MK Today - Saturday 11th February 2023

With His Majesty King Charles III about to visit Milton Keynes to confirm and to celebrate our home being awarded a city charter may I share a couple of bits from my book MILTON KEYNES THE CITY OF LEGEND: 

School Assembly and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II And The Visit That Never Was.

In the definition of the word these are perhaps not legends, there certainly is no myth about them as every word you are about to read actually happened.  If enough people now read about Milton Keynes Mayor Brian Baldry’s school assembly and the wave at the bottom of Leon School’s field then perhaps these event may be lifted into legend !

So let’s start, shall we, with School Assembly

What were school assemblies like when you were a kid ?  Were they as boring as they were

for me ?  Were they as boring as some of the assemblies I presided over at Leon School. Never mind which school you went to, never mind if morning assemblies were good, bad or ugly let me share memories of a very special time.

In 1981 Brian Baldry became the eighth Mayor of Milton Keynes.  He decided he wanted to come to Leon School where his son and daughter were students, he wanted to address the entire school and explain the Milton Keynes motto on the crest hanging from his mayoral chain:

BY KNOWLEDGE, DESIGN AND UNDERSTANDING

Headmaster David Bradshaw gave me the task of organising the visit and assembly. In 1981 I would have preferred he had dumped the major task on another member of staff but today I am so proud that I was the one who drew the short straw.

I had to pack one thousand two hundred students and staff into the sports hall, a tight fit. Mayor Brian then gave a brilliant talk totally captivating and inspiring the students, not to mention the staff. That was forty-two years ago and yet, such was its inspiration, I can remember it as if it was yesterday.

By Knowledge, Design and Understanding. Mayor Brian stood before the assembly, took the mayoral chain in his hands and explained in detail the motto of our New City.  He wanted every student and every member of staff at Leon School to be very clear that this was the at the heart of Milton Keynes and what the words meant.

Knowledge began with The Open University then spreading out to every single school in the New City. Design was the planning of Milton Keynes Development Corporation. Understanding was the way we would all come together to build Milton Keynes New City into a Milton Keynes a Great City. That is how Mayor Brian explained his chain of office. He inspired everyone at that assembly about the New City where we lived.

After the assembly Mayor Brian chatted with me about our infant City. We called Milton Keynes a City as it was being developed and everyone just assumed on completion it would be awarded a city charter. A few weeks after that assembly Mayor Brian was to host HM Queen Elizabeth II on a visit to Milton Keynes. Brian would meet her at Bletchley Railway Station, there was no Central Milton Keynes Station back then. He hoped that visit would lead to Milton Keynes being awarded city charter and shared his passion with me as we chatted. He so much wanted to be Lord Mayor of Milton Keynes.

Being a city does not automatically mean its mayor becomes a Lord Mayor. Birmingham has a Lord Mayor but Greater London does not. Milton Keynes is now a city but we do not have a lord for our mayor. The role of the mayor is above politics, It was in 1999, seven years after Mayor Baldry left office, that elected mayors started popping up. Boris Johnson was an elected mayor of London. I do so hope that Milton Keynes does not go down this path of folly.

Anyway………

Mayor Brian Baldry was a businessman, well he liked to think that he was. He owned a taxi company, a small haulage firm and Bletchley Coaches. The wheels on the bus go round and round, well sometimes on some of Brian's buses they did but not always did they do so.

Following the success of Mayor Brian's school assembly, he decided he would host a group of students at the new Milton Keynes Council offices. Brian sent one of his own coaches to the school to take us there.  I say us because again I drew the short straw and was put in charge. It may  have been a short straw forty odd years ago but today I am again so proud to have been given the task.

Driving the short distance from Leon School in the south of Milton Keynes to the civic offices in the city centre the engine of the coach began to overheat. By knowledge and a lot of understanding the driver managed to get it to the city centre and park up outside the council offices. He blagged an empty milk bottle from reception then kept running in and out with water to top up the radiator. It was my role to distract Mayor Baldry from what was happening. I smile now as I tell you the milk bottle which the driver was frantically using to fix the coach was from Taylor's Dairy, a dairy owned by a fellow council member and colleague of Mayor Brian, David Taylor who would later become Mayor of Milton Keynes.

BY KNOWLEDGE, DESIGN AND UNDERSTANDING 

Mayor Brian I am sure you were disappointed on not becoming Lord Mayor of Milton Keynes, I know how much you loved our New City. You left us many years ago but I am sure you are looking down from the mayor’s chamber in the sky with great pride now Her Majesty has granted Milton Keynes it’s well-deserved city charter.

Your visit to Leon School and your assembly has gone down as a legend. I wonder how many remember your speaking to us all in that packed sports hall. I wonder how many of your successors have donned their chain and visited our city schools to give a similar lecture. Not many if any I am guessing. Perhaps such a duty should form part of mayoral civic duties.

And now for….

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II And The Visit That Never Was:

It was a weekday when Mayor Brian welcomed Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to Milton Keynes, at the time Mr D B Bradshaw was Leon School headmaster. Leon is adjacent to the railway line along which the Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh would travel before reaching Bletchley and Mayor Baldry. We staff wanted to take our classes out onto the field to wave at the royal train. Headmaster Bradshaw did not think this was a justifiable reason to take the kids away from the Three R's.

 

Staff in the school office, however, were determined to change his mind. I think his secretary threatened to put a typo into every one of his letters until the end of term if Headmaster Bradshaw did not allow the entire school to wave at the royal train. A message was quickly sent round the classrooms, so we all decamped onto the field.

 

There we enthusiastically waved at all trains be they an express or a train scheduled to stop at every blade of grass. We waved at goods trains and we even waved at a bin lorry driving along Drayton Road. But we did not wave at the royal train. By the time Leon School was waving Her Majesty was long gone and the royal train was parked up in a siding at Bletchley Station, possibly the same one that had housed the Great Train Robbery’s Travelling Post Office. An abundance of egg was left on an abundance of Leon School faces !

 

After school and joking about the royal wave that never was, I was driving along Saxon Street behind The Brunel Centre in Bletchley when a black car approached then passed me by on the other side of the road. There she was sitting in the back seat, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Perhaps as her train slowed towards Bletchley Station she saw the school, Leon School, on her right. Perhaps she wondered why there were no kids there waving to greet her. Perhaps.

Your Majesty King Charles III I am sure we are all looking forward to you visit to the City of Milton Keynes on Thursday 16^th February 2023. I will myself be attending a blood donor session but I promise while laying back on the donation bed that I will wave !