Dare to Be a Daniel by Tony Benn Page A

was then in his late teens) to rewire his office and it had not been done safely. Happily, most of the papers were safe, and during the war my brother and I moved them to this old slaughter house, and Father spent many happy hours going over them. At Stansgate we swam and cycled and did a bit of sailing, and Father used to sit with us and reminisce about the old days.
    My brothers and I did not have any pets in London, but there was a little puss called Fluffy living locally at Stansgate, which my brother and I smuggled into the car to take back to London. On the way back my father discovered this kitten and was furious – he stopped the car, knocked at a cottage and asked the woman who lived there to take it. We were very upset. Father had strong ideas about what was, and what was not, in order.
    On another occasion at Stansgate my brother David gave a local boy my set of toy soldiers while I was away. I loved those soldiers – I would dig trenches and sew sandbags, and would advance and withdraw the soldiers in my own little stories. When David gave them away I was so angry that I rushed at him and bit him; he screamed and I was punished, and the other boy had to return the soldiers.
    The house at Stansgate was a pre-fabricated wooden structure built by Boulton and Paul, at a cost of £600, which had been floated downriver for construction and originally had a thatched roof. Captain Gray had this replaced by tiles, and covered the outside with expanded metal and then pebble-dashed it to give it greater strength.
    There were various outbuildings, including the windmill, a garage and a circular wooden summer house which we used to call ‘The Temple’, where Mother would work when she wanted to escape from the family. The farm was next door and we used to milk the cows and go out on the tractor at harvest time, and ask for a ride on the horses that drew the waggons as the hay was collected and built up into hayricks for winter feed.
    Father had acquired an old ship’s lifeboat, which he named the
Brethren
, and we used to sail in the Blackwater. It had strong tides and muddy beaches on which, if we got stuck, we had to wait for the tide to come in and float us off many hours later, for the mud was like quicksand and could trap you, making escape impossible.
    We sailed to Osea Island, just opposite; down to Bradwell, where the long lines of deserted merchant ships lay at anchor because of the Depression; or up to Maldon, from where the fishing smacks came out each day, returning later with their catches.
    Osea Island itself was fascinating, with a pier along which were gun emplacements to defend the river in the First World War; facing us across the river was the big house built by Charrington, who gave up his fortune as a brewer, and turned the house into a home for recovering alcoholics.
    There was a simple causeway connecting Osea to the mainland, used for the delivery of supplies, and when the tide was low the causeway would appear. The postman would cycle across with letters to deliver and collect from the postbox, which bore the unique inscription: ‘Letters collected according to the tide.’
    Here, as in London, Father was always making ‘improvements’ with the help of a local joiner. For example, all the rooms at Stansgate interconnected – so that you could enter the bathrooms from both ends, which was not always altogether comfortable!
    The nearest village was Steeple, with the Star Inn and the Sun and Anchor, a little church and two chapels, one being established for a dissenting sect called the Peculiar People and the other Congregational. There my grandmother had paid for a notice board on which it was announced that marriages could be ‘Solomonized’ – an innocent misprint that conveyed the wrong impression of the sanctity of monogamous marriage.
    Also in Steeple was Mr Harrington, the cobbler, who worked in a little thatched shed and would cut our hair for sixpence, which seemed a lot at the