At the Stiff Oak

When Samuel Pepys galloped from London to Stevenage, he noted in his diary: "Mighty merry . . . a coney [rabbit] skin in my breeches preserves me perfectly from galling." Last week, riding the same 28 miles on the comfortable cushions of his car, gloomy Lewis Silkin knew that there would be no merriment in Stevenage for him, that before he got out of town he might well need a coney skin of his own.

Hostile faces stared as he climbed out of his car. Signs--"Hands off our Homes" --glared at him. Nervously he walked to a little red-brick house in Fairview Road, introduced himself as Minister of Town and Country Planning to elderly Mr. & 'Mrs. Arthur Pearson.

London, Socialist Silkin smoothly explained, was smothering in its own amorphous bulk. To relieve congestion the Government planned a series of new satellite towns, each with its own factory, home and business districts divided by parklike "green belts." The population of Stevenage would rise from 6,000 to 60,000. It would lose the picture-book aspect it had worn since 1281, when it was chartered to the Abbot of St. Peter's, Westminster. Stevenage would be new, up-to-date.

Said Mr. Silkin: "You must consider that you will be provided with another house just as good if not better." Mrs. Pearson, unhappy, nervous, with tears in her eyes, protested: "But we don't want another house; we have been here for 20 years." Mr. Pearson showed his guest to the garden, broke off a spray of apple blossom, said: "But you can't give me back my apple trees." Answered Mr. Silkin: "No, but we are trying to give you a better Stevenage." Retorted Pearson, "That's as may be."

Neighbors gathered around the little group, asked "Why pick on Stevenage?" Mr. Silkin explained: "Because it has all the natural amenities we require." But Stevenage (which means "at the stiff oak" in Old English) was not amenable.

That night, when Mr. Silkin rose to speak at the town hall, he was greeted with yells of "Gestapo!" "Hark, the dictator!" "We want our birthright!" Red-faced Mr. Silkin shouted back: "Really, you are the most ungenerous people."

After Mr. Silkin spoke, the muttering continued. Said aristocratic, elderly Clarence Elliott, owner of a charming old converted farmhouse in Bedwell Lane: "Of course, Silkin is not quite a gentleman, d'you think? Mind you, I don't know anything about politics, don't care either, but I'm bitterly pro-Tory, and I think it's a damned shame to pull down beautiful property like this."

There was another side of the picture. Cheery Margaret Toner, wife of a laborer, looked around her squalid 200-year-old cottage and said: "Wot, this hole? They could pull it down tonight for all I care."

But late that night Mr. Silkin rode gloomily back to London in a borrowed car. Some ungenerous soul had let the air out of his tires.

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