J W Booth AUTOBIOGRAPHY c16

Chapter l6. On the Scrapheap.
After the dust had settled, so to speak, my reactions to retirement were depressingly commonplace. I felt a sense of being dumped before I was really worn out and a 1oss of status. I don’t think that had anything to do with what that status
had been and I am sure retired Prime Ministers and labourers must feel the same. One day you have a niche and a function to perform in it and the next day you haven't.
After eight years of retirement I still find myself thinking I’ll do that over the weekend', forgetting that my weekends are now seven days long. Not that time hangs heavy on my hands. Any lack of purpose is more than counterpointed by the way time starts galloping ahead as you gat older. It’s almost weird the way a weekly programme seems to come round every other day.
Men who retire at 60 do not get the state pension until they are 70 at which age they also get such perks as bus-passes and cheaper haircuts. My Civil service pension is not quite the index-linked fortune that the Daily Express thinks it is, but it is quite adequate. Nevertheless the first five years were the least affluent and it was partly to bridge this gap, and partly to ease me into complete idleness, that I did a couple of spells with the monopolies commission in 1983 and 1984.
I was involved in two takeover cases and the work bore some resemblance to my old job. Whereas in VAT we had to take a quick look at the affairs of many traders, the commission probed more deeply into a couple at a time.
The Civil Service has some advantages over the private sector and vice versa and I had always suspected that quangos had the best of both worlds. This was certainly true of the Commission. My immediate boss was an Assistant Secretary of 65, who had
no plans to retire and no one was pressing him to do so. The Principal who signed me on worked three days a week and was pushing 70.
When we were out of town on official business, first class travel and four-star hotels were booked for us and other expenses were promptly refunded without question. The Accountant and Control1er-General of the Customs and excise would have
had a fit.
My group in 1983 was headed by the Chairman of the Commission himself, who was a Q.C. and one of the nicest men I ever met, and I enjoyed every minute of that spell. Despite my distrust of lawyers as a class, I always seen to get on well with any
individua1 ones that I meet. It’s very confusing.
In 1984, it was a less interesting case and the group was Chaired by a retired under Secretary who reminded me of Frankie Frost. He seemed to concentrate on hacking drafts and had a thing about commas. I thought at first that this was just the amiable eccentricity of a top man but later concluded that he homed in on trivia because that was what he was good at. He was, I think, a typical Civil Servant, and though he might have taken that as a compliment, a Customs officer so described would thinkit a deadly insult.
Since 1984, we have continued to live in Glasgow and contemplate a move into England, with our son established in Derby and daughter in Bristol, each with two children, we clearly ought to move south, but where to? It could be invidious to plump for either Derby or Bristol, which might be resented by the more distant family, or worse still, by the one we were closer to.
A strategic halfway house would mean a fresh start in a new place where we had no contacts and not much scope for making any at our time of life. English house prices are horrendous and we both dread the upheaval of the actual move, but these
factors are mere excuses. We "just can't make up our minds.
Meanwhile I have leisure to look back and ruminate about the great might have-been.
Up to 1933 when I went to Holbrook everything was decided for me and any childish ideas I might have had did not matter. I had gone to Swanley quite happily, but I soon realised how much it had cost Mum to agree to it. As Dad was a sailor until
l926 and died in l929 she had had little enough time with him and her financial situation must have been desperate indeed when she let me go. I can still remember times when she was humiliated for the lack of a shilling or two.
After we moved to London, she tried to visit Dad's grave at Wickham each year and, although she was a martyr to travel-sickness on the road, she always went by coach, because the train was dearer. God knows what agonies of shame and embarrassment it cost her. It is no wonder that the need for financial security was burned into my consciousness fromchildhood.
This was what induced me to opt out of the navy and into the Civil Service. I had to leave school at the end of 1937 before the examination in 1938, my boats were burnt and if I failed I was someone's office boy. When I passed, others were green with envy. It was not that 32/6 a week; as a clerical officer was that much more than 25/- as a junior costing clerk. It was because, short of something downright criminal, I was sure of 32/6 or more until I was 60, whereas they could he sacked at a week's notice. It must be hard for the children of the Welfare State to understand how much difference that made. Neither I nor anyone dependent on me would ever suffer as my mother had done.
From 1938 until I was demobbed at the end of 1945 my fate was again in the hands of others, but then I had a choice to make, though I didn't realise it at the time. The country did not do much for its returning heroes, but together with campaign
medals, demob suits and gratuities of a few pounds, it did give them the right to re-claim their pre-war jobs. It never occurred to me not to take this up.
Ex-service men had certain special opportunities to go to universities and if I had been less security-minded I could have checked on my own position, if I had, I might have got a fair degree and even aspired to re-enter the Civil Service in the Administrative Grade. I might have been a Principal at about 30, instead or 48, and risen higher thereafter, but I doubt if I would have enjoyed it as much as I did my career in the Customs. In retrospect, I would dearly like to have had a crack at a degree and more especially to have experienced several years of university life, and found out whether I really could hold my own at that intellectual, level. I believe Holbrook boys now regularly stay there till they are l8 and go on to university but in my day I think it would have been a first, even if the degree wasn’t.
If I had foreseen the timing of the war, I should probably have gone into the Navy in 1937, but I don't now think that I should have been right to do so. A few of my contemporaries at Holbrook actually reached commissioned rank, no doubt helped by wartime expansion and casualties, but there is no reason to think that I should have done so. Quite a few of them; were killed too. Had I survived, I should still have faced the bleak prospect of discharge at 40. So I think that at 14 years of age, I was right. I am not so sure about opting for my old job back in 1946. I was only 24 and single so perhaps I should have taken a more adventurous line. I'm sorry I didn't.
From then on my objective was never in doubt. Once launched in the customs I felt bound to seek to advance as far as I could, The only occasion when I failed to give it my best shot was at the interview for promotion to Assistant Collector in 1967 but I have already agonised enough about that.
I have now largely lost touch with the Customs and Excise but I am sure that they easily filled my place and my departure never left a ripple. This does not bother me as I never thought I, or anyone else, was irreplaceable let alone immortal. The fact that many duties, to which I and thousands like me, devoted years of our lives, are now not being done at all, is a more sobering thought. I do not refer to taxes such as Entertainment duty, for example, which have long since been abolished. Spirit
duty pours in as before without any of the incessant checking of casks which we all thought so important, we were really like the bookie that lost thousands of pounds every week but couldn't give it up because it was his living. Revenue controls, useful or not were our 1iving.
Taking a last look back, I am amazed how often things turned out quite differently from my hopes and expectations. Not necessarily worse, but different. At school I naturally hoped to become a PO boy. When I had given up hope I became one in my last term and was put in charge of a ‘half', but never rated chief, probably because I wasn’t much good at it.
Having always accepted that the Navy was my destiny, I opted out of it. Then the war shoved me back towards it but even then I missed the Navy proper and finished up serving briefly in dozens of merchant ships and seldom seeing a real fighting warship
In the Customs I held my pre-determined course pretty well until I decided to take a chance on Glasgow, calculating that I should be able to get back to Newcastle in a year or two, and possibly even make collector there. In fact, I remained in Glasgow for the last eight years of my service. I have now been retired for eight years, I am still in Glasgow and I never made collector in Newcastle or anywhere else. If I had got through the first interview and failed to make Collector, I could have considered myself unlucky. Having taken three bites at it I was lucky to make deputy. Deputies get only slightly less money than Collectors and have much less responsibility so they are arguably better off, but this kind of rationalising can never alter the fact that there is all the difference in the world between being No.1 and settling for No.2. There may perhaps have been worse men than me who became Collectors; it is certain that many better men didn't get as Far as deputy.
If my whole career was regarded as one long promotion interview, I don't think I passed, but I think perhaps I was a near-miss.
That’s better than nothing and it’s too late to appeal.