THE STATUE WHITEWASH

WHEN I WAS ABOUT 18 YEARS OLD

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At midnight on 14th March 1967, a group of college students from the Scarborough Technical College Student's Union whitewashed the Queen Victoria Statue in the Town Hall gardens at Scarborough (UK). This included myself, John Ellard, Jonathan Snow (the current Channel 4 Newsreader), Colin Steel and a few others I can't quite remember. That's me up the statue, above!

As representatives of the Students Union, we had previously applied for permission to collect money for the charity SHELTER on the streets of Scarborough, as part of the Scarborough Technical Colleges' FIRST-EVER Rag Day. The application was declined.

Jonathan Snow led an appeal against the decision by taking a delegation to see the Town Clerk Mr Horsefall Turner. (Where does one get a name like that?) He flatly refused permission (and frankly was quite rude about it) based upon the fact that there were already six street charity collection days in Scarborough, and he didn't want to see any more. "HE didn't want to see any more." As Jonathan and the delegation stood there, they could see that the statue of Queen Victoria was directly outside the Town Clerk's window, and henceforward a quick plan was hatched.

The plan was (as part of the College Rag Week) to whitewash the statue at midnight THAT NIGHT, so we speedily approached Councillor Peter Jaconelli (who later became Mayor of Scarborough) for his support, because we knew he supported our inaugral Rag day. He agreed to contact the Press and have a photographer there at midnight. (See photo above) We all unanimously agreed that using paint would be far too vandalistic, and that whitewash would be fairly easy to remove and hence the preferred method.)

And so it happened. We all gathered in the backyard of my house at 7 Princess Terrace at around 11am, and we had two cars at our disposal sitting out in Princess Street. We mixed up the whitewash, and used nylon stockings over our heads to disguise our faces, knowing that the press would be there. One car was to drop off the team in St Nicholas Street near the statue, with the buckets of whitewash and ladders, (including myself) whilst another car waited on the seafront to pick everyone up when the dastardly deed was done. This meant that once the statue was whitewashed, the team had to swiftly run (more like a charge really) through St Nicholas Gardens down to the seafront, and get picked up and make our escape. It was like clockwork! AND IT WORKED PERFECTLY!

Next day, the Student's Union team was hauled in front of the CID Chief Inspector on the top floor of the Police Station in Northway - AND WE FREELY ADMITTED that the whitewashing was carried out by the Students Union - but they wanted names, and names were something we were not prepared to divulge, even though everyone present at that meeting had been in on the whitewashing. I distintly remember the Chief Inspector shouting: "If it takes me 30 years, I'm gonna find out who did this!" Well, the 30 years are well gone, and he never did find out the names of those present, and if he had, might have been surprised that one of them (Jonathan Snow) was the son of the Bishop of Whitby, and went on to become one of the biggest names in British television.

Just for the record, many of the team who did the first whitewash went out the very next night, and did it again, after they had cleaned it. The second night didn't make the newspapers but boy, did it make the Chief Inspector angry, and he sent policemen out to visit the houses of student Union members, taking with them all the photos taken on the night by the press photographer.