THE NIGHT MOSELEY TREMBLED

THE NIGHT MOSELEY TREMBLED What did happen on October 30, 1952?

The Moseley Players weren’t your run-of-the-mill amateur dramatics group. Performed in local churchyards and public houses in the 1950s, their shows were often hard-hitting and controversial. The group are alleged to have inadvertently caused panic in the suburb when rehearsals for a new production went very wrong. With the help of an archive article from a 1980s edition of Moseley B13 Magazine, we attempt to discover what really happened on the night of October 30, 1952... Cashing in on the B-movies of the time, The Moseley Players mounted their biggest show in the shape of the science fiction drama, The Battle of The Planets (written by group member Clifford Irving). The script followed Britain’s first fictional manned spaceflight aboard the RKO281-Unicron vessel and the craft being followed back to Earth by invaders

from Mercury. Costumes, scenery and a large UFO structure were created and Moseley Park was selected as the location for the show, which would begin its run on October 31, 1952. Rehearsals with costumes and props in the park took place on the night of October 30. The evening was selected to test the special effects - lights had been rigged up on the UFO and dry ice was used to create fog around the landed spaceship. It has been generally believed that a Salisbury Road resident witnessed the events and, unaware of the planned show, panicked and headed into the village, spreading stories of a Martian invasion. Although there have been claims that the events of the night were exaggerated by The Moseley Players director, Charles Kane (in an attempt to gain publicity), a 1982 issue of Moseley B13 Magazine interviewed an eyewitness from 30 years earlier. Birmingham 13 (as the magazine was then known) spoke to Harry Lime, a 38- year old Billesley resident who claimed to be the individual that started the alleged panic in 1952. “I was eight years old at the time and looked out from our back window on Salisbury Road. I could see the UFO - it was lakeside - and a lifeform walking out from it,” Mr Lime told our reporter. He went on to explain the series of events as he remembered it. “Of course I feel like a fool now but how was I to know it was just a rehearsal for a show? I’d recently seen The Day the Earth Stood Still at the Imperial Cinema on the Moseley Road so I was terrified, thinking an invasion was actually happening. My parents were out and I was only with my older sister - I can still hear her screaming - so we ran into Moseley Village. We spoke to a park keyholder who laughed at our story but, in the end, went in to check. He could see the UFO surrounded by lights and smoke and looked terrified as he ran out of the park. He informed drinkers in the Prince of Wales and I’ve heard it said that they locked themselves in the cellar until sunrise. There was also a vehicle collision on the Alcester Road as people tried to get away from the area.” Mr Lime featured once again in the magazine when, in 1984, he claimed to have discovered the childhood diaries of JRR Tolkien, kept while the writer was living in Sarehole. This later turned out to be a fake so it is necessary to take Mr Lime’s other claims with a pinch of salt. This leaves us where we began, with an enigmatic mystery. What did happen on the night of 30 October,1952? Was there widespread panic in Moseley? Perhaps we’ll never know, but it’s certainly a story that is “out of this world”. Mark Baxter