Interview conducted by Reggie Holme
RAE Holme: I am sitting in the Lake District with Mr Arthur Sessford, who comes from Liverpool. He has now retired to Keswick after an interesting beginning in considerable poverty in Liverpool, then going on to 44 years with the great Prudential Insurance Company, then a period of some years during the War when he was with the Royal Air Force in India. Also with Mr Sessford is his wife who comes from Switzerland. Her name is Denise and she also had experience of the rough side of life as a child, which she will tell us about later.
First of all we will begin with Arthur Sessford. Could you tell us a bit about what life was like at the underprivileged end of the scale in those days just after the First World War - I believe you were born in 1908?
Arthur Sessford: Yes. I was born in a very working class area near the Everton football ground. I was the youngest of a family of 10. Being the youngest I had it much better than my older brothers and sisters. My mother’s early life was one of abject poverty. She was born in Liverpool, somewhere in the Brownlow Hill area. Her father and mother died in early life and she, at the age of 4, was left an orphan with a brother and sister slightly older. As far as I know, though Mother did not talk a great deal about the past - they died quite young of TB. My mother often used to say that she scrubbed the steps of the gentry who then lived in that area, scrubbed the steps of their homes and received either a halfpenny or a penny for that.
At the age of 18 she met my father who was much older than she was. He was seafaring and a boilermaker and their life was still one of hardship and poverty.
RAEH: But despite all this poverty your parents had a large family?
Arthur: Yes. I said I was the youngest of 10 but in reality I was the youngest of 12 because two died in infancy, almost a few weeks after birth. I was the youngest of 10 living and the last of our family. My older brothers and sisters knew what poverty meant. I did not know it to the same extent. We went to the local council school and my eldest brother was exempt from school at the age of 10 in order to help to earn a living. He worked with a local pawnbroker. My mother used to say that she felt rather ashamed but often she had to take things to the pawnshop in order to feed the family and she herself often went without food for days.
RAEH: People often say that bad social conditions inevitably produce distorted characters and that if you change the conditions, their characters will be shaped all right. But I understand that the marriages of your family turned out all right. What was the reason for this?
Arthur: I would hardly like to say what the reason for it was. I feel that my mother particularly was a very whole, sound woman. I never remember her complaining about life. In fact, looking back upon life, I think of her as a very complete person. She had suffered but somehow we were a family unit. We really liked each other, I suppose.
The Church played a great part in my life anyhow. It was a go-ahead church and many of the older generation will know of Dr Sangster. He was one of our earlier ministers when he was but a student. Church was our social life. It was really our complete life in many ways. We had a very fine spiritual leadership with one man in particular - Mr Dick Nall who was a railway clerk. He had a great knowledge of young boys. He knew their problems and he did his best to answer them. I am very grateful for that early time in the Church.
I was more a Liverpudlian than an Evertonian, even though we were born so near the Everton football ground. At church we used to have what were called ‘Sportsmens’ Sundays’. It was a great thrill for us to have a local footballer preaching or reading the lesson. One man I remember who was certainly one of my heroes was a chap called Brommilow (?), one of Liverpool’s half-backs. This particular man had never had a foul given against him.
I felt the privilege of being under-privileged. Life has taught me that things you experience are absolutely your own. They are valid. The friendships we had, the life we had, the fact that one had to really battle even to keep a decent job, these things were of tremendous value.
My training in a solicitor’s office - I went in as an office boy from the age of 14-21 - gave me some knowledge of things which would be of use to me in the insurance world. I learnt something about estates, probate and conveyancing. I also learnt how to write a reasonable business letter and how to express myself. In my job in the solicitor’s I knew that sooner or later I had to find something else, so I wrote to many firms, actually. I wrote to the Prudential Assurance Company and got an interview with them and was given an agency. I had no idea what that would entail. So that was the beginning.
An agency in my way of thinking was an area which was allocated to one to control. An area which was solely the responsibility of that representative. In those days, in industrial assurance field, the agencies also carried with them what we called the Approved Society Section, which was the forerunner of the present National Insurance Scheme. Every half year we used to issue the National Insurance Cards to the people who were members of the Prudential Approved Society and we used to collect them. We used to pay sickness benefits to these members. Being in an area of abject poverty if you had any feelings at all, you felt very much for the society in which you lived. Probably, I would say, 80% of the population was unemployed - and unemployment in those days meant abject poverty. I hated the society which allowed that sort of poverty in the midst of what seemed to me to be plenty.
This divorced me in some measure from my earlier connection with the Church. In my mind I felt that all I had learnt at church was not relevant to the situation in which I found myself and in my heart and mind I turned to a political answer. I longed for it. I longed for a caring and sharing society.
I lived in the same neighbourhood as the lady who became my wife. We went to the same church, we knew each other and had friends in common. It was very much a simple boy and girl relationship. All that I can say about that, is that it was a very happy and rich time we had together.
I did re-find a faith sometime later. With my job with the Prudential I was determined that I was going to ‘get on’. I had been 4 years with the company and I took a superintendency which I held for 22 years. I found that with a big organisation you can still have an understanding management. Management can be so broken down that even though they may not agree with you, you are not afraid and you have access to them. This was one of the things I valued with the Prudential system.
I felt there was a political answer to things around me. It was only later in life, just before World War Two had started (or it might have started, I am not quite sure about that) that I was in Liverpool on one of our tram cars and I met a friend, Eric Morrell. Eric said something like this to me, after asking me where I was living. ‘I am going to the Walton Vale picture house. There’s a film there called Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and I am going to sell this book by Daphne du Maurier, Come Wind, Come Weather,’. This was a 6d booklet telling of some of the amazing stories of men and women in the forces.
This book had told stories of men and women who had learnt to listen to God and it helped to build morale during those dark days.
Later that year Eric Morrell came to our home. He was a man I greatly admired. A man who always had a deep faith. He brought with him another friend, Will Kneale. They asked whether they could use our home in Bootle as a meeting place for some men and women from labour and the trade unions. They came every week, until 12-18 months later when I was called up to the forces. Now these men taught me something which I had longed to know. It was the business of the simplicity of finding God for me. They talked about 4 absolute standards - honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. They talked about the fact that God could guide and direct, and they talked about writing down the thoughts that came to you. They met in our home, as I said, for that period of time. I didn’t immediately accept what they were saying or doing but I realised they had a quality of life which we had not. I remember the first time I felt ‘well now I am going to try this way of life, I am going to take a pencil and paper and write down the thoughts I believe God gives to me’. It was strange that, as far as I remember, 3 thoughts came to me: to see a sister of mine who we had sadly neglected; another was to be honest with my wife as to the sort of person I really was; and the third was to be honest with the postage account in the office. We all used the postage account for our private mail, the same as the company’s mail. That was the start of something new for me.
Because of an incident in the past the family had closed their hearts to my sister. Some years had passed by and, as far as I know, none of us had seen her and she had been in great need. When I called to see her, I expected probably the door to be closed in my face but instead of that she threw her arms around my neck, kissed me and it was as though nothing had happened. The past was all healed and redeemed. I was so grateful for that because later her elder son, who was a young man I admired greatly, lost his life at Arnhem. I felt the experiences which I had gained through meeting Moral Re-Armament had been healing not only for myself but for the family.
As far as honesty with my wife Agnes went, there weren’t many serious skeletons in the cupboard but there were quite a few. It really remade our marriage. Our marriage was a happy marriage but it became a much better one. During that period, or prior to that period, we had had a young lady staying with us in our home. Her home had been blitzed and she was working for my company. Her husband had been called up and she was taking over his job. My wife, who I never thought of as being in any way at all jealous, just shared with me then that she was jealous of this young woman who had come to share our home because she felt I was paying too much attention to her and her work. She was right. We found a new relationship and I was grateful for that.
The postage - when I took this up with my District Manager of course he said, ‘Well we all do this’. I said, ‘Well, that’s fine but I’d like to make some restitution.’ I think he thought I was crazy. I decided from that point on to pay all my postage expenses, for the company and everything else that was incurred and in no way to accept any further postage allowance until my callup. I think those 3 experiments started me on a road which I shall be eternally grateful for. That was the start of what I feel was the major turning point in my life.
When I was called up I went to Blackpool for my initial training and then on to a place in Wiltshire. After that I went to No 5 Group Bomber Command which was a very important group indeed and there we helped to service the bombers. From there I was transferred to the American Air Force and had a very happy time with an American squadron. Then over to another squadron and then to India, which to me was probably the highlight of my military service. On the way out to India I came up against the ideological war. I had heard a lot about this. Some may remember that Russia came into the war rather late. Previously they had decided, with Germany, as to the division of Poland and our Communist Party in Britain stood on its head in order to make us believe this was an imperialist war. Then Russia was attacked and they were in the war. I was surprised on my way out to India on the troopship that 2 men, one an officer in the Medical Corps and the other an NCO in the same Corps, held meetings on D-deck, the part of the ship where the troops were. They were giving pure Communist propaganda . I enjoyed the trip to India and I enjoyed battling for what I believed to be right.
When I arrived in Bombay it was with some horror that, like so many Britishers, I saw the poverty. It did something to me. From Bombay we moved on by a very slow journey to Calcutta. From Calcutta I joined my unit which was a wireless unit. There we had a number of Indian followers with the unit and I made friends with many of them. Later on I had, through my contact with MRA, the address of a very fine friend, Col Whitby, who was manager of the Bengal-Assam railway. His home was a haven for all the MRA people in that SE Asia command who passed through Calcutta. It was one home where I came into a really classless society, where there were Moslems, Hindus, Christians, Chinese, practically every race you could meet and every rank. It was the first time that I had felt the world impact of the force of MRA.
I well remember one meeting when India was threatened with a postal strike. We had two of the trade union leaders with us. One was a Moslem and the other a Hindu. They were as bitter as hell. One said to the other, ‘We are like traffic lights. When you are on green I am on red. And vice versa.’ After a time of quiet they found unity. The strike was averted.
Other people I met in this home were Dr Foss Westcott, Metropolitan Bishop of India, Burma and Ceylon, Bishop George West of Rangoon, Lord Sinha, an Indian member of the House of Lords, Dr Hans and Lisa Beck, Austrian Jews who fled from the Nazi persecution, Major Ralph Vibert and many other people, including ordinary people.
By way of contrast I would like to tell you of another couple I met at the Whitby home - Mr and Mrs Abraham. He was an officer in the Indian Army and Beatrice his wife and little daughter were with him. I had the thought that I would like to see them in their own home. Where they lived in Calcutta was out of bounds to troops but I felt it was right to go to see them. I met Beatrice and her family in this home, which was entirely different to the home of Col and Mrs Whitby. What I remember of it is that it was one round room and the windows were concrete slits. I was given a very warm welcome. To my surprise Beatrice wrote to my wife Agnes, as far as I can remember, something like this, ‘Out of love for your husband Arthur, who is the first white man to be in our home, our home is now open to people of all races.’ That to me was one of the greatest thrills I had during my time in India.
After the war I returned to my job with the Prudential Assurance company and took an active and positive role in my trade union, the Prudential Staff Union. We were affiliated to the TUC and also to the Labour Party and the Liverpool Trades Council. I became a delegate to the Liverpool Trades Council, apart from having offices at branch and national level in my own union. I felt a new approach was needed. The ‘we’ and ‘they’ attitude was completely out of date. We had to find a true unity on the basis of ‘not who is right but what is right’.
I lived in the Walton area of Liverpool. Our first Labour MP was Mr Jim Howarth, who was a fine Christian fighter. With another friend, Eric Carter, we became members of the Labour Party and tried to undergird what Jim was fighting for.
Looking back on life, one of the next things which we had to decide - Agnes and I - was how to get a new home. We saw a local builder and I thought a certain area would be very nice to live in. He was building in this area and also in another area. At last he agreed to give us a home. This was in the times when building and prices were controlled and it was normal to offer builders something over the controlled price. We knew that this was not right and we had no intention of doing it. However, the builder gave us a home not in the place which I wanted but in another part of the city of Liverpool, in West Derby. Shortly after we got into our new home Agnes’ health deteriorated rather quickly. She had a very bad heart, owing to two severe illnesses with rheumatic fever. This particular day we had planned to go to an engagement party of a close friend of ours. Agnes said she didn’t think she could face it - which was very unlike her. The next day we called in the doctor. He was amazed that she had carried on so long with her heart in such a condition.
The day after we had a specialist and as far as I remember the specialist said something like, ‘Your wife’s heart is in a chronic condition. She will be an invalid for the rest of her life and the expectation of life is no more than two years.’ This really shook me. I tried to keep it to myself but she saw that there was something wrong and she got to know. During the next years - actually she lived for 5 years - I feel they were the most peaceful and the most victorious years of our life together. We never knew what it was to get a reasonable night’s rest but it was her gaiety and her faith which was a tonic to so many people who came into the home.
I remember on the morning she died we had just had ‘another night’. The only thought that came into my mind was ‘Are you willing to let go?’ I prayed ‘Lord make me willing’. I went to my job, came back for lunch and the voice said to me ‘You are free. You are free.’ I think I knew what that meant. When I opened the door I found Agnes dead in the kitchen. Her time of quiet that morning had been on the theme of the man in whom there is no guile. This was very much a treasure to me.
Later on, a day or so later, her niece came to see her aunty. The niece was an able young medical student who as far as I know had no church or religious background but was a grand girl. She looked at me and she looked at her aunt and she said something like this, ‘Uncle Arthur, Aunty Agnes was my godmother.’ I said, ‘I know that Jean’. She said ‘I have seen more of God in the way she lived than I have seen anywhere else and I would like to live my life as she did.’ She knelt by the bedside and we both prayed. Jean is now in Canada, where she has been a long time. I have no idea what it meant to her but it was a thrilling moment in a time of sadness for myself.
Also, we belonged to the Methodist Church and the lady who had been Agnes’ class leader called regularly to see her. After Agnes’ death she came to see me and I thanked her for her faithfulness in coming. She said something like this, ‘It has been a joy coming here. I have always found great peace in this home.’
Looking back on life, particularly that episode of my life, I can see how all things slotted in - the home we were given, the friends around us, Laura Morrell, Grace Carter and others, who were there, always willing to help, and always ready to be called on. I feel for me and for Agnes they were probably our most victorious years together and I am really grateful for them.
After Agnes’ death it meant that I had to find a new life. I stayed on in our home for one year, feeling that I did not want to make decisions in a hurry. Later it came clearly into my mind that it was right to sell the home and its contents and to use the money in two ways. One was to buy a car, to make me freer, and the other was to give the money for the making of the MRA film Freedom.
It was interesting how easily and how quickly this happened. The first person who came to see the home bought the house. The furniture and the contents seemed to be sold in a couple of days and I went to live with a friend in digs in Bootle. We carried on in this way for a couple of years. Then the thought came quite clearly that the time had come for me to make a new start. I applied to my company for agency work in Keswick in the Lake District. To my surprise this happened very quickly. I liked being in Keswick. It is a lovely area to work in but the problem of finding a home to live in, in a tourist centre, was more difficult than I imagined. After a series of unusual happenings I became the tenant of a furnished cottage.
Later on some of my friends from Liverpool came to visit me. The cottage was very often used by them, and I was delighted to see them. One of my friends’ son, whom I had known since he was a lad, stayed with me and I wanted to help him. It was strange the thought that came to me that morning. It was about marriage to a lady I had met at Heaton Cooper’s home - the Lakeland artist. Denise Jaeggi (?) had come over from Switzerland to learn English and to help Mrs Cooper in the home. I talked about this to my friends and later I asked Denise to marry me, and lo and behold she said ‘yes’. Now a new chapter of life had started.
With special thanks to Ginny Wigan for her transcription, and Lyria Normington for her editing and correction.
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