The
story of CLOG – how it started and the War part 2
*By Bob C based on his interpretation of "The First Ten Years"
- our official history published in 1947 (author unknown).
- our official history published in 1947 (author unknown).
The
outdoor programme
The main purpose of the group
was to organise weekends away with occasional day walks on Sundays. At this
time many people still worked Saturday mornings but there were hostel trips
every weekend leaving after lunch on Saturday. Cheaper weekends were organised
for new members near London at Chaldon (in the North Downs), Epping Forest and
Ivinghoe (in the Chiltern Hills). The total cost was 5 shillings (25p). Half of
this was the train fare and the other half covered the bed and self-catering.
There was a short-lived experiment hiring coaches picking
up members on Saturday at 2pm from Charing X and taking them to under-used
hostels further afield which were hard to reach by train such as Patcham (in
the South Downs) and Cross-in-Hand (in the Weald). In 1938 a camping
sub-section was also formed.
The outbreak of war briefly ended weekend trips. At the
beginning, nobody felt like going away and the YHA offered many hostels to the
ARP (Air Raid Precautions). Holmbury St Mary (in the Surrey Hills), Ivinghoe
and Flackwell Heath (both in the Chiltern Hills) all closed. Holmbury reopened
after the war and still exists as a hostel.
However it turned out to be a “phoney war” to begin with. The
Ministry of Labour & National Service, Ministry of Supply and Board of
Education all encouraged young people to get out into the countryside at
weekends. The exercise was felt to be healthy for young people waiting for
military training or being drafted over to France, on leave or working long
hours in factories in artificial light. Despite this, walkers were unpopular
with transport officials because they were using travel facilities for pleasure
which was not considered essential.
Soon a scaled-back programme of hostel weekends was
organised, often ignoring “Keep Out” signs where the army had taken over large
areas of the countryside such as the Surrey Hills and walking through military
areas unmolested. There was rationing but it didn’t really affect hostel meals
(they may have been quite small anyway!)
The group continued to have weekly trips through the Blitz.
On Saturdays they had lunch at a café followed by a couple of hours in the
clubroom before taking a Green Line coach to a hostel just as the air raids
were starting. They would walk all day on the Sunday then take the train back
in the evening. Taking the coach out and the train back was a way of keeping
the cost down as coaches were cheaper. However this was no longer an option
when Green Line coaches were withdrawn and converted into ambulances.
The group had a tradition of bank holiday camping weekends.
These had been suspended because of travel disruption due to regular weekend invasion
scares (possibly instigated by the Government to test readiness) and the fact
that the Home Guard were very nervy and likely to take pot shots at people
camping. However in 1942 these longer trips resumed and a summer camp was held near
Basingstoke in Hampshire with young Austrian refugees as guests.
When the war ended travelling became easier but not
cheaper. YHA membership and interest in trips soared but half the hostels had
closed permanently or had to be refurbished due to damage from being
requisitioned during the war. In the summer hostels had to be booked two or three
months ahead, even if the group were helping to repair war damage.
Supporting
the YHA
The secondary purpose of the group was to support the YHA.
The group adopted GOSH (Great Ormond Street Hostel in Bloomsbury) helping out
there two evenings a week and sometimes at weekends. They redecorated the
hostel and organised dances on Saturday evenings. Every evening volunteers from
the group ran a desk giving information about travelling, selling tickets and
YHA stuff (such as hostel handbooks). They also organised trips to the Proms
for people staying at the hostel.
There were also working parties at Holmbury St Mary,
Ewhurst (also in Surrey) and Speen (in the Chiltern Hills). Cutting logs for
firewood at Holmbury was especially popular. These working parties lasted till
the Second World War when hostels closed or rail fares became too pricey. After
the Blitz working parties recommenced at Kemsing (in the North Downs) and
Speen. There was no preference for people working at a hostel rather than
walking; they still had to pay to stay in the hostel.
The YHA also used the group’s clubroom to hold their own
meetings during the war. After the war the YHA reopened GOSH and opened another
hostel in Taviton St, Euston. The group helped out by organising working
parties at both hostels in exchange for being able to hold their Xmas Party at
Taviton St hostel.
How
the group was organised
Within six months, Phil Victorsen, the instigator of CLOG
who was our first chairperson, resigned. It isn’t recorded why. Maybe there was
a personality clash, maybe there was a sex scandal (only joking!) but he
resigned unexpectedly. As the group’s first chair, he had been taken for
granted as a fixture but of course there’s no such thing as a fixed piece of
furniture. Chairs come and go and CLOG would have to find many more chairs over
the course of the years.
The new chair was Cecil Malyon, one of many accountants,
and it won’t surprise you to learn that he wrote the group’s constitution. He
put CLOG on a firm footing but he was active in the YHA at a national level and
basically burnt out so he resigned in 1939. Mickie Hartwell (who was to become
Mickie Brown) took over as Chair. She was to steer CLOG through the war.
When war broke out, many local groups folded. This nearly
happened to CLOG. In 1940 an inquorate AGM voted by 9 votes to 5 to disband the
group for the time being (possibly permanently), give notice to quit the
clubroom and put their furniture into storage at GOSH. However two members (Ralph
Jones and Syd Worral) persuaded some others to ignore this on the basis that it
couldn’t be binding as the meeting had been inquorate. So the group continued
to meet. In January 1941 an Extraordinary General Meeting reduced the quorum to
a more realistic figure, given that only about 15 members were still turning
up. Eventually membership increased to about 30 members.
By 1942 there was a new influx of members who were refugees
from abroad. Soon there were as many Dutch and Belgian members in the group as
British ones but they didn’t always see eye-to-eye. A couple of Dutch sisters,
Bubbles and Tuppenny (surely not their real names!), provided fresh impetus but
they had very definite views on how they thought the group should be run (they
had been in a YHA group of their own in Antwerp before the war). Bubbles’ real
name was Margriet Barber and her sister Tuppeny was Vera Barber.
At the October 1942 AGM, they called on the group to be
more lively and go-ahead and to do something useful. This was translated into
having a competition to design and make a model youth hostel, colouring in
Ordnance Survey maps, naming wildflowers picked on weekend trips and making
cushion covers for the clubroom furniture. However, human nature being fickle
and sluggish, meant that none of these tasks was ever completed and some
weren’t even started!
They wanted the group to be involved in setting up an
international YHA in London. There was some disagreement about this which ended
in a friendly split. In summer 1943, the Dutch and some of the English members
left CLOG to run an International Youth Centre. The rest of the members went
back to knitting and a more humdrum existence. They remained good friends even
when the Dutch returned to Europe after the war. Out of this, a new
International Group was set up in London. To begin with this was more active
than the Central London group though over time this changed. Many years later
the groups effectively remerged when surviving members of the International
Group joined the Central London group.
The
finances
To begin with, renting a clubroom cost 25 shillings (£1.25)
per week. As little as this may seem today, this was considered high and led to
regular moves to new premises (there was also a crisis with people booking on
trips then cancelling their places). When the group moved during the war to 37
Great James St the weekly rent cost 11 shillings (55p) per week (it is now
unthinkable that a flat could be rented in Central London on a permanent basis
yet only used for weekly meetings). The dozen members or so at this time kept
it going by sharing the costs, paying the rent personally between them, taking
turns to buy bags of Coalite, putting money in the gas and electricity meters
etc. In February 1941, they rented out one of the rooms to a local councillor
every Saturday
The
news sheet
The first news sheet (now Clogprints) was published in
1938. It was edited by the chair (Cecil Malyon and then Mickie Hartnell) and
produced on a typewriter. In the war the news sheet kept people in touch and
came to be seen as vital. Members had been scattered by call-up and evacuation.
Letters from members on service abroad and donations of money encouraged those
at home to keep going. The news sheet ran a series of articles entitled “What
our Members are Doing”. Members were charged a nominal price for the news sheet
to cover the costs. The News Sheet was not without controversy. In November
1941, the editor was criticised for appealing more to former members away on
service than to the members who had more recently joined. It was always difficult
to please everyone.
These first two episodes have been based on a pamphlet
called “The First Ten Years” (author unknown, published in 1947 for 1 shilling
(5p). I wonder whether the author thought we would still be going 73 years
later? Next week, we’ll find out what happened after the War and how this must
have seemed doubtful at times…