| Description | Interview with David Strachan recorded on 21 February 1989 by Jennifer Carter
Transcript of Interview :
C You came from Montrose, I think you said, David, to the University, why did you chose Aberdeen? Was it a natural choice, or a selection among many, or what?
S No I shall be honest and say that I had applied to a number of universities intending to do a first degree of some sort, and then Divinity as a postgraduate degree, My A-Level results were not as I had hoped they would be, and competition for places in the Divinity Faculty was not as steep as it was - for instance one of my options was to go try Arts for a first degree, but I didn't have enough to get into Arts - I did have enough to get into Divinity, hence it ended up as a Hobson's choice, but one which I was very, very happy with. So I carne to do Divinity as a first degree, It had only been offered as a first degree, I think, for two years prior to that, In previous years it had only been offered as a postgraduate degree, I may say that one of the difficulties I found, as an eighteen year old undergraduate, was that the course, while it had been restructured to take in a couple of Arts subjects and to make it into an ordinary first degree, had not in other ways taken account of the fact that you were getting some pretty raw first year people like me, and I ended up in the first lecture I ever had ''History and Philosophy of Religion" with Professor Graham at 9 o'clock: in the morning - sitting beside a chap who had just graduated with a First in Philosophy. There were we, both trying to do History and Philosophy of Religion together - an impossible task for the lecturer, and an impossible task: for the course, I may say I struggled academically, I think it was partly because of that, that the degree was not very good for a young chap, and partly because I was far too busy doing non academic things - I was doing far too much of that - and I ploughed one exam in my first year (which I got at the resit); three in my second year (which I got at the resit); and two in my third year (which I got at resit).
C So you had very busy summer vacations, I can tell?
S I don't regret it, I don't regret it! I loved doing all the other things as well, But I think now, looking back on it, there are gaps, and the opportunities I thought there would be to catch up on the reading I didn't do, to do more than just pass, have gone - so it's a shame,
C; You mentioned A-Levels - does that mean you were at a school that did Scottish as well as English exams, or just English?
S I went to an Edinburgh public school, Merchiston , so A-Levels were the order of the day, they were the norm.
C They didn't hedge the bets by doing Scottish Highers as well?
S No they didn't, so I did A-Levels in Maths and Physics, I think that was part of the reason the Divinity Faculty took me. They thought it was pretty freakish.
C About Aberdeen - you say that your qualifications, in a sense, confined you to Divinity, but had you any other reasons for coming? Had you any connections with the University?
S Oh, yes. In my UCCA form you have six choices and two of mine were Aberdeen. So although Divinity was a safety one, i.e.: to do it as a first degree - I think Arts in Aberdeen was my first or second choice. The reason for that is that my family, my mother and father were both graduates of this university, My father was, unusually, also President of the SRC - there are very few of those combinations around.
C Are there any others?
S There is one other; the Goodbrand family. There are twenty five years between my father and I (as Presidents of the SRC) there are fifty between the Goodbrands. I don't know what their dates were, but the young Goodbrand was around when I was elected, and congratulated me.
C That's very nice.
S Yes, so there was a family connection, and my father's family are from Aberdeenshire, so we knew the place well, I had been up and seen the University, and very much liked it, My father was very friendly with Alan Robertson, and he had shown us around, and it was the usual thing - one or two little things like that tip the balance.
C So that means that when you arrived as a fresher - you've described yourself as a rather raw eighteen year old, but that's probably not wholly true - It wasn't a case of a strange experience, it was something you were very unprepared for in some ways. Can you remember it as being a shock, or unexpected in any way?
S Yes, I remember a number of vivid images from my first week. One of them was of sitting on the wrong side of the road waiting for a No. 20 bus, just outside King's because I couldn't tell title side of the road from the other. Another was of people calling me " Mr Strachan" and looking over my shoulder to see where my father was because nobody called me Mr Strachan. After that there was the business of (Fresher's Week). I got the information from the University which said that all the fresher's activities were on certain days and at certain times, and I had an appointment with my Adviser, at such and such a time, and this appointment clashed with some activity which had been involved with Fresher' s Week, and I thought "Oh! dear - this is terribly badly organised, they must have made a mistake", I just failed to appreciate there are a lot of things that go on at the University. That it is not the University's responsibility to mother me through my course, One woke up fairly quickly, I think that what that taught me was that I had to find things out for myself, and I started at that stage reading notices, a thing that not many students do, and I think - why did I get involved in the SRC? How did I manage to certain things? Part of that was because I knew what was going on, because I actually read notices.
C You were a well informed student, compared with many of your contemporaries?
S Perhaps - a very negative sort of advantage!
C Speaking of that freshers arrival - were you one of those who went through a formal Freshers' Week:, with talks from the Principal, talks from the head of Student Health, and so forth?
S Yes, that's right, and above all - umpteen dances - being bussed around all over the place, down to the Beach Ballroom, down to the Union several times, and all the rest of it. So the first culture shock was the University Freshers' Week, and the next culture shock was going into the Divinity Faculty where the atmosphere was completely different from dances, and talks on sex education.
C Do you think in retrospect that that first week was a helpful bridge for the newcomer, or do you think in fact it confused people, and left you'd feeling you'd really had rather a silly waste of a week?
S No. I think that it was necessary, I might have spent a long time wandering round the place looking for things - it allowed you to find the geography - and also to identify one or two landmarks in terms of people and places - and get that cut of the way. Also you have to have something structured to push people around during that time, I'm sure that some of things laid on for me, a local boy, were not particularly good. I hope that some of the things we did in the SRC, for instance for overseas students, or the meeting of people from airports and trains - I hope that that aspect of Freshers' Week would have a very solid value for some people. It was valuable week, not necessarily for the reasons the devisors of it thought. The introduction, not just to the idler forms of socialising, like going to dances and so forth, but also the introduction to the University Societies - It was like going into a toy shop when you are five, being surrounded by this wealth of enthusiastic amateurism, projecting itself at you as hard as it can.
C And with hardly any bill to pay at the end, because it's all so cheap. Did you move straight into Hillhead as a fresher?
S Yes.
C What was it like then, was it still just the three houses, or had it already got flats?
S No. It was just Adam Smith, Fyfe and Wavell. Fyfe and Wavell were reckoned to be generally a little bit wilder than Adam Smith, because Adam Smith had a slightly different visiting policy, Fyfe and Wavell you could visit within your own house, or visit Fyfe or Wavell at all hours of the day or night, but in Adam Smith men had to be in the men's half and women in the women's half by midnight, because the fire doors in the middle were then locked - which was unusual! - so there was that distinction then. The whole Carnegie Court thing had not started, it had not even been dreamed of at that stage, and what you had in Hillhead was a community of five hundred people, It was not as much of a community as the other halls. Fyfe, Wavell and Adam Smith were very much the poor relations of Crombie, Johnston and Dunbar, because the rooms were smaller, you had to queue longer for your meals, and there was no college atmosphere such as there was in some of the other places,
C And the site must have felt rather undeveloped, and there was a lot of space and rough grass around?
S Yes there was. You could walk: across - I remember walking down with my then girlfriend - in the mornings through Seaton Park, I used to walk her down for her 9 o'clock lecture. Mine were not until 10, so I used to go and have a cup of cocoa, and do some work - allegedly - in the Central Refectory for an hour before going to my first lecture. The roughness of it - it was sufficiently wild - I remember a terrible man "flashed" my girlfriend, and she got a terrible fright - you could never do that now because the place is so built up! It was so quiet.
C About the three houses - I hadn't realised that they had different internal rules and regulations, Did they feel very separate? Were you conscious of being an Adam Smither, a Fyfer, or a Waveller?
S I think: to some extent within Hillhead you were - that was encouraged to some extent by what the wardens and subwardens did, I can still remember the wardens and subwardens, Mike Brittain was our house warden.
C A striking character?
S Very much so, The there was Mike Slater, subwarden at my side of Fyfe.
C Was he the climber?
S Yes he was. They would organise social events. They would invite people a floor at a time, in order to get to know them, They were very active in their wardening and subwardening, and one got to know one's individual wardens, David Braine was in Wavell, and I got to know him, just by meeting in the Central Building at Hillhead, and struck: up a friendship, We used to go across to the Central Building at night, when we'd finished working and there would still be somebody there, and you could have egg and chips and sit and have a great conversation, For me that was one of the best bits of Hillhead, I could never understand the people who sat in the television lounge and watched " Top of the Pops" and then "Star Trek" on a Thursday night, and whose lives were just getting on a bus and going to King's and back:, I tended to enjoy going across too the Central Building and arguing with people - talking, talking , talking, Then going back to people's rooms, and sitting until 3 in the morning, talking, talking, and talking.
C You said Hillhead had a bit of a reputation for wildness, or some of it had, Was that a real thing, or a bit of nonsense? What was your personal evaluation? Was it a wild, or a responsible little society?
S We were the post 60s (generation), I remember Alan Robertson's analysis once when he said that, for instance, as far as sex was concerned, he made a joke - " You didn't know who was doing what next door, but you were jolly sure it wasn't you, and you wished it was". There was probably an element of that. There was the story that went around that somebody in Wavell had been caught in bed with somebody else by a cleaner, and didn't seem to care about it - it was the not caring that was so outrageous.
C Sex scandals were the in thing in those days, were they? Not, for instance drugs?
S Yes, there was a bit of drugs as well. You reckoned that if you walked along a corridor and you smelled joss sticks, they were probably being burned to cover other smells, I never was a part of that. Subsequently, I met people who had been smoking pot quietly, and if they offered a puff you might take it, but there was never a lot of peer group pressure to be involved, I remember a conversation at the Union with someone who identified himself (as a drug taker) - you were either in the druggy set or you weren't, as I felt it - and you were not under heavy personal pressure either way.
C It was purely a personal choice?
S Yes, and it was certainly just pot. There were no hard drugs. So the attitude was - what the hell - let them do it if they want to - one did not feel especially virtuous for not getting involved.
C It was probably the period just before fairly heavy drinking set in as the fashionable thing, was it? Do you remember a lot of friends getting very drunk?
S I remember the one thing I did feel under pressure about, because I had a lot of friends who were medics, and they all frequented the Kirkgate, and they all reckoned you were not a real man's man if, one you didn't play football, and two, you didn't drink enormous quantities of beer.
C That would be football, not rugby?
S Yes, I was useless at ball games, and I was not particularly interested in getting drunk, I was quite happy to drink, but I wasn't interested in getting drunk. By not wanting to spend all my time in the pub getting drunk I felt a certain pressure - and partly because of doing divinity as well I wondered if I was something of a wet.
C There was another sense in which Hillhead had something of a reputation for wildness, though this may have been before your time - the great protest days of Tom Snow, and all those chaps, protesting against hall rules, and against levels of fees, and things like that. Was there none of that atmosphere in your time?
S That was before my time. There were next to no hall rules in my time.
C They had all gone?
S Yes, finally they compromised on saying that you had to be out between 2 and 5 am. This was to prevent the halls having twice the number of residents they were supposed to have - it was an economic issue. They introduced, in my time, rules to prevent freeloaders coming in for breakfast; anybody could have had a breakfast in Hillhead.
C You had to show your ID card?
S That's right. There was a fairly active Hillhead Residents' Committee. They organised social events more than anything else. But the protests over the rules had gone, and all that was left was Adam Smith's little locking of the doors at midnight.
C So you describe what sounds like rather a happy society?
S Yes, I think it was. It was a happy time. There was an element of loneliness for some people. You could walk up a corridor, and smile at people, and not speak to them for two years although they were in your own corridor, which was quite strange, There was a ghetto element among some groups of people. For instance there was an ex-public school group - I seemed to spend most of my time rejecting becoming part of that group, Fettesians they were mostly - they sat around making a great noise in the coffee area. Then there were the faculty groups, I know of one person who was in Hillhead for three years, and also did English for three years, and was introduced at the end of that three years to someone who was doing English.
C You spent all your three years in Hillhead?
S Because I had a long course I got a third year ; it was normal that you were kicked out after two, though you might get three. Then because Alan Robertson was looking for mature, sensible students!
C Liaison Students I think: they were called?
S Yes, and to become new students in Carnegie Court, which opened in '74, so I got a fourth year in Hillhead. So that was interesting, selecting people to make up a flat of six, and that we did and were the first people in the new block at Carnegie Court. Those were the days when there was no grass in front of it, and the buildings were still pretty wet, and we couldn't believe how small they were or how much noise travelled through the walls.
C The person next door breathed, or turned over the page of a book …?
S Or the toilet roll holder fell off the wall, or the cupboard was so designed that it opened onto the radiator so you couldn't get anything into it - the hinges had been put on the wrong side - and so on.
S Were you active as a Committee member at Hillhead - was that the basis of your subsequent career in student affairs?
S No. I was never on the Hillhead Residents' Committee. Alan Robertson was trying to encourage some people to get involved, but I didn't do that, I got involved through Divinity. Divinity Faculty had a Divinity Student's Council. There were representatives from each year, there were only four in my year, and I was the one who didn't say no, I was quite interested in doing it. The rest of them were not, so out of the four people I was elected to the Divinity Students' Council, and that led on to the SRC. I had a kind of mentor in Tom Tait, who was Secretary of the SRC that year, who was a Divinity student and who was about to come off as Divinity rep, and encouraged me to do that.
C Divinity Faculty, like Hillhead, must have been quite small, and I suppose quite a friendly in group was it? Or did it not strike you like that?
S I found it not particularly happy. It was divided between the evangelicals and the non evangelicals, and very early on people were trying to pigeonhole you. I remember writing for the Divinity Students' Magazine little anonymous poems, about how I didn't want to be pigeonholed. But there were the evangelicals who wanted to know when I carne to know the Lord, and if I couldn't give time, date and place, then I wasn't one of them.
C You were not elect, were you?
S That's right. And the rest of them wanted to know if I was interested in baiting the fundamentalists, I wasn't really interested in either. The other thing was that most of my colleagues were older than me, I think the next youngest in the Faculty was 20 or 21, and when you are 18 that is a very big gap. A lot of there were people who'd had jobs and come back: to do Divinity as a second option - so at that stage I didn't have many friends in Divinity. The friends I've kept up with from the Faculty are people whom I did the postgraduate diploma with later on.
C How much did this atmosphere of theological tension, between the evangelicals and the others affect classes, and affect the staff's relations with students?
S I wasn't mature enough to see it at the time. I know from talking to lecturers subsequently what they thought about it. There would be times, particularly if a lecturer was perceived not to be evangelical, the evangelicals would respond either by taking in what he was saying and then regurgitating it, for the purpose of the exam without internalising it at all …
C An almost contemptuous returning of his ideas?
S Absolutely - without any conviction - or, alternatively, they would sometimes decide that today was the day for a battle, and they would start to ask questions and argue in class. It was not nice to be caught in that crossfire. What finally made me begin to reject the evangelical tradition, from which I partly came, was being invited - well two things. I went on a mission to Tarland, along with some of the evangelicals in the Faculty, and a friend of mine, Jim Cowie, who was a good musician, played guitar (the Faculty's avant garde musician, because he played the guitar!) - he was not deemed suitable for this mission because it was suspected that he might have been a member of the Labour Party. I wondered about that, although the first time I voted I voted Conservative (the last time I voted Conservative!) It seemed wrong for him to be rejected on those grounds. Secondly, I was invited to go to prayer meetings at which part of the agenda was prayer for the conversion of some of our lecturers, and it seemed to me that someone like Bill Johnstone was an eminently Christian scholar, and I could not begin with any integrity to pray for his conversion, so I smelled a rat in the evangelical closed group, and began to explore outwith it. That was very, very traumatic, and I'm sure I lost the benefit of my theological training because of being trapped in the evangelical thing for the first few years. It's only now that am able to go back, and draw on the roots of what I was taught then, It was a very dangerous thing.
C Was it for that reason that you didn't go into the Ministry?
S Oh, I did in fact. While I was a student I got involved in University Television, so I had always had an interest in television, so I wondered whether I would go into the Ministry - but I did. I was an Assistant Minister for two years in Aberdeen, and then I found that not a happy experience - there seemed to be too much PR, and not enough real work going on - I was looking for pastoral concern for people. So I started looking to television again to Thames, Granada, London Weekend for jobs but then I made contact with Aberfeldy, and I was Minister there for six years. Then I came back into television after that. So it's a backwards and forwards thing.
C Is your present television position in religious broadcasting?
S An independent production company such as ours doesn't know whether to go for a niche market. We've done five hours of religion this year, but we've also done half an hour of current affairs for Channel Four. So I suppose we ought to specialise - but you have to be willing to do anything. I've trailed around the golf courses, like at St Andrews where I recorded the Singapore Golf Team, who got wiped out in the first round, for Singapore Television. I got into television because of my experience of University Television as a student.
C Which, of course, you would think in retrospect a tremendously good thing?
S Oh, absolutely - now I'm involved in television as a business, I can see where the University Television Service was perhaps expensive, in terms of equipment - nothing but the best, and almost broadcast standard would do. But at the time there wasn't any decent standard in the sub broadcast standard - they had the disadvantage of setting up when that technology was in its infancy. But they gave us (a great deal). There are a lot of people who are in broadcasting now whose first taste was through that service.
C Through Alan Grimley, particularly, or who else?
S Michael Steele, who's still at Grampian, and Jim Woodward Nutt, and particularly David Haggart in the Careers Service, who was the contact point for the staff-student production group., He was very much involved. We staggered in a made a programme live, on a Tuesday or a Thursday, and it was beamed out on the closed circuit round the campus, and we had all audience of perhaps a 100 people, most of whom were outraged at having their BBC interrupted for half an hour. It enabled us to make our mistakes in private. We don't presume that the University benefitted greatly from the news service that we provided, although I think we did some interesting and unusual things. Some of the interviews made such news as could be made on the campus.
C Coming tack to your days as a student politician; how did that start - you became a Divinity rep, then what next?
S I think the next year I was elected Treasurer, I don't think I'm being modest when I say that a lot of the things I did in the early days were because no body else wanted to do them. The Treasurer's post was not a highly political post, not highly sought after, and a non-controversial new boy was acceptable to all political factions. Then I got interested in the money side of it, I began to see the clubs and societies and the way that they were funded - a rather haphazard way, I began to be quite aggressive in the way I wanted to see more money for some, and to attack the grants that others were getting.
C It was a case of "historic funding", and you were coming in with "formula funding"?
S That's right. There were other things too - as Treasurer I was on the Composition Fee Disbursement Committee, which was my introduction to the staff side of the University, where I began to meet (members of staff who were not my teachers). The CFD Committee worked on an incredibly gentlemanly basis, I couldn't believe that hundreds and thousands of pounds were being disbursed by this Committee - OK, its decisions were ratified by the Court, but Edward Wright made sure that if the students wanted something, that's what they got. He was incredibly good to students I think. The system was that the money was disbursed between the AA, the UMC, and the SRC, and there was never any particular shortage of money so the organisations never fought each other. Ten or fifteen per cent was kept back for what were called special projects - a contingency fund - and if that contingency wasn't spent, it was disbursed as grants for special projects. In the SRC: we were campaigning for Campus Radio - we wanted to string masts and wires across the Crombie towers - and lodge a studio down at the bottom of one of the towers, That was set against a ski slope which the AA wanted, The AA won, and I suppose the ski slope is still out at Balgownie Flaying Fields. Then, out of these special funds, came the minibuses - first, one for the SRC, one for the Union and one for the AA, and then they grew - there must be dozens of them now.
C A whole fleet now!
S That enabled societies in the SRC to have the use of a minibus at non-commercial rates, because it was the special fund that was providing capital for replacements. It enabled societies to do things in terms of travel that they wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. I thought this was great. Though the amount of bookings from the Socialist Workers' Party to go down to questionable demonstrations was something which we tried to sit on. I remember the problem of holding an impartial reign over the political societies was difficult. I remember John Knox, who was Secretary of the SRC, (a very distinguished if little known Secretary, because he was very self effacing - unlike most student politicians, he was content to do his job and then go) in a debate on the ratification of two student societies. One was the Operatic Society, and the other was the Blue Movies Society. Would we ratify either, or both of these? Of course we had arguments about artistic merits and all sorts of things, and we tried to be very literal and non judgmental, but we were stuck for a way to say yes to one and no to the other. John Knox, in a memorable moment, said "why don't we just affiliate the societies we like, and not those we don't like." That divided the SRC and the Left was after his blood from then onwards.
C You describe the SRC as being very political - do you mean in the party political sense? Was it leftwingers, or Workers Revolutionary Party, versus rightwingers; or was it all shades of Left; or what?
S It's difficult to be objective. There was not a strong conservative element on the SRC in my time - most of us would have described ourselves as non political - by that I don't mean that we were conservative: we were proud of the fact that we were non political. We were also proud of the fact that we did our negotiating with the University by ringing up Tom Skinner, and just going to see him. Things were put right: there was no question of a confrontation meeting. Those were the pre public meeting days, the pre open meeting days. There was always a small group of what we used to call the Trots - International Socialists or whatever. But as we moved, in my time, from involvement with the Scottish Union of Students to involvement with the National Union of Students, politicisation came from there. There was the Broad Left Alliance of Labour Party and Communist Party, which a number of people on the SRC, quiet Labour voters, would have affiliated with, but it wasn't strong. Rather there was a Lunatic Left Fringe versus the rest. I remember once in a debate ire the SRC being told that the University should dispense with its motto, because the fear of the master is the beginning of wisdom was a very anti left wing motto. That was about the level of what happened. I remember generally that the consensus that ran the SRC had occasionally to exert itself not to be out manoeuvered by the hard left, but mostly it wasn't much of an effort. There was constant pressure, there was always that pressure, to take a hard left line - to occupy, to demonstrate, to do all that. We did demonstrate in 71, and that was a consensus demonstration, against Mrs Thatcher (then the Education Secretary) who was attempting to change the method of funding student unions. We marched up Union Street, and handed in a petition to the Conservative Party Headquarters in Crown Street, and then said, "everyone go home, chaps." Too our enormous surprise the leftwingers then blocked all the yellow box junctions up and down Union Street, and we were left with, egg on our chins. That was the last student demonstration that went up Union Street. We hadn't organised the return route - I think both the Police and the SRC were naive in these days. But there was a big consensus, and a big demonstration in that case. In my time, I remember being maneuvered into occupying a house. There was a campaign on try get houses which were being compulsorily purchased by the town let to the University, in order that they could be sublet to students, thus getting round the Rent Acts and security of tenure. There was a feeling that the town and the University were not doing all that they could. There was a token occupation by four or five SRC members, and I remember as President being the press officer, and not part of the occupation - to my great relief, as they were all arrested and fined three pounds for breach of the peace. Generally we did things successfully, for instance we had a good liaison with the Scottish Education Department to get grants problems dealt with quickly and efficiently, and good relationships with the University. I had my eyes opened the year after I was President, when I was on the Residences and Refectories Finance Sub Committee, and I saw Edward Wright conceding … the big thing then was, would the University hold hall fees to the level that was allowed for residence fees within the student grant, and the SRC always pressured the University to do that … the University did that for a time, then felt they couldn't. Then the government, in order to get round that one, didn't break down the grant, so there was no component part for hall fees. But I remember Edward Wright giving a promise that he would hold hall fees to that level, in a Finance Sub-Committee meeting, and then hearing my successor, who is now the Labour MP for one of the Edinburgh constituencies (Alistair Darling), campaigning for just what had been achieved, or promised by Edward Wright at a public meeting, and claiming it as a victory when Finance Committee and Court subsequently ratified it. I thought that was absolutely scandalous. Subsequently I learned that it was just politics, I felt then that if that was the way things were going I didn't want to have anything to do with it. I didn't like that side of it. I was very lucky to have a very good Vice President, Raymond Gann, who was more politically aware, and perhaps protected us a bit.
C So you had a fairly calm year as President?
S Yes, I think so.
C No big dramas, apart from the ones you have described'?
S No. Anything that happened tended to be internal - problems about Gaudie running out of money, always needing to change the way it was done. We were also beginning to talk about co operation with the Union and the AA, and the first plans for a central telephone exchange which would serve both the Union and the SRC: were mooted in my year. Student Publications, as a group with in house printing was mooted, in fact set up in my year. So it was internal things rather than external things that we got involved in.
C You seem to have been a much more technical, and much more money man than I had realised?
S We were - though we were financially naive, sustained by the quality of the "civil service" - people like Mike Welsh. He was extremely popular as Administrative Officer with the SRC. He was extremely funny, because he used bureaucracy to thwart things he didn't like. He won't mind this story - my predecessor warned me, beware, if you ask: him the time he'll tell you where his watch was made. His answer to everything was, "it's in a file, I'll just get that file." But I was there when he had only been there a short time, and I could tell from some of the old Treasurer's files how bloody awful it had been as an organisation before he got there, so I don't blame him for setting up his filing systems. People like Mike managed the money: the students sat and made broad policy decisions about money, but he looked after the day to day things, like Bryan Wallace at the Union. We were thoroughly spoilt.
C How did you spend your time as President? Did you spend time on student grants and welfare problems? Were you a pastoral officer?
S Yes, I suppose because I had a bent for that, I was inclined to get .involved in that sort of thing, There was a major campaign that year to get representation on the Senate, that was my year.
C So you were giving evidence to the Meston Committee and that kind of thing?
S That's right. There was also a campaign to have representation on the Court, but it was the Senate thing that generated a lot of work that year. I wish I could remember more of what we did. On grants I remember lobbying MPs, and we became quite good at press releases. There was a defending the student image thing - I remember getting involved in a lot of PR in association with Miss Harkess (the Lodgings Officer) because I was constantly writing to the papers and saying "Don't you dare write about bloody students, because they are actually nice people who are being ripped off by landlords." Miss Harkess, on the other hand, took me to see a flat and said "Don't you defend these students, look at the things they've left in this flat etc." On the other hand, I remember warring with Miss Harkess over the conditions that were being set up - I remember particularly bringing some overseas students to a flat, at the beginning of my time as President, bringing them to a house which was temporary accommodation for them. The only thing they had in common was that they were all of non British origin, they were all coloured, and these poor chaps were in a house where the only form of heating was coal central heating, and there was no coal, and it was a public holiday, so they had no way of getting that., They were supplied with beds with downies, but no downie covers - that sort of thing. I'd been in a hall, I knew that in flats you had to fend for yourself. But I thought it terrible that these people (had to do so). I remember writing an article in Gaudie about that, in order to try to get something done, the usual channels having failed. It was a very critical article, but I kept it anonymous, in order to preserve relations with the University. So we got involved in individual things like that.
C Your relationships with the University were normally good, I gather?
S They were extremely good. The key organisation for that was the University Committee. Again we were thoroughly spoiled. We were taken to Hillhead and given a jolly good dinner. Then we sat and had a couple of hours' discussion with little or no agenda; the agenda was discussed by the SRC President and Secretary, with Tom Skinner and perhaps Edward Wright beforehand, and this allowed six or eight senior members of the University, and the same number of senior students to discuss together and maintain an open relationship. That fed the other individual relationships. If we wanted to talk about Court we could ring Gordon Hector, and we would know what was going on, and the officials were probably more indiscreet with us than they should have been, and we felt (and were constantly campaigning within the SRC that if we behaved responsibly with the University we would get a lot more for students from the university than if we didn't. So that was one, and the CFD was the other one, and all the various Finance Sub Committees like Residences and Refectories and so forth, where key decisions were made. We were also involved in things like Faculty Sub Committees and staff student committees (though I always felt the Senate Staff Student Committee was a terrible rubber stamping body).
C In contrast to the University Committee, which was a real committee in your terms?
S Oh, yes, a very powerful committee.
C Do you agree with the view that Edward Wright was in fact a very skilful manager of students?
S He probably was - and we were probably completely managed by him. We felt that he was very much a friend, and an ally, and we did not want to pick fights with him. In terms of steering the University through the turbulent 60s, or would it be the early 70s by the time that turbulence would have reached Aberdeen, the students did it for him - we kept the pack quiet. There would be people who would say that we were idiots for being so non political, but I don't think so, I think it was a happy time. I remember later being concerned in a major investigation into student welfare. This University was extremely concerned about student welfare. There were others, we met them on consultative committees, who felt that all the University's resources ought to be going into academic things, and into the departments, and that if you had Jean Mackintosh (Student Counsellor) and an undue amount of chaplains and wardens and all the rest of it, and also the university putting money into student housing - (that this was a misapplication of university resources). But this was a view which was generally hidden from the students. So in a way it wasn't necessary for us to be radical protesters - and we were not manipulated by Edward Wright.
C Rather, you made a lot of good practical gains?
S Yes, I think so. We could see when we were being manipulated, in a token sort of way. I remember writing to all MPs to support the grants case, and all the local ones wrote back and said "Of course we will" - except Jo Grimond, the ex Rector, who said that there were other things the country's resources ought to go on. He and I had a long correspondence, and argued on finer and finer points, until he said "Look, I'm coming up, we'll meet." I met him off the sleeper and took him to breakfast in the Station Hotel (which seemed a very bold thing to charge to SRC expenses) and took him round the University. He was saying things like "Why have you got halls of residence that are only functioning for two thirds of the year, it's scandalous. Why isn't the University making more use of its summer vacations?" All this is now happening, but he was shouting about it a long time ago. So we could see what token support was, and dismiss it as irrelevant.
C Fine - we've dealt with your year as President of the SRC. Then you went straight on afterwards to be Rector's Assessor, is that right?
S I think: so, though I think: there may have been a slight gap - I can't quite remember - yes, I think that there was, Iain Cuthbertson was Rector, and I think his Assessor maybe stayed on, and there was a month or two gap, something insignificant. I was then getting used to being back: to being a student again. The SRC provided one with facilities and resources, in terms of secretarial support, and photocopying, and so on.
C Then suddenly it all vanished?
S Yes, there are many small companies that would be jealous of that, and certainly as a minister I used to wish that I had an SRC office again. Anyway, I went back: to being a student, and became Rector's Assessor, which was a much more low key and amateur operation. The Rector had an office. If the Rector chose to fight individual causes, or get involved in individual things, then as his Assessor one would support him, but it was very much follow the Rector's quirky initiatives. There were one or two pastoral things, I remember one student who was about to be deported, and ended up in jail. We ended up …
C Bailing him out?
S Yes, that sort of thing.
C Pleading with the Home Office or something?
S Yes. And again, the fact that as a member of Court you had this extraordinary access, which was even greater than you had - thanks to the benevolence of the University - through the SRC. As Rector, or Rector's Assessor, people actually deferred to you, which I found quite preposterous when we were really amateurs in this thing, but the Court was extraordinarily gracious. Iain Cuthbertson always used, in a token way, to chair the opening part of the Court, before handing over to the Principal - to Edward Wright, or then Fraser Noble - just to make the point.
C The point that the Rector was chairman if he wished to be?
S Yes, but he didn't want in any way to impede the good management of the Court's business.
C And he chose you as Assessor because it was then already the custom, was it, for the former President to be chosen?
S Yes.
C Andrew Gordon was the first, was he?
S No - the first was Norman Macdonald.
C Oh! Our old friend Norman Macdonald!
S Yes, who was a very good friend, and who ran my President's election campaign. I must just tell you about the poster he had - "The Macdonald is Coming" - when he was to become President. The best graffiti I have ever seen was when someone put underneath it "Too Late - the Campbell s are Here!"
C I must remind Norman of that the next time I see him.
S Yes, that's class graffiti. Anyway - he was first, and I think he was Michael Barratt's Assessor. I was Vice President when Michael Barratt was installed, and I remember making a speech which Norman and I (he was President and I was his Vice President, and that was a high point for us, the installation of Michael Barratt:). ... He took over from Jo Grimond, and I think he was less of a Rector than Jo Grimond was. Jo Grimond was a very distinguished, and active Rector, Michael Barratt tried to continue it a bit, but didn't really succeed. Then lain Cuthbertson came in. He was determined that he was also going to be an active Rector, more in the Jo Grimond tradition than in the Michael Barratt tradition. I can't remember - there was Norman Macdonald, and I can't remember if David Kennedy was ever Rector's Assessor for any length of time. Norman Macdonald had been a President, who was chosen as Rector's Assessor, I was a past President chosen as Rector's Assessor. During my year the University regulations were changed, and the President of SRC was co-opted to tale of the vacant places. I don't know if it subsequently became a right that the SRC President should been the Court, but I think the Court chose to use one of its unused co-opted places.
C So that in a way put you in a slightly odd position, that you [until then] had been "the student voice"?
S Yes, I was the student voice for a time, and then Peter Russell joined me. I think: I had a year of one regime, and then a year of the other. Or was it Andrew Gordon? No, I think Andrew Gordon succeeded me …
C Difficult always to remember these details, isn't it?
S Yes, that's right.
C Can you remember what it was like, becoming a participating member of the Court? Obviously you had been very closely involved, as you have described, as President, but you hadn't actually been to Court meetings?
S No. What one became aware of was that the University was managing its own staff and its own resources, in a way we hadn't [appreciated]. We had thought that there were these people who were just managing us. Suddenly we saw that they had an industrial relations thing to do with staff although that wasn't really a problem in terms of lecturers in those days because there was a fine compact - but in terms of technicians there was all the unions thing to be dealt with. We didn't get involved in the personnel committees, but the people who were involved in the personnel committees gave an enormous amount of their time, both the academics and the lay members of the Court, to dealing with that, It was quite extraordinary.
C It was when you were at, Court, presumably, that Edward Wright retired and Fraser Noble took over?
S That's right, I think: I am not breaching official secrets now to say that I was involved in the selection …
C That's interesting.
S It's not a widely known secret. What happened was that Maurice Cramb was invited by the Secretary of State to make some comments on potential candidates, I remember that he invited a number of people, and they were all, I think, lay members of the Court, to a little meeting that he had. He was the means of consultation with the Secretary of State.
C He's the official channel?
S We arrived outside his house, I had already been quite shocked to be on selection committees, as a member of the Court, and I felt again - it is something that one has to get used to later in life, but that was my first experience of sitting in judgement on the appointment of staff, and I found that very frightening. I felt wholly inadequate, being so young, to make these sort of comments, but the University was determined that the student involved should have a say, and you were not left to sit in a corner.
C Just backtracking on that, though, do I understand you to say that you were actually on staff appointment committees?
S Yes.
C What sort of staff? Presumably not academic staff?
S No, I remember sitting on a PE one …
C Physical Recreation, or perhaps catering staff, or a chaplaincy, things like that?
S Yes.
C: I'm with you now. Then you were involved in this choice of the next Principal?
S I think I was involved in an appointment committee for a practical theology lecturer.
C That's interesting.
S I think the Court, because I was in Divinity, decided to put me on that. Perhaps I had actually left the University by then, and was not a student - I can't remember, I do remember that sort of discussion going on. But then to be involved in that, albeit informal discussion on how the next Principal was to be chosen …
C Was quite a big step?
S It was just mind blowing. I remember feeling that I just did not want to know about this, that this was wrong somehow, particularly as I remember the most frank discussion on staff, and sometimes on internal staff.
C Whom you knew as staff - Professor X and Professor Y?
S That's right.
C Did you notice a great change of regime with the change of Principals?
S No. The students expected Fraser Noble to be less sympathetic than Edward Wright, because people thought that you couldn't have anyone more so. I only saw six months of Fraser Noble chairing the Court, so I didn't really see him settle into his stride. That was also the very beginning of the cuts coming. So I would say I wasn't there under the new regime very much. The one thing that I did notice about Court meetings was that they lasted a lot longer. I think Fraser Noble was less autocratic. Now I talk I do remember. In Edward Wright's time, everything was decided by consensus. You would go away from the meeting thinking "Hell's teeth, how did I find myself in that position? - We didn't all agree that," Edward Wright was good at detecting consensus, but he sometimes steered. You did not feel, unless you felt very strongly, while he was steering towards a consensus [able] to steer him away from it. Whereas, in Fraser Noble's time we had votes on the Court. That was unheard of in the previous regime. Voting became a fairly regular thing. Perhaps people began to speak their minds a bit more. There were other things in which there were little changes. In my time Edward Wright was always generous with his hospitality. The Court always had a jolly decent lunch before they met. He felt that this was an important thing, to set the tone. In Fraser Noble's time that was pulled back, partly through - I think - Fraser Noble's initiative, but I think Iain Cuthbertson was quite strong in taking that initiative as well, that he felt the lunch ought to be at least modest, If we were beginning to preside over any sort of reduction in University standards, then that was the first thing to go. Court meetings began to get a bit longer in Fraser Noble's time.
C Any major thing you think we've missed, David? It's been a very fascinating conversation.
S I suppose I haven't said much about the other bodies - the Union and the Union Management Committee, and the Athletic Association, and our relationship with them. I suppose that when I, as an SRC President, was involved in both of those bodies, we found a reasonably close relationship with the UMC. Partly, that was because of personal relationships. We found deep suspicion in the Athletic Association towards the SRC. They regarded the SRC as wasters and politicians.
C: Hairy monsters?
S Yes, We, on the SRC, regarded the Athletic Association as arrogant, and as spending a great deal of money, which we wished we could have our hands on. We regarded the AA as having a lot of friends in high places, which enabled them to do certain things, which we wished we also could do. We felt that they were not scrutinised as closely as we were. So there was an element of that sort of competition going on. There were one or two people who stood for election to UMC and SRC, but that was a most unusual thing to do, I think also that it was during my time that the move to the General Meeting took place. I never felt that that was a good thing. Most students couldn't be bothered turning up to a General Meeting every three weeks.
C Therefore it could be manipulated?
S That's right. The quorum was ten per cent, and a quorum could never be achieved, because you could clever get six hundred people in those days to turn up. The other thing that we haven't really covered is generally the feeling of the beginning of decline. I felt in my time that the University was full of plans to expand to ten thousand. The Nat. Phil. Building had been built, Johnston and Crombie had been built. The Robbins expansion was there. The universities could spend as much as they wanted. In my time they were arguing that it wasn't fair to take an average of the resources for the University, and to insist on building small to compensate for large lecture theatres in Nat., Phil. In that day Prof. Jones ruled in Nat, Phil, and nobody else got into that building. Nowadays to have the luxury of that sort of discussion, and those sort of criteria would be looked on as being the halcyon days. The decline was beginning then, but it was nothing to what was to come.
C Well, on that sad note we'd better sign off, and go towards the Nat. Phil. Building, which is now called the Fraser Noble Building. Thank: you very much indeed.
END OF INTERVIEW
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