming act and who, incidentally, as Councillor Gray, Chairman of the Borough Entertainments Committee, contributed to the success of the Conference in other respects. Even the Conference Committee, when introduced, looked as if they had [34] just been through an air raid, for the Scarborough Table just refuses to take itself too seriously about anything’. The Committee’s battered, bloodstained, bandaged and be-splinted bodies may have hampered movement, but they got the Conference off at a cracking pace. It was described by the National President, Eric Bliss, as ‘fabulous’, a word he was to use again on the Friday. By Saturday night (vide News and Views) he was speechless.

It was at the Civic Reception the following evening, Thursday, that Bill Ellis and Ernie (‘Don’t ‘ee worry’) Pilgrim (‘who also found time to be Chief Steward without exceeding a steady walking pace’) burst upon the National scene with ‘Water can’t quench the fire of love’. Thus they ensured for themselves a reputation that, as they have, has gone beyond the confines of the Table, the former for his inexhaustible rhymes of the thymes, the latter for his pawky* impromptus.

*This word has no vocational significance.

The Rotary Club’s obstetric functions have already been mentioned in these pages. On the Friday, at the National President’s Ball at the Olympia, the Club displayed other aptitudes by presenting a dead-pan excerpt from ‘Swan Lake’, the third cygnet from the left being Peter Boyes.

The President’s Ball went on until 1 a.m. By 7.45 p.m. the following evening the hall had to be ready for the farewell fancy dress party, naively named ‘Native Nite’. The preparations for this party had been going on for months, and many hundreds of Table-man-hours had been expended, under the direction of Stan Bradley, whose premises had been constantly in use as workshop and store. The quantity of scenic decoration that had been made and painted was enormous. All through the Friday night the Table worked, and gradually what had been an idea at last became reality.

Ken Higgs had designed and made four mammoth ‘mobiles’ to hang from the ceiling, representing the four quarters of the globe. Murals on stretched hessian covered the walls. The pillars were transformed into totem poles.
The entrance to the Polar Bar on the balcony was an igloo with its curtain of icicles, and the Jungle Juice Bar was appropriately decorated. [35]

‘The impact on the Tablers as they entered the hall,’ writes Colin Sedgwick, ‘was electrifying, and the scene was set for a magnificent event. Spirits ran high* and high jinks were the order of the day.

*There were four bars.

‘Towards the end of the evening, over-enthusiastic Tablers began to take down varying items of décor as souvenirs, not as carefully as they might have done, and the recently-decorated hall suffered a little. Many of the items were seen leaving Scarborough on the tops of cars the following day.

‘Finally, at midnight, one party tried to launch a totem pole as a canoe, and got the inevitable ducking, which didn’t dampen their spirits at all and delighted the onlookers.’

As guests left for their hotels, 90% of them in the St. Nicholas Cliff area, there to whoop it up until dawn, they were each, through the careful organisation of Meredith Whittaker and his staff, presented with a special Conference Edition of the Mercury. This included three full pages of Conference photographs together with a picture of the President of Round Table International, Peter Myers, being sacrificed by druids at Stonehenge a matter of minutes earlier.

As was usual, a certain amount of business was done at the Conference, but nobody seems to remember much about it. In any case, it is all (one hopes) in the national archives.

The Cabaret
This was the beginning of the golden age of the Table Cabaret, for what it had done at the 1956 Conference established it as an important ingredient of the Table’s future social activities. In Bill Ellis the Table had a script writer who, after months of mental anguish, would come up with lyrics fresh with the dew of inspiration, not infrequently with a little earth still clinging to their roots. In Ernie Pilgrim the Table had an urbane compère and raconteur whose polished impromptus have already been mentioned, and in Neville Gray, an electronic perfectionist. On this trio the brunt of all cabarets fell, except in the year when Bill Ellis was Chairman, when Derek Towle deputised for him.

John Secker recalls the time after the purchase of the Spa by the Corporation in the late 50’s, when four members [36] of the Table – Ernie Pilgrim, Peter Boyes, Bob Quinlan and Neville Gray – were also members of the Borough Council. The following quatrain from The Councillors’ Song was inevitable:

I’m Quinlan, I’m Pilgrim, I’m Boyes and I’m Gray.
We’re stuck with the Spa and we can’t make it pay.
The Council decided the men for the job
Were Peter and Ernie and Neville and Bob.

The basis of the Ellis-Pilgrim partnership rested on:
1 A topical song relating to members of the Table, their various activities in and out of the Table – e.g. “The Councillors’ Song.
2 A mime of some popular song pre-recorded by Neville Gray – e.g. ‘Whispering Sands’ with Bill as a dying prospector and Ernie as a highly successful angel. The partnership became a trio occasionally, as with Fred Coopland in the Ying Tong Song.

No member of the Table was safe from Bill Ellis’s lilting pen. It is, however, not the aim of this history to publish libels, however long ago they were perpetrated, or however great the temptation. Nevertheless one classic stanza has remained with varying degrees of accuracy in the minds of many members of the Table, and in the interests of scholarship the definitive version is here given. Its subject combined a directorship of a large department store with rural, agricultural and equestrian pursuits.

Percy Pickles, they say,
Is a horseman at heart.
He goes riding, jolly well riding.
The horse would be better
Off pulling a cart,
When he’s riding, jolly well riding.
In his new riding jacket,
His new riding cap,
He really looks handsome,
A most dashing chap.
In the fields as he passes
The cows stand and clap.
When he’s riding, jolly well riding.

The Dancing Girls
The more physically energetic section of the Cabaret was the sextet of dancing girls in the later 1950’s. Ex- or old-girls of the troupe are Colin Sedgwick, Basil Young, Geoffrey Heselton, John Bradley, John Secker, Tony Squire, Michael [37] Plows and Derek Towle. The costumes were made by long-suffering if not altogether approving wives.

These girls performed (in spite of a Council resolution that they shouldn’t) at the 41-Club Conference in 1960. At this performance it was decided that the turn should be delicately guyed. Colin Sedgwick suggested that it should be built round John Secker, as he was always half a beat behind everybody else. John’s comment is that by the time the performance took place he had arthritis. How far that was attributable to Offenbach is not clear.

The Great Storm of 1958
Here, perhaps is the place for a brief word on the most important of the Table’s occasional periods of self-examination mentioned on page 68. Council and membership had fallen a little out of step, and Tom Pindar has had the task of putting his recollections on paper:

When a storm breaks, one often wonders why the signs of its approach had gone unheeded, but is then comforted to remember that once events are moving its arrival is as inevitable as the delightful freshness that succeeds it.

Thus it was with Table year 1958-9. Events flowed along pleasantly, but there was an ill-defined feeling that some thing was due to happen. There was talk of another Conference, and Council met to discuss the formation of a Shadow Conference Committee.

Peter Boyes, Chairman of the 1956 Conference, attended the meeting and after discussion it was agreed to invite Basil Young to be Conference Chairman, John Secker to be Secretary. Further appointments would follow later. This was on the 24th November,

By 22nd December the storm was rumbling loudly and a letter reached Ron Huggins, Table Chairman, offering criticisms of and suggestions for the running of the Table. Covering three sides of foolscap and signed by 10 Table members, it could be taken as indicative of serious discontent.

A special general meeting was called to discuss the letter and the 2 1/2-page Council point-by-point reply bore the signatures of all its 9 members. One Council member had [38] the distinction of signing both letters. A blood-bath was expected, and there was a good turnout to see the sport. The meeting was remarkable for the skilful chairmanship of Ron Huggins and the readiness for sense and reason shown both sides as well as by the non-combatants.

So, the storm was over. It was a milestone (if not a landmark – Ed.) in Table history, for after it there was a greater sense of unity and of respect for Chairman and Council. Some reforms began to emerge, but the Conference Officers appointments, which had caused much of the storm, came to nothing, because Scarborough was not selected until 1962, by which time a new method of appointment had been devised.

It is a curious coincidence that, as we go to press, Ron Huggins, now as President, should be writing in Roundabout from which, on page 70, we have filched an extract. [39]

The Developing Years, 1953-56

IN LOOKING BACK over the years it becomes possible to see trends and events in a perspective not readily apparent at the time they are taking place. There is a danger in measuring a Table against the yardstick of its own social fellowship and activities; there is an equal danger in measuring it solely against that of its service to the community. The full strength of a Table lies not in either one or the other, but in both. Without fellowship service suffers; without service fellowship is incomplete.

For five post-war years fellowship had been developing and strengthening and the average age of the Table had fallen. The younger members were beginning to shoulder responsibility and, as was right, were to become the increasingly active members of the succeeding years. The first of these succeeding years brought a large measure of fulfilment to their apprenticeship, for it marked the Silver Jubilee of the movement and it was the year of the coronation of H.M. Queen Elizabeth II.

Already, earlier in the year, the Community Service Committee had recommended that the per capita annual ‘voluntary’ charitable donation of 10/- should be raised to 15/- ‘with the proviso that the Council be authorised to use 5/- per capita of this amount for the National A.G.M. Travel Pool* if such scheme be adopted.’ The Table, however, resolved that in lieu of adopting the Committee’s recommendations the amount of £1.5 (annual subscription) in line 1 of rule 9 be deleted and £2 be substituted’. The [26] result was that in the 1953-4 accounts the ‘Charity Levy’ was replaced by a transfer from Table funds.

*This was a scheme whereby the expenses of two members from each Table attending the National A.G.M. would be paid from a national pool to be fed by a per capita annual levy from each Table.

The Silver Jubilee, 1953
This year was marked by the discovery that the Table’s Charter had not been seen for about 15 years, and nobody knew where it was*. On the other hand, three years previously, Swinney had produced the Area Golf Cup, which apparently no one had then missed.

*It was never found, and a new one was issued by R.T.B.I. The original, however, had been issued during the year in which the Founder had been National President, and it was felt that the replacement should also bear Louis Marchesi’s signature, which it does.

Considerable discussion took place in the Community Service Committee, then under Frank Judson, to determine a suitable means of commemorating the movement’s Jubilee. The outcome was a recommendation that £50 worth of camping equipment be presented to the Scarborough and District Boy Scouts’ Association.

By now the leisurely pace of the first five post-war years had gone for good. Already Roundabout, a fortnightly bulletin of Table news, was being issued. Extension was still in the air. With E. V. Appleton as Area Extension Officer and D. I. Steel from the Table, contacts were made with a view to the formation of a Table in Whitby. Eventually, after a great deal of work, a successful dinner meeting was held there on 21st April 1954, and at the inaugural meeting on 29th July 16 founder members were elected from the 27 who had attended various preliminary meetings.

The Whitby Charter Night at which the Scarborough Table was to present Whitby with a Chairman’s jewel, took place seven months later on a wild February evening, and was attended by Sir Alec Spearman, M.P., Arthur Slater and Maurice Plows, respectively Chairman and Vice President of the Scarborough Table, together with several carloads of supporters. The journey is graphically described by the Vice-President, who was a little older than anyone else, as follows:

‘We assembled at the Pavilion. The streets were thick with snow and it was freezing like hell*. Arthur Slater came in and said, “My word, there has been a smash!” A car had [27] skidded into a bus. Tom Pindar came in with a story of another smash. He had got a load of freestone plus several pairs of wellingtons in the back of his car and also a pick and shovel. I had rung up Philip Pedley in the morning (Saturday) and asked if they were going. He said yes, had I got cold feet? I replied yes in both senses, so he said I need not go if I didn’t want to, so I went.

*Hardly an appropriate simile.

‘We followed a hearse with a coffin in it from Falsgrave to Cloughton. The road was shocking and it was blowing a gale. We didn’t know if the roads were wet or black ice, so we tried it. It was the latter.

‘When we got past the Flask we stopped for a bus, and for half an hour the four of us tried to get the car back on the road facing the right way. We eventually got to Whitby.

‘We arranged to come home in convoy, ten to fifteen cars. Sir Alec Spearman led the way and Ted Appleton brought up the rear, so that everyone got home safely in due course.’

New Zealand Ladies
At this time a New Zealand Ladies’ Cricket Team was to visit this country and fixtures were arranged in Scarborough early in June 1954. The Yorkshire Women’s Cricket Association had approached the Table to see if hospitality could be found for the 17 members of the New Zealand team.
The Council agreed to undertake the task. Table members and their wives not only provided the basic hospitality in their own homes, but the Table ensured that the visiting team had an enjoyable social time and saw something of the surrounding countryside.

Membership Policy
The strength of the Table was increasing, and early in 1954 earnest discussions were taking place on the whole question of membership, its size and quality. The Table was, in fact, having one of its periods of self-examination.

The outcome was two Council resolutions, the first decla ring that the ideal strength of the Table was 40 to 45. and therefore no effort should be made to increase membership for its own sake. The Membership Committee was instructed to concentrate on quality and to bear in mind that, after allowing for retirement due to age and possible transfers [28] and resignations, it would be necessary to elect no more than four or five new members a year to keep the Table up to strength.

There has from time to time been much argument, both in and out of the Table, for and against membership of an organisation by invitation, the social equivalent of a closed shop. Inevitably accusations of snobbery, exclusiveness and favouritism are not infrequently made against such an organisation by those who would like to join, perhaps for purely social reasons, but are incapable of assessing their own qualifications for all that membership demands.

Nevertheless the Council’s second resolution was one common not only to many Tables but to other organisations. The odd feature about it is its late appearance in the history of the Scarborough Table, twenty years after its inception. It usually appears much earlier.

When a member of the Table wishes to propose a new member he shall complete a proposal form without notifying his nominee. This proposal form, if duly seconded, will be considered by the Membership Committee and, if the nomination is looked on favourably, the nominee may then, and only then, be approached and asked if he would like his name to be considered.

Five years later, at a time when the Table strength was 40 with four prospective members and another six nominations in the pipeline, the procedure was further extended and codified:

Procedure for Introduction of
New Members as from April 1959

1 The sponsor, who should have been in membership for at least two years, should first advise the Membership Chairman that he has a prospective member in mind.
2 If the current programme of the Committee permits and the man is basically suitable the sponsor may bring the prospect to two lunches and a social function. He should then be introduced to the Table Chairman, Membership Committee and as many members of the Membership Committee and Council as possible. The Committee will then decide whether or not the prospect is acceptable.
3 An Information Meeting will be called. This will be attended by the Table Chairman, Committee Chairmen and Table Secretary. This will be informal and will take the following pattern:
The Membership Chairman welcomes the prospective member and introduces the Table Secretary who will [29] outline the history, aims and objects, strength of the R.T.B.I. and affiliated organisations and the method of government of the movement.
Each Committee Chairman then sets out the functions of his Committee and the prospective member has an opportunity of asking questions,
4 The Membership Committee then pass their recommendation to Council. Following its approval and 14 days notice to the Table, the new member is inducted. (It is obviously better to bring in a group of members at a time to avoid having a vast number of extra meetings).
5 The ceremony of induction should be rather more impressive than it has been and it is agreed that the sponsor should ‘stand by’ on this occasion.

There has always been what is loosely termed a freemasonry amongst members of Round Table wherever they may be. This impressive procedure almost suggests that the ancient Craft has exerted its influence in other directions.

A further result of the 1954 increase in membership was another change of luncheon venue. For the preceding six years Rowntrees had housed the Table. Now arrangements were made at Boyes Restaurant, and there the Table met for the next eight years until the restaurant was discontinued.
Thereafter from 1962 meetings have been held at the Victoria Hotel, birthplace of the late Charles Laughton.

The Novice
So far we have looked at the question of membership from a purely Table point of view. New members often had opinions of their own, which they usually had sufficient tact at the time to keep to themselves. Two once-new members have been persuaded to put their thoughts down on paper. In each case it is interesting to see how those thoughts reflect matters that have already been discussed in these pages.

Michael Plows came into the Table in the early 50’s, at the beginning of the Table’s renaissance. At the time he had the distinction of being the first son of an earlier member of the Table, the first of the second generation. He was to be followed in the 60’s by Geoffrey Winn, Jeremy Woodcock and Clive Pickles.

‘I had given very little thought to Table, or coming into Table,’ he writes, and there seemed to be very little activity [30] at that time. I had heard of long walks across the moors, and swimming competitions, but absolutely nothing as far as Community Service was concerned. I understood the Table was a luncheon club with speakers, mainly members of the Table who occasionally had to talk about subjects that they knew nothing about. I had no close personal contact with any member, although I knew most by sight.

‘Asked to join Table one Thursday, I accepted, and the following Tuesday was a member. It was rather a horrifying occasion. I was asked to sit at the top table, the room being packed with what to me were very much more senior citizens. I found that the members were extremely friendly, and although most were over ten years my senior, I was soon brought into Table life.

I found that the system for speakers had been recently changed and that some most interesting men were invited along to speak. Community Service, which had been mainly a collecting-box passed round at meals, had become a levy, and attempts were being made to raise funds in various ways. No publicity was allowed on any charitable work.

‘On the social side things were changing quite a lot. The Table Cabaret was about to be born, and dances were more like parties, with various games and interruptions!* Table Council were very serious men. I found this when I came on to Council in my second year in Table. Meetings were on unlicensed premises, usually started at 5.30 and went on until late in the evening. One in particular, when we wrote the Table Rules, went on until 11 p.m. without refreshment.

*Of a previous function he says: I had been to the Annual Dinner in (I think) 1947, which was a very stuffy function, the evening being dinner, half an hour’s dancing, then supper, the supper menu being almost larger than that for dinner. I think this must have been due to the fact that we were rather obsessed with eating after the restrictions of the war.’

‘However, I think that this period was probably the most important in the Scarborough Table. Roundabout was born. Council meetings moved to Arthur Slater’s house, committee meetings to some hostelry. Community service grew much more ambitious, and the Table really sprang to life. Looking back now, I think the way Scarborough Table developed during that period was quite remarkable. A collection of men, enjoying themselves, quietly giving pleasure to a few, [31] became a Table enjoying itself quietly and giving pleasure to a lot.’

The Table was 13 years older when Jeremy Woodcock followed in the steps of his father William (who had been Table Chairman in 1949), 13 years in which the Table had been host to two more National Conferences, had gone into Community Service in a big way, and had formulated the 1959 membership procedure:
What he expected:
1 A collection of young professional men who met regularly to promote fellowship between themselves.
2 That out of the meetings a considerable amount of fellowship and entertainment would be forthcoming and that the entertainment would take the form of several rather expensive dances, with satirical cabarets, and
3 That Round Table was like a secret society in that one did not join in the normal way but was invited by those already In the Table.
What he found:
1 Membership was not confined to the professions, but Tablers from the professions tended to keep themselves separate.
2 However, there was a strong feeling of fellowship between all Tablers, irrespective of age, and an immediate bond of friendship.
3 The amount of entertainment was not as much as he had expected, but this obviously depended on the Entertainments Chairman of the year.
4 He had not expected there to be as much Community Service as there had been in the last few years. Again, this depended on the Community Service Chairman, and some people seem to have high sights, especially with regard to fund raising.
5 ‘Membership is by invitation, and you get the odd situation wherein non-Tablers are examined as to their suitability for membership without it being established whether or not they want to become Tablers’.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (our sons are just like their dads). Many of these thoughts are nostalgic echoes to many of the old brigade, long superannuated from the Table, who still remember their own thoughts and feelings as novices. [32]

The Ladies, 1937-39

AT THIS POINT we must briefly look back two years, and in so doing remember a sphere of Round Table activity in which the membership of the Table had no immediate part.

Although the early ideas of Round Table took no account of femininity, it was perhaps inevitable that the ladies should make an impact on its work. Many a wife did much and endured much for the sake of Round Table, and this fact was early recognised by Round Table in the holding of Ladies’ Nights, Christmas Luncheons and Annual Dances. Any male organisation owes a debt to the wives, sisters and girl-friends of its members, particularly an organisation in which community service plays an important part.

Wives were roped in by husbands to help, individually or collectively, in one Table job or another; alternatively those with young families were holding the fort at home while their husbands were about Table business.

The first Ladies’ Circle, however, arose from a pre-conference situation. The 1932 Conference was to be held at Bournemouth, and nearly two years earlier the Bournemouth Table began to get ready for it. Here it was that the members’ ladies got together to raise funds to provide a gift for every visiting lady. The Conference came and went, but the Ladies’ Committee remained and eventually became Ladies’ Circle No. 1.

By 1935 there were another seven – Manchester, Hastings, Liverpool, Middlesbrough, Wolverhampton, Doncaster and Southampton and so numbers remained until early in 1937. This was the year of the first Scarborough Conference. History repeated itself, the imminent conference bringing into being the Scarborough Ladies’ Circle, No. 10, on 3rd [18] March 1937. Sunderland Ladies’ Circle had come into being a week earlier, beating Scarborough for 9th place.

At this date there were 27 married and 9 unmarried members of the Scarborough Table. The inaugural meeting of the ladies, attended by 12 wives, elected its first officers:
Chairman: Mrs. H. D. Tesseyman
Vice-Chairman: Mrs. G. E. Pearson
Hon. Secretary: Mrs. F. Winn
Hon. Treasurer: Mrs. N. L. King
Committee: Mmes. Dalzell, Hanlon and Hopwood
The other founder members were Mmes. Evans, Forward, Jackson, Plows and Simcock.

Mrs. Tesseyman was elected to represent the Circle at the
A.G.M. of the National Association of Ladies’ Circles, which had been formed the previous year. The following year she was elected National Vice-President.

Active membership was limited to wives and sisters of members of Scarborough Round Table, nominations to be made by an existing member of the Ladies’ Circle. Power to elect honorary members was vested in the Committee, such members being ineligible for either voting or holding office.

At the date of the Circle’s first Annual General Meeting on 29th March 1938 membership had risen from 12 to 16. In the year a great deal of assistance had been given towards the Conference. Members acted as stewards, and Mrs. Tesseyman responded to the toast of ‘The Ladies and Guests’ at the Conference Banquet in a brilliant speech that is still remembered by many of those present.

The Circle assisted with the Hospital Collection at Pickering, this time as a Circle; its members had done the same thing the previous year as individuals. Small social functions were held to raise funds for Christmas donations to the Scarborough Clinic (at which volunteers were helping) and to the Langdale End Unemployment Centre. Monthly meetings were held throughout the year, with speakers on a wide variety of topics from beauty-culture to first-aid. ARP classes followed in the following year, the year of
Munich.

At the second Annual General Meeting, held on the 14th March 1939, the Circle was having difficulty in carrying on. Several of the more active members had left the town, [19] replacement recruiting had not been forthcoming, National Service obligations, including those of husbands, were intensifying, and membership had dropped to nine. Nevertheless in that year several members had qualified for their silver A.R.P. badges and two had produced babies. Assistance had again been given to the Table’s Hospital Collection and occasional charitable efforts had been held.

The meeting resolved to suspend operations until the end of the summer, when a special meeting was to be called to discuss the future of the Circle.

For reasons with which we are familiar that special meeting was never called. [20]

From National Conference 1937, to International Conflict 1939

THE OPENING OF THE Table’s second year was marked by the resignation of Singer on his removal to Warwick. His enthusiasm and hard secretarial work had done a great deal towards building a firm foundation for the Table, and he was ably succeeded by H. T. Jackson.

Almost the first task of 1936 was preparation for the 1937 Conference. A strong Conference Committee was set up, with appropriate sub-committees, and the whole strength of the Table was deployed. Yet the domestic work of the Table also had to go on, and the result was that for more than twelve months heavy calls were made on virtually the whole of the Table membership in one capacity or another.

On the home front the first major activity of the New Year was the first Dance, arranged at the Pavilion Hotel on Friday, 7th February but, owing to the death of H.M. King George V, postponed until Tuesday, 25th February. It is interesting to reflect that the hotel provided band and running buffet at an inclusive charge of 5/-, the Table to guarantee a minimum attendance of 6o. The attendance was in fact 58.

Then, in addition to the Fraternity, Membership and Speakers’ Committees, a Community Service Committee was formed (27th April 1936).* Requests for assistance began to come in. The first big job, in which the Table enlisted the assistance of the ladies, was to organise a Rose [10] Day in Pickering for Scarborough Hospital. This was so successful that before the end of the year ‘next year’s Hospital collection’ was already being discussed. It became an annual event until it was cancelled in 1939 on the outbreak of war. The conveyance of crippled Scouts was continuing on a rota basis. The Table became represented (3rd December 1936) on the committee of the Scarborough Boys’ Club, and later H. D. Tesseyman represented the Table on the Basque Children’s Relief Fund.

[*The Vocational Service Committee was set up a year later (20th April 1937). Each of these five sub-committees submitted half-yearly reports to the Council and Table, where comments and criticism were forthcoming. Late in 1938, for instance, the Table felt that greater latitude should be given to the Speakers’ Committee with regard to political subjects.]

The Donations Box, which had now become the Charity Box, found a continuing outlet. The decision was taken to create a Round Table annual Scholarship, or Grant, of £5 for award on the recommendation of the Director of Education ‘to help a boy who, after obtaining his County Scholar ship, cannot afford the necessary school caps and sports clothing.’

This continued to be awarded until 1942, when, in circumstances beyond control of the Table, it was suspended.

At the First Annual General Meeting of the Table, held on 17th April 1936, Mr. W. E. Harland was elected President in succession to Mr. G. H. Fawcett. Whether or not he considered existing methods of calling the membership to order unsatisfactory or outmoded is not clear, but at the end of his year of office he presented the bell on which subsequent chairmen have performed with varying degrees of expertise.

The disciplinary function of a bell is transient, but not that of the Council, which learned that it had a continuing disciplinary function of its own. It had to hold the balance between liberty and licence. It was at the 1935 Hastings Conference that Lord Eustace Percy said:

The salvation of the world lies not in politicians or politics, or negotiations, or societies, or administrations; but simply on the fundamental constitution of democracy – men living together and, out of that joint life and joint service, evolving a way of life that is worth living.

This concept applies as surely to an organisation as to the world. That is perhaps why so very much of the time of Round Table, nationally and locally, has been taken up by the discussion and formulation of rules.

A recurring item at Council meetings was the occasional submission of the names of those members whose attendances [11] fell below the 50 % mark. After suitable reminders and in the absence of reasonable excuse, the offending member was advised that he was disqualified from membership under the Attendance Rule.

By the end of 1938 two further disciplinary matters had, in the end, to be dealt with by the Council. The first was by no means peculiar to Scarborough. The chronic reluctance of the rank and file membership to occupy vacant seats at the top table is a peculiarity of human nature by no means confined to Round Table itself.

The second matter was one not uncommon in a membership that meets for a function on licensed premises, and is of considerable importance if a strict timetable has to be observed.

The matters were eventually dealt with on 4th April 1939 when the Fraternity Committee was requested ‘to appoint two members to be on duty at each luncheon – one to see the top table is filled, and the other to round up members from sundry rendezvous’.

The 1937 Conference
There is no question that the first Scarborough Conference, coming as it did so soon after the Table’s formation, contributed more than anything else to the Table’s maturity. High standards had been set at previous conferences, and national membership was growing from year to year.

The Conference committees appointed early in 1936 were:
Conference Committee, 1937
G. E. Pearson, Chairman
S. D. McCloy; G. S. Hazell; R. K. Rowntree: H. D. Tesseyman;
J. C. Whitfield ; N. L. King; H. I. Dennis
H. T. Jackson (Assistant Secretary)
F. Winn (Secretary)
Chairman, Secretary and Assistant Secretary Ex-officio

Sub-committees:
Entertainments:
S. D. McCloy, Chairman
H. I Dennis
J. Johnson
M. L. T. Plows
W. E. Hopwood
W. C. Sloan
Registration:
G. S. Hazell, Chairman
J. C. Whitfield
N. L. King
E, P. Evans
J. Sinclair
W. Nockels [12]
Hotels:
R. K. Rowntree, Chairman
E. Gibson
C. N. Mountford
W. L. Woodcock
E. Webb
Transport:
H. D. Tesseyman, Chairman
J. A. T. Hanlon
J. C. Newsome
J. Newton
A. deG. Elliott
N. W. Pearson

These committees promptly got to work, and within six months were arranging for an overdraft on Conference Account at the Bank, for which four members of the Table stood as guarantors. It is pleasing to relate that they were not called upon.

At this point the Council had little idea that the Conference was to be a historic one for the National movement. It had become apparent that Round Table had outgrown its organisational strength, and Conference accepted a report from a Special Committee which aimed at ‘putting Round Table on a sound basis as a National Organisation. The fact that the Committee had been set up is a true indication of the movement’s internal weakness at the time.’

‘That year at the Scarborough Conference,’ wrote John Creasey, ‘the Report “was considered”. There were 29 recommendations, and among them the suggestion that there should be:
A central headquarters.
A paid Secretary.
A proper allowance for National Officers.
Travelling expenses for National Councillors.
A general readjustment of finance, including the setting up of a central register of members.
An increase of Capitation fees to 6/6.

‘And, if this were not enough, the National Executive briskly announced that it had set up a Special Committee to overhaul administration.

‘Seldom has there been more vigorous argument against any proposals. Delegates jumped to their feet to protest, prophecies of suicide and bankruptcy were thrown at the top table, some suggested that it would put the Movement into the hands of a salaried individual who was not a member. Let the work be carried on as before, they cried, by voluntary officers; otherwise, ruin.

‘The Executive was adamant and received sufficient support from the less vociferous delegates to have all the [13] recommendations approved. Soon afterwards a small office was opened at Ludgate Hill and Captain Chambers, a retired Regular Army officer, was installed as a salaried Organising Secretary. Another thing happened which to have great significance later; Cyril Marsh, of the Wimbledon Table, was appointed to the National Executive “to keep an eye on things”.”

The later significance was that it was very largely due to Cyril Marsh, National Secretary during the war, that there was a strong National Movement still in being at the end of it.

He was elected afterwards the second of Round Table’s National Honorary Members. The first was Louis Marchesi, the Movement’s founder.

At the time of the 1937 Scarborough Conference the membership of the Table was 36. There were 118 Tables in existence, and the national membership was 4,000. The total numbers attending the Conference were approximately 360.

The highlight, as usual, was the Conference Banquet at the Royal Hotel at which the Mayor and Mayoress, Alderman and Mrs. J. W. Butler, attended as official guests. The cabaret, ably compered by Alan Forward of the Scarborough Table, included the popular Leonard Henry as its star and a trio of acrobatic dancers. Although the function officially ended at 1.30 a.m., it was not until nearly 3 a.m. that the subsequent fun and games came to an end and the Mayor and his Lady went home.

It is pleasing to reflect that the Conference made a profit which was distributed early the following year as follows:
National Funds £5 5s 0d
Hull Table £5 5s 0d
York Table £5 5s 0d
Bridlington Table £5 5s 0d
Scarborough Table £14 15s 9d

Total £35 15s 9d

The Cardiff Conference followed in 1938, and subsequently the National Conference Sub-committee circularised all Tables asking for suggestions for the improvement of the National Conference in order to make it more popular and useful.

Scarborough, in the light of its own experiences of the [14] many problems involved, suggested:
a Centralisation of headquarters and accommodation
b Expenses to be kept as low as possible.
c A seaside or inland spa should be the venue
d Too much should not be attempted in the time available
e In addition to the Annual Conference, Area Conferences should be held.

War
The 3rd September 1939 caught the Table in the full spate of seasonal activity. There had been the continuing Social Service activities, the usual summer events including an evening meeting at Ravenscar in July, and the usual Area meetings. There had been a much overdue reprint of the rules, representation at the Cardiff Conference, discussion on the question of endowing a hospital cot and a paternal interest in the Scholarship boy; Geoffrey Hazell had been appointed Area Vice-Chairman, John Jaram was busy arranging teams for an Area golf tournament, and arrange ments were well advanced for a Rally to be held at Ravenscar later in the month.

At the Table luncheon on the 8th September the Chairman, the late Howard Tonks Jackson, announced that he had considered it advisable to cancel the scheduled talk so that the Table could discuss the situation. It was already known that in the event of war certain members would have civil or military commitments and as time went on active membership would inevitably dwindle. Bert Dennis had already gone. The National President, Rodney Lillicrap, had lost no time in writing to all Tables, hoping that they would carry on as far as possible, and wishing every member success in whatever he might be called upon to undertake. He himself later went into the R.A.F. and resumed National Council work on his demobilisation.

A year earlier, as Munich approached and it was obvious that war would follow sooner or later, the Chief Constable was anxious to build up his Special Constabulary.

‘I. E. Thomas, the Weights and Measures Superintendent, was a member of the Table,’ writes Maurice Plows, ‘and when war was nearing us before Munich he began to [15] re-form the Special Constabulary in Scarborough, as we were then the Borough Police. It was through Round Table members that this was commenced, and we had many members sworn in. Unfortunately there are none ere are none now except myself.’

Maurice Plows, joining the force from the Table, remained in it for thirty years, retiring shortly after he wrote these words.

The first Table activity to suffer in 1939 was the Hospital collection at Pickering, then imminent, which had to be cancelled, as were all ‘existing arrangements and recommendations’. It was agreed that fortnightly luncheons be continued, but that no speakers be engaged and the time utilised for discussion.

War conditions made it impossible to hold Area meetings, and any Area business was thereafter conducted by correspondence. An invitation to the Table luncheons was issued through News & Views to any Table member of H.M. Forces who might find himself in Scarborough.

The Secretary wrote to H. I. Dennis, then a Lieutenant in the 5th Bn. Green Howards, to ask what would be most useful and acceptable as Christmas gifts to his men, ‘Scarborough men preferably’. As a result 24 vests and 24 pairs of shorts were sent to France. Dennis, now Captain, received them safely.

Numbers were dwindling. At the first wartime A.G.M. (the Table’s fifth) on 19th April 1940, 18 members were present. At the 1939 A.G.M. there had been 31. The Council and sub-committees were still nominally functioning, but circumstances made it necessary at the next ensuing Council meeting a few weeks later to resolve that ‘in view of the constant withdrawal from active membership of the Table on account of the war, no sub-committees be appointed’. Individual Council members undertook responsibility in their place.

At this meeting, quorum or no quorum, only three members were present. It is worthy of note that at the infrequent Council meetings an attendance of five was usually possible, though they were not always the same five.

Attendance at meetings had dwindled drastically, and even those who did attend did not find it easy to do so. Early [16] in 1941 the Chairman, Ralph Rowntree, joined H.M. Forces, and Nockels took over. ‘In this year £25 was invested in Defence Bonds during War Weapons Week.’ In 1942 the Secretary, H. W. Moss, resigned for the same reason, and there was nobody to take over. At a Special General Meeting of the whole Table on 16th October 1942 seven members managed to attend, and passed this curiously moving resolution:

“That as from today the activities of the Round Table be suspended until the signature of the Armistice or such other time as is deemed desirable by the members, when a meeting of all available members shall be convened for the Friday next following, to consider the resumption of activities, the books in the meantime to be deposited with W. Nockels for safe custody.’

This resolution immediately followed the last item of Table business to be transacted for four years, which was to approve the 1942 Scholarship grant of £5. It visualised a termination of hostilities on 1918 lines, in which it was wrong. It assumed, with inherent optimism, that at some time in the years to come there would be somebody who would be able and willing to call a meeting, in which it was right. [17]

The First Year, 1934-35

THE STORY OF ROUND TABLE, nationally and internationally was told by John Creasey in 1953 in Round Table, the First Twenty-five Years. In these pages is the shorter story of one of the member Tables of the movement, the National Association of Round Tables of Great Britain and Ireland. It is the story of the Round Table in Scarborough.

When in 1927, with an enthusiasm and a foresight that were to become characteristic of the movement as a whole, the first Round Table Club came into being at Norwich, the ripples extended slowly but surely throughout the country, reaching Scarborough in 1934. They had already encircled her, having earlier reached Middlesbrough, Hull, Bridlington and York in that order.

As Rotary Clubs had done and were still to do in many more cities and towns, the Rotary Club of Scarborough assumed the functions of an avuncular midwife, and the successful birth of the Scarborough Table can be attributed directly to its initial efforts. The Founder Chairman of the recently formed York Table, J. M. Gray, had been invited to speak at one of its luncheons. At that time the Rotary Club’s President was Mr. G. H. Fawcett, its Secretary was Mr. Andrew Sinclair, and among its membership were three who were distinguished by their youth, for none had reached the age of 40. They were Frank Winn, Norman King and Geoffrey Hazell.

Gray had made a good case in his presentation of the ideas and ideals underlying the Round Table movement, with which Rotary had been sympathetic in both theory and active ever since the formation of the Norwich Table. The President and Secretary of the Scarborough Rotary Club [1] called a meeting of eight under 40’s, including the club’s own trio, who were arbitrarily deemed to be potential Table members.

Such potential members had to fall within fairly well-defined categories. They had necessarily to be:
a Under the age of 40
b Of responsible executive status
c Of varied occupational classifications
d Of such character as would cause them to give of themselves for the good of their fellows.

This meeting was held at the Esplanade Cafe on Monday, 17th December 1934. Although doubts were expressed whether there would be sufficient suitable men in a town the size of Scarborough who would fulfil the broad requirements of membership, seven of the eight men present committed themselves to the formation of a Table.
Thus the seven Founder Members to emerge from that historic, informal and unminuted meeting were:
S. D. McCloy, Solicitor – Chairman
Frank Winn, Chartered Secretary – Vice-Chairman
T. S. Singer, Architect – Hon. Secretary
John C. Whitfield, Solicitor – Hon. Treasurer
Ralph K. Rowntree, Departmental Store – Council Member
Norman L. King, Dentist – do.
Geoffrey S. Hazell, Ladies’ Outfitter – do.

The first minuted meeting, held on 7th January 1935, in effect confirmed the decisions taken at the December meeting. Messrs. G. H. Fawcett and Andrew Sinclair were elected President and Vice-President respectively in graceful acknowledgment of the part Rotary had played in bringing the Table into being.

At this meeting it was resolved that Table meetings should be held fortnightly on Fridays at 1.10 p.m. and the names of 13 eligible under 40’s, among them hoteliers, motor engineeers, bankers, furnishers, police officers and estate agents, were suggested for personal approach with a view to membership.

Early Days
Much work inevitably fell on the Council – contact with the National Association of Round Tables, formulation of rules, [2] venues for meetings, speaker-finding and all forms of club activities. An overriding consideration was the quality of membership.

‘The attempt was made,’ said McCloy many years later, ‘to try to assess fully before election whether a particular candidate could contribute something to the Table. The principle was adopted that we should go slowly at the start to build a Table of members who were congenial and representative, rather on Rotary lines, of a fair cross-section of the community. We were always in the early days careful not to allow the Table to grow so fast that the new members could not be readily absorbed, thus enabling the fairly close ties of friendship to be built up.’

This is borne out by a minute of 26th March 1935, that not more than four new members be admitted per month, this being two at each meeting. One has but to look back over the years to realise the wisdom of this early policy, on which the subsequent strength of the Table was firmly based. What happened in Scarborough parallelled what happened in many other Tables throughout the country. Fellowship led to friendship and many friendships, first made in the Table, have continued throughout life.

The first luncheon meeting took place at the Esplanade Cafe (which was then the home of the Rotary Club) on Friday, 18th January 1935, eleven days after the inaugural meeting. The second and subsequent fortnightly luncheons were held in the Cricketers’ Room at the Grand Hotel from
1.10 to 2.25 p.m. at a cost of 2/9 ‘including a tip of 3d’.

The Council’s next step was to decide that an Attendance Register should be kept, and to set up three sub-Committees:
a Fraternity Committee: to take charge of all matters relating to hotel accommodation, menus, payment for meals, Table property and classification badges; to promote a fraternal spirit within the Table and to foster its social life by arrangement ing various activities such as dinners and dances; to arrange for the proper welcome of visitors and new members
b Speakers Committee: to prepare a syllabus of the Table programme and arrange speakers.
c Membership Committee: to deal with all matters pertaining to the invitation, election and conduct of members.

The First Table Job
In March came the Table’s first of many incursions into [3] social service. The Silver Jubilee of H.M. King George V was to be celebrated, and the Scout movement had evolved ambitious plans. Table representation on the Executive Committee of the Scarborough and District Scouts’ Association was invited.

Maurice Plows, on condition that he did not have to wear shorts, agreed to serve, and consideration was soon being given to the help that the Scouts would need in their arrangements.

Beacons were to be built round the whole of the coast of the country and lit at an appointed time. Scarborough was to be responsible for three – one on Castle Hill, another on the Racecourse and the third at Ravenscar. The Ravenscar beacon was the one on which the Table’s attention was concentrated.

‘It was quite a job, I well remember’, wrote Maurice Plows more than thirty years later. ‘We had, of course, to get fuel for the fire. I got two lorry loads of old tyres from Tesseymans delivered at the site near to the road leading down to the Hall.

‘We contacted the various people connected with the forests: I don’t think it was called the Forestry Commission then. Loads and loads of wood were taken to the site. This was to be our first big job in Community Service and naturally we wanted the best fire. As it was, the other two were poor affairs and soon burnt out.

‘I got a furniture van from Tonks via Howard Tonks Jackson, and into it we loaded all the scouts along with their tents, food, beds etc., and we set off for Ravenscar. There we directed the scouts to build the fire along with ourselves, about half a dozen members of the Table. We got the scouts to dig a deep pit in a circle round the fire and this we filled with water and kept full buckets ready for the actual fire.

‘On the big night the whole Table went to Ravenscar to get the fire going; I cannot remember if we had fireworks or not. I do remember that we all went to Raven Hall and had a dance, and then at midnight a lot of us went to the swimming pool.’

This was the first, not only of the Table’s Social Service activities, but of its efforts to help the Scout movement. [4]

‘During my office on the Scouts executive,’ recalls Maurice Plows, I found that quite a few of the scouts who were crippled or ill could not get to attend their Wednesday meeting sso we got out a list of those in R.T. and Rotary who possessed cars; not a lot of us did in those days.

‘A rota was drawn up for the scouts to be picked up and taken to their meetings. This worked very well indeed and continued until the war broke out when we lost members and petrol rationing etc. stopped activities.’

Conferences
This (1935) was the year of the Hastings Conference, at which S. D. McCloy, W. E. Hopwood and Frank Winn represented the Scarborough Table. The various proposals on the agenda were considered in some detail by the Council, and the Table’s delegates given careful instructions how to vote.

It was following this conference that the Scarborough Table, barely six months old, cheerfully agreed to invite the national body to Scarborough for its next conference but one, the 1936 venue being London. Somewhat to its surprise the Table found its invitation taken up by the National Council.
The dates were to be 27th to 29th May 1937.

The invitation was not, of course, officially given until the 1936 Conference. It was made by Frank Winn, supported at the meeting by R. K. Rowntree, H. I. Dennis, G. S. Hazell and H. D. Tesseyman, and it was accepted with alacrity and acclamation.

The curious thing about a conference is that a delegate will soon forget the business transacted but long remember quite irrelevant details. The London Conference was a case in point.

‘The Scarborough party,’ Frank Winn remembers, ‘stayed at the Cumberland Hotel. My room-mate was Bert (H. I.) Dennis. I got up one morning to find his bed was unoccupied. The window was wide open and there was a drop of about 120 feet outside. I could see nothing unusual below, but I dashed along to tell Dennis Tesseyman the news; we were both really hot under the collar. Bert turned up later, his bright and breezy self. He had got up very early and had gone to see a relative in one of the London suburbs.’ [5]

The contingent’s main recollections appear to centre round the Conference Banquet at the Connaught Rooms. The National President rose with hospitable frequency to take wine with the delegates from the various Tables. There were sufficient Tables for the Scarborough quintet, with characteristic irreverence, to spend the meal debating the time when, instead of rising above the table, he would sink beneath it.

The cabaret that followed is remembered by more than the Scarborough delegates, and it taught all potential Conference organisers a lesson. The star turn was a popular and highly paid Cockney raconteur whose choice of material would have been admirable for a seasoned all-male smoke room audience. In a young mixed audience in their twenties and thirties he produced a profound mass-embarrassment. Red-faced Conference stewards tried to shush him from the screen that did duty for the wings, then they appeared on the platform to plead with him, and in the end to whisk him off in the middle of a word. The following year Scarborough played safe.

An innovation in the first year of the Table was the Donations Box. It was the result of a resolution of the Council at a meeting on the 2nd August 1935* that ‘a box should be passed round at all future Table meetings and that members present should contribute such sums as they choose, not exceeding 3d, and that the proceeds should be devoted to such charitable objects as the Table shall from time to time decide’. It was not until some months later that the Secretary was empowered to leave the box at the hotel office instead of taking it home with him after each meeting.

[* This was the meeting at which Ralph Rowntree reported on the cost of the lamp-standard presented to Dennis Tesseyman on the occasion of his marriage, the minute book containing the classic resolution: ‘Resolved that the presentation committee should collect 2/3 from each member (Tesseyman excluded)’ ]

In October the luncheon venue changed to the Pavilion Hotel, still at 2/9. Certain other Tables in the Area considered this a rather high figure, no doubt indicative of plutocratic tendencies on the part of Scarborough’s membership. Hull, for instance, at that time was paying 1/9 at the old White House Hotel which, incidentally, was then a temperance hostelry. [6]

Charter Night
The last major activity of the Scarborough Table’s first year was the presentation of the Table’s Charter at a dinner held at the Pavilion Hotel on 2nd November 1935. Louis Marchesi, the founder of the movement and in that year National President, accepted the Table’s invitation to come up north to present it.

Distinguished guests included the Mayor, Councillor (later Alderman) F. C. Whittaker, J.P., whose son Meredith, twelve years and a world war later, was to become Table Chairman; the Town Clerk, Mr. Sidney Jones; the Member for Scarborough, Sir Paul Latham, M.P., and the assembled company included representatives from most of the Tables in Yorkshire.

During the summer, joint outings had been arranged with the York and Hull Tables which, with Bridlington and Scarborough, comprised No. 10 Area. After the summer, additional to the fortnightly luncheons, monthly evening meetings were arranged. Then surplus energy was worked off on a Club Walk which the Council resolved ‘should not be less than ten miles’. This appears to have been reasonably successful, for other walks followed.

Hitherto the activities of the Table had been exclusively male. Signs of limited acknowledgement of the existence of wives, fiancées and girlfriends, however, appeared at the end of the year when it was decided that they should be invited to the Christmas luncheon.*

[*It took, however, a further quarter of a century for a Council resolution to be passed in 1961 that the names of wives should be included in the Directory, with the minuted content that Tom Pindar disclosed a remarkable and suspicious knowledge of most of them.]

Speakers
From the beginning considerable attention was given to speakers and their subjects. The Speakers’ Committee had to bear in mind a Council directive that all aspects of the Round Table movement should receive proper representation and, in particular, that ample opportunity should be given for discussion of business matters concerning both R.T.B.I. and the Scarborough Table. This was all very well, but enough is as good as a feast. The Committee wisely widened its own terms of reference. [7]

Current topics were discussed and debated. Speakers were found who spoke authoritatively on Scarborough itself, on local government, on unemployment and other social problems of the day, and on matters of wide general interest. Quite early, for example, the Table debated two topics that today, after more than thirty years, are still remarkably up to date:
1 That the extensive practice of selling goods on the hire purchase is to be deplored.
2 Is the present tendency of exaggerated advertising effective?

The Table’s own membership threw up speakers on the various aspects of their own jobs. Such vocational talks not only had a continuing interest to the listener, but in some cases gave a novice his first audience, a sympathetic and friendly (but not necessarily uncritical) audience within the fellowship of the Table.

This was not peculiar to Scarborough. In Tables all over the country there was a membership varying in age between the early twenties and the late thirties, a hand-picked membership selected not for what it could get from, but for what it could give to the Table and the community. But in giving, it gained.

This duty, for it was and is a Table duty, of having to get up and say something, whether to make an announcement, to give a talk, to propose a vote of thanks, to give a toast or even to say Grace, is but one of many things that have helped a shy and diffident youngster to gain poise, to overcome butterflies and often to emerge with a quiet confidence into wider spheres.

Finally, what were members to call themselves? This problem had been in existence far longer than the Scarborough Table had. The practice had grown up in many Tables, and perpetuated in the magazine, News & Views, of referring to them as Tablers.

A letter from a member of the Hull Table to News & Views in which, amongst other things, this word was referred to as an incorrectly derived etymological abortion, sparked off a controversy that continued for some time. It eventually died, probably because even worse misuses of the English language were, in spite of A. P. Herbert, constantly burrowing their way into current usage. [8]

Hull dropped the word; it could not very well do anything else with a militant purist in its ranks. The word Member was used instead. So it was in the Scarborough Table, which had purists of its own, and within four months of its foundation a recommendation was being sent to the National Council that the use of the objectionable word be discouraged. As a matter of interest it does not appear in the Minute Book until 1948, and then but fleetingly. It creeps in again in 1954, occurring with increasing frequency in and after 1957. [9]

IT IS NOW MORE THAN thirty years since the Scarborough Round Table was founded. The Table feels that whilst many of its earlier members and their memories are still available, some account of its own formation, development and work should be recorded.

A true record must be not merely an impersonally factual history, nor yet a nostalgically romantic story, but as far as possible a human account of the essentially human activities of a club in which fellowship and service are inextricably blended.

With an upper age-limit of 40 it is obvious that the active association of even the oldest of its present members extends only to the early fifties, some 15 years (including the war years) later than the founding of the Table.

Fortunately many of the founder and early members, long ago superannuated from the Table at the youthful age of 41, are now passing the succeeding decades of middle age in the less chronometric atmosphere of the Scarborough 41 Club. To many of them I am indebted not only for considerable sympathetic encouragement but for personal recollections of the Table of their day and for clarification of obscure points in such records as are available.

My own contacts with the Scarborough Table in those distant days were within the framework of the Area. If a personal word may be permitted (or, indeed, if not), it has given me a great deal of nostalgic pleasure to renew memories of those days.

The main skeleton of the story, is of course, the Minute Book, but it is a skeleton only, with none of the flesh that gives a human interest to bare bones. It has fallen to the lot of the present membership of the Table to cover the bones of later years.

This story of the Table inevitably stops at the point in time when the last word is being written. What has happened [vii] in the 34 years up to that point will be, I hope, tolerably clear to the reader. What will happen in the years to come is still clothed in the darkness of uncreated things. It will the duty of another generation to continue the story.

M.H.

Scarborough 1968-9

And I, according to my copy, have set it down in print …..
humbly beseeching all noble lords and ladies, with all other estates of what state or degree they be of, that shall see and read in this present book and work, that they take the good and honest acts in their remembrance, and follow the same. Wherein they shall find many joyous and pleasant histories, and the noble and renowned acts of humanity,
gentleness and chivalry.

William Caxton,
Prologue to Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, 1485 [viii]

How to use the Index

It was originally intended that this Index should be helpful, if not instructive, to the ordinary reader as well as to the crossword expert. To gain the maximum benefit from it, however, it is necessary for both types of reader to observe the following simple rules:

Page 78 in the Index really means page 79. Page 79 in the Index really means page 81. Page 80 in the Index really means page 82. This is fairly clear, but what will fox all readers is that when the Index says page 81 it can mean any page from 83 onwards.

Digital addition to help referencing

Chapter 1: The First Year 1934-35 pp 1-9
Chapter 2: From National Conference 1937, to International Conflict 1939 pp 10-17
Chapter 3: The Ladies, 1937-39 pp 18-20
Chapter 4: The Difficult Years, 1946-52 pp 21-25
Chapter 5: The Developing Years, 1953-56 pp 26-32
Chapter 6: The Second Scarborough Conference, 1956 pp 33-39
Chapter 7: Projects, 1957-61 pp 40-45
Chapter 8: The Third Scarborough Conference, 1962 pp 46-50
Chapter 9: Further Projects, 1963-68 pp 51-60
Chapter 10: International, the Three 88s pp 61-65
Chapter 11: Roundabout pp 66-71
Chapter 12: What Now? pp 72-76
Appendix I: Officers of the Scarborough Table
Appendix II: Members of the Scarborough Table holding National Office
Appendix III: Community Service
Appendix IV: The Area
Index

The young business and professional men of this country must get together round the table, adopt methods that have proved so sound in the past, adapt them to the changing needs of the times and, whenever possible, improve them.

Edward, Prince of Wales, 1927

Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe.

Alfonso X of Castile, 1226-84

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
1 The First Year, 1934-5
2 From National Conference, 1937, to International Conflict, 1939
3 The Ladies, 1937-39
4 The Difficult Years, 1946-52
5 The Developing Years, 1953-56
6 The Second Scarborough Conference, 1956
7 Projects, 1957-61
8 The Third Scarborough Conference, 1962
9 Further Projects, 1963-68
10 International, the Three 88
11 ‘Roundabout
12 What Now?

APPENDICES
I Officers of the Scarborough Table
II Table Members holding National Office
III Community Service, Major Projects and Disbursements, 1953-68
IV The Area
Index

ILLUSTRATIONS
A Letter from the Founder
1 Charter Night, 2nd November 1935
2 Social Evening, circa 1938
3 The Carol Singers in Action, December 1952
4 The Table, 23rd December 1954
5 The Conference Committee in Session, 1956
6 The Dragon Slayers, August Bank Holiday, 1960 .. facing page 49
7 The Table, A.G.M., 1964
8 The Table, A.G.M., 1968
9 The Wishing Well, 1968

With acknowledgments to Walkers Studios Ltd., The Mercury, The Scarborough Evening News, Raymond Ellis, Colin Sedgwick and Uncle Tom Cobley.