| Description | Interview with Mr W. Nelson, former Finance Officer of Aberdeen University. This is the second part of Dorothy Johnson's interview with Mr Nelson recorded on 6th February 1985.
Transcript of Interview :
J Well I think that following on from our talk last week we have reached the point where we might discuss the Court and its meetings and I thought maybe to clear the ground first of all I would ask you if you could give me a description of the Court. Where it met, who sat on it and what was the nature of your contact with it?
N The present structure of the Scottish universities was set up in Victorian time by an Act of Parliament at Westminster, the 1889 Act, which settled the structure of the then four Scottish universities. The four old universities were Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Aberdeen. The present other four hadn't then been founded. And at the time of the 1889 Act, all was not well with the four Scottish universities. And it's necessary to stress that the reputation for good education that the Scots held in Victorian times was very largely due to the fact that there were four universities in Scotland, while in England there were only two - Oxford and Cambridge. Another old English one was Durham, it was the first of the expansions outside Oxford and Cambridge. But in the Victorian days the running of the universities in Scotland was very much a kind of private club by the professoriate. They had really complete control of everything, including all the money, and Westminster decided that it was time that this was sorted out and so they passed this Act in 1889. And the important thing that the Act did was to introduce control of the Scottish universities, not only by professors but by representatives of the local authorities, of the General Council and lay members from business. The whole idea was to broaden the control of the university and to introduce elements and aspects and types of mind other than the academic. This doesn't mean to say that the control of the university was taken away from the academics. They had a number of representatives of the new governing body, the University Court, but they no longer had a monopoly. The Court in my day - though I believe it may now be changed, because I've been out of the university for ten years - used to meet regularly once a month here in the Court Room in Marischal College. The chair was always taken by the Principal. If he for any reason had to be absent, the Chancellor's Assessor, who was the next senior member of the University Court would take the chair in his place. The Court was certainly not a rubber stamp body, it took definite decisions. It said yes or no or it deferred or admitted, whatever, but this was all done in discussion on the day. There was, of course, a certain amount of putting of heads together by those who thought alike on any particular item, but the discussion was always completely full and open at the Court meeting and no votes were ever taken. Decisions were taken by what was termed 'the sense of the meeting'. It was just realised that the meeting was either for or against certain proposals and that was a decision. But there was no taking of votes, partly because that tended to create blocks who would always vote one particular way and freedom of choice was always desired, and certainly when I first knew the University Court it was full of very striking and forceful individuals. Some extremely, not only knowledgeable, but very strong and determined characters of a kind who, I think, are now missing. I think in particular, of Dr J. A. Ross, who ran the world famous Crombie Mill for the production of cloth that is noted from here to America. Dr Ross was an extremely forceful character and in many ways he ran the University as well as running the Crombie Mills, and I don't think that nowadays you have individuals of that kind capacity, because Dr Ross was an extremely able man. And I don't think you have a desire nowadays that any single member of the Court should have such predominance in discussions. It was quite unusual for any item of business which Dr Ross did not approve for that to be passed by the Court. If he said 'No', that was it. The Court consisted - and I am just trying to remember now - of about fourteen people. I may have the figure wrong, but it was about that; and there were four elected by the Senate, they were all professors to start with, later some lecturers came in. There were either three or four from the General Council, a similar sort of number from business, and one or two official appointments such as the Rector, who was elected by the students, and the Chancellor's Assessor, who was nominated by the Chancellor of that particular time. And they - usually any sitting Chancellor's assessor would be continued if the Chancellor himself changed.
J Just to continue the representation. Was there a representative from Aberdeen city?
N Yes I forgot that. There were I think three: the Lord Provost, ex-officio, and I believe two others, who were usually the City Treasurer and one other councillor. The attendance of the town representatives was slight. Quite often they didn't turn up; or one came, stayed for half an hour and then left. They didn't see it as part of their duty to influence university matters and their attendance was really formal. It was entirely amicable. This wasn't because they disapproved, but because they didn't feel that they ought to intrude into academic matters.
J I see, thank you very much. There is a lot of information covered in that section. perhaps I could just focus on one to two points which have come out. You've given some detail about the importance of the historical background. One thing that occurs to me was to wonder, is this something that you have been personally interested in or do you think that most of your fellow administrators would have been as familiar with the effects of the 1889 Act?
N Probably not because that Act dealt more with finance than with anything else and I just had to know the contents of the Act, it was part of my job to know what the Act said, and I doubt whether any other sections were affected by it in that kind of way at all. I might modify that. The Senate - my opposite number there, Mr James George - he would have been well acquainted with the Act too, but apart from the two of us I don't think others were really concerned.
J Well continuing with our description of the meetings of Court. Can you tell me where you normally met?
N In the Court room in Marischal College. This is now converted to departmental use, I believe, but it was a very fine room and it was always in there that the meetings were held.
J And did they tend to follow a familiar tradition? Was it the kind of meeting where individuals would have their seat?
N Yes, and everybody sat in his own seat. Not because there were official seats for everybody, but just by habit.
J When did you first attend meetings of Court and in what capacity?
N As Assistant Secretary I was responsible for clerking the Court meetings under the general supervision of the Secretary of the University who, when I first joined in 1948, was the famous - one might almost say notorious - Dr H. J. Butchart, who along with Dr Ross - the two of them probably, one might say, ran the university. I can remember my first Court meeting which took place about a couple of days after I joined the university staff. Dr Butchart in his younger days had been a very fine rugby forward and he'd never really forgotten that he had once been so and there was some item on the agenda with which he didn't approve and in the middle of my trying to say something I gave a tremendous 'ow' because under the table he had given me a rugby hack on the shins - this was Secretarial procedure. Nobody minded, they were accustomed to Dr Butchart's ways.
J Who had clerked for Court before you had arrived?
N Dr Butchart himself. This was the emerging university being, as it were, reborn after World War Two. And Dr Butchart, who had been a colonel in World War One was a private in the Home Guard in World War Two and his commanding officer was the Sacrist of Marischal College.
J An interesting situation.
N Which both accepted with complete acceptance.
J Was the duty of Clerking for Court something that he gave up quite lightly?
N No, Dr Butchart gave up nothing lightly. He was really very odd. He behaved as Secretary as though he was still on the rugby field and if you got in his way it was too bad. And one of his habits which would certainly not be acceptable nowadays, was that if he didn't like the way the conversation was going he grabbed you by the shoulders and slammed you, back first, into the wall, knocking the breath out of you. This of course was most improper. I suppose nowadays he would be held up for assault or something like that, but this was just Dr Butchart at work. And after all we were just submerging from World War Two and there had been quite a lot of roughness going on and nobody minded. Except the person who was slammed into the wall of course.
J How did he deal with female subordinates?
N He had a weakness and that was he did tend to bully the little girls. He didn't touch them but he often had them in tears, which wasn't nice.
J Well perhaps we can return to the business of Court? You attended as Clerk to Court and Dr Butchart obviously was there too. Would there have been any other administrators in attendance?
N According to the business. If there was, say, a substantial amount of business connected with property coming up as communications from the Edilis Committee, then probably representatives of Edilis would be sitting against the side wall, not really at the table or at the place where the Secretariat sat but just in attendance in case something cropped up where some detailed technical answer was required.
J And if they were being called in attendance they would sit there throughout the business?
N Not necessarily, it would depend on just what the business was. Normally those who attended in case they were wanted were there just for their own particular piece of business and then they left.
J So this could mean that individual administrators would actually speak, at some extent, at meetings.
N Yes and they were always encouraged to. In a way the early Courts, as I remember them, were not only informal but they were friendly and matey and everybody was brought in who really had anything to contribute.
J Would most of the members of Court have known the administrators by name?
N Yes, oh yes.
J So when you came for the first time you would have been introduced?
N I can remember Dr Butchart introducing me to the Court. He said - he was very parade ground in his manner - 'Mr Nelson. Stand up'.
J This contribution of the administrators. Is it something that you observe changing in the course of your period in clerking for Court?
N Yes and no. it really continued the same way, but as the university grew, so the attendance of administrators at the Court meeting tended to grow also, simply because there was more business.
J And did it become more formalised?
N Yes, it did. And also, as I understand it, there has been a change in Court procedure. Instead of full discussion at the Court meeting, with no discussion beforehand, it has now moved more onto the local authority system, where the various interests have discussions at convened meetings as to what they are going to say over such an such an item. This, I think, is a pity, because I believe that the free discussion that used to go one with everybody as equal - still of course some being more equal than others - had great merits, and the detailed discussion by various groups beforehand carries some risk of sectionalising the Court as I knew it was that there were no cliques and groups within it. All the Senate representatives didn't always vote the same way and the same went for all members of the Court and there may now - for all I know, thought I don't know - there may now be less freedom in that way.
J Did you continue to clerk for Court until you retired?
N I did yes. Oh no, I'm sorry, I'm quite wrong. With the growth of the University the pressure of work, where I clerked both Finance Committee and the Court became too great and during Dr Angus's time as Secretary, the two sections, the Finance and the Court, were separated and a separate Clerk to Court was appointed.
J But before that, would you have prepared all the Court papers for circulation in advance?
N Yes.
J Can you tell me anything about how Court decisions would have been notified to the university? Court minutes were not publicly available were they?
N They were circulated round all members of the Court, so that all members of the Court had a printed record at the next meeting of what had been decided at the previous meeting. And immediately after the Court meeting the Secretariat had to get busy with writing a very large volume of letters. My view was that everything had to be recorded in black and white and that memory should never be relied upon, because memory is all right at the time, but a year later there is not record of it.
J And as far as the rest of the academic community was concerned - at what stage would they have heard about the decisions of Court?
N When they were intimated by the Secretariat as the decisions of the Court that affected the various people. And this wasn't all easy because the university structure in many ways is labyrinth and it was all too easy to omit to tell somebody. But you just had to be very careful.
J Would the majority of decisions immediately had been notified to Senatus?
N Only those that affected the Senate. The Senate was not concerned with the management of the University. The Senate was concerned with the teaching and research conducted by the University. But any finance or running up of buildings or anything like that was in no way the affair of the Senate.
J Was there a feeling that the decisions of Court were confidential or if a member, say, of the professoriate had contacted you after a Court meeting, would you have freely told him what Court had decided?
N If it was his business to know. If it wasn't his business to know, I would not. And decisions were not necessarily restricted in knowledge to the members of the Court. Very often the person who had to be told first was an academic professor who was much interested in whatever the decision might be.
J Well, returning to the composition of Court. You have referred to the Rector. Can you elaborate a little on the role of the Rector, and how frequently in fact the Rectors tended to take up their privileges on Court?
N Most Rectors, as I remember them, were what might be called working Rectors. They attended every Court meeting and this, if the Rector happened to be a man who lived in London, would of course have been very expensive. So the university used to pay the Rector's travelling expenses and accommodation when he came to Aberdeen. Usually he was accommodated by the Principal, in which case of course there was no cost. But the Rectors were expected to come to every meeting and it was made clear to them, when the students had made their elections, that they were expected to be working Rectors and they always were. And I certainly remember that the Rectors as a body - there were one or two duds - but the Rectors as a body were extremely useful, and they brought in a fresh outlook. They've tended in recent years to be what you might call public figures in the entertainment world; somebody who does a chat show on TV or something of this sort, gets himself elected. But whatever his private job is they did the Rector's job well.
J And they made a useful contribution?
N Oh yes. And there was also a Rectors' Assessor, who was a student, as a member of the Court. So there were really two people on the Court who spoke for the student body.
J At what stage did the student become eligible to sit on the Court? Was this not quite a recent development?
N It was, yes. I should think about five years go, perhaps, I'm not quite sure, but fairly recently.
J But before that tie the Rector would have represented students. Would he have limited his contributions to affairs that affected students?
N No, no he was a full member of the Court and he could take part in any discussion. The Court was a gathering of equals. With - because of difference in personality - different weight being carried by different people.
J Yes. You did make the point that the town representatives did not attend very regularly and didn't act as an interest block. Were there any occasions when this was not true? Did they for instance make any contribution at the time when the university was expanding?
N I can't remember that the town took any active interest in that, for the reason that you have already stated, that they didn't regard it - I think they were quite right - they didn't regard it as their business to come into academic matters. They are perfectly happy to leave others to deal with the things with which they were qualified.
J Well I think we will probably come back in a few moments to the question of the decisions that were made at Court and how these were achieved, but you also I understand clerked for the Finance Committee. Is that correct?
N Yes.
J And I wondered if perhaps at this point we could in the same way describe how that committee met and functioned?
N It's quite easily described actually because during my time the Finance Committee consisted of al the members of the Court. In other words, it was the Court meeting a second time in that month to decide financial matters which were excluded from Court business.
J Excluded on what grounds?
N A division of work. That the Finance Committee, which was the Court sitting with another hat on, considered financial matters and formally communicated to the Court the next week what its decisions were and in that case it was very unlikely that the Court would change any of the recommendations put forward to it by the Finance Committee.
J Was it precisely the same body in composition?
N Exactly the same.
J And did, for instance the Rector tend to come to Finance meetings?
N No. He, so far as I can remember, only attended Court.
J The Convenor of the Finance Committee, by what system was he appointed?
N By finding somebody who was prepared to take on an extremely heavy job. And it was, so far as I can remember, always held by a lay member of the Finance committee. The two who were there for most of my time were Sir William Scott Brown and Dr Maurice Cramb. Sir William Scott Brown was an ex-Indian Civil Servant and Dr Cramb was a lawyer in Aberdeen with a very heavy practice. While I didn't mind bothering Sir William, it used to trouble me quite a bit that I had to take up so much of Dr Cramb's time, because their services as Convenors were completely unpaid.
J And what did the Convener have to do that was so much more onerous than simply being a member of the Committee?
N In the case of the Finance Committee, where there were quite complicated, questions of detail to be worked out, sums to be done, it was the Convener who really sat down with me and did the sums.
J Does that mean that very often when the Finance Committee met, it was in order to ratify things that had already been worked out between you and the Convener?
N No, to consider proposals which the Convener put forward as a solution to a certain question. For example, it might have been a review of the travel expense regulations of the university. I would have worked out a revision, submitted it to the Convener, who would probably have changed something, and then the Convener would have spoken to the documents submitted to the Finance committee and wither accepted or not, as the case might be, suggestions made round the table, and then the regulations would be approved by the Finance Committee and passed on up to the Court to give formal university ratification to it.
J Was this role that the Convener held something which changed in the course of your experience?
N Well I believe it has now changed - and I say, now, because I've got to repeat, that I have been out for ten years and a whole lot of things have changed - and many of the changes have been as Principals have changed. They have introduced various alterations both to Court procedure and Finance Committee procedure. I believe, for example, that the Finance Committee now, meets very seldom: perhaps three or four times a year, instead of eight or nine as it used to be. And a more formal procedure has been adopted for the Court. But it would be other members of the administration who could speak to that. It doesn't really come into my period.
J But until the point of your retiring, the Finance Committee was functioning in pretty much the same way that it had throughout your career?
N Yes. Everything, of course, was getting bigger and more complicated and complex and one of the great bugbears to life was having items remitted to somebody to look into and report back. Because too many people had too many remits, which they didn't deal with, and chasing them up trying to get an answer was extremely tedious.
J Do you mean remitted to subcommittees or remitted to individuals?
N Either or both. The subcommittees would normally meet fairly quickly, but if there is some item of detail that some particular member of the Court was knowledgeable on, it would be remitted to him as an individual to report back with his suggestions and it was then that very often the remits tended to die, unless the office kept them awake.
J And presumably as far as Court was concerned, this would have been your responsibility would it as Clerk to the Court, to chase up remitted business?
N Yes.
J Well this leads us very naturally into the question of the committee system in general, about which I'm sure a great deal could be said, but you have mentioned just a moment ago, the fact that the Principal could change procedures of the meetings of something like the Finance Committee.
N Well let me put it this way. The Principal is still the first among equals, and the Principal cannot from the formal point of view change anything, only the Court can change anything. But in fact, if the Principal makes a recommendation, on which he obviously feels strongly, it is very unlikely that the Court will oppose it.
J The committee structure then of the University, can you tell me how that is established and modified? Is it through recommendations to the Court, which are ratified by Court?
N Every now and again the existing committees have grown to such a mountain that something has to be done to cut the mountain down and there is a formal exercise undertaken within the university for scrapping committees and reducing them to a very small fraction of what they had been. This is fine for about six months, at the end of which it is back to what it was before. And certainly for all the time that I was at University, the greatest burden was fighting one's way through the maze of committees without some business getting bogged down or something just getting into a shambles. The University may look a very complete straightforward sort of body from the outside; inside it's just a kind of rabbit warren and one of the hardest things of any administrator in the university it to steer business through this. A lot depends on the Secretary at any given time. I don't know what the present position is: perhaps under the present Secretary and the present senior officials, this weight of committee structure has been cut down, but I'd be surprised.
J Can you offer any explanation for this kind of labyrinth as you describe it?
N Well I've heard officials at the Regional Hospital Board complaining of their labyrinth. So I doubt whether any large body, in fact, is free from this sort of administrative dead weight of detail.
J So it wasn't because of any conscious wish to spread the administrative burden around? I'm thinking of the academic representation on some of these committees. The representation of amateurs in administration.
N Don't believe it. Lots of them are very expert.
J Well this in fact is going to be my next question. Could you make any comment on the kind of contribution that was made to the committee system by the academics?
N Well it was very good - always invariably. For the simple reason [aside] that the academic work and duties of any member of the academic staff was such that it took up all this time, if he were to do it properly. But there were many academics who liked administrative 3work and regarded it as a good contribution towards the university function; and they therefore were known as liking administration, were therefore elected by the Senate to the Court as Senatus representative. And because they liked the work and were good at it, as individuals, their contribution was good. On the other hand, the vast majority of academic staff have, I think it fair to say, practically no knowledge of how the administration of the university works. They haven't a clue. They will be aware of that there is such a think as Secretary of the university somewhere, they think, but that's about all they know. Apart from that, there is this monster called the Office, whose function appears to be to stop anybody ever getting anything. This is quite a widespread academic view.
J You are referring now to the academics who are not on committees?
N Yes that is right. The general body of the academics of the university.
J So are you in fact saying that there are two quite different kinds of academics in your experience?
N Well two quite different levels of efficiency in administrative matters. There are those who are good at it, who do it, and those who are no good at it, and who don't. And of course, you have got some half-and-halves in between. But I certainly found personally that the hardest thing I had to do overall was to get business through academic staff who were simply not competent and interested in, or qualified in, any business matter, and yet you had to somehow get it through. And it was - so often you were just talking a different language.
J What was the nature of your problem generally? Was it that you required a decision from the, or that you wanted them to understand your decision, or - why were you having this contact?
N It was a sort of two-way business. First of all there was communicating Court and Finance Committee decisions down to the academics. There was also a very great body of business received up from the academics, who were proposing this, that and the next thing, and wanted to know whether the Court approved etc, etc. And you had somehow, though as I say, you very often seemed to talking foreign languages to each other, you had to get the business through and it wasn't easy.
J So would it most commonly have been occasions when they were looking for something for their department and they came to you with requests?
N This was one of the rather trying things, because so often I had to say 'no'. I had a fairly wide discretion in dealing with matters and very often it was clear to me that there wasn't a proper case made. The academic who put the point forward couldn't see that point and I didn't gain in popularity because of it, but that's part of the job.
J Can you think of any particular examples that we might just finish this tape on? Either of particular competence… Could I for instance ask you, is this something that you found a distinction between the Arts Faculty and say the Medical Faculty? Would you make the same judgements across the board?
N By and large the Arts academics were not much good at administration. They didn't really understand what money was all about. There were of course many exceptions to that, but as a generalisation, I would say that probably the Arts Faculty were less good at it then the others. Those who were best at it, indeed were quite hot at it, were the Medical Faculty, who were very quick. Perhaps because, in the very nature of medicine, they had to raise large sums of money for their research and therefore they had to be money-minded. The scientist, I should say, came in between.
J On the other side of the tape we began by discussing the Court in its composition and we had some description of its meetings. I wonder if you could now tell me a little bit about the way in which the decision that would have been preferred by the administration was the one that tended to be reached after the discussion?
N I'd like to think that the decision which the administration would have preferred would always have been accepted, because certainly we endeavoured in the Office to work honestly and not to favour cliques; an one of the great virtues of the Court, and indeed of all committees when I knew them, was the absence of the clique. There are may other bodies - possibly other universities, I don't know: I can think of some Scottish universities - that are bedevilled by cliques, but Aberdeen never has been. It's always been free of that; and that very largely - though one can say quite a few things, perhaps a little critical of Dr Butchart - that was one of his great points. He would not abide cliques. And although he was, you might say, only the Secretary, nevertheless, his forcefulness was such that right for as long as I knew it, there were not cliques in Aberdeen University. But it was never possible before any item came up for decision to say what the final view of the Court was going to be. It might approve a recommendation or come to a certain decision, but that was founded entirely on the talk that took place round the table. There was, as I may have already said, no taking of votes, simply, among other things, to prevent cliques. Everything was settle on the feeling of the meeting. It was just decided that such and such would be done or would not be done and then the Convener or whoever it may have been passed on to the next piece of business; and one of the drawbacks from the office point of view was that very often the discussion was of rather indeterminate nature and the unfortunate clerk had to try to decide what it was the Court had decided. Which wasn't always easy, although I think we usually got it right. One thing that ought to be said in favour of the University Court was that in its operations it was a very friendly body. There was none of the kind of malice that you read in the newspapers as being reported [from] meetings of the - I was going to say the Town Council, but now Aberdeen District Council, where Labour and Conservative say the most frightening things about each other, merely because the other man wore a different label. There was none of that. It was all perfectly friendly and everybody was taken as expressing an honest opinion. The opinion mightn't be agreed with, but it was never thought to be some kind of put-up job.
J How informed do you feel the discussion was?
N Very good. They always knew what they were talking about. Of course there were differences. In the jargon expression there were differences in the way different members of the Court did their homework. Some did it very well indeed; others I know, because I've sat and watched them, opened the envelope they'd received in the office containing the agenda and all the enclosed papers when they had sat down at the table. In other words they turned up not knowing the first thing of what was in the papers in front of them. This didn't happen often, and it happened only with one or two people. And we tended to say, 'Oh there he goes again'. But usually the members came very well informed and they had done their required work in advance; and before meetings I had lots of enquiries from members of bodies, who wanted to know this, that and the next thing, or said they didn't really agree with this - did I really mean that or wasn't something different etc? So there was quite a lot of coming and going between the Office and the members of the committees.
J Were you ever under the impression that discussion could be helped by more information? Could you quite freely contribute yourself as Clerk of the Court?
N Oh yes and I did. I spoke quite at length about things and I was expected to. If I didn't, someone might turn round and say, 'Well why the devil didn't you tell us?'
J Was this not extremely difficult to combine with clerking?
N One became adept.
J You mentioned that it could be difficult to know what Court had actually decided?
N Sometimes.
J Were there ever occasions when your judgement was subsequently questioned and the Court said, 'We didn't decide that'?
N Not that I remember, no. Obviously one had to be careful and in all cases I endeavoured myself to keep in close touch with the Principal; and if I had any doubts as to what it was the Court had decided, I would check with him.
J This raises another question. I was wondering to what extent you would have been in formal contact with the Principal, possibly before Court meetings. Did you brief him?
N Not a formal briefing. I can't remember that any Principal ever wanted it. The Principals had always made up their own minds what their own views were; and they would have taken into account of course whatever arose in the papers or whatever I might have told them, but there was nothing formal about it. I didn't for example, wait upon the Principal on the morning before the Court meeting and be taken through the papers by him or anything like that.
J Would the same be true of the Secretary?
N I wouldn't like to answer that, because I was never the Secretary.
J No, I mean of your relations with the Secretary?
N Well I used to go through the agenda with the Secretary very closely [prompted] in advance, that's right. But this wasn't really from the point of view of forming any decisions but of making quite sure that we both understood the papers.
J I understand the nature of the discussion then, in Court - I have the picture from what you are saying that it was quite free and informal. The role that the Principal played in this is naturally of great interest. I wonder could you say a little bit about it?
N It depended upon the character and personality of the Principal. There were two Principals while I was there, Principal TF Taylor and Principal EM Wright. They were two very different men. Principal Taylor, because of his great personal virtues, perhaps could sometimes arrive at the wrong decisions. Principal Wright was - I don't say this with any disrespect - but he was two men. In his own room he was charming, affable, amiable, telling funny stories, nothing could have been more pleasant. In a meeting, if he was cross, he was hell.
J And this would come out in Court?
N Yes. Principal Taylor probably ended up with some wrong decisions taken because he was too nice a man, and principal Wright may have had wrong decisions taken because he had been needled.
J Would there have been many occasions when a decision of Court would have been arrived at despite the opposition of the Principal?
N The collision would have been side-stepped. Someone would have found the right words to have the matter remitted. This would give everybody time to think again and try to get the matter settle without an obvious clash; and I can't think of any case where the Principal's view was overridden.
J Does that mean then that in looking back over these years of Court decisions, one could fairly say that any positive directions made by the University Court at this time were made with the approval and backing of the Principal?
N Again it's very hard to say other than 'yes and no'. Because so many matters were complex, intricate, and there were so many different elements involved, that there was quite a degree, in the end of the day, of compromise by people who held different views and they tried to arrive at a middle view that as far as possible gave fair play to all the different interest concerned. I don't use the word 'interests' in any derogatory sense, but people who did in fact have a right and proper interest in the matter. So that it was really, I always thought, a very skilfully arranged consensus of opinion that was arrived at, and accepted. I never knew anybody on any Court or Committee who tried to upset or frustrate decisions that had been taken.
J Did the Court ever meet in the Principal's absence?
N Oh yes and this was not infrequent. For example, Principal Wright was seriously ill with hepatitis for a long time and the Chair was then taken by the Chancellor's Assessor, who at that time I think was Mr William Taylor, and I think he regularly took the Chair during the Principal's illness, and was accepted as having the same authority as the Principal had and the same limitations upon him.
J If I can return just briefly again to the role of administrators at Court - you have made it clear that there were not votes taken. My understanding is that both Dr Butchart and yourself and any other administrators would have been there in attendance?
N That is correct. We never had any vote.
J Did this ever make it difficult for the chair to decide upon the nature of the decision about the agreement of the Court upon any decision? If Dr Butchart was expressing an opinion very forcibly as a non-voting member, would this simply have been disallowed?
N His forceful views; and they nearly always were - would have had an influence on the way that the members of the court themselves took their decisions. Dr Butchart was an extremely shrewd and able man and I cannot remember his ever talking nonsense and his influence on the decisions would have been [in the form of] his influence on the members of the Court in arriving at their decisions. And I endeavoured to exercise the same sort of thing, though my concern was more strictly financial.
J Turing back to the question of committees, did the same sort of patterns of decision making occur there?
N Well it depended on what the committee was. If it was a selection committee for a post … In which, incidentally, in the Aberdeen University committee structure the existing occupant f a post was never on the selection committee: he was excluded as a matter of policy. For various reasons: he might have certain preferences for people he had known previously and worked with or something of this sort, or he might have some particular research interests and he might end to press the case of someone who had a similar research interest to himself or something of that kind; but for whatever reason, the sitting tenant was always excluded from the committee, and not only from the membership of the Committee but didn't even attend and be present.
J Did you have any role in such committees?
N Only as clerking.
J But you would clerk for Selection Committees?
N Oh yes quite often. I didn't do it normally. An awful lot depended on pressure of work, if you've got time to spare to go along to a particular meeting. And more and more I tended to do less and less of clerking committees.
J And these would be academic appointments would they?
N Yes. On administrative appointments I would only be in on those concerned with the Finance Section. If somebody was wanted for the Senatus Section, I would not have been there; and similarly for a Finance appointment there wouldn't be any member of the Senatus side in the office.
J If you were clerking for one of the selection committees, would your duties there extend to the question of, say, starting-scales salary?
N Well all of that kind of thing had to be worked out and brought along to the committee with the greatest care, because one of the inevitable questions, when it was decided that they wanted to appoint Mr X, was what shall we start him at? And the members of the committee all had to have the facts quite clear in their minds; so that at any of these committees and I always took sheets with me giving all the necessary information on salary scales.
J Can you recall any other committees that you clerked upon?
N Well so many that I can't remember any. Thousands of them.
J Is this something that in the 60s changed? I'm thinking of the expansion of the University Office and presumably the fact that there were more administrators around to do this duty.
N One committee that I should never had clerked was the Music Committee, because I am totally tone deaf. I cannot even whistle. So that then I left the university in '75 I was able to say to the Music Committee, ''Well at least over all these years I have been impartial'.
J So you continued to clerk with them until you retired?
N Yes. Which was not an easy committee because musical people are a bit odd anyway; and the members of the general public - this, I think, was about the only committee in the university that had members of the general public on it, not members of the university (and when I say 'members of the university', I mean students are members of the university) - but total strangers, who were perhaps the head of another orchestra in Aberdeen or were professional music teachers in the town or something of that sort. They would be invited to be on the Music Committee because the activities of the Music Department were public, they were not restricted within the university, they gave public concerts. And so the members of the general public were brought in. And they all tended to be a little bit odd too.
J Did they thus influence decisions affecting the Music Department?
N Not the department, no. Their role was really advice and discussion on the contents of the public concerts that the university Music Department ought to organise in the town.
J Were there any other committees that particularly remain in your memory?
N Far away the most tedious, because it was never ending were the several committees that had to do with the grants given to departments. The words 'grants for departments' may sound nothing; in fact it was a never-ending job of extreme complication; and it needed very careful handling because everybody inevitably had an axe to grind. And the various axe edges had to be kept apart. And it needed quite a lot of skilful handling. And it also involved unfortunately taking on oneself a certain degree of unpopularity, because you had inevitably to say 'no' to people who very often you didn't want to say 'no' to.
J And how did these decisions - how were they expressed in committee. Were you there as clerk or were you there with the Finance services?
N Well I was there as clerk but with a somewhat bigger role than at most committees; because it was all so much a matter of figures. And it meant also taking up a great deal of time of the convener of the - some fancy name - the Equipment and Materials Subcommittee, that was what it was called. But - I wont' say it was in permanent session but it was - sometimes I felt I was in permanent session in this business. And unfortunately too it was the one committee that I can recall that engendered ill feeling.
J Were there direct complaints made to you after decisions?
N Oh complaints about me to me. I had to accept that I was not popular in all cases but one had to do one's duty, which of course - duty is a dangerous concept and one must be very careful.
J Well if we can move from this area within the University now to the more general question of university funding and particularly the University's contacts with Government. Perhaps we could start this section by looking briefly at the situation as it was when you arrived in 1948. What measure of Government funding did the University have at that time?
N For all practical purposes, none. That's an overstatement, because there was a little, but it was not the position that it is now, where 75 to 80% of the government income is by way of direct… The University income just now is 75 to 80% government grant; only quite a small proportion, 20, 25%, comes from a variety of other sources; in other words now the university couldn't even begin to function without being carried financially by the Government; and of course as we know, who pays the piper calls the tune. And therefore there is an increasingly difficult area raised by the sides of current Government grants on the direction of academic freedom. To what extent does the government, because it pays, tell the universities what they shall be. The government has for long been itching to do just exactly that, because the universities grew up each independent of all the others. Therefore inevitably there is duplication of what they do; and in the case of Aberdeen university there has long been - though I think it has stopped now - but for many years there was considerable pressure by the University Grants Committee that Aberdeen University should close down it Agriculture Department. This was strenuously and successfully resisted. The government case was that there was full university provision for academic students at Edinburgh University and that provision at Edinburgh University should be enough for those from the Northeast of Scotland. They could attend Edinburgh University if they wanted to follow agricultural studies. The answer to that was, 'stuff and nonsense'. The Northeast of Scotland is a very advanced and prosperous and sound agricultural area. There is a whole body of agricultural research institutes and for Aberdeen University to drop out of this would be simply crazy. And the university's view prevailed.
J Was this particular incident something that you were personally involved in?
N To some extent, but not really directly. The man who inevitably was mainly concerned was however happened to the professor of agriculture, who had to really fight his own battle against other men from the agricultural world who were in government or in the University Grants Committee.
J Well I think that we will certainly want to look again at his whole question of Government influence and authority over internal maters. But at the moment perhaps we could return again to 1948. The position as you describe it then was that the University was getting a fairly small proportion of its revenue from the Government. Did this mean that you at that stage looked more actively towards endowments as a source of revenue?
N Yes. Aberdeen is a medieval university, therefore for centuries it received endowments under people's will, very often in the form of money, again very often in the form of lands. When I first came to the University there was a whole mass of land and of farms all over the Northeast owned by the University. That to a large extent doesn't apply now. The farms have been disposed of over the years, and endowments are now very, very largely in the form of money rather than lands. But your question about the importance of endowments, the answer is yes. [Break]
J Did this change meet with your approval?
N It wasn't really for me either to approve or disapprove. It was never my business, it was just what happened.
J And how did it happen?
N As the size of the University and the number of the students increased, it was quite clear that development couldn't take place on the old university structure. Far more money had to come from outside and the only place that could provide that kind of money was the government, so that if there was to be university growth it could be only by Government support through grants. But it wasn't direct Government grants. They were awarded to the University through a buffer, the University Grants Committee, which was a body set up intentionally as an intermediary between the government and the universities, mainly so that the essential academic freedom to conduct teaching and research as the university thought it should be conducted could be maintained.
J Did the arrival of the University Grants Committee coincide with the quinquennial development?
N It did. It as the UGC that introduced the quinquennial estimate system, which had had its ups and downs within recent years, I believe. The five-year estimate has been scrapped and annual estimates have been put into the UGC by the universities, but that is since my time.
J When the five-year estimates began, did you feel, as the university's Finance Officer, that this was a welcome development?
N In the early years it was a farce, because while the quinquennial estimates were certainly produced with great care, they were then put away and filed and forgotten about. The university had done what the UGC required it to do and then they university just put the stuff away and got on with its current work. But that position is very different now and the quinquennial estimates are strictly held to; and if some head of department fails in his submissions to the Office for consideration by the whole quinquennial grant - quinquennial estimate structure within the university - if he fails to think of some research development that a couple of years later he wants to develop, it's just too bad - he's had it.
J Can you say a little bit more about why it did not work in the early years?
N Yes, but once the estimates have been prepared and submitted to the Grants Committee and the grants announced - the grants were always announced, not so far as I can remember right up tot he end of the quinquennium, but certainly announced at least a couple of years ahead - the quinquennial estimates were regarded as having served their purpose and so they were put away. The point that I am making is they are now treated much more as a live, working document that has to be - not put away and filed - but kept out and looked at and consulted throughout the whole coming quinquennium.
J And are you saying that in the early years individual departments would have come back with subsequent requirements and that you would have overspent? If the expenditure had not been built into the quinquennial estimates, how did the university afford to meet it?
N The UGC grants are given to the university in a block sum fifteen million whatever in each year, simply just like that. 'Here you are here's fifteen million' and it is up to the university to allocate that to salaries, electricity, cleaning, whatever you like, and its own discretion, but if it is wise, it lives within its income and Aberdeen financially was always very prudently run. There was always a number of men on the University Court for example, who watched the direction and trend of university expenditure with an eagle eye.
J I understand that the system was begun in 1956. Is that correct?
N I can't remember, but it was certainly the 1950's, I can confirm that.
J Can you recall the initial effect upon the running of the finances of the university? Did it make, for instance, for greater stability?
N Now that is difficult to answer because one of the elements in stability or instability in those days was Dr HJ Butchart, who is not easily defined. He ended, incidentally, by landing in serious trouble with the Grants Committee by sticking an extra floor onto the Chemistry building without consulting them and then just sending in the bills to UGC for them to pay. He was in hot water with them for a long time.
J Yes I can imagine.
N He sailed very close to the wind.
J Had he realised that he was doing this, or was this a miscalculation?
N Old Harry Butchart miscalculated nothing.
J I did wonder if perhaps the stability of income allowed for development and planning in a new way?
N Oh yes undoubtedly. The more money you've got, the more you can do with it, and I like to think - though it's not for me to say - I like to think that from a financial point of view, Aberdeen University was as soundly and prudently run as any other university in the country and that means [it was] me. And I always took or tried to take a long-term view and to look years ahead.
J And were you closely involved in any discussions about future developments in the planning?
N No this came up basically from the Senate, because you've always got to remember what a university is there for. It's not there to earn or spend money or to build or maintain buildings; it's there for teaching and research. In other words it's there for academic purposes. And for this reason the three Assistant Secretaries - Mr George on the Senatus side, Mr Kelman in Edilis and myself in the Finance - it was perfectly clear among the three of us that the senior was Mr George.
J And Mr George would have been involved in these discussions?
N Oh yes. And there was a very wide spread structure of what you might call build-up committees, started on the Senatus side, which worked up by triangular process to a peak, where the Senatus was able to put forward to the Court its proposals for academic expansions and developments and that kind of thing for the coming five years. But basically the preparation of the quinquennial estimates was founded on Senatus proposals.
J Would this include the general question of expansion in student numbers?
N Very much so, because the number of students in the university settles the whole activity. You can't divorce anything from the number of your students.
J So, in a sense when you were preparing your quinquennial estimates, you were working to a brief written by Senatus?
N In its foundation. But what the Senatus recommended to the Court for the next five years had to be approved by the Court; and this meant a great deal of detailed discussion and passing matters to and fro and backwards and forwards and this kind of thing; and there was a lot of modification made in the original Senatus proposals. Because clearly the Senate, which was not concerned with money - that was not its province and it never clamed that it was - because it wasn't dealing with money it was liable on the best of academic grounds to put forward proposals that were altogether too expensive and had therefore to be returned to them for a rethink because they would be advised that Court considered that their proposal would cost them x million and it would only be possible to put forward to the UGC half x million.
J In considering these proposals that might have been put by the Senate, did the Court limit itself to the immediate proposal on paper before them or did they consider it part of their business to specify what the implications of that were? Should I elaborate that?
N Could you? Yes.
J I'm just thinking of a hypothetical situation where the Senatus might consider it desirable to expand in a particular area and might ask…
N Say agriculture.
J Yes, and might ask for approval from that from Court.
N For ten additional agricultural lectureships, let us say [aside] the Senatus, not being concerned with money, wouldn't price that, it wasn't their job. But the Court's job was to price it and they would answer the Senate, 'Yes we see this is a thoroughly worthwhile scheme, but it will cost half a million a year and there is not half a million for that kind of development. You will have to rethink your proposals and come up with something that will cost about half of what you have suggested'.
J Well in that situation the Court is replying directly to a recommendation by Senatus. Would the Court go further than that and say, 'If you hadn't asked last month for the development of eight new lecturers in chemistry or whatever, we could have done this, but you have to balance…' Was it the Court's role to see the implications of the kinds of development that Senatus was suggesting?
N On very much so. Because while the Senate was responsible for teaching and research, it was the Court that ultimately responsible for the shape of the university; and the Court therefore had - and it must always be remembered that the governing body of the university…
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