They locked me up for wanting peace (From Stroud News and Journal)

They locked me up for wanting peace

He has been a professional soldier yet was jailed for taking part in peace protests. He has worked as a sludge pusher and a performance poet. He is a qualified FA coach as well as a dedicated 'thoughtful anarchist'. It cannot be said the Dennis Gould has not led a varied life and here he talks to chief reporter Sam Bond all about it.

DENNIS Gould seems to know everybody.

Sitting outside a Stroud cafe, my interview with him is constantly interrupted by people stopping to trade friendly pleasantries with the popular poet and artist.

And those who don't know him will have found it hard to avoid his distinctive posters which keep the craft of letter setting alive and well in the Five Valleys.

Dennis has carved out a niche for himself in the town and his views on peace and socialism and cheerful, anarchic outlook on life are well known.

But perhaps the early life of this working class lad who overcame society's obstacles to make creative expression his life's work is less of an open book.

Born in Burton-on-Trent, Dennis moved to Derby as a child, left school at 15 and was immediately immersed in the world of work.

Although even then he had wanted to go to art school he did not know how go about getting in.

"None of my family had ever gone into higher education and I didn't have the confidence to just turn up at a college and ask if they would have me," he said.

"I know it sounds daft but I just didn't know how to apply." Instead he wound up as a trainee hotel manager.

Archaic

"It was really archaic situation, like an old-style apprenticeship," he said. "My parents had to sign me over to Trusthouse."

He stuck out the training for a year and a half but found the work dull and signed up for the army life instead.

"It was kind of an escape for me," he said.

"I was attracted by the life of adventure like so many young men in those days."

Fascinated by maps, Dennis joined the Royal Engineers in the hope of carrying out surveying work.

Already a keen footballer, his enthusiasm for the sport was actively encouraged by the army and he qualified as an FA coach as well as playing for the Royal Engineers.

although his most exciting match in the army was playing the formidable Pegasus, a team of student stars from Oxford and Cambridge, the most memorable was a game in Matlock on a flooded pitch.

"There's no way they would have held the match there now, it was a complete mudbath," he said.

"The pitch was an absolute quagmire, when you put your foot down you couldn't move it and the ball would only go three yards when you kicked it.

"It was like a slow football ballet."

During his army career Dennis was posted to Cyprus and when he left the Royal Engineers took his time working his way back to Blighty and fell in love with foreign cultures and languages.

Voluntary

He did not stay in England too long, however, and soon signed up for the International Voluntary Service for a year where he was posted to Morocco to help renovate a building for Algerian refugee children.

He also worked in Switzerland laying a water pipe for a poor hill farmer.

When the year ran out he finally got a shot at higher education, enrolling at the enlightened Woodbrook College in Birmingham which had been founded by the Quakers.

"It was like universities ought to be," he said. "And that was when I began to write."

His new found appetite for writing was matched by a taste for reading and he got through a lot of Tolstoy, DH Lawrence and Thoureaux to name but a few.

"It was the influence of DH Lawrence that made me write, because of the simplicity of his poems," he said.

"The first poem I wrote was about jazz." While at college he was also involved in the fledgling peace movement and discovered the joys of pacifism and conscientious objection.

"I would never have joined the army if I had been aware of political ideas," he said. "And by that time I was beginning to question the whole military thing.

"When I left the Royal Engineers they kept my details as a reserve to call me up in an emergency and they used to pay me a small allowance.

"I sent back my reserve papers saying I'd never serve again, didn't want my money and wanted to be a conscientious objector.

"They stopped my pay but kept me on their books and said they would still call me up if they had to."

Cold War

At the height of the Cold War Dennis joined many anti-nuclear demonstrations and, like hundreds of others was arrested and put under lock and key where he could no longer be a menace to society.

"Direct action wasn't a new idea," said Dennis. "There was the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, of course, but it was new to most of us.

"When you first get involved it's all quite strange because you're not used to taking action for yourself.

"But taking part in demonstrations does radically change your attitudes and makes you feel like your taking responsibility for your own life and society."

"When we were arrested we refused to be bound over to keep the peace so we were thrown in jail," he said.

"We could have left at any time by signing a piece of paper to say we would behave but we wouldn't.

"We told them that we were keeping the peace by breaking into these military bases."

Their fellow inmates thought they were barking mad for not signing the pieces of paper and walking free but they did have a grudging respect for them too.

While his fellow protesters got two months apiece, Dennis was put away for four because they had him marked down as a ringleader.

Maps

"I was carrying a map when I was arrested so they assumed I was one of the organisers," he said. "I wasn't, of course, I just liked maps."

Dennis was, for a time, in the same prison as James Hanratty, the last man hanged in Britain.

"He was a simple man who had been encouraged to sign a confession," said Dennis.

"Everyone in the prison was convinced he was innocent, including the prison officers.

"He had been transferred by the time he was hanged but we were all locked up the morning it happened until it was over.

"The prisoners made as much noise as they could in their cells as a sign of respect. "It was very moving, it was like solidarity.

"We couldn't stop him being hanged but we could show them how we felt. "It was a very powerful thing."

When he wasn't serving time for his opposition to the nuclear arms race going on on both sides of the Iron Curtain, Dennis got the chance to meet some prominent peaceniks including the philosopher Bertrand Russell.

"He was an amazing man and very dignified," said Dennis. "He was in prison during the First World War as a conscientious objector and that was almost unheard of then.

"He may have been a flawed human being, but aren't we all?

"To be that committed at the age of 89 to the extent of taking direct action and put himself on the line when he really didn't need to was impressive."

As usual, Dennis had more than one string to his bow and was not a full time peace protester.

He set up a number of events featuring jazz musicians and poets and took a travelling poetry set to schools and colleges around the country.

Poet

"I don't think many of the kids at the time were familiar with the idea of having a poet in the school," he said. "I'd like to think it opened a few of their eyes."

He was also deeply involved with the festival scene of the 1960s and to this day, along with fellow Stroud poet Jeff Cloves and Bristolian Miss Pat West he organises the poetry tent at Glastonbury Festival.

During his varied career Dennis has dabbled with journalism writing for Peace News and acting as a freelance reviewer.

His many articles on the Children of Albion anthology compiled by Michael Horovitz captured the mood of the times and sold like hot cakes.

"I wrote about ten reviews of it and several were published including one in Rolling Stone magazine," he said.

He survived for a year on the occasional freelance pay cheque doing casual jobs. While living in Cornwall, for example, he worked as a sludge pusher in a streaming plant, sifting tin and copper out of Cornish clay.

He set up his own community bookshop, Whisper and Shout, where he began printing pamphlets, posters and essays on civil disobedience.

Next stop Oxford, where he worked in a community centre called Uhuru in a poorer part of the city and carried on publishing the posters.

"I'd didn't have a view of who they'd reach, it was just important for me to produce them," he said.

"It's like any creative work - you do it and hope it might reach one or two people and hope it might encourage other people to do the same or paint, or write or make poems."

Posters

But it wasn't until he came to Stroud that he began printing his own, trademark posters. "It was at Piccadilly Mill in Stroud," he said.

"Up until then I'd been getting local printers to do them.

"But I was given a chance to have a go myself and really enjoyed it - gaining skill in a craft gives you the confidence to try all sorts of other things.

"It took me about seven hours to set my first poster because I kept dropping the type. "But eventually I did it. It was a poem called Stroud Eye View Blues."

Though Dennis is no longer waiting for the revolution he does not believe anarchy and civil disobedience is a young man's game.

"If the ideas are right you don't necessarily stop believing they have some contribution to make to society," he said.

"I think things change very slowly and I just want a more liberal society.

Revolution

"The revolution is a myth and it's never going to happen.

"I don't think there will be any sudden upheaval and I think it's peaceful and thoughtful action that will bring long-lasting changes."

"How we choose to live our daily lives and how we interact with one another is what's going to make a difference in the end.

"That's what will give people the self-confidence to change their own lives and have a bit more influence on society."

As a seasoned peace campaigner, Dennis is disturbed by America's war on terrorism and the growing tensions in the Middle East.

"The awful thing about the war against terrorism is the lack of civil liberties and hypocrisy in the countries that are promoting it.

"America has more weapons of mass destruction than anyone else and it's the only country to have actually used the nuclear weapons.

"Its own record on human rights is questionable and now they're rounding up people and detaining them without trial.

"Of course some of them are terrorists, but not all, and I'm sure it will be used as an excuse to get rid of people they don't like."

As for invading Iraq, Dennis shares the concern of many that hawks baying for Saddam Hussein's blood in America risk becoming more of a menace than the man they oppose.

"I haven't got a solution but I think the Americans are only getting involved because of the oil," he said. They "And the more it pursues this war the more like Saddam American society becomes. "It's a very dangerous time."