Teign u3a great Lives 2014/15

SOJOURNER TRUTH

(1797 -1883)

Sojourner Truth, along with Harriet Tubman, were two of the most famous African-American women of the nineteenth century. A woman of remarkable intelligence despite her illiteracy, and as an abolitionist and feminist she put her body and her mind to representing physically women who had been enslaved.

Sojourner was born Isabella Baumfree in, it’s believed 1797, and was one of 12 children born to James and Elizabeth Baumfree in the town of Hurley, in Ulster County, New York State. Her father, and mother were both slaves captured from Africa. The Baumfree family was owned by a Dutchman, Colonel Hardenbergh, and lived at the colonel's estate in Esopus in Ulster County. When aged 9, Isabella, known as "Belle" at the time, was sold at an auction with a flock of sheep for $100 to a John Neely from whom she suffered intolerable cruelty. The language barrier aggravated the torture – her owners didn’t speak Dutch and she didn’t speak English. When Isabella couldn’t understand commands, her mistress flew into rages and her master whipped her so savagely that the blood streamed down her back – the scars for which she bore for the rest of her life.

She was sold twice more finally becoming the property of John Dumont at West Park, New York. It was during these years that Truth learned to speak English for the first time. In 1817, Dumont compelled Isabella to marry an older slave named Thomas. Their marriage produced two sons, Peter and Thomas, and two daughters, Elizabeth and Sophia.

Isabella was emancipated from slavery following State legislation in 1826. She discovered the Christian faith and in early 1827 she helped to found the Kingston Methodist Church.

On the 1^st June 1843, Pentecost Sunday, Isabella believed she was called by God in the Spirit and chose the new name Sojourner Truth. (She considered that she had only been a ‘sojourner’ in New York City and as she had found it was a wicked place, seeing it as the biblical equivalent of Sodom in the Old Testament. The “Truth” in the name was the Spirit of Truth which is how the Holy Spirit is referred to in the New Testament by Christ.)

In 1850 Isabella spoke at the first National Women's Rights Convention in Worcester, Massachusetts. She soon began touring regularly with abolitionist George Thompson, speaking to large crowds on the subjects of slavery and human rights.

Isabella toured Ohio from 1851 to 1853, working closely with others to publicise the anti-slavery movement in the state. As Isabella's reputation grew and the abolition movement gained momentum, she drew increasingly larger and more hospitable audiences. Even in abolitionist circles, some of Isabella's opinions were considered radical. She sought political equality for all women, and chastised the abolitionist community for failing to seek civil rights for black women as well as men. She openly expressed concern that the movement would fizzle out after achieving victories for black men, leaving both white and black women without suffrage and other key political rights.

Sojourner Truth put her reputation to work during the Civil War, helping to recruit black troops for the Union Army. She encouraged her grandson, James Caldwell, to enlist in the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. In 1864, Isabella was called to Washington, D.C., to contribute to the National Freedman's Relief Association. On at least one occasion, Truth met and spoke to President Abraham Lincoln about her beliefs and her experience. True to her broad reform ideals, Isabella continued to agitate for change even after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

When Isabella arrived in Washington, it had become a bustling centre with tens of thousands of former slaves living there. Despite emancipation and repeal of the black codes, racial discrimination still permeated everyday life. Street cars were desegregated but they rarely stopped for blacks. One day when this happened to Isabella she took the conductor’s number, reported the incident to the president of the company and the conductor was dismissed.

A major project of Isabella’s later life was the movement to secure land grants from the federal government for former slaves. She argued that ownership of private property, and particularly land, would give African Americans self-sufficiency and free them from a kind of indentured servitude to wealthy landowners. Although Isabella pursued this goal forcefully for many years, she was unable to sway Congress.

Until old age intervened, Isabella continued to speak passionately on the subjects of women's rights, universal suffrage and prison reform. She was also an outspoken opponent of capital punishment, testifying before the Michigan state legislature against the practice. She also championed prison reform in Michigan and across the country. While always controversial, Isabella was embraced by a community of reformers.

Sojourner Truth died at her home in Battle Creek, Michigan, on 26^th November 1883 in the company of her daughters Sophia and Elizabeth. She is buried alongside her family at Battle Creek's Oak Hill Cemetery.

Isabella is remembered as one of the foremost leaders of the abolition movement and an early advocate of women's rights. Although she began her career as an abolitionist, the reform causes she sponsored were broad and varied, including prison reform, property rights, opposition to capital punishment and in favour of universal suffrage. Abolition was one of the few causes that Isabella was able to see realized in her lifetime. Her fear that abolitionism would falter before achieving equality for women proved prophetic. The Constitutional Amendment barring suffrage discrimination based on sex was not ratified until 1920, nearly four decades after Sojourner Truth's death.

JOSEF STALIN

Youth

He was regularly beaten by his father and being small he also regularly lost the numerous fights among the boys of Gori. At one point his father took him out of school and put him to work in a shoe factory in Tbilisi but his mother persuaded the priests to reclaim him and return him to the Spiritual School at Gori. We therefore owe his future career to the Russian Orthodox Church!

The young Dzhughashvili also began to write poetry and started to read revolutionary writers including Marx, Lenin and Darwin while at the seminary. He left just before his final exams and without any explanation.

The Revolutionary

In 1911 Lenin decided to form his own Bolshevik Party and co-opted Dzhughashvili on to the new Central Committee. This gave him a national status which was enhanced when he also became the editor of Pravda which appeared for the first time on 22 April 1912. He was however arrested on the same day and sent to Siberia. This new prominence was accompanied by the assumption of a new pseudonym; Dzhughashvili was no more and Stalin emerged derived from the Russian for steel.

He escaped from Siberia and returned to St Petersburg but was arrested again on 23 February 1913 and remained in exile for the next 3 years. Unrest began to spread in late 1916 and early 1917. Tsar Nicholas eventually succumbed and abdicated on 2 March 1917. Stalin returned to St Petersburg and Lenin was allowed by the German Government to travel back to Russia because he was opposed to a continuation of the War with Germany. He took Stalin under his patronage and promoted his career partly because he valued him as a counterweight to the charismatic Trotski... The revolution took place on 25 October and Stalin became a member of the first Council of People’s Commissars as the People’s Commissar for Nationalities Affairs.

Further disputes with Trotski led to Lenin deciding to tighten control and he put Stalin in charge of the Department of Agitation and Propaganda in addition to his other roles. He went still further in 1922 having Stalin appointed

General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party, an appointment which was more political than administrative.

Lenin had a massive stroke in May 1922 but he recovered and became concerned about leaving the Party to Stalin. He therefore prepared was became known as Lenin’s Testament. This included comments on all the main leaders but concentrated on Trotski and Stalin, suggesting that their rivalry would lead to a split in the Party. He later produced an addendum on Stalin in which he said “Stalin is too crude and this defect…….becomes intolerable in the post of General Secretary. I therefore make a proposal for comrades to think of a way to remove Stalin and in his place appoint someone else …..”Lenin died on 21 January 1924 and Stalin organised his funeral. He managed to restrict the knowledge of Lenin’s Testament and Trotski was too afraid of being accused of being divisive to make it an issue. Stalin began to form his own gang including Molotov and Kaganovich, together with a retinue in the Central Committee. The only person with a similar following was Trotski but he lacked Stalin’s tactical cunning and pugnacity. Stalin was no mere administrator; he also had the makings of a true leader; he was decisive,

competent, confident and ambitious. Above all he was ruthless; he said “The greatest delight is to pick out one’s enemy, prepare all the details of the blow, to slake one’s thirst for a cruel revenge and then go home to bed.”

By 1927 he was the undisputed Leader but food had become critically short largely due to the collectivisation of agriculture combined with an emphasis on industrial growth. The use of forced labour camps was also expanded. Show trials were introduced in 1929/30 and hundreds were shot or sentenced to long prison terms. Famine became rife in the countryside and it has been estimated than some 6 million peasants died of starvation in Ukraine.

Stalin’s propensity for excessive violence had always been evident. He expressed admiration for Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives in 1934 - “What a great fellow! How well he pulled this off!” He also admired Ivan the Terrible and in 1937 vowed to annihilate every enemy together with their entire clans. For him the criterion of goodness was not morality but effectiveness and he slept easy.

The scale of the terror increased in 1936 as any opponents were arrested at Stalin’s instigation, Altogether it seems that about one and a half million were seized by the NKVD in 1937/8 of whom only about 200,000 were ever released. Stalin ordered that about half of those arrested should be delivered to the execution pits set up at the edge of most cities. In all some 750,000 were killed in those 2 years alone.

According to research by Robert Conquest, on 12 December 1937, Stalin and Molotov personally approved 3,167 death sentences – and then went to the cinema. Conquest then went on to estimate that “the total deaths caused by the whole range of the Soviet regime’s terrors can hardly be lower than some 13-15 million.”

In contrast, by 1939 almost 90% of those aged between 9 and 49 were literate and numerate. Schools and libraries proliferated, apprenticeships abounded and the universities teemed with students. Physics, maths, military technology, ballet and organised sports also flourished.

War Lord

Six years of mutual vilification by Germany and the USSR ended abruptly in August 1939, when they signed a 10 year non-aggression pact. Stalin probably thought that the pact with Germany was the only feasible way forward. He did not, however, believe that the treaty would secure peace and in a speech in May 1941 (which was not reported) he recognised that “War with Germany is inevitable”. His aim was to postpone the inevitable. Nevertheless the actual launch of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 took Stalin by surprise in spite of warnings from Zhukov. He had also ignored the massing of German troops on the border and even telegrams from Churchill.

The German Army advanced rapidly and after only 3 weeks there was no great urban centre between it and

Moscow. More than 400,000 Red Army troops were captured in the battle for Minsk alone and the Russian Air Force in the west was destroyed. However, the mobilisation of Russia, driven by a ruthless Stalin, was astonishing. In the second half of 1942, the USSR acquired 15,000 aircraft and 13,000 tanks although this was at the cost of disaster in agriculture. In June 1942 the Germans launched their attack on Stalingrad. The city seemed doomed but Stalin issued orders that any retreat was to be treated as treason. By December 1942 Stalingrad had been reduced to a lunar landscape but the Red Army still had better supply lines than the Germans who were reduced to eating rats and grass. In February 1943 they surrendered but only after 147,000 Germans had been killed and 91,000 captured. The Russian losses were still greater but Hitler’s invincibility had been shattered.

When the Red Army began to advance Stalin understood the importance of getting to Berlin first. Having taken Berlin, Stalin turned to the east but he was forestalled by Truman who having seen how Roosevelt had been fooled over Berlin saw no reason to encourage Russian involvement in the East. He also believed that the use of the atomic bomb could prevent thousands of America casualties if Japan fought to the end.

26 million Soviet citizens had perished in the war; millions more were wounded or malnourished. Almost 2,000 towns and 70,000 villages had been destroyed. But Stalin’s main objectives were now the subjugation of Eastern Europe and obtaining the atomic bomb.

Post War

Communists were inserted into the ruling coalitions throughout Eastern Europe and soon the whole region was locked into a single military political and economic fortress. At the same time as the satellite states were being declared “democratic republics” repression was being imposed and show trials were introduced.

In 1948, Stalin tested the resolve of the USA by starting the blockade of West Berlin but he had underestimated their determination which culminated not only in the raising of the blockade but in the declaration of the Federal Republic of Germany. Stalin immediately created the German Democratic Republic in response.

Elsewhere, in Yugoslavia where the communists had defeated Germany without the aid of Stalin, Tito resisted his influence and encouraged neighbouring Albania to do the same. He was therefore treated by Stalin as anti-Soviet. After his death, a note from Tito was found in Stalin’s desk. “Stalin: stop sending people to kill me. We’ve already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle ….. If you don’t stop sending killers, I’ll send one to Moscow, and I won’t have to send a second.”

Stalin also took an active interest in the Soviet atomic programme. This had to employ scientists who accepted Einstein’s work which had previously been rejected as anti-Marxist. Stalin accepted this – “Leave them alone, we can always shoot them later.” Success came in August 1949 with the explosion of the first Soviet atomic bomb. Matters in Asia came to a head when the communists in Korea sought Stalin’s support in attacking the USA supported government. Both Stalin and Mao were convinced that the war would be short and successful and the communist forces very soon took Seoul. Truman took the matter before the UN where Stalin was hamstrung by his earlier decision to boycott the Security Council because it continued to recognise the nationalist Chinese government in Taiwan. He refused to accept advice to drop the boycott and so was unable to prevent the despatch of a UN sanctioned force to Korea.

In the face of this, Stalin was reluctant to come face to face with American forces so he ordered Mao to help. The Americans then started to discuss the possible use of atomic weapons in Korea which Atlee resisted but Stalin almost certainly knew that Truman had promised that only conventional weapons would be used as both Philby and Maclean were involved in the discussions. The Korean War was relatively short but exceptionally bloody. Nearly 5 million people died of which more than half were civilians. Almost 40,000 Americans died in action in Korea, and more than 100,000 were wounded. Nevertheless it could easily have developed into a Third World War.

Stalin had suffered poor health for many years but it was very dangerous to be his doctor. His personal physician advised him to give up work in January 1952 and was promptly thrown into the Lubyanka. In September 1952 several Kremlin doctors were arrested in another purge.

On 28 February 1953 Stalin invited Beria, Malenkov Bulganin and Krushchev to watch a film with him at his dacha. The party broke up at 4am on 1 March and Stalin gave orders that he was not to be disturbed. His staff became anxious when he did not call them as usual in the late morning but nobody was brave enough to disobey his orders and call a doctor. A light went on at 6.30 but nobody went into his room until 10.00 pm. He lay semiconscious on the floor clearly having had had a stroke. Even then it was hours before doctors were called. They needed more advice but all the best doctors had been arrested and were in the Lubyanka. They were nevertheless approached and in spite of being confused by weeks of torture they agreed that death was the likeliest outcome.

He died on 5 March The official line was that he had died of natural causes, although it is possible that he was poisoned, with the most likely candidate being Beria. By 1956 Krushchev had succeeded in becoming leader and he denounced Stalin as a monstrous individual in a closed session of the Party Congress. Krushchev delivered a still more devastating attack in 1961 after which his embalmed body was removed from public display and Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd.

Various attempts had been made to rehabilitate Stalin before Putin became President. His grandfather had worked in the kitchens for both Lenin and Stalin and Putin did not want to hear about the abuses of power in the 1930’s and 40’s although he did not rehabilitate Stalin who was simply treated as a historical figure. He continues to be a controversial figure in Russia. A recent poll (2015) shows that a growing number of Russian citizens regard him in a positive light. Forty-five percent of respondents said that the sacrifices of the Soviet people under Stalin's rule were justified, whereas two years ago that figure was only 25%. 39% of respondents now describe their feelings toward Stalin as "admiration," "kind regards," or "sympathy."

ERNEST BEVIN

(Born Somerset - 1881. Died London - 1951)

Ernest Bevin was born in Winsford, Somerset in 1881, the youngest of seven children and the 6^TH son. The Bevin family were farm labourers and moved to South Wales in the mid-1870s; they were part of the 2^nd great flight from the land of the 1870s following huge imports of cheap North American wheat. Diana Bevin returned to Winsford in 1877 without a husband –there is no record of him, whether he died, deserted the family or simply disappeared. Winsford was like many other poor villages of the late 19^th century .. a place where the poor took care of the poor. When Ernest was born in 1881 his mother was down as a widow so Ernest was illegitimate. By 1889 Ernest and his 5 elder brothers and one sister were orphaned, he was 8 years old.

He was taken in by a half-sister and her husband, a railwayman and moved to Morchard Bishop. At the age of 11 he could read and write and she got him his first live-in job on a farm in Crediton - 10 hours a day, six days a week at six pence a week payable every three months.

What was it that took an 11 year old farm labourer boy with three years of schooling to create and lead the biggest Trade Union in the world; then on to the office of Minister of Labour and National Service in 1940 and a seat in the 1940/45 Churchill War Cabinet then finally to be His Majesty’s Foreign Secretary in the 1945 to 1951 Atlee Labour government?

Bevin’s early work experience in Bristol from 1894 showed him the extremes of poverty and wealth in a Bristol, then England’s 2^nd city. Through church and political association he underwent a steep learning curve and became a leader of men and at 27 became a full time Dock union official.

He married Florence Townley, attended the Manor Hall Baptist mission - a militant evangelistic church in Bristol and was baptised by total immersion. He learned to preach and so the art of public speaking which taught him to think and gave him a sense of public duty. His loyalty and commitment to the church stayed with him all his adult life.

He joined the Bristol Socialist Society then part of the Social Democratic federation but very much on the revolutionary arm with strong Marxist beliefs. He attended evening classes run by The Bristol City Authorities and lectures given by the Bristol Adult Learning Society. These classes helped to train some of the foremost men in the new Trades Union movement of the 1900 period - amongst them were people like Burns, Mann and Ben Tillet – described as a man with a silver voice. By now, his job at 18 shillings a week was as a delivery man for a mineral water company. At the time, both working and unemployed men were campaigning for the Bristol unemployed under the slogan “The Right to Work” and Bevin was one of those men. The year was 1908 and he was 27 and now quite prominent in the Bristol Socialist Federation and he met a labour councillor and told him. “We need greater publicity for our “Right to Work Committee” ...you’re a councillor, get the mayor to see us”.

A few days later he led a group of 20 men to see the Lord Mayor of Bristol and talked of the plight of the unemployed and the civic work that needed doing and could be done by some of the thousands of unemployed… and how some measures could be taken to alleviate it

He took this a stage further in a quite dramatic way. He led a march of 400 unemployed men and women to Bristol Cathedral on 6 Sunday mornings where they sat quietly and peacefully amongst the furs and silks and smart suits of the upper class congregation and at the end left marching and singing to their own band. Very soon the Bishop and clergy were supporting the right to work campaign and asking questions of the Mayor. The congregation were also muttering about finding work for the unemployed. He was gaining a reputation and some enemies amongst the powerful political figures. An attempt by some to blacklist him and close accounts he had built up was frustrated by his employer who, while not of Bevin’s persuasions, never the less supported him and the Bevin boycott failed.

He organised a Bread Relief Fund for Christmas Eve 1908 and distributed 3,545 loaves to unemployed families in

Bristol. Bevin was still not a trade unionist. He had met and listened to Ben Tillet an active trade unionist and Henry Bell the Bristol Organiser of Tillet’s Dock, Wharf, and Riverside and General Labourers’ Union…commonly called the Dockers Union. A decision was made to start a branch of the Bristol Carmen’s Branch of the D W R & G L Union. A meeting was called and Bevin was elected its first Chairman. His ornate membership certificate dated 27^th August 1910 hung proudly in his room when he was Foreign Secretary.

In early 1911, Henry Bell decided a fulltime secretary was needed and persuaded Bevin to take the job. He climbed off his mineral water van for the last time and at a wage of £2 a week entered into a life that would be his home for the rest of his life. He became a full time paid trade unionist. He was a good worker and made gradual but slow progress in his union rising to Assistant General Secretary. In 1925/6 he represented his union in a judicial inquiry into wages and working condition for dockers. He won virtually every point in the union demand. Fame touched him. He became known as The Docker’s King’s Counsel. He worked to bring an effective voice to Trade union work, culminating in the formation of the Transport and General Workers Union that became the biggest union in the world - with Bevin elected as its General Secretary - and the establishment of the Trades Union Congress. In the 1930s he was told by P. M. Ramsay McDonald that he could have a peerage but he declined the offer saying... “Don’t be daft”.

Whilst he never trusted Churchill he sided with him in the mid-1930s in opposing appeasement of Nazi Germany and in advocating re-armament. After the fall of Chamberlain in May 1940 and with Churchill now Prime Minister, Bevin was offered the job of Minister of Labour and National Service. On a train journey back from Brighton he wrote his own job description and in 10 days it resulted in the passing of the Emergency Powers Act that gave him authority over the working lives of 33 million people in Britain and moved the country to a total war economy. He became an M.P and held one of the six seats in the war cabinet. – see “What Britain Did” to read of the nation’s civilian achievements in the war. At the end of the war he drew up plans for the smooth demobilisation of 5 million people from military service. The national government came to an end with the election of a labour Government in 1945 with Atlee as Prime Minister and he made Bevin his Foreign Secretary.

The King had got to know Bevin well during the war and when he met him as his new Foreign Secretary he complimented him on his extensive knowledge and understanding of world affairs and asked him what University he had attended. Bevin replied saying “Sir, I attended the university of the hedgerows”. Bevin had ended formal school at age 11. As Foreign Secretary he over-saw the independence of India. He dealt with America’s sudden decision to end Lend Lease and actively encouraged the establishment of The Marshal Plan for Britain and Europe.

He worked to ensure that America did not return to a policy of isolationism and instigated the establishment of NATO with America as a powerful member. He was instrumental in the decision by the Labour government to develop the atomic bomb as part of Britain’s military capability.

On 7^th March 1951 the Foreign Office gave a birthday party to honour the 70^th birthday of their minister, Ernest Bevin. A collection was made throughout the Office, including embassies overseas. It was a unique occasion for the Foreign Office only ever recognised the birthday of the reigning monarch – without a present. It was the first time this had ever been done, and it has never been done since. Foreign Office staff were asked to give sixpence – no more – no less. The tanner was significant as it represented the “full round orb of the Docker’s tanner won in the dock strike of 1889”. He was made Lord Privy Seal. On the 14^th April he died and his ashes were interred in Westminster Abbey.

Shakespeare wrote…some men are born great, (the privilege of a birth right), some earn greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them. Vera Britten wrote...often in my teenage years I contemplated the huge benefit of my own antecedence. Sidney Webb wrote …merit comes before recognition while recognition comes before power and power comes before fame. Bevin most certainly was not born great, so where did he fall? Where did he earn his greatness? In the university of the hedgerows?

Biography sources

Francis Williams - Ernest Bevin - Portrait of a great Englishman

Marks Stevens – Unskilled Labourer and world Statesman Trevor Evans - Bevin of Britain

Kenneth Harris - Atlee.

Frank Field - Atlee’s Great Contemporaries

Lord Bullock - Ernest Bevin Foreign Secretary Lord Bullock - Ernest Bevin – a biography

Min of Information - What Britain has done.

CAPTAIN W.E.JOHNS

William Earle Johns was born in Bengeo, Herts in 1893. He had a happy childhood and after leaving the local grammar school he became articled for 4 years to the county municipal surveyor. Upon completion of his apprenticeship he was appointed sanitary inspector in Swaffham, Norfolk where he met and married Maude Penelope the local vicars daughter who was eleven years his senior. Bored with his career he joined the Territorial Army on the 4^th of October 1913, as private 74451 in the Kings Own Royal Regiment (Norfolk Yeomanry). War was declared in 1914 and this made Bill and Maude get married on the 6^th of October 1914. Maude was pregnant when Bill embarked with his regiment to Gallipoli in September 1915 and their son was born on the 18^th of March 1916.

Bill spent three years fighting in Turkey and the effect on him was like with so many others traumatic and appalling. He then joined the machine gun corps and was transferred to the Greek front at Salonika where he was one of the 63,396 men out of the 100,000 who contracted malaria. It was whilst recovering from this he took the decision that would literally change his life and applied to join the Royal Flying Corps at the time a branch of the army. Writing later about this he said “it seemed to me there was no point in dying in squalor (i.e. in the trenches) if one could do so sitting down in clean air”.

He was successful in his application and on the 26^th of October 1917 he was sent to flying training school near

Reading. The following January he received his wings as a bomber pilot but was sent to teach new pilots to fly at Thetford in Norfolk. In 1918 the RFC became the RAF, Bill Johns given the rank of second lieutenant and July 1918 he was posted to France and joined number 55 Day Bomber Squadron, where he managed only 6 hours operational flying before being shot down over Germany, wounded and taken prisoner. His observer was not so lucky and died before the plane hit the ground of bullet wounds. Fortunately he was not long as a prisoner of war before the war was over. Bill was released and turned up at home to the surprise of his family who thought him killed in action.

After a year as a flying instructor he was placed on the unemployed list. Lack of money and tensions brought about by the effect of the war on Bill meant that he and his wife now separated and his wife moved back to her parent’s vicarage together with their son. He would never live with his wife again and in November 1920 he was reinstated into the RAF with the new rank of Flying Officer and posted to the Inspectorate of Recruiting at Covent Garden in London, where he had his first claim to fame by refusing to recruit a man called Shaw because his papers were obviously faked. He was subsequently ordered to recruit him anyway, although Johns writing later would say he was also arrogant and shifty. The man in question was Thomas Edward Lawrence better known as Lawrence of Arabia, Bill was certainly no fan.

In 1923 he was sent to Birmingham to open an RAF Recruitment Depot; whilst there he met and fell in love with Doris Leigh who he would live with until his death. Subsequently he was transferred again to Ruislip, where he took up painting and writing articles. He was so successful in both artistic fields that he relinquished his commission in the RAF in October 1927. He now set out on the path that would bring him fame and fortune as the writer of Biggles. He set up a studio and started to paint and was soon designing posters for large companies such as Imperial Airways (the forerunner of BA) and flying illustrations for magazines. Soon he was also writing articles for the Illustrated London News and the Graphic on aviation. More writing commissions came along including articles on a weekly basis for the Modern Boy and he was offered the editorship of a new flying magazine called Popular Flying and another called My Garden.

Shortly after this he started to contribute stories of his own about a teenage Royal Flying Corps called James Bigglesworth. The first story The White Fokker appeared in Popular Flying in April 1932. This and further short stories were published by John Hamilton and led to the 102 books about the very popular Biggles between then and 1968.

Johns’ stance was very controversial in the later thirties as he adapted the ancient Greek saying ‘if you want peace prepare for war’. Not what the government wanted to hear, in fact there was even a movement within Westminster to disband the RAF to save money (familiar at the present time perhaps?). In the end government pressure forced his publishers to remove him as editor of their magazines. With the coming of World War Two his stance became very popular to the extent that the Air Ministry asked him to write about female flyers to encourage girls to join the WAAF, as they realised how effective Biggles was in recruiting. So Johns quickly started writing Worrals of the WAAF books which proved very popular and ended up as a series of 11 over the period of the war and beyond. The War Office now begged him to write something for them and he duly obliged with a series of Gimlet King of the Commandos books.

Johns volunteered to re-join the RAF but he was in his forties and the Air Ministry appointed him a lecturer to the

Air Defence Corps which subsequently became the Air Training Corps. He joined the ARP and perhaps became a Hodges (of Dad’s Army fame) type figure – “put that light out”. By the end of the war Johns and Doris had moved to Pitlochry Lodge, Grantown-upon-Spey where they spent the next 9 years fishing, shooting and writing Biggles books from which he was earning large sums of money. With the end of the War, Biggles books were even more popular because they could now be translated into other languages; they were published in France, Spain, Scandinavia, all over the Far East, Australia and surprisingly Germany; it was only the USA that held out against this too British hero.

In an interview with a reporter for the Daily Mail in the early sixties after he had moved back to London he outlined how he worked. He reckoned to spend two months in a year writing and the rest of the time travelling, his favourite place was the French Riviera. All his manuscripts were written in long hand before being sent to a typist. In his study was a life-size painting of Biggles which is believed to have been painted by Johns himself. It is the same picture that illustrated his early books. Johns was a contemporary of, and in contact with, many of the well-known children’s authors of the time in particular Enid Blyton but also Richmal Crompton and Eric Leyland.

By the early sixties he was doing exceptionally well and in 1964 the first UNESCO statistical yearbook reported that Biggles books had been placed 19^th on the list of most translated books in the world and Biggles was the most popular juvenile hero in the world. He reckoned to make £10,000 on each book, equivalent today to about £360,000. Johns died in 1968 of chronic coronary artery disease but his books still today sell in massive quantities. All 102 stories can still be bought and nearly 60 are still in print. There are hundreds of Biggles flying helmets for sale on the internet. Biggles the clean cut hero is still very popular even although his author died nearly sixties years ago.

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