| Description | Transcript of an interview with Ronald Scott Brown on the 2 June 2004. The interview is conducted by Roddy Begg.
RB Well Ronnie could be start with some identification of the victim.
RSB Yes I am Ronald Scott Brown. I was born in Madras in south India on 14 February 1937. My father was in the Indian Civil Service and his career took in basically the southern third of India. He finished his career there in 1947 as Chief Secretary to the Governor of the Government of Madras Presidency.
RB And your father had a strong connection with the University as well?
RSB Yes, not long after he retired from the ICS he came back to Aberdeen and was asked if he would be the Rector's Assessor and he as delighted to do that. He was very fond of Aberdeen University and he served as Rector's Assessor until 1965. I think it was about 15 years that he was Assessor.
RB So a strong family tradition. So the young Ronald came back to Aberdeen with his parents in 1947. What were your impressions of the city? Had you been there before?
RSB Well I had been as a babe in arms but this was a first return, it was actually in Spring 1946 and when we docked at Liverpool nothing would have pleased me more than to turn round and go straight back to India which was a lovely sunny place with happy smiling people, instead of a grim Liverpool in March. But Aberdeen once we got there, eventually, but it took about 24 hours from Liverpool to Aberdeen. But Aberdeen was actually very pleasant and I always thoroughly enjoyed living here since then.
RB What was the family at that time? You had brothers and sisters?
RSB Yes, I had a brother, an older brother Alastair, just over two years older than me, and he went on to do medicine and I changed course from that kind of thing, although a number of the family had done Medicine, I moved in different spheres and I decided to do Arts and Law.
RB So when you came back to Aberdeen you went to school. What school did you go to?
RSB Yes, I went to Aberdeen Grammar School and thoroughly enjoyed that. It was a good time to be there and the Rugby team had been doing extremely well and it seemed to give one a nice variety of things to do and I met some superb school friends.
RB And a formidable James Robertson, was the Rector?
RSB JJR was the Rector, as you say a very formidable, a very inspiring, but dominating character.
RB He certainly imposed himself on the school's character. So you made a decision to break with family tradition. Was this against advice to go for Law.
RSB No, it wasn't. I think it just seemed to be an interesting possibility and so I did that and interesting enough, one had to do various subjects. One had to do Latin for an Ordinary Degree in those days. That brought a wealth of amusement in its trail as there were a number of perpetual students who never wished to pass Latin at all and attended every lecture, intent on tripping up the lecturer or Professor on the least error he made. So that was a good introduction to a young student to find that there were other attitudes to be taking as well.
RB And you came up to University in what year?
RSB In 1955.
RB Had you completed a sixth year at school?
RSB I did a sixth year at school which in the end of the day I thoroughly enjoyed, although initially I said why, why spend another year at school, but I did thoroughly enjoy that sixth year, because I suppose it was as a sixth year should be, the ability to begin to follow your own lines of thought and interest and I particularly enjoyed doing History in the sixth year with the ability to really roam about in the library and things like that just to find out where one wanted to pursue a topic and I suppose that was a very good induction to a university.
RB Yes, yes. Well I think it is received wisdom now that by sixth year and even a gap year was desirable, and there were so many of us went up as 16 year olds from the 5th year and don't seem to have been harmed by the experience. So you started off in the Arts Faculty taking the Ordinary Degree. What subjects apart from Latin did you do?
RSB I had English, Logic, Zoology, which I found particularly interesting in fact I was almost tempted to change course and do Zoology, I found it really so fascinating . And it was an interesting thing that you could do a totally new subject and open a new horizon, which I think again was great about Universities.
RB I think it as the great strength of the ancient universities' Ordinary Degree structure that you had to do these things. You were required by regulation to do Philosophy, to do a science subject, all these thing have passed of course.
RSB Regrettably! In fact the only subject I equalled my father in, in that he had done Zoology, we both got the first prize. But neither of us pursued Zoology.
RB Can you remember particular teachers in the Arts Faculty.
RSB Dr. Bednarowski in Logic was an absolutely wonderful man, a very gentle and a very smiling, helpful. He was one of the stars to my way of thinking. And Philip Orkin in Zoology was again just a lovely and helpful individual.
RB Yes you choose two of what may a dying breed now, the dedicated teachers, who didn't really feel that research was a priority in the way we know it is now! So in your third year you moved to St. Mary's. How big was the Law class?
RSB Well I think that we had all of 12 in our Law class! And they were good fun and we had some wonderful lectures. We had the final year of Professor T.B. Smith for Scots Law which as very good but as an inspirational lecturer as well as a man able to write the books for Scots Law.
RB Who else was an undergraduate with you?
RSB We had Mike Park, who went on to become a very, very prominent Aberdeen Solicitor and a player in the National Law Society scene and Sandy Anderson, Ray Barton. It was a very enjoyable group all together.
RB Well you mentioned T.B. Smith, who else taught you?
RSB Peter Stein, was our Professor of Roman Law, Ian McGibbon in Constitutional Law and we went on to have Ronnie Ireland who succeeded T.B. Smith in Scot's Law.
RB And did he conduct his tutorials in his house in Don Street in your day?
RSB Yes indeed, they were good occasions to have! Good parties! Mercifully, in the days before breathalysers, when you had to get home.
RB Yes, his reputation preceded him when I followed you a few years later, when Ronnie Ireland's lectures were much looked forward to. So as was the custom and the requirement then you became an apprentice whilst still a student.
RSB Yes.
RB So how did this process work in your case.
RSB Well I think you applied to a number of firms to see if they had an apprenticeship vacancy, and fortunately Paul & Williamson happened to have an apprenticeship for me. So Mike Park and I joined Paul & Williamson's as the lowest form of life within a couple of days of each other in 1958 and the remuneration was the princely sum of £50 per annum, which we found ourselves receiving in single pound notes, what the office boy got in £5 notes!
RB Oh yes you would know about the pond life! So Paul & Williamson were where they are now?
RSB Yes, that is right.
RB So what was the day then, you had the lectures in the morning and ?
RSB Yes, the lectures in the morning, and back to the office in the afternoon.
RB And you were living at home?
RSB Living at home, yes that's right.
RB The majority of course of non-Aberdonian students were in digs then, in the days before Halls of Residence.
RSB Yes that's right.
RB Well what was student life like for the young Ronnie? What were your interests outside the Law Faculty?
RSB Well I was interested in a number of things I was heavily involved in the Scout movement, so that kept part of the time. I also was in the OTC. These were the days when National Service was still on the cards and seemed to be quite a sensible idea to prepare oneself for what you would be doing there. So I joined the OTC and thoroughly enjoyed myself on that. They actually had the ability in those days to select round pegs for round holes in the form of Officers and NCO's from the regular army who appreciated that they were not just dealing with the ordinary recruit, that these were actually students and they allowed you to be a student soldier in the nicest possible way. It was really interesting we had camps up at Loch Ness, indeed they introduced me to skiing, because it was winter and we went up Glenshee in the back of an open truck to learn to ski, using our army boots and flat track bindings! It was very interesting but very enjoyable.
RB You weren't tempted into student politics?
RSB No, I thought that was probably enough for a while of the diversions from studying!
RB So it was pretty hard work being a student and a law apprentice. Did they require you to work in the vacations?
RSB Oh yes, that was the end of your long holiday so you had three weeks I think it would have been and I think we worked three Saturday mornings out of the four, there was none of this 5 day week stuff!
RB So you graduated in 1958 with the Arts Degree and then went on to do the LLB. And did you distinguish yourself in your studies?
RSB I think I got only one modest other prize, I got second prize Scot's Law II, but for the rest it was neatly keeping out of trouble!
RB And by 1960 had the threat of National Service receded?
RSB It has been abandoned, maybe the thought of getting me along put them off their oats and that, so that there was no need for it.
RB Yes I remember in my first year at University in 1960 there were a couple of wretches in the first year classes who were there simply to spin out their MA so they wouldn't be called-up! So you had already been accepted as an assistant or did that come later?
RSB Well as I was nearing the end of the apprenticeship I began to look around to see where I would like to continue the Law course and I got the opportunity to join Brander and Cruickshank, who were a firm very similar to Paul & Williams in that they had the ordinary full scale law operation but were also involved in investment management work and the opportunity came to join them to really do three things, which would, as it turned out, be totally impossible to try, one was to learn the ins and outs of investment management, one was to become knowledgeable in Company Law and the other was to get involved in the inshore fishing industry where Brander and Cruickshank had a major part to play in the herring industry and to inshore white fish industry.
RB And who were the partners in Brander & Cruickshank then.
RSB Rory Cruickshank was the senior partner, Graham Fulton was head of the company law and the fishing side and Colin Black was number two, but wholly involved in the day to day work of investment management.
RB And were you the only apprentice?
RSB No, I was the only apprentice there and I finished off my apprenticeship there.
RB I am sorry, I am confusing there. You were by then an assistant?
RSB I did the last three months of my apprenticeship there and there was a very amicable hand-over of the apprenticeship from one to the other. So I finished that and became an assistant at Brander & Cruickshank.
RB And how did your early career pan out. Did you start out specialising early on?
RSB It became quite clear that it was impossible to do all three of those things fully so that I really followed two of the strands, which were being involved in the fishing industry and investment management. That really was all that one could comfortably cope with, the company law specialism had to take second place or third place.
RB And were you invited to be a partner quite soon or did you have to serve …
RSB Serve a period. It was about 5 years before I became a partner in the firm, which was what we had agreed when I joined as an assistant.
RB Had matrimony entered in the field by this stage?
RSB Well it entered in, almost coinciding with becoming a partner. That was more accident than anything else. So I married my wife, Jean, in 1966.
RB Had you known each other for a long time?
RSB We had actually known each other for a while. We went to the same church and so we had known each other for some time, yes.
RB Had you by this time set up in a separate home in Aberdeen?
RSB No, this was the excuse for both of us to come away from the matrimonial home of our parents and set up our own home.
RB And where had your parents bought their house?
RSB They had bought a house in Rubislaw Den South when my father came home from India.
RB So full circle?
RSB Yes.
RB So perhaps you could take us through your career as a lawyer and your big decision which was to diversify some 15 years later.
RSB Well I had done a few years of riding the two horses of the inshore fishing industry and the investment work, which were both in their very different work very, very fascinating and having been able to quickly remove one's self from talking the ins and outs of a price earnings ratio for some company or other to receive a call from the shore representative in Oban who had too many herring in a cran and what was he going to do about this! But it was very interesting and you met some absolutely wonderful people in both spheres of life. I could thoroughly recommend someone to have that bit of a spread and I still from time to time see somebody, inshore fisherman, with whom I had worked before all those years ago, but I suppose it would be about 1971 it became clear that one would have to move in one direction or another. Colin Black had moved to London and I then took over from him as the individual under Rory Cruickshank in the investment management world. It was rather sad in a way having to say goodbye to the fishing industry and concentrate on investment work and continued with that as part of the law partnership until 1983. It had become increasingly clear as time went by that the old style of law firms also having investment trust management departments was becoming more difficult to maintain. The chartered accountants had been the first people to come across the need to separate the two in case there were conflicts of interest and so forth. A number of the Chartered Accountant firms had to split into two forms, one bit going for investment management and one with chartered accountancy. Various pressures were becoming apparent upon us and in the course of the 1970s we formed a joint investment management operation with an Edinburgh firm called Sheen & Tate, who had accountancy practice and we formed a joint operation really to get economies of scale, because if we were sending people over to America to investigate investment opportunities the costs of two small operations were too heavy to bare, so we formed this joint operation in the mid-1970s which worked quite well, but not perfectly in that with a bit of hind sight we should have probably have said well let's go the whole hog and really amalgamate and come out of our respective partnerships, but we didn't do that, but various pressures came up on the investment trust world and one of our investment trusts came under attack from people who wanted us to unitise, to do away with the discount and we came to the conclusion that actually the most sensible thing would be to come out of the law partnership, concentrate fully on investment management work and look to build up the investment scale in a way that one couldn't satisfactorily do as part of a law partnership. So we separated from the law partnership in 1983 and set up the Aberdeen Fund Managers and then set about trying to grow the business.
RB And who were your partners in this enterprise?
RSB George Robb, who qualified in law a few years after me and had also been a partner in Brander & Cruickshank was the other qualified partner in the operation and the new member of our team was Martin Gilbert, who got his Chartered Accountancy qualifications and was working towards his Law qualifications and he was the third of the trio when we set out.
RB Where did you set up office?
RSB We set up office next door to the Brander & Cruickshank operation. Inevitably there was spare space in the office buildings so that we occupied a part of the building and Brander & Cruickshank came out of that and that is where we got going.
RB And the rest is history as we could say, but let's fill in the details a little. How did the new enterprise grow?
RSB Well the first thing actually was curiously to shrink it because we felt that our biggest investment trust was under constant pressure to do something about the discount that was there and we became aware that there were two or three predators hovering around us and if we didn't do something, something would be done to us. So we took advice and got good advice from our brokers, Casnove in London and also Barring's the Merchant Bankers, who said "well you should take the brave step and unitise the investment trust and do away with the discount except that you would lose some of the funds under management but at least you won't always be looking over your shoulder at what may or may not happen to you". So we did that in 1985. It was obviously quite a dramatic exercise but we did that. We initially joined with Martin Curry in Edinburgh who were also new to managing unit trusts , which is a whole different exercise in running a unit trust from an investment trust, so we formed a joint operation whilst we both learned the tricks of the trade, had our biggest investment trust unitised, lost, I suppose 40 - 45% of the funds under -management, but that was not un- expected and if they were going to be uncertain supporters we were better not to have them. And then set about saying well we had better grow this business from here. So we learned our business of unit trusts and in 1987, after a very amicable separation of the joint operation, the third party to it was The British Linen Bank, part of the Bank of Scotland, and they wanted out of the tri-partite arrangement and Martin Curry and ourselves we both wanted to go in slightly different ways, so we essentially split the operation very, very amicably and bought out between us the British Linen Bank and borrowed a lot of money, set up the operation on the 30 September 1987 and on the Monday 19th October 1987 was "Black Monday "
and within two days 25% of all stock markets had disappeared!
RB And when that happens it seems as if it has never happened before!
RSB So that was an interesting little while! But it only goes to show that, everybody was a bit shell-shocked by it, but we came to the conclusion that again we just had to grow this business, because we wanted to grow, where others wanted to give up. We got the opportunity to make a number of acquisitions which were in our scale and we did that over the next three or four years, we made some very important, strategic acquisitions, none of them hugely big by modern standards, but all very important to increase the size of the funds under management, hence increase the viability of the operation.
RB Were there particular milestones in the decade that followed?
RSB Well I suppose there would have been. We first of all got our stock market quotation, and again we were able to make a number of strategic acquisitions, which enabled us to grow as a company to the stage where we could begin not only to get growth back but the ability to launch new funds. We had some very successful launches. We acquired in one of our deals a couple of extremely good fund managers, one of them Hugh Young, was a specialist in the Far East and allowed us to build up an overseas specialism, which was very important.
RB Yes, I remember, Ronnie going off to Singapore quite frequently!
RSB Yes, yes!
RB Did the work involve a lot of travelling?
RSB Yes, one of the decisions we made was that we had to have a London presence for one thing and the Far East was much more easily managed from overseas and we took the decision early on that if we were going to manage another number of offices around the country, around the world, we would have to be able to take on the travelling that goes with it. We felt that we must regularly be up and down to the London office, to show the interest, to be present, in what was growing there and similarly it was important if we were managing funds out of Singapore, which we lighted on as our base for the Far East, that we must be prepared to go out there and see things on the ground and be part of the expansion that was taking place there.
RB And what is your business connection with the firm now?
RSB I have now retired. I came out of the Executive role in 1996 but remained as a non-Executive Director of the management company but retired from non-Executive role about 18 months ago. So now fully retired and looking at it from the distance as it were!
RB Yes, yes. So now Ronnie we now can turn to your second major connection with the University, when you became involved in its management. Can you recall how that came about?
RSB I had obviously always been interested in the University. Indeed we had been involved with the management of the University's investments, so that I had a kind of a running connection with a number of people involved in the University for a long time, but in 1990 the Principal, George McNicol, approached me to see if I would agree to be co-opted on to the Court and I very readily agreed. I had a very, very soft spot for the University and I was very happy to get involved.
RB And prior to that you had been brought on to the Business Committee of the General Council?
RSB Yes I had joined the Business Committee of the General Council in the late 1980s and then I had become Vice- Convenor with Molly Gauld as Convenor, which must have been in the late 1980s or early 1990s, so that there was the twin track.
RB Yes, that has now been, I think, become the pattern, because of Molly, then you and now Joe Leiper, serve on to Court as well. I don't think Ian Olsen did - he has been the exception.
RSB He is the exception and certainly as Convenor of the Business Committee it is very useful to be aware of what is going on at the University, so it is quite useful as Convenor to also be on the Court.
RB And I think it works the other way very strongly that the Business Committee appreciate having their Convenor giving the news from the "horse's mouth" as it were.
RSB Yes, I think you could impart, because the Business Committee has got quite a range of interests and ideas coming forth and I think it is quite useful for the University to get at very, with a very short line of communication, to be aware of what the graduate body is thinking and feeling about what is going on in the University. I think it is a two-way plus on that exercise.
RB So you came on to the Court in 1990 with George McNicol really well into his stride as the Principal, I think?
RSB Yes, well not far off demitting offices as the Principal, which he very graciously, I thought, did in order to insure that his successor would have a good run in towards the Quincentenary, which George McNicol appreciated would be very important for the University.
RB Can you recall what the main issues that confronted the Court in 1990. Had the financial crisis of the late 1980s been still rumbling on?
RSB It was still rumbling on, but one was very conscious that it was so much better than it had been. I think George McNicol had done a wonderful job in stabilising things, and persuading the Funding Council that stability was indeed there. So it was a very much more a secure financial situation by the end of George McNicol's period as Principal.
RB And had these very gracious policemen that had been nominated by the Funding Council, were they still on Court?
RSB They were still on Court but I think by then much more relaxed about what they were doing and did not have to come wearing the full bullet-proof vests.
RB Of course, both Sir Robert Smith and Gerald Elliott, became Honorary Graduates, and I know they greatly appreciated, in fact, respected the University and George McNicol in particular for all he had done. So things were looking much more positive in 1990s. What were your Committees of the Court? Which ones did you serve on?
RSB Well I served on the Estates Committee and the JPRC, Joint Policy and Resources Committee, those were the two principal ones that one was involved in, but we were… It was actually quite a period of inventiveness. I was of course put onto the board of OMS, on the basis that this is quite an easy one to go on. It was unfortunate that OMS had just lost its major customer, I wasn't told that before I was appointed to the board! But that's part of the rich tapestry of life that you have to cope with.
RB Yes, mentioning OMS of course the University company AURIS that had been set up some time before that. Were you on the AURIS board?
RSB Not initially, I was on the AURIS board latterly but I think that people felt that I had enough of a role if I was dealing with OMS and of course the two did link very closely but it wasn't until a few years later before I went on to the AURIS board.
RB So the Estates issues of the day, what were they? Were they maintenance ?
RSB Maintenance was always a problem, but also student accommodation was a major issue, which was, looking back from the 14 years later, it is a very different looking picture, but it was very important that University kept up its recruitment of students in those days and the oil industry distorted the housing market very considerably in Aberdeen so it was really very necessary to have quite a substantial amount of student accommodation simply to enable us to recruit from other than the local students.
RB Yes I remember the panic stricken decisions that were taken such as buying the Northern Hotel?
RSB Well you forget the bad press that was there when students arrived and there is no accommodation for them and there were crash pads and of course this gets spread round the local and the national papers and this is not good for recruiting. But with the benefit of hind-sight some of the decisions were wrong and some of them were actually perfectly right too.
RB I am sure they were right at the time, but things have changed so much now with subsequently to your leaving the Court, with the University residences being disposed of!
RSB That's right and that meets the demands of today and students are much more likely to want to come to their own accommodation, rented, however sordid the condition may be, that's what they want to live in!
RB So student numbers in 1990 were still rising fairly drastically?
RSB Still rising and quite rapidly and of course we had made all our plans on the basis that we would be allowed to continue to do that, when of course the tap was suddenly turned off and the government found out how so expensive it was to be continuing the student numbers and the tap was turned off in 1991 or 1992, 1992 probably and that was it. You couldn't continue to recruit just as many as you had in mind, there was a ceiling put on that.
RB Yes I wondered sometimes whether or not the very fact that we were growing helped with some of our financial problems. That we would grow out of the problems. Was that right?
RSB Yes.
RB So your service on the Court sort of became more crucial when you became the Chancellor's Assessor. Can you recall how that happened?
RSB Well yes. I suppose the first stage to that, was a take a number of chairmanships. Dick Ellis had retired from Court and I became Convenor of one or two of the Committees. David Wilson who was the Chancellor's Assessor became our Chancellor and I was very delighted indeed when he asked me to be his Assessor on the Court. He was a wonderful person to follow in that particular role.
RB Yes I am sure that is one of the very unusual events in any University history is for Assessor to become the successor as Chancellor. I remember being astonished at the time it happened. So you then effectively became the Chairman of the Court?
RSB Yes, that is right.
RB The Rectors I know were and are the legal Chairman of the Court. Who were the Rectors in your time and did any of them do this?
RSB Yes, they all chaired the Court meetings and some of them - the Rector is in a sense is the Chair of the Court Meetings, rather than the Chairman of the governing body. This is a fine distinction that one or two of the Rectors found a little bit difficult to grasp, that the senior lay-member was equivalent to the Chairman of the University Corporation, but the Rector was the person who chaired the Court meetings. And they all actually chaired the Court meetings extraordinary well, in very, very different ways, but all very well and I think that we have been fortunate at Aberdeen University that we have had people who have respected the position of the Rector and known that there is a responsibility there, by all means to be the student champion in many ways, but also at Court meetings to accept that they are chairing the business of the University and are not in that moment being a student champion above all else.
RB I was listening to your successor as Chancellor's Assessor Alastair Mair, a few days ago and he was saying that the Funding Council feel that it is time to change the law as it is no longer appropriate for an elected person who might be quite inappropriate to be the Chair of the University Court.
RSB That's true and it would tidy the thing up, but this was mooted at the time of the Deering Report and I think that the man who is currently our Chancellor of the Exchequer having been Rector of Edinburgh University, Gordon Brown, very early on said that would not happen!
RB As well this particular one may change or may not ! We touched on the fact that George McNicol was the Principal when you came onto the Court, did you know his predecessor at all?
RSB Yes I knew Fraser Noble and I think the University is interesting in it chooses widely different people as Principals and absolutely rightly you do not want to try, no matter how successful one Principal is, you don't want a clone effect. You want a different one, so we have had very different …
RB I think it is almost the case that the appointment is a reaction to the previous one sometimes?
RSB A little bit, well inevitably you are now looking for different strengths and the incumbent has set his stamp in one particular area and cannot the whole waterfront in absolutely way, so you are looking for someone slightly different next time round.
RB So having come onto the Court with George McNicol as the Principal, he goes and resigns, or retires a little early, but my recollection is it was Richard Ellis, who chairs the Committee that …
RSB Yes he chaired the Committee that selected his successor, Maxwell Irvine.
RB But you were not personally involved.
RSB I wasn't involved . I think I was too much of a new boy at that stage to be involved.
RB What are your memories of Maxwell?
RSB Well I think he … my memories of a man who rose to the Quincentenary in 1995 in an excellent form and instituted a fund raising exercise to celebrate that which may seem small beer now but was a very dramatic move at the time to look for 25 million pounds to mark this major event and one has to bear in mind that not many universities raised any money in that kind of way, so it was quite a dramatic exercise and he put his stamp on a number of other things. For example the go ahead with IMS 1 up at the Medical School, which again was a formidable decision to do and also the decision to have this Institute of Medical Sciences built with a blank wall at the end so that the next stage would not be forgotten about and I think that was a very important step in the life of the University to get that up and running to really give the potential boost to research in the Medical School.
RB Were you in the small group that interviewed the architects and looked at their designs?
RSB I wasn't in fact, no. But I think they have a very impressive building there.
RB Now it is twice the size it was it looks even more magnificent. It is really splendid and a great tribute to the architects. The thought of the ideas of the central area being kept open.
RSB And I think it was to make it a bolder, big enough statement to make the impact, which was the critical thing, it was not to gently do this, it had to be a major step up to achieve that. Of course it had spin-off elements in that it concentrated the mind that much of what was done in Marischal College was now not relevant to the University, elements of Medical, elements of the other bits of the University, so that the two were stepping in hand, but one was stepping out of much of the teaching, research, that went on at Marischal College and were repositioning these between the other two campuses.
RB I think there is little doubt that Estates issues dominated the Court agendas for many, many, years, not only your decade but in earlier and later decades.
RSB Yes, yes.
RB With Marischal College, perhaps touch wood, being resolved!
RSB We hope it might be within range of being resolved. I mean it is a wonderful statement building for Aberdeen, but it is no longer the right one for a University's teaching research and therefore if one can have a means of converting it into office accommodation, which will require a huge amount of work, but we will have a marvellous building at the end of the day.
RB If we can believe the "Press & Journal" of last Saturday, it is going to be the New Town House, and let us hope they are right!
RSB Yes, let us hope they are right!
RB It would be a fitting use for the building, I think. So you served on the Court for, I think, more than 10 years.
RSB Yes, that's right, just over 10 years.
RB What would you say was the crucial decision that you were party to taking?
RSB Well I think the launching of the IMS was important, I think the decisions to come out of Marischal College, but to retain the Mitchell Hall and the Picture Gallery that was very important. I think it was important in the business sense that we took the company,such as OMS, (Offshore Medical Services) and felt that we would not be able to develop it to its full potential, as a University, and therefore disposed of it to somebody who could do the developing of that and also maintain a very close operation with the University . As I think that part of what we had to learn over the period was that we can't do everything, as a University our main role is research and teaching not necessarily running all the ancillary things that we have to make the best use of the business that can come from the likes OMS and AURIS but accept that it is but a stage in our hands and we want to develop it and we want to be happy that it has spun on and with a connection that is continuing with the University.
RB A decision was I think not perhaps not, well fulfilled until after your time on the Court but was very much on the agenda, was the merger with Northern College, and there you had a rather unique perspective?
RSB Yes, I had a perspective because I had been a Governer of the Northern College for a number of years, so that I could see that there were synergies there and I was delighted that this has in fact gone through as it is such a logical extension to so many of the other things that we have been doing, Teacher Training is such a key part of education in this part of the world and it seemed to me very sensible for Aberdeen University to have that as part of its operation. It was moving toward this whilst I was still on the Court and indeed I chaired, I suppose a Committee, it would have been, of University people and Northern College people just to facilitate somewhere to let them know that we were quite nice people to deal with, we were not there to be unbearable with them, so I think in the end it will be a very good long term move.
RB In your time as the Governor of the Northern College it must have got itself into some quite serious financial difficulties, were you, did you feel that you were in control of the situation as it happened?
RSB I don't think so, because as I first became Governor when it was Aberdeen College of Education, and to be perfectly honest there was a political decision made that Aberdeen and Dundee Colleges should merge. Now there was not an enormous amount logic in that, I think in the end of the day they did that remarkably well in that it required a lot of extra effort to try and make sure that neither campus was disadvantaged, but it wasn't the brightest of decisions to be honest, they should have made up their minds to have one or the other and stuck by it, instead of putting the two together, having a slightly poisoned chalice, because in the end of the day what has happened is that the Northern College has been disentangled and part of it has remained with Dundee logically and part remained with Aberdeen.
RB How much of what has happened was down to the personality of the Principal of the day?
RSB Inevitably there must be an element of that and the Principal of the College of Education did a very good job in defending an almost indefensible college, in that it had to have probably a shorter life as they were looking towards slimming down the whole education provision. You will have to remember there were 10 colleges of education, when I first got involved with Aberdeen College of Education and you wonder who on earth would have thought of having as many colleges for a country the size of Scotland, so to get it down to more manageable needs was right, but there was a lot of blood on the carpets on the way!
RB My memory is that there was the Donaldson report which recommended that the colleges should merge with their neighbouring universities and in Aberdeen's case it took more than a decade for the recommendation to actually be achieved! And of course it wasn't only the education it was the art colleges too. It seemed that it took an inordinate time from somebody looking from the outside.
RSB Yes I think it did, but I daresay there were sensitivities that had to be played and particularly when you have politicians at work, it is much easier to postpone the hard work to your successor or whatever office it is!
RB So we have talked about your feeling s about George McNicol, was there anything more that you would like to say about that?
RSB I think he had a very, very, difficult role to play and I think when history is written people will appreciate, I think, that he played a very weak set of cards very well, and I think that the University came through that very, very hard period stronger and better a place, and I think he was able to hand on to his successors a much more stable situation, certainly from when he inherited and maybe the most people expected would be available.
RB I know that is the view of the present Principal. In fact I am looking forward to seeing George and Susan McNicol next month.
RSB Oh super!
RB I will see them in France where they live now. Again you have talked of his successor, Sir Maxwell Irvine, who served a rather shorter time as Principal than we expected. Can you recall how he broke the news to the Court that he was moving on?
RSB Well indeed I received the news when I was in China, I believe, when I got a phone call from David Wilson saying that more or less are you sitting down, we are losing our Principal and we will have to start moving. So I think that we were all very sorry that his stay was so short and I think in a different way he too achieved a great deal for the University. He was very much a man of time of our Quincentenary when we had to have a very important public face and also a man able to lead things through like the Institute of Medical Sciences, which was major step forward for us, the decision to go for a Quincentenary appeal and take that step, he only then had five years with our University and only half way through achieving his various goals.
RB So did David Wilson, who was the Chancellor's Assessor at the time, and chaired the Committee to find his successor. Were you involved in that?
RSB I was involved in that. It was very interesting and it was .. and you yourself had a not insignificant hand in administering this. I think we had a very good committee and made our way through, what started off as a very long list of potential ones, where we narrowed that down by a very logical and sensible process to in the end of the day a short list of about 4, I think, we had.
RB Yes, I think we were planning to see 5, but saw 4, as someone pulled out at the last minute. The lady pulled out. And being off the record, do you feel that the process produced a good outcome?
RSB Yes, I think it did. I think we knew the kind of individual we were wanting and I think we got the kind of individual that we were wanting and I think Duncan Rice will be among the first to agree he was fortunate to arrive at the University when so much ground work, compared to 1980, had been completed, and he was then able to take us forward to build on his experience in the United States, because this was one of the factors that we were very conscious of by this time, that we were never going to get enough funding from the government unless we were prepared to do some of it ourselves. Hence we were looking for somebody who would be prepared to have a wider view of the University and the University finances as was then the norm and I think it has been followed by many others since. But also an individual who combines hugely international prospective of wanting to build up the University to be a hugely regarded on an international scale, while never the less baring in mind the local roots, so that combination of localness and international approach is a very important one to have. I think from my perspective, one of the key things that he said very shortly after he arrived, "If we are ever making an appointment it must be an appointment that we want to have, if the candidate is probably okay, he or she is probably isn't talking and therefore don't hesitate about going back and having another look.
RB Duncan brought quite significant changes to the management of the University and in particular to the role and composition of the Court. Was that immediately apparent to you?
RSB I think it became apparent quite quickly that Duncan was using his North American experience to bring in probably a wider range of individuals into the co-opted element of the Court and businessmen and women in the widest sense I think he was anxious to have them on board and I think we have achieved a fair bit of that. I can think of a number of members who have contributed enormously from their business experience. Andrew Salvesen a man totally prepared to say "Well I think you are wasting your time doing that, or you need to devote more attention to this and push that ". George Stevenson has come on and has I think proved absolute value to the Court. An absolute breath of fresh air, totally prepared to say what he feels is important and also bringing an knowledge of property and what goes on in that kind of thing, that I don't think we have ever had before, somebody whose deep, intimate, knowledge with these things allowed us to make all sorts of better decisions on our estate than we had ever been able to make before.
RB From my perspective a major change was that we ceased to automatically think that you had to be an Alumnus to be involved, but of these two that you have already mentioned and other also..
RSB Yes, I think it is very important that you have a lot of talent amongst our Alumni but I don't think you should in any way restrict the Court to that and I think that sometimes you get a better perspective from somebody who is not cluttered with memories and recollections, on how things were or done, but are able to really take on an almost forensic interest, saying "This is definitely what you should be doing here".
RB You mentioned that Duncan has seen the fund raising role as central to his activity. How has he involved you personally in this being a member of the Development Trust?
RSB Yes, have been a member of the Development Trust for a few years now and that I think is a very fascinating one. It is also involved of course in the Quincentenary appeal, which was your starter, but I think it has become a lot more professionally guided now, which is inevitable, because you have to learn by walking before you run and there is quite a sizeable number of people involved in this and it is going to be very important both more effectively, being in touch with graduate and in an interest in people who may not be graduates in this country and also in the United States, where of course Duncan has got a particular flare.
RB The wonderful organ that we now have was largely one of your little projects.
RSB That's right!
RB Little projects! How did that one come about? Was it just Roger (Williams) banging away?
RSB A little bit of Roger banging away, Graham Roberts, was probably the one who squeezed my elbow and said "There is a project here that I think we should looking at" and it all seemed to be very appealing and I think that it is the kind of thing that does catch the imagination and we raised our £270,00 or so in a remarkably short order, from a lot of people who contributed large and small, because they appreciated that here was, what we were talking about earlier, top quality, and I think that has to be the factor, that if you are going to have the very best that you can possibly do and achieve it. And of course it is wonderful, absolutely stunning visually and stunning to hear it.
RB It is quite wonderful.
RSB And it looks, although there were fears that how would a new organ fit in there? You look at it now and think this is what should have been there all the time.
RB Yes, 500 year old buildings seem to be more adaptable than ones that were built in the 1960s.
RSB Don't say that!
RB We have talked about the Principals and passing mention of Rectors, how about the academics that you encountered, that have been on the Court as Vice-Principals and Assessors and so on, who are the memorable ones?
RSB Oh there are some wonderfully memorable ones. Derek Ogston was such a knowledgeable individual and able to, gently able to achieve all sorts of things that you would have not thought couldn't possibly start. Alec Forester, a totally different style but again a pusher and achiever, a knudger to get things . Ian MacDonald, again a wonderful individual for complimenting the other skills, in fact I think that is one of the key things about the way the University has developed. The Principal cannot do everything you have got to have some very good lieutenants who can achieve things and can do a bit of persuading and moving along and yet need to have some steel underneath it. You need to get the changes taking place. Bill Ritchie is another one that springs to mind.
RB There was a time, when it seemed, that being Vice-Principal in Aberdeen was a good way of getting at the Principal-ship, because we had Andrew Rutherford, and Phil Love, and Ritchie and going off in quick succession. Almost like we don't want to pick somebody too good or we are going to lose them! The officers of the University, present company excepted, did you have a great deal to do with the Estates Directors, the Finance Directors?
RSB Yes, inevitably you have a lot to be doing with them and dare one say it, The Secretary. They are the ones that keep things going. I think the University has been very well served by all these people. Anything in administration is bound to be anathema to almost all the academics and but they have a very important role to keep all the things moving on and providing all the information that you require to try and make the best decisions possible.
RB One of the duties of being a Court member was that you were expected to serve on Selection Committees and some have wondered why a lawyer would be a good person to have on the chair of Medicine Committee, or what-ever. How do you feel about that as a concept. What was your experience?
RSB I think it is an excellent idea and I know that if one hasn't got the intimate knowledge of medical things or science, well in a way that is not what you are bringing to the Committee, you are relying upon the academic ones to know whether the enormous list of publications are relevant, or good, or whatever, but I think what you do bring to a Selection Committee is the ability to be one step back. Sometimes to ask the question that academics may never think they should be asking, sometimes to ask the kind of question that allows a candidate to actually break out of the mould of the discipline that is being talked about and just show a wider range, because you are actually looking for, not only a very good writer of academic papers, but you are looking for a colleague and a potential in due course to be all sorts of things. And I think the lay-member is able to ask just that sort of question and to try and encourage. Laterally we were brought in mainly for the more senior positions, but I didn't mind actually even for some of the junior ones, where you could sometimes ask a question that allowed the kind of north-east man or woman who down-plays his or her skills, or doesn't play them up, to allow these things to come forth and I think that is… , I actually enjoyed the Selection Committees. Again you are able sometimes to almost play the daft laddie with the academics, saying "Well I don't know about that, but …." And give them the courage to think laterally as well.
RB I was always particularly appreciative of the likes of John Grant who used to give freely of his time for very junior administrative appointments and not only in the finance area but also in catering and so on. He found some excellent people and the lay court member input was always greatly valued in administrative appointments.
RSB I think the University has been very fortunate that they have got an immense number of hugely loyal and very effective people at the academic side, in the administration and the place just couldn't run without the smooth co-operation of all these people. I suppose my connection now having come off the court is there with the Development Trust and that enables me to still keep a very close interest in all that goes on. Michelle Calvert summons me every now and again, to bounce a few things off me, which I do appreciate that and I do hope that what I put back is of some help. One other person who has done so much for the University in that area and that is Ron Taylor in the Home Development Trust field plus also AURIS and that particular area of the University. He has been a huge servant of the University and altogether I suppose one remains as enthusiastic and full of warm feelings towards the University as one ever has and just look forward to it continuing, to progress and keep going to become the place of excellence that it is striving for all the time.
RB Well as we said before we started recording this interview, it is nearly 4 years since you came off the Court, which neither of us could believe, but the printed record is there. I am very grateful that I have shared so much of the times with you talking with you. Thank you very much for giving us your thoughts.
RSB It is a pleasure.
End of Interview.
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