Review on Good Reads by Tim Pendry of The Abergavenny Witch Hunt

Book Review on THE ABERGAVENNY WITCH HUNT. Self published but no less useful for that - indeed, although there are disadvantages (one or two lapses in editing, design infelicities and a structural approach which we will come on to), self-publishing enables new and important material to come into the public domain. What William Cross has done is provide the raw data (unusual in itself) about a rather unpleasant incident in British social history that allows us to make up our own mind about its meaning, sandwiched between acute and humane analysis and an excellent series of notes. This incident was the prosecution of over twenty homosexuals in a small Welsh town in the middle of the second world war. It is a foot-note in the long and grim story of gay persecution in the UK before the 1960s but an important one. I am not convinced by the speculative attempt to pull Evan Morgan, Viscount Tredegar, into the story but Cross seems to have an almost obsessive research interest in this aristocrat and his circle. The appendix (for that is what it is) does not detract from the whole. However, the benefit of having the full raw data creates the structural problem. The book is analysis and data but not always easy to read narrative or analysis of the raw data itself. He leaves much of the interpretation to us. I tend to approve of this because I find a lot of narrative history to be half-truth by selection but most readers will not find it helpful so it loses a GoodReads point. They want an easy read and not to have to do the researchers job for them - fair enough up to a point. The problem of narrative in history is the same as the 'story' in journalism. We like stories and stories are fiction. Making facts easy to digest and culturally palatable immediately partly fictionalises them. Most journalism and history is, in fact, part-fiction. Although not a set narrative (but Cross writes clearly), his account (other than the speculation around Tredegar) sounds true to me. One learns more about the actuality of 'gay' life in mid-twentieth century Britain from Cross than from many others in this field. And what do we learn? Obviously that homosexuals were treated appallingly in British Imperial Christian culture, not from malice (at least in most cases) but from ignorance and prejudice. This much we knew. What this book pinpoints is the complexity of that culture with its internal contradictions that are not easy to see in simple black and white terms. The evidence tends to show that this ignorant and prejudiced culture still expressed itself in terms that were far from sadistic and often moderated through a kind of random if judgmental compassion that inherited the unthinking instincts of the wider culture. Nasty authoritarian types tended to grab hold of the legislative process to make changes regardless of the lack of interest and even compassion of the 'masses' and then impose draconian laws on a judicial system that then tried to square it with human reality. There is no doubt that an underground sexual culture must tend to viciousness - the anxious, frightened and those with most to lose will be deterred from their instinctive practices but the hard and sociopathic cases will not. As a result, the continuum from consensual sex between adults back into grooming and exploitation of young poor working class males (ephebophilia shading into paedophilia) meant that we are dealing in this book not just with some standard alleged witch hunt against gays. We are dealing with what would be recognised as a paedophiliac network embedded within a gay culture and there is much to learn from this about the sociology of sex and the law, what happens when the State hunts as a pack and how things can go wrong. The overwhelming lesson is that sexual culture is incredibly contingent on a wider cultural set of assumptions about what is right and wrong. Observation today of Greater Syria, Moscow and Uganda tells us as much. We, in the West, seem currently to have settled on the notion of consent and the reasonable notion that minds that are not fully developed cannot be said to be consenting minds. This allows us to bring homosexual (and indeed bisexual and polyamorous) relationships into the mainstream as simply private matters, while ensuring that we have laws that protect at least under-16s from exploitative grooming (even if appallingly enforced). But we all know that in the UK this is a bit of an arbitrary fix and, as more liberal interpretations of consent are under siege and on the wane, conservative models are placing the system under pressure by extending exploitation upwards into consensual sexual trade. The decisions about what is a private matter in sexual relations thus remain fluid in time and somewhat arbitrary even today. Even the 16-age limit in the UK is an arbitrary fix which other cultures refuse to pull into the ambit of the criminal law. In the Abergavenny Case, we have an enormous range of individual stances - the uncertain and lonely vulnerable lad unsure of his identity, the manipulative sociopath and the victim of rape and this extends up in time to 21 as much as down to 14/15. The same range of attitudes to sexuality probably applies to young women in the current grooming cases so deeper questions lie in at what stage do young people take rights over their own bodies and lives and what actual (rather than presumed) harms are involved. This is all too sophisticated for the blunt instrument of the law and English and Welsh practice has tended to try to treat the powers it has as reserve powers and not inquire too deeply into private life lest it uncover the sheer scale and unmanageability of things. This has two effects. The first is that horrible things as well as a great deal of freedom carry on as if there was no law. Administrators and coppers muddle through - with dreadful consequences when they get it wrong as they have done over child abuse. The second is that, every now and then, there is a political or moral panic or some unfortunate case is forced on the Establishment and 'justice has to be seen to be done'. Some show trial or investigation becomes necessary 'pour encourager les autres'. In the last two decades, this has degenerated into 'law enforcement for the cameras' - camera crews watching doors being beaten down by troops of armoured men when a knock on the door by a local copper would have sufficed - and sudden surges of draconian idiocy. It started with the asinine 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' that resulted in kids being neglected to get better records of property crime in northern cities - what a disaster New Labour was! - and ends with Cameron denying evidence on drugs harms. This is, in short, a mid-twentieth century system out of its depth, administratively incompetent and unable to see the wood for the trees. William Cross' book helps us to see that a system that was inhumane but sort of worked is now in its final degenerate stage. A lot of the problem comes from the flip dark side of the social revolution of the 1960s and 1970s that enabled marginal populations like the gay population their freedoms and which undermined the cultural primacy of the 'Establishment'. No one will face the facts that the human condition is complex, that the millions of people in a modern State will act in diverse ways if they are free to do so and that the State, shorn of its terror and monoculture, has to find new ways to administer this. At the moment, every activist and NGO or lobby group drives Government this way and that to place more and more demands on a second rank administrative service hobbled by procedures and processes driven by rights legalism. Yet there is not, fact, the funds for such a system. The Soviets could not handle this problem of the human condition - our very nature - and yet they could print money and order people around at will. The Fascists just took the dark side and directed it outwards. Our establishment, quite rightly (as the Fiona Woolf case has shown) is now surplus to requirements, our political class is despised and at sea and our administrators are asked to do more than is humanly possible and then are frightened by the risk of failure into inaction. Take paedophilia. NGO lobbyists pushed a single policy (so typically because NGOs think in simplicities) of hunting down those who downloaded kiddy porn, largely to create a 'strategy of fear' for those who remained. The police, reasonably, followed the law, did their best and used their very limited resources to undertake intelligence-based policing to round up networks. Taking kiddy porn off the internet is a 'good' but it is not a strategy against organised crime which is what this is. It now transpires that the fear factor only works on non-dangerous males dabbling on the internet, that something like 60,000 people are still looking at these images and that only something like 2% have been apprehended and sentenced at huge cost. Worse, about 30% of those charged are judged informally by law enforcement as actually not dangerous to children but their lives have been ruined. They do time because they are idiots (which is not really a crime per se) and because others like them need to be terrorised. If we postulate that the sociopathic predators and dangers to children are so committed to their ways of life that they will become increasingly devious within their networks and create counter-measures, then it sounds to me like the dangers are getting worse. This single issue approach is like concentrating on bringing down celebrities for the tabloids instead of going deep into the state's own care home system, the public schools or into the churches (oh, no, never touch the churches) to root out organised child abuse. There is much in William Cross' book to give us food for thought in this context - for welfare state, read warfare state. The imperial system seemed oddly tolerant of public school sexual exploitation while a theme of military homosexuality runs through the book. In other words, in dealing with 'sexual crimes' we seem to have learned nothing since 1942 - we have not learned to define the harm, we have not learned the difference between harms and we have evaded investigating institutional structures that promote crime. The strategy remains one of evasion and fear - targeting scapegoats, failing to frame laws on evidence, failing to invest funds in strategic law enforcement, using cultural terror as an instrument of policy and allowing policy to be dictated by passionate activism. The bottom line on our current crisis (paedophilia) is still that of consent and of vulnerability. We have to face the fact that we have tens of thousands of people driven, like homosexuals a century earlier, by sexual urges but, because of the harms and unlike homosexuals, who need to be contained in a dynamic, aggressive but feasible and (I believe) humane way. We also have to face the fact that we have pockets of mostly migrant but also underclass males with an instinctive view of women as 'things' and we also need to deal directly and immediately with the harms involved in an evidence-based way. Again, Cross' book is suggestive - homosexuals had many different atitudes to their own 'condition' (seen as not much better then than paedophilia) and no doubt modern abusers are much the same. However, if we had had a serious understanding of harm in 1942, no consenting adult would have had to go to jail and every adult guilty of sexually molesting or grooming someone immature would have been dealt with solely on that basis in a draconian way. Things seem to be better now because at least we understand that the harm to the young is proven but the language is still absurdly based on moral disgust and not on an evidence-based commitment to protecting all young people instead of running down those who disgust us. This creates a simulacrum of that underground that existed for homosexuals in the first half of the twentieth cetury, a world of misery, loneliness, desperation and fear but also of increased viciousness and exploitation. An evidence-based policy on child abuse would evade nothing - not the minor public schools, not the care system, not the churches and, above all, the most evaded of all and yet the largest source of abuse in society, the family. So, this self-published book on local history acts as a window on our own times, a reflection on how far we have not progressed. The re-telling of the story of the gay trials of 1942 is welcome in that context. Tim Pendry lists his intersts in books/ book genres as : british, crime, cultural-studies, history, psychology, public-policy, sexuality-erotica and twentieth-century.

ABERGAVENNY GAY WITCH HUNT : BOOK SIGNING 20 SEPTEMBER: COMMENTS AND THANKS

27 September 2014 : ABERGAVENNY BOOK SIGNING 20 SEPTEMBER 2014 : Blog Part 3 : William Cross writes about the book signing at The Abergavenny Book Shop on 20 September 2014. Twenty books were sold in total. 16 copies of “The Abergavenny Witch Hunt” and four others. A few books were given away too. My favourite customer was an elderly lady who bought copies of two of my books on Almina, Countess of Carnarvon. Comments about the Abergavenny Witch Hunt were mixed. One lady ( D) said she’s been the first to buy a copy after the article appeared in the “Abergavenny Chronicle” on 24 July. I was delighted to sign her book. Among those also buying copies was an LGBT historian, two Cardiff lawyers who had heard about the case on the grapevine. A few others had come specially to buy a copy including an interesting chap who picked up the book signing from the coverage given by Literature Wales. Several others including one delightful young lady said she was determined to get a copy. Several gay men ( all charming and from England) bought the book and I enjoyed a exchange with a few on how the law changes had benefited our lives by allowing everyone over the age of sixteen their own gender/ sexual choices. A mother with a gay son bought a copy. She was almost in tears when I told her the story of 19-year-old Lewis Matthews, who killed himself during the 1942 case. One local man popped by to say he was “ Half way through reading it” and the story had shocked him. He said the story had "always been suppressed in the family". Now he knows why! Another man said the case was “ always hushed-up”. One articulate lady from Settle, USA, came by to point out that her reading of the newspaper coverage on the case was that it involved pederasts only. I sensed her outrage. I conceded that William Edwards, the YMCA Manager at Frogmore Street and George Rowe, the cinema manager at the Coliseum had both abused boys. However I made clear that the point about the unfairness of the case was that the Police did not stop after arresting Edwards and Rowe ( who were identified early on as abusers), they also closed in on over twenty over youths and men and several of these men were not paedophiles, they were engaged in consensual sex with other adults. I felt I brought this American lady round into having a better understanding of the case and an appreciation of why it was a gay witch hunt ( read queer hunt). All in all it was a day very well spent in Abergavenny admist the Food Fezzers. The town will not see its like again from Will and Monty or any other. Leaflets were given out to several dozen people and this has resulted in a few sales of the book on Amazon. All profits will go to the Abergavenny Community Café – a fitting way to remember Lewis Matthews. Much thanks to Monty Dart and Tom, Annie Parker and Les. Also thanks to Brian Hughes and his staff at The Abergavenny Book Shop. ,

ABERGAVENNY BOOK SIGNING 20 SEPTEMBER 2014 : FIRST CALLERS INCLUDING MARTIN and ALISON HICKMAN THE MAYOR AND MAYORESS OF ABERGAVENNY

ABERGAVENNY BOOK SIGNING 20 SEPTEMBER 2014 : FIRST CALLERS INCLUDING MARTIN and ALISON HICKMAN THE MAYOR AND MAYORESS OF ABERGAVENNY 26 September 2014 Blog Part 2 : First Callers: Including the Mayor and Mayoress. William Cross writes about the book signing at The Abergavenny Book Shop on 20 September 2014. Our early callers were a mix of visitors to the town and a few local folk. The chat was lively and intense. Sales began and were consistent throughout the day. A good will call was received from several friends including one of the volunteers at Abergavenny Castle who some time ago did not hesitate in taking some of the leaflets on the war time saga for display at the Castle. Hostility was almost non-existent. However one man offered a leaflet snarled “ I don’t want to read about a bunch of homosexuals in 1942”. Somewhat angered at such blatant homophobia, I replied “ Fair, enough, you are entitled to your view..” A small dramatic moment arose when Martin J Hickman JP, the Mayor of Abergavenny and his lady wife, Alison, the Lady Mayoress appeared close to our selling table, wearing their official chains. To our delight they came over and chatted about the Gay Witch Hunt case and agreed to have a photograph taken with me. Bless them. A very fine couple. But like Royalty it emerged they don’t carry any money, so didn’t buy a book. However it was a great act of courage on their part to be seen with us given that the issue of the war time case still rattles many homes and families in Abergavenny. No other current Abergavenny Town Councillor ( who were ALL e-mailed about the book )made themselves known to us. TO BE CONTINUED.

ABERGAVENNY GAY WITCH HUNT : ABERGAVENNY BOOK SIGNING 20 SEPTEMBER 2014 : SETTING UP

26 September 2014 Book Signing Blog Part 1 : Setting Up : William Cross writes about the book signing at The Abergavenny Book Shop on 20 September 2014. On the weekend Saturday of the popular Abergavenny Food Festival we set up base camp outside The Abergavenny Book Shop in the town’s High Street. Monty Dart, author of “ Who Killed Dripping Lewis?” ( the Pontypool murder case from 1939- see below) shared the limelight - or firing line. We were there for several purposes : to greet people, to ask them to take a leaflet or two, buy a book and chat . He stayed there immoveable from 9.30am to 5.00pm. But it felt strange. Both of us have been long standing supporters of the Abergavenny Food Festival and have worked for many years there as Venue Managers. In 2013 we decided to hang up our aprons and leave it to younger folk to take over our batons and napkins. The Aber Fez event seemed a good place to attract people coming into the town, and offer them a chance to learn about an important chapter of Abergavenny’s history. Brian Hughes at the Abergavenny Bookshop has been supportive from the start on offering the book on the war time scandal to those who want to read it. Our unmissable table spread was adorned with the quaint display in clerical purple declaring “ HOMOSEXUAL WITCH HUNT: BOOK SIGNING TODAY “ . This banner was last seen at Cardiff Pride. What was equally noticeable were our black tea shirts brandishing the front cover to the book in all it’s glory, which is a colourful drawing by Newport artist and cartoonist, Gerard Whyman, of the Abergavenny Coliseum Cinema in it’s heyday . In 1942 the Cinema was the lair of George Rowe, the evil paedophile who preyed on his young page boys. However as well as the book on THE ABERGAVENNY WITCH HUNT we had on offer a variety of other books including our series of titles about wayward members of the Morgan family of Tredegar House, Newport, the notorious Carnarvons of Highclere Castle ( read Downton Abbey, of course), a book about an unsolved murder in Pontypool in 1939, and a Memoir of a Ward Maid at St Cadocs Hospital, Caerleon. TO BE CONTINUED…….

ABERGAVENNY CHRONICLE : BOOK SIGNING : THE ABERGAVENNY GAY WITCH HUNT OF 1942

19th September 2014. The Abergavenny Chronicle newspaper have been supportive from the word go on highlighting the existence of my book “The Abergavenny Witch Hunt.”. They featured a piece in the edition of the Abergavenny Chronicle on 18th September 2014 about a book signing in Abergavenny, at the Abergavenny Book Shop on Saturday 20th September 2014. Bless them. The Abergavenny Witch Hunt An Account of the prosecution of over twenty homosexuals in a small Welsh town in 1942 A New Book from Newport Author, William Cross From The Abergavenny Chronicle 18th September 2014 Booksigning at Abergavenny The author of the controversial “ Abergavenny Witch Hunt” will be signing copies of his book at the Abergavenny Bookshop on Saturday [ 20th September 2014]. William Cross published the book earlier this year on the largely forgotten Abergavenny sex scandal of 1942. At the time, the notorious sex case made national news and ‘rattled the town like an earthquake’. It involved over 20 men from Abergavenny and further afield being put on trial for homosexual behaviour, when it was still an imprisonable offence. One of the men involved took his own life by throwing himself in front of a train, while most of the other men involved received sentences ranging from one to ten years. Cross told the Chronicle, “ Understandably the book’s appearance has brought a mixed reaction especially as it provokes people into either distancing themselves completely or confronting a disturbing part of the town’s past which has cast its shadow of fear over the last seventy-two years.” Although keen to stress that the book is an objective study of the 1942 case and its wider implications, Cross does not whitewash the fact that certain characters involved in the 1942 case were predatory paedophiles. Cross explained “ Several of the men in the case who were found guilty were rightly punished for their offences against boys. While others, who were only ever involved with other consenting adults, were arguably treated harshly in the sentences given compared with today’s more enlightened times. “Whatever feelings are held, from the indifferent to the sympathetic I sincerely hope most Abergavenny people will accept that in the main the events recalled reflect what we consider as the cruelty and prejudice of our society in 1942. A time when the law and tolerances were very, very different from the modern era.” “ I believe a book was needed to retell this compellingly dark and tragic tale to a new audience. It will always be a difficult chapter of Abergavenny’s history, but cases like it led to fairer laws to protect our basic human rights and more importantly laws that still protect children. Final profits from sales of the book will be donated to the Abergavenny Community Café in memory of Lewis Matthews, the 19-year-old who took his own life as a consequence of the 1942 case. ABERGAVENNY CHRONICLE 18th September 2014 Page 2.

LGBT Magazines and Welsh Libraries take copies of The Abergavenny Witch Hunt

Week commencing 8th September 2014 LGBT Magazine and Libraries: Monmouthshire Libraries Fail to order The Abergavenny Witch Hunt. Book sales have continued slowly. Copies of the book have been accepted by a number of LGBT magazines, some academics ( with LGBT credentials ) as well as by several review, literary and newspaper contacts in South Wales, Kent and London. It is pleasing to report that several Welsh Libraries, including Newport, Gwent and Powys have ordered multiple copies of the book. All credit to the book requisition librarians in these two Counties. The National Library of Wales have also ordered an additional copy for their shelves. It is a very bad reflection on Monmouthshire Libraries that despite sending e-mails to ALL the libraries in the County offering discounted priced copies of The Abergavenny Witch Hunt no orders have been received to date. A very poor show. This reflects the general veil of disinterest about the sex scandal of 1942 by official organisations in Abergavenny .Whether the town and county authorities like it or not the case is a very important but disturbing aspect of the County's past history.

Article in LGBT's Shout Magazine About The Abergavenny Gay Witch Hunt

30 August 2014 ; Author's Blog The Abergavenny Gay Witch Hunt of 1942 Newport-based author, William Cross, writes about attending Cardiff Pride and describes his controversial new book “ The Abergavenny Witch Hunt: An account of the prosecution of over twenty homosexuals in a small Welsh town in 1942. ” ISBN 978-1905914-22-7 Book Midden Publishing ( 2014). A time to tear down……..and a time to build up After watching the colourful parade marching through the streets of Cardiff it was a pleasure to take part in Cardiff Pride on 16th August, 2014 in Cooper’s Field slap bang in the middle of the Welsh capital. The atmosphere was buzzing from the word go. At the entrance gates I discovered throngs of happy, smiling pilgrims of all ages who had descended from almost every nook and cranny of South and West Wales. As I waited to get into the ground I greeted a few strangers with my customary innocuous chat-up line of “ Have you come far?” I learned some folk had travelled from nearby Newport, Pontypool, Bridgend , and Swansea. Later I met others who has ventured from as far a field as Leeds, London and Bristol; I even encountered two excited visitors from Blackpool in Lancashire ( on holiday at Penarth) and several attendees from places overseas. Thanks to the excellent pre-publicity given by the Swansea Unity website about my book signing event on their stall, in the end a dozen people turned out to buy copies of this new book “The Abergavenny Witch Hunt” ; scores more were almost certainly drawn in by curiosity over the very distinct mauve coloured banner and the large headline that was attached to the pitch of “ HOMOSEXUAL WITCH HUNT “ ( see photograph ). Many folk ( and this included a impressive stream of young people passing by) were interested in knowing something more about the tale but understandably had earmarked their precious funds for other more instant pleasures of the day than buying a book. However several took away an information leaflet containing the book’s synopsis ( see below), which sets out a sad and grim story involving the prosecution of over twenty homosexuals in the small Welsh town of Abergavenny, in 1942: “In 1942, the Welsh town of Abergavenny was scandalised by disclosures after the arrest of over twenty youths and men on charges relating to homosexual activity and corrupting boys. George Rowe, the 40-year-old manager of Abergavenny’s Coliseum cinema was at the centre of a Police enquiry after one of the page-boys complained about being molested. The boy’s complaint turned into a witch-hunt of ‘queers’ across Britain revealing an oddball mix of abused and abusers; a farmer, a clerk, two chefs, a fireman, several serving soldiers, a hairdresser, an actor and others were arrested and brought back to Abergavenny, where almost all the offences were committed. Before the case reached a Judge at Monmouthshire Assizes, three men attempted suicide, one young man succeeded in taking his own life. In the years that followed rumours persisted that several people had got away scot-free, including one notable public figure. Others went on the run to escape capture and disgrace, since all homosexuality was illegal in Britain until the changes started by the Sexual Offences Act, 1967. William Cross the biographer of Almina, Countess of Carnarvon, and of salacious tales about the Morgans of Tredegar House, Newport, South Wales, is no stranger to controversial histories. Cross examines the facts in the Abergavenny case and sets out details from contemporary newspapers including closed files at National Archives, now released under the Freedom of Information Act. Here for the first time is the unvarnished truth, the background, the preliminary proceedings, the trial and the aftermath of a grisly, but sad tale from Abergavenny’s past that some would prefer to see buried forever.” Of those poor sods arrested, charged and jailed several went to prison for up to ten years serving their time in Cardiff Prison, a stone’s throw from the Pride location that day; during the Second World War Cardiff was one of Britain’s worst penitentiaries. Those would-be punters at Cooper’s Field trying to escape the hard sell for the book were spared nothing including the horrific details about the suicide of Lewis Matthews a nineteen- year- old Abergavenny lad – who could not face his fate and threw himself under a train. Moreover potential customers did not get off without also making me a solemn promise. It was that those accepting a leaflet must pop into their local library to get the book on loan, and if they should find it was not yet available they persuade their local librarian to order it to grace the branch’s LGBT book shelves. I was insistent on this saying that the book filled a missing chapter about an important ( but forgotten) episode from Welsh history and these monstrous homosexual persecutions, nothing short of a ‘ witch hunt’ of ‘queers’ ( the latter was the emotive word more often used than ‘gays’ in 1942). The Abergavenny case was one of Wales’s most notorious scandals. This quiet Welsh town ( only otherwise famed in the social sub-culture for a pop song in the 1950s from the rock and roller Marty Wilde ) found itself in the limelight. But the whole place rocked in a different way when it became centre stage of this purge of gay men and youths and subsequently the glaring, show trial involving the savage prosecution of twenty-four of these individuals for their participation in homosexual vice. “ An orgy of perversion”, reported the News of the World. The local South Wales newspapers carried headlines a little less sensational but which were equally marked out by the nature of the case. There were almost two hundred offences cited in the indictment sheets, with uncompromising references to unnatural and illegal acts, deeds of buggery, attempted buggery and gross indecency. In 1942 all sexual activity between males was against the law. Until the reforms began by the great Welsh politician Leo Abse in 1967 gay men and youths hid their activities behind a veil of secrecy. How times have changed when now, thank heavens, everyone over sixteen can choose how they live and who they take to bed. It has to be said that amongst those “caught” in 1942 a few of the participants in the case deserved apprehension, evidence was found of the corruption of underage teenage boys by the manager of the local YMCA in Abergavenny. Another blackguard was the manager of one of the local cinemas in the town who preyed on his youthful employees. But few of the others rounded up like stray animals were offenders ( in today’s terms). Of the twenty- four arrested only a handful molested boys. But the remaining men and youths who were simply engaged together in consensual sex were swept into the same furnace as the peodophiles. That mud stuck as did the hostility from the town’s people of Aberagevnny who tarred everyone with the same brush. That was the way it was at the time. In the decades since with grief, remorse, gossip, backtalk, sneering, sniggering and much rumour, including countless dark stories that are simply untrue, one might hope that the publication of a book charting the full, albeit uncompromising history of the circumstances surrounding the event might provoke some interest from the populace of Abergavenny and that it might also inspire some intelligent discussion. The book has began well and has sold copies in The Abergavenny Book Shop in High Street ( the very last remaining bookshop in the town selling new books). The local newspaper The Abergavenny Chronicle has been supportive and carried a full page in it’s edition of 24 July 2014 ( please e-mail me if you would like a copy of this). The LGBT Unity group in Swansea has been most kind in its support for the book and I must acknowledge the always encouraging Norena Shopland ( who very nearly wrote up the tale herself a few years ago). Unity’s pitch at Cardiff was a perfect place to offer the book and I am most grateful to Andrews Davies and his colleagues for letting me gate crash at Cooper’s Field. One kind reader remarks about the book “ I would like to thank you for writing the book about the Abergavenny event as it reflects the cruelty and prejudice of society at the time and brings knowledge of it to a new audience.” Another commenting on the harrowing tale said “ the trials in Abergavenny are particularly awful. You certainly feel for the wretched individuals who were up in court. Thank God we live in more enlightened times.” The title of this article includes a uplift from the Bible about “ time”. This is taken from the well known lines that for everything there is a season etc… ‘ a time to born and a time to die’ etc. Here I refer to the lesser known fragment of the epistle viz “ a time for tearing down” and then “a time [ usually later] for building up” again. In 1942 the ruling authorities, comprising the Police, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Magistrates and the Judge in the case did the “tearing down” I dearly hope Abergavenny in 2014 is a mood to offer the “building up” again. That answer remains unclear. The story is damned, the wounds run deep, some individuals in local families remain shamed; there are still survivors of those abused ( NB none of the ‘victims’ are named in the book) who must still be protected by silence. Profits from the sale of the book ( available at The Abergavenny Book Shop at 1, High Street, Abergavenny, or direct from the author @ £12.00 ) will go to a charity in memory of Lewis Matthews, the nineteen-year- old lad who killed himself. William Cross can be contacted by e-mail williecross@aol.com

Can Anyone Blame Abergavenny For Being Homophobic?

In rejecting the article entitled “Abergavenny’s Best Kept Secret ” ( see previous posting ) the Abergavenny Focus Editor writes: “ You mentioned in your previous email that it was OK for me to edit according to our readers’ sensibilities, and my feeling about that would be that it would need considerable re-drafting after which the essence of the article would be lost. By its very nature it is a controversial topic and involves incidents in the not so distant past to which some of our readers may be linked. I do fear that readers of the magazine, who can be extremely sensitive when it comes to content (I know because I get the feedback directly) would take exception to it.” Before submitting the piece I had a feeling about this one, as a publication like the Abergavenny Focus depends on its advertisers and public funding and local people’s support for revenue and continuity. The suggestion I made was for my article to be edited for house style and readers’ tolerances. The inference from the Editor is that readers’ tolerance would be adversely affected by the words of the article i.e. that they would likely take exception to the piece. Although the 1942 case is not spelt out in gory detail the draft article does make reference to named peodophiles molesting boys, and adult homosexuals and in some households in Monmouthshire ( and elsewhere) either of those subjects is abhorrent and feared. But solely in other Monmouthshire homes it’s a question too of not mentioning the war time scandal that besieged the town of Abergavenny and which caused such hideous headlines at the time and still induces a feeling of dread. That said the event was like a town being hit by a tsunami : so can anyone blame Abergavenny for being homophobic? The Focus editor knows her readers and is speaking up for Abergavenny’s equivalent of the person on the Clapham omnibus….. But beside this my thoughts are a little anxious about the underlying issues . Dare I mention the old cliché that …you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs…. And you can’t mention the Abergavenny case of 1942 without using words about the fact that there was child molestation and gay sex. Some men in the case were monsters. But a witch hunt… hunting down all the queers in the place was cruel, sentences passed were severe and surely has ( in retrospect) to be challenged. Certain words about sex and gay sex in particular horrify, terrify some people, and the resulting deeds are not wished for reading at breakfast, lunch or dinner time. But the law expects tolerance of homosexuals in the same way as heterosexuals doing whatever it is they wish to do if the parties are over sixteen. The old 1942 case needs to be confronted for to allow wounds to heal. That is part of the purpose in compiling the book. There is no doubt the embargo on publishing the article prevents information getting out about the book ( intended to raise money for an Abergavenny charity in memory of the nineteen- year- old youth Lewis Matthews who took his own life). Was such censorship editorial discretion or homophobic? Is this example of editorship concerning an ancient historical scandal a display of circumspect, and good sense, or an over-reaction? NB Being homophobic is having a dislike or a fear gays or of being prejudiced against gays. The sorry Will e-mail is neatly worded : I can well understand all the points made, but muse about points not made that could affect a small publication like the Abergavenny Focus, for instance from its local advertisers withdrawing their support at a matter such as homosexuality being thrust upon them. If that were true and admitted it would be homophobic, but does that conclusion still hold true in having an attitude about an historical homosexual crime that took place seven decades ago? The 1942 case has been a taboo subject in Abergavenny for the last 72 years, has it rendered the town homophobic by instinct? It’s been still waters running deep all the while, and the town has been at the butt end ( bad pun) of countless snide comments about the old case from across the country. However would an adverse reaction (as suggested by the Editor of the Focus) have happened? Who would have taken exception to it, and how would that have been pitched? Interestingly the local newspaper The Abergavenny Chronicle, who published a whole page about the scandal and the book on 24 July, 2014, including stark newspaper extracts from the time has not had a single letter of complaint from any of its thousands of readers. The Abergavenny Focus has kindly said they will produce my article on their web site, which would still reach some of Abergavenny citizens and of course a wider stretch of visitors . We shall see if the promise actually materialises. DO PLEASE CONTACT WILL WITH ANY COMMENTS ON THIS e-mail williecross@aol.com