In South Vietnam, a primitive backward comer of South East Asia, where Vice-President Johnson had “looked into the eyes” of the people, 20,000 American troops are engaged in an endless struggle – endless that is, unless it should end in something worse. In the past seven years 300,000 Vietnamese and 1,400 Americans have been killed and wounded.

It is a war in which, as one American lieutenant told World in Action, “you don’t know many times who your enemy is until he shoots at you. It’s hard to fight someone when you can’t see them and when a man can lay down his rifle in a rice paddy and pick up a plough after he shoots at you.”

On the night when the Tall Texan and the Man from Arizona were fighting it out at the polls — to the overwhelming victory of LBJ – World in Action presented a programme about Vietnam, a subject that looms large in American minds and one which posed President Johnson with his first major crisis after re-election.

Mike Hodges and Mike Boultbee led the World in Action team into the paddy-fields of Vietnam. Arnold Bulka did the research.

Vietnam is a country of 30 million people, part of what was once called French Indo-China. It is split in two – with the communists holding the North which borders on China. The communist leader is Ho Chi Minh, aged 74, one-time pastry cook in a London Hotel, and now known to his 16 million people as Uncle Ho.

Uncle Ho is a professional communist. He studied the theory well at Moscow’s University of the Toilers of the East, where he graduated with honours. In 1944 he was smuggled back to Vietnam to lead guerrilla partisans fighting the Japanese who had taken over the country from the French. As soon as the Second World War ended, Ho set up his own makeshift regime in the North before the French could come back in and stop him. In the months that followed, the French and Ho found that the country was not big enough to hold both of them. And they went to war.

For eight years Ho and his peasant army, supported by Chinese arms and money, fought a quarter of a million of France’s best troops and killed 94,000 of them. Then on 7th May, 1954, at Dien Bien Phu – a place the French will long remember – they tried to break the ragged communist army. But the day ended with the pride of France’s army captured, scattered, wounded or dead.

The French Empire in South East Asia was now at the mercy of Uncle Ho, the Marxist-Leninist pastry cook. For with the defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the French could no longer prevent the communists from taking over, not only Vietnam itself, but also their two other protectorates Laos and Cambodia.

The private little war in Indo-China seemed set to develop into a clash between the Big Powers of East and West. So they met together in Geneva in July, 1954 – rivals with one aim in common: to prevent each other from taking over the area. At this Conference three vitally important decisions were made:

One, that Laos and Cambodia should become independent, neutral states;

Two, that Vietnam should be divided in half, with Ho Chi Minh and his Communists taking over north of the 17th Parallel, and the French-backed anti-Communists holding on to the South;

And three, that an election would be held in all Vietnam, north and south, within two years, to decide on a single government for the whole nation.

Lord Avon, then Sir Anthony Eden, was Britain’s representative at that Conference. He told World in Action, “We were trying to bring to an end a very bloody brutal war which had been waging for some time and which was going at that time badly for our French allies who’d had a big defeat at Dien Bien Phu. In those conditions I’m sure that the agreement was the best that we could have got. The working out of it, inevitably, has had many disappointments but fundamentally the idea was sound – to try an create a protective pad between the Chinese forces in the North and to make of these three states, if we could, countries – little countries with an independent way life.”

The Geneva Agreement did not, in fact, bring peace to Indo-China. And principally this was because of the man chosen as the first leader for the new state of South Vietnan – Ngo Dinh Diem. Diem was an aristocrat, a Roman Catholic bachelor, who was opposed to both the communists and the French. His choice by the Geneva powers was by no means unanimous.

“In Vietnam, as it seemed to me,” said Lord Avon, “a wrong turning was probably taken when Diem was appointed as the Head of the Government of that country. That was many years ago. This isn’t hindsight, because the time I and the French representative to Geneva counselled against the appointment. However, it took place, and he ruled the country for many years.”

Diem became a virtual dictator, running the country with a Government that was practically a family firm. Even his sister-in-law, the beauteous and ruthless Madame Nnu, was given office – and with it access to the economic wealth being poured in by the Americans. Comfortably entrenched, Diem refused to risk an election.

From the north, Ho Chi Minh retaliated. He sent in his guerrillas, the terrorist force known as the Viet Cong, which is now harrying the Americans. This underground force opened a savage campaign of destruction and murder. Not even the children were spared.

Diem, meanwhile tried to soothe his people – handing out lollipops to the children and at the same time asking the Americans for military aid. Between 1956 and 1963, the Americans poured in 16,000 soldiers – “advisers” they called them – and enough equipment to arm the 300,000 strong South Vietnamese forces, but Ho Chi Minh continued to win. At the same time. Diem and his regime were in serious trouble from their own people. Diem became more dictatorial. Then he made his worst mistake. He refused to recognize Buddhism, the country’s biggest sect, as an official religion. Buddhist monks committed suicide in public, dousing their clothing with petrol and then setting themselves alight. Students rioted, and finally in November, 1963, the Army took over. They arrested and executed Diem and his brother.

Even then South Vietnam still failed to find a strong government. First they had General Minh – Big Minh. He was ousted by General Khanh, who gave way in turn to another temporary administration. Still, despite more and more American aid, the war in South Vietnam continued to be lost. And among the 20,000 Americans serving there the casualty list grew daily.

The Americans in Vietnam are fighting an enemy who most of the time is invisible. An estimated 30,000 Viet Cong guerrillas – the V.C.’s as the Americans call them – form the hard core of this hidden army. Some of them live in the jungles. And like the animals of the jungle they have learned how to hide well from their enemies. They even dig themselves into holes in the ground and have to be smoked out at bayonet point. Many other V.C.’s, however, live in villages where the local peasants hide them, feed them, and even finance them through an organized tax system.

The V.C.’s fight a hit-and-run war, as one wounded American Army Lieutenant described:

“The military operations are very difficult in a guerrilla type war, because you do not know where the enemy is. The guerrilla, if he sees a big force, disappears – and when he sees a small force he gets enough together to overcome this force and eliminate it. We went this one day to visit this village and everything was going pretty well, we stayed there for an hour or so talking to the people and nothing extraordinary happened and we returned. Unfortunately, the guerrillas were waiting for us. They probably saw us go in – it was about 2 kilometres or so, of undisturbed road – and they were waiting for us to come back. This was probably one of our mistakes. We had two jeeps and a 2½ ton truck with about a platoon of infantry in it. But this did not deter the Viet Cong at all. They planted a 105 round, I figure, with some extra explosive on the side of the road, and as our jeep came near he detonated it.”

The guerrillas move swiftly from place to place, and their task is made all the easier by the continued refusal of the South Vietnamese Government to stop people travelling freely about the country. An American captain explained, “Take for example the man that lives up north in some city. He gets a mission from the V.C. to go down and blow a bridge. He gets his orders, I don’t know where, but he gets them from some Communist leader. He comes down and blows this bridge, turns right round, goes back and he’s been gone only six or eight hours. Who’s missed him. Remember, people saw him walking on the road down here, or coming in a sampan, but nobody stopped him.

“If we don’t have any population controls,” he went on, “this compounds a problem that the military people have in combating these types of people. You don’t know where they are. They don’t as a fact wear uniforms, though some of their hard core units do – they’ve got a type of uniform. But as far as all of them being identifiable we don’t know who they are. This is a terrific frustration as a military type operation for a soldier.”

The main battleground in South Vietnam is the Delta of the Mekong River. This region, twice the size of Yorkshire, is flat and waterlogged, a maze of canals and rivers. It is here that practically all of the rice which feeds people of South Vietnam is grown. And whoever controls the Mekong Delta controls the country. In this flooded area, the guerrillas are hard to find and hard to get at; they are, in their own words, like fish in an ocean of peasants.

“They come down the Mekong by sampan and junk, usually at night,” said a U.S. Navy lieutenant. “When they reach the district they wish to manoeuvre in they go into the small canal. Some of these canals are so narrow that when we take our boats in we are brushing the trees on the bank. The V.C. wear civilian clothes, and they look just like a fisherman or farmer, but when you stop their junks and search them you find weapons hidden underneath, and pamphlets, propaganda material. V.C. also use the sampan and junks to attack civilians, this is another thing we are trying to stop. The V.C. in the area generally don’t appear in uniform, but they will join a hard core V.C. unit that’s been trained in North Vietnam.”

From a base in the Mekong Delta World in Action cameras travelled on one of these patrols. The U.S. Navy Lieutenant aboard explained the risks:

“We lose more boats to mines than by any other offensive means the V.C. employ. They will plant a fix mine of a 200 or 300 kilo strength in a narrow canal. This mine will be connected with electrical wires, to a lookout point on the beach. The wires are buried under the canal and run over to the beach into a grove of trees or into a hidden area. The V.C. put a lookout on the canal and when the boat they want passes over the mine they cross wires over very crude batteries.

“Two days ago we finished a salvage operation on an army personnel carrier that was sunk by a mine in a small canal down the river from here. The V.C. had fixed the mine knowing that the personnel carrier had to cross the river at this point.”

This patrol took World in Action up a small river in the Delta. The force consisted of: a monitor, armed with a heavy gun for shelling the V.C.’s on shore; two small gun boats; and two armed troop carriers with Vietnamese soldiers aboard. The patrol was under complete Vietnamese command. A Vietnamese Naval Captain and a Vietnamese Army Lieutenant gave all the orders. The U.S. Navy officer aboard could only make suggestions with no guarantee they would be accepted.

This patrol was the first to sail up the river for ten months. It was considered important to show the flag to the villagers, because large numbers of Viet Cong had been reported along the river banks.

“We usually operate within easy rifle range of the V.C.”, said the U.S. Lieutenant. “They have rifles, they have machine guns and a few Recoilless rifles. When you fight the V.C. they usually pick the time to fight. We have to look for them, and when they ambush us they usually are in a pretty firm position. So far from what I’ve seen, I couldn’t ask for a better group of fighting men than the ones on these boats because when they find an ambush they go right in after it.”

On this day the patrol did find an ambush. Viet Cong terrorists, hidden in the jungle thickness, opened fire on the patrol. The patrol boats fired back. As the gun boats and the guerrillas shot it out, the troop carrier swung downstream … and crashed into the banks. The troops jumped ashore to circle round the guerrillas and cut them off. But by the time they got there the guerrillas, as usual, had vanished.

The captain of one of the gunboats signalled that his men had killed a lot of terrorists, but not a single body was found. The Viet Cong carry their dead with them. Day in, day out, this is the war in South Vietnam.

Day in, day out, too, another war is being fought – a war for the minds and hearts of the people of Vietnam – a war of propaganda. At the 17th Parallel, the line that divides North from South, the two sides match propaganda poster for propaganda poster, word for word, flag for flag, loudspeaker for loudspeaker. Every day, Hanoi Hannah, the sweet-talking Communist Radio announcer, speaks to the peasants of South Vietnam, promising for everyone the better life.

Despite smooth words the casualty list grows. In one week alone in October, 1964, nearly 3,000 Vietnamese from North and South, were killed or wounded. As the war drags on, bitterness and hatred eat into the hearts of the Vietnamese. For this is a civil war – and civil wars are always the most brutal. North and South equally kill, maim or torture with the cold-blooded enthusiasm of brother set against brother. And as usual there are the bystanders – the people who just happen to get in the way. The American G.I. would be less than human if in the midst of all this he did not find himself downhearted. And back in the United States, the anger, the frustration and the humiliation of Vietnam is felt by the American people.

“There are soldiers over there,” said one man who was interviewed, “dying in this war without a name. We’re getting nowhere, we’re just sitting there. They’re not doing anything. There’s no sense in it. And you have to pay money to keep them there, so there’s no sense in it.”

Said another, “I think we should invade Vietnam.”

And a third, “We should just not let our men get knocked off one at a time, we should put our foot down and get out, one way or the other.”

Amid emotions like these, Senator Goldwater found willing listeners in his election campaign.

“Where has weakness brought this world since the end of the Second World War?” he demanded of his supporters at one meeting. “Twelve nations have fallen to Communism. In the past three years alone, Laos has been torn apart. Indonesia has been set afire. And South Vietnam has been soaked with American blood.”

The tough talk sometimes explodes into action. In August 1964 two American destroyers patrolling off North Vietnam were attacked by North Vietnam gun boats. As a reprisal, aircraft of the U.S. 7th Fleet bombed and strafed North Vietnamese naval bases, carrying the war over the border for the first time. China and Russia protested – but back home in America there were those who were heartened by the attack being carried into Communist territory.

Some American politicians, however, do not see this as the way to win in Vietnam. Among them is Democratic Senator William Fulbright who is Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “I think that this tough talk, which is sometimes called brinkmanship, is irrelevant to modem conditions and it is also very dangerous. In the days of simple gunboats and very limited weapons you could engage in this kind of psychological warfare with impunity. If you did make a mistake it was not particularly disastrous in most cases, but today with nuclear war and with the highly sophisticated world we live in, I think this kind of policy is both dangerous and is irrelevant to the problem, in the sense that it isn’t designed in any way to solve the problems or to get at a solution.”

So long as the war in Vietnam continues to go against the Americans, so long will a threat remain to Britain’s interests in South-East Asia. For if Vietnam falls to the Communists the way will be open to Laos and Cambodia, through them to the pro-western nation of Thailand, and through Thailand to Malaysia, the new federation which provides most of our tin and rubber.

The strength and morale of Communism in the Far East got a new boost on 16th October, 1964, when China exploded her first atomic bomb. Today many Americans talk tougher than ever on Vietnam.

But the American soldiers in Vietnam, the weary and the wounded, know better than any civilian that this is not a war that can be won with guns or bombs alone. As the wounded lieutenant said to World in Action: “This is a guerrilla war – a war for people’s minds, and hearts.”

The post The V.C War appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

LIKE a snow-covered volcano that has fumed impatiently for weeks below the surface, World in Action could shake everyone when it erupts for the third time on Tuesday.

The six-week break between the last series and the new was meant to be a holiday for its globe-trotting team of reporters and cameramen.

Instead, World in Action‘s sensitive fingers have been on the pulse of every major international story that has broken since the end of July.

Some holiday! When the Vietnam crisis broke in the evening papers, a World in Action team flew out to Indo-China at midnight the same night.

In the hair-raising fortnight that followed, producer Mike Hodges and cameraman Mike Boultbee were ambushed in the jungle while on a river patrol and almost blown to pieces in their hotel.

I met the two Mikes the day they arrived back in London, sunburned and travel weary from their trip half-way round the world.

Hodges told me of their march through Vietnam to the 17th Parallel with an American jungle patrol.

“We were trudging down a jungle track,” he told me. “when suddenly we were met by a hail of bullets — right from nowhere. All we could see was trees and greenery.”

“Our American friends fired back speedily while Mike Boultbee, risking life and limb — leapt in front of the soldiers to snatch the film we wanted.

“We didn’t give chase. There was no point when you consider it takes three days to cover a quarter-of-a-mile in jungle territory.

“On another trip into the interior with a river patrol boat, we were nearly blown out of the water by a mine.

“Lucky escape number three came when the cinema next door to our hotel was blown up by a home-made bomb. On all the occasions, both soldiers and civilians were lucky to escape death.

“The only time I felt safe was on a helicopter raid on Mekon Delta. At least we were in the air with the guerillas on the ground!

“Apart from that other occasion, I was expecting to be shot or blown to pieces at any moment. It was the most nerve-racking experience I have ever encountered.

“The Americans afforded us every protection, but if you stopped a bullet it was purely at your own risk.”

Next, I spoke to the programme’s executive producer, 40-year-old Alex Valentine, a rugged, good-humoured Scot of Italian extraction.

Alex graduated to the top of this go-anywhere, do-anything outfit after years in top-flight journalism.

“The programme thrives on a get-up-and-go technique,” he told me, “so this has been no holiday for any of us. The team was always on tap — never more than a telephone call away.

“Our lightweight camera gear — carefully weighed and packed — means that we can fly off to any spot on the globe at a moment’s notice.”

What will be in the new series? “It wouldn’t be fair to tell you precisely what our programmes will cover,” said Alex, “in case we disappoint you by throwing them out at the last minute.

“But I can tell you that World in Action cameras have whirled in Indo-China, Malaysia, New York, Chicago and Washington — all during the past four weeks.

“In Vietnam, we played a waiting game in case the situation flared up. We played it the same way in Cyprus and Zanzibar earlier this year and it paid off.

“Our team, which had been in Cyprus for four weeks, snatched some valuable material before they were kicked off the island by the authorities.

“This sort of situation calls for nerve and shrewd handling. Try bull-dozing your way in Cyprus and Vietnam and you’re likely to end up with a bullet in your back.”

I asked Alex for the ingredients of a typical World in Action programme.

He told me: “It should be topical — we did the Beaverbrook story in six hours flat. And it should tell, in an interesting way, a great number of things that are not known to the public.

“In particular, we set out to expose falsehoods and commonly-accepted assumptions that are not true.

“The golden rule on World in Action is to take nothing on trust and always try to find out for yourself.”

The same thing might be said of Alex himself. A favourite yarn spun in the team’s “local” in London’s Soho recalls his dynamic coverage of the Lakonia shipping disaster.

When the story broke, Alex was in Cyprus. He was immediately told to cover the Athens end of the Lakonia story.

Then came a cable urging him to interview the Captain of the rescue ship, the Montcalm, in the Adriatic just off Venice.

There is no recognised flight from Athens to Venice so, like a true newspaperman, he “jumped” a plane from Athens to Zurich; boarded another from Zurich to Rome; sped from Rome to Venice by car; then hired a tug to find the Montcalm.

He boarded the Montcalm, interviewed the Captain and got his report safely away, all within the space of 48 hours.

Spectacular progress, even by World in Action standards!

The post Always in action! appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

“Chambers coffins are just fine
Made of sandalwood and pine
If your loved ones have to go
Call Columbus 690.

If your loved ones pass away
Have them pass the Chambers way
Chambers customers all sing
Death, O Death, where is thy sting?”

That advertisement comes from America where funerals, like nearly everything else, are big business. In the United States, funerals cost an average of £500. In a year this adds up to a total of £750 million – big business indeed.

The unashamed commercialization of death in the United States might shock and even horrify many people in Britain. Here people prefer to think that the British Way of Death is more dignified, more respectful – and less commercial. But there are signs that, like the American Way of Life, the American Way of Death is crossing the Atlantic. In one of its editions, prepared by James Hill and Mike Hodges, World in Action examined the Business of Death.

Not so long ago in Britain the local undertaker was the man who, perhaps, usually drove a taxi or made furniture. He fashioned the coffin himself and polished it. He hired a hearse, chaulfeured the mourners, and so provided a simple funeral at moderate cost.

Today there are still a few such part-time undertakers. But in Britain, as in America, undertaking is becoming increasingly big business. The average spending on a British funeral is £150. The average number of deaths each year for British undertakers to cope with is 600,000. So, at £150 each, the annual gross income of the British funeral industry is £90,000,000.

The cost of £150 per funeral is an estimate generally agreed by the undertakers themselves. Our researchers give this general breakdown of where the money goes:

• £55 is the average undertaker’s bill for providing the coffin and carrying out the funeral arrangements.
• Another £20 goes to the cemetery for the grave.
• Another £40 is usually spent at the monumental mason’s – on the gravestone.
• And the remaining £35 is spent at the florists, by family and friends buying wreaths and cut flowers.
• Cremation generally costs the same as burial when a manorial stone or urn for the ashes is bought.

The paraphernalia of death is clearly expensive. The question is: is it too expensive? Examine the costs more closely to see exactly where the money goes.

First, cremation. Mr. Horace Carter is managing director of a London Crematorium. He explained the costs.

“The average cost of a cremation is nine guineas. This provides for the use of the chapel, attendants, and also provision of an organist to play for the service. There are, of course, other extra charges, one being that the ashes can be dispersed on the Garden of Rest for a fee of two guineas.

Then there is the Book of Remembrance, in which names are recorded under the date of death. The average cost of an inscription is three guineas. In the Chapel of Memory at Golders Green, and so far exclusive to this crematorium, is an alternative type of commemoration vase – a slim long vase to hold a small posy of flowers with its own name plate. For a fee of four guineas a year a vase can be used at will.”

But cremation can and often does involve other and more expensive extras. For example: If relatives wish to keep the ashes, they must buy an urn. These cost anything from nine pounds to ninety guineas. If the urn is kept in crematorium it will cost still more – anything up to £200 to rent a niche for 20 years.

Some relatives like to remember their dead by having, say, a rose tree planted. This costs anything from twenty-five pounds to fifty pounds. And a garden seat memorial can cost another sixty pounds – with a further charge for the nameplate.

Cremation in Britain, introduced in the face of intense public opposition, is still less than 80 years old. The first crematorium – at Woking, in Surrey – was opened in 1885. The idea of cremation was not popularly accepted until after the Second World War. In 1945, fewer than one in ten funerals went to a crematorium. Today in Britain it is four in every ten – and increasing steadily. But the growth is still held in check by certain personal and religious convictions.

Next, examine the costs of burial. The charge for a communal grave can be as little as two pounds. Private graves normally start at sixteen pounds, but can go as high as £100 for, say, a quiet corner with a good view. But it costs time – and more money – to keep graves neat and tidy; and relatives complain that this is often not done by cemetery authorities. This, in fact, is another reason for the declining popularity of cemetery burial.

Twenty years ago, 500 acres of land were taken over every year for graves. Today this has fallen to 300 acres a year – a trend welcomed by local authorities desperately short of building land for houses for the living. It is estimated that all the graveyards in the land would cover an area roughly as big as the City of Birmingham.

Further, gravestones and memorials are expensive. The director of a firm of monumental masons told us about prices:

“The average, I suppose, is about £40 to £50. Of course you can have any price – you can give three or four hundred pounds if you wish. But the general run is about the fifty pound mark. There are still quite a number of people who want carved figures of various sorts and sizes. We do, in fact, what anybody wants us to do.”

So much for the last resting places. What of the funeral itself ? Although the direct costs are generally paid by the dead person’s family aided by a £25 National Insurance Grant, mourners at most funerals also spend large sums at the florists. One florist listed the prices for us:

“A wreath costs from thirty-five shillings to £2 – and that is a small wreath made of small flowers with no spray at all. Then they rise up to about seven or eight guineas according to the choice of flowers. We have made a horse recently of all small flowers, and then we made a Gates of Heaven which had a spray of roses and carnations in it.

“We find that the poorer people spend much more on wreath work because they think that’s their way of giving respect to the person that’s dead. They can spend anything up to thirty and forty pounds. But I always think that they should give it to the people remaining – not to the people that have gone,” the florist concluded.

Beyond doubt, the biggest single expense remains the undertaker’s bill. So look now at how the undertakers of Britain operate; how much they charge, and how they draw up their bills.

There are some 4,300 undertaking firms, large and small, in the country today. Most of them belong to their own trade association, the National Association of Funeral Directors. Every year the N.A.F.D. holds a get-together. In 1963 it was at the Hotel Majestic in Harrogate. It publishes a handbook – giving vital information about such things as cemeteries, coroners, hospitals and institutions, public mortuaries, and Registrars of Deaths. The Association also has its monthly trade magazine, full of items of peculiar interest to undertakers. Further, the Association trains undertakers and holds examinations and tests. For instance, customer relations are regarded as a highly important part of the undertaking business. So the Association takes particular care to teach its members how to deal with relatives. World in Action attended one of these training sessions.

The Association is deeply concerned with raising the status of the British undertaker to that of funeral director. The President of the National Association of Funeral Directors is Mr. Stanley Gilman.

“Very many years ago,” he said, “the undertaker was almost invariably a tradesman employed in some other business and he could do little more than perhaps just provide the coffin and arrange for its conveyance to the cemetery or churchyard. The modern funeral director assumes the whole responsibility for the funeral service. He will make arrangements with the church, the cemetery, press notices and the hundred and one other things that the family requires.”

Despite their efforts to create a new image, undertakers have always had their critics. In 1938 Sir Arnold Wilson, M.P., and Professor Herman Levy had this to say in their book Burial Reform and Funeral Costs:

“The manufacturer or seller is in a far stronger position than in any other trade. The buyer does not and cannot know the true value of what he buys. He can seldom compare prices.” They went on to say, “The instinct of the masses for a ‘respectable’ funeral is pampered to by the industry. Those who can least afford to spend money in this way are encouraged to do so. There is little evidence of profiteering, but none of any attempt to reduce expenditure.”

Today, 25 years after those words were written, World in Action found that there is still little attempt to reduce spending.

Obviously the next-of-kin, grief-stricken and distressed, want the best funeral possible. Said one relative, asked by World in Action how much a recent funeral in the family had cost.

“I suppose it was somewhere about £130 to £140 – that was with the stone and the surround, and the ground we had to pay for, and the funeral expenses. But the undertaker done us well.”

Said another, “Well, my father got this stone from Italy, you see; he ordered it from Kensal Rise and it came from Italy. It cost £300, the headstone and border. And then the statue of St. Patrick came from Italy – that cost £78; and then under the wreath is a holy bible costing £78.”

A third epitomized the common attitude, “We could only ask the undertakers for the best they could give us. We said ‘The money’s no object, it’s the last thing we can do for her’ – so we said ‘Give her the best.’”

And a fourth summed it up for the majority of those bereaved, “I mean, when you love them and that, you just want them to have the best of everything.”

Clearly, money is often of secondary importance to relatives at the time of a funeral. Canon Thomas Fitzgerald works in a poor London parish. We asked him if undertakers do, in fact, encourage over-spending.

“To some extent they have to,” he replied, “by which I mean that many of them are the employees of big combines and they get commission on these extras. If, for example, you put a rug under the coffin in the church – well, that’s an extra. The widow says ‘I think I’d like my poor husband to have a carpet under his corpse’ – well, that’s 30/-, at any rate it used to be; it’s probably gone up now. But those and many other accessories – a walnut coffin rather than an oak coffin, bound with brass or aluminium as the case may be; I don’t see how you can avoid a good salesman from trying to persuade people to have them, because he gets commission on it all – it’s part of his livelihood.”

But Mr. Lawrence Ashton, head of a chain of undertakers, sees it differently:

“Well, experience tells me that people are so widely different that I have to decide what particular class of funeral, what particular charge to make to them, and I have the greatest difficulty in doing so. Consequently never would I arrange any form of funeral service, and never do I, without finally mentioning an approximate cost of the entire service before they leave my office, or before I have finished the interview. I make the going and they don’t.”

Can all undertakers be trusted to make the going? Some people seem to think not. In 1944 Dr. Edith Summerskill, M.P., asked for government control of funeral charges because families of air-raid victims were, she said, being overcharged. In 1947 Mr. Garry Allighan, M.P., demanded that the whole undertaking business should be taken away from private concerns and nationalized. In 1949 the Labour Government agreed with the National Association of Funeral Directors that a simple, minimum-priced funeral – £20 was the cost at the time – must be available to everyone. But this agreement lasted only four years, for in 1953, after repeated petitions by the undertakers, the fixed minimum charge was scrapped. The undertakers maintain, however, that despite the ending of the agreement, cheap funerals are still available. Their President Stanley Gilman, explained:

“Our Association plays no part in price-fixing but our members do voluntarily agree to provide a basic simple funeral service for not more than £35. I must add, of course, that this amount can’t include grave fees and other amounts that the funeral director actually pays out on behalf of the family.”

The minimum £35 funeral is simple. It is also completely adequate. It includes a straightforward but dignified elm coffin, generally with brass handles and fittings, a hearse, four bearers, and one car to take the mourners to the cemetery and back home again. It also includes the undertaker’s services in preparing the body for the funeral and arranging all details. More elaborate coffins obviously cost more. And it seems that the cost of services goes up hand-in-hand with the price of coffins.

Few people ever buy the cheapest funeral. Most are even unaware that the £35 one exists. On average people spend more than twice as much. And the undertakers fight fiercely among themselves for this money. Already there are indications that the American pattern of big funeral business has crossed the Atlantic. Consider these two examples of the finance of the British undertaking world:

The London Necropolis Company, recently taken over by the massive Alliance Property Company, owns Brookwood Cemetery covering 500 acres of Surrey. Brookwood’s net profit in 1962 was £18,309. But the Company’s accounts also show a further £36,060 received in dividends from seven subsidiary companies also in the funeral business. Some of these dividends were contributed by Frederick Paine & Company, an undertaking firm with fifteen branches. Their net profit in 1962 was £36,617.

Next, the case of Golders Green Crematorium, one of the best known in the country. Together with the Woking Crematorium it was taken over in 1937. The buyers: a tobacco company. Five years later the tobacco company sold its holding to the Cremation Society. That year the cremation profits were £36,412.

The American Way of Death is coming to Britain in another form – in the trappings and equipment used for funerals. American undertakers complain that “England is fifty years behind us”, and they want radical changes in the British Way of Death. An official of the American National Selected Morticians, one of the big undertakers’ associations, even made this suggestion: “I think we should send some missionaries over there – we would do them a world of good.”

The main aims of these American undertaking ‘missionaries’ would be to encourage us to use more embalming; to use caskets instead of coffins: Chapels of Rest instead of having the body lying at home – all highly profitable sidelines. Mr. Colin Cocks, of one London undertaking firm, agrees with his American colleagues.

“We are trying to break away from the old-fashioned idea of the gloomy undertakers.” he said. “In fact this firm once had as its telegraphic address, ‘Gloomy, London’. We are trying to break away from this; indeed, we have broken away from it. The emphasis is more on service to the relatives and those who need help at this particular time, which has not been given by many firms in the past, and in effect isn’t being given today.

“Our service is typified by the fact that we have light, cheerful, bright premises always supplied with fresh flowers. Relatives coming here can have coffee in the morning if they like. Our bearers are dressed in normal dark grey suits – we don’t use mourning coats, top hats and high wing collars any longer – and generally the whole atmosphere is one of a business-like presentation. We also have a white ambulance, which goes to hospitals or nursing homes. This we feel is a lot less distressing to to relatives or passers-by, or observers from windows of the particular premises.

“We do, of course, offer a conventional coffin, but we would sooner use the casket shape. It has, we think, a nicer line and it is again less harrowing to look at as against the shoulder tapering to the foot. The caskets are purchased in America; we buy them in America and have them shipped over; they are really for export only. They are hermetically sealed, with an interior-sprung mattress.”

Mr. Cocks also showed a casket of Bermudan mahogany with a metal liner, produced in England. “It has a glass lid, full length glass lid inside, with hermetic sealing once again, and is used for vaults in this country. Another facet of the service that we offer,” he went on, “is a private chapel with fresh flowers on the altar, and candlesticks. We find that many people today prefer to use this method of having the deceased available to be seen at any time of the day or night, as against having them retained in their own homes. I must, of course, add that embalming is a normal part of our service.”

Indeed embalming is becoming more and more popular as part of the British Way of Death. An expert embalmer talked about his job to World in Action.

“In this country,” he said, “embalming entails quite a simple injection of preserving and disinfecting fluid. The features are composed and set to a restful condition. Cosmetics are not used unless they are requested by the relatives – apart from a little powder to take the shine from the features, perhaps. The relatives should be left with a pleasant memory for the rest of their lives, and not an unpleasant one.”

It is clear that British undertakers will stress more and more their service to the living as well as to the dead. It is clear too, they are likely to find an increasing number customers who believe that even in death it is important to keep up with the Joneses.

The last word, as always, was with the undertaker.

“No one,” said Stanley Gilman of the N.A.F.D., “would expect a funeral director to say that he found his work enjoyable; but nevertheless it can be, and is, immensely satisfying.”

The post Mourning Business appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.

On Easter Saturday, 28th March, 1964, a new sound spread over East Anglia and south-east England; or rather, it was not so much a new sound as a trad sound from a new place. On Easter Saturday, Radio Caroline, the first of Britain’s radio ships, broadcast its first programme of pop music. This broadcast was like a bolt from the blue-in more senses than one! The launching of Caroline had been a well-kept secret.

But there was another surprise to come: a second pirate ship with a different group of backers was nearing completion. This was Radio Atlanta.

At 6 o’clock on the morning of Tuesday, 12th May, Atlanta went on the air. At 10.05 that night, its usual transmission time, World in Action presented a report on these new type pirates showing who had got them on the air, and who was trying to get them off it.

Among those who welcomed Radio Caroline and Radio Atlanta – which later joined forces to become Caroline North and Caroline South – were some pop music publishers who saw in the ships an opportunity to get more of their music played on the air. One of these publishers explained to World in Action, “At the present time,” (this was before the pirate ships had started to operate) “at the present time there are only two outlets in sound broadcasting into England. One, of course, is the BBC and the other is Luxembourg. Luxembourg is held by all of the major record companies. A third and alternative outlet such as a radio ship arrives on the scene; it can be appreciated how very undesirable this could be from the record companies’ point of view because they cannot control it.”

The pirate ships are only one aspect of a business that is big and booming – so big that in 1963 the pop business took £22 million in record sales alone. Six months after Radio Caroline’s first broadcast, on the night of the Beatles’ return from one of their American tours. World in Action went back to the pop business to take a look at another side of it – the flip side. This report, like the earlier one on the pirates, was prepared by Mike Hodges.

Symbolically, this edition of World in Action opened with a shot of a goldfish. “With luck and skilful judgement,” said the narrator, “this fish will sell a million pop records.” The fish belongs to Roy Tempest, a trader in Britain’s fastest growing industry – pop groups.

Roy Tempest speaks lovingly of his fish. “I’ve got a tropical fish tank with my Top Twenty fish in. I call them my Top Twenty fish because they represent my Top Twenty rock ’n’ roll groups. Now these fish, the first one of them to enter the Hit Parade … what I will do? I will isolate the fish in a little bowl and I will give him all the tit-bits, and naturally this will make all the other nineteen fish rather envious and they’ll be hopping mad and hoping like hell to get into the Hit Parade.”

The pop business as the customers see it is one thing. The groups and the fans see pops as one long swinging ring-a-ding rave-up, a ball, a good time. But the agents, the managers and all the other promoters see it differently. To them it is business and the pop groups are the human merchandise.

It all began with the Beatles. Thousands of British teenagers bought guitars and drum kits on the never-never. They let their hair down over their eyebrows and the group stampede was on. But at the same time another, and a quieter rush started. The operators moved in too.

Eddie Rogers, author of a book about Tin Pan Alley, and an old hand in the pop business told World in Action, “Everywhere you go there is a group and what’s more important, every group has a manager – oh, and they’ve all got the greatest group in the world. Every group they manage is the greatest discovery since penicillin. Since the advent of the Beatles everybody thinks they can get on the bandwagon.”

In the pop business they talk about the flip side – that’s the tune on the other side of a hit record – the tune not usually played. But the whole pop business has its own flip side – the side not usually talked about.

A typical group, recently turned professional, is the Four Plus One. Keith is the group’s vocalist – he’s nineteen. Junior, who plays lead guitar, is sixteen, and used to be a sheet metal worker. Boots, the bass guitarist, is nineteen. Ken, the drummer is seventeen and gave up a place at college to play with the group.

When these boys first got together a youth club worker moved in on them quickly, waving a contract. We looked carefully at this and found:

It tied the boys up for the next five years.

It could tie them up for another five years after that.

For all of these ten years the manager would have complete control.

In all this time, no matter how much they earned, the manager would take 20 per cent, a fifth, of all the money.

The manager would also control all the advertising and publicity – but the group would pay the bills.

The boys would also have to pay a 10 per cent agent’s fee for every booking, so that, in all, they stood to pay out at least ten shillings of every pound they earned.

Luckily the Four Plus One read every clause and threw the contract out, and signed up with another agent. These four boys form one of the 10,000 beat groups fighting to get to the top. It’s a struggle, and a hard one at that.

Said Ken, “We are working about seven nights a week now, earning about £30 to £40 each. That’s not much though, when you consider we are doing concerts every night, also rehearsals all day.”

Boots agreed that it wasn’t all that much. “I think it’s very expensive starting a group,” he said. “I’ve got about £300-worth of gear. Keith’s got £300-worth, Ken’s got £200-worth. But it’s the HP as well, you know – it drags you down a bit when you have to pay out a lot every week.”

To Junior it was well worth it. His ambitions were clear: “Wanna be known when I walk down the street, sorta thing, instead of just working as anybody else – regular hours. Get up when I want, finish when we’re able to, have something to show for it instead of nothing at the end of the week, you know. It’s better all round and you enjoy yourself when you’re on stage – you have a big rave-up and everything, you know. It’s a right giggle.”

Keith agreed. “We have a ball on stage, one of the main things. We all sort of rave about and everything and the kids like it and everybody enjoys themselves, you know, and it’s great, you know – great life.”

All of today’s up-and-comers depend heavily on their promoters. And the promoters are always enthusiastic about their latest finds. Eddie Cox is one agent who does not restrain himself in describing the fine points of a young man named Rhett Stoller.

“Rhett Stoller,” said Cox. “Yes, I think you’ll be hearing about Rhett Stoller one of these days as I think he’s the greatest – what shall I say – multi-guitarist in Europe, if not the world. He’s already done quite a number of recordings which have absolutely astounded electronic engineers who say he can’t do more than nine, ten, eleven or twelve dubbings on one tape, but he’s already recorded twenty-two guitars on one tape and it’s a noise that sounds like a symphony.”

Any one of today’s newcomers might make the Top Twenty by next month. But the chances are that when they get there they will find the middle-men have moved in ahead of them. Roy Tempest is one of the new-style pop impresarios: a man who backs the outsiders. He described how he does it:

“We look through the charts, we buy the new records of the new releases of the groups which are not signed with our agents, and if we like the record – if we think they’ve got a fair chance of going into the Hit Parade, then we buy them for ballroom dates from their agents, and if they do hit the charts in a big way, then we’re on a very good profit.”

Having bought a group when they were unknown and cheap. Tempest waits till they become successful and expensive. Then he moves in. World in Action listened to Tempest on the phone to a ballroom manager:

“I don’t know if you’ve seen these guys perform, but they go over like there’s no tomorrow. Now I’ve got a Thursday for you, Peter. You know what they’re going out for, don’t you. They’re asking now £200. Well, now. I’ll tell you what I’ll do – they’ve got a date, if you’re interested. It’s in November – I’ll give you the date, Peter – Thursday, 19th November. The only Thursday they’ve got left. I can let you have it for £120. That is an absolutely unbelievable price, because they’re number five in the charts next week. I’ll be honest with you – I’ve had about seven offers, quite seriously, but as I offered them to you in the first place… At that price Peter, I’m practically giving it away to you.”

Peter accepted the present.

“That’s fine, yes. Fine – I’ll put it in the book,” said Tempest. “You’ll ruin me, Peter; my life, you will.”

Roy Tempest gauges the value of his stars by their place in the record charts. Indeed the success or failure of any pop hope lies in the record shops. A star is as big as the sales of his last disc. Each week the musical papers publish a guide to these sales known as the Charts. These are the barometer of success – the Stock Exchange list of the pop world. They are all compiled from weekly lists supplied by record shops selected by each of the musical papers.

But many people in the business doubt the reliability of the charts. Walter Beaver, a Mersey-side record dealer is one of them:

“For instance, a little while ago the record by the Animals called ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ was first published. Immediately it shot into the charts but into the chart compiled by the Musical Express it came in at number ten. The Melody Maker showed it at number nineteen, and the Record Retailer at number thirty-one – all of these, mark you, on the same day and all of these are national charts. Now who is correct? I don’t know, but two, possibly all three of these charts, must be hopelessly inaccurate.

“A dealer can be over-enthusiastic in his ordering,” Walter Beaver continued, “and there’s no surer way of getting rid of stock than by putting the record in question into the dealer’s return to the charts and hoping that it will climb. Believe me, this can be very successful. I think the simplest reason for these discrepancies is merely the fact that in most record shops the girl is simply asked to send her returns to the charts and this she does by writing down fifty record titles as fast as she possibly can.”

But Jack Hutton, editor of the Melody Maker, defends the chart published by his paper.

“This is the cheapest and quickest way that we can think of,” he said. “On compiling such a list you could spend a fortune. I don’t honestly think there is a fairer reflection of record sales in the country; but it must be remembered that this can be only a guide to record sales and through that a guide to the popularity of different artists and groups. We can only reflect the trend of sales in the country as far as we can see them.”

The charts are also closely watched by a band of men known in the business as song pluggers. It is their job to get records played on radio and television so that they become popular. Eddie Rogers is a professional song-plugger who distrusts the charts:

“I remember many years ago I was associated with a number. Four musical papers gave this a number one in their charts. The fifth musical paper didn’t even show it anywhere in the Top Twenty, so I phoned the man that compiled the charts in that paper and I said ‘Do me a favour, I mean every paper’s given it number one – give me a number thirteen or something.’ And he said ‘Why should I? You don’t advertise with us.’”

The song-pluggers today have one powerful target – the men who put the music on the air. Eddie Rogers remembers how it used to work:

“For instance, I have been in the studio and on a live broadcast and made signs at the artist on the stage about how much 1 was going to pay him if he did one more chorus of my song. But even if I paid him as much as forty quid, which I have paid for one chorus of a song, it wasn’t money thrown away because the next day I would sell 40,000 copies of sheet music.”

Today it isn’t sheet music that matters – it’s the records themselves.

The money spent on records in Britain explains why everyone in the pop business keeps a jealous ear on what is being played. In 1950, British record sales totalled a mere £3½ million. By 1960 this figure had risen to £15 million. In 1963 sales shot even higher – to £21¾ millions – nearly seven times up on the 1950 figure, and in 1964 it was higher still.

Two big companies alone have cornered four-fifths of this money. The smaller of these, which sells nearly four of every ten records in Britain is Decca under such labels as: Warner Brothers, R.C.A. Victor, Coral, London, Vocalion, Brunswick.

But easily the biggest is Electric and Musical Industries – E.M.I. – which sells just under half of all the records. E.M.I.’s labels include: Parlophone, H.M.V., Capitol, United Artists, Columbia, M.G.M.

E.M.I. is the world’s largest record company. Its chairman, Sir Joseph Lockwood, keeps a realistic eye on the competition.

“Well, it’s a free-for-all,” he told World in Action. “The competition is absolutely terrific and anyone who thinks this is an easy business should come and have a try. People who rush in knowing very little about the business can lose substantial sums of money very quickly. Last year (1963), for instance, in Britain there were 2,133 pop records produced. Of these only 80 got into the Top Ten. So that I should think about 1,700 of those records that were issued last year lost money.”

One man who tried to compete with the giants like Sir Joseph was Joe Meek, songwriter and creator of the hit record ‘Telstar’, one of the biggest pop sellers of all time. He started up his own company.

“This was a complete unit to produce and press the records,” he explained, “and the third record turned out to be a hit. It was ‘Angela Jones’ by Michael Cox. But this brought on a lot of difficulties because the major record companies decided that they didn’t want small operators and so they did their best to squash us out of the shops.”

Joe Meek now produces recording tapes only, leaving the giant record companies to make and distribute his records.

The middlemen of pop, each in his own way, keep on making money in a shifting market. Even the men who write the tune on the flip side do all right because the flip side earns exactly the same amount in royalties as the main side. Whenever the main side is played the flip side automatically earns a royalty too. But the stars themselves, the poods in thi smarket, fade – and then what happens to them?

Only three long years ago there were two young men who were making money for themselves and for lots of other people besides. One of them was Terry Dene, born Williams, once hailed as Britain’s Elvis Presley. He spoke to us as he walked, 24 years old and alone, among the empty dreams of Denmark Street in London – in Tin Pan Alley itself:

“I went to the top very, very quickly – in fact I think far too quickly. I was 18 years old and at the top, earning roughly £150 a week. Then, everything crashed. My stardom disappeared almost overnight. I went to various doctors and people for advice – I even spoke to some people in the business – but it’s very, very difficult sometimes to explain some things inside you that seem to go wrong. 1 tried desperately to get back on my feet again, but every time I made the attempt something seemed to go wrong again. It seemed to be a vicious circle.”

In 1960 – which is all of five years ago – Ricky Valance sang a song called ‘Tell Laura I Love Her’. The record sold a quarter of a million copies and so won a silver disc. Today Ricky Valance can walk along the crowded promenade at Bridlington in Yorkshire and nobody turns a head.

In a seafront cafe Ricky, aged 25, looked back on the young Ricky, aged 21:

“As one can imagine, at this particular time I made quite a lot of money from ‘Tell Laura’ and the records; but I was an idiot at the time because I felt that there was plenty more where this came from. Unfortunately this was my big mistake, and other people’s too. But, of course, by that time it was just vanished. Anyway, after that I went away from London and started trying to sell myself. I had a lot of heartbreak and worry and in the end I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“But anyway,” he concluded more hopefully, “the thing is at this particular moment I would like to say that I have learned from my mistakes – I really have learned and I feel that given another chance – I really feel this after studying it from quite a wide angle – that if I could just get another chance again, I could really make it again.”

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