University of Sussex and Brighton

Post date: 30-Jan-2021 16:02:43

What has the University of Sussex and Brighton to do with the Witches? A number of us who hung around the Witches or went to William Ellis School or lived in Brighton had links to the Witches. There was me, Paul Ernest, who was accepted at University of Sussex to study in 1966, after 3 'wasted years' working as a dustman and then re-doing my 'A' Levels. Roger Silverman, who had been part of the Witches crowd studied Russian at Sussex. Alan Green from William Ellis and the Witches crowd moved to the south coast near Brighton, along with his elder brother Brian and wife Mary. They all decamped from Oppidans Road near Chalk Farm/Primrose Hill when their father moved his fastenings (nuts and bolts) business to near Worthing, probably to get his sons away from the London hard drugs scene. Tony Barnett, stalwart of the Witches, moved to Brighton for his first teaching job 1967 after graduating from College of St Mark and St John in Chelsea. Other people from William Ellis moved to Brighton to study at the University of Sussex including Steve Gould and Dave Baker. Indeed, Philippa Baxter, daughter of Sid Baxter the headteacher at William Ellis School was studying at University of Sussex when I started there October 1966. So there were a lot of connections with the Witches Crowd and Hampstead. Indeed University of Sussex was nicknamed Hampstead-by-the-Sea because of the number of children of Hampstead intellectuals who studied there, like the Jay twins and Julia Summerville.

The University of Sussex was quite politically active, but then so was everywhere in the years 1967 & 1968. Indeed, one of our friends, Sean Linehan, an English undergraduate, was waiting with his now-famous bucket of red paint which he threw over a senior representative from the US embassy who had come to make a speech justifying the Vietnam War. The red paint symbolised blood and there were many of us who opposed the war in Vietnam. Indeed the membership card for the University film Club carried the flag of the Vietnamese National Liberation Front on its reverse

Flag of Vietnamese National Liberation Front

In fact, in my opinion, the student body at Sussex University was over-policised. 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. This is beautifully parodied in Life of Brian. 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'.

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.

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 wit 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!

We also experienced great music. At freshers week 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, whatsisname (Mike?), the bloke with bamboo specs, who had a car, and Robert Powell. 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 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 might also have been involved.

I'd got myself a horrible single coldwaterroom 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 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 unremberable - 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 of 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.

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/

The concert when Jimi Hendrix played Sussex University 1967.

We also saw The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown perform at Sussex, including his hit Fire in 1968, which was altogether trippy!

Arthur Brown

But I've got ahead of myself in this story. 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 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 into 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.

Maggi Gearson and Marilyn Wheatcroft on Brighton Pier c.1966

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 her 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!

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!