Ruskin
College and City of Oxford University
1961-1963
Part
of 101 in Black and White 2005
Joseph
Grech
Colin
Joseph Smart
Introduction
In 2005 the opportunity arose to have a work of
words and pictures privately printed by the Daily Mail and I decided to create
an autobiographical work focussed on my journey to become Joseph Grech, a
creative art worker. The work included two chapters on my experience of
attending the adult Education Ruskin College, located on two sites in the City
of Oxford, between 1961 to 1963, first to study for the University Diploma in
Politics and Economics and then for the second year to undertake a Diploma in
Public and Social Administration at the Department of Extra Mural Studies of
Oxford University, and which involved three practical social work placements.
Although 101 copies of the book, 101 in Black
and White, were printed the contents were not intended to be read, but to form
part of a work 9.3.39 (my date of birth, in 24 black and white boxes and 101
black and white framed photographs) which is also a component of the ongoing
artwork installation 101.
I have deleted some names and added a few notes.
The writing provides a fair and good account of my experience.
How I came to attend Ruskin college is covered
in earlier chapters of the work and it was only weeks before the beginning if
the first term that I decided to take up the offer of a place from the College
and an adult education grant from Surrey County Council.
I left school at sixteen years and went to work
as a general division clerk in the large motor vehicle local taxation and
registration department of the Finance Department of Middlesex County Council
in a seven storey building, now part of the Penguin Random House Publishing
company, close to the Vauxhall Bridge, the Tate Gallery and the MI6 building in
London. I was attached to a section of
six men who had all experienced military service, one had lost part of his leg
during World War I, four had been on active service during World War II and one
joined the team later after being on service in Korea. They felt trapped
because of a lack of transferrable skills and encouraged me to study for a
qualification which would enable a move from the General to the Clerical
division of employment in local government.
Over Christmas and New Year in 1957 I was put
in charge of a group of temporary employed staff handwriting the annual licence
renewals while I continued my daily task of writing the new registration of
motor vehicle log books. One of the group was the retired head of the
significantly smaller but similar department of Croydon Borough Council and he
arranged for me to undertake similar work with the authority of the town where
I was born and lived three miles away in Wallington. I successfully studied for
the General Division Certificate in
evening classes at the Croydon Technical College where one of the required
subjects was British Constitution, purchasing the advance level GCE Rapid
Results College course on the subject which I also passed in 1957.
At Ruskin in the corner of the top floor of the
former stable block at the Rookery there was a student from Malawi, Timon
Mangwazu who attended for two terms in 1962, He invited me to his room for tea
and revealed that he was a civil servant and I remember commenting on the
importance of the civil service in bringing political stability to a country,
giving him the course material on the British Constitution and on other
subjects after the Easter break. At the end of the year I read a note in the
Times Newspaper that the Malawi Embassy had held a reception for Timon who was then
the General Secretary of the Malawi Civil Services Union. It is rare that a
chance reading of a newspaper provides a second opportunity to re-establish
contact.
In 1967, living and working in London, I read
that Timon had become the High Commissioner for his country in the UK. I
received an invitation to visit him which was arranged but alas I was unable
keep the appointment required to attend a juvenile court.
Timon said in his letter that.” I remember very
vividly the interesting time we spent together at the ‘Rookery’ (annex) where
we had rooms opposite each other. Since I left the ‘Rookery’ I have never been
there again, but I am glad to say that I have been to Oxford three times, and
also on each occasion, I was able to meet the Principal of Ruskin College and a
few other students.”
.
Timon later served on behalf of his country in
a number of other capital cities and at the United Nations, returning to his homeland
for a political career but like many who went to Ruskin and the magical city of
Oxford University, their perspective of the experience can change over time as
his ‘prabook’ entry via Google demonstrates.
I had attended an independent Catholic school
as a day pupil, the John Fisher School, and the Jesuit teacher of modern
history had suggested that if we wanted to understand what the second world war
was about we should read the published accounts of the Nuremberg War Crimes
Tribunal so I had gone to the local reference Library and read those on
Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz and together with New Testament Sermon on the Mount,
and my experience as a child of the
blitz living in an area where more VI and VII rockets were concentrated than
elsewhere, I was immediately sympathetic to the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament, joining the small branch for Beddington and Wallington, forming a
youth CND group whose members included two of the sons of Ritchie Calder (Angus
wrote the People’s War).
Just before Christmas 1959 I joined the staff
of Houseman’s Bookshop on a temporary basis and a photograph of demonstrating
outside a nuclear rocket base in Northamptonshire, in Peace News, describing me
as a staff man of the weekly paper was misleading. In 1960 under the leadership of Pat
Arrowsmith of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War I participated in
two civil disobedience demonstrations sitting down in a countryside roadway in
front of a line of police officers some distance from the Foulness Defence
research establishment in Essex, and with twelve others refused to enter into
an oral recognisance to bring our activities to a halt for two years, spending
six months in a number of prisons, knowing we could leave at any time.
While in the closed prison at Stafford, Peter
Currell Brown, the author of Smallcreeps Day, had the idea of a march from
London to Holy Loch to make a protest against the Polaris submarine base which
had been announced. My subsequent letter too Pat Arrowsmith proposing the
project is referred as a footnote in Gandhi and the West by Sean Scalmar and in
the archives of the Direct Action Committee at the J B Priestly Library,
University of Bradford.
I also became a member of the Committee 100
headed by Bertrand Russell but resigned in protest after he refused to take
action against Ralf Scheonmann who I believed threatened the integrity of the
movement. While clearing tables in the coffee bar of the basement of the New
Left Review and Books I witnessed him with others asking people to sign up for
first Committee 100 demonstration intended for Parliament Square saying they
did not need to attend or get arrested. At the end of the 1961 Aldermaston
March Ralph with others was responsible for a secret unauthorised sit down
outside the USA Embassy. The Russell apologia included at the end of the Ronald
W Clark biography is questionable. Christopher Driver, author of the Disarmers,
retained the letter from Lady Russell stating her husband had full confidence
in Ralph. Sheonmann reappeared on national media during the so called Arab
Spring.
I also resigned as Chief Marshal of the march to
Holy Loch and from my work for the Direct Action Committee in preparing for the
march from Glasgow to Holy Loch and the land and sea demonstrations because of
the involvement of the Committee 100 supporters who were to receive no
preparation and the principles of Satyagraha were being betrayed which involved
advising the authorities in advance precisely what we intended to do and why. At
the conclusion of the successful Holy Loch project (successful in terms of
international media attention), I had the opportunity to become the full time
paid secretary of the London Region CND and which had involved an interview
with the formidable chain smoking general secretary, Peggy Duff.
Meanwhile in 1960 a local councillor had called
at my home after reading a letter published in the local paper and persuaded me
to join the Labour Party. Some months later he called to explain that it was
the annual meeting of the Wallington and Beddington Party which matched the
local municipal borough council and part of the Mitcham Constituency which was
represented by the Conservative Sir Robert Carr, who became a Home Secretary. I
was the only member in the ward and the meeting would have to agree to my
attendance.
In 1960 the Beddington and Wallington Council
comprised Ratepayers and Independents and the Young Socialists planned a coup
to take control of the Party executive committee, so after nominating the former
Chairman and Secretary, the headmistress and deputy head of Bandon Hill Primary
School, they nominated each other, and I was nominated just before nominations
closed and agreed upon a vote.
In 1961 we canvassed for the local elections
and the chairman and Secretary became members of the Council and in 1963 there
were five Labour members who continued until its abolition in 1965 and
amalgamation into the London Borough of Sutton. In 2014 Sutton Council
comprised 45 Liberal Democrats and 9 Conservatives.
I can only remember attending a handful of executive
meetings and that the Chairman and Secretary took a special interest, because
my address was the same as the teacher who took the intake class and was one of
two Miss Smarts at the same address and in fact, I was her secret child, and
where the name and occupation of my father was not disclosed until 1999. Apart
from the headmistress of the private catholic preparatory day school I
attended, the two women were the only individuals outside the family who took
an interest in my future and after meetings we talked about their view of
pennyworths of socialism and why I had chosen to go to prison. (The Bandon Hill
School hit the headlines in 2014 when it was reported that its head teacher was
highest paid primary head in London at £205000).
I cannot remember when I wrote to the General
Secretary of Labour party about wanting to work for Labour but I have the
letter somewhere which invited me to meet an administrative officer who advised
about being a local agent, a councillor or a member of Parliament, recommending
further education and Ruskin College. I discussed this with the Chairman and
Secretary and they mentioned someone who had been to Ruskin and arranged a
meeting. I contacted the college and
submitted an application with the required essay, and with the Chairman and
Secretary of the local party providing references.
In 1960 I met the daughter of a leading City
accountant, who had just completed a degree in Art History, taking me to see
the Leonardo drawings at Windsor Castle, inviting to a performance of Beyond
the Fringe and introducing me to the Alexandrian Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. I
consulted her when faced with the choice of the CND job or going to Ruskin
College although her belief that it would condense what I had to say failed.
The secretary of the Oxford CND was appointed London Region CND organiser in my
place.
It was not until 1999 that I discovered that my
father had been Monsignor Carmelo Grech OBE, a Vicar General of Gibraltar and
the parish priest of St Josephs’ Church.
My birth mother was Mabel Josephine Smart who
was four when Fr Grech was appointed assistant parish priest aged 28, and my
middle name is Joseph although the birth register has me shown as Josephine
crossed out and then Joseph.
I made my first visit to Gibraltar in 2003
taking the ashes of my care mother for masses at the church of St Joseph and
the cemetery chapel next to the airport and under the Rock before burial in the
tomb of her parents.
It was when alone in 2004, standing at the top
of the rock which dominates the small territory with its resident population of
30000 (but with present plans to become the Hong Kong of the Mediterranean)
that I reflected on what my life could have been with its Maltese, Spanish,
Italian, Gibraltarian and English mixture of a background. In 2003, I felt the
name Joseph Grech reflected my creative European soul and it was from that
perspective I reflected on my time at Ruskin in 2005.
In June 2016 I returned to Ruskin on the
morning of the Referendum decision to exit from the political control of
Brussels. The visit to the Ruskin College Fellowship reunion was both a pilgrimage
and as part of the preparations to publish autobiographical work on the
Internet one aspect of the free artwork 101 project. I am writing separately
about the Fellowship Reunion visit. I lived in Oxford between 1964 and 1967, in
Summertown and Headington, working as a child care and court officer with
Oxfordshire County Council at Witney and at Henley. I returned for a conference
of the Local Authority Associations on Social Services, as a Department of
Health Inspector of Social Services for the Drug Advisory Services and three
times from 2003.
The 2005 Perspective
“My two years at Ruskin
College were very different. The first year was based at the Rookery, located
at one end of Headington old village, accommodated in a wood cell in the former
stable block. The separate University was regarded as a distant great symbol of
an aristocratic and militarised empire.
A more significant
division is that over the first year I struggled to find an economic,
political, social and general philosophy by which I, in the context of the rest
of humanity, could live by, and over the second year I learnt how to change and
structure my life in the service of others.
New Ruskin students
were accommodated in a middle class, semi-rural village, up a hill where Robert
Maxwell built his publishing empire, separated from the Gown of concentrated
colleges, and the Town of the Cowley car works, and the busy market and tourist
shopping centre. There are two pubs in Old Headington which summed up Oxford.
The first, “The White Heart”, closest to the college buildings at the Rookery,
had pleasant gardens where students could mingle with the cultured university
staff from nearby homes, and the second whose name says all that needs to be
said, was “The Black Boy.” In 2003 and 2004 I sat in the sun lit garden of the
White Swan, feeling at home, speculating what my life might have been like, if
I had been more open minded when I arrived, and had known of my dyspraxia and
dyslexia, and gone on to an honours degree and PhD. I sat only once,
uncomfortably, in the other place where it was evident that the division
between the two worlds of Oxford remained as strong as they had been. (addition-
an appeared so again in 2003).
Not that in 1961 I
spent much time in pubs, and if I went out, other than to lectures, tutorials,
or a university meeting, it would be to the grim façade Bodleian.
I went to Ruskin
thinking it was a kind of socialist seminary for the working classes. I quickly
discovered that Ruskin was not a revolutionary training camp where one became
armed with socialist economics and the techniques of mobilising the working
classes, but was a university college clone with good educational purpose, and
where the same standards of academic objectivity were required, using the same
academic process of graded subject tutorial assignments and end of term examinations, with ongoing lectures and
seminar groups covering the six subjects selected from the certificate
syllabus.
In my first tutorial week of the Michaelmas
term 1961, I switched from unilateralism and direct action politics, to Hobbs’
Leviathan and Sabine’s History of Political Theory, which I bought from
Blackwell’s with a generous book grant for the constituency Labour Party.
Although my essay was praised for its awareness of the theory, it was marked
down because I evaded answering key questions.
After comparing issues between
Hobbs and Locke in week two, I progressed with Rousseau because what I had to
say about totalitarianism was considered interesting, I then struggled with
Mill over the question of sin and crime, while my flirtation with Marxism
lasted until I was forced to conclude that in answer to the question, “ has the
Marxist view of the state any relevance to day,” that it had little, and while
the course lectures on Machiavelli were inspirational, the weeks spent with
Schumpeter, Capitalism Socialism and Democracy, and the Benn and Peters, Social
Principles and the Democratic State, were the foundation for the position which
I quickly developed.
Sadly I quickly
appreciated that I lacked the kind of academic ability which would enable
passage via the back door into the university, for another students explained
that the Principal had an arrangement which enabled Ruskin students who passed
a university diploma course to read at a University college, selected on the
basis of recommendation and interview and sit for the second public examination
of an honours degree over three years instead of the usual two, thus bypassing
the first public examination which then also required one paper in Latin.
However, my lifelong
fascination with the gulf between political ideas, politicians and political
practice was given its academic basis. My reading and book acquisition was
politically catholic with Ralph Miliband’s Parliamentary Socialism and the “Out
of Apathy” essays by the new lefties of New Left Books. I also bought but
struggled with Volume I of Das Capital, The Fundamentals of Marxist Leninism
Manual issued by the Moscow based Foreign Languages Publishing House and
Lenin’s Materialism and Empiro-Criticicism, and Socialist Utopian and
Scientific by Frederich Engels. More readable was the Trotsky “Russian
Revolution”, Imre Nagy on Communism, the Isaac Deutscher political biography of
Stalin, Crosland's, “The Conservative Enemy, and the memoirs of Hugh Dalton.
“Call Back Yesterday,” and Douglas Jay on “Socialism in the New Society,” But
the reading was not restricted to the left and extreme left with a reduced
price copy of the memoirs of Sir Anthony Eden and on Lloyd George by his son
the Earl of Dwyfor. For those on the
right, who wanted to look into their worst nightmare, the Battle for Socialism,
by Peter Fryer can be recommended.
I also more than
strayed into investigating intellectual anarchism with Professor Woodcocks
book, and most editions of the magazine anarchy merit rereading and were
instrumental to introducing me to the work of A S Neil at Summerhill, the
social and psychiatric work of David Willis in relation to delinquents and
disturbed young people, of Dr Alex Comfort on issues of sex and violence and to
ideas on workers control and democratic community living.
I was full of
prejudices about Oxford and to demonstrate that I was not immediately casting
away the revolution I had a red college scarf made by Shepherd and
Woodward.
I also continued to
read literature, devouring the rest of the Alexandrian Quartet, after the gift
of Balthazar, as well as Catch 22, and
John Updike`s Rabbit Run, through Penguin Pockets- Rupert Brooke, Laurie Lee,
Negro verse and the Beat Poets, through Penguin Modern Poets 1-5 included Dom
Moraes, Ginsberg and Elizabeth Jennings, and Penguin Poets William Blake and
Robert Graves, Penguin New English Dramatists and Plays included, Chekov Arden,
Shafer, Willis Hall’s Long Short and Tall which I had seen in London together
with Wesker’s Kitchen, also buying all his other work. I could quote Betjeman
and chunks of the Four Quartets and return again and again to the Cocktail
Party. I did not go to the pictures much but made a special effort to see Two
Women, Last Year in Marianbad, Viridiana, Judgement at Nuremberg and Exodus. A fellow student alerted to the publication of
The Adventurers by Margot Heinemann, Seven Seas books, Berlin. (Insert- I also
claimed to remember some events but not others, although now I cannot remember
at all) Looking back on the year I remember the death of George Formby and Gary
Cooper, that Hemmingway committed suicide, the establishment of the Peace
Corps, South Africa leaving the Commonwealth, Sputnik 10 carrying a dog into
Orbit together with the Eichmann trial, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and Freddie
Truman taking five wickets for no runs to destroy Australia. I have no
recollection that it was the year that JFK sent his 18000 to Vietnam, when
Immigration from the Commonwealth was first limited, that British troops went
to Kuwait because of the threat from Iraq, or that the Syrians had a failed
coup in the Lebanon and that the first Polaris submarine arrived the evening
before my birthday. (insert- nearly went
to prison over Christmas and received an extraordinary telephone call on Boxing
day).
I returned to Ruskin deciding
that I would take advantage of some of the privileges arranged with the
university, attending the meetings of the Labour Club, and the inner Labour
Party group for Members of the Party, as well as those of COUND, the Campaign
in Oxford University for Nuclear Disarmament becoming the college rep. I had
also been recruited to the Clerical Workers union by the college secretary who
was the brother a Secretary of State for Social Services. In Trinity Term there
were four public lectures, including Professor Bernal and Sir Issiah Berlin,
who also gave a separate lecture at Ruskin on Science and Marxism and
Libertarians, Determinists and the Russian Revolution; there were five study
groups on Socialism at Somerville, and I celebrated my birthday by going to one
led by the student Lydia Howard, a relative of Harold Laski, on Fabianism. Jack
Jones was the main event at meetings of the Party group at Balliol, and I also
visited the Oscar Wilde Room at Magdalene for a discussion on Pacifism and
Revolution. The biggest occasion of big occasions were the visits of Michael
Foot on Aneurin Bevan at the Union debating Hall and Hugh Gaitskell at the
Taylorian, Shirley Williams, Douglas Jay and JB Priestley also had good
followings. Peggy Duff came to COUND so I was able to say hullo, as did Gene
Sharp from the Direct Action Committee, together with Tony Greenwood MP and
Philip Noel Baker.
In Trinity term, a time
to picnic in the parks and punt on the river, and take excursions further
afield. Among speakers were Barbara Castle and John Freeman, with Len Williams,
Tom Driberg, Robert McKenzie, Wayland Young, Judith Hart, and Richard Marsh,
who had been to Ruskin, and with Sydney Silverman, who supported the Direct
Action Committee, all getting support. Study groups on Pacifism in the 30’s and
The General Strike and Direct Action were attended, as did a meeting on Sartre.
Bridget Brophy came to COUND and senior member Iris Murdoch attended. You felt
at the centre of the political universe, especially when Harold Wilson and Hugh
Gaitskell wrote back personal letters.
But most of my time was
concentrated on Economic History which required more somersaults in beliefs and
understanding than political theory had required. There was little time to
respond to the enthusiasm of English Literature students, who had read their DH
Lawrence and felt that Ruskin working men offered relaxing diversion to the
academic pressure.
In fact, during my two
years I took two young women out to lunch, and one of these I had met on the
Liverpool to Hull Youth CND march having stayed at Wallington for a week,
before travelling around India on her own, as a gap year student, before going
up to Oxford. Alas, she was involved
with a very bright and interesting young man also a CND supporter and college
rep who she married. I also had a mini adventure of a kind when a young lady
notorious for the brevity of her skirt and stiletto heels, called at my
lodgings for tea and to discuss how we were to persuade the Labour Party to say
no to Europe and well as to the bomb. My landlady was out visiting university
chums, but I was summoned for censure later after she eagle eyed spotted heel
marks on the polished stairway lino, but I enjoyed her disapproval which I
hoped she would broadcast.
It was not until the
summer term at the Rookery that I managed some genuine notoriety when I
smuggled in a pen friend* and a companion into college for Saturday night and
Sunday morning. The friend of a friend turned out to be one of the most
beautiful and well-proportioned young women in the land, setting the whole
college alight, causing an instant party. While several students had regular
lady friends in and outside college without cause for official comment, the
combination of my noted celibacy and the stir caused by the friend of a friend
meant a little official telling off, although I had arranged for them to stay
in the twin bedroom of students in separate premises and who were away for the
weekend. It was good to be so popular for the first and only occasion.
(*I had placed a
creative advert in the New Statesman personal columns. This resulted in a well-known
columnist of the Evening standard suggesting it was a clever advert from a wine
merchant and claimed six free bottles. There were four female replies, one a
journalist who never returned the typed play I had sent to the Royal Court
Theatre who had written back saying their Readers wanted to see anything else
which I had written, but I had not).
There was one other
adventure. A notice appeared advising that some ladies would like the company
of some worldly men and being good souls a number of students volunteered to go
on the trip to what we believed was a residential home for the elderly. Given
that I had reviewed Professor Peter Townsend’s book, The Last Refuge, for Isis,
my name was put at the top of those making the visit, but not by me. It was
only on arrival that we discovered that the visit was to a well- known Ladies
Finishing School and that each of their working class guests was looked after
by three daughters of the rich and some famous. (One of those allocated to me
said she was going to become the secretary to the Editor of the Times. There
was at least one student less on the return trip).
The DH Lawrence thing
was a challenge for some students, affecting their academic potential. Ruskin
in Oxford was that of a child who spent their whole life looking wistfully
through window at all the chocolate cream cakes inside and then told you had
five minutes to go in and consume what you wanted. Some selected something fine which they
savoured, perhaps treating themselves to a second éclair as they departed.
Those who tried something of everything became rather sick.
For those who studied
hard, there was a different order of intoxication available, if the Principal
selected you for interview at Colleges to read for an honours degree. One close
friend returning from such a successful interview, after tea on the lawn
listening to the organ playing in the chapel, behaved like someone who had
always played in the fourth division and had then scored the winning goal in
the FA Cup.
There were never any
guarantees that going to Oxford ensured a better rest of life, but from what I
have seen of other universities since, Oxford and Cambridge provided, a superior
experience while you were there. It is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. A
couple of years later I was dined at the Union before speaking to the Crime a
challenge society and Sir Edward Health was being similarly dined by the
Conservative Club at adjacent tables. The aspect which struck me was the extent
to which he listened to what was being said to him. It was no different from
the attention given by tutors to your essay work.
It was in my second
tutorial term that I learnt to accept the difference between what I had thought
and what the available evidence indicated. The first challenge was to answer if
the industrial revolution had been a triumph, or a disaster, and I immersed
myself in the works of the Hammonds, Hobsbawn and Hartwell, an article by A P
Taylor and Raymond Williams, Culture and Society. I did my best to give one
answer when the facts point to the other.
Similar challenges
followed with the issue of free trade 1842-1914 and the work of Chambers,
Clapham, Ashworth, Hahbakuk and Cairncross, but I was happier with the
development of trade unions as I was already familiar with the work of Cole and
the Webbs, and Postgate on the history of the Common People. Arguing why the UK
depression between the Two World Wars was so mild became a great challenge and
my tutor disliked much of my approach, including my response to arguments that
the development of the Empire was primarily economic imperialism. After a promising start with political
theory, my tutorial and examination marks for Economic History dropped although
in part this was the consequence of interaction with the tutor.
What happened with
Economic Theory is less of a paradox than appeared to others at the time. My
impression, after almost half a century, is that the college was divided between the academic concept
economist, someone like me in another life, from humble beginnings who had been
embraced by academia and who responded with one significant work which had
attracted important attention at the time, but not since, and the then
contemporary professional economist who was determined to use the growing
knowledge base to provide economic tools to effectively manage the general
economy and address its component problems. It was the difference between PPE
economics which could result in a government Minister and Cambridge Economics
which could make a Chief Economic Adviser at the Treasury.
I went to Ruskin taking
with me several obstacles which I only understood afterwards. It was only when
a daughter in her first term at university was assessed as dyslexic, that I was
able to separate the emotional trauma and deprivation of my childhood from the
increasing knowledge of the brain and of motor control which is also an aspect
of dyspraxia.
At Ruskin the problem
was that as soon as a concept attracted my attention, or an argument made which
I instinctively disagreed, I concentrated on that and missed the rest. My
handwriting remained indecipherable to me, so hand written note taking
continued to pose a challenge, as it does today.
I continued to be
unable to remember detail unless it had been digitally registered in the brain
which meant that I had to understand and consider that it was something I
should retain because it interested me, or I considered that it would be useful
in the future. It has always been a struggle to retain knowledge for the
purpose of only passing an examination. This applied to the tutorial essays in
that I did not see the task as completing the assignment in such a way to
obtain a pass mark or a good mark, but I wanted to give the answer, using all
the available facts and arguments, which in turn meant not just trying to
assimilate the relevant part of recommending reading but the whole text of
Keynes, Hicks on Public Finance, or Dobbs on Wages before I had grasped the
basics. I did try hard with Samuelson, Cairncross, Stonier and Hague, and with
statistics where I encountered a wall against comprehension. I have always
tended to listen to people who impress me, and not hear what they are saying if
they do not. I always respond badly to criticism, even if it is justified, and
I thrive on praise if I believe it is accurate.
I had wanted to learn
socialist economics while the college taught the certificate syllabus and did
not believe there was a viable alternative to capitalism, which created an
immediate resistance on my part to what was being taught.
By good fortune for me,
my economics tutor was the Vice Principal and I took the trouble to buy his,
“Introduction to the Study of Economics”, an intense slim volume which I also
struggled with, and I also looked at his main work. I wrote some good essays, given my basic lack
of understanding and failure to grasp fundamentals, and in the tutorial
examination, I realised that I not only knew the answer, but was able to
express it with a clarity and accuracy which bordered on the genius. I thought
this, and amazingly Henry Smith did too, and marked accordingly. It was my only
moment of justified academic glory but everyone else knew, and I knew, that it
was all that it was.
It confirmed the
decision which I knew in my heart of hearts I had to make. I saw the college
Principal and said that I had been studying the wrong subjects for the wrong
reasons, and what I really wanted to do was to study Psychology, Sociology and
Criminology. The Principal, Billy Hughes was amazing. (an addition with changes-A graduate of
Balliol and chair of the Labour Club, he had served as a Member of Parliament
1945-1950 after Second World War Service. He said nothing but looked at the
syllabus for the Diploma in Public Administration where the college had six
places with one vacancy because of a premature departure after checking the
subjects I had studied. He made a phone call and said I had to see the
admissions officer at Barnett House that afternoon and I should say I wanted to
be a social worker.)
Speaking Martyrs
Memorial Cuban Blockade photo Oxford Mail.
(Further addition and
changes) It was just as well the Ruskin College annual magazine New Epoch had
not been published as it included my diatribe on social workers as Reactionaries
or Revolutionaries. Over lunch I decided to say Probation and went to the
appointment with no idea what the course involved or that its Director of
Studies liked to work with first class or second class students with degrees in
other subjects capable of taking two academic courses with practical work
placements during the vacations and then combined with academic work in the
latter stages.
Ruskin students only sat
the Diploma in Pubic and Social Administration over two years with a long
practical work placement between the two years and at least two practical
social work placements during other vacations. I suspected Billy Hughes had
made a second phone call because when I arrived at Barnett House, the
Department of Extra Mural Studies, it was evident the only issues were to find
tutors for the subjects required, Criminology, Psychology, Public and Social
Administration, and practical work placements including a crash course on
social work before going on my first practical placement. It was suggested that
taking sociology would be too much but I should do some reading all of which I
did.
Everyone appeared
anxious to help, including Surrey County Council which agreed the grants could
continue. To get around the problem of the additional maintenance costs the
first inspirational placement was two months with the Manchester and Salford
Family Service Unit, created by conscientious objectors in the Second World War
in Liverpool and which provided accommodation and food for staff with a
resident motherly housekeeper. I made contact with Frank Allaun, the Member of
Parliament for Salford where I was to work. I had met Frank on a bus to
Aldermaston and had taken a party of Ruskin students to meet him at the Houser
of Commons.
The F.S.U provided
support and company outside of work. Towards the end of the stay a weekend camp
was arranged for a party of boys and girls from families known to the unit at a
centre in Derbyshire and where the majority had no experience of countryside
walking or views from a hillside. I discovered that I could communicate with
children and first seeds of working in child care were sown.
The unit manager,
together with the worker with whom I had been attached also had the brilliant
idea, an idea which had been used before, for me to meet a family who had
achieved fame by an appearance on TV, as being the problem family of all
problem families. Such had been the size
of the family that the local authority had knocked two council houses into to
one to accommodate everyone, although when I visited most the children had left
home to commence their own situations. I was there for the greater part of an
afternoon, and for a couple of hours, I listened while the mother described
with considerable perception the dozens of officials, social workers and social work students who had previously
called, including those who had spent their time talking about themselves and
their problems. Before going I had read the file and knew from the record of
the links with other families and that the father, who was also present, had
like me, been to prison, something which he disclosed and which had also become
public knowledge. It was my first test because without any grounding in social
work practice, I instinctively knew that it would be wrong for me to disclose
my own experience as a child and as a protestor, and I did not, something which
I also found to be essential casework practice later.
I also learnt from the
family lessons more valuable than anything else I was to study and experience,
although much was also to be important and indispensable. It does not matter
how poor, how uneducated, how disturbed, or complicated a client is, they are
people in their own right, meriting respect and capable of assessing you, how
much you care, how much you are interested, and if you have the capacity to
help. This ability varies with the depth of understanding but is always there.
This was also to be the
fundamental lesson of the Casework Relationship by the, Jesuit Felix Biestek, a
book given priority by the Director of the Birmingham Child Care course,
Pauline Shapiro, I was able to take immediately after Ruskin, arranged by and
financially supported by the Home office.
The ability to look
into the soul of another is an enormous power and responsibility, but it is
important to always understand that the other soul is usually capable of
looking back into you.
Politicians, mass media
personalities, and managers of large organisations frequently fail to pass this
test. It is why despite some progress and achievements I always regarded each
day as a bonus, and recognised that circumstances could change suddenly and
that whatever I did could be done by others better. This provided the strength
to know what to do when challenges came, without fearing personal consequences,
although the undertaking of responsibility for one’s own family, creates a
different level of consideration.
I returned to Ruskin
confident that I had made the right decision but anxious about the new
challenges I faced. Arrangements had been made for me to have shared
Criminology tutorials with the Reader in Criminology who was based at Nuffield
College, a post graduate college. My tutorial partner had a first class honours
degree and his essays were everything I hoped mine would be. The kindness and
understanding which the tutor and he showed enabled me to get rid of my
educational and academic anxieties and had a profound significance on the rest
of my life. My tutorial partner for the term and I were to work together later.
He became the first full time secretary to the Association of Child Care
Officers, when I became its last Vice Chairman, and then he became the first
Family and Child Care secretary to the new British Association of Social
Workers and I became the first chairman of the section, and Sir Keith Joseph,
was the chief guest at the conference dinner.
In addition to the
tutorials there were two important components to the study of criminology which
contributed to my rapid development. Dr
Walker held two series of eight seminars with guest speakers over the Michaelmas
and Hilary terms. The first series was on the English Penal system. I never
enquired if I was the first student who had been to prison, and although my own
experience had inevitability caused questions and concerns, my experience was
used constructively and paradoxically helped me to feel an equal member of the
group.
After the first
introductory week which covered the relationship between criminal law and other
means of enforcement and the machinery of justice, we met for the second time
at noon on the second Wednesday of the term to consider the law on imprisonment
and the classification of prisoners and their after-care. We then looked at
alternatives to imprisonment, juveniles, institutions for juveniles, the
mentally abnormal offender, the underlying assumptions and finally, the
effectiveness of the system.
The second series
covered Theorising about Crime and drew heavily on the work of Lady Wootten and
the work of Gordon Trasler on the Explanation of Criminality. Every aspect was
explored from fact finding to heredity and individual propensities, the
psychopathological and psychological issues together with ecological and
sociological aspects, the implications for prevention and treatment and issues
of prediction. In order for these
sessions to be of value it was necessary to undertake appropriate reading and
thinking of the issues which might be raised.
It had also been
arranged for me to become a full member of the University Crime a Challenge
Society as Ruskin representative, and during the three terms, I heard many of
the leading exponents, opinion shapers and researchers in the field of
Criminology.
The range of speakers
and visits at Crime a Challenge in just one year, which the undergraduate could
experience three times, together with the seminars and tutorials, equipped
students in a way not achieved in the other subjects. The others members were
able to make visits to Oxford Prison and one to the Scrubs (Wormwood), one Open
prison and one psychiatric prison and one to Broadmoor Hospital, two visits
were made to Reading Borstal and one to Huntercombe and there were visits to
Approved School and Remand Home, and to special school, and the Society had
developed a special relationship with the Wallingford Farm Training School.
Among the most
memorable speakers was Rupert Cross on “How many crimes too far?” and Dr
Winifred Cavenagh, Author of the Child and the Court and who as Senior Lecturer
in Social Study at Birmingham University was to have a further role in my
development a year after her visit; there was Gerald Gardiner QC Joint Chairman
of the Campaign for the Abolition of capital punishment and on a more personal interest note, the Principal Psychologist at
Brixton Prison, there was also Dr West from the Cambridge Institute, Howard
Jones and Terence Morris, Michael Argyle then the Social Psychology lecturer at
Oxford and DL Howard, the author of The
English Prisons, but for me it was Lady Wootton of Abinger, former Professor of
Social Science at the University of London and whose work Social Science and
Social Pathology was rightfully considered a bible of its kind (and which I
re-read recently).
A couple of years later
as a child care officer, I attended one
of a handful of white tie and black coat dinners during my life, the occasion
was held at the House of Lords and the theme of the main speaker which
concerned the protection of society from criminal activity, an aim which we all
shared, was based on his convictions and beliefs about the right of everyone to
be “free from”, whereas I had already learnt from the writings of Erich Fromm,
and an essay in Philosophy, Politics and Society edited by Laslett and
Runciman, and the Mikes book on prison, of the significance of “freedom to”, as
the stage beyond “freedom from”. The failure of the speaker to make this
distinction undermined his thesis and I drew his attention to this because I
believed the conclusions he was making as a consequence were wrong and harmful.
I was a bundle of nerves before speaking in such a distinguished company which
included Lady Wootton, but I did so because I felt someone needed to speak out.
Afterwards she came up and congratulated and I began to believe that I had
something to contribute more than my individual work.
It was just before the
start of term that the report of the Prison Reform Council group which I had
chaired of CND actionists was published and attracted some good media
attention. There was a spectrum of media response, with the understandable
snipes that we had chosen to go to prison at public expense for a dangerous
cause, but because we did not attack the system, or those who ran it, it was
suggested that the authorities should give attention to our suggestions.
Our suggestions covered
Medical, Social and Mental Welfare matters, Hygiene, Clothing, Food, Exercise,
Letters, Visits, Libraries, Discipline, Education, Work and Pay, information to
prisoners and other matters. Our President was Lord Stonham, then Shadow Home
Office Minister the Lords, and he arranged for us to meet Lord Jellicoe, the
Conservative Government Minister. Lord Stonham introduced us, and the report
and Lord Jellicoe responded positively, saying that he had asked his officials
to consider all our recommendations.
We were given the
opportunity to add or emphasise points and I raised the issue of visits from
families and friends. A senior official then made a crucial error about visit
policy and I stepped in and drew the Minister’s attention to the paragraph in
the Home Office published policy statement and guide which confirmed that our
complaint on the discrepancy between policy and practice was right and his
statement was blatantly wrong. From that
moment I felt I was being seriously listened to and after the debate in the
House of Lords a large number of our recommendations were implemented.
However, this did not
prove as good a thing as we expected. In addition to recommending that everyone
should have an individual chamber pot, instead of sharing which was becoming
practice with the overcrowding, we proposed polythene pots with handles and
lids, and that cleaning and disinfecting should be taken seriously, and
adequate material provided. The Home
Office purchased tens of thousands of the recommended replacements, only to
find that there had been no research on corrosive damage, and consequential
ineffectiveness of their use, became a good example of being cautious about
quick fix solutions however well motivated and well-intended.
The experience revealed
the openness of the democratic system if pressure groups approach matters in an
appropriate way and make constructive proposals. The publication and meeting
also had positive consequences on my future career. Lord Stonham, on behalf of
the opposition, initiated a debate in the House of Lords to which we were
invited together with other interests, and during the proceedings were taken
for tea and introduced to a Bishop. The Bishop was impressed with Jane and
Margaret because of their book and Jane’s family connections. Another in the
group, I believe from a Civil Service union, was concerned about the position
of a member, whereas my only justification for being there was having been to
prison and being a student.
The Bishop was
distinctly cool in his response to me. Several months later I shared this
experience with some of the students at Barnett House, and one commented that
her father could appear diffident with strangers. Given my own problems with polite
company, and what I believed about not rushing to judgements, I regretted
telling the tale.
During the fifteen
months from arriving at Ruskin and undertaking my first term at Barnett House I
made an amazing leap from being a non-violent revolutionary in relation to a
specific cause, and going to prison for six months, to participating in
cultured academic discussions at one of the post graduate colleges of
excellence in Great Britain. I had commenced to appreciate the academic methods
and standards implicit in an honours and a post graduate standard of education.
I had also learnt something of the political and social life at what I had come
to recognise as one of the great universities of the world, and I had come to
recognise my limitations, and how much more I needed to learn.
Most of the credit for
this transition must go to those who accepted me, as I was at the time, and
took the risk of offering me a place to read Economics and Politics, and then
Public and Social Administration, the Principal and Vice Principals of Ruskin,
the Course Director and the admissions and social casework tutor at Barnett and
House, together with Dr Walker at Nuffield College. There was also something
fundamentally English about this transition, from trying to sit down at the
gates of Parliament and having every word and action monitored as a threat to
national security, and then invited to discuss issues with Ministers at the
Home Office and attend a debate in the House of Lords as the guest of the
initiator of the debate. It says
something about the core nature of British Society which I had attempted to
overthrow and then learnt to respect and to defend.
I have mentioned the
dinner involving Sir Keith Joseph during which I was frank about my background
and political perspective. His first reaction was to comment about my being
more at home in Russia, but later he shared my belief that come such a
revolution we would both have been among those imprisoned and executed. That is
also part of the British soul.
in the Autumn of 1962 I
commenced to find what I believed was the real me, and learnt to fit in with
others, and to enjoy the success of personal achievement. There was no sudden
revelation, or dramatic change from one life into the other, although with the
hindsight of experience, the changes which occurred were dramatic, and of
lasting implication. Instead of wanting to change the world, I became more
focused on changing me, and on the problems of learning and remembering, and
then on the value of being able to help others on an individual or family
basis.
During 1962 Snow fell
in San Francisco, Lucky Luciano died, Kim Philby defected, and the Cuba
Blockade commenced. Wesker’s Chips with
Everything had opened, Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday Mr President” and
the Isley brothers released Twist and Shout while Benjamin Brittain released
his War Requiem.
Over that first
academic year at Ruskin, based out at Old Headington, I had discovered the wide
range in political thinking among Ruskin students, with a couple of African
students launching a Moral Rearmament group which marched up and down to annoy
the Trotskyites Marxists who tended to be left of the left. Half the college
led the protests against the Cuban blockade and the Principal spoke at the
demonstration at the Martyr’s Memorial. I kept clear being bound over.
Photo Oxford Mail
There was also a college
protest when the Ambassador to Spain addressed the Spanish society and where
among a number of students we joined the Spanish Society beforehand.
Photo
Oxford Mail
Although the political
views of Ruskin students varied, we were all restless spirits, concerned about
the lives of others, and united in the quest to improve our own. While we
lacked the confidence of the ambitious young politicians of the Labour Club, or
the gloss of the public school, we were all desperate to succeed and to
contribute. It was only as the year progressed that I learnt that there were
greater similarities than differences. I also began to see that while there
were gulfs in educational attainment between us and the undergrads and post
grads, we all shared in the problems of childhood, family and relationships,
and that majority of Ruskin students had achievements through experience to
offer. I went home at Christmas in a condition of euphoria.
It was good to have the
Ruskin Oxford experience, but I did not expect the feeling would last. (addition-
The modern history tutor at the John Fisher School recommended I read the War
Crimes Tribunal reports to understand what the second world war was about. I
went to the local reference library and read those on Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz).
(I did not buy
newspaper when at Ruskin, listen to the radio or watch TV) but I did know that Marilyn
Monroe was found dead and Nelson Mandela was arrested (but) no one knew that
President Kennedy had installed the taping system which led to the Nixon
downfall. I may have known that the second Vatican Council was convened by Pope
John but unlikely to have known that Saudi Arabia abolished slavery.
I spent Christmas 1962
and the New Year 1963 undertaking practical work with the Surrey Probation
Department arranged with the help of a course member whose father was the Chief
Probation officer. The hurriedly arranged placement was something of a
disaster, except that for a few days I was able to sit in with someone who
demonstrated the highest standards of professional practice, and who went on to
become distinguished in his field. I returned to Ruskin ad advised my link
tutor at Barnett House that I wanted to try and become a child care officer and
a placement was arranged with Manchester Children’s department over the Easter
vacation.
I cannot remember when
I was invited to take tea with two dear ladies who took a maternal interest in
Ruskin students, the daughter of the legendary Oxford Professor noted for his
misuse of words and her cousin who we knew as the Spooner sisters. (additions-Their
grand piano was donated to Ruskin and is now at the Rookery) and the tutor in
political Theory from the United Stated States former a choir which recorded an
EP record which was titled Jay and the Rooks).
I treated myself to a
hard back edition of Doris Lessing’s new book, because she was one of us, but I
did not grasp the significance of the Golden Notebook until years later. I was
oblivious to the launching of the Incredible Hulk and Spider man comics. I did
go to the West End to see Lawrence of Arabia, and I took the Aunties to see How
the West Was Won in Cinerama.
Most of the other films
released during 1962 I only experienced on TV, later, including the Longest
Day, The Man who shot Liberty Valance, Tokill a Mockingbird, Dr No, Taras Bulba,
State Fair, Kid Galahad, Lolita, Cape Fear, the Manchurian Candidate, Ride the
High Country, Birdman of Alcatraz, The Miracle Worker, A Kind of Loving, Mutiny
on the Bounty and Divorce Italian Style. I also understood Neil Sedaka’s,
“Breaking up is hard to do,” without ever being in a relationship of that
nature!
I had kept up my
membership of JACARI, Oxford University Committee Against Racial Intolerance but
I cannot remember which meetings I intended. I hope I went to the meeting on
the Oxford Colour Bar with Fr Michael from the Catholic Chaplaincy and on
Radicalism and Fascism in Britain, but I do remember Denis Healy on Central
Africa, jointly held with the Labour Club. The main event of the JACARI year
was the visit of the Bishop of Massai, Trevor Huddleston.
I was full of
enthusiasm for the second tutorial subject, Psychology, only to be confronted
by a brilliant young man who led the Institute of Experimental Psychology, his
first student from Barnett House and from Ruskin so I was also an experiment.
He had no regard for
social workers, and even less for Freudian based psychology upon which much of
social work theory was then based. So his first mission was knocking out any
idea of my becoming a social worker and preventing my interest in Freudian “psycho-babble”
taking root. The first essay assignment was to compare and contrast Classical
and Operant Conditioning.
I described the
sequence of the human hand touching hot metal as follows, “the hand will have
been subjected to a stimulus (the hot metal) and this will have elicited a
response (the withdrawal of the hand); the sequence of stimulus and withdrawal
being described as a reflex. Depending on the intensity of the stimulus (the
temperature of the metal (tutorial note insert was within limits) will be the
magnitude of the response; the period between subjection to stimulus and the
response elicited is described as the latency. The latency of any reflex will
therefore depend upon the intensity of the stimulus.” This was not what I had
expected to be doing.
The second mission of
the tutor was to develop my academic potential and encourage me to thinking in
terms of a philosophy, psychology and physiology degree. The idea of doing a
degree still had appeal, and the possibility of joining an Oxford college, even
more so, especially after the debacle of the probation placement.
The third mission, and
which brought one of life’s memorable experiences, was that I should learn to
participate and enjoy the good life. Because he and some friends were not
college based and therefore outside the social life of colleges, they had
formed a dining club which met in a hired room and served the equivalent of a
college top table feast of many courses and wines, and with guests who were
expected to entertain by their wit. On the occasion of my baptism, the chief
guest a college master, was clearly uncomfortable and retreated immediately the
meal was over. I do not think he stayed for the liqueurs and cigars. He might
have been put off by one of our company who was a musician and who said he had
run girls in Soho, although this may have been a boast. That I had been to
prison added to the misery of the chief guest who must have wondered what
further revelations he was to endure. After the meal we staggered to Nuffield
College Tower as guest of one of the number, and the others played snooker
until the early hours while I tried to amuse with tales of prison life, after
which I returned to my lodgings even later than I had advised my landlady, but
who had not locked up. I was violently sick bringing up most of the food which
I had then spent time disposing of slowly down basin plughole.
My landlady was most
understanding and appeared amused which suggested that getting drunk without
being disorderly was considered preferable to having a girl in the room. I did
however commit one act of stupidity which led me to decide to move into college
for the final term. I had tried to dry something with an electric fire over a
polished table, and then had to seek financial help in order for a French
polisher to redeem the damage.
The period when I
debated using the Diploma, for entry to a philosophy and psychology degree,
lasted only for part of the term. I read some philosophy. I had a serious stab
at digesting the Stebbings’s Introduction to Logic, and Russell’s Outline and
his History, and a four volume collection on Philosophy in the twentieth
Century, and these later equipped me to tackle the Sartre, Being and
Nothingness, as a move from Nihilism and Anarchism to Existentialism seemed
rational to me.
The Clifford Morgan,
Introduction to Psychology, and the Kimball Young handbook of Social Psychology
were my basic readers, but I never took to the study of rats in the same way as
the Hall and Lindzey.
The opening week’s
salvos from the tutor, who bombarded me with scientific papers and theoretical
treatise, came to a head when we tackled Freud and the sub conscious. He was not
pleased with my enthusiasm. I jumped into the deep end with Franz Alexander’s
Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis and his Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy, Sandor
Lorand’s, Psycho Analysis Today which led to the work of Melanie Klein, and a
five volume edition of the collected papers of Sigmund Freud. I also looked for solutions to my condition
in the Jacobson, “The Self and the Object World” the Hartman, “Ego Psychology
and the problem of Adaptation,” and the Arlow and Brenner, “Psychoanalytical
Concepts and Structural Theory”.
The effectiveness of
the approach of the tutor was that again I quickly appreciated my academic and
intellectual limitations, and that before one adopted positions to last a life
time, it was essential to understand the wide range of theories about the
normal, or average growth of personalities through infancy, childhood,
adolescence, and sexual relationship, into the roles of middle age and the
adjustments required to cope with physical frailty and death, and then the varied explanations about
the formation of abnormalities and deviancies, and then the various approaches
and methods to containment and effective treatments.
(an addition -My tutor
also commenced a series of metamorphoses. He returned England after taking his
team to the USA to become head of a Polytechnic in London, to move to Which
magazine and then to the Open University. His Obituary in the Guardian aged 70
commenced, “John Beichon, who has died, achieved national prominence in 1984 as
the troubleshooter who calmed the student rebellion at the North London
Polytechnic - a situation that provoked court orders and a threat by the then
education secretary, Sir Keith Joseph, to close the institution down. An
innovative manager of public services, Beichon later turned his attention to
the Consumers' Association, though he was probably less successful in shifting
the culture there than at the polytechnic. His management methods reflected his
pedigree. The son of an entrepreneurial communist engineer in London's East
End, with whom he had a stormy, but, in the end, affectionate relationship, he
blended the academic disciplines of engineering and psychology with communist
convictions and a belief in blunt speaking.
The precision of
engineering cannot be said to apply to the marking system which operated at
Ruskin and mirrored that in the University. The system comprised the allocation
of Alphas, and Betas, and C’s and D’s with a margin range between grades of B-
-, B-, B, B+ and B+ +. My educational performance at school had fluctuated
between the equivalent of failures of Cs and D’s. The performance during the
first Ruskin year had been one of B range marks although I achieved one Alpha
minus. I cannot remember what happened in psychology, in part because it was
not good, but also because my tutor has his missions. It was when I studied
Public and Social Administration that academic work clicked and I began to
function closer to my potential. It also involved undertaking two tutorial
assignments a week and preparing for the examination with would involve all
seven subjects.
My academic
breakthrough occurred with my work on Public Administration which was marked
never less than B + with two “B + Good” comments for work on the organisational
structure of local government, and on the duties and functions of local
authorities; I also obtained B+ on the areas covered by local authorities, and
on the financial system, together with the structure of the Civil Service and
on the accountability of the nationalised industries. But I also achieved three
B + + with essays in Government Departments and Local Authority Chief Officers,
and on Treasury Control in relation to Local
Authorities. The real value of this work was not the grades, but the
understanding of the systems then in operation which although it all became
buried under the volume of further work and experience, I was able to draw upon
when I became an Assistant Director and then a local authority chief officer.
Professor Richard
Titmus had come to the Labour Club before Christmas on the Changing Face of
Welfare, but 1963 was marked by Earl Atlee speaking on the achievements of the
1945 Government.
It was Tony Benn who
commanded attention with his clarity of purpose and vision, and everyone
enjoyed Malcolm Muggeridge on the Satire Industry. A second visit from Hugh
Gaitskell reminds of his response to a letter in 1962 when I had commented on
the loss of the Orpington by-election, Opinion Polls, Unilateralism and the
Common Market.
Over Easter in 1963 I
had my first experience of working in a local authority Children’s Department.
My supervisor in
Manchester was an Area Children Officer and in addition to providing a
comprehensive introduction to the actual work of child care officer, she
arranged for me to undertake work on my own, and then tried to persuade me to
take a job in the department. In addition to a glowing practical work placement
report, she provided a heartfelt reference which is treasured.
My study and essay
assignments on Social Administration were to have a significance which my tutor
and I did not appreciate at the time.
Every one of the assignments were to lay the foundation for my future
working and thinking. The young tutor balanced her academic excellence with a
common sense which kept my feet firmly rooted in the reality of practice.
The
first task was to consider if local authorities had adequate powers to prevent
the neglect and ill treatment of children living in their homes. My paper began
with a review of developments over the previous one hundred and fifty years,
based on the historical work of Jean Heywood, in “Children in Care”, and who
argued that it was only with the rise of Protestantism had responsibility for
children become concentrated on the parental family and the welfare of children
had only become an issue for humanitarians, philanthropists and evangelicals
when children became an economic unit after the industrial revolution.
Over the first half of
the twentieth century there was an increasing involvement of the state, with a
number of legislation measures after 1930 to protect children in their own
home. I then wrote that the driving force was recognition that the child was
father to the man, (which today I would have added as part of a heredity
chain), and that the skill, vigour and morality of a people may well be said to
be a reflection of the education, training and care which they received in
childhood. Someone else’s words I think. I then tackled the problem of reaching
an acceptable definition of ill treatment, arguing that a consensus over
physical ill treatment was possible, (and would have assumed that this included
sexual ill treatment), but that the problem was with psychological and emotion
ill treatment, raising the controversial issue of whether a child brought up in
one faith, believing it was the only true faith and that all other faiths were
damned, could be regarded as suffering from psychological ill treatment. Few
would disagree today that to bring up a child hating other children because of
their religious faith, family political beliefs, their skin colour or their
race is wrong, but when does this become grounds for state intervention? The
main issues about the nature of the problem, and the role of the state, had
been explored by the Ingleby Committee and which led to the 1963 Children and
Young Persons Act which required local authorities to undertake work to prevent
the ill treatment of children, the admission of children into care and the
appearance of children before court within a functioning family environment.
Twenty years later I was to sit on a panel of inquiry into the death of a child
at its home, where some lawyers defended the action of the local authority to
keep the child in an evidently unsatisfactory parental situation because of
this duty to prevent the admission into care. However, when I challenged the
lawyers to say that this duty over rode the duty to protect a child, it was
admitted that the responsibility was to argue the best case and the panel to
make the judgement.
I was then asked to
discuss the powers and procedures of the juvenile court and the paper covered
the issue of the age of criminal responsibility and differential treatment for
children involved in the committal of the same offence. I came strongly down on
the side of those who wished to see the age of criminal responsibility lowered
and for children to be treated according to need, irrespective of whether they
were delinquent, disturbed or in care on a voluntary basis, or because of the
need to protect them
What became
extraordinary is that within a year I had written to the leading Children’s
Officer advocate of this approach for a job, and she gave me one, and set me on
the fast track which led to my becoming the Vice President of the Association
of Child Care Officers, with a responsibility for overseeing the lobbying of
Parliament to try and ensure that this approach was the basis of the 1969
Children’s and Young Persons Act
It is one of the more
ludicrous of human notions that leaders in whatever field, Monarchs,
Presidents, Spiritual Guides and church managers, Prime Ministers and
Governors, Judges and Professors Company chairmen and media barons are good and
effective in what they do because they have got into the positions by birth,
election or circumstance. All who have a comprehensive education know that good
and effective leaders are bred. The balance between interlocking chains of
genes and subsequent training and social preparation will vary according to
needs and opportunities. The essential rule is that every kind of leader needs
appropriate preparation and training, and the better this is the less the
leader is likely to learn at the expense of all and any of us.
The same view applies
to those who advise and organise for the leaders. When I went to Ruskin I would
have liked to have become a leader, a principal adviser and organiser, but I
never saw myself as becoming one. However, the experiences of being treated as
one by staff at Ruskin and in the University and by the university process led
me to believe that anything was possible. This was to become translated into a
national leadership situation during 1969 and 1970, and the roots for my
actions and position were formed during the social administration assignment on
the Younghusband Report on the training and recruitment of social workers.
Penelope Hall, in her
study of the Social Services in Modern England had described the piecemeal
development of social welfare which had led voluntary and then statutory
services developing in relation to specific needs without coordination, and
frequently without reference to each other. There were a number of separate
training disciplines, child care, probation, hospital, psychiatric and family
and an even greater number of professional organisations representing
practitioners, and separately of managers, and in addition to hundreds of
specialist based charitable and voluntary work organisations, statutory
functions were divided between children’s departments, hospital social work
departments, the probation service and a variety of local authority
organisational, committee and departmental structures covering the work of
Medical Officers of Health, of Welfare Officers primarily concerned with the
elderly and Mental Health Work, with responsibility for people with severe
learning difficulties (Mental handicap) divided according to age between
Education and Health and with responsibility for disabled people or people with
a disability) pending upon viewpoint, vague.
The idea, discussed in
the Younghusband Committee was for a one basic general social work
qualification, on the same lines as a general teaching certificate and medical
degree and which in fact came shortly into being as the Certificate of
Qualification in Social Work. It never occurred to existing professional
practitioners that such qualification would replace specialist practice. However,
the issue was how far should changes in training be reflected in changes in
organisational structure within the social work activities into one social
services department or agency and between the functions of Health, divided
between Hospital and Local Authority Medical officer and the social
services.
There were also
adjacent debates over the boundaries between children’s departments and
education departments, and between social service and social security
functions, and there remains confusion about responsibilities and boundaries
not only in the public mind and in the media, but between and within health,
social services and social security, and education, to this day.
Because in 1960 our
knowledge of the relationships, the links, between poverty, crime, poor
education, mental ill health had advanced, together with our awareness of the
issues facing children in single parent households or substitute environments
such as fostering, residential care and residential school and changes in the
structure and functioning of families, the concept of comprehensive social work and social service
departments had gained strong support among social work teachers, professional
and managerial bodies and to a lesser extent among practitioners, who
justifiably feared the implications of organisational change.
My views in 1963
reflected the contemporary swing towards the comprehensive social services
department. It was my tutor, Juliet Cheetham who questioned the potential
consequences of this for professional social work in becoming part of a major
local authority bureaucracy. I am not stating what her actual views were at the
time, but my having come down firmly on one position, she, as all the tutors
had each done in their individual ways, had ensured that I was aware that there
were just as strong and valid options. In this instance she made me think about
the issues long after I moved on to other assignments and as I will come to
explain, my rethinking had national consequences.
Another assignment had
been to review the administrative structure of the National Health Service,
although it was three years later before the husband of the Children’s Officer
of Oxfordshire, explained and tried to convince why the only justification for
health functions being retained by local government was the public health
requirements. For a time, because I believed it was important for the rapid
development and strengthening of social work management and practice separately
from health, I supported this view as Medical Officers of Health justifiably
fearing for their personal futures, attempted to take control over all local
authority social services functions, including children’s department services
and staff. My then lack of interest in social security provision can been found
in the weakest of my essays, on the relevance of Beveridge principles on the
social security system of the early sixties. Over twenty years later the then
Director of Studies at Barnett House, Olive Stevenson, had become a Professor of
Social Work and a member of the Supplementary Benefits Commission, and she and
my former tutor in social administration, Juliet Cheetham, who had also become
a Professor of Social Work, came to South Tyneside to see me about matters they
were investigating for a report.
During 1963 the Editor
of Isis had invited me to review the Peter Townsend study of residential care
institutions for the elderly, and the review had been given prominence and he wrote
saying how much he appreciated the way I had presented his work. It was his book
and the description of attitudes towards elders which influenced what given my
present circumstances and interests I regard as one of my best pieces of work
from 1963. The task was to consider if
the services available for old people were in urgent need for revision, with a
steer that I should look at the balance between residential and community care.
I had taken the proverbial horns of the bull and condemned the use of the term
old people because it was then used to describe old people as an inferior
section of the population when “in fact we are being concerned with our social
parents-the men and the women who have provided the material and cultural
wealth which we now inherit.” I went on
to argue that we should be concerned about “all individual human beings- people
with the capacity to feel pain and affection, who possess memory and
imagination and who want to communicate their own experience and share in the
experience of others. Any discussion about the services available for the old
should commence with the question, how would I want to be treated, and would I
want to be treated like this? Far too often underlying our approach to social
questions is the attitude, `its good enough for em, and what else can they
expect` with the emphasis being on them rather than ourselves.”
I then went into the
information about population percentages and changes, the existing service
structure and the changes then under discussion, but I also made a point which
governed my approach when I became responsible for the development of services
in Cheshire in 1971 and for the management and development of services in 1974.
I wrote in 1962. “For this reason it should be considered essential that before
any revision of services is undertaken that we make ourselves aware of the
needs of old people.”
Shortly after I became
a Director of Social Services at South Tyneside the local authority agreed to
the proposal that we should use some special government funds to reduce
unemployment to hire people to knock on every door in the borough, over sixty
thousand households and ask them what they thought of socials services
provision and what was their priority for service expansion. The overwhelming
response was the extension of a limited visiting warden scheme, in which local
people were paid coppers to call on a number of household each month to check
on the elderly occupant or couple, to establish if they were alright and if
their needs had changed. To meet the expressed need, the local authority would
be required to increase the number of Visiting Wardens from around thirty to
over one hundred and fifty and the department worked out how to achieve this
over a three-year period, and with political blessing it was put into the
system. The development had the additional advantage because the extension
would enable free television licences for those visited under the regulations
which with legal advice the Director of Housing and I understood to be the
position.
For any new measure or
change in service which involves staffing and funding in local government it
was necessary to go through a complex system for consultations between officers
and officers and politicians and a formal committee structure with separate sub-committee
covering aspects of social services, the personnel and financial functions of the local
authority, and then through the main committee structure, leading the Policy
and Resources Committee and a full Council, before which all the political
party interests hold meetings to consider their approach before a final
decision is taken. Even then it is usually only a decision of intention to
provide funding and staffing in a future budget yet to be agreed.
In this instance
Councillors of the majority and controlling political party said I was being
negative and short sighted and moved that the development should be implemented
with immediate effect and that the Financial Director should advise his
committee how the funds could be provided. Inwardly I was thrilled at the
working of a democracy in which you asked people what was needed, that the
people said the welfare of the elders was the most important, and the local
authority put it into immediate effect.
Sometime after that,
independent research was undertaken into the warden and home helps service in
South Tyneside and the investigators did not understand at first why the
officers returned to help their clients outside of their paid time. They did
not understand until it was explained that we recruited local people from the
same estates and neighbourhoods who were visiting their elders, who if not part
of an extended family network, were known to their extended family network.
I do not believe it was
chance, or some product of chaos or random theory which led me to write what I
did in 1963, to decide to stay in local authority social services when
children’s services were merged in 1971, rather than move into a non-statutory
child care agency, or when I was interviewed for the position of Director,
aware that the sitting tenant had applied and was almost certain to be
appointed, that I got up and said what I thought, to a group of ordinary people
councillors who cared about their community, in
a way which I found extraordinary at the time, and continue to marvel at
since.
When the Conservative
government, aided by many in the Social Services field, attempted to introduce
Community Care and Children Act reforms in a big bang approach in the early
1990’s I warned that the proposals would be disastrous for the provision of
basic services such as home helps and visiting wardens in South Tyneside in
three papers which I submitted to the House of Commons Social Services
Committee. This led to an invitation to appear before the Committee, which
caused great embarrassment for the Association of Directors of Social Services
who had not bothered to submit papers as an organisation. Not for the first or
last occasion was I find myself in a situation where the Association defended
the indefensible while I tried to present an alternative viewpoint.
When I wrote that
academic essay on community care services for the elderly I did not know if I
would pass the certificate, or become a professionally qualified child care
officer, which in turn would lead to development and managerial
responsibilities for the elders. At the
time I was experiencing difficulties in getting a grant and a place on a
university professional training course, and I was still unsure if I was going
to be any good as a child care officer, or wanted to spend the rest of my
working life in social work.
Given my previous
problems with learning and examinations, I am amazed now that I managed to
survive the five term examinations before sitting the papers for the seven
subjects which I had studied. While my mind was full of Psychology, Criminology
and Public and Social Administration, and Social Casework during the last year,
I still had to face three hour examinations on Economic Theory, Economic History
and Political Theory. Ruskin provided a series of sessions and briefing guides
to assist students and although I attended some they only reminded of how
little I had known and then remembered.
There was also one
event which Ruskin arranged which was also to have the most profound effect on
my view of the universe, the extent of human knowledge, and the great
unanswered questions. I wrote this before seeing the film version of the
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy! The college had a special fund which enabled
an eminent generalist to give a series of lectures which were mind blowing in
their breadth and depth. In 1956 Victor Gollancz published a collection of
essays, The New Outline of Modern Knowledge, on philosophy and metaphysics, the
sciences, the arts, politics and economics and the law. The work is
comprehensive but what the Ruskin lectures achieved was to enable an
understanding of concepts such as time and number as well as of space. The
memorable example is the concept of 1. Divide 1 by 3 and the result is .333333
recurring, so what has happened to the missing .1? A not insignificant question
given the digital world has been built around combinations of 0 and 1. For me,
it was the issue of time which fired my imagination.
Today it is possible for
anyone in the world to communicate with anyone else in the world with only the
briefest of time lapses, yet in terms of time, the awareness of time in terms
of day and night, and hour, minute and second will vary. It is also possible
for communication between this world and man and machine in space at
considerable distance and therefore there is no reason why such communication
is not possible across the vast expanse of space. Simply because we are
presently limited in our capacity to listen in or transmit pictures between our
known technologies at a distance does not mean that others are not more
advanced, and have been able to listen and see throughout our recorded
knowledge of self-aware consciousness.
It is also possible
through satellite, telephone and computer to observe and change the records of,
who we are, and what we are and have been doing, and indeed our actual recorded
existence can be erased or changed to enable others to see us differently from
who we have been and what we have accomplished. At the same some entity
somewhere can be viewing this happening and recorded the evidence of who we
were and have become.
Although I spent night
after night in preparation for the final examinations I found myself
unexpectedly relaxed from the sense of special occasion. The Oxford
Examinations are an event when you are required to dress in sub fusc, a dark
suit, a white bow tie, and if a university member a gown and mortar board. I
became quietly confident because at one level the result did not matter, the
experience had.
The aunties had been
able to fund my going abroad for the first time, a college trip to Sweden. The
party travelled by train through Belgium and Germany and Denmark, through
Southern Sweden to Stockholm and from where three of us paid a visit to the
Swedish Oxford at Upsala as guest of a student we had met, and who was studying
psychiatry, before spending several days at a Folkhighschool at Forsa on the
eastern coast.
The endless miles of
forest and waterway explained the thoughtful character for the Nordic, enabling
me to listen and see again differently, the music of Grieg and Sibelius, the
films of Igmar Bergman and plays of Ibsen.
We were on a hillside,
were we, when news reached us, did it, that President Kennedy had said “Eich
bin ein Berliner, and was given added significance because a visitor from the
United States, staying at the high school, was a member of the outing. My first
memory was that news of the assassination had reach us, but this did not happen
until I was at Birmingham, so the whole situation is in doubt except that I
have photos of hillside, the group and the views, and there was an American and
we said it was a moment we would always remember where we were and with whom.
I returned to Oxford to
stay with some Ruskin students who had taken rooms for the rest of the summer
before going on to colleges and the PPE. We picnicked in the grounds of
Blenheim Palace and we punted on the river in an effort to capture our own
little bit of Brideshead. Then we went
see if our names were posted at the Examination schools, and ordered our copies
of the Oxford University Gazette of Friday 30th August 1963. Thirty-two Ruskin
students obtained the Economics and Political Science Diploma, one with
distinction, thirteen from the Catholic Workers College, three from university
colleges and one from St Peters. All six Ruskin students succeeded in the
Public and Social Administration Diploma, plus one re-sitting.
I was very impressed
with myself, even more so when I discovered that in addition to those from
Barnett House nineteen students from university colleges had also taken the
diploma including someone from Balliol, Trinity and Corpus Christi. This gave
added value to the Diploma, well I thought so and that is what mattered. “
Since
rereading I have started to go through boxes of unprocessed information and one
item rediscovered is the Labour Party Group card for Michaelmas 1962 with
meetings on Sunday mornings in Somerville West JCR at 11am with coffee. Billy
Hughes listed as College President spoke on the Fabians Today, John Ennals as
College Vice President spoke on the Labour Party Conference 1962 and John
Hughes on Unions in the sixties. Walter Kendall who was at the college
1962/1963 then Vice Chairman of Wimbledon CLP and spoke on European Socialism.
Bob Skidelsky then at Nuffield spoke on Education.
Jeremy Beecham, now Lord Beecham and a Labour
Front Bench spokesman and appointed my solicitor in 1993 was then at University
College and a Labour Party Assistant Secretary of the Labour Club in 1963
concerned with Internal coordination and organiser for the A group of College
within the club.