WeLCOME TO THE UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX

Falmer House, University of Sussex

As you approached the University of Sussex from the main road, or indeed from Falmer train station you walked through the archway of the modernist (Basil Spence designed) Falmer House, the administrative centre and seat of student common rooms and canteens. 

Library, University of Sussex

As you walked on through on your left was the library, richly supplied with books, as you would expect, but also with grassy slopes leading up to it, a place where many students met, hung out, and chatted. I first met Lamorna Heath sitting outside the library, Autumn 1968, when I was instantly drawn to her.

I recall looking at the grassy slopes, the perfectly balanced buildings, the walkways full of beautiful people and thinking - this is the city of god, utopia, a foretaste of heaven! 

Patrick Alexander offers an illuminating rejoinder

As always, I was delightfully distracted by various themes and read your description of the library at Sussex: “As you walked on through on your left was the library, richly supplied with books, as you would expect, but also with grassy slopes leading up to it, a place where many students met, hung out, and chatted.”

I believe you first arrived at Sussex, a year after me and so would have missed this. The year I arrived; the library was indeed completely surrounded by grassy lawns – but no pathways. “How silly” we thought. “Sir Basil Spence must have forgotten or never noticed.” For the whole academic year, we could walk across the grass, either to go to the library itself or as a way of getting from one part of the campus to another: sometimes we would simply sit and hang out, gossiping and smoking joints. We would do this every day, in sunshine and in rain so that, after several months, the lawns were bisected with muddy trails. Some muddy tracks were wide and well-trodden, obviously the most popular route, others were narrow indicating that just a few people wandered that path. Then there were a few spots where no grass grew, just a large barren plot where obviously large groups of people like to sit and hang out. “What a muddy mess” we thought as we left the campus in June.

But when we returned for the next term, all the muddy tracks had been replaced by solid, paved pathways. Wide pathways where most people walked, narrow paths where some liked to stroll and large circular areas with benches where people liked to hand out.

Spence had very cleverly let the customer dictate their needs and then provided exactly what was wanted.

Ah … memories

Lamorna was a beautiful undergraduate student draped in a scarlet lined black velvet Victorian cloak with a short skirt, attractive figure and black painted nails. Such signs of decadence are commonplace now with Goth and Emo movements but at the time it was tantalizingly wicked. She was working on a project on Simon Simeon, a neglected decadent artist of the Aesthetic movement. I offered her a pull on my joint which she took sitting on a low wall. She must have momentarily fainted because she rolled off the wall and fell on the grass, and a delcious ripple ran through the flesh of the back of her thighs. I was captured and we began an affair that lasted for the rest of the Autumn term and continued off and on until Autumn 1970 when she would visit me in London as I entered my last and successful detox phase.  

At Sussex we also experienced great music. At freshers week October 1968 I attended the Soul Society. I reasoned that I'm interested both in soul music, and mysticism, so whichever it is, I'm in. It turned out to be a soul music appreciation group, run by about four mods who became my instant buddies. There was Rick and Al, and whatsisname (Mike?), the bloke with bamboo specs, who had a car, and Robert Powell. All were Mods at the time. I end up sharing a house with them in Southover Street, Brighton, a hilly road that led down to the Level and St Peter's church. At the Soul Society we'd dance to some soul records. I don't recall any girls coming, but Tony Allen, Pete Prebble, and Sean Linehan were also involved, as were many others. (See bwlow for Sean's red paint protest).

I'd got myself a horrible single coldwater room near the seafront, and every cupboard seemed to have meters in it. I only stayed there a few weeks before moving into the shared house with my new friends, in Southover Street. My only memory of that room is my new girlfriend Maggi coming back and spending the night with me and accidentally knocking a glass of icy cold water off the windowsill onto me which was a hell of a shock first thing in the morning! She said she was surprised I didn't hit her. I was too busy holding the tears of shock back. And anyway, I don't hit people. Ever. In those days of youthful romance, if you spent the night with your love, it would be the two of you snuggled up in a single bed. Ahh ... the young, who sleep so soundly and anywhere, at the drop of a hat!

Maggi also spent many nights with me in Southover Street and it was there that she and I took an acid trip together and ecstatically made love for hours and hours as I describe elsewhere on this site. It was bliss in paradise - unforgettable!  But also unrememberable - fleeting images and feelings float across my mind - we were in a small room on the ground floor I think, towards the rear of the house, with the bed against the left hand wall. But as for the rest - or rather those parts that misty memory serves up - apart from a few details and feelings too private to share - nothing else remains. But then experiences are not signs or symbols pointing to meaning elsewhere. They are complete unto themselves and neither enhanced or diminished whether they be remembered or gently slip away! Nostalgia may want to imbue them with extra meaning - Proust's taste of the Madeleine or feeling of a wobbly cobble stone underfoot might trigger memories of past or even lost time - but that is an expression of a feeling, a desire, a need in the present, not the past reaching forward in time to embrace you.

Flag of Vietnamese National Liberation Front 

In fact, in my opinion, the student body at Sussex University was over-politicised. My most vivid recollection of student politics is of the in-fighting between different leftist groups: Trotskyites, Stalinists, Leninists, Maoists, Marxists, International Socialists, Millitant, Socialist Workers Party, Communist Party and other groups contesting the true meaning of revolution, socialism, and necessary political action. As someone vaguely leftwing, pro social justice, pro-CND, anti-Apartheid, anti-polaris, anti-Vietnam War I was quite put off radical or leftish politics for over a decade by this vicious infighting. For me the real enemies were the Tories, Edward  Heath, the self-serving priviliged elites in society, and not left-leaning factions with differing interpretations of 'true Marxism', each of which they rigidly cleaved to as 'The Truth'.

In fact, being hectored by hard left factions had the effect of turning me off politics for many years, I being of a soft left disposition, as noted above. One memorable event occurred when I was descending the stairs from the snack bar on the top floor of in Falmer House. I was deep in conversation with a friend. Suddenly this figure forced his way into my physical and mental space - an activist with an outstretched hand thrusting a copy of Militant newsletter at me - saying aggressively "Buy the newsletter and support the revolution". I was startled, frightened by the intrusion, and thrust him away with some expletive like "Fuck off!". The very serious internecine struggles between the hard left groups is satirized brilliantly in the Monty Python film "Life of Brian".

Attending the University of Sussex in the mid to late 60s did three things for us. First, it introduced us to 'grown-up' scholarly thought; the greatest ideas in history, which Matthew Arnold termed ‘the best which has been thought and said’. This is undoubtedly the main purpose of university education. Second it plunged us into new interests and social movements like politics but also the Hippie movement. Third, it introduced us to new, like-minded and altogether wonderful friends. Many of these new buddies became friends for life.

Among these, although her life was tragically cut short was my dear new girlfriend at Sussex, Maggie Gearson, pictured below, already mentioned and about whom I write more below.

Maggi Gearson in 1966

Maggi and I went to lots of concerts together as well and a notable one was Jimi Hendrix at the University in 1967. We were at the front right, but we don't show up in this and many other pics of the concert on the the Sussex University scrapbook website.  https://www.flickr.com/photos/sussexscrapbook/

Arthur Brown

But I've got ahead of myself in this story (again). The first week I started at Sussex Uni in October 1966 I remet Steve Gould, who had been to William Ellis, and who I had bumped into in Afghanistan and Istanbul during my Summer 1966 travels. That first week I recall being quite drunk after a freshers party and smoking some of my hash, brought back from Afghanistan, through Steve's water pipe. We were joined on the pebbley beach of Brighton by another guy called Mike (Jones maybe?), also on my course.

I was following a course called Philosophy and the Theory of Science (with mathematics) founded and run by a philosopher named Peter H. Nidditch (1928—1983), a really nice guy with a warm-hearted Irish wife. He became a famous John Locke scholar and there is a philosophy prize named after him at Sheffield University. You could also study my Sussex course with a physics option, but I opted for mathematics. During the extended period in which I was on this course it changed its name to Logic, History and Policy of Science, and finally ended up as Logic (with Mathematics) as it states on my degree certificate of 1973. 

In the first weeks of lectures I found myself sitting next to a pleasant and attractive young woman named Marilyn Wheatcroft. I invited her to join me for a coffee afterwards, but she replied "No - I have my own set of friends, thank you very much." Despite her cliquiness we remained on cordial terms in the lectures and a couple of weeks later I bumped into her at a seafront club in Brighton. We were all dancing to various soul tracks including Reach Out (I'll Be There) by The Four Tops, downstairs in the club. This song really got you going - disinhibited, sweating, ecstatic as only music can make you! I went outside to smoke a joint and who should I bump into but Marilyn and one of her North London friends Dave Fry (who became and remains one of my best friends right up to this day). I offered them the joint and Dave took it and sniffed it suspiciously before proclaiming "It really is a joint!" and took a couple of drags. He retains his inbuilt scepticism to this day!

Marilyn Wheatcroft

I didn't know it then, but Marilyn's best friend was a young woman called Maggi Gearson. I first noticed her when my Mod friends were giving me a lift to Brighton from the campus one late afternoon and we passed Marilyn and Maggi in the dusk, walking to Falmer Railway Station. I said "Hey, let's give them a lift", the car stopped, they piled in, and the rest is history.

Marilyn Wheatcroft and Maggi Gearson

I didn't know it then, but Maggi had already noticed me and confided in Dave Fry that she fancied me. By then, Dave and of course Maril knew me. Dave had been Maggi's boyfriend from 1963 until Summer 1966 when he had been displaced by their mutual friend Alex Scott-Samuel while they were all on holiday in France. This cause Dave great grief, but he didn't show it. But his replacement Alex had gone to Liverpool University so my luck was in.

(I Last saw Alex at Johnny White's funeral at the Golders Green Crematorium in the late 2010s. His sight has weakened but he still full of life. He lives in Liverpool and has been very active there in the Labour Party.)

Maggi Gearson and Alex Scott-Samuel, Summer 1966.

Maggi was studying at Brighton College of Education across the road from Sussex University. She loved all things French and was studying French culture, literature and language as part of a teaching qualification. It all stemmed from her French mother Marcel who had abandoned her husband Heinz and daughter Maggi when she was about one year old. Maggi had established a good relationship with her mother who lived in Paris and visited her regularly. French culture was a way of regaining her mother and being re-enveloped by her milieu.

From Autumn 1966 Maggi and I were inseperable until she dumped me, Summer 1968. It does not seem so long now but in the chaotic universe of young love, especially since it ended in a downward spiral of hard drug addition, a folie-a-deux, it was an epoch, a bounded eternity, an everlasting dazzling bright star that burned out seemingly all too soon, leaving me scorched in the ashes. 

THIS IS A WORK ON PROGRESS - MUCH MORE TO COME!

Pete Deadman on violin performing with David Bowie 1969

Steve gould shares

Memories of a 13 year old Olly Swingler outrageously drunk, in a  Reading school (we were housed in a school overnight) the second day of the 1961 or 1962 Easter Aldermaston March - see photo of my dad and Bertrand Russell holding the banner.  I missed the first March but the second one was my introductory - I was just 11 years old - in the last year of primary school - I met one of my teachers- mr price- the one whose job it was to administer the slipper 🥿 - the young Gould was not unaware of the irony

The original 1959 March from London to aldermaston. Steve's dad in front, Bertrand Russell to his left

The organisers quickly learnt that bringing thousands of people to an obscure establishement in the middle of the country with barely any transport links was not a great idea for an ending. The the following year's march - 1960 - the first that I participated in - began at Aldermaston and ended with a huge rally in Trafalgar square. I was 15 years old, walked the whole route and had huge blisters on my feet by the end. I was acoompanied by Tony Barnett, Peter Sayers, Roger Silverman and countless other friends.

What is it all about?

 Memories of some of us who were at the University of Sussex or nearby in Brighton  during the mid 1960s