Under Pressure. Richard Humphreys

Under Pressure - Richard Humphreys


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decline in both Wolverhampton’s – and the industrial western heartland’s – economic fortunes, and by the mid-1970s a third of the population lived in council housing, with unemployment rising and immigration causing deep divisions in the West Midlands.

      Enoch Powell, author of the infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, was the local MP for Wolverhampton South West. I’ll never forget as a very young boy answering the door to him while he was on the stump in the first general election campaign of 1974. I remember opening the door to the palest-looking man I’d ever seen, his skin like alabaster, head slightly tilted forward. He stared at me intensely with fixed, unblinking eyes.

      ‘Mum and Dad are up the road at the neighbours,’ I told him bashfully.

      I may have been very young but I knew immediately who he was – I’d seen him on the TV – but of course I didn’t know about the general furore he’d caused in the country as a whole. At this point my elder brother Chris joined me for moral support, so Powell doffed his trilby hat, wished us good luck and walked off at a gallop to Number 6.

      As a six- and seven-year-old, I’d watch the news of factories shutting, car plants closing, the oil crisis and the first miners’ strikes. Even at that age I was aware that this wasn’t business as usual, but it didn’t give me sleepless nights. I was too busy with my newfound love of sport. Whether it was football, rugby or cricket, it all came fairly easy to me, and I guess that sport was also an enjoyable release from overly zealous, annoying teachers. Football was my obsession; morning, noon and evening I’d be out in our road, in the park, or driving my parents mad, hammering the ball against the garage door. Slightly introverted and on the shy side, I was wary of people until I got to know them, and was not much of a conversationalist. Instead, I lost myself in sport and my other passion – music.

      I didn’t make the grade for Wolves. I remember the coach coming round to my house, sitting me down in front of my mum to break the upsetting news. It hit me hard, the first time I’d failed at something.

      But my childhood was happy for the most part, except for losing both my maternal grandparents at the end of the decade, my grandfather dying six months to the day after his wife; married at 18, they’d been together for over half a century before both bowing out at three score years and ten. I was particularly close to my cousin Stephen. Four years older than me, he was cool, played the guitar and was into New Romantic bands, particularly David Sylvian and his group Japan. I didn’t see him as much as I’d have liked, and by the time he reached 18 I’m sure he didn’t want to be seen hanging round with this spotty 14-year-old with braces.

      My parents would let me out of the house for hours at a time. I’d disappear up the local park, playing football, climbing trees, annoying the neighbours, staying out till dark; fish and chips every Saturday lunchtime, going to Woolworths to buy The Jam’s Sound Affects, my first LP – not ‘vinyl’, it was never called that, a modern term used by people who were never there in the first place; playing ‘knock and run’ … slowly I was tapping into a new sense of adventure as my body and confidence grew.

      As I became older, this love of adventure – plus Simon Murray’s book, which had provoked my failed attempt to join the Legion – pushed me towards a life away from formal education. When I returned from Marseilles, the Navy looked like the next best option for an unconventional life – and I’d also heard that the Submarine Service paid well. Serving Queen and country never entered into it for me, as I was neither nationalistic nor a particular fan of the monarchy. The only people who ever talked about fighting for Queen and country were – and still are – feckless politicians who’d never done, nor ever would do, any of the fighting. Queen and country? One was outdated as an institution, the other past it as an idea. No, I wanted to do it for me.

       Beasting

      My grand intentions were destroyed within 24 hours. We were put together in a class of around 25 recruits and given a lecture of induction by the master-at-arms. He told us he was to be addressed as ‘Master’, pointed out who the senior NCO (non-commissioned officer) on the staff was, and then, much to my amusement, had us pledge allegiance to the monarch and sign various forms with next-of-kin details. I was then given a service number and whisked to the barbers for a brutal No.1 haircut – the only option – for which I had to pay £1.20. Piss-take. Next, once I’d climbed into a smelly sweater used by every training recruit, I had my photo taken for my naval ID card with said new haircut. I was then measured by the stores staff, hats were shoved on and off my head, shoes and boots tried on, more sweaters hurled at me, with tape measures poked into my every nook and crevice. Finally, once I was handed a kit bag, I walked over to my dormitory – a ‘mess deck’ in naval terminology – ready for the long slog to begin.

      I soon got chatting to my fellow squad members, who seemed like a good bunch, a nice mix of cocky, hard-working and methodical types. I reckoned I’d be OK. I was assigned a bunk, and told that lights-out was at 22.00 hours and we’d be woken up at 5.30 every morning. Shitsville.

      Our instructor was Chief Petty Officer Jenkins, a Cornishman who


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