“Robert, we’ve got to get this postcard out there,” says Tony.
“Yes… How are you going to do that?” says I.
“Mr Foot…”
Michael Foot, the Labour politician, was deputy to Wilson, but apparently wasn’t getting on that well with him. Mr Wilson was on the right of the left, but Mr Foot was to the left of the left. As the MP for Devonport, he also had a house in Hampstead. Tony, of course, knew where he lived. He decided it might be a good idea to visit Mr Foot early one morning. So, armed with his trusty photographer (myself) and carrying 500 copies of this postcard, we arrived outside Mr Foot’s London abode. He used to take his dog for an early morning walk at half past seven. This too, Tony appeared to know. At half past seven on the dot, out comes Mr Foot with two barking dogs. Tony walked up to him and saying,
“Mr Foot.”
“Who are you? Press? Go away!”
Tony said, “No, no, no. I want to make you an offer that I think may be to your advantage. It could be mutually advantageous.”
I went up to take a picture.
“You are the Press! Paparazzi!”
Tony disagreed, “No, I promote popular musicians.” He turned on the charm offensive for which he was famous. He was good-looking in an Italian way. He smiled, with his big teeth. He told Michael Foot that the elections were coming up and maybe this cartoon would help pull the rug out from under Mr Wilson’s feet? It could be to his advantage.
“Perhaps, Mr Foot might like to put one of these postcards, on every single seat in the House of Commons?”
“I can’t do that,” he retorted.
“I don’t see any reason you shouldn’t,” responded Tony and gave him the whole bundle of postcards.
Next day, newspaper headlines read: “Pop Group Sued By Prime Minister For Libel.” So he had gone along and done it. He had done the deed (or so I thought). What happened between our handing the postcards over and the next day, I’m not entirely sure. But suddenly, the postcard was out there and there was an injunction against the group. That night, The Move were playing Portsmouth. The press descended on the group, flashbulbs popping and demanding interviews.
“What’s happened? Have we got a number one?”One of them asked.
“No, you’re being sued by the Prime Minister,” they were told. “For a libellous postcard showing him in bed with his secretary.”
“Oh my God!” they went. “That’s our manager. What’s he gone and done now?” They knew he didn’t do things by halves. Meanwhile, Tony was jumping up and down with joy. An overnight sensation – his band are known worldwide. He was tremendously excited.
The Prime Minister sued, serving the group with an interim injunction and the whole thing went to court a couple of months later on October 11th 1967.
Before the court case, a few days after the story had broken, Tony heard a knock at his door. Two very nice-looking men with Homburg hats, both carrying briefcases, stood outside his flat in Earls Court.
“Are you Tony Secunda?”
“Yeeesss,” he answered, as though not quite sure.“What do you want?”
On the admission that he was, in fact, Tony Secunda, they moved like greased lightning. Entering the doorway, they picked him up and held him against the door, lifting his feet up off the ground. They were still holding their briefcases and umbrellas and kept their hats on. One of them grabbed hold of his balls and began twisting them. Tony told me afterwards that he never experienced such agony, or been so frightened. Then these two terribly respectable gentlemen said,
“You’ve been a very naughty boy. You’ve upset the Prime Minister. If this continues…” There was a pause.
“But it won’t, will it, Sir…?”
Tony knew that he’d overstepped the mark. “Once you start messing with the establishment,” he warned me, “look out”. These two gentlemen had just appeared, he told me, and then they disappeared. They hadn’t said who they were.
On the day of the court case, Quintin Hogg Q.C. acted for Harold Wilson. He was a Tory MP and later became Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone, not to mention Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain. Anyway, for now, I was sitting in court observing his ears, which stuck out in an elephantine sort of way. The case was being held ‘in camera’. “Marvellous!” I thought. “I’ll go along and take some pictures.”
‘In camera’ actually means ‘in secret’. I wonder, was I naive or just didn’t want to understand? Whichever it was, I had taken my trusty camera into the High Court. Which you’re not supposed to do. I’m not sure whether I realised this or not. Tony and the band were supposed to be there as well to see what transpired. They had not arrived yet and I was in the High Court waiting for them.
The sun is streaming through a huge picture window behind Quintin Hogg. He is standing there in front of this massive window with his large, protruding ears all red and glowing. I am thinking “Wow! Great picture!” So I walk up to him, go *click* with my camera and take a picture. Immediately, he bellows out, “Arrest that man!” Before I know what is happening, these gorillas – enormous gentlemen, appear from nowhere. I was carried with my little feet hardly touching the ground and swept down into the bowels of the earth. I thought that this was going to be it.
“You’ve been very naughty,” they say.
“Really?”
“You know cameras aren’t allowed here.”
“Really?”
“You know you can’t take pictures in here, thinking that that’s going to be your next best selling poster, or any such nonsense.”
Then they pulled the film out of my camera and I responded,
“Please don’t hit me,” putting my hands over my face and fearing the worst.
“Now, just make sure you just don’t do it again,” they said and put me outside the back door of the courthouse.
Just at this time, Tony and the band were arriving.
“Hello Robert, how’s it going?”
“Well, I’ve just been kicked out of the High Court.”
“Oh!”
Tony had hired a Rolls Royce for the day, which had broken down on the M1 on its way down from Birmingham. They were running late and had missed the proceedings. I loaded up the camera and took a picture of all of them. Carl Wayne was holding a book by Timothy Leary, ‘Turn on, Tune in Drop out.’ Acid had arrived. He was holding this and they were all looking very smug and pleased with themselves. Trevor Burton had had his hair permed, it was an early Afro. Asked about their political standpoint, they joked,
“We’ve got no faith in any political sides at all. We’d vote for people like Frank Zappa or Jimi Hendrix, you know.”
Tony Secunda and The Move arrive late for their court hearing – 12 October 1967
The court found Tony, the publisher, the cartoonist, Neil Smith. the band and anybody else involved, guilty. Quintin Hogg described the postcard as “scurrilous”,”making use of ‘malicious rumours’ concerning the Prime Minister’s character and integrity.” He also criticised the decision to send it to journalists, television producers and music publishers. The band were ordered to apologise to the Prime Minister for spreading “false and malicious rumours concerning his character” and to pay all profits from the single ‘Flowers in the Rain’ to charities of Wilson’s choosing, including Stoke Mandeville Hospital (where Jimmy Savile was jolly busy) and the Spastics Society (now called Scope). The royalties for both the ‘A’ and ‘B’ sides of the record were to be paid in perpetuity – forever. This agreement would cost the band more dearly than they could have imagined. At the time, lost revenue was estimated at anything from £2,000 to £8,000. Twenty years after the event, Roy Wood complained that he was losing hundreds of thousands of pounds. By now, it is estimated that he could have lost millions in royalties.
After Harold Wilson’s death in 1995, Roy Wood tried to reverse the ruling. But they said no, forever means forever and the charities changed to those chosen by Lady Falkender. Wood said that it was “worse than a sentence for murder”.
“The court case was the beginning of the end. We were suddenly thrown into the High Court of Justice and we were defenceless. We had no one to represent us or listen to whether we were involved. Had we been sensible, we’d have taken counsel and listened to what we should have said. Instead, we admitted to something that we didn’t actually do – all because we thought it was good fun to do. When you think about it, it was completely and utterly fucking stupid because we hooked ourselves onto something that we would later regret. It was really Secunda’s bag and we should have quickly stepped away from it. It was a stunt too far, but by then of course, we couldn’t.” Carl Wayne [Source: www.carlwayne.co.uk]
