Prime Minister says 'No' to well-wishing peace campaigners

Liverpool Beatles Museum,

23 Mathew Street

L2 6RE

‘War is Over’ card sent from John Lennon to Harold Wilson goes on display at Liverpool Beatles Museum

The latest addition to Roag and Pete Best's ever-expanding museum was revealed this morning by former NEMS and Apple employee, the Beatles' friend Tony Bramwell.

Although threatened, a 2022 reshoot of the cover for John and Yoko’s 1968 LP Two Virgins (for which Tony set up the camera, and then had the dubious honour of trying to find somebody to develop the roll of film) was thankfully NOT what was he was there to unveil. 

The new addition is a 1969 "War Is Over" Christmas card from John and Yoko, one of hundreds which they sent out to various world leaders and other dignitaries as part of their peace campaign. 

This particular card was sent to the then UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He was the member of Parliament for Huyton (where I grew up) from 1950 to 1983 and Prime Minister from October 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. 

The card is signed “with love to the Wilsons from the Lennons.”

John with Harold 'Wilsod' as he called him.

Never one to miss a photo opportunity or to court the approval of the masses, Wilson was photographed with the Beatles in 1964 and, while Prime Minister in 1965, recommended to the Queen that the Beatles be awarded the MBE.

As George Harrison recalled in Anthology:  Probably it was Harold Wilson that put us up for it. He was Prime Minister and was from Liverpool, Huyton - 'two dogs fightin', one is black and the other's a white un'.

After all we did for Great Britain, selling all that corduroy and making it swing, they gave us that bloody old leather medal with wooden string through it. But my initial reaction was, 'Oh, how nice, how nice.' And John's was, 'How nice, how nice.'

Four years later and John had a change of heart. In November 1969 he sent his MBE back to attract attention to his causes: I had been mulling it over for a few years. Even as I received it, I was mulling it over. I gave it to my auntie who proudly had it over the mantelpiece, which is understandable - she was very proud of it. She won't understand this move I've made probably, but I can't not do it because of my auntie's feelings. So I took it a few months back and didn't tell her what I was going to do with it - no doubt she knows now - and I'm sorry Mimi, but that's the way it goes. 

Anyway, I sold out, so it was always worrying me, and then the last few years I'd been thinking, 'I must get rid of that, must get rid of that.' I was thinking how to do it, and I thought if I did it privately the press would know anyway, and it would come out; so instead of hiding it, just make an event of the whole situation. So I did it with the MBE. I was waiting for some event to tie it up with, but I realise that this is the event, this is the next peace event going on now. 

The MBE was returned directly to Buckingham Palace but it can’t have been long before Wilson's ministers in Downing Street got wind of Lennon’s gesture, and the possible embarrassment it had caused Her Majesty. If the Lennon’s antics over the previous 12 months (from Two Virgins and their drug bust onwards) hadn’t made them persons of interest in the eyes of the establishment already, from this point on their card was definitely marked, and in this case literally. 

The Lennon’s Christmas card was placed with the rest of the ‘strange’ post that came into No.10 into what was referred to as the “nutty filing” cabinet. It was rescued by secretary and Beatles fan Ruth Ferenczy, who kept the card at home until her daughter Alex Rowe decided to loan it to The Liverpool Beatles Museum. 

Speaking to the press today, Mrs Rowe said “My mum was filing one day and came across this card so she said to her boss: ‘Look at this, the Prime Minister doesn’t want it, can I keep it?’ and the boss said yes she could. Apparently Harold Wilson would write in green pen and if he was going to respond to mail he would write ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

“There’s a little green ‘no’ on this card (see top right) which means he didn’t want to respond.” 

Clearly Wilson no longer wanted to be associated with the moptops. 

Mrs Ferenczy, now 81 and living in Spain, took the card home where it was displayed on a shelf, her daughter said.  Mrs Rowe added: It’s just been sitting on a shelf all my life, nobody else has seen it as far as I know. It’s literally gone from No 10 into our possession and it’s gone through lots and lots of countries, it’s been round the world because we lived abroad. One day we were looking at it, at home in Manchester, and just said why have we not shared this, somebody else needs to see it.

Tony Bramwell, originally from Hillfoot Avenue, Hunts Cross, was one of the few of the Beatles’ Liverpool gang who was with them from the start, initially working as an office boy for Brian Epstein at Nems and remaining with them through the madness of the Apple years, much of which Tony believes was of John and Yoko’s own making.

Tony with the Beatles in 1963 (above) and 1965 (below)

With John Lennon during the 'Sgt. Pepper' sessions, 1967. 

Tony (left) slightly covering Neil Aspinall, John and Peter Goldmann during the making of the 'Strawberry Fields Forever' promotional film (above) and sat with Paul and Ringo during a 1967 session (probably during the preparations for the 'All You Need Is Love' satellite broadcast). 

Tony during the preparations for 'Our World', June 1967, with Brian Epstein (above), and Tony King and Patti Harrison (below). The rag doll Patti is holding now lives in the Liverpool Beatles Museum and is visible in the cabinet over Tony's shoulder in today's photos.

Tony (in blue) with Paul and the Black Dyke Mills Band in Saltaire, near Bradford, 30 June 1968. 

Tony on 'Apple Business'. Watch out Ladies!!

Before the unveiling special guest Tony Bramwell spoke to the specially invited audience.

Tony told the Museum’s invited audience that as part of the War is Over! campaign he was tasked with organising for huge billboards bearing the slogan to be displayed at locations across the world, as well as sending out cards with the message on. 

He said: There were thousands of those Christmas cards, we sent them to everybody in the address book. John and Yoko would send them specifically to people they wanted to wind up, well who John wanted to wind up and Yoko thought would bring world peace. Anything aimed at Harold Wilson was a dig. John had just sent back his MBE in protest. 

Tony said that Mr Wilson (of 'Taxman' fame) had previously met The Beatles and posed with them for pictures but said he wasn’t surprised the politician had chosen not to respond to the card. In fact, he would probably have said no even if he was offered a box of Beatles records.

"3-6-9, the goose drank wine..."  Roag Best warms the audience up before Tony's speech. 

The card is the latest little gem to on display in the museum on Mathew Street, which houses one of the largest collections of Beatles memorabilia in the world. I can’t imagine what treasure might be unveiled next!

A great morning catching up with fellow fans, historians, and tour guides on the Liverpool Beatles Scene, many of them members of this blog’s Facebook group.    

Oh yeah, Top Tip: When you take a book with you to get signed by the special guest at an event, it’s a good idea to take it out of your bag while you're still at the event!

My treasured unsigned copy of Tony Bramwell's book.  Tony has a new book out soon which he promises contains even 'more shit'. One to put on your Christmas wish-list then.

Until next time....

Photograph Smile

137 Gateacre Park Drive

Liverpool

L25 4UE

I've previously written about John and Yoko's visit to Liverpool in June 1969 on this blog (you can read about it here).  Another photo from the visit has just turned up. 

This is Yoko's daughter Kyoko Cox, and John's son Julian pictured on the driveway at 137 Gateacre Park Drive (see below) just before they set off on the long drive up to Scotland to see John's Aunt Mater and Uncle Bert in Edinburgh.

Mimi Mendip

251 Menlove Avenue

Woolton,

Liverpool,

Lancashire,

England

Circa 5 September 1960, John Lennon sent his Aunt Mimi a postcard from Hamburg. 

Dear Mimi,

Sorry I haven't written much but we're terribly busy and don't finish playing 'till about 2 in the morning and by the time we've eaten we're "dead beats."

This is the street we playing (the little yellow bit at the end). I'll write a proper letter soon as I get time. I hope you're well and everything  and don't worry about me I'm eating and sleeping well and keeping out of trouble xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    Ok and no trouble. I'll be home in 5 weeks I think (we might be going to Berlin).

cheerio,

Love John

You can just imagine Mimi simultaneously smiling and tutting as she read it. 

The postcard appears in the new book, The Beatles Mach Shau in Hamburg, by Thorsten Knublauch, which looks to be the final, definitive word on the Beatles in Germany. 

The first run of 500 copies has already sold out. A reprint is currently underway, and you can order a copy here: 

The Tram Sheds with no Trams

Former Tram Sheds adjacent to the Substation,
Now known as the Penny Lane Emporium

Smithdown Road,

Wavertree,

L15 5AF

John Lennon: ‘In My Life’ started out as a bus journey from my house on 251 Menlove Avenue to town, mentioning every place that I could remember. And it was ridiculous. This is before even ‘Penny Lane’ was written and I had Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, Tram Sheds – Tram Sheds are the depot just outside Penny Lane – and it was the most boring sort of ‘What I Did on my Holidays Bus Trip’ song and it wasn’’t working at all. I cannot do this! But then I laid back and these lyrics started coming to me about the places I remember. [1]  

So where exactly where these Tram Sheds that John was still thinking about in 1965? That's what fellow historian and Beatles blogger Steve Bradley wanted to know when he messaged me last week.  

The answer is that they were just around the corner from the 'Penny Lane' bus shelter familiar to Beatle fans the world over. The circular shelter can be seen bottom right in the above photo, while the tram sheds were once sited where the rectangular, overgrown area is to the left of centre.  The tram (later bus) depot is now occupied by a small retail park. 

The Smithdown Road depot was Liverpool's second electric tram depot and opened in 1899. In 1912 the depot employed 64 persons and had a capacity of 96 cars [2] The double-arched sheds can be seen on the right of the above photo.  

According to Ron Smith's Liverpool Trams site it was in use up to around 1936 which means the depot was out of service, and presumably without its trams, even before John Lennon's birth in 1940. 

Paul McCartney: ‘Penny Lane’ was kind of nostalgic, but it was really a place that John and I knew; it was actually a bus terminus. I’d get a bus to his house and I’d have to change at Penny Lane, or the same with him to me, so we often hung out at that terminus, like a roundabout. [3] 

Trams to Woolton via Smithdown Road and 'Penny Lane' ran until 15 October 1949 when the service was replaced by buses, which is clearly how Paul McCartney remembers it. Between 1940 and 1945 John Lennon lived for a time on Newcastle Road, just around the corner and it's no stretch to imagine that he actually saw the trams still in operation passing through the depot and heading along the bottom of his road, up Church Road towards Picton Clock. 

I used quotation marks because the bus (and former tram) terminus (the "shelter in the middle of the roundabout") is not actually on Penny Lane. It sits on a triangular junction between Church Road, Allerton Road and Smithdown Road and faces one end of Penny Lane.  Depending on where you were travelling to in the city it was often necessary to change at Penny Lane and buses with 'Penny Lane' displayed were common throughout Liverpool. 

So why didn't the buses say 'Smithdown Place'? 

John Lennon: Penny Lane is a suburban district where I lived with my mother and father (although my father was a sailor, always at sea), and my grandfather. I lived on a street called Newcastle Road [5].

So, the name Penny Lane was also applied to the area surrounding the bus terminus though some locals appear to dispute this. If you visit the area today, you might notice how many of the shops in that area have the words Penny Lane in their name (e.g., Penny Lane Flowers or the Penny Lane Emporium). Of course, these days it's hard to tell whether the owners are aware of the area name or are simply capitalizing on the Beatles' connection.   

Trams passed through Penny Lane for the last time on 6 September 1952, but some routes continued in Liverpool for the next few years. On 14 September 1957 Liverpool's trams ran for the very last time, a parade of trams running from Bowring Park where I grew up (much later) towards the city centre.

Post card showing the last tram on 14 September 1957.

In 1946, around the time that John Lennon settled in Woolton, his Uncle George was working the night shift at the depot on Woolton High Street, cleaning the trams. While John still lived at Newcastle Road it's said he enjoyed walks with his grandfather, 'Pop' Stanley and eldest cousin Stan, to places like Wavertree Park (the 'Mystery'), Sefton Park, and even as far as the Pier Head. They would have passed the entrance to the tram depot on Church Road (later known as the Prince Alfred Road bus depot) and probably paused to watch the goings on, as they walked towards Smithdown Place.  

Replace the buses with trams and add in some tracks and overhead cables and you can visualise how the depot would have looked viewed from Church Road in the late 1940s. The rear of the two tram sheds are visible in the background of this photo taken in 1985 [4]. Contrast this with the modern image below. A public house and retail park now occupy the site.

Given these early childhood memories it's likely that the young John had more than a passing interest in the trams and carried this through to his teenage years. On his way through Penny Lane on the No. 5 bus into town, heading for the Art College or perhaps a Beatles' engagement, he obviously noticed that many features of the Liverpool tram system remained well beyond the final closure. 

This picture of the Smithdown Road sheds was taken by Ron Smith on 28th September 1986 and was still standing in 1989, thirty-two years after the last Liverpool tram operated! The two depot entrances that were used by trams coming off the street can clearly be seen sealed-up at the front.  

Twenty-six years on from Ron's photo and the sheds have long gone as these shots taken in 2012 and 2019 attest. The entrance to the site was fenced off and displaying advertising hoardings until recently. 

But what's the shed-like structure on the left? This is what prompted Steve Bradley to message me. Obviously, it's not one of the two big sheds seen on the earlier photos but set back from the road, I think it could have been part of the depot. Certainly, when it's viewed from the side there are to be a number of openings, long bricked up which look to have abutted the missing sheds. 

Today this is the Penny Lane Emporium, a mix of small retail units selling antiques, antique fireplaces, vintage furniture, art and vinyl records, but this set of photos I found online shows what used to go inside. I'm no mechanic or tram expert but they look like generators of some sort, perhaps to power the trams?

Today there's a useful cut through from the retail park to Smithdown Road that runs along the side of the old sheds. If you felt inclined to stick your nose between the railings and look down you could see that the old tram tracks were still in place, though overgrown in places. It's hard to tell from the above photo, but they were visible, honestly (I'd taken this photo through the railings on 1 February 2020).

A week later, with lockdown finally over in England I happened to be at the retail park behind the site waiting to pick up my son and thought I'd try and get a better photo.

To my surprise I found all the trees and vegetation had been cleared. Work could only have started in the last few weeks because workmen and an excavator were still on site.

The rusted tram lines are now clearly visible, running diagonally from left to right. Furthermore, the excavations had uncovered a trench containing the remains of what looked to be a brick walled inspection pit.

I know I haven't been out much in the last twelve months, but I was quite excited by the unearthed archaeology.  It must have been hidden for at least a quarter of a century. If anyone knows what this trench was used for, please get in touch.

It's amazing how by digging a simple trench we can open a window on the past. Back in September 2016 resurfacing works around the junction at Smithdown Place uncovered tram tracks not seen for over 60 years. I expect I was not alone in assuming that when the trams stopped running to Penny Lane the tracks would have been lifted and removed, to be reused or sold for scrap. In fact, they were simply covered over here with a layer of tarmac, and this seems to be the case across most of the city. Presumably this was the cheaper option in the 1950s and it still appears to be the case today.    

Photos taken around the Smithdown Place roadworks in 2016, showing the shelter in the middle of the roundabout and St Barnabas Church (where Paul McCartney was a choir boy). Photos by Mr John Lunt and the Liverpool Echo.

John Lennon: A childhood in photographs

The inspiration for this latest blog is a superb book I received for Christmas - John and Yoko / Plastic Ono Band, a near 300-page hardback volume which traces the evolution of perhaps John's finest solo album through first-hand commentary by John, Yoko and members of the Plastic Ono Band, archive material, and hundreds of fascinating and largely unseen photographs. It was released last October and intended as a companion piece to the new Deluxe Plastic Ono Band CD/DVD box which was unfortunately delayed due to the current pandemic. It's finally due out this month.

Each track on the album has its own section where you can read about the genesis and recording of the song and see John's handwritten lyrics and appropriate photographs.

Naturally, to illustrate the song 'Mother' the compilers of the book have used a number of John's childhood photos, none previously unseen but all in absolutely superb quality. They look beautiful, as do the pictures in the rest of the book. Seriously, this is like the sort of book that Genesis publications would produce but at a tenth of the price.

So, while admiring the book I started wondering, just how many childhood photos of John Lennon are there? 

I started by going through all the folders on my computer and then checked a number of books just on the off chance they might contain a photo that hadn't been scanned by someone and uploaded a thousand times. They didn't. 

I grouped together every different photo I had and deleted all the duplicates, keeping only the best quality copy of each.  Then I tried to arrange them in chronological order.

This is the result.  I'm sure I've not got the order completely right and so any constructive feedback is welcomed.  I've deliberately not included any photos of John as a member of the Quarry Men or at Art School, choosing instead to focus on his family and childhood friends. I've also put some commentary in from interviews, primarily with John, to provide some context.   

9 Newcastle Road (the author, 2020)

John Lennon: Penny Lane is a suburban district where I lived with my mother and father (although my father was a sailor, always at sea), and my grandfather. I lived on a street called Newcastle Road. 

That's the first place I remember. It's a good way to start - red brick; front room never used, always curtains drawn, picture of a horse and carriage on the wall. There were only three bedrooms upstairs, one on the front of the street, one in the back, and one teeny, little room in the middle.

[Julia] My mother was a housewife, I suppose. She was a comedienne and a singer. Not professional, but she used to get up in pubs and things like that. She had a good voice. She could do Kay Starr. She used to do this little tune when I was just a one - or two-year-old. The tune was from the Disney movie - 'Want to know a secret? Promise not to tell. You are standing by a wishing well.' 

The earliest two photos date from circa 1941-44 when John was still with his mother Julia. The first is a typical photographer's studio shot of the day the sort of print you'd get done for your relatives, and perhaps dates from around John's first birthday in 1941 or Christmas that same year.  This was John's contribution to the four childhood photos of the Beatles which appeared on the sleeve of their 1967 Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane single. A cropped version was later used as the rear cover of John's Plastic Ono Band album in 1970.

During 1943 John lived with both parents at the Dairy Cottage, 120a Allerton Road, Woolton.

(photo by the author) 

My mother and father split when I was four. Then my father split. He was a merchant seaman, and it was the Forties in the war, and I guess she couldn't live without somebody. She was the youngest and she couldn't cope with me, and I ended up living with her elder sister, Mimi.

Julia's sister Harriet was actually the youngest of the five Stanley girls.

John: Mimi told me my parents had fallen out of love. She never said anything directly against my father and mother. I soon forgot my father. It was like he was dead. But I did see my mother now and again and my feeling never died off for her. I often thought about her, though I'd never realized for a long time that she was living no more than five or ten miles away.

It was more like three miles!