Understanding John Lennon. Francis Kenny
vehemently refused. There then followed a campaign by Pop and Mimi to ensure that they both got their way. Julia, much to the chagrin of Mimi, was allowed to stay with Pop at Newcastle Road together with Bobby Dykins. ‘Living in sin’ was anathema to Mimi. Such a state of affairs brought shame on the family, but perhaps there was a method to Pop’s madness. Bit by bit, pressure was applied to Julia to relinquish John into Mimi’s care. She and Bobby could stay and take care of Pop. The pressure to give in was so intense that Julia, John and Bobby moved out of Newcastle Road and into a small flat in nearby Gateacre. This was the chance Mimi had been waiting for. With Pop in attendance, Mimi paid an unannounced visit to the flat. Both declared that it was an unfit place for John to live and Mimi demanded he be placed with her. A campaign of harassment against Julia was to pay dividends. ‘She saw a window of opportunity, and if she’d have let that go, there wouldn’t be another chance,’ states Julia Baird (nee Dykins):
The first time she came round to collect John, my father put her out. The second time she came with a social worker who said – or rather told – Mimi that she could find nothing wrong with John’s staying with his mother. Mimi then probably appealed to the Director of Public Services. She was determined. He asked where John slept. There was only one bedroom and my parents weren’t married. He agreed with Pop and Mimi that John should go and live with George and Mimi at Mendips.7
Mimi’s belief was that John living in the same house as his mother’s common law husband was enough to get him away from his mother. Refusing to take no for an answer, she went to the head of Liverpool’s Public Services. The Director sided with Mimi. The result was that five-year-old John was removed by order of the Public Services from Julia, just one summer after he had lost contact with his father.
Mimi would say later that ‘Julia had met somebody else with whom she had a chance of happiness, and no man wants another man’s child’.8 But Bobby Dykins showed strong intent to take John on as his own son. He was willing to set up home with Julia and John. If Freddie could be tracked down and agree to a divorce, it was highly likely the couple would marry. And as for ‘no man wants another man’s child’, where did this leave George Smith, in whose home John would be living? ‘Mimi changed John’s school to Dovedale from Mosspits, and took over running his life. Or should that be ruining his life?’ Julia Baird comments.
It was obvious that Julia and Bobby needed a bigger place, where John would have his own bedroom. Julia and Bobby moved back with Pop at Newcastle Road, where John could have his own room. That would solve the problem, so Julia went to Mimi to get John back. Mimi turned her away at the door.9
Mimi had acquired John as she has acquired Mendips: by stealth and subterfuge. Her appetite for self-advancement included the ‘ideal family’, which of course included a child. John was to be the final part of Mimi’s transformation into a post-war, Woman’s Own accomplished suburban matriarch. John had now been subject to a tug of war between his parents, having to choose between his mother and father, the introduction of social workers in the battle for his custody between his mother and his aunt, and the introduction of a regimented and cold regime at Mendips. It’s no wonder that he sought solitude in his writing and art.
‘Hypocrite to the core. Flawed. Unbelievable what she put my mother through’, concludes Julia Baird.
[Mimi] had set her heart on having John, no matter what the price to pay, no matter what my mother thought. Mimi just battled away. This was her opportunity to have a child.10
chapter 4
1946–50
Wandsworth Jail
JOHN’S NEW home was now 251 Menlove Avenue, a three-bedroom, bay-windowed, pebble-dashed semi-detached house, complete with lead-glassed quarter-light windows and the name plate of ‘Mendips’. John’s bedroom was the small box room over the vestibule. He would stay there throughout his childhood and into early adulthood.
Mendips was a sign to Mimi of having ‘made it’ – no more living next to butchers’ shops, drapers or costermongers. Here at Mendips, Mimi could look over a golf course a hundred yards away and was surrounded by a variety of mansions built by the great and the good, whose money had been made in trade from the port. Woolton should have been an ideal place to bring up a child with its woods, green spaces, its golfers and a village with a history going back to the Vikings. For post-war Liverpool families living with their bomb-damaged houses, cluttered inner cities and decrepit housing stock, Mendips was a dream. For five-year-old John, it would be anything but. The post-war world of Britain in which the young John was brought up was in a period of social revolution. A war-weary population was demanding a better way of life to the deprivation suffered during the 1930s. The 1945 General Election produced a shock at the polls in the shape of a landslide victory for the Labour Party, which ran on a mandate of addressing issues of poverty, social class and the fairer distribution of wealth. The formation of the Welfare State was to be the vehicle for this change.
The 1945 General Election radically changed the country’s political landscape, with newly elected Labour MPs singing ‘The Red Flag’ on the first day of Parliament, which caused more than a hint of concern to the British Establishment. The General Election result was seen by many as a kick in the teeth to the Conservative Leader, Winston Churchill. His supporters were amazed that the electorate should see fit to jettison the nation’s wartime leader. Upon hearing the election result, Arthur Marwick relates how an upper-class supporter of the Tory party announced: ‘But this is terrible – they’ve elected a Labour Government and the country will never stand for that.’1
The Welfare State was to provide a clear divide between those in favour of the ‘pull yourself up by your bootstraps’ ideology and those in favour of collective support. The Welfare State was to deliver cradle-to-grave provision of social care. This included the need for decent housing. Many, like Mimi and her family, had already followed the route of the ‘respectable working classes’ in moving steadily further afield from inner-city Liverpool. Indeed, not long after Mimi took John to Mendips, the following item appeared in the Liverpool Echo regarding a home in Mimi’s old neighbourhood, Head Street: ‘A Beaufort Street family were awakened at one in the morning by a loud crash to find a hole five foot square [in diameter] had opened in the side of their home.’2 The reporter concluded with the view that this was not an uncommon incident.
Berkley Street in Toxteth, where the Stanley family had moved, was sliding towards decline just as the family moved further afield again to Newcastle Road in Wavertree. Sociologist J. B. Mays’ research into the once prestigious Princes Road area of Toxteth area noted that:
It is significant that Negroes serving in the United States Forces stationed in the Merseyside area find their way to the Berkley Street region in search of recreation and companionship. There is little doubt that one reason for the visitation of coloured and white men is the attraction of certain dubious clubs where illegal pleasures may be bought. According to reliable information, there were a great number of brothels in the area during the war years.3
Liverpool’s Berkley Street was the area where Stanley Crouch’s ‘Negro chaos’ met ‘Scouse chaos’ and lindy-hopped the night away. Like many factors of life, housing and where you lived in Liverpool could be a seen as a badge of honour or shame. Liverpool’s rented housing stock always had a history of being extremely poor in quality. In 1954 the National Building Association estimated that Liverpool had around 88,000 unfit dwellings which housed approximately 90,000 families. This meant almost a third of the city’s population had to live in slum housing.
When John commented on where he lived, he insisted it was not the poor kind of slummy image that was projected in all The Beatles’ stories. In the class system, it was about half a class higher than Paul, George or Ringo, who lived in government-subsidised houses.4
He was fully aware of how distinctly housing differentiated people. This was why the council estates where Paul and George lived brought out all the snobbery in Mimi. During John’s time under her ‘mentorship’ there would be frequent and varied references to both Paul and George as ‘scruffs’