26- April-2014 Penrith A 1.5 – Grange A 2.5
Board1 Mark McNulty 143 0 G Boswell 154 1
Board2 E Früchtenicht 137 0.5 M Houlsby 127 0.5
Board 3 Fred Clough 127 0 A Robinson 98 1
Board 4 Holden Davis 130 1 P Johnson 81 0
The above is a chess match result from the Cumbria First Division in April 2014. None of us playing on that day would have any idea of the significance of the match to the title of this story. Three things you need about that day before reading on to the main body of the story.
The first is that it was a shock win for the Grange-over-Sands A team whose team selection for the match had been decimated by the refusal of key players to play. All those boycotting the match were doing so in protest at the way Corbynite left winger and captain of the team Gary Boswell (that’s me) had behaved on an issue of club protocol. As captain of the team and chess club treasurer, he had committed the cardinal sin of negotiating a new hire fee for the room in which the chess club played their matches, in a room above a pub called The Commodore in Grange-over-Sands. This was a job for the club secretary who had registered his protest and refused to play in the previous match against a member of the Carlisle team who had travelled sixty miles to play him. The Tories in the club, already famously at odds with the team captain and club treasurer, held a kangaroo court in order to eject the said offender from the club: Strip him of his duties and all.
Problem. The captain refused to go saying this was just a chess club, we only play a game. He apologised for the protocol offence and said he was going to carry on and see the season out starting with the next game away at Penrith. The dispute caused a schism in the club, not unlike that we witness on a daily basis these days in the House of Commons. The Tories were outraged by the ungentlemanly behaviour (mainly that the captain was a jumped-up Corbynite) and the rest of the club (totalling only ten members in all) shrugged their shoulders and said we only come here to play chess. Five club members agreed to support the motion to see the season out. The Tories all boycotted the remaining games.
That left our A team short of two key players on boards 2 & 4. The two players who stepped into the breach were Andrew Robinson – who scored a famous win on the day in a complex Queen and pawn end game against Welsh International Postal Chess star Fred Clough; and one Peter Johnson who was also hopelessly outgraded in his match on board 4 (as you see from the above results card: the number after the name denotes the player’s grade) but fought valiantly against a rising junior star called Holden Davies; and although defeat was likely, Peter – a newish member at the club – was loyal and committed in his love of the game and was prepared to travel the forty odd miles with us to the match just to ensure that Grange Chess Club fulfilled its obligations to the league.
We didn’t know Peter all that well at that point, but we knew who he was because of how he looked. You’ll see what I mean in a moment when you click on the internet link I am going to advise you to access. That will be the first pointer to the direction this story is going. So the second thing you need to know about Peter was his identity in a National sense and how we had all been charmed by his funny but intense take on life. You’ll see more on that too in the link I’m sending you to. He had come to Grange on a free transfer from Kendal Chess Club when he had moved into a nursing home nearby to see out the final years of his life. I got to know Peter well during those next two years and we became dear friends. Firstly through our love of chess but also as my work as a volunteer driver in the town meant I got to transport Peter on many occasions to his dialysis appointments back at Kendal hospital. Terrific conversations about religion and politics, family and poetry ensued, and we also went to Ulverston Chess Club together the following season when the schism at Grange worsened and caused the Grange Chess Club to fold as a league playing club. The Tory faction did continue to meet in a small way but for most of us the fun had been compromised and the light seriously went out in April 2016 when Peter finally passed away.
His funeral is the next part of the story but before that, the third thing you need to know about that day in Penrith (apart from the jubilant atmosphere in the car ride home!) is that it was the first time we heard Peter utter his oft to be repeated warning to us. That warning was simple: Whatever you do, do not let my nephew ever become your Prime Minister!
I point you now to the internet link which is a memorial to Peter written by another dear friend of his – Jill Clough – after the funeral.
https://jillclough.wordpress.com/2016/05/12/a-tribute-to-peter-johnson/
So now you know who we are talking about. But what has that got to do with the title of this piece? Bear with me, I will explain but I already feel a few of you dear readers jumping ahead.
I pull you back a tad first to say that I mightily approve of Jill Clough’s words and she has drawn the Peter picture better than I could have. She knew him longer than I and had greater insight into that faith aspect of Peter that was so intriguing. The political thing was intriguing too: he had openly defied the Tory revolt within Grange Chess Club and failed to go with the way ‘ the herd was moving’, as had I. We were on similar ground but I have to admit every time he sounded that warning to us again over the next two years, we honestly all thought he was joking.
Until the day of his funeral when I volunteered myself as taxi driver to pick Boris and Peter’s brother Stanley up from Grange station and ferry them back there after the wake. In the end, I didn’t do the pick up before the funeral, a colleague covered me on that, but I was in the congregation at Grange Catholic Church to witness Boris’ affectionate, hilarious and seemingly improvised portrait of his Uncle. Mainly jokes about childhood skirmishes and Peter’s constant obsession with buying Boris a comb for every birthday present in a desperate attempt to make him take the neatness of his hair more seriously! Boris repeated that tale to me in the taxi ride back to Grange Station after the wake which I had also been invited to and duly attended. I responded by telling Boris and Stanley how Peter and I had found a common interest not only in chess but in our joint love of writing and reading poetry too. Peter often likened his own poems to prayers he had been inspired by and told me I needed to take my own work more seriously. Too many jokes don’t really belong in poetry he said. I argued Philip Larkin and Roger McGough at him but always lost! It was my first hint that Peter’s warning was perhaps not a joke when both Boris and Stanley looked bemused and admitted to not even knowing Peter liked poetry!
What happened next is a story I’ve told many times in the six years since Peter’s funeral but this is the first time I’ve written it down. I’ve waited for this piece to find the context to put it in because what happened next was that as we approached Grange Railway Station and our parting of the ways, Boris suddenly blurted out from the back seat where he resided ‘Can you stop the car a moment please. I have to get out.’ I looked quickly at his father who was sat next to me not batting an eyelid and did as requested, thinking perhaps Boris had consumed too much Champers and was about to vomit! I couldn’t have been more wrong.
He had in fact spotted a baby in a buggy with a clutch of adoring Mothers congregating around it and he positively bounded over to them to kiss the baby. ‘Never misses an opportunity‘ was written all over Stanley’s face although I’ll be honest and can’t remember if he actually said it. But he didn’t seem surprised when in seconds the small clutch of women grew to a crowd of twenty plus and Boris was laughing and oozing the vote winning charm. He wasn’t Prime Minister then, nor was the Brexit nightmare seeming anything like a possibility, but the first shiver suddenly came over me. Peter hadn’t been joking. What Jill says in her memorial about divorcees and severed limbs appeared as a ghastly possibility before my very eyes.
I don’t need to tell you about the next six years, I presume you have lived through them as I have. The profligate lifestyle we have seen Boris exhibit during his time as Prime Minister was on view that day now that I look back. The champagne, the cute lies, the disregard for the role of public servant – a role he obviously wanted for himself at the highest level – were all on show. I’d never been a fan of the Tories, having grown up as a Johnny Rotten superfan in the height of Thatcher’s dictatorship, but I’d been wowed by Geoffrey Howe’s resignation speech and had presumed like many that not all Tories that misunderstood what public service meant. Back then they can’t have done, Geoffrey surely wasn’t driven by desire to serve the elite and self alone? He understood.
I’ve been busy verbally undermining Boris for the past six years but I had no part in his rise to power (other than I shouldn’t have pressed the brake pedal on his taxi!) and I had no part in his demise either. I’d been in Liverpool when he did his ‘don’t expect my car to have any tyres when I get back to it’ gag and seen Michael Howard make him go and apologise. But if anything, I admired Boris for that gag; it was brave, punk even. And I’d seen him speak in person at Peter’s funeral and I knew how funny he could be. Genuine off-the-cuff inspired hilarity, consummate timing and real charisma with an audience. And I started getting seriously worried. I’d shown him what I thought Public Service was agreeing to taxi him down to the Railway Station. He took not a blind bit of notice. There were votes to be won and electorate to be wowed. Boy were they wowed!
Fast forward now to the speech Boris gave in the House Of Commons after the Queen passed away. Written carefully, I don’t know how long before he delivered it. Possibly years. A well crafted, meticulously edited, heartfelt rhetoric delivered with all the gravitas and enormity that the moment deserved. And it hit me from the look on his face that Peter had been right about his warning. Of course he had, the past six years make that pretty clear. What I hadn’t appreciated until I saw Liz Truss do the serving Prime Minister address at the state funeral was where Boris had been expecting to deliver that carefully crafted piece of written work. A place denied to him by the public servants who may have similar motives and misunderstandings as him but were savvy enough to foresee the potential for a negative reaction from the grieving crowd. They did actually consider the great British Public who had already gathered outside Boris’ house after the Brexit result was announced and who had booed him at the Abbey when he attended there last time out. They had form and had also committed the heresy of booing Prince William at the FA Cup final.
You tell tasteless generalisation jokes about Liverpudlians (or any other set of the public to be fair) and they come back to bite you in the end. No matter how funny or brave they may be. Not brave perhaps after all. My mistake.
The herd moved to protect the nation from a potential faux pas and negative reaction as it did. They exercised foresight on that one. Gave us vapid utterly unmemorable Liz Truss instead. Forgotten already like this morning’s breakfast (dry toast). Saved us from Boris’ magnum opus delivered only to the House and missed by most. Forgotten already. Alongside the toast. It would not have been the speech that would have been booed. Simply the man himself. And us perhaps for ignoring Peter’s warning.
Peter was very saddened by the collapse of Grange Chess Club and expressed his doubt to me before he died about whether or not we could have done more to save it. On the back of that I went and shook hands with two of the antagonists who had been most influential in the boycott of play and who had both invested a great deal of their time over the years and since then kept Grange Chess Club going as best they could. Wounds like that never really heal though do they? You put them behind you and you move on, as we are all trying to do with Brexit. It was JRR Tolkien who wrote that some wounds never heal.
The Lord of the Rings is a tale of self sacrifice on a grand scale, and Peter’s coming to Penrith with us that day up there was on that level, alongside his demonstration that he had no wish to be associated with some members of his family’s misunderstanding of the term Public Service.
I might have got the misunderstanding Public Service bit but the we in the title of this piece is of course the Tory Party itself. It took them, as with Thatcher, to act on Peter’s warning.
I genuinely thought he was joking!
Gary Boswell
.