The only known photograph of Robert Aickman and Tom Rolt together (Yorkshire Post, 31st August 1948)
Foundation stories matter because they give organisations of any kind not just a sense of origin, but of purpose. By retelling the inspiration for the setting-up of an organisation, and giving accounts of early challenges overcome, shared intentions are established which can continue to give direction into the future. By making something almost mythic out of the foundation and the founders themselves, people who may still continue in their roles, an emotional connection is created for all who are involved. It becomes personal and that, in turn, can give an organisation its strength.
For several years, the Inland Waterways Association
in Great Britain felt a need to tell such a foundation story. Or, at least,
Robert Aickman did. He knew it would help inspire loyalty, credibility, and assure
long-term support. It also put him in a position of authority.
In the story Aickman told, he accepted L.T.C. Rolt as
his co-founder, although he was at pains to suggest that he himself had been
the prime mover behind the organisation, and that he undertook by far the
largest share of the work, for which he was never properly paid. (It should be
noted that Aickman’s financial claims were often slightly opaque.)
There is a great deal to be said for Aickman’s
version of events, although such a campaigning organisation may well have been
created without him, because pressure was already building in opposition to the
wanton dereliction of the country’s canal system. It should also be pointed out
that many other people also put in valuable and often little-acknowledged work
over many, many decades of the IWA’s campaigning. There have always been those
who argue that Aickman’s role was sometimes so divisive he may have actually
held back the IWA, but after years of hard work, the IWA was the victor in the
various battles against authority, and Aickman could reasonably claim a great
deal of the credit. He also had battles with self-created enemies within the
IWA, but as he won most of those, he felt able to write the history in The River Runs Uphill (1968). From the perspective of most
observers, whatever they thought of Aickman, the IWA’s activities can be judged
to have been a success, which makes it all the more baffling that Aickman,
himself, would claim that its achievements actually constituted a failure.
At the time he helped set up the IWA, Aickman was
looking for direction in his life. Although he and his wife, Ray, were running
a literary agency together, he had already tried to set up a Borley Rectory
Trust, because he seems to have wanted to run an organisation that might give
him both a purpose and perhaps a public profile. As he had a small private
income, money was not an important factor in the early days. In The River Runs Uphill he gave an
explanation for the founding of the IWA that would have surprised many of its
members, especially in its earliest days. He claimed it had always been his
intention to kick-start an artistic and cultural revolution via the restoration
of the waterways. There is little evidence of this until, perhaps, the Market
Harborough Festival of Boats and Arts in 1950.
Somewhat retrospectively, Aickman seems to have wanted to become a Gabriel D’Annunzio
of the British waterways. (In 1919-1920, D’Annunzio set up the short-lived
Italian Regency of Carnaro in Fiume, now Rijeka in Croatia, entering the city
with only a handful of soldiers and proclaimed himself Duce.) Aickman’s failure
to inspire a revolution was the reason he gave for considering the whole IWA
venture a failure.
With hindsight, if anyone had reason to believe the
IWA had been something of a failure it should have been Rolt, who hoped from
the beginning to restore the waterways for their original purpose of effecting
the movement of goods around the country. But, however either men felt about
the IWA, it was instrumental in saving many miles of waterways which are now
enjoyed annually by thousands of people.
Cressy at Tardebigge (Photo by Hugh McKnight)
When I wrote my Biography of Aickman, I made a point of questioning his account of
his important first meeting with L.T.C. Rolt at Tardebigge, on Rolt’s boat, Cressy, in August 1945. Aickman’s
version of events seemed to me indicative of not just how Aickman told the
story of the IWA, but of his whole life. Most autobiographers are,
understandably, centre stage in their work, and they have every right to choose
how they present their material. We know we are reading of events from their personal
point of view, and with potential bias, but we like to hope they can be trusted
over basic matters of fact.
A rare photo of Angela Rolt, with Tom behind her.
In The River
Runs Uphill, and elsewhere, Aickman states that the IWA was founded by
himself and Rolt on Cressy, and
clearly implies that only he and Rolt were present, although Rolt’s wife Angela
was in a supporting, mainly decorative role. It was presented by Aickman as the
meeting of two great men who, though they came from different backgrounds,
identified a similar problem, and found common ground in a cause that was close
to both their hearts.
However, surviving letters in the National Archives
suggest that Aickman mythologised his account of their first meeting when he
described it twenty-three years after the event. The most obvious deviation
from the facts is the omission of his wife, Ray, from the account. She was
certainly on board Cressy when the
two men met for the first time. Admittedly, Aickman may have excised Ray from history
because he had a lifelong detestation of the institution of marriage and he did
not like admitting that he had wife. He was also horrified, later, when Ray
divorced him, leaving their marriage to become a nun (which he might have
expected people to consider a judgement on his own failings as a husband,
rather than to the attractions of the religious life).
Robert and Ray Aickman
Angela and Ray would not be the first women to be
ignored because their role was secondary, enabling the men to get on with their
great work. But Ray would come to be the backbone of the IWA, organising its
office for many years and effectively running the organisation. Others involved
would credit her importance in the organisation, even if her husband refused
to.
But Aickman also left out of the account of the
foundational Cressy meeting his
friends Howard and Joan Coster. The couple wanted to
meet Tom Rolt because they were planning on buying a narrow boat themselves,
and were seeking his advice. I was careful how I put this in my Aickman
biography because there had been a last-minute change of date for the meeting
between the six of them, and I didn’t know for sure if Howard and Joan Coster had
been available for the rearranged rendezvous at Tardebigge.
However,
the newly published The Life of L.T.C. Rolt by
Victoria Owens states categorically that the Costers were present at the
Tardebigge meeting. When I asked Rolt’s biographer for clarification, Victoria was
able to quote from an exchange of letters between Joan Coster and Ray Aickman
in the National Archives I had not seen. Writing to Ray on 13th August 1945,
Joan thanked her for arranging a pleasant weekend. In her reply dated 17th
August 1945, Ray wrote:
'I am
glad you enjoyed seeing Cressy.'
This
would appear to be conclusive evidence.
Joan and Howard Coster
But am I making too much of Aickman’s downplaying
of Angela Rolt’s presence on that day, and the omission of Ray Aickman, and
Howard and Joan Coster? After all, Aickman is correct in the essentials that he
and Rolt met for the first time and they discussed the formation of a campaign
organisation. Aickman’s account was endorsed by Rolt himself, even after the
two men had become bitter enemies, and neither Ray, Howard or Joan later
complained at being written out of the story.
I believe the omissions are important because all six people on Cressy that day were there because of a
shared interest in the inland waterways, and all would have a vested interest
in seeing the canals maintained and hopefully restored. It seems highly likely
that the formation of a pressure group would have been discussed by all six,
and that everyone would have had some input into the discussion.
In his defence, I should point out that
Aickman was a great believer in rhetoric, arguing that causing trouble was more
effective than engaging in reasoned debate. He also believed in the idea that
strong men had the right to act, if anything of value was to be achieved. The
creation of the myth of Tardebigge was useful, not just as a shorthand
explanation of what took place on Cressy
at Tardebigge, but because he believed (at least in the early days) that he and
Rolt would achieve much more by standing shoulder to shoulder at the helm of
the organisation. No doubt, he was also aware that it sidelined those who might have otherwise been proud to have attended the first
official IWA meeting on the evening of 15th January 1946 at the Aickmans’ Gower Street flat in London, only six months later.
History, however, has a
habit of not always remembering what we are at pains to preserve. Because
Aickman’s role was considered so divisive by some who outlived him, for a
number of years his pivotal role in the IWA would be ignored by the Association.
More recently, he has been somewhat rehabilitated, and the magazines of the
organisation have finally recounted fair and even-handed histories of the early
days of the IWA. It is a cautionary tale for anybody with an ego who seeks long-term
recognition for their work, let alone self-aggrandisement, that the majority of
the users of the canals of Britain today are not even aware that a preservation
campaign was ever required. Because the existence of the remaining canals is
usually taken for granted, why should anyone be interested in who deserves
credit for the IWA?
Robert Aickman: A Biography, by R.B. Russell, Tartarus Press, 2023
Acknowledgements
With thanks to Heather
Smith, and Artellus, Ltd.
All photos, unless otherwise stated, are
copyright Estate of Robert Aickman/British Library/R.B. Russell, and are not to
be reproduced without permission and acknowledgement.
