Fairytale life of 'Jock' Whittington

Published on Wednesday 30 October 2002 00:00

HOW a poor Portobello boy became Lord Mayor of London smacks of storybook stuff. In fact, Dick Whittington has got something to do with it. And while Frank McWilliams’ life hasn’t been a pantomime, it has resembled something of a grand theatrical production.

He felt he had a "pretty reasonable" story to tell, so the autobiography has duly arrived, with an eye-catching title . . . Pray Silence for ‘Jock’ Whittington - From Building Sewers to Suing Builders.

We are talking about Sir Francis McWilliams GBE, knighted in 1992 - Frank to his friends, and he has amassed those both in the UK and abroad, particularly in the Far East. Here is a man who appears to have been born to wander, far from Portobello.

Retired now at 76 and home at last to roost, he and his wife Wyn have chosen a hideaway in deepest East Lothian to see out what can justifiably be termed a "full life".

We met there to reflect on how it all panned out. Frank himself at times looks back with something mildly akin to disbelief. There was a touch of the fairytale about him when, after a colourful 23 years working in Malaysia, Frank returned to London and eventually found himself the centre of attraction in a golden coach, revelling in the finery of the trappings that went with it.

"The odds against me making something extraordinary, unique if you like, of my life were stacked ridiculously high. One of six children, I was born at Carlyle Place in Abbeyhill and I grew up in Portobello’s Bath Street," he says.

"The flat we lived in had been the first convent in Porty. The nuns who’d lived there had taught at the local St John’s school. My Irish-born mother, who’d been brought up in Fauldhouse, the West Lothian mining village, and my father, who delivered bread by horse-drawn van around Edinburgh for McVitie’s the bakers, scrimped and saved to put me to university.

"Incidentally, my dad, who helped build Portobello power station, had done his bit in the First World War, winning a military medal.

"We were, I suppose, an impoverished family, and inevitably you don’t really appreciate the sacrifices your parents make to get you the best possible education until they’ve gone. On the way to a civil engineering degree in 1945, I was schooled at St John’s and Holy Cross Academy where Eddie Paolozzi, destined to become a world-rated sculptor, and I were classmates."

In an engrossing read, Frank - blessed with a retentive mind among other special talents - remembers Highland Cream toffee at a penny a bar, Saturday movie matinees with Laurel and Hardy, delivering Christmas mail in Leith Walk during student holidays and playing rugby for Dunfermline.

"Ear trouble saw me obliged to do my two years’ National Service in the City Engineer’s office after I graduated before I applied for a post in Stafford at three times my salary. I had been told that to progress in local government I’d have to move around. My only contribution of note to the Edinburgh construction scene had been at the Sighthill industrial estate.

"I was leaving my beloved Edinburgh for the first time, little realising that jobwise it would be a helluva long time before I’d return and, of course, never dreaming of the adventures ahead."

There was, though, one particular adventure above all. Home for Christmas from Stafford, he went dancing at the Plaza, Churchill, and by chance met up with a teller who’d caught his eye when he had closed his account at the Trustee Savings Bank.

"She told me her name was Wyn. Love at first sight? I don’t know, but that was in December 1947. We were both 21 and we’ve been dancing together ever since.

"We’d married and produced Douglas, first of our two sons, by the time I answered an ad for an engineer in Malacca in 1953.

"We’d wanted to go overseas and, as things turned, this was the beginning of life in Malaysia for us for 23 years. We were there so long, where Michael was born, hobnobbing with royalty, that we all but went native.

"For a decade I reckon I had the best job in the country, and I was 50 when we returned to the UK for a career switch."

However, while out in Malaysia, Frank got "involved in arbitration", as he puts it, in a particularly complex dispute in Brunei, and loved the work so much that he took a correspondence course in English law, which led to the first part of the English Bar exams.

"I passed, and when I got the results back in Malaysia I told Wyn I could become a barrister if I wanted to. Now I tell people I was going through the male menopause at the time and that it was a case of changing my wife or my career. Wyn persuaded me that changing my career would be cheaper than changing my wife. Being Scottish, I took the cheaper option.

"That’s really why we came back to London, for me to become a full-time student at the School of Law for two years. The ultimate choice was return to Malaysia as an engineer or as a barrister. I decided to stay in the UK and practise as an arbitrator.

"We found a flat in the city at the Barbican, which unwittingly was to lead us in time to the Mansion House and the Mayoralty. I became a spokesman for the residents of the 2100 flats and houses which were owned by the then Corporation of London."

As a result, Frank was elected an alderman, or lawman, for the ward of Aldersgate. "I had no idea how the city was governed, so this was the beginning of a learning curve that took me to the Mansion House. When I was elected, I was on the ladder to becoming Lord Mayor, probably the most prestigious civic office in the land - a long, long way from hunting for crabs with my brother on the Joppa rocks and playing marbles in the gutter on my way to school.

"This was when I was introduced to the finery of office. The full kit was scarlet gown with sable fur trim, violet gown with bear fur trim, velvet court suit with breeches and normal court suit with breeches. The court suit was worn with black tights.

"I never felt embarrassed wearing my Aldermanic robes, although somebody once described the Court of Aldermen as ‘a group of middle-aged men poncing around in medieval drag’.

"I also became a Liveryman and then, in 1989 for a year, Sheriff of London - all part of the traditional pomp and ceremony en route to the Mayoralty." He was finally elected Lord Mayor in September 1992 for a year.

"But not before I was reminded that the most famous Lord Mayor of all is Dick Whittington," says Frank. "So much of what is written about him is fiction that people have come to doubt he existed, but there was a Sir Richard Whittington. He was elected Lord Mayor three times in the late 1300s. When he died in 1423 he left in his will 6000 for charity - about 2 million in today’s money.

"But money couldn’t buy the thrill and privilege of what I experienced in London pre, during and post my stint in the top office. Riding in the golden coach for the Lord Mayor’s Show, when Princess Anne was the first royal to attend the show since Queen Victoria, dining alongside the Queen at her memorable ‘annus horribilis’ lunch, meeting Margaret Thatcher and John Major, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev and Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke.

"Many of the functions - my record was 12 in one day - were held in the Guildhall. The Mansion House is famous as the only place in London where white tie and tails remains the dress code. Adorned with medals, stars and a sash, I felt like a Christmas tree."

The explosive chapter in the book, literally, deals with the IRA bomb that caused so much damage in the heart of the City in Bishopsgate in April 1993, with Frank still at the helm. "Wyn and I were on our way to visit our son Michael and his wife in Kent when it happened. I was truly proud of the way the corporation staff and the emergency services reacted.

"Perhaps my main claim to fame as Lord Mayor of London is that, in the aftermath of the bomb, being an engineer, I was able to appear on television looking comfortable in a hard hat even when wearing a priceless badge of office, a tail coat and striped trousers."

He and Wyn - they celebrated their 52nd wedding anniversary on September 30 - bought what’s now their home for life in 1994 as a holiday retreat.

"It’s ideal for us, just down the road from Edinburgh, and we do still love Edinburgh." Frank says. "When Wyn and I reflect on our life, considering that we must have been a target for the IRA and we survived, we can’t complain. Not that we’ve severed links with London. We’ve been invited to the Lord Mayor’s Show next month [November 9] and the Lord Mayor’s Banquet."

Wyn, all smiles, showed me the card accompanying their invitations. "The Lord Mayor Elect and the Sheriffs," it says, "present their compliments and hope that those ladies who care to do so will wear tiaras."

Frank says: "That’s typical of the whole Mayorality bit and I’m sure Dick Whittington would approve. It so happens, by the way, that Wyn does have a tiara, so we won’t have to dig deep into our pensions.

"Carlyle Place to the Mansion House. I have to think about it from time to time. God almighty, did this really happen to me?"

Pray Silence is available from Malu Publishing, Apt 7, Whittingehame House, Whittingehame, East Lothian EH41 4QA, priced 16.99, p&p 1.95.