Sixth formers’ magazines usually don’t leave much of a mark. But Perspective, launched in 1958 by the London Schools Left Club, hit the publicity jackpot when the head of a leading Hampstead school banned it – because of an article accusing British troops of atrocities against guerrilla fighters in Cyprus.
The story was the splash lead in several local weeklies. The restriction was imposed at Haberdashers’ Aske’s, a mainly fee-paying school then based in West Hampstead and which later relocated to its present site in Elstree. The headmaster conceded that sixth formers had shown enterprise in producing the magazine but he forbade pupils to sell or publicise it on the school premises.
"We were both threatened with expulsion if we brought the magazine into the school," recalls John Lesirge, who now lives in Finchley. He was then sixteen and one of two Haberdashers’ Aske’s sixth formers who launched the magazine.
"We were told that under no circumstances should we talk about or foster CND (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) – and our CND badges were taken away from us when we walked through the school gates. And we were threatened with the school not providing good references to colleges and universities."
His collaborator at Haberdashers’ Aske’s in establishing Perspective was Laurence Orbach, whose father was a Labour MP and who went on to co-found the Quarto publishing group.
The article which angered the Haberdashers’ Aske’s head focussed on the conflict in Cyprus, where British troops were fighting the guerrillas of EOKA, a Greek Cypriot nationalist force demanding an end to British rule and eventual union with Greece.
"British soldiers are naturally angry and afraid of the resistance movement," it argued, "and, in their fear, they have allowed a large minority of soldiers ... to perpetrate the most horrible atrocities."
It appeared under the name of Yianni Papaioannou. The author was actually John Lesirge, writing under the name he was given at birth. His father, a hairdresser, was a Cypriot who moved to London in the 1930s and changed his name to one that his customers didn’t find too difficult to pronounce.
Lesirge says it was common knowledge among the Greek Cypriot community in London in the late 1950s – at the time numbering no more than 30,000 – that British troops were resorting to underhand means to try to suppress EOKA.
"It was extremely hurtful that the activities of the British army in Cyprus were so little known in the UK," he says.
After five years of bitter conflict which claimed hundreds of lives, Cyprus gained independence from Britain in 1960. The island was partitioned in 1974 when the Turkish army invaded stating that it was protecting the interests of the Turkish Cypriot minority.
Perspective was a product of a fresh wave of political activism which was known at the time as the New Left. This was pioneered by radicals who were angered by the British attempt to invade the area around the Suez Canal in Egypt, alarmed by the nuclear arms race, dismayed by the timidity of the Labour Party and repelled by lack of openness and democracy in the Communist Party.
Tens of thousands of pounds were raised to lease a building in Carlisle Street, Soho which combined offices, a library, meeting rooms and, most conspicuously, a coffee bar – a "left coffee house" – which took the name of the Partisan Club. The driving forces of the initiative were two young intellectuals: the historian, Raphael Samuel, and Stuart Hall, a pioneer of cultural studies. They encouraged school pupils who supported the New Left to set up their own organisation and put out their own magazine.
The London Schools Left Club held its meetings at the Partisan Club and succeeded in attracting an impressive range of speakers: from Michael Foot to Doris Lessing, from the film director Lindsay Anderson to the art critic John Berger. Most of its members were sixth form pupils at north London grammar schools and public schools, including Copthall, Mill Hill, Merchant Taylors, Henrietta Barnett and South Hampstead Girls.
"Going in through the door, one was struck at once by the amazingly large number of people who had managed to cram themselves into an extremely small space," wrote a journalist who attended one of the London School Left Club’s initial meetings in October 1958. "About 40 early arrivals were sitting on some rather hard folding chairs, at least another 50 had settled themselves on the even harder floor, and latecomers were still streaming in."
The club thrived for a couple of years, then faltered when its leading lights left school and moved on. Perspective only appeared for two issues – but it was a substantial, well-produced journal with contributors including Stephen Sedley, who went on to become one of the country’s most senior judges. And with the help of well-connected parents, it attracted much more advertising than you would expect for a sixth formers’ start-up with a print run of probably just a few hundred.
John Lesirge, whose made his career in the travel business, says he looks back on his youthful political activity with great pride.
"We were idealistic socialists who wanted to make the world better. Why would 16 and 17-year-olds be interested in the left except to change the world?"
Andrew Whitehead (awkashmir@gmail.com) is a local historian. He would be delighted to hear from anyone with memories of the Partisan Club or the London Schools Left Club.
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