Les Tilbury

Les Tilbury – Great Barfield, Essex, taking notes for Kabinews.

 LES TILBURY
The death of a friend is always a shock and the news of the passing of Les on 7th February 1992 is an event which has left all who knew him with a
strong personal sense of loss. As the main architect for 30 years of all
that we enjoy in the MOC today his death marks the end of an extraordinary
era in which his vision and policies put the Messerschmitt way out in front
as the micro car to restore and own and the MOC as the Club to join.
Les’s long and distinguished editorship of Kabinews was only part of his
unique contribution to MOC affairs but when in January 1989 he handed this
task over to Colin Hooper most of us sensed that his dedicated service to
the Club was moving to a close. Hopes of a ‘Les Tilbury Column’ were sadly
not fulfilled and now that the final break has come his loss at the age of
77 leaves schmitters with a special kind of sadness.
An Obituary should paint a finished picture and I should state that after
Les had made a good recovery from his stroke in 1985 I gently broached the
subject that, assuming I was still around, the responsibility for writing
his might one day fall to me. Mike Kensdale subsequently formalised the
matter by raising it at the NEG. Because he was a realist Les took all
this in his stride and gave me many details about his life knowing they
would one day appear in print. None of us knew Les as a younger person when
he played the central role in other organisations so to help set that part
of his long life into the context of his Club years I headed for Maldon in
Essex to see his old friends lt1illiam (Bill) and Joyce (Joy) Ginn. The
relaxed chat with Bill and Joy, in which they recalled happy times with Les
and May, and with Joy’s late husband Len Brett, another great friend of Les,
helped bring to light how Les’s superb skills as a communicator and organiser
were acquired and honed to the brilliance from which we as a Club were later
to benefit so substantially.
I should also like to thank Gill Brown, Les’s daughter, for allowing Alan
Marriott and I access to Les’s papers which revealed the prodigious output
and staggering range of his activities as a writer going back to 1930. Like
all the family, Gill is a schmitter and took over Les’s KR 200 in 1990 and
intends to be out on the road again soon.
Leslie Walter Tilbury was born at Brentwood, Essex, just after the outbreak
of the First World War on 26th September 1914, into what he used to describe
as ‘an ordinary Essex working class family’. If you look at old issues of
Kabinews you will find Us referred to it in these terms on more than one
occasion. Although I never argued with him on the subject, when I asked
about his early childhood some of his reminiscences rather indicated that
it was not quite as ordinary as all that. Les’s father sent him to a private
boy’s school where the fees were £6 per term, and had his own business as a
tailor some of whose clients would today be described as ‘upmarket’. He made
clothes for local business people and the horse riding fraternity, such as
jodhpurs. Bill Ginn recalled having some outfit’s made by Mr. Tilbury that
were so good they simply never wore out. tiThe quality was such that you
eventually became fed up with wearing them all the time and just threw them
out” remembered Bill.
In 1920, when Les was almost 6 years old, an event occurred the consequences
of which stayed with him throughout his life and must have had at least
some bearing on the formation of his character. Those who never met Les and
anyone who knew him only through telephone cal1~probab1y from overseas, will
most likely be unaware he was partially disabled. Joy Ginn recalled “it was
serious, but it never stopped him doing what he wanted”. Without making a
drama of it Les made it clear in a long talk I had with him at Frating Green
on 14th January 1989 that what had happened to him 70 years earlier could well
have saved his life in view of subsequent world events. I shall return to
this point below.
Near the Tilbury home at 126, Ongar Road, Brentwood, there stood an
enormous weeping willow tree. One unlucky day young Les had a go at
climbing and when only four feet up fell heavily on his left elbow.
Some other kids brought him home and a doctor was called who diagnosed
‘more than an average fracture’. Joy Ginn told me it was actually a
compound greenstick fractLU’e and added that the doctor announced “we
shall have to amputate”. To their credit Les’s parents would not give
their consent. For weeks and weeks no pulse could be felt and the arm
went, in Les’s words, “like a lump of wood”. A primitive form of
electrical treatment was applied and gradually some feeling returned.
As all movement of the fingers was lost Les’s father was worried and
took him to Harley Street in London (then as now a centre for Britain’s
top medical brains – treatment there must have cost the family quite a
lot) where he was seen by a specialist, Dr. Elmsleigh, necessitating Les
staying during 1921-22 with an aunt while treatment was given.
Dr. Elmsleigh prescribed a special aluminium adjustable splint. This was
intended to pull the left hand back to the normal position but for Les it
was torture as his hand always wanted to return to the bent position in
which it had become set. After a miserable year of little progress Les
was returned to the local doctor at Brentwood who recommended a new heat
treatment twice weekly then becoming available at Brentwood cottage Hospital.
But it also failed to bring the hand back into position and, discouraged,
the family eventually had to give up the therapy. There was some improvement
years later however, as movement of the fingers gradually returned when Les
stopped growing. He had by then resigned himself to a permanently damaged
left hand.
All this disruption can hardly have helped Les’s education and Bill Ginn
believes that elder brother Joe, who became an architect, had a larger
share of the resources the family could provide. Les never seemed to resent
this according to Bill, and with the sole exception of his swimming pool at
Frating Green, followed a consistently modest life-style.
Leaving school at age 15 Les found a job at 75pence per week with a firm of
wholesale chemists known as Dakin’s where the conditions were, as he described
them, ‘Dickensian’. This did not last long however and the year 1930 saw Les
drawing the dole for a while before landing a temporary job as a junior clerk
on £1 per week with the London office of the shipping line, Reardon Smith’s.
He must have made a good impression because he became a member of the permaned
staff and the salary gradually climbed to £1.75 by the time he reached age 21.
Then one day Les was annoyed to discover that the young lady he dictated
letters to was receiving all of £3 per week!
Les was always to seek fulfillment outside work and it was also in 1930 that
he took the first steps which eventually led to the remarkable impact he was
later to make on the Messerschmitt Owners’ Club. At age 16 he formed the
‘Tilbolian Press Club’. To do this he placed advertisements appealing for
people interested in a discussion group to contact him. One of those who did
so was Bill Ginn. “Les replied saying he would write again when he was ready
to start. He did and that was how we got to know each other. Len Brett and I
met at his home and Les would edit material from our discussions and publish
the magazine, a complete set of which has survived at Frating Green. At one
time we even went to Bristol on a cheap rail excursion to meet people for
discussions there. They formed a branch of the Club and there was another
one at Chadwell Heath” recalled Bill.
Bill described how Les developed these early writing activities until he
eventually began a weekly column for the Braintree & Witham Times and was
able to supplement his income as a freelance journalist. The column had the
title ‘Beacon Hill Bulletin’ and ran for 20 years. ‘~es wrote on everything
to do with Essex. He was a member of Essex Archaeological Society right up
until his death. This gave him access to their library which assisted him
with material for his weekly articles. Many of them described the different
churches allover Essex, were well-researched and are still remembered today”
declared Bill. This view was endorsed by Neville Bonner who recalled the
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articles with obvious pleasure. Other newspapers Les contributed to were
the Maldon & Burnham Standard and the Brentwood Gazette. “Les had the job
of reporting all Parish Council meetings in the area and became well known
throughout Essex for his accurate work” Bill told me.
Les had been living in Brentwood and then in 1936, about the time he left
his job in London with the shipping line, he spotted a cottage to let for
32 pence per week at Wickham Bishops and persuaded Len Brett and Bill Ginn
to move in with him and share the expenses. “We named the cottage’ Brave New
World’after Aldous Huxley’s novel” Bill remembered. Then one rainy day in 1937
Les noticed two nice young ladies sheltering under some trees and invited
them in out of the rain. One was May Gerber, a London girl of German extraction.
Less than two years later on 8th July in the fateful Summer of 1939 Les and
May were married. Over to Bill Ginn~ “May had an extraordinarjJ]y beneficial
influence on Les, almost to the extent where he became a different person.
He saved money and got together £100 using all of it to furnish their home
of the next 40 years at Eleanor’s Cottage, Little Braxted, where Gillian and
Martin were brought up. Les and May were to have a happy marriage and Les
never seemed quite the same following her death in the Autumn of 1979 not
long after they moved to Frating Green.
But the outbreak of war in September 1939 saw the commencement of the worst
period in the world’s history. Lives were turned upside down and no family
in Europe remained untouched. In preparation for war with Germany the Prime
Minister, Neville Chamberlain, took the decision on 27th April 1939 to
introduce conscription of men and in 1940 Les was ordered to appear before
an Army Medical Board in nearby Chelmsford. When I asked him about this he
recalled the exact words used to reject him for military service. “They took
one look at my left hand and said, we shan’t be needing you, here’s five
shillings expenses”. That was enough for a night out in those days and the
same evening Les and May bought fish and chips and went to the pictures.
Les believed our quarrel was never with the German people, only the madmen
in control, but he realised in 1940 that south east England would be the
scene of heavy fighting if the expected invasion materialised. As an otherwise
fit man and regular swimmer, and with the fighting on mainland Europe hotting
up, Les was probably correct that the Army’s curt rejection of him had saved
his life. With aerial combat already raging overhead it was time to make
contingency plans and he therefore cashed in an insurance policy for £12 and
bought a Humber tandem for £10 from Southend-on-Sea. The Tilbury’s plan was
simple. They reasoned that there would not be much they could do as unarmed
civilians and would seek shelter further north until circumstances permitted
a return to Essex. To do this they would shut Eleanor’s Cottage and head for
the Great North Road on the tandem taking any food and cash they had with
them. Although this was never necessary the tandem proved useful for basic
wartime holidays and when Gill was borne they added on a little sidecar and
took her along.
After leaving Reardon Smith’s Les joined Crittall’s, the Braintree-based
window manufacturer in 1937 and remained with them for almost 40 years. Like
all others the firm soon plunged into war work making window frames for
airfield buildings and bomb-damage replacements. They also manufactured
portable air strips for use in the desert. He worked at costing and later
estimating, which would not even have begun to fully utilise his abilities,
and for a while May also worked for the same firm before finding work she
enjoyed as a librarian at Witham library together with Joy. Eventually, in
the late 1960’s the asset strippers, Slater, Walker Securities took the firm
over, which did not please Les, who took early retirement in 1976. Bill Ginn
was with Hoffmann’s, the bearings specialists at Chelmsford at the time and
obtained an interview for Les who then put in a further two years working in
their sales office until finally ‘retiring’ and moving to Frating Green in 1978.
Because I had lived through the war andklew about the farreaching effects it
had on all British people I asked Bill and Joy to provide a little more
background to this subject in relation to Les’s life. Bill’s answer was clear
and concise. “In addition to his writing there were three organisations
at that time in which Les was active and influential. These were the MCA,
the WEA and the Beacon Hill Sports Association based on Wickham Bishops
Village Hall. The latter was an organising body for all sporting activities
and fixtures, but the other two had wider social and political implications
and need explaining”.
The MCA was the Maldon Constituency Association, formed to assist Tom
Driberg, a far-left but not Labour Party candidate at what became a
famous by-election in June 1942. Its historical significance is that it
was the forerunner of an international leftward swing which in Britain
culminated in the election of a reforming Labour Government in 1945. Bill
Ginn was active with Les in the MCA and reminded me about the wartime
electoral truce, which meant that by-election candidates could only stand
as Independents which was why MCA was formed as, technically at least, it
was non-party. Les was pleased at Driberg’s success not only because he was
pledged to alleviate the almost medieval poverty and privilege then endemic
in Britain but also because he was a brilliant journalist whom even the rigtt
wing Daily Express employed. Les continued to actively support MCA until 1945
when Driberg joined the Labour Party and stood for them officially representing
Maldon and later Barking right through until 1974. The highly controversial
and widely reported private behaviour of Tom Driberg, which blighted his
parliamentary caree~ bothered neither the Essex voters nor the Tilbury family
who always welcomed him when he dropped in for tea at Eleanor’s Cottage. I
asked Gill about those times. She remembered Tom Driberg with obvious affection
and said “I grew up knowing him as Uncle Tom and always called him that”.
Just at that moment as we sifted through Les’s voluminous papers Alan Marriott
handed me an old hard-backed book. It contained the wartime minutes of the
MCA which Gill intends to donate to Witham Public Library for preservation.
In the WEA Les was to playas central a role as he later did in the MOC.
The Workers Educational Association is a venerable British institution, still
active today, and provides courses for adults who have not benefited very
much from state education. It is not really surprising that Les became involved
because of his wish to do something practical about the need for social
progress and political affiliation. \vith demobilisation there was an upsurge
of interest at the end of the war which had made many ordinary people realise
for the first time what they were capable of. At that point the WEA was
expanding into Essex and appointed Les Tilbury Secretary/Organiser of its
!,oIickham Bishops branch. His enthusiasm and ability made an indelible
impression which is still remaOCered with admiration today. This was indeed
the ‘Brave New World’ when for a brief period economic and social prospects
looked good for Britain. Apart from the work of organising classes and speakers
Les was about to score oW of his greatest achievements, which members can
see for themselves today. The ‘Festival of Britain’ held in 1951 was intended
to mark the end of austerity and demonstrate that better times were at last
on the way. Up and down the land projects were launched to mark the occasion.
The WEA approached Lord Braintree who agreed to sponsor, in book form,
‘A Survey of an Essex Village’ and Wickham Bishops was selected. The research
was carried out under the auspices of the University of Cambridge and the WEA
and here is an extract from the book’s preface by Donald Brierley BSc.-
‘~eslie Tilbury, in addition to a host of other duties, has translated a mass
of notes on two dozen complicated discussions into this book”. Those members
wishing to read the book, which is a valuable social document, should ask their
Public Library to contact libraries in Essex where copies are known to have
survived, particularly at Witham.
The scope of Les’s work with the Club and Messerschmitts is so vast that in
other fields it would have brought him a knighthood. I can give but an outline
here.
In the mid 1950’s Les needed a better means of travelling about than a bicycle
and public transport and first acquired a BSA Dandy. These were 70cc two-speed
lightweight scooters and as Les was no motorcycle or car buff he may have sought
advice before buying. Gill thought he did not keep this for long before changing
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to a BSA Bantam motorcycle. Despite his disability he coped reasonably
well with two-wheeled transport and in 1958 moved on again this time to
a turquoise blue 150cc ZUndapp Bella. These had larger sized wheels than
the average scooter and Les must have been satisfied because he ran the
Bella for some time until in 1961 he handed it over to son Martin and
changed to a elack and white 200cc model. This was quite a stylish choice
and would have had a speed well up in the sixties. But he did not remain
on two wheels for much longer. One day Les’s editor on the Braintree and
Witham Times told him there was a Messerschmitt for sale at a dealer in
Rayne Road, Braintree, known as Jake Hubbards, who Gill told me was a former
racing motorcyclist. Les saw the point that it would be better and more
significantly he liked the look of the schmitt and thought its steering bar
and right hand gear change would suit his disability. Both Les and Bill
date this event as “early 1962” but because of her facility with dates I
cannot ignore Gill’s opinion that it was actually late in 1961. Whatever
the actual date Les bought the schmitt, which had 10,000 miles recorded
and was two years old, making it most probably a 1959 KR 200, and named
it’Blodwen’. Inside the cabin he found a membership application form for
the L & SE Club and wasted no time in joining. Les took an active interest
from the beginning and became Editor of Kabinews in November 1963 retaining
office until December 1988 with no issues missed for the entire quartercentury.
The effect on the magazine was dramatic. Les was good at drawing (and also
photography) and used this skill to good effect. But it was his flare for
writing, with its free-flowing and entertaining style that really captured
the membership at that stage of the L & SE’s development. With the ending
of Messerschmitt production in june 1964 it was inevitable the character
of the Club , would change and Les strongly advocated a hands-on style,
which enabled a new style of Club dedicated to preserving schmitts to emerge.
The importance of Les and May allowing the use of the Kabinenrollerhaus at
Little Braxted can never be over-estimated. Not only did this ensure the
survival of hundreds of schmitts that would otherwise have been scrapped,
it revitalised the, whole movement by bringing in new blood. One thinks of
the ‘wet’ Rally of 1972 and the arrival on the scene of such able young men
as Ian Andrews, Mark Smith, Ian Hopkins, Alan Forbes and many more who were
all to play their various parts and still do. He was also adept at giving
a role to those in other Clubs such as David Garner and Wynford Jones who
made many of the early trips to Schweinfurt with pockets full of cash to
save parts that otherwise would never have helped keep Messerschmitts on
the road. The intr~duction of the spares service – later Partsmart – just
as supplies through the manufacturers was drying up in 1969 was also a
masterstroke. The unveiling of the Derek Cole Silencer in 1970 also pointed
the way forward for the Club to manufacture and source replacement parts.
Our cousins in Messerschmitt Club Deutschland have always acknowledged the
key role of Les supplying copies of Kabinews in helping them to establish
such a successful club. The increase of contacts with other members in
overseas nations was always on his mind and perhaps that will be one of the
tasks we could launch in his memory. Alan Marriott has already proposed a
permanent memorial to Les and the form it should take will be considered soon.
At meetings I shall always remember the clear blue eyes and quicksilver mind
of Les which so often produced the intellectual key to solving difficult
problems. He had an instinctive comprehension of what was possible in a
voluntary body and was unfailingly right, some times uncannily so. This was
markedly noticeable in the run-up to the successful 1980 merger, which was
also Les’s idea.
Whenever we chance upon a schmitt out on the road we should ask ourselves
whether that one would still exist if it were not for Les Tilbury. And how
many of those at the Rally would have survived if it were not for his vision?
P.B.
4.3.92.