The Embassy in Trafalgar Square in 1985. It was still flying the orange, white and blue stripes with British, Orange Free State and South African Republic insets – the apartheid flag. Why were we there? As members of the Federation of Conservative Students (disbanded in 1986) notorious libertarian faction – the self-dubbed ‘Provisional wing’ of the Conservative Party – we were targets for propaganda from various regimes. We attracted attention and we were potentially the leaders of the future and potential influencers on public discourse, so causes with a PR problem wanted our support. The list of unpopular causes supported included the Nicaraguan Contras (remember Colonel Oliver North, “American Hero”?), the UNITA rebels in Angola, President Reagan’s invasion of Grenada and, notoriously, the white supremacist government in South Africa. All the others were extensions of the freedom loving principles of the new Right. The latter was an outlier. And the man responsible was a white Rhodesian malcontent called Hoile.
Hoile had a penchant for winding up an audience (especially one hostile to him) and a brawl. In student union meetings he could always get the desired howls of anger from ‘Trots’ by referring to black students as “Third world radicals” and was occasionally rewarded with being physically attacked. He was portly – though physically handy due to military training in the Rhodesian military – and a white Matabele. He delighted in telling us tales from his exploits in the army (the Selous Scouts?), and a little chuckle, half-suppressed, sounded from his throat at the memories.
Hoile was a notorious figure on campus. An atmosphere of conspiracy hung around him like a shroud. He was somewhat older than us, a slight accent, quietly spoken. Vaguely threatening. Always looking furtive and as if he were up to no good. He was the eminence grise of our coterie of politicos. He befriended us. We went along with it – the mystique was naughty, but, in truth, it was more sinister than naughty. I am sure the invitation to the South African Embassy came via him.
The reception was in the basement of the Embassy. We were shown a propagandised film about how jolly life in the modern RSA was for coloured families – I remember a black man rowing over a lake – and then there was a speech by the Ambassador, welcoming “friends”. We found it blatant and sickening. We were behind a pillar. We began heckling. Quickly, we were ushered out by a couple of large Afrikaans. There was a tussle on the lion skin rug in the entrance hallway and then we were ejected out in to Trafalgar Square. Right into the 24 hour picket that stood vigil for the long imprisoned Mandela. They presumed we were lickspittle whites supporting the regime. I think we were derided and maybe spat upon. Attacked twice in one night by members of opposing sides. Ironic.
Politics at university was a game. It was fun playing and it gave you a small taste of danger being a conservative in a left wing campus. I was attacked several times – once singing anti-IRA songs in the Republican Cholo Bar, my car was vandalised driving through an anti-Keith Joseph picket line and I escaped a bottling at a party due to the vigilance of my guardian angel, an old fashioned labour politico. I was part of the so called “riot” at the FCS Annual conference at Loughborough University in 1985 (total bill for damage, £20), last seen shouting “kill the wets” – hence the T-shirt in the picture above. It was heady. We believed we were the shock troops of Thatcherism and we felt the excitement of being idealogues and pure of faith.
We were constantly under threat of being ‘no platformed’. We railed against the Greenham Women; we heckled visiting socialist politicians; we had Enoch Powell to speak under great secrecy, talking about, well, the importance of secrets. We smuggled in a stripper who ate fire in the Student’s Union, in blatant disregard of the union’s non-sexist – and fire – policy. We made inflammatory speeches which we knew would rile the largely left wing audience. It was all dressed up as politics but we were out to provoke and antagonise as much as espouse a coherent philosophy.
We invited Tim Page, the brilliant hippy photographer immortalised in the film Apocalypse Now (played by Dennis Hopper), to come and stay with us (he camped on my floor, which was a thrill). We were entranced by anything to do with renegade military and Colonel Kurtz’s commitment chimed with our ideologically twisted vision of the world. We revelled in the notoriety.
It was just a game.
Page had lived through the Vietnam conflict, had had the back of his skull blown off when he stepped on a landmine. The stripper was a woman just trying to earn a living. When we escorted Enoch Powell to say goodbye after the dinner, we were sobered by him taking our a mirror on a telescopic rod to inspect for possible bombs under his car – he was then a sitting MP as an Ulster Unionist for South Down and the IRA was still on active service. He lived with the very real threat of being assassinated. All these people paid consequences for their convictions. They weren’t playing a game. Neither was Mandela or the Apartheid regime. And neither was Hoile.
Years later, when I was in Cape town on business, I made the pilgrimage to Robben Island to visit the prison where Nelson Mandela was detained so brutally during his long walk to freedom. I mouthed my personal apologies to his image on the wall as I waited to embark on the boat that would take us over the icy cold water to the place of his incarceration and where he evidently exhibited such nobility in his conduct despite atrocious provocation. I felt truly humbled by his example and ashamed of some of our antics and the protestations that we unthinkingly articulated in our FCS zeal. When you come face to face with history, it is a sickening feeling to realise you were on the wrong side of it. History is not a plaything. It is too important to trifle with and too deadly to disown.