| Description | Interview with Mr N R D Begg recorded on the 20 June 2000 by John Hargreaves.
Transcript of Interview:
Edited version
H Roddy Begg, you've already written in the Quincentennial History a brief review of your student days. You took the degree of MA in 1962 and LLB in 1964. We won't go over too much of what you've already put on the record, but you said relatively little at that time about your more formal education. For example you mentioned two of your teachers but I wonder if there were other of your teachers about whom you would like to say something now, your memories whether favourable or less favourable?
B I was quite a young man when I came up to university, still seventeen, not really clear what I was going to do with my life. I think at various stages of my five years as an undergraduate I was going to be an accountant, I was going to be a historian (briefly) and ultimately I decided that I was going to be a lawyer …. only to change my mind as soon as I graduated. So I took an MA and - in the tradition - took a little bit of everything. So I was taught Geology by a marvellous teacher called Eric Tait who took great pride in seeing that Geology was a subject that people in the Arts Faculty could understand and appreciate, and many arts-biased people like myself discharged our "science obligation" by going to Geology and enjoying Eric Tait's teaching. I also had to do a Philosophy and enjoyed the teaching of Bednarowski , a great lecturer, a great character and, I am delighted to say, still alive today. Probably not the greatest teacher of all time but a wonderful man - and of course we all enjoyed a little bit of the wonderful MacKinnon. I was never actually formally a student of Moral Philosophy, my choice was Logic for reasons that I can't recall now, but McKinnon was a great man around the University. I remember trying to sit an examination while he was having a conversation with the Sacrist outside the window and I don't think anyone in the examination hall managed to get much written during that half hour. He was not a man to speak quietly. When I became a law student - it was really in my third year I became a formal law student - we really were a tiny class.
H How big?
B I think the intake was six and - as not everybody had to do everything - I was frequently in a class of two. I remember taking advanced Roman Law with Frank Lyall who went on to become Professor of Public Law in the University, Peter Stein sitting on one side of the desk and Frank and I sitting on the other. trying to be in a lecturing relationship. It was really quite funny because Peter had actually prepared lectures even though it was just for the two of us. But we talked about the Code of Justinian and studied the subject. Some of the classes were a little larger. Classes like Scots Law which were open to Arts students might get as big as twelve, but it was a pretty small Faculty at the time. We were on the top floor of St Mary's which also housed the Psychology Department and the Geography Department. And of course St Mary's is now all Geography and Geography has had an extension of twice that size. But it was a small Faculty, though I think there were about eight of us who graduated, because when I graduated in 1964 the first intake of Law as a first degree had also came through at the same time. There were a handful of us who had done an MA, LLB and then a few more who had completed the LLB as a first degree.
H Were there many women students in the Law Faculty at that time?
B Tiny numbers. I remember them both. One was called Flora and the other one was called Liz. They weren't actually in my year - we had no women in my year. They were in the year above me and I think they were all the women in the Law Faculty at the time.
H You mentioned Ronnie Ireland in your written memoire?
B Yes! of course. I should have thought. Ronnie was the greatest of the characters in the Law Faculty. His idiosyncrasy as far as we were concerned was that he preferred tutorials to be held in his house in Don Street - and after the tutorial had gone through the first formal hour or so he would open a cupboard in his living room and produce bottles…. of beer and the tutorial (for those who wanted to stay) then continued for an hour or two and became slightly looser and more outspoken as we progressed. But Ronnie was a much loved character and we never really understood why he gave up being an academic and went off to be a rather lonely figure as a sheriff. And I think, in talking to him later, it was a decision he himself regretted - that he was tempted to go and become a judge but might have been better just staying as a teacher because that definitely was his forte. He was a great teacher.
H Do you want to add anything perhaps about personalities of the student community? I remember that myself as a pretty rich time in student life and student theatre.
B There were great characters. I remember a man called Wilf Heap. I've no idea what has happened to Wilf now, but he was the leader of the student socialist group, who were characters who wandered around in black leather jackets (as I remember) always looking very serious and solemn at all times. I was greatly involved in drama and the Students Show and things of the like. And the characters that I remember were people like John Bain who was a medic who went on to become a Professor of General Practice in some university in England. Quite a lot of my student life as I've mentioned before was dominated by drama. I was in fact seduced away from academic life by the theatre in many ways. I remember Peter Stein telling me that I could have been quite a decent academic if I'd not got involved in Show and DramSoc. But that was not the way I wanted to play it.
H After you graduated in Law, your first job, if my records are correct, was as administrative assistant in the University of East Anglia?
B Yes.
H What were you doing there and how did that very new university compare with this rather old one?
B It was really not a University at all when I first went there. I should perhaps just divert to say that in my final year as a student, James Kelman - the Estates Director as his post would now be called: I think he was called the Edilis Officer - introduced me to William Angus, the Secretary. I'll talk about William Angus later, but he in turn advised me about what might be appropriate universities to apply to, if I wanted to become a university administrator. And East Anglia was where his former deputy (the Deputy Registrar when he was Registrar at Durham), had gone, George Chadwick. So it was very much following a person. I wanted to go and work with the man that William Angus said would be a good person to work for. I'd never heard of the University of East Anglia. When I got down there I found that it had had one year of students - I think there were a total of forty who had just completed the first year - and my first task in August 1964 was to use the infant UCCA system to admit the next hundred. So I became (effectively) a Faculty Clerk as they were called back in Aberdeen, and I looked after two small Schools of Studies - Chemical Sciences and Mathematical & Physical Sciences. and My job was to sit in the office next to the Dean and do all the administration for the School. It was a wonderful training. In retrospect I did a bit of absolutely everything. If there was a problem with the cleaners I had to sort out the problem with the cleaners and if the equipment didn't work in the laboratory I was the one who had to go and see that somebody was brought across to fix it. Pretty much a dog's-body but it gave me a feel for the spectrum of support that administration provides to the university.
H And it obviously encouraged you stay in that line of business, because in 1964 you came back, first as an Administrative Assistant and then as an Assistant Secretary Academic?
B Yes, I came back to be William Angus' personal assistant and that was very much a personal thing. I greatly admired Angus and - I had a call from him, a phone call saying that the post of his personal assistant was available and would I consider applying for it - it was really a great honour. And, although I'd been at East Anglia for less than two years and moving on so soon was definitely not my career plan - I had decided that I would want to spend five years in my first post - I couldn't resist the temptation. There is an amusing little side to this which I may touch on again later. Angus and Edward Wright didn't get on terribly well together and - after I'd applied for the post and been called for interview - Angus phoned me up and he said 'By the way, Begg, don't betray the fact you know me at the interview. That could kill your chances'. So I had to pretend I didn't really know William Angus…. and as a result I got the job and it was all OK. So I came back really to be his assistant… and it was (frankly) the worst job I've ever done in my life. Fortunately I only had to do it for a year. Angus had absolutely no idea how to delegate and I used to go upstairs pathetically and see Marjory Gardiner his secretary and say 'Has Mr Angus not got anything for me to do today, because I've read the papers?'. That was one of my standard jobs and that's about all the routine jobs I had! When he retired (and he retired within a year of my arriving) it was something of relief to me in professional terms because Jimmy George became the Acting Secretary and I was immediately given a real job. I became the Clerk to the Faculty of Law and, although that was a tiny Faculty and a relatively small job, at last I had something to bite on. That started my period as a Faculty Clerk. In the end I was Clerk to almost all the Faculties in the University. I don't think I was ever Clerk to Arts but I'd had a long stint as Clerk to the Medical Faculty (I was probably Assistant Secretary by then) and I was also Clerk to Divinity, Law and (for quite a long time) Science as well. Not all together - but in series - taking me through to 1976, which was probably (in retrospect) the critical appointment as far as I was concerned. I was taken by the Secretary Tom Skinner from (I suppose) the rabble of Assistant Secretaries and invited to succeed John Greig as Registry Officer.
H Before we come to the Registry Officer's appointment, what do you do as Faculty Clerk? Helping to process admissions we know - but how much else does the Faculty Clerk have a substantial input into?
B I think the Faculty Clerks were kind of unsung heroes. They were the chaps who went around behind the Deans making sure that what the Deans said was going to happen actually happened. They were the common denominator to any meeting that happened in the Faculty, be it the Faculty itself, one of its sub-committees, or a working party it might set up. The Faculty Clerk was automatically the administrative support for any activity of the Faculty, including (as you've rightly pointed out) the admissions process which was very much central to our role. But it would be wrong to think of the Faculty Clerk as just the person who processed admissions in the Faculty. We were the liaison person to every part of the administration. If there was a problem in Forestry about its roof, or some thing like that, it would be the Faculty Clerk who would go to the Edilis Section and say the Dean want something done about.
H Not just on academic matters?
B Not just on academic matters. We were very much the forerunners of the officers, who have now emerged as really very critical in the new managerial structure of the University, the Faculty Officer. The Faculty Clerks were a great bunch of people and I enjoyed tremendously good relationships with my immediate colleagues: people like Robbie Ewen and John Fraser and Joan Hunter (who were the three closest for the longest period of time). And later Neil Robertson and David Yule became Faculty Clerks as well and I felt that we were a pretty good team, probably somewhat undervalued. It was much like the Admin Assistant at East Anglia. We were the jacks of all trades and again this was a good training ground (as it turned out) for the wider responsibilities that I was to inherit later.
H In 1976 you became the Registry Officer and -as you say - you succeeded John Greig. You have said that this was a critical step in your rise in the hierarchy. Was there a change in the role of the Registry Officer, because I never thought of John Greig as being destined for higher things?
B Absolutely not. In fact, in candour of this interview, I would say that John Greig was a disaster for the University for many decades. But I was selected to succeed him to reform the registry. And the promotion that came with the appointment was the one that was the equivalent of lecturer to senior lecturer, from Assistant Secretary to Senior Assistant Secretary - and that was always the critical promotion in an administrator's career. John Greig was the archetypal dead hand on the management of student affairs and I was brought in to change the atmosphere. The person whom I worked with closest in that - other than my immediate colleagues in administration who frankly didn't have a tremendous amount of interest in the matter - was Bill Watt. I can't quite recall what formal role Bill Watt had but Bill Watt - who was the Professor of Humanity - had been the strongest critic of John Greig and everything that he stood for. He was very quick to say: "you've got to start being seen; students have to know who this figure is, the Registry Officer; you've got to start writing letters that seem warm and friendly even though they may be conveying a stern message or a warning; they don't have to be six pages long with heavy type and block capitals in sections", Bill Watt was a tremendous help to me, in that he was a widely respected academic throughout the university community and he was the one who went ahead and said 'Look this chap is trying to reform. You've got to help him'. And heads of department were much much more willing to be co-operative and to change their procedures to fit with what I saw as a more friendly and open style of student administration.
H By 1979 you'd completed the reform. Was this a matter at all of structural change rather than the sort of attitude change which has just been mentioned, which was certainly very perceptible?
B Yes. There were a number of things that changed at the same time. The Faculty Clerk's role was reformed by creating a centralised admissions process and the admissions process was part of my responsibilities in the Registry. We did the same with postgraduate admissions and set up a Postgraduate Office. The Accommodation Office (which had somehow survived as independent) and even the Lodgings Officer (which was again an independent person). They were brought together and they were all put under my overall control and responsibility. And then a little later Careers came in. So the whole of student administration came under the Registry Officer… and that post of course has now evolved to being one of much status high - as the Academic Registrar of the University - probably the third officer in the hierarchy. It didn't all happen at once. I don't think the University was ready for revolution. It was ready for evolution. And, perhaps evolution over a period of years rather than decades. But in three or four years I managed to achieve most of that…. and then the opportunity arose for further advancement and I felt ready for it. I was happy to see the Registry remaining part of my overall responsibility because I then became Clerk to Senate and the Registry was "my half" of the administration.
H What else did being Clerk to Senate involve?
B Being Clerk to Senate was really being in charge of the whole of the academic side of the administration. The Registry Officer was just student affairs; being Clerk to Senate involved the whole of the Senate structure as well. So there was the Senate, the Faculties (as they were called then; they later became Faculty Boards) and all the Committees of the Senate from Honorary Degrees through to Degree Regulations and so on. I was responsible for the whole thing but actually, in day to day terms, I became very much the senior Committee Clerk of the University. I didn't do that for a tremendously long time but I enjoyed doing it, because my partner in crime was Robbie Ewen. He was the Deputy Secretary of the University and he was looking after the other side of the non-specialised part of the administration. I've always regarded administrators as being of two breeds. There are the specialists: these are the Estates Officers and the Finance Directors and the people with very specific responsibility. And then there are the generalists and Robbie and I were the archetypal generalists; we had done a little bit of everything. Later of course Robbie moved on to become the Secretary of the University of Glasgow and he and I were Secretaries of Glasgow and Aberdeen for a number of years until his tragic early death in 1995.
H When you were promoted to be Deputy Secretary in 1985 did that mean you moved over to Robbie's side?
B No. The University was I'm afraid getting towards the time when the looking to save money was key. And it was a means of not replacing Robbie. I simply took over his responsibilities and a new person was brought in - but at a rather lower level - to actually deal with the Senate on a day to day basis. But I took over all of Robbie's responsibilities as Clerk to the Court, the Estates Committee and so on. The Joint Planning and Policy Committee… and I also remained responsible (at a slightly more distant level) for the Senate and the Registry at the same time. I think the job was unmanageable. I was really only able to do it because I had done half of it for the decade before. And when I became Secretary it clearly became necessary to bifurcate again. So the Deputy Secretary (in that sense) was a post that only I held, in which I didn't have predecessors or successors.
H Before we go on to your time as Secretary, you had one other function/office title - as Clerk to the General Council - through some of this period.
B Well (actually) to this day. I cease to become Clerk to the General Council at the end of September and it will probably be the job that I've done longer than any other job in the University. Because I became Clerk to the General Council when I became Deputy Secretary in 1985 and I will be that in that office until September this year; so fifteen years…. possibly a little more. The General Council was probably not very highly regarded at the time I took it over. It became more important as alumni became more significant in the University. One could have listed the significant things very simply: electing the Chancellor, which it did whenever the vacancy arose… so that wasn't very often… and electing four of The Great and The Good to the Court. The General Council Assessors were always a very important part of the Court machinery. When the Court was very small there were still four General Council elected Assessors. But beyond that it really didn't do anything very important or significant - though it sought and had aspirations to higher things. And when I became the Clerk to the General Council, the Convenor as he was called, the Chairman of the Business Committee, was Eric Morrison. Eric was just ending his term of office. Molly Gauld then became the Convenor and Ronnie Scott-Brown succeeded her and in that time, largely because they - as individuals - had the confidence of the Principal, the General Council's advice and input to the management and governance of the University became more significant. And, with that significance, the membership improved in its quality rather more, as significant people became members of the Business Committee. It has never been a large part of my responsibilities, but some of the trappings that went with it - such as launching Gaudeamus as a graduate magazine, which remains part of my responsibilities now as Director of Alumni Relations - these things were all part of building a relationship with the now nearly 50,000 graduates of the University. Because the university sees their support, moral and financial, as an important part of its future. If I'm to say what am I most proud of in my time as Secretary, I think it is nurturing that relationship, developing it in a non-confrontational way. In some Universities, like Glasgow, the General Council has seized power and there is now trench warfare between the General Council and the University. Because, if you read the legislation, the powers of the General Council are significant. It's just that they weren't exercised previously. And I think that in Aberdeen there is a very good relationship between the body of graduates and the university.
H You became Secretary in 1988 and remained Secretary of the University for ten years until 1998 and I'd like you to talk a little about some of the relationships which that job entailed. If I might begin with a rather provocative remark if you like: it's often noted by rather cynical academics that - at the time when the university was expanding and at the time when it wasn't - the administration (broadly conceived) seemed to be expanding at a greater speed. Do you think on the whole this was value for money for the university or are there any areas in which the administration (broadly conceived) may have proliferated excessively?
B First of all, I don't deny it is a fact. The administration has mushroomed particularly in the last two decades. But it was growing even when I was a younger administrator.
H The contrast with Butchart's days.
B We know the joke about Butchart (which I suspect is close to true) which was that a senior member of the Senate was in the toilets at Marischal College and it wasn't until he was at the point of reaching for the toilet paper that he realised there was none. So he didn't know what to do. But he eventually managed to attract the attention of a passing student, and through the closed door, conveyed to him that there was no toilet paper in the professors' toilet cubicle. So the student duly went away… to come back twenty minutes later to say 'I'm awfa sorry, professor, Colonel Butchart's at a meeting and there's naebody to issue toilet paper'. There's perhaps only a ring of truth to it. But it makes for a good laugh at an Alumni dinner, I can tell you. I think that the serious point to make is that the expansion of the University involved a transformation of the estate of the University. And it was mainly in that area that professional support was required. Buildings were being put up, and some of them were put up far too quickly, and haven't survived well. What was happening at the same time was that the very benign University Grants Committee structure was replaced by University Funding Councils that demanded the most awful volume of statistical information. And most of my colleagues, I think, are there now simply because numbers have to be provided for so many overseeing authorities… or authorities that see themselves as having a right to information about the University. This is probably only a partial excuse, but I've always blamed the growth of the bureaucracy that government set up to manage the funding of universities as the single greatest cause. The very fact that we now have many thousands of applications for admission to the university. In my day when I was first an administrator…. the Law Faculty had under a hundred applicants for the places and it was a very easy matter to process these applications. It now has many thousands of applications and it is close to a full time administrator's job just to go through these and to make sure that correct decisions are taken and communicated. So yes - I am apologetic about it - but I don't think it was my and my colleagues' fault.
H You've become Secretary, you're director of this bureaucracy but you're also involved in relationships with large numbers of important as well as less important people and first and foremost I suppose with the Principal. You were Secretary under three Principals and I wonder if you would like to try some comparisons of the experience and the methods of Principals McNicol, Irvine and Rice.
B First of all I think I should say that in 1988 I became the Secretary without interview. In 1985 I and Robbie Ewen and several other candidates were interviewed for the post of Secretary but Michael Bradley was appointed. Robbie almost immediately, in some disappointment, went off to Glasgow. Because he didn't see it as a better university: he just saw it as a second best university. He would much rather have been the Secretary of Aberdeen University. He's an Aberdeen alumnus as well. Quite frankly Michael Bradley's appointment was pretty catastrophic. It must have been fairly obvious from the outside. It was absolutely patent within the closer parts of the administration that it had been entirely wrong to appoint somebody who had no experience of universities at all; because Mike Bradley said, with some pride, that he had never worked in a university administration. He had been Secretary of the Hong Kong Funding Council and, prior to that, he had been a colonial civil servant. And prior to that he had been a civil servant in the UK. And he hadn't the first idea of how a university worked. So by the time he went, and I think he went just in time, the administration was in a fair amount of disarray. And I was called in on the day he resigned to be offered the job as Secretary to the University. That was amusing in itself, because the offer was made to me on the telephone by George McNicol who was in Australia at the time. I was called into the Principal's Office. Bill Mordue was speaking, (he was the Vice-Principal at the time)... he was speaking to George McNicol on the telephone. He handed the phone over to me and George said 'Roddy I would like you to become the Secretary. I will have to get the Court to approve that, but I would like you to - effectively - become the Secretary. You are the acting Secretary today and I hope that you will be the Secretary within a couple of weeks'. And that's the way it worked, because he felt that I had gone through the interview process three years before and the Committee had seen me as appointable then. And he felt that this was not a time to have six months of interregnum while a process was set up which he expected to have the outcome that I would be appointed. So he shortcut everything. I hope it hasn't coloured my view of George McNicol - but I will not hide from you that I think George McNicol is the greatest unsung hero of this century as far as the University is concerned. The reason I say that is because I was there right at the centre when the bombs started to fall, and the University all but collapsed in the mid eighties. 1981. What a time to become the Principal of the University! The first thing - to have to deal with was a significant drop in funding. And then to learn privately that this was just the first cut and that more cuts were to come. And I thought that George handled that situation in a brilliant way, in that he did not allow the University to go the wall. He made no friends within the University doing that - and that (perhaps) was his greatest shortcoming. He didn't have a charismatic personality. He managed to secure the undivided loyalty of his immediate colleagues. His Vice-Principals had a high regard for him. I and my senior colleagues had a very high regard for him. But I think, beyond that, even at the level of Dean and Head of Department, the University felt that somehow there should have been a fight put up. But I knew that that was a fight that we were bound to lose… and it would have been very very damaging to fight a rear guard action. The University had been grossly over-funded for decades and that was the legacy of others - who had promised growth that didn't happen and accepted funding on the basis of student numbers that they knew could not be achieved. So we ended up as the best funded university in the UK. You only have to look at the statistics of the early eighties and you will see that Aberdeen enjoyed a student to staff ratio that was second to none. And it was because we had promised to take students and we had accepted funding against promises that were not in the end fulfilled. For good reasons - but the students weren't recruited. So George had to handle that and he did. And he handed on, 10 years later, to Maxwell Irvine a university that was in sound financial shape and that was a tremendous legacy for any Principal to receive. I feel that Maxwell might have been more generous in acknowledging that. He knew it - and he acknowledged it privately - but he didn't acknowledge it publicly. And he kind of traded on being "mister nice guy" who could now afford to make more generous gestures that there simply wasn't the financial resources to make in the decade before. To his great credit, in my view, Duncan Rice's almost first action was to publicly acknowledge the record of George McNicol and invite him up. And there was a sort of rehabilitation of the image and so on, which I know that George was quite touched by. Because he did feel that - when he went away to his house up in Cromarty - he was kind of ostracised. And he's not a very happy person to this day. But George was not an easy person socially. He was awkward in formal speech - quite a good speaker in a technical sense - but awkward in other ways. And he didn't have the skill to put bad news across in anything other than these terms. 'We're going to have to cut, we're going to have to cut and cut and the University's going to have to lose 200 members of the academic staff' and so on. No sugar with the pill. The medicine was administered and he was absolutely resolute in driving through the policies that had been worked out in his "cabinet". There were very very small numbers of people involved in the crucial decisions and not many members of the University Court were involved in these decisions. They were taken by the Vice-Principals and the four or five senior officers of the University. Then George announced what they were. The Senate was told that this was going to happen, these were departments that were going to have to close and so on. I've observed almost wryly that if you look at the last eight Principals of the University, each is the opposite of his predecessor. Edward Wright was succeeded by Fraser Noble - mister nice guy. Mister nice guy is succeeded by a "toughie" in George McNicol. And then we have another mister nice guy, another toughie - because I would characterise Duncan as a tough man. But he is a tough man with a greater veneer of social pleasantry and so on. He can put pretty tough news across in a rather better way - and an easier way - than George and he is very much more successful in what I've always seen as the vital role of warming the local community. He's a great relationship with local politicians, the business people in Aberdeen. The professional classes in Aberdeen all have a very high regard for him, something that George himself didn't have time to develop and perhaps didn't have the personal attributes to develop. But I'm a great George McNicol fan and I'm sad. I'm sure there will be a time in the future when his crucial role in the survival of the University will be acknowledged. But it may not be soon.
H Thank you, that's very valuable indeed. What about your own working relationships as Secretary or earlier Deputy Secretary with these three Principals? You would normally see them most days if you were both in Aberdeen?
B Yes. I spent perhaps half my working day with George. A little less so with Maxwell. I talk about reactions to their predecessors; I think Maxwell was tipped the wink that George had had too close a relationship - and too exclusive a relationship - with me. At one stage George said 'Why don't we change your title? I think you're the Deputy Principal of the University' and I said 'I can't be Deputy Principal. I am the Secretary of the University and I'm proud to be the Secretary. No I don't want a change of title'. That was not the relationship that I had with Maxwell. Maxwell developed a group of senior academics who he involved much more in the decision making of the University than George had felt that he could allow to happen, in his day. So the very fact that Maxwell spent more time with the Deans and Vice-Principals and so on meant, by definition, that I saw a little less of him than I saw of George. My time with Duncan was rather shorter. I had less than two years with him as Secretary. In the first of these, I spent a great deal of time with him, because he was very intent on catching up quickly on what he saw as a great gap his in knowledge. Long before he became Principal - in the six months between his appointment and his taking up office - I spent many hours, days, months with him. Even went to New York for a couple of weeks, simply so that he could suck me dry of my knowledge, basically. And I was very happy to be used in that way. Once he felt more confident about it, then our meetings became less frequent and I wouldn't be seeing him every day in the way that I was seeing his predecessors. But that I think is an evolution which is perhaps of more general application than just in Aberdeen. I think that the day of the senior administration being the principal - and perhaps almost exclusive - adviser to the Principal are gone forever. And that is happening all over the world. It's not just happening in Aberdeen or just in the UK. I observe it in Sweden and Germany, where the role of the Kanzler is reducing and the role of the Vice-Rector is increasing (and the Vice-Presidents in universities that have Presidents) and so on. I think it is perhaps a reaction almost to the over-managerialism that was rampant within universities in the seventies and early eighties. That universities are now much more academically orientated and democratic institutions - in some ways - than they used to be.
H I must confess I'm not absolutely clear who if anybody is your successor?
B My successor is a very fine man, Steve Cannon. The University I think has made an excellent appointment. Steve was Secretary to the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council prior to his appointment in Aberdeen and prior to that he was Deputy Secretary of Dundee University. So he is what I would call a professional university administrator.
H His title is Secretary?
B His title is Secretary but he has another title which I can't recall which he wisely chooses not to use. I think he's called Director of Operations. It sounded terribly American to me (and to him which is why he chooses not to use it).
… other persons, Court members both academic and lay in the government of the University, could we deal with that both in general terms and in terms of personalities?
B I think by the time I had become Secretary in 1988 there had emerged a clear role for … [fault in tape] … Vice-Principal of the University. This was already a critical role when I became Secretary, and people like Andrew Rutherford - in the years prior to my appointment - had been the most important advisers to the Principal. Mike Meston, in that same period again. By the time I was Secretary, the role had fallen to Roy Weir, who was a quiet man but very very effective. The first medic who had come into this senior managerial position in the University, which had traditionally oscillated between Science and Arts. Then - subsequently - we had Phil Love, who went on to become Vice-Chancellor of Liverpool, and Bill Ritchie, who went on to become Vice-Chancellor of Lancaster. There was a time when one could have looked at these people and thought 'This is obviously a hot seat. Who's going to be the next Vice-Principal because they're going to become a Vice-Chancellor'. But perhaps it was just an accident of history… but we had this run. They were, I suppose, the third leg of the stool: the Principal, the Secretary and the Senior Vice-Principal. We met as a gang of three, or whatever you care to call it, every day and discussed the issues of the day… and which of us was going to take the prime responsibility for sorting out what was seen as requiring to be sorted out. The Vice-Principals then multiplied in number and - under Maxwell - they became three, one Senior Vice-Principal with an Arts and Science biased one underneath them. So there were three Vice-Principals. That period didn't last very long because I think Maxwell quickly recognised that the Faculties had to be represented at the "senior management table". That was literally an issue at one stage. What should be the size of the table at which the management would meet on a Monday morning and was the balance of academic and administrative officers correct? George McNicol's balance was himself and the Vice-Principal and six senior officers. Maxwell changed that balance by keeping the number of senior officers but trebling the number of academics. All the Deans became members of the kitchen cabinet (or whatever you care to call it) and were given the status of Vice-Principal. So magically we suddenly had seven Vice-Principals. and that number is still with us, because there are still three Vice-Principals that don't have Faculty responsibilities, and four with Faculty responsibilities. And no doubt the number will increase by one when Education becomes the fifth Faculty when the College merger is complete. It was more than just that; it was a change of emphasis that, now that the University was no longer in financial difficulties, effectively the spending of the surplus rather than the clawing back of the deficit was something that was seen as much more an academic's job. And I used to have meetings with my senior colleagues and I said 'Now - be very careful what our goal is in these Monday morning meetings. We are there as advisers. We do not express personal opinions - we express professional opinions'. That was not something that was easily taken by some of my colleagues. In particular Michael Yuille, the Director of Finance, who was used to expressing his opinion on anything under the McNicol regime, found it difficult to bridle his tongue. And I think that contributed to his decision to move to Glasgow. I think that is now very much the style. That the senior officers of the University are the professional advisers, the civil service. They speak when they are spoken to rather than venture their opinions. It is a change in status and an appropriate change in the University. I have no quarrel with it, but I don't think I would pretend that I was the power in the University in 1998 that I had been in 1988 (or even 1993, which was when George retired). It has been a natural evolution. And I think it is a University that has its finances in complete control that is able to make that change, and allow things to be driven much more by academic considerations rather than financial necessity.
H What was the role of lay members of the Court in general, and as individuals, in your time at the top?
B I think that that is as dramatic a change as the change that I've just described. Lay members of the Court were almost totally insignificant figures in the management of the University until relatively recently. And the change really came in the eighties, when it became necessary to secure the support of the community in which the University was struggling, and more and more important figures in the community were brought on to the University Court. I guess that was happening towards the end of George McNicol's time. It was happening throughout Maxwell's time and it has been accelerated in Duncan Rice's time. Duncan's recent experience is from a tradition where lay governors, or the "trustees of the university", were men of great status and he has ensured that the people brought on to the Court in his time - and there have been many many changes - it is a completely transformed Court - were of that stature. And their say in the governance of the University is very significant now, and it would be unthinkable to take any initiative without the support of the key half dozen lay members of the Court. People like George Stevenson, Ronnie Scott-Brown, leaders of the business and professional community in the City. I think it pays off very well, because - even though the senior management of the University might have taken the same decisions - the fact that these are decisions in which these lay members have participated gives them greater credibility. And you now have the Court in full support of the management, rather than being slightly critical, on the outside, saying 'It's a pity that happened'. And they now know that they had a critical say in what has happened and I think they've responded pretty well to that. There are many many hours devoted to the management of the University by people whose time, if this could be evaluated, would be enormous… and it is of course all given entirely free. One of the things that made me very sad was to hear John Sizer, the Chief Executive of the Scottish Funding Council, saying at a meeting recently 'I think it is time for the senior lay members of the Court to be paid for the time they put into the management of the University'. He couldn't understand it when there was a sharp intake of breath. How it would totally change the advice that they gave, if it was being paid for. They would become much more reticent, much more cautious, if they were being seen as professionals who were advising the University about its future. They would give much less useful advice. I'm afraid John has got the bit between his teeth and I suspect that that is going to happen: that governors are going to be paid in the same way as, if you work on the Shell Board, you get £10,000 a year for half a day a month or whatever it is. That sort of thing is going to happen, I think, in university management. That will be a very retrograde step, but I think it is likely to come.
The other group of people I suppose I really ought to mention are what I would call my "senior colleagues". I have been, in my view, wonderfully supported by a succession of Estates Directors and Finance Directors. Ron Taylor (who I now technically work for, in that I moved from being his boss to his being my boss in one day in 1998) as Director of External Relations is doing an absolutely marvellous job. I think that the University is very well served by these people. I suppose. I ought to be careful: I picked most of them - or I had a hand in picking most of them - and am very please with the outcome. Of course, the faces are changing very rapidly now; in two short years, quite a number of these posts have already changed hands. But administration has never in my view been a one man band. I may have technically been its head but I always saw myself as the ringmaster rather than the dictator and it was a team approach to the management of the University.
H One person we haven't mentioned is the Chancellor?
B I've a very high regard for our present Chancellor, but I think I should perhaps reflect on Chancellors as a progression. When I was a student and when you were first a member of staff at the University, you might have been struggling to remember who the Chancellor of the University was. It was a man called Johnston and understandably, because he never came to see the University. And it was alleged that the reason for this was that my predecessor but three or four, Harry Butchart, ruled that Chancellors couldn't retire. So poor Tim Johnston was left to linger and finally die in 1964. When I first joined the administration, the Chancellor was about to be installed, the new Chancellor, Harry Polwarth, who was Chancellor for a great chunk of my time with the University. He was almost as rare a visitor to the University as Johnston had been. He didn't come for all the graduations in July. He came for one maybe two. He tried to be there for the Thursday afternoon as well as the Friday morning and he gave an address at one of them and conferred degrees at the other. And that was the only time he came to the University. I suspect it may have been the only time he was invited to come to the University. When he retired, and fortunately I had a different view on his right to retire… Harry retired… he was succeeded by Ken Alexander. The process I mentioned before: the Chancellor is selected by the General Council of the University, the body of graduates. But as was tradition that a small committee, consisting of representatives of the Court and the Business Committee of the General Council, was formed to consider who might be possible candidates - because it would be very desirable (would it not) for this to be an uncontested election. There was a very interesting discussion in that very small group, and eventually Ken Alexander's name came out and I think that that was the happiest choice. Ken was then the Chancellor for ten years from (I suppose it must have been) about from mid-way through George McNicol's time… so it would be about 1985/6, probably 1986 to 1996. That sounds about right. And he of course had been the Vice-Chancellor of another Scottish University, the Principal of Stirling. Ken very early on made it plain that he saw himself as part of the life of the University. He came to most graduations. He accepted invitations… where his predecessor possibly didn't receive then, or certainly - if he did receive them - didn't accept them. He would come and he would open buildings and centres and speak at significant occasions. He came greatly into his own in Quincentenary year, which we will talk about later. He and I, with Angela and Fiona, [our wives], spent six happy weeks in Australia and New Zealand talking to Alumni. And I reckon we had about nine dinners in various places. So Ken started to play a part in the life of the University. He however saw [his role] as part of the social life of the University. He didn't seek (or was never invited) to play any part in the management of the University. And when he decided to retire - I think four or five years ago now - very unusually - it was his Assessor on Court, David Wilson, Lord Wilson of Tillyorn, who was elected…. again unopposed. Unlike other universities with similar structures, we, to my knowledge, have never had a contested election for Chancellor - though it remains obviously an ever present possibility. David Wilson went that bit further. In addition to playing the part of the Chancellor at every graduation including, incidentally, the November graduations and the ad hoc graduations that we might have, the Installation of the Rector, the Chancellor is always there. Very, very rare for David to miss anything. Unusually he is not going to be at the Statutory Meeting of the General Council next Saturday but that is almost now a rare exception; whereas his predecessors would never have dreamed to take up their office as chairman of these meetings. So David comes up a lot. He's a busy man. He may be the former Governor of Hong Kong but he is still a young enough man to inherit a lot of business commitments. He is Chairman of the Scottish Arts Council. But he finds time to spend in the University and I know he is the first person the Principal turns to when he needs advice on a critical decision to be taken by the University. Duncan would not dream of doing anything that David didn't fully support as a way forward. Not that David will always express an opinion but, if he has an opinion, it's a critical view to be taken account of. He was of course the Chairman of the search committee that found Duncan. I love the terms "search" and "finding". You know the process and how it happened in this particular case - but David took that job so conscientiously and followed up every piece of advice that he had. He met innumerable people in all parts of the country and abroad and brought together a very fine shortlist that led to Duncan's appointment. I think it was in the discharge of that role that I recognised that there was almost nothing that would be too much to ask of this man. Though not an Aberdeen graduate, he has an immense regard for the place. To what extent it is an evolution of the role of Chancellor, or whether it is a response to a individual's view of their commitment to the University. I suppose it's a kind of circle - in that I suspect now, if David were to fall under a bus or decide to retire in ten years time or whatever it is, the committee that was formed to find his successor would look first at: 'Is there a person of sufficient status who would be able to devote the amount of time that David (and Ken before) him devoted to the role?'. I think it has greatly enriched the life of the University to have involved Chancellors in this way.
H And have they reshaped the institution?
B Indeed. Have brought something special, something that couldn't be brought in just by adding to the membership of the Court.
H We've said something about your predecessors as Secretary. But you probably said earlier on that you would enlarge upon them their role as Secretary which was obviously very different from what the role of that modern Secretary has become?
B I think the first thing to acknowledge is that this is not one of the great ancient offices of the University. The first Secretary to the University was Harry Butchart in 1919… first full time Secretary. Prior to that, the Secretary to the University was the senior partner of a law firm in town and it was always quite difficult to find a name to put to this office. But Harry came back from World War I and became the first Secretary to the University. I think only MacKinnon stories exceed the number of stories there are about Harry Butchart. And, of course, he was the Secretary of the University from 1919 to 1952. He was still around when I became an administrative assistant in 1966 - as the Law Agent to the University. And Angus could have seen him far enough - because old Butchart was in a garret on the other side of the quadrangle and he would come in the morning, in his kilt, and stay for a couple of hours… and generally create havoc and go away again. But undoubtedly, in his time, he was a great influence for good in the University. It was under his guidance that the Court was persuaded to invest in the land that enabled it to develop in the sixties and the seventies. He was almost out of sight when I joined the staff, and Angus was the Secretary and about to retire. A great man in his way - but a very different man from Butchart, almost a recluse. Scarcely one to ever speak in public. By "public" I mean even at a Senate meeting, I suspect. Angus would rarely be persuaded to express a view but he always had views. But they were views that he chose to put privately, on a one to one basis. And I think - if I learned from him - I learned the importance of preparation for decision. That no decision is taken at the Senate meeting. It is taken in the weeks prior to and at the meetings preparatory to the big decision being taken. Angus was a great man for taking people in, in ones and twos and small groups, and discussing the issues. He didn't enjoy a good relationship with Edward Wright. Not entirely clear why that was, but it certainly was the case that they did not get on. And I alluded to the fact that it would not have done my chances of appointment any good at all [for Wright] to know that I was the personal choice of William Angus, on the day that I turned up for interview in 1966. Angus's departure was sudden and I think unexpected. It was within a year of my arrival and the University spent quite a long time 'faffing around' (it seemed to those on the outside) trying to find a successor. What I have gleaned is that two people were actually offered the job and turned it down and possibly each of these had the offer (as it were) for some time thinking about it. One was Maurice Cramb who was the Chancellor's Assessor - effectively the senior lay member of the Court - for many years. He was partner in a single-handed law practice in Aberdeen. And in my view he would have been an excellent Secretary of the University. But he might have seen it as a difficult transition, so he turned it down. The other person who I believe was offered it was Cowie who was the Secretary… or maybe it was Registrar… but the head of administration… in University of Belfast… who had been Butchart's deputy for some years. But Cowie I don't think had any particular wish to come back to Aberdeen…. though he was an alumnus, and one might have hoped that he might have been happy to respond to an offer to come back to his alma mater. [For almost a year, the acting Secretary was] Jimmy George, the sitting Deputy Secretary, who was a charming, delightful man… and absolutely minute… I don't know how many inches over five feet he was, but it wasn't very much, and he was always hidden behind a pall of smoke from a revolting smelling pipe that he puffed away at in his office. He would have been appalled that I brought in a rule that there is no smoking in the University Office! Even in one's own office. And you still see a number of my colleagues pacing about outside having their fags, because you're not even allowed to smoke in the corridors. Jimmy was left holding the baby for a year, which was a difficult year for him, and then Tom Skinner emerged. I remember the jokes in the papers that the University had appointed the head of the Prison Service to become the Secretary of the University of Aberdeen. In fact, the person they had appointed was a very senior and able civil servant and Tom became (and remains) a man that I have a very very high regard for. He died not that long ago. But one wonders if he was the right person for the job as it was evolving. He was a very silent civil servant and was plagued by his deafness, which became very very severe towards the end of his career. And I think he was a bit out of his depth when the University came in for the battering of the early eighties. And it was with some relief that (I think) he reached an age where he could decently retire. Again a very, very nice man and someone who I think not only administrators but academics in the University responded to well, on a one to one basis. Then came the brief visit of Michael Bradley which I've referred to. When Tom retired in 1985 the post was advertised and there were two internal candidates, Robbie Ewen and myself, and a number of unknown quantities. I believe Bob Bomont, the Secretary of Stirling University, was persuaded to be a candidate, and was seen but not appointed. And the University appointed Michael Bradley who had no experience of university administration. He had been Secretary of the Hong Kong Universities Funding Council but that didn't really mean that he understood how universities worked. He might have been a better candidate for the Secretary of the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council than he would have been for the University. And what was very plain to me, because I could almost hear the shouting, was that he and George McNicol did not hit it off. They really did not like each other. I find it hard to find very many people who have a very happy memory of Mike Bradley. But he stayed for such a short time, I don't think he was there for a full three years. In February 1988 he announced that he had been appointed as Deputy Director of Middlesex Poly, as it was. He was off as soon as possible. In fact, I think he decided to go into hospital for some elective surgery, that he had been wanting to have for some time, and I think he had left his desk within about a fortnight of announcing his resignation. So I was immediately Acting Secretary and very shortly thereafter was the Secretary to the University, as George McNicol was kind enough to say that he didn't feel an interview was necessary. That is the full list of Secretaries of the University. A century has passed and it has been a very short list. Far fewer Secretaries than Principals [in the period] but it's largely down to the fact that Harry had such a long run at it, thirty three years I think, and that both Tom Skinner and William Angus had relatively long tenure as well. So we're a short line.
H Finally I think perhaps, your role in the Quincentenary celebrations which were a central feature of your time of office?
B I think you will recall that probably the first thing that I had to do [as Deputy Secretary] was to respond to a letter from one John Hargreaves who said the University is going to be 500 years old, I think you gave us ten years warning, wasn't it?
H It was a little more than that.
B And if we're to do something significant we really needed to get started. So, as far as I was concerned, that stimulation was well received and I hope we responded quickly to it. The whole of the Quincentenary History Project was something that I was quite deeply involved in, perhaps more involved than I should have been. I should have left it to historians. But I wanted it to be seen that it wasn't just historians who thought that this was an important thing, and I persuaded the senior management of the University to put whatever resource you advised us was the minimum required, even in straitened circumstances, [to ensure] that was found. The first part was getting the mechanisms agreed and set up for the writing of this excellent and many-fascicled work. I remember the invention of the word fascicle (or seemed to be invention at the time, though I believe it was found to have been in the dictionary all the time).
H It was indeed.
B I think it was Donald Watt - who came up to a seminar and uttered the word fasicle several times in the course of a meeting - that had us all rushing off to look it up. In the same way as the University Grants Committee had found the word "virement" a few years before, which became the great excuse for moving money about. But after the History Project, it really became a case of how best to mark the event… the celebratory aspect of it. Here I think I should reveal that one of the great self sacrifices of George McNicol was to give up three years of his career to allow someone else to "run with" the Quincentenary - and get all the reflective glory that undoubtedly came to Maxwell as a result of being Principal of the University, going through this quite unusual celebration. But George saw it as his duty to stand down so that a younger person, who was going to be able to see the Quincentenary through, could run with it. So it was in 1991 he retired three years early. And that - I'm absolutely sure - was the main reason why he retired early. It wasn't to do with feeling the pressure too much. Because we were through all the financial difficulties. The University was in good shape to celebrate the Quincentenary as a result of the financial stability that had been achieved by the early nineties. So the Quincentenary boat was launched. Very early on in it was seen - as money was on our minds - it was seen as an opportunity to raise - what was thought at the time to be - a one-off reward. And the Quincentenary Appeal was launched and various, very notable figures [became involved] - alumni many of them… some not alumni people - like Deny Henderson who was persuaded to become the Chairman of the Quincentenary Appeal… and others like Euan Baird, quickly brought on board as well. Undoubtedly, without that involvement, we would not have had the Baird gift… which [is the] first, and possibly the only, time an individual has given a million of anything to the University. Although it's dollars rather than pounds, it's still an awful lot of money for an individual to give. The early stages - the stages still in the eighties rather than nineties, as the early part of my Secretaryship - was getting the support of the influential people. It was recognised, even in the early stages of fundraising, that you had to find wealthy people to support your cause and wealthy people who are prepared to then demonstrate their belief in the cause by giving generously. And that's when people like Gordon Baxter was identified as being a graduate of the University. I don't think Gordon's gift was enormous, but the fact that he was on side, and he and Ena were prepared to come along and be publicly identified with the University, was very important. Fundraising for the £25 million - that we thought was the realistic target. The fact of the matter was that we didn't get anywhere like £25 million. We dressed it up as being close to that, because of various other endowments and benefactions that would have come our way anyway. The donors were persuaded that these were "Quincentenary gifts". You have to understand that the University has always been enormously dependent on the benefaction of the community. The benefactions have been received, very often from alumni, very often from just wealthy people living in the locality. Sometimes people with scarcely traceable connections to the University suddenly decide - because they have no other beneficiary - that they are going to leave their money to the University. There have been many occasions when the entire estate - of half a million or three quarters of a million - has come to the University. It is clearly seen as being the future of the University that there are a lot of such wills lying in lawyers strongrooms up and down the country… and every year a couple more [letters] come in saying "so and so has died and named you as the beneficiary of the estate" and you wait with baited breath. Is this one going to be £100,000 or is this one going to be a million or is it going to be £10 million? The lasting legacy of the Quincentenary is the legacy of the tradition of fundraising, which is now supported by an enormous office, the Development Trust Office. I always saw the more important side of it was the 'friend raising', the potential that we had in - this very brief window - to restore the University of Aberdeen to world wide recognition. And I think we achieved that rather better than people acknowledge. I no longer go to a meeting and people say: 'Aberdeen?, Where's Aberdeen?' They don't know me or they don't know anything else, but they know that I come from a university that has celebrated its Quincentenary in 1995 and is (therefore) one of the surviving ancient universities of the world. We were very successful in doing that. We brought the [European] Rectors Conference to Aberdeen, we brought the Heads of Administration in UK Universities to Aberdeen, (…we didn't bring the British Association! We decided - at the end of the day, got cold feet - that that was one too many). We even got the Queen to come. For that year (we concentrated [the period] a bit, it was from February to October in 1995), there was something happening every week. It was exhausting, but by God, it was fun! I don't know if it diverted us from our academic mission at all. Perhaps it did, but perhaps it was worth it.
H Thank you very much indeed Roddy Begg, and as you're your carrying on that mission as Director of Alumnus Relations you may be interviewed about that sometime in the future by another generation of University historians.
End of Interview
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