Who from Brighton’s past should we be remembering? The film ‘Vindication Swim’ recalls the achievements of the amazing Mercedes Gleitze

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 13th March 2024)

Brighton has a poor record of preserving the memory of those who have gone before. How many Brightonians, not least those who are recent arrivals, know who Herbert Carden, Dorothy Stringer or Lewis Cohen were? And why should they? The City Council does little to commemorate these and other individuals who helped make the city what it is. The Argus remembers them, and Brighton and Hove Buses names significant people from Brighton’s past on its buses and on a special website. It should be commended for this.

From time to time I write about people I have known who have died, people like Selma Montford, Dennis Hobden, Ruth Larkin, Bernie Jordan and Bob Cristofili. Mary Clarke is the ‘forgotten suffragette’ in spite of being Emmeline Pankhurst’s sister. Mary ran the Brighton office of the Women’s Social and Political Union. She died on Christmas Day 1910 from a brain haemorrhage probably caused by rough treatment at the hands of the police and prison authorities immediately before her passing. There is no memorial for Mary other than her name appearing on the front of a Brighton bus. There is now a campaign to have a statue of Mary Clarke erected in the gardens of the Royal Pavilion estate. 

Another long-forgotten Brightonian is Mercedes Gleitze. She was born in Brighton who, in 1927, became the first British woman to swim the English Channel. Her swimming achievements were not ‘limited’ to that. She is believed to be the first person to swim the Straights of Gibraltar and was the first person to swim to Robben Island and back to Cape Town, a sea I know well as I was brought up there and can testify to the currents and coldness of those waters.

After nearly 100 years during which time she had become largely forgotten, her legacy is now secure through a film that went on general release last Friday, deliberately coinciding with International Women’s Day. The film, Vindication Swim, features the amazing Kirsten Callaghan and the equally impressive John Locke. Remarkably, it was written and directed by a 23-year-old Brightonian, Elliott Hasler. If you warch just one film this year, make sure it’s Vindication Swim.

With Kirsten Callaghan and John Locke (I’m the one who didn’t dress up for the occasion!)

After a special screening of the film on International Women’s Day at Brighton’s Duke of York cinema, a cinema that Mercedes herself had visited, Kirsten Callaghan, John Locke and Elliott Hasler answered questions from the audience. Kirsten described some of the discomforts and challenges faced by Mercedes which she, too, had experienced. For example, she wore a heavy 100-year-old one-piece bathing suit. The leather in the goggles she used bled, resulting in a disgusting taste seeping into her mouth. On one occasion she was in the water for four hours, with the salt affecting her mouth and sense of taste. Elliott, too, spent lengthy periods filming in the water, but he had the protection of a wetsuit! John, on the other hand, stayed in a small support boat as had his character, Harold Best, who had coached Mercedes.

All the scenes in the sea were filmed off the south coast. No use was made of stage tanks nor ‘green screen’ technology where subjects can be superimposed onto virtual backgrounds. 

Back to Mercedes herself. Her first endurance swimming record was for 26 hours. Over several years she extended this record to 45 and, subsequently, 46 hours. She had become a popular and famous personality, and when she undertook these endurance swims in public swimming baths, crowds would attend and encourage her by singing together.

Most of Mercedes epic swims, including her world records for endurance swimming, were sponsored.  She used her sponsorship and winnings to open accommodation for homeless people, particularly homeless women, with the first Mercedes Gleitze Home opening in Leicester in 1933. The charity bearing her name continues to operate providing accommodation for homeless people but, sadly, not in Brighton. She helped unemployed people to move from the north to Leicester where there were jobs. She is also said to have supported the extension of the franchise to women below the age of 30 in 1928.

Towards the end of her life, Mercedes became increasingly reclusive. She denied her past achievements and would not discuss them with her family.  She died in1981 in London aged 80. There is now a blue plaque commemorating this daughter of Brighton at the house in Freshfield Road where she was born in 1900.

I hope that in future more Brighton women, perhaps not as exceptional as Mercedes Gleitze, can be remembered for their own extraordinary achievements.

My brief experience as a film censor

(This item first appeared on 11th January 2023 in my ‘Brighton and Beyond’ column in the Brighton Argus)

In the 1980’s, I found myself accidentally elected to the old Brighton Borough Council. In 1986, as Committee places were being carved up amongst councillors, something called the Film Viewing Working Party was mentioned. It was explained to us that every local authority had to have a panel able to review the recommendations of the British Board of Film Classification. We were also told that the committee hadn’t met for over 20 years. That sounded like just the one for me, a committee that never met. So, selflessly, I volunteered to take on this onerous responsibility.

Within a week, a women’s group at the University of Sussex had collected the requisite number of signatures that required the working party to review the classification of the film 9 1/2 Weeks.

On a damp Wednesday morning, three councillors, Tehm Framroze, Doreen Radford and me, accompanied by a council lawyer and a committee clerk, found ourselves sitting in an empty cinema off the Brighton seafront watching what can only be described as a second-rate movie. 

My abiding memory is a scene where Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger were bonking at the top of a clock tower as the great bonging bell tolled backwards and forwards. It was at that precise moment that Cllr Radford nudged me and asked: “Would you like another toffee, dear?”.

Back at the Town Hall the lawyer explained that we had done our duty and we could now just ratify the classification. I asked him what options we had. He said we could reduce the classification to allow younger people to see the film. When pushed, he reluctantly said that we could also ban it from public cinemas in Brighton.

So I proposed that we ban it. There were a few scenes that I had found completely unacceptable (although I freely acknowledge that you could see more unacceptable things on television most nights, both then and now). It wasn’t nudity. In fact, I don’t think there was any. What I objected to was that the more Basinger’s character resisted the advances of Rourke’s character, and the more he forced himself on her, and the more she said no, the more the film suggested she ultimately enjoyed the experience. This is the classic rape myth.

I feared that a young lad out with his girlfriend, on seeing this in a Hollywood film, would have the false assumption reenforced that the more his girlfriend said no, the more she would enjoy it.

To my surprise I was supported by Doreen Radford who said that she had been a foster mother in Brighton for more than thirty years and had lost count of the number of times teenage girls had come home on a Friday or Saturday night, very distressed, having been forced to go further with their boyfriends than they had wanted.

So, 9 1/2 Weeks was banned from public cinemas in Brighton. The Duke of Yorks cinema, as a private cinema club at the time, was able to screen it. Its decision resulted in many people resigning their membership. There were picket lines outside. It even split the Militant Tendency down the middle, mainly on gender lines, with women on the picket line and the men going in to watch the film.

As a result of our decision, the film got some notoriety and probably more people saw it because, according to The Sun, it was “too saucy for the seaside”.

Of all the things I achieved as a councillor (there weren’t many), I think that the debate that the banning provoked, on censorship, on pornography, on violence against women, was up there as one of the best.

One of the objections to the banning that people voiced was why should anyone, not least a 26-year-old as I was at the time, have the right to decide what adults should be allowed to see? Well, I was an elected representative at the time and could always be voted out at the next election. And society has always drawn a line, quite rightly, in what is acceptable and not. No decent or rational person would say, for example, that the sexual exploitation of children should be allowed as popular entertainment. Where we draw that line is the legitimate subject for debate.

What does worry me today is that personal views and the freedom of expression is now being censored. The language being used is ‘no platforming’ where, for example, opponents try, increasingly successfully, to silence those with gender-critical views, even to the point of them losing their employment.

If we are a civilised society we must be allowed to debate and to disagree. People have the right to be offended, even if no offence was intended, but we must be allowed to speak the truth as we understand it.

Thanks to Cinecity and the Duke of Yorks for raising money for BHT’s Brighton Advice Centre

Yesterday (10th November) BHT received a cheque for £388 from Cinecity following the screening at the Duke of Yorks cinema of the iconic film ‘Cathy Come Home’.

50% of ticket sales has been passed on to support the work of our Brighton Advice Centre in Queen’s Road.  A collection on the door raised a further £137.

‘Cathy Come Home’ was first screened by the BBC on 16th November 1966. It was directed by Ken Loach.

‘Cathy’ tells of the decline into homelessness of Cathy and her family when her husband has an accident at work. The film ends with social services removing Cathy’s children at a railway station, and Cathy, whose husband is no longer on the scene, left weeping uncontrollably as the credits role.

Brighton actor Ray Brooks played Cathy’s husband, Reg.

Pictured: Tim Brown from Cinecity, Jo Berry from BHT, and Bill Randall, a BHT Board member

The cheque was presented to BHT Board member, Bill Randall, by Tim Brown of Cinecity.

Tim Brown from Cinecity, said: “We and the Duke of York’s were delighted to work in partnership with Brighton Housing Trust to support the work of their advice centre in Brighton. Each year the advice centre helps hundreds of household to avoid homelessness, so they do not find themselves in the same desperate situation as Cathy. There is a crisis of homelessness in the UK, not least in a Brighton and Hove, and anything any one of us can do to prevent even one person ending up on the streets is so important.”

Bill Randall, from BHT, said: “Brighton is a special place with many wonderful businesses doing great work to support the many hundreds of charities working in our communities, be they the Brighton and Hove Table Tennis Club, Allsorts, or Brighton Housing Trust, just three of the organisations I work with. We at BHT are immensely grateful to Tim and all at Picturehouse for screening of Cathy with half the ticket sales going to our Advice Centre.

“The screening was a timely reminder of both how far we have come, yet how little has changed. Some things have got better, like the Homeless Person’s Act, and social services rarely taking children into care because of homelessness. Rather they accommodate the family. But we have by no means begun to see the end of homelessness. In Brighton and Hove we have 24,000 people on the housing waiting list, 1,800 children living in temporary and emergency accommodation, and almost 150 rough sleepers. This situation is replicated throughout the country, and it is a scandal that in this, one of the richest countries in the world, we cannot provide decent homes for all our citizens.”

We must never return to the days of ‘Cathy Come Home’

(This item first appeared in the Brighton Argus on 4th October 2016)

The iconic film about homelessness in Britain, ‘Cathy Come Home’ tells the desperate tale of Cathy, who loses her home, husband and eventually her children through the inflexibility of the British 1960’s welfare system.

We have moved a long way since Cathy, but still there is further to go.

This week we have heard that there are almost 2,000 children living in emergency and temporary accommodation in Brighton and Hove. This is a higher rate than in many other parts of the country.

BHT’s day centre, First Base, works with the visible homeless – those sleeping on the streets. Those in emergency and temporary are the hidden homeless. Our Advice Centre works with people who are invisible, who you wouldn’t notice but who, like Cathy, are facing homelessness and major disruption to their lives and those of their children.

Fortunately the Advice Centre prevents several hundred households from becoming homeless each year. Each case of homelessness we prevent saves the local authority on average £16,000.

Our Court Duty Scheme, a service not available to Cathy, had a 93% success rate over the last year in preventing homelessness.

Advice services prevent homelessness, and without them the invisible people we work with would soon become the visible homeless living on our streets.

A special screening of ‘Cathy Come Home’ will take place at 6.30pm on Monday 10th October at the Duke of Yorks in Brighton. We must never return to the days of ‘Cathy’.

My secret life as a film censor

Following my post earlier today regarding the need for more sophistication in lobbying and campaigning in which I mentioned that I had been on the panel that had banned the film 9 1/2 Weeks from public cinemas in Brighton, my friend Emma Daniel asked for urgent clarification about this.

During my misspent youth, I found myself accidentally elected to the old Brighton Borough Council. In 1986, as Committee places were being carved up amongst councillors, something called the Film Viewing Working Party was mentioned. It was explained to us that at that time every local authority had to have a panel able to review the recommendations of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). We were also told that the committee hadn’t met for over 20 years! That sounded like just the one for me, a committee that never met. So, selflessly, I volunteered to take on this onerous responsibility.

Within a week or so, a women’s group at the University of Sussex had collected the requisite number of signatures to require the working party to review the classification of the film 9 1/2 Weeks.

So on a damp Wednesday morning, three councillors, Tehm Framroze, Doreen Radford and me, accompanied by a council lawyer and a committee clerk, found ourselves sitting in an empty cinema off the Brighton seafront watching what can only be described as a second rate movie. My abiding memory is a scene where Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger were bonking backwards and forwards at the top of a clock tower, as the great bonging bell tolled backwards and forwards. It was at that precise moment that Cllr Radford nudged me and asked: “Would you like another toffee, dear?”.

Back at the Town Hall the council lawyer explained that we have done our duty and that we could now just ratify the BBFC’s recommendation. I asked him what options we had. He said we could reduce the classification from an 18 certificate to a 15. When pushed, he reluctantly said that we could also ban it from public cinemas in Brighton.

So I proposed that we ban it. There were a few scenes that I found completely unacceptable (although I freely acknowledge that you could see more unacceptable things on television most nights, both then and now). It wasn’t nudity. In fact, I don’t think there was much if any at all. What I objected to was that the more Kim Basinger’s character resisted the advances of Mickey Rourke’s character, and the more he forced himself on her, and the more she said no, the more the film suggested she ultimately enjoyed the experience. This is the classic rape myth.

I feared that a young lad out with his girlfriend, on seeing this in a Hollywood film, would have the false assumption reenforced that the more she says no, the more she will enjoy it.

To my surprise I was supported by Doreen Radford who said that she had been a foster mother in Brighton for more than thirty years and had lost count of the number of times teenage girls had come home on a Friday or Saturday night very distressed having been forced to go further with their boyfriends than they had wanted.

So, 9 1/2 Weeks was banned from public cinemas in Brighton. The Duke of Yorks cinema, as a private cinema club, was able to screen it. Its decision resulted in many people resigning their membership. There was a picket line outside, and it even split the Militant Tendency down the middle, mainly on gender lines, with women on the picket line and the men going in to watch the film.

As a result of our decision, the film got some notoriety and more people probably saw it because, according to The Sun, it was “too saucy for the seaside”.

Of all the things I achieved as a councillor (there weren’t many), I think that the debate that the banning provoked, on censorship, on pornography, on violence against women, was up there as one of the best.