Club Chronicle

24 April 2025: Coppering in the 70s

Since President Francis is still on holiday, it fell to 1st Vice President Graham to chair this meeting. He joked that he had to introduce the speaker - himself.

Graham retired from the Essex Police as a Detective Chief Superintendent. For this talk he told us about two cases he was involved in during the 1970s.

One was an investigation into a business he thought had probably been set up with the best of intentions. Two men had rented a large warehouse in Essex with a view to buying goods for resale to the general public from the warehouse. The warehouse was fitted out appropriately and local staff hired. The two owners and their manager then acquired goods on credit from suppliers all round the country.

One aspect of the business they had overlooked was publicity. They had hardly any customers but continued to buy from their own suppliers on credit. The operation came to the attention of Essex Police when they started receiving complaints about the business’s failure to pay its bills.

Three plain clothes officers were sent in. One, a male, purported to be a salesman interested in selling to them. He turned up in a business suit carrying a briefcase under his arm. Accepting his cover story, the two owners took him up to the offices not generally seen by the public. The briefcase contained a hidden camera, so the officer was able to take photographs of the proprietors. He also reported that there were piles of paperwork with no order to them.

The other two officers were female. They turned up individually purporting to be potential customers, going round the warehouse with shopping lists in their hands. Their real job was to note the brands on sale so that the police could approach their credit departments for more background information. Graham was one of the officers who went round the country interviewing the suppliers’ credit controllers.

The police had seen that loaded lorries were leaving the warehouse and decided to follow one of them to see where it went. These days such an operation would be carried out using four unmarked cars, and possibly a helicopter and a GPS tracker. In the 1970s Graham was in one of the two unmarked cars following one of the lorries.

The lorry drove down the A12 towards London. From time to time it would slow down to 30 mph. Graham commented that it was difficult to follow a vehicle successfully when it was going so slowly on a major road. Eventually the driver would turn into a lay-by and stop. The surveillance car immediately behind it would then drive past and the second car would keep a watch on the lorry. When it arrived in London it stopped overnight and arrests were made.

The two owners and their manager were prosecuted, the rest of the staff being completely innocent and unaware that they were working in anything other than a legitimate business.

The second case Graham mentioned was another fraud. The police discovered that the culprit had emigrated to New Zealand with his family.

Graham and another officer travelled to New Zealand with an extradition order. He said they had a very pleasant few days there interviewing people. Having flown eastwards from the UK to New Zealand, the two of them decided to continue flying eastwards with their prisoner so they could claim to have completed a round-the-world trip.

The problem came when they had to stop in America overnight. Their prisoner had an American visa but neither of the police officers did. Furthermore, Graham set off the airport alarms when he walked through with a set of handcuffs on his belt. He produce his warrant card but the local police weren’t convinced; so far as they were concerned, he couldn’t be a police officer because he wasn’t carrying a firearm,

Graham didn’t actually tell us how he got out of that one. The two officers did make it back to the UK, complete with their prisoner, who was put into prison on remand.

When it came to trial, the fraudster was sentenced to eleven months. If he had been sentenced to twelve months he would not have been allowed back into New Zealand.

A couple of months later Graham was surprised to bump into the fraudster in Chelmsford. It turned out that, because of the shortness of the sentence and the time he had already served on remand, he was already out on licence.

Young Musician Regional Final

The Regional Final of Rotary Young Musician was held in Chelmsford Cathedral on the evening of Saturday, 8 March 2025. Two of our members handed out programmes. Other members of our Club attended, as did other Rotarians. The Region covers Districts 1080, 1090, 1240 and 1260, taking in much of Central and Eastern England. As Youth Lead for District 1240, Peter Dowse organised the Regional competition.

There were eight competitors, four instrumentalists and four vocalists. Our Club sponsored Amelia Yang, the sole violinist among the group, who won both the Chelmsford heat we organised and the District 1240 Final. The adjudicators were Liz Childs, a flute teacher at the University of East Anglia, Are Wangcharoensab, Assistant Director of Music at New Hall School, and Elyse Maugher, Music Lead at Isaac Newton Academy.

At is to be expected at this stage of the competition, we were treated to an evening of great music. Each competitor performed two or three pieces. The music they selected ranged from classical to modern. None of us envied the adjudicators the task of choosing winners and runners-up.

After all the competitors had performed there was an interval while the adjudicators deliberated and those who wished drank tea or coffee, stretched our legs, chatted with friends or did all three.

Art Wangcharoensab gave the adjudicators’ feedback. He said the competitors were “all winners”, which at this stage of the competition is literally true. The winning vocalist was Oscar Riley (District 1080) and the runner-up Nina Ayling (District 1090). The winning instrumentalist was clarinetist Fred Blackshaw (District 1080) and the runner-up our own Amelia Yang. The winners will now go forward to the National Final in Romford.

Quiz Night

Report by President Francis

The Wilderness Foundation quiz, was held at the Essex Young Farmers building at Chatham Green on 28 November 2024. We provided the quiz, quizmaster and admin on the night, leaving the charity to find teams, supply prizes, venue etc. We did a quiz on these lines for the Wilderness Foundation last year. They kindly asked us back as a result, and again the evening was a great success, with plenty of positive feedback. Nine teams took part, with the winning score 76 out of a possible 92, and more importantly, over £800 was raised for the Wilderness Foundation, which is a charity we are very pleased to support, not least because it is a District 1240 corporate member.

I had only one piece of negative feedback, from a quizzer who didn’t think I should have described Richard Osman as a comedian, but despite that I think we might be invited back next year to do another quiz, which we will be very pleased to do.

My thanks to fellow members Angela, Geoff, Graham, John, Anne and Bob, who were there to help with the quiz on the night and made sure it ran smoothly. Thanks also to Anne’s husband Steve for again providing the audio equipment and Bob’s wife Jean for being part of the team our club entered.

President’s bike ride

Report by President Francis

28 August 2024

At 9:45 am, in the company of three cycling friends who rode with me for the first eighteen miles, I set off on the first leg of my two-day Rotary Cycle Challenge, to ride from Debenham to Chelmsford. There I would stay overnight, attend the weekly meeting the next day, and then pedal back to Debenham. The first part of the route, through some quiet and lovely Suffolk and Essex countryside, was very enjoyable, despite quite a few hills. The final dozen or so miles, first alongside the A12, then through Hatfield Peverel and Boreham, and finally along cycle tracks, was less enjoyable, more of a means to an end.

Through the wonders of modern technology, I was able to keep Jenny informed of my progress by using the location function on WhatsApp. I made good progress and arrived in Central Park at 5 pm, to enjoy a relaxing coffee and chat with the various Rotarians who had kindly turned out to greet me. My legs had done well to that point, but soon felt leaden when I sat down, a precursor to quite a bit of cramp later in the evening.

29 August 2024

I had an early start the next morning, as I had arranged to meet Pam Scammell at 9 am on Springfield Green, from where she was setting off on her ride to Edinburgh. John Watkins kindly came along as well and took some photos for me. Pam’s cycling companion for the day, Ron, who had come from Ilford and was riding a small wheeled Brompton bike, was also sporting a Rotary snood, sold to him by John, on his head. I was pleased to hear from Pam later in the day that she and Ron had safely made it to their first overnight stop at Whittlesford, in Cambridgeshire, and that she now realised Essex wasn’t as flat as it is made out to be!

I left the Club’s lunchtime meeting around 2:15 pm for my return ride in a positive frame of mind after the discussion. It was good to get the noise of the A12 out of my ears when I reached Kelvedon, and the rest of the ride was a delight, as the weather was perfect for cycling, a few degrees cooler than the previous day and a gentle south westerly breeze to help push me home. The route was largely the same as the previous day, except that when I crossed the border into Suffolk at Bures, rather than following the Stour valley to Nayland, I headed north-east, to Assington and Boxford, then Kersey, where I paused for some refreshment.

That included a couple of bananas; when I had mentioned the attacks of cramp to Jenny, she had suggested I eat some bananas as the potassium would help and they seemed to do the trick, as I had no cramp after I got home. I had the warmth of the sun on my back until around 7.30 pm, when it fell low in the sky, but I was near to home by then, so did not need extra clothing, although I did put my lights on for the last couple of miles. The church clock said 7.45 pm when I passed by, so I made it home just as the sun was setting for the day.

Some more detailed reflections of the ride can be found here.