‘Yes’ man

THE Church of England Men’s Society may not have expected to make the headlines, not even 40- odd years ago, not even (as happily was the case) when its diocesan annual meeting was in Shildon.

Eric Cleaver, the chairman, was to prove sadly prophetic. It was time, he said, for the Bishop of Durham to start saying No – “so that the Church can benefit from his services for many years to come”.

No chance. Had the word been coined in 1969, Dr Ian Ramsey – the Diddy Bishop – would have been supposed a workaholic. Three years later, it killed him.

None doubted the fatal flaw, not even the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Being unable to say No “became a deep and inseparable part of his character”, said the unrelated Dr Michael Ramsey at one of six memorial services.

A new biography underlines the theme time and again. “He looked on his diary not as an aid to the memory, but as a booklet which had to be filled up,” writes John Peart-Binns.

The obsession is most graphically described, however, by Gail, Ian Ramsey’sdaughter-in-law.

“I likened Ian Ramsey to a small and very enthusiastic terrier. This sounds rather flippant, but anyone who has lived with one of the small breeds of terrier will recognise the comparison.

“When digging – from whence comes the description ‘terrier’ – they are determined and utterly dedicated to the task beneath their paws.

They cannot easily be distracted and will continue to dig until they are satisfied.

“Ian had the same indestructible determination to see that his work was done to the best of his ability and gave himself wholly to the task.

“Sadly, there were too many holes to dig and too many squirrels to chase. He lacked the terriers’ saving grace – they know when they have done enough for the day.”

RAMSEY was a Lancashire lad, son of a postman who, unlettered, rose to become head postmaster of Norwich, the biggest postal district in the land.

He himself was a brilliant academic, taken aback – such his humility – when in 1966 a letter arrived from Harold Wilson seeking permission to put his name forward for the vacant see of Durham.

Apart from anything else he had never been a parish priest, the conflict between the academic and the pastoral a cross which many a Durham bishop, before and since, has had to bear.

He was small and round. Even a report of his consecration described him as “tubby”. John Peart-Binns twice or thrice reckons his appearance owl-like.

There was, indeed, a certain resemblance between the 91st Bishop of Durham and Billy Bunter, the Fat Owl of the Remove, as memorably portrayed by Gerald Campion.

He’d ceremonially crossed the great divide – that is to say, the Tees at Croft – in December 1966, made reference in his enthronement sermon at Durham to mini-skirts and long hair, “symbols of protest at what are regarded as the oppressive customs of an earlier generation”, threw himself into the Church of England’s fourth most senior post with what his latest biographer deems gusto.

Among the more visible surprises was that the new bishop chose to wear episcopal apron and gaiters – mod gear, his young admirers supposed – though most believed them to have been consigned to some sort of ecclesiastical museum.

Ramsey himself told the story of the occasion in a Durham restaurant when he was mistaken – from the back – for the head waiter.

Thus bedecked, he danced the Gay Gordons and, with gusto, at the Bishop Auckland press ball. Thus gaitered, he overturned the motion at Bishop Auckland Debating Society that God did not exist.

The proposer was Professor Anthony Flew, perhaps the country’s best-known atheist, who died last year, aged 90. Ian Ramsey died in 1972, aged 57 – proof, were ever it needed, that God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform.

I’d chaired the debate, helped write the obituary. The bit about God moving in a mysterious way was the pay-off line in that one, too.

THAT he had the common touch was indisputable. The people’s bishop, it was frequently said, though Peart-Binns critically supposes him everybody’s bishop – reluctant to delegate, unable to prioritise, apparently indiscriminate.

That Echo obituary had recalled an earlier interview we’d had. “He talked of his 90 hours and 200 letters a week with enthusiasm. It seemed a perk of the job.”

A frequent attender at the House of Lords, he also held more chairs, many of national importance, than Doggarts furniture department. Nor did his lifestyle allow much opportunity for exercise. When the bishop talked of taking a walk, he meant once around the Auckland Castle bowling green.

Almost every invitation was accepted, sometimes, it’s said, to the detriment of more important tasks in hand. Ramsey was nonetheless a man of coruscating intelligence, effervescent charisma and huge, almost pop-star popularity. If Durham were his diocese, the North- East was his constituency.

He became the first Bishop of Durham to go down a pit – Dawdon – and was delighted to be asked to address the Miners’ Gala. Ian Ramsey spoke their language, and by no means episcopally alone, albeit in a funny accent.

Brigadier Ian Bransom, a leading North-East Conservative and inveterate critic, is credited with the Diddy Bishop soubriquet. It stuck, and grew, wholly affectionately.

Whatever happened to the arch- Tory, Ramsey was soon being tipped to succeed his namesake as Archbishop of Canterbury. Eternity overtook him. On Easter Eve 1972 he suffered the major heart attack about which his GP and others had warned if he didn’t ease up.

He spent three weeks in Bishop Auckland hospital, finally alerted, he said, to the need to stand back, or at least to lie back, and consider his way of life. Ian Ramsey lay back and thought of the Church of England.

Back at Auckland Castle, still only allowed up for short periods, he talked of doing a little light work, of reorganisation, of having learned his lesson. “Even as those words were being written, Ramsey was diving into his work and expanding his commitments,” writes Peart-Binns.

“In sad fact he wasn’t swimming, he was drowning. He said he would not go back to the old killing round, but he did. “ On October 6, 1972, he died while attending meetings at the BBC in Langham Place, London.

The Reverend Tony Hodgson (bless him) spoke of breaking down in tears as he walked along Hartlepool docks that night, the Reverend Jeremy Martineau tells Peart-Binns of being “very angry indeed” with God.

The Archbishop, in his memorial service address, returned once again to the workload. “Never to say No means before long to lose the power of discrimination and to be living in a whirl of mental and physical movement.

“The whirl became a whirlwind which swept Ian, like Elijah of old, to paradise.”

What they said about him:

"Ian Ramsey used to complain that everything landed on his desk, but if it didn’t, he complained ever more loudly."

The Right Reverend Kenneth Skelton, late assistant bishop in Durham

"He was a kind-hearted little man with a superb intellect... but he found it difficult to distinguish the really important from the trivial in life, so that he used the sledgehammer of his intelligence cracking walnuts."

The Reverend Harold Saxby, former parish priest

"The criticisms are mostly concerned with his habit of overworking, which is very unhealthy."

Canon David Edwards, Ramsey’s first biographer in 1973.

* The Improbable Bishop by John S Peart-Binns is a human, warm and wholly readable account of the life of a beloved bishop. It’s published by The Memoir Club of Langley Park, Durham (£8.95).

Hatched, matched. . .

ARNOLD Hadwin’s funeral was held on Tuesday at Langworth, somewhere in the flatlands between Lincoln and Horncastle. Once a Marine, always a Marine, they played at the church The Ashokan Farewell, by the Royal Marines band.

Once a Spennymoor lad, always a Spennymoor lad, they played Gresford, the miners’ hymn, at the crematorium.

Arnold was editor in the Sixties of the Northern Despatch in Darlington, the man who – as his obituary observed – gave me my first job. Others, he insisted, warned that no good would come of it.

In Langworth, where he enjoyed a long retirement, they knew him as Arnie. Whatever else we mewling cubs called him – and usually it was Mr Hadwin – it was never, ever, Arnie.

The village noticeboard – old habits – advertised a book about the forlorn fight to save their post office “against a backdrop of misrepresentation, financial dexterity, and overarching and wanton bullying by Post Office management.” It wasn’t written by Arnold, could well have been, cost £14.95. Maybe not flying off the selves at Waterstone’s, but a No 1 best seller in Langworth.

As he had in Spennymoor and in and around Darlington, Arnold immersed himself in the community.

He was parish councillor, village hall committee member, contributor under the pseudonym A D Hawkes of grass roots gardening notes to the Langworth Local, circulation 350.

He was also a tree warden and nature lover, carried to his rest not in ornate oak, but in a coffin-shaped wicker basket.

He was one of eight raised in a terraced house in Marmaduke Street, joined the Echo from school on fifteen bob a week, did his two years National Service as a Royal Marine commando, won a scholarship to Oxford, became editor of the Bradford Telegraph and Argus and of the Lincolnshire Standard group after the Despatch, was awarded the OBE.

He was also a Labour Party member, not many Tories having come out of Marmaduke Street, though he resigned while an editor.

“He put a big Vote Labour poster in his window,” recalled parish council chairman and next-door neighbour John White. “I put up an even bigger one for the Conservatives.”

MANY local party colleagues seemed to have gathered in farewell, though these days local government’s apolitical. Whenever two or three are gathered together, all they do is compare potholes.

Arnold, mind, may still have been the only Guardian reader in Langworth.

Julie and Sara, his daughters, both became senior journalists. Edna, the girl he met at the Settlement, died in 2004 after 50 years marriage. Arnold was 82, the picture on the front of the order service depicting him with a pipe of the sorts that the Injuns smoked when getting it together with the Lone Ranger.

Julie talked of his roots in Spenynmoor and his gratitude to the Spennymoor Settlement – the Pitmen’s Academy – and of the advice, later discarded, never to trust public schoolboys and southerners.

“He took many issues seriously, but never himself. He was fun and funny, not always intentionally.”

Sara recalled his lifelong fascination with people. “He talked to everyone he came across and always made a connection.”

Jamie Gould, his grandson, played In the Mood on the saxophone that his granddad had bought him as a joint Chriustmas and birthday present – “we didn’t want to bankrupt him” – Ellen, Jamie’s sister, spoke of rhubarb fights and fishing trips and how Arnold had taught her how to cheat at cards.

He was also village crib champion, doubtless without cheating at all, and properly proud of it. “Came into the coffee morning waving the trophy over his head,” said Robert Speight, the vicar.

It was a good send-off to a great man, even quoting some Julius Caesar – “the valiant never taste death but once” – he’d learned in the school play at Alderman Wraith Grammar in Spennymoor.

Principally he was a hard news journalist, a principled and eloquent campaigner and a tireless educator.

Probably he didn’t have too much truck with flimsy-whimsy wicker basket case columns like these.

In a way it doesn’t matter because today’s isn’t really a column at all.

It’s an undying vote of thanks.