https://inews.co.uk/news/long-reads/mark-steel-i-was-adopted-but-discovered-biological-millionaire-dad-1338117I discovered that as I was being brought up in a little bungalow in Kent and yelling in rage about the rich, my biological dad was a multimillionaire ex-world backgammon champion
Mark Steel
December 7, 2021 7:00 am(Updated 7:02 am)
It never bothered me that I’d never met my mum. I had no interest in my own adoption. It was barely discussed. There was never a moment in which I was sat on the settee while my adoptive parents looked into my eyes and said: “Now sweetheart, there’s something we have to tell you. You’re loved because you were chosen specially, not like normal children whose parents have to look after them even if they can’t stand the bastards.”
I’d been told my biological father was French, so sometimes I would mention this to someone, who would make a comment such as “Ooh well that explains why you like cheese”.
I’d also been told that my biological mother gave me up because she had “really strict parents” and when they found out she was pregnant, they went berserk and insisted I was given away. I never considered that the woman who gave birth to me would be bothered about what happened to me. If I’d been asked, I’d probably have said: “I doubt she remembers me after all this time. We were only together for a short while.”
But when I became a father, it occurred to me she probably did recall, from time to time, the incident in which she gave birth. I had a duty to find her, I thought, so I researched where she might be. It took 12 years of writing very dull letters to organisations with very dull titles, but eventually I discovered she was living in Rimini, in Italy. A letter was sent to her, explaining that I’d been looking for her, but she had no interest in making any contact. But she did reveal, to the person who contacted her on my behalf, the name of Joe, who was my father. And that’s how I discovered that as I was being brought up in a little bungalow in Kent and joining left-wing groups while yelling in rage about the rich, my biological dad was a multimillionaire ex-world backgammon champion, a figure in the “Clermont Set”, the gambling club of the Seventies that met at the Clermont Club in Mayfair and included James Goldsmith, Tiny Rowland, David Stirling, who founded the SAS, and others, who at one point tried to plot a coup against the Labour government. Its most prominent member was Lord Lucan, who famously murdered his nanny and disappeared which all came as a bit of a shock. I explained it all to a friend that evening, who said: “It should be easy to track your dad down now all you have to do is find Lord Lucan and you’ve got him.”
I managed to contact Joe and he replied with a warmth and understanding not always associated with venture capitalists. He remembered my mother well, he said, and the last time they met was when he gave her the money for a termination, that they had agreed he would arrange. It would appear that at some point she must have changed her mind. But I’d like to meet him again, partly because there are so many unanswered questions. I’d love to know the details of how his family fled the anti-Semitic regime in Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser. I’d love to hear his accounts of the Clermont Club and how he met the woman who gave birth to me. But mostly I’d love to meet him again because we’d make each other laugh. I did meet the family of my mother. And they did provide me with answers to my many questions. Their parents weren’t “strict” at all, they all said. They were exceedingly liberal for their times, and their children all grew up to campaign for a variety of radical causes. My mother had clearly decided at some point to keep me. My adoptive mother often told me she had to wait until I was a year old before I was officially adopted, because my biological mother “wouldn’t sign the ruddy papers”.
Eventually she was given no choice. An army comprising doctors, social workers, her parents and millions of people compelled her to sign the ruddy papers. If you suggested to an unmarried pregnant woman in modern Britain that she must give her baby away and never mention it again, even to her family, to stop disgracing the family, she would probably stare in bewilderment, assuming you were from a cult that would soon be the subject of a documentary on Amazon Prime. But in the 1960s this was not only possible, it was inevitable. Between 1955 and 1975 an estimated half-a-million unmarried women in Britain were compelled to hand over their babies in this way, so I wasn’t as unusual as I’d liked to think. As I researched my book Who Do I Think I Am?, I read dozens of accounts from that time which quoted unmarried mothers on their parents’ reaction to hearing of the pregnancy. The most common response was: “I was told I had brought disgrace on the family and belonged in the gutter.”
In report after report, I read stories by women such as Angela, who said: “My mother said whatever I did, I was not to come home, saying ‘we don’t not want this shame to get round the family’.”
Another woman, Mary, told how “My father said ‘get your coat, we’re going down to the river. You’ve disgraced the family, I’m going to drown you, then drown myself’. So my mother tried to make light of it and said ‘well if she’s going to be drowned, she won’t be needing her coat’.”
Most of them were sent to “mother-and-baby” homes, where they would be told they were there to be punished, and made to work, usually until they went into labour. If you were to read to someone the conditions in these places and ask when they thought these homes existed, I expect most people would imagine they were from around 1870. One report on women in the mother-and-baby homes, after their baby was born, said that typically “the mother does not know whether to hold and cuddle her baby, or have the child removed from her sight. Whether to let her maternal feelings flow, or hold them back, knowing she will soon lose the child”.
Pamela, in a programme on ITV, described the hours after her daughter Carla was born, saying: “She was born at 10 past four in the morning. She was taken away immediately. At 10 past seven I asked where my baby was, and everyone ignored me. Eventually I got out of bed, and started searching through rooms, and cupboards. When I found her, a nurse shouted ‘you’re not to touch her, she’s for adoption’.”
The stigma attached to unmarried mothers was so powerful, it was almost impossible to withstand. Everyone in authority would insist they had done something filthy, and the only reasonable course of action was to give their baby away, never mention it to anyone again, and surely before long they would forget they’d ever had the baby at all. But of course they didn’t. My natural mother died without ever getting in touch. Just before the international lockdown, I travelled to Rimini in Italy, where I met all her closest friends, none of which knew she’d ever had a baby until after she died, when they were told by her family. Among them was an infectiously vibrant soul called Salvatore. “Your mother was always so lively, so much fun, so passionate,” he said. “But always I say to myself: ‘Why is she angry, angry, angry?’ Then I find out she have baby, I say to myself ‘Aaah, now I know why she is so angry’.”
There are many reasons why I’m now fascinated by my own adoption. There are the thousands of ways it illuminates how and why we are what we are, and there’s the immense curiosity of discovering who I think I am. It’s a lesson in how the times needed changing, and were changed, because so many people fought to make them change. And I’m fascinated, because I reckon it’s a bloody brilliant story.
