The ugly side of AA

A lot has been going wrong lately in the support group I’ve been attending for more than 20 years.

I wasn’t going to write about it, of course. But then a fellow member stuck her iPhone in my face at a meeting and filmed me. So rather than sitting here waiting for the footage to turn up on the internet, I thought I’d explain.

I’ve been objecting to the banning of a long-time member who has helped a lot of other members over the years, but he’s chatted up too many women and now the safeguarding procedures of this strange new era have kicked in and the younger female members, in particular, have flexed their muscles and decided to throw him out.

I am one of the older generation members who have stuck up for this 64-year-old man, who is of an age and social class that have left him completely bewildered as to why he cannot flirt with women without being accused of harassment. I have been standing up in meetings and saying that while this chap can be a pain to deal with sometimes, his history is very unfortunate, and I do not believe we should ban him.

Well, the snowflakes have gone tonto. And now one of them has filmed me in a meeting sitting next to this almost pensioner trying to defend him while they were shouting at him to leave and not come back.

So I suppose I will have to explain that I was one of those Fleet Street hacks… until I decided, aged 29, that I should knock it on the head in a timely fashion. I found I couldn’t do it on my own. And these meetings were fantastic: unlimited group therapy in return for a pound in the pot. I’ve been helped by pop stars, window cleaners and convicted murderers. And apparently I’ve helped them.

When I lived in London, I had access to the best meetings in the world outside America, where it all started in the 1930s with a stockbroker and a doctor realising that if they talked to each other they could resist going to the bar. The first woman and the first person of colour soon joined them. The whole point then and the whole point now is that it is open to all.

But since moving to Surrey, I’ve become aware that the aspirational curtain-twitchers of this county are up to a bit of social cleansing: working-class men who swear and say ‘’ello darlin’ are getting a really hard time of it in meetings.

The chairman of the branch wants to ban swearing, and promote safeguarding.

The younger women like this a lot, and have started to enthusiastically lodge complaints about men they don’t fancy using crude language – or worse, approaching them at the end of the meeting to chat.

One or two complained about this particular old rogue, accusing him of harassment. And when they discovered he had a criminal record, hysteria broke out.

He was banned from meeting after meeting, some he had never even been to. The gossip spread and the inaccuracies multiplied until he would slink apologetically into a room and sit down at the back, and the women would get so stroppy that the officers of the group took to calling the police to have him removed.

And that was the situation a few nights ago when this craggy-faced former bricklayer, who I’ve known for ten years without incident, walked in quietly and sat at the back, next to me, because he knows I’ll support him, and several women started shouting and screaming and the chair of the meeting yelled: ‘Call the police!’ And the recently appointed safeguarding officer dialled 999.

It was ridiculous, not least because this organisation is best loved for dealing with society’s scoundrels. It goes into prisons – I’ve done this myself – and helps offenders get clean and sober. Once they are released, the idea is that they go to meetings.

I’ve made the point to these groups repeatedly that since he was released from prison a few years ago for an offence relating to a dispute with his ex-girlfriend – and that did not involve any violence, by the way – should this man not be welcomed, or at least tolerated, when he turns up at a meeting to get himself back on track? But the answer came back no, we don’t want his kind.

And we were having this row again, and a pink-haired girl with a ring through her nose was screaming at the ageing bricklayer: ‘Can’t you see we don’t want you here?’ when a bossy woman walked over and filmed us.

One of the As in the title being blown for me, therefore, I may as well cop for the other A and be done with it.