Above: Graham F. N. Knewstub 1908-1999
Albert K. Bender He founded the International Flying Saucer Bureau (IFSB) -the first major civilian UFO club in the world in 1952. The Flying Saucer Club of Great Britain was set up by Graham Knewstub in 1952 and was the first organised British UFO or flying saucer group. The FSC joined with the UK branch of the IFSB which was struggling and became the British Flying Saucer Bureau. In 1953, Bender shut down the IFSB after, allegedly, being visited by three men in black. From what I learnt it seems that Bender may probably have had a breakdown-there is another theory that Bender was the victim of a hoax. However, the BFSB crapped its collective pants.
I was told how they had been informed that the MIB were heading their way and to expect a visit. So, all data and records were put into a safety deposit box in a bank. The thinking, irrational as it was, being that the MIB could not get at the deposit box.
Captain (field rank) Edward J. Plunkett told me the story in a hushed tone in 1977: "Everything is safely tucked away for when they turn up" I was informed. Well, if the MIB were so slow that after 24 year they had not yet gotten around to 'silencing' the BFSB I doubted they were ever going to bother. In the 1980s the 'silencers' were still being talked about and "they may turn up at any time (to bother pensioners in their late 60s and 70s..?).
Bender, himself, died at the ripe old age of 94 in 2016. Graham Knewstub died at the age of 91 in 1999 and though I have no date for his death, Edgar Plunkett was in his late 80s when he passed away. And Denis Plunkett who took over the much declined BFSB as a solo effort died a few years back.
What was my problem when I was pushed into the Head of Investigation & Research position? Simply this: I was not permitted to look at any of the BFSB data or reports from their hey-day. I knew that Graham had files stored in his attic but he was a gentleman and had given his word to the BFSB that no one would get their hands on the reports he had. He did indeed try three times to ask the Committee of the BFSB to allow him to let me see the reports but these pleas were rejected. I ought to point out that on the last two occasions I was present because I was on the committee! Just "no".
The other big problem was that I was asked to edit and produce the BFSBs now defunct Flying Saucer News -I don't think it had been published since the 1960s (?). It took a lot of persuasion but I got permission to drop the "Flying Saucer" in favour of the more "credible" (at that time) "UFO". There were three issues of the UFO News Bulletin and problems existed from day one -I have no idea what their definition of "a total free hand in this" was especially since the UNB was mine but published through the BFSB (it's complicated).
UNB Volume 1 Number 1 November-December 1979 had a cover featuring a recreation of the Buckfastleigh incident. Oh, no. I was told clearly that it did not "fit the Bureau". The compromise was my illo of two UFOs in a valley with figures under opne of them. You see, that left open what was going on and could be three contactees or "Space Brother". Then I was asked why "volume 1 number 1" and I explained that no, it had top be volume 2 so that it followed on from FSN...which made no sense. However, I compromised and it became volume 2 of a new title.
The crunch had come with No. 2 as I spent a great deal of time illustrating the Huyton CE3K for the cover as well as another one for inclusion in the UNB. I received my copy from the Bureau and neither cover was used and the old BFSB logo was the sole cover image. It looked awful -a winged flying saucer! I had been censored because an image of an entity was on the cover (both illustrations were, apparently, put in the waste bin by the people copying the publication on instruction from "the Committee"). "And if I had written a piece on Adamski and included a blonde Venusian on the cover?" I asked. "There would have been no problem there" was the response!
The third and final issue therefore had a typical UFO cover and no "aliens". No problem. However, I was then told that I was no longer Head of I&R -someone who had just joined the Bureau and had no experience with investigation (but whom the Plunketts had known since he was a youngter) and who believed all UFOs were created by nuclear reactors even in the heart of Amazonia -yes, when he proudly boasted that theory to me while on an investigation he took no part in I did realise things had gotten very rotten! Then I was told "You have done an excellent job with the magazine. Time for a new hand to take over!" That was where the UNB died. Never appeared again.
Graham later confided to Franklyn Davin-Wilson (my collaborator for some years and also with the AOP Bureau) and I that the Bureau had decided that I was far too serious on the whole investigation and research business and (remembering that members of the committee itself were from various backgrounds) that "they" had decided that I had not come from "the right educational background" and that I was a "bit of an "H" dropper"...basically: I was dead common. Also, my "successor" had blamed delays in his getting mail on me -there was a postal strike on at the time!- but had not considered the fact that his own personality and how he had dealt with people meant no one wanted to talk to him!
It was sad in a way. After the early 1960s most in Ufology thought that the BFSB had gone defunct in the 1960s. It took a lot of work on my part but in the late 1970s the Bureau became "a name" again only to be a flash in the pan.
Although Denis still thought the MIB were a threat into later years they never showed up -maybe the travel expenses were too much for MIB Central? What happened to the 2-3 boxes of reports in Graham's attic? What happened to the materials in the safety Deposit box? What happened to all of the material Denis had?
My belief is that it all probably ended up in a skip.
Perhaps the one thing that had hit me most was the fact that, on turning up to my first BFSB meeting in the Quakers Meeting Rooms, Gloucester Road, was that there were maybe three people under 60 years of age. There was this little fella who greeted me with a big smile revealing "vampire fangs" - a little joke used by Franklyn A. Davin-Wilson to "scare the straights"!
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There was lots of talk about my being one of the "new guard" that they, the "old guard" would be turning things over to but for the life of me I could not work out what was going to be turned over. "The wonderful Mr Adamski" was referred to a few times and it was like a time warp -I was back in a 1950s flying saucer club meeting. I got the impression that Graham Knewstub had tried to advance things but was pushed back every time.
I asked one of the members whether the Bureau had looked into any Close Encounters of the Third Kind in their time and the person I was talking to turned and called out "Eddie -can you spare a minute, please?" And so I explained again what I had asked and what my field of interest was I stated that I was looking at the Betty and Barney Hill case and Plunkett snickered and told me I really was wasting my time with that rubbish as "Mr. Adamski told us who was piloting these craft and they were benevolent". I responded that the case seemed to have a lot going for it and there and then, with no one batting an eye-lid, Edgar Plunkett responded: "It has no credibility. You do know that she is a white woman who married a darkie? Where is her or their credibility?"
At this point Franklyn's eyes almost popped out of their sockets as, I am told, I "looked like you were going to choke the life out of our dear captain!" and he turned the subject to something else. The area I came from had plenty of "mixed" marriages and the response given was one that I never forgot. Plunkett was not the only person, however. I heard that very same sentiment from others in Ufology and to me it was unbelievable but I learnt soon enough.
One Bristol investigator I worked with not only destroyed a CE3K report from a local because he "is a UFO nutter -he says he saw something get out and walk about the object" but was also a big supporter of the racist National Front and often used the term "fuzzy-wuzzies" and worse. If their "hair was not straight enough" then their report was ignored and after 20 years I noticed that there were no black investigators and no black members of groups. It had nothing to do with "the times" these people were simply racist.
In my books I have written about this a bit more -as well as in blog posts. If looking into CE3K reports put a bad mark against my name the fact that I would speak to anyone not white and accept their reports added a couple extra bad marks.
The National Front supporter was also a wife beater I found out and his sexual behaviour was never hidden. On one occasion I was left in the living room with his wife as he answered the door to a female neighbour. After a few minutes the woman called something out and I looked at his wife who scowled "their having sex" she told me. I started saying she was imagining it and it was pretty awkward -the same thing happened when another colleague called around to the house one evening.
On one occasion we had managed to have a joint meeting with the Bristol Astronomical Society and as this person was the astronomer of the group he was given the task of answering those questions while everyone else had other tasks -I was to be the one smooth-talking the senior astronomers. At one point as we all mingled one of the people with me rushed up and asked "Where's ----? I'm getting a lot of astronomy questions?" I looked around but could not see him. We carried on and after an hour he turned up and I asked where he had been. With a big smile on his face he told me "Just been down to City Road" and I asked what for (it was at that time a well known red light area) and he responded, not keeping his voice down, "What else for -to see a prossie!" He had left the meeting and walked a good distance to pay for a prostitute and I did tell him later that this had been unacceptable and his response was "not your business".
Around the same time I was dealing with Mrs C (see UFO Contact?) who had various experiences and at one meeting she told me that my 'colleague' had "tried it on" and that was beyond unacceptable to me as she was a married woman and had been proposition during the pretence of following up on something for me. I was about to leave for Germany and explained that when I got back we would have words.
When I did get back Mrs C had left and avoided all further contact (I never found out what had been going on) and there was threat of legal action from the BFSB regarding a document sent out while I was away with my signature faked on it. Later I found APEN headed note paper and correspondence with Northern Ufologists in the room we used for our meetings and on confronting the man he said "So what? What you going to do about it?" but he was rattled at being found out -APEN involved some well known British Ufologists.
In case you are wondering about APEN: The Aerial Phenomena Enquiry Network (APEN) was (and may still be) a secretive Ufology organisation of unknown origin and structure, notably active from the mid-1970s into the 1980s, when it reputedly operated under the executive direction of one 'J. T. Anderson', the self-proclaimed "Supreme Commander of APEN." The network mailed a series of letters and cassette tape recordings to various British UFO researchers, as well as extending suspect invitations to join or to review their evidence, which were typically declined or ignored (sometimes resulting in harassment), as reported by Ufologists Jenny Randles and Peter Bottomley.
This 'Ufologist' had a hanger-on who was basically a mini version of him and one day I was talking about the lack of black people in Ufology and he uttered the sentence "Maybe in London you know what they are like!" and, like a true racist the 'investigator' joined in with "Too right. One good thing about our northern friends is that they'll "keep it white" for as long as they can!"
Today I cannot think of one black British Ufologist or major report involving black witnesses.
The pseudo science of Ufology as we learnt from yesterday's Erica Lukes podcast, is full of far right thinkers and scammers. It is why I never ever use, and always correct when it is used, the term "Ufologist" regarding my work -the same with cryptozoology and even the paranormal field. I do not want to be tainted with any such association.
Ufology will never change. From the 1970s on fake reports were fed into Ufology by known Ufologists who will not explain why they did this (certainly no 'study') or identify which are the fake reports which means anything from 1977 onward is suspect. And do not believe that misogyny, racism or any of those bad things are gone. They are still existent and fake reports from Ufologists are common.
