The Postcard
An R. & C. Luxusdruck Series postcard. The Prince of Wales pub on the corner is no more - there is now a block of flats on the site. Sign of the times.
The card was posted in Thornton Heath on Saturday the 4th. July 1908 to:
Mrs. Milner,
33, West Buildings,
Worthing,
Sussex.
The message on the back of the card was as follows
"My Dearest M,
Arrived in good time. I got off
the train by this tower & walked
up, and arrived 9.5.
Have had dreadful thunderstorm
in the night, about like the last
one we had at home - and it is
still thundering in the distance.
Min is better but not very strong,
yet is going to Brighton next
Tuesday or Wednesday for a bit
so may call.
Love from both".
Thornton Heath Clock Tower
On the 17th. May 2020, during the height of the Covid pandemic, the Thornton Heath Chronicle published an article about the Clock Tower:
'Thornton Heath’s historic clocktower was
set alight last night. The fire brigade were
called to tackle the blaze which was confined
to the wooden doorway of the clocktower.
The area has been plagued by groups of
street drinkers who gather on the seats next
to the tower, which were installed as part of
the recent council-led regeneration of
Thornton Heath.
Firefighters attended the scene just before
11.20 pm on Saturday, and had to break open
the door to eradicate the fire.
Police also attended the scene.
Groups of drinkers had been hanging around
the clocktower for most of the day, even though
it is within the council-designated No Drinking
Zone.
During lockdown a half hearted attempt was
made to tape off the seats at the clocktower,
but the tape was quickly removed.
Street drinkers have been arrested and fined
for breaching social distancing, but have
continued to congregate.
The Police say that with limited resources (there
are just three officers for the Thornton Heath
ward), they are trying to be reasonable and fair,
but despite being offered housing:
"The street drinkers unfortunately don’t
seem to want our help, and although fines
have been issued, it's not a long term solution."
Prior to the pandemic, one persistent street
drinker was issued with a Criminal Behaviour
Order banning him from Thornton Heath, but
magistrates refused to issue a second CBO
against another female drinker'.
History of the Clock Tower
The clocktower has stood at the junction of Brigstock Road, Thornton Heath High Street and Parchmore Road since 1900.
It was built to commemorate the new century and cost £300, half of which was donated by members of the public.
The site on which it stands was formerly known as Walker’s Green, and was suggested as a location by Councillor Addison, who wrote to Croydon Corporation with his suggestion.
Within two weeks of receiving Addison’s letter, plans for the tower had been drawn up by the deputy borough engineer and were approved by the Corporation, which also agreed to meet half the cost of the project.
The stone structure soon established itself as a well known local landmark and became a focal point for Thornton Heath.
During the Second World War the tower stood defiantly in an area which suffered badly from enemy bombing. One high explosive bomb fell close by, destroying the tram lines in Thornton Heath High Street, but fortunately the clocktower escaped serious damage.
In April 1987, work began on an £8,000 facelift for the tower, which included the laying of new paving; the planting of flower beds; the installation of railings and the filling-in of old underground toilets that stood adjacent to the back of the clock tower in Parchmore Road.
More recently, last year, it was cleaned and the area once again regenerated with new seating and planting.
Aurelio Peccei
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted to Mrs. Milner?
Well, the 4th. July 1908 marked the birth of Aurelio Peccei.
Aurelio was an Italian industrialist and philanthropist, best known as co-founder with Alexander King of the Club of Rome, an organisation which attracted considerable public attention in 1972 with its report, 'The Limits to Growth'.
Aurelio Peccei - The Early Years
Peccei was born in Turin, the capital of the Piedmont region of Italy. He spent his youth there, eventually graduating from the University of Turin with a degree in economics in 1930. Soon thereafter he went to the Sorbonne with a scholarship, and was awarded a free trip to the Soviet Union.
His knowledge of other languages brought him to Fiat. Although under continual suspicion as an anti-fascist in the early-1930's, in 1935 a successful mission for Fiat in China established his position in Fiat management.
During World War II, Peccei joined the anti-fascist movement and the resistance, when he was a member of the "Giustizia e Libertà". He was arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. After 11 months in prison he was freed in January 1945.
Aurelio Peccei's Business Ventures
After the war, Peccei was engaged in the rebuilding of Fiat. He was concurrently involved in various private and public efforts then underway to rebuild Italy, including the founding of Alitalia.
In 1949, he went to Latin America for Fiat, to restart their operations, as Fiat operations in Latin America had been halted during the war. He settled in Argentina, where lived for a decade with his family.
He realised that it would make sense to start manufacturing locally, and set up the Argentine subsidiary, Fiat-Concord, which built cars and tractors. Fiat-Concord rapidly became one of the most successful automotive firms in Latin America.
In 1958, with the backing of Fiat, Peccei founded Italconsult, which was a joint consultancy venture involving major Italian firms such as Fiat, Innocenti, and Montecatini. He became its chairman, a position he held until the 1970's, when he became honorary president.
Italconsult was an engineering and economic consulting group for developing countries. It operated under Peccei's leadership as a non-profit consortium. Italconsult was regarded by Peccei as a way of helping tackle the problems of the Third World, which he had come to know first-hand in Latin America.
In 1964, Peccei was asked to become president of Olivetti, which was facing significant difficulties at that time due to the profound changes occurring in the office machine sector. Peccei, with his entrepreneurial vision, was able to turn the situation at Olivetti around.
Peccei also threw his energies into other organisations, including ADELA, an international consortium of bankers aimed at supporting industrialisation in Latin America. He was asked to give the keynote speech in Spanish at the group's first meeting in 1965, which is where the series of coincidences leading to the creation of the Club of Rome began.
The Club of Rome
Peccei's speech caught the attention of Dean Rusk, then US Secretary of State, who had it translated into English and distributed at various meetings in Washington.
A Soviet representative at the annual meeting of the United Nations Advisory Committee on Science and Technology (ACAST), Jermen Gvishiani, Alexei Kosygin's son-in-law and vice-chairman of the State Committee on Science and Technology of the Soviet Union, read the speech and was so taken by it that he decided he should invite the author to come for private discussions outside Moscow.
Gvishiani therefore asked an American colleague on ACAST, Carroll Wilson, about Peccei. Wilson did not know Peccei, but he and Gvishiani both knew Alexander King, by then Director General for Scientific Affairs for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris, so Wilson appealed to him for information.
As it happened, King did not know Peccei, but he was equally impressed by the ADELA paper, and tracked down its author via the Italian Embassy in Paris.
King wrote to Peccei, passing on Gvishiani's address and his wish to invite him to the Soviet Union, but also congratulating him on his paper and suggesting that they might meet some time, as they obviously shared similar concerns. Peccei telephoned King, and they arranged to have lunch.
The two men got on well from the outset. They met several times in the latter part of 1967 and early-1968, and then decided that they had to do something constructive to encourage longer-range thinking among Western European governments.
Peccei accordingly persuaded the Agnelli Foundation to fund a two-day brainstorming meeting on the 7th. and 8th. April 1968 of around 30 European economists and scientists at the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.
The goal of the meeting was to discuss the ideas of Peccei and King relating to the globality of problems facing mankind and of the necessity of acting at a global level. However the meeting at the Accademia dei Lincei was not a success, partly due to the reluctance of the participants to focus on a distant future.
After the meeting there was an informal gathering of a few participants in Peccei's home, which included Erich Jantsch (one of the great methodologists of planning studies), Alexander King, Hugo Thiemann, Lauro Gomes-Filho, Jean Saint-Geours, and Max Kohnstamm.
According to King, within an hour they had decided to call themselves the Club of Rome, and had defined the three major concepts that have formed the club's thinking ever since: a global perspective, the long-term, and the cluster of intertwined problems they called "the problematique".
Although the Rome meeting had been convened with just Western Europe in mind, the group realised that they were dealing with problems of much larger scale and complexity—in short, "the predicament of mankind".
The notion of problematique excited some because it seemed applicable at a universal level, but worried others, who felt that the approach was valid only for smaller entities such as a city or community.
Saint-Geours and Kohnstamm therefore soon dropped out, leaving the others to pursue their informal programme of learning and debate.
Thus started what Peccei called "the adventure of the spirit". He was fond of stating that:
"If the Club of Rome has any merit, it is that
of having been the first to rebel against the
suicidal ignorance of the human condition."
Peccei felt that:
"It is not impossible to foster a human
revolution capable of changing our
present course."
About the same time, a study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), headed by Jay Forrester, began on the implications of continued growth on population increase, agricultural production, non-renewable resource depletion, industrial output, and pollution generation.
Jay made an offer to the Club of Rome to adapt his dynamic model to handle global issues. A fortnight later, a group of club members visited Forrester at MIT, and were convinced that the model could be made to work for the kind of global problems which interested the club.
The results of the study were published in the 1972 book 'The Limits to Growth', which received both worldwide acclaim and strong criticism.
The Death of Aurelio Peccei
Aurelio died in Rome at the age of 75 on the 14th. March 1984.
