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Kim Newman was born
1959 in London, brought up in the West Country , went to Dr Morgan's school
in the 70's where he made his first drama film and then by his own admission
grew up into maladjusted adult. Together with Eugene Byrne, Kim wrote
stories in which history has worked out differently. One story is where
the Nazis invade Great Britain during the Second World War. However Brian
Smedley of Dr Morgan's fame helps to lead the resistance. Here is the
story.
Smedley was brought
up in the industrial North, darkest Anglesea and the idyllic factory town
of Bridgwater, Somerset. Young Brian spent his earliest days around the
turn of the century hauling Hovis bread up the cobbled streets and blissfully
ignoring the forces of imperial decline that inevitably lead the world
to the First World War. Smedley was educated in the fearsome Dr Morgan's
Grammar School for Boys, where he and his comrades were regularly flogged
to within an inch of their lives by sadistic prefects, forced to play
rugby in a swamp against boys twice their age and drilled in the rigid
disciplines of mathematics.
In 1916, Brian and his friends Eugene Byrne, Kim Newman and Alex Dunn
escaped briefly from school and enlisted in a line regiment so they could
enjoy the more relaxed, hygeinic and healthy atmosphere of the Western
Front. Tragically, Eugene, Kim and Alex were mown down by machine-gun
fire when the infantry was ordered over the top in at Ypres, and young
Brian's bottom was riddled with shrapnel as he tried to drag their corpses
back for a proper burial.
Invalided home, Smedley returned to Dr Morgan's to complete his education
and became interested in a new form of music that was just making its
way across the Atlantic. With some friends, Brian formed The Dangerous
Ragtime Brothers and was in the forefront of the West Country's burgeoning
music scene all through the twenties. The group broke up with some acrimony,
however, in an argument about their first gramophone recording. Though
Smedley later formed other groups - Red Smed and His Hot Buttered Crumpets,
The Jazz Rascals - he turned down an opportunity to tour with the then-unknown
George Formby in order to get more involved in politics. During the General
Strike, he whipped together the remnants of the DRBs to perform for rallies
in support of the workers and was battered with a rubber hose when arrested
at a demonstration. Though never a member of the communist Party, he recognised
in socialism the only force that was standing against the rising spectre
of fascism in Europe.
His decision to join the Labour Party was heavily criticised by Revolutionary
communists, but Smedley remained in touch with all factions of the Left,
a rare figure who could be respected by bomb-throwing anarchists and tea-making
vicars alike. Leading his masked band of anti-fascists, the Sheep Worriers,
Smedley clashed with the BUF during an attempt by the blackshirts to march
through Hamp. With a bounty placed on his head by a local Mosleyite Councillor,
Smedley was forced to flee the country and spent the mid-to-late 30s travelling
the world, lending his organisational skills and ukelele-playing to the
Republican Cause in the Spanish Civil War, the fight against Mussolini
in Abyssinia and the anti-appeasement movements that grew throughout Europe
as Hitler's aggression became more obvious.
It is believed that a liaison with a comrade heroine during the siege
of Madrid lead to the birth of a daughter, Caramela. It was at this point
that Smedley composed his most famous song, the revolutionary rallying
cry 'No Marzipan!' Granted a full pardon by Bridgwater MP Vernon Bartlett,
Smedley was the first to call Neville Chamberlain a 'gurt wazzock' after
Munich and founded the Bridgwater-Czech Friendship Society in the wake
of the Nazi annexation of Czechslovakia, using his 1910 vintage charabanc
to help refugees escape to freedom in Somerset and arranging for the billeting
of many happy Czechs on many less happy Bridgwaterians.
When war broke out, Smedley attempted to re-enlist but was refused a position
in uniform because of his high blood pressure and old arse-wound. With
a German invasion of Britain imminent, Smedley devoted all his energies
to helping the refugee Czechs who were on Hitler's death lists escape
to Ireland and then onwards to fulfilling lives in the utopian democracy
of opportunity across the seas - after all, if they didn't like Greenland,
they could always go to New York. When England fell, Smedley was in Dublin
with a troupe of Slovak dancing contortionists. It is our recommendation
that he be smuggled back into the home country, since his experience,
local knowledge and contacts, dedication to anti-fascism, profound love
for the people of Sedgmoor and nimble ukelele fingers make him the ideal
man to organise, lead and inspire the Resistance Movement.
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