Roger Martin

This section was setup in August 2018 in order to move the existing related discussions from other sections into this new section to group them together, and separate from the other CH-related topics.

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ZeroDeConduite
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Re: Roger Martin

Post by ZeroDeConduite »

bakunin wrote: Tue Aug 21, 2018 6:10 pm
michael scuffil wrote: Tue Aug 21, 2018 11:50 am...No head teacher of any school in the 1950s...
I just don't think things are as different now, especially compared to the 1980s-90s when many of the cases occurred, as people are saying.
I don't think people who grew up after the social revolution of about 1963-68 have any idea how different things were before that. Very very different. IMO. Jimmy Saville's exploits flourished as a result of the changing freedoms in society. It seems the educational and religious institutions similarly.
What is common to both eras is the devastating effects on the victims. Unfortunately, often in perpetuity. For them to see justice done (to help give closure) means that there should never be a time limit where there are victims.
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michael scuffil
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Re: Roger Martin

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Re my post on the statute of limitations.

In 1965, Germany abolished its time-limit on prosecutions for murder, previously 20 years. This was specifically to allow Nazi war crimes involving murder to be prosecuted in Germany indefinitely (though it applies to all murders). As far as I know, it is the only country in continental Europe not to have such a limitation (mostly it's 25 years). For other crimes, in Germany the limit is related to the maximum penalty for the offence, i.e. the more serious the offence, the longer it can be prosecuted. Most sexual offences would have a limit by this criterion of 10 years. However, with sexual offences, to take account of the special psychological circumstances, the period is deemed only to begin when the alleged victim (if under 30 at the time of the offence) turns 30. In the case of a sexual assault on a boy of 12 in 1978, then, the case could have been prosecuted at any time before 2006.
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yamaha
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Re: Roger Martin

Post by yamaha »

by michael scuffil » Wed Aug 22, 2018 10:34 am

This was specifically to allow Nazi war crimes involving murder to be prosecuted in Germany indefinitely
Except the Trawniki men etc. that were recruited in Latvia, Ukraine, Poland etc. and who committed many of the worst atrocities while Germans commanded and observed. Germany has steadfastly refused to be responsible for their prosecution on the grounds that they were not born in Germany. This week, after 14 years of trying the US has finally got Germany to receive a war criminal called Jakiw Palij.

Back on topic:

I attended CH during St. Clarence’s twilight years.
He was like a bewildered time traveler from a former age.
ZeroDeConduite
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Re: Roger Martin

Post by ZeroDeConduite »

I attended CH during St. Clarence’s twilight years.
He was like a bewildered time traveler from a former age.
That was an accurate description of 'The Oil' Flecker at his end. The extreme in-house boys-boy sadism and gang-bang squit initiation degradations ceased (in Peele A) with Seaman's arrival. Maybe it was just 'changing times'.
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sejintenej
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Re: Roger Martin

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ZeroDeConduite wrote: Wed Aug 22, 2018 12:28 pm
I attended CH during St. Clarence’s twilight years.
He was like a bewildered time traveler from a former age.
That was an accurate description of 'The Oil' Flecker at his end. The extreme in-house boys-boy sadism and gang-bang squit initiation degradations ceased (in Peele A) with Seaman's arrival. Maybe it was just 'changing times'.
Yes, Peele A was notorious for the sadism etc. in that era. I remember one "victim" whose name rhymed with Grunt.
You and I were in Prep A at the same time and in the upper also at the same time but I don't remember your name; possibly you were one year ahead of me.
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
ZeroDeConduite
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Re: Roger Martin

Post by ZeroDeConduite »

sejintenej wrote: Wed Aug 22, 2018 1:56 pm You and I were in Prep A at the same time and in the upper also at the same time but I don't remember your name; possibly you were one year ahead of me.
I was known as Chicken. If you remember me it might be for the occasion I nearly blew housemaster Pop Beaven out of his house concocting a phosphorus/chlorate rocket booster. Very silly in retrospect. Seamen bent me over for 6 (well deserved) for theft of the ingredients from the chemistry lab. I have suppressed most of my memories of Prep A, and after that remember very little contact with anyone in the other houses, except maybe in the Science department.
Peele A prided itself in its nickname, Public House - we were very outwards facing. When older we kept our bicycles permanently hidden in the undergrowth by the railway bridge beyond the triangle, the better to make a sharp exit when unsupervised. We had a system of avoiding the nearest three pubs in case a master visited them, so we ended up making a mad dash cycle ride of about 10 miles. Summer weekend cycle rides were occasionally as far afield as the beach at Worthing or Sunbury on Thames....
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Re: Roger Martin

Post by michael scuffil »

Re 'St Clarence'

His first nine years were in my opinion exemplary, both as a new broom cleaning the Augean stable, and as a reformer (expanded Sixth Form, senior/junior houses).

However I think it is certainly true that he (like many of his generation) was totally bewildered by the 1960s, and mistakenly thought he could hold back the tide. This desperation was already becoming evident in my last year (1962/63). I think he should probably have moved on once the senior and junior houses had been set up.

As for the atmosphere in Peele A:
When my parents met my housemaster John Page on my first day, he told them that Thornton B was a 'happy house' (which, thanks to him, was largely true). It did not occur to my parents to ask what an unhappy house might involve, or if there were any. (Actually, if I'd been asked to name any at the end of my first year, I would have said first and foremost Peele B, then Thornton A, then Lamb B.)
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sejintenej
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Re: Roger Martin

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michael scuffil wrote: Thu Aug 23, 2018 8:43 am As for the atmosphere in Peele A:
When my parents met my housemaster John Page on my first day, he told them that Thornton B was a 'happy house' (which, thanks to him, was largely true). It did not occur to my parents to ask what an unhappy house might involve, or if there were any. (Actually, if I'd been asked to name any at the end of my first year, I would have said first and foremost Peele B, then Thornton A, then Lamb B.)
I reckon the intention was Thornton A!

However I do wonder to what extent housemasters depended on the ignorance of parents. My housemaster in Prep A when I arrived was already well known as a holidaymaker in the remote village where we lived and knew that we spoke a patois so my "mother" was content that he would understand my not understanding his language. (Incidentally I later learned that the patois was closer to Breton!)
As for norms she told the story about when she was a girl; doing her homework her mother had by accident smudged her work with the sand used to dry ink and wrote to the teacher about it. My mother was beaten by the teacher because her homework was smudged so my mother was beaten by her mother simply because she had been beaten by the school teacher!!!!! (At least she wasn't in a Catholic school in Dublin). The result is that my mother considered that a good beating was a norm for the course or, as she put it "Spare the rod and spoil the child". Based on that understanding Kit could have done whatever he liked and she would have passed it off as normal - kids in my mother's homeland were killed for less
What happens if a politician drowns in a river? That is pollution.
What happens if all of them drown? That is solution!!!
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Re: Roger Martin

Post by rockfreak »

Yes, poor old Clarence. The 60s would have been a big shock. I, Sejintenej, Michael Scuffil and JR and others on here were of a generation where we had witnessed the stifling and smug atmosphere of the postwar years, and around 1960 I think we were perhaps vaguely aware of a strange but distant rumbling sound underground. It turned out to be Peter Cook and friends readying the End of the Age of Deference. Followed by Lady Chatterley, Lenny Bruce (brought over by Cook) and the Beatles.
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Re: Roger Martin

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I agree. The discovery of an unexpurgated copy of Lady C in The School and the following landmark court case was the start of a whole new wonderful era.
John Rutley. Prep B & Coleridge B. 1958-1963.
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Re: Roger Martin

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"were of a generation where we had witnessed the stifling and smug atmosphere of the postwar years,.."

I find that exceptionally patronising and quite undeserved. I was born in 1938, so lived through the war and its aftermath. Most people in the UK had experienced bombing, or had relatives who had. Even in my small Devon coastal town we were bombed often; the end house in our street was destroyed (with occupants, as I saw the following morning) and on another occasion my mother was machinegunned in the street by a passing German bomber. But these were nothing compared to the dangers and hardships of those who lived in major cities, like London, Bristol, Plymouth and Liverpool. The danger was also random - for example, the bombing of the school playground in Petworth (40+ children killed) and the Guildford-Horsham train destroyed by a Luftwaffe aircraft looking for a soft target.

In the wider world, vast numbers of those of military age had been conscripted and virtually every family lost at least one member.Many of those returning had to cope with either mental or physical problems - or both!

To turn to the post-war period, the first and over-riding reaction was that we had survived. But that wasn't all. It is often forgotten that rationing continued into the 1950s, so that housewives and catering staffs at places such as C.H., were constantly juggling with ration coupons and money to enable their families/schools to survive. (As an aside, I have to admit that food at Housie in the late 1940s and early '50s was far more varied and plentiful than at my home). Much of the housing stock had been either destroyed or seriously damaged, a situation that took years to put right.

The people struggled and in some ways sought to restore pre-war norms. But in other ways they kicked over the traces. There was a Labour government which revolutionised many aspects of life: the NHS, nationalised railways, road transport, airlines, etc. My father (a real scion of the so-called middle class) voted Labour in 1945 as he confided to me many years later!

On the international scene, the UK still had massive commitments and the government and its citizens had to disengage from India and Palestine, as well as defend some imperial territories (e.g., Malaya). The UK contributed to the UN force in Korea and played a major role in the Berlin airlift. Indeed, the international situation was so bad that National Service had to be reintroduced.

It is in the nature of life that each generation criticises its predecessors, but if my generation seemed 'stifling and smug' I can only remind you that we did have a few problems to contend with

David :shock:
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Re: Roger Martin

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I was born in 1943 and just survived death by doodlebug (so I was told later). My father was away in Germany during the war. No-one is denying the historical list of events that you mention. But my abiding memory of life in Britain was of stuffiness and self-congratulation - probably born of being an island and having had an empire. For instance, for many years we found foreigners funny in a Monty Python sort of way - egged on by a rabid and disgraceful popular press (then as now). After Mrs Thatcher came along we started to blame them for everything. The class system was still fully entrenched, satirised by that TV sketch in which John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett look down on or up to each other.
Orwell said that unthinking hypocrisy was the most obvious characteristic of the English and the one that foreigners often commented on. Again, a legacy of our imperial past I imagine. I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make. I'm not trying to blame the previous generation. Merely commenting on social changes in attitude that I believe were long overdue.
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Re: Roger Martin

Post by J.R. »

Can we keep on topic please ?

I have no objection to war memories from the senior posters, but on a new thread please.

Thanks !
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Re: Roger Martin

Post by rockfreak »

One thing leads to another on these sites. I'm sure they'll get back to Roger Martin in due course. By the way, where is Spoony these days? Do you think he's popped his cloggs?
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Re: Roger Martin

Post by Foureyes »

I was commenting on the phrase "the stifling and smug atmosphere of the postwar years" which, I repeat, I find patronising. Thus, I was not reminiscing on wartime years for the sake of it, but to explain my view. So, if it is thought that my contribution was irrelevant, then the phrase to which I objected should be struck out, too. Further, I would point out that the reference to Lady C is equally off topic - you can't have it both ways. David :shock:
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