About Derek Wells Sr.

"I was born in rural England the youngest of four children. My father was a bricklayer and mother

a housewife, cook, waitress, seamstress and anything else that helped put food on the family

table. I considered himself fortunate to have grown up in council (government) housing as it had

an inside toilet, unlike my grandparents’ house where you had to go outside. I was educated in

government schools. First Primary then Junior and on to Grammar School. A few months before

my sixteenth birthday I was told by my Headmaster that I would need to get a job and leave

school because I was too disruptive. I was. Constantly challenging authority especially the

institutionalized bullying. So out into the big wide world and earning a wage to help with the

family expenses. It was quite natural for me to have a socialist leaning viewpoint growing up

working class and was often in the forefront of philosophical debates in the local pub and labor

disputes. But over the years my views changed because nothing else was. The Working Class

were still poor, the Middle Class was still out of reach for me and the Upper Class didn’t give a

damn about the classes below them. I particularly remembers a visit to my bank manager. I

wanted a small loan to buy inventory and start a retail business. Similar to Tupperware. The bank

manager looked at me and almost laughed telling me quite frankly I was “from the wrong side of

the tracks” or in this case a “Council House” kid. By my late twenties this socialism thing just

wasn’t working for me or anyone else except the Upper Class. Oh there were periods of so called

conservatism but still nothing changed for the Working Class. Then one day I read about

America. How it really didn’t have a class system. Everyone was in theory created equal.

Everyone had a chance to succeed as long as you worked hard. A friend living in California

invited me for a visit. What an eye opener. And there began my life as an American. Now some

forty years later I have retired. I’m still working class and that will never change. There are many

stories to tell about those forty years. I’d be glad to sit down with you one day over a beer and

tell you a few. Especially the one about discovering I should be the rightful king of England or

the one about my “Irish” grandfather. Those are doozies. But for now the story that must be told

is that of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."