Why I Like Howard Marks

I was very sorry to hear that Howard Marks, the famous cannabis smuggler and advocate of cannabis decriminalisation, has inoperable cancer.  I disagree with everything he argues for, and have debated against him on four occasions. But I regard him as a civilized opponent, a gentleman and a principled defender of free speech.

In fact I am often thinking of him when I experience the other thing – an opponent who lacks generosity, who misrepresents me, who confuses disagreement with personal dislike and lets one become the other, who isn’t actually paying attention to what I say, and who probably wishes in secret that I could be shut up by force.

 

Howard is the opposite of all these things. I’ll describe the strongest instance of his generosity in a moment. He’s never been other than friendly despite our disagreement. A few years ago, when I bested him on a point on a debate, I was struck by the way he had carefully researched that very point the next time we met. Because we each listened to the other, we both made each other think and came back with a cogent answer to it.  

 

He is also possessed of the picturesque ruin of a once-beautiful voice. And I often wonder what he might have made of himself had he not chosen the sad path of drugs. He has a considerable mind, and the country would have benefited greatly had that mind been used for another purpose. He is of course a grammar school product, from the lost days when the sons of Merchant Navy captains from Bridgend could get into Balliol College, Oxford.

 

But this is how we met. Long ago, so long I can’t recall the date. I agreed to discuss the drugs issue with him at a fringe meeting of the National Union of Students conference, one winter's night in Blackpool. This took place in one of the side rooms of the vast, ornate Winter Gardens there. A lot of people had come to hear Howard. Soon after we had begun, someone in the audience (or perhaps not) spread a false story that I had said from the platform that I was a ‘racist’. The person involved later withdrew and apologised for this slur.

 

I had no idea that this storm was quietly growing as I spoke. Since it wasn't true, I couldn't have known the story was circulating. There was a certain amount of muttering from a part of the audience, but that’s not unusual at such meetings.

 

Then  ( and I have to say the meeting was going rather well, with plenty of repartee, humour and audience engagement) a senior official of the National Union of Students marched up on to the platform and told me that I must immediately cease speaking and leave. When I asked why (totally amazed by this behaviour) he told me that I ought to know, and that I must know why. I said I had no idea, and protested quite loudly. The microphones were then turned off. Some sort of protest group had meanwhile assembled and were shouting. I can speak without a microphone, and proceeded to do so. The NUS official then said ‘In that case, I must ask you to leave the platform’.

 

At this point, Howard declared ‘Well, if he’s going, I’m going too’. What’s more, he put his arm firmly round my shoulder as we walked through the shouting protest group.

 

I was then asked to sit in a side-room, where, to my even greater astonishment, I was approached by a  police officer who offered to escort me to the railway station for my own safety. Never having been run out of town before, and being (as an ex-Trotskyist) very unscared of Trotyskyist mini-mobs, I urged him not to worry.  I would leave under my own power, and spend the night in Blackpool as planned, thanks all the same.

 

Very cleverly, the officer pointed out  (accurately) that the Winter Gardens are full of glass. The place is terribly breakable. If I left without an escort, he said, who knows what might happen to the ornate glass panels and lamps we saw all round us. And of course, if they were damaged, he, the police officer, would be held responsible for having failed to keep the peace. Surely I didn’t want that.

 

So, seething in fury, but outmanoeuvred, I agreed to be escorted to a back entrance like a fugitive, though not to the station. Nothing of any kind happened to me. I didn’t see Howard again for some time, but I was deeply impressed by his instinctive revulsion at the way I was treated, and his readiness to stand literally shoulder to shoulder if it had come to trouble. Every time I've met him since has also been a pleasure, though we'll never agree. Not many people are like this, and more should be. I am very sorry he is so ill, and send him my very best wishes at this bad time.