| Description | Interview with Professor H. Potter, recorded on 28th January 1985 by Colin McLaren
This is a follow on from MS3620/6
Transcript of Interview :
M I think there were further points you wanted to make about the quality of life in the 40s and 50s and indeed before then, in terms of finance and the amount of personal administration that you were called upon to carry out. Can we begin with a very simple area - travel from the university to pursue your own research. Was the university library sufficiently equipped to meet your needs?
P Oh no. There had been cuts in periodicals, I think, at the time of what was called 'the Geddes Axe' in the early 30s and the Depression, so although the periodicals were by no means good in the way of spread - the range was not like what it is today - they stopped some at that time, and so I had to work in Oxford libraries and Cambridge libraries in the vacation, in the summer vacation, paid for all that myself, train fare, lodging in Oxford or Cambridge; and that went on for a long time; and even when I went to a learned society like the Edinburgh Mathematical Society in Edinburgh, I had to pay the fare down to Edinburgh, hotel overnight, and then back. That was as an assistant. A lecturer, his appointment was for a year; a letter would come from the Court or the Secretary saying, 'You have been appointed for next year, please let us have a letter saying that you accept the appointment'. So it wasn't a secure tenure. All these things. Even at the international congress in Oslo, I had to pay for that myself.
M When was that?
P In late '36.
M When did this financial constraint ease?
P Well, that was after the war. Everything was frozen during the war and also there was very little happening. But it was mainly after the war. I can't remember exactly, the real flow came with the Robbins expansion but before that there was some easing of this. I forget when it [the university] first started paying for conferences; it was certainly after the war, not before, and there was such a shortage period in '45 until about 'S0 that it could well have been after 1950 but that could be found out easily.
M To what extent, would you say, did these constraints on travel and so on restrict the interests of the university to its own locality? Would you say the university lost through this in any way?
P I suppose it did because one was more remote. It also meant that people would perhaps be more willing to leave Aberdeen to get a job in the South. Alternatively, if a job was advertised and they had a choice, in the South or in a place like Aberdeen, they would probably prefer the South, and that lingered until way after the war. It's a natural thing that people in sciences like to be near where things are happening and although the university was later generous in giving fares to conferences to try and counteract that, when they had the money, it is still a deterrent, you know, because of the cost.
M During the late 40s - the Austerity period - and the 50s and the early 60s, how would you describe the pattern of your social life in the university community? You have already, I think, described your life at 113 College Bounds.
P High Street.
M High Street. How did you live in the 40s and the 50s?
P Well, during the war in the 40s, it was wartime and there was rationing and shortage. In some respects it was not so bad in Aberdeen: we were near the country and we could get eggs and milk, compared with the South; but that [obtaining food] wasn't the same problem as the First World War; the rationing system was pretty fair and one had food. The social life we made ourselves. Of course, there was no television; throughout the war I didn't even have a radio. I must say that helped to relieve some of the strain; people were always glad to give you the news that they heard on the radio and I didn't have the pressure of looking, listening, hanging onto the set, listening to all the news. But, as I said, we made our own entertainment. We had parties and I arranged a sort of informal choir where we invited people to sing things like Handel and Bach and what not; members of staff and others, servicemen who were around Aberdeen who were interested in these things, used to come and there was that sort of social life.
M Did you continue these activities later in the 50s and the early 60s?
P No, no. When one got married these things disappeared.
M When did you get married?
P Oh, 1950. And also I moved out of that large house in High Street into Don Street, a small house where it was not possible, so that it was really up to about 1944 that this went on. Then after that not. Later on though, in the university itself again we tried to encourage things during the Austerity period. Lunches at the Imperial Hotel to get the university together and also having parties for students, that was just a few of us did this, and the Christmas party we arranged, things of that sort; but it wasn't laid on, we had to make it ourselves. I remember once organizing a gramophone music [concert] in - I forget which place it was; you see, there was no common room in those days, we had to use often a classroom, there was no get-together place in Marischal. There was a common room of sorts in the Elphinstone side room, that was useful, but nothing in Marischal.
M Why were you now at Marischal? Had the department - was it split between the King's and the Marischal site?
P Well, the Marischal staff and the King's staff... The staff was much smaller in those days so one could get to know most of the staff in both King's and Marischal - a thing which I find impossible nowadays. But one felt, especially in the allied subjects, one felt that it was a duty to know all one's colleagues and even outside that to know them.
M How close was the department of mathematics in this period of the late 40s and 50s and the early 60s to other departments such as nat. phil.?
P Well, nat. phil. was very close, certainly like chemistry and engineering, these were the allied departments. But in those days one knew most of the others as well and in a fairly close way; we had friends, rather than just knowing faces. So that was the benefit of the smallness rather than say benefit from facilities; we had no facilities but smallness made it possible.
M After you married did you stay in the Old Aberdeen area or did you move out?
P Until about 1958 when we needed a larger house so we moved to the West End then: the family was getting too big. But, yes, now Old Aberdeen was a friendly place in those days. Having lived there one knew not only the university set that lived there but the others, there were certain families there...
M Can you identify them?
P I have forgotten names, but some who would - for instance, if one wanted like a home help - there was usually labour around, glad to come and help, so we employed - various members of the university employed - people there. We were a good source of fobs. And also for things like - if you wanted a room papered, there would be a painter who would do it from Old Aberdeen. And some of these had been there for generations. And a certain amount of home industries too. I remember opposite 78 Don Street they made fishing nets and periodically a van would come and take away the knitted nets and leave the ropes you know, or the cord or whatever it was they used to make the new nets. There was another house in the street behind where an old woman made fishing flies for anglers; it was a home industry. So some odd little quirks of that sort. And we knew each other and walking into King's we would be saying hello to the chimney sweep who lived next door and so I would have a chat with him - he had a broad accent. And there was Lily, who was a housekeeper to an old lady - in Don Street - she was a great character, all these people.
M How would you describe the students of the 50s and the early 60s. You described the intake of more mature students who came up after the war and the vintage years that you experienced then. How would you describe the students of the 50s and 60s in terms of their maturity compared to those you had encountered in the 30s and the 40s?
P In '45 to the early 50s, when National Service was still on, that group - I don't recall greatly the maturity aspects. After all, boys and girls are boys and girls much the same at that age and they were very shy and that hadn't changed. One noticed it with the army and RAF cadets from the South. Complete different character, not so shy, more willing to speak out. But, as I said, the group that was being called up for National Service, that put a pressure on them and it had this influence that if they saw they were about to fail exams and be sent down for this, then there was a threat of being called up into like the lower ranks of the forces; whereas if they had a degree then they might go into one of the higher-up, you know, service like scientific service; and so that put a pressure on them and they were much keener to work for it.
M Did you notice a great change during the later 60s, when as I think you have said elsewhere, students in other parts of the country and abroad were far more - or seemed to be engaged in a lot more political activities. Did you notice that in Aberdeen too?
P Political activities. In the 60s, yes, they began to grow, up to the period - '68 was the peak, when the Paris riots broke out. That was like the [marker] point of all this and it was greatly moving towards that. But I think that the earlier part, because people had to face National Service, they were more absorbed in that, just as in the war. These sort of flooded the other part down - it wasn't so important: this is what you are facing now and you've got to think about that. So that may have been it, I suppose. And also life was harsher and took up more of their attention, perhaps. It was, oddly enough, it was a time when Harold Macmillan said you know, 'you've never had it so good'. 'Having it good' meant that they had more time to relax and to think of other things and that's when they began to think, 'Oh, we want it better'. And that's when the student unrest began to grow, I think. An odd thing, that really, if they knew, they had had it very well compared with the previous lot but they were the ones who were dissatisfied.
M How did you personally react to the student desire for representation on various committees and so forth that cropped up in the late 60s?
P Well, I must freely admit that I was very much against most of it.
M Why was that?
P Well, I felt that, a number of things - it's a complicated matter -that when the university was smaller, one had a personal relationship with the students. I saw that as the Robbins expansion started, it was getting bigger and bigger and bigger, it was harder to keep in touch with students because of numbers. But when it was small - just as in the department one would settle matters with the professor over coffee, there was only about four of us on the staff; but when it comes to about twenty, it is a different matter; so that makes a change, one has to organise committees then. Likewise when the student numbers were small, one would know them in a fairly intimate way and a lecture would be an informal thing, where there was only about half a dozen Honours students. Whereas when numbers crop [crept] up, I could see that things were becoming more formal. But also there is this, that the cycle is three or (187) four years, depending on whether it's Ordinary or Honours and what a certain generation of students wants - the first year they come in they are too raw to know, I mean they are just schoolboys or schoolgirls. By the time they get a bit more dug-in at understanding they are working for their finals. Because time is so short to come to a mature judgement about matters, I felt, and there was a danger of requests at that stage being ill-judged, as indeed I found when I did set up these committees of students. A student wanted to have tutorials in small numbers. We'd had, I'd explain, yes, we had that earlier but we'd found that it was better to have larger numbers, instead of a class of about 10 students with one just looking after them, we had about 30 and three members of staff looking after them, but that was more flexible, the three could spend more time with those who were needing them. However, we would set it up for a small tutorial. And this was done and what happened was this person representing the class hadn't consulted with the others, just saying just what that student wanted, and the others didn't want that and so we had [ ....] requests and the next day we had to go back to it. It was partly that they were more confronted with 10, more confronted with being responsible and to talk and they just did not want that, they didn't want to be so exposed. They wanted to work quietly, you know, and not be exposed to having to answer questions, all these things. Well, these are some of the reasons, but also I felt that this was becoming like a slippery slope or slide, people wanting power for power's sake, and [it] wasn't being considered and we had a responsibility of certain intellectual matters not to let standards drop. If a student has control too much, natural human nature, he will want to make things easy for himself, and that's a danger there too, that in our integrity we shouldn't give over our responsibilities. It's easier living without responsibility and just letting things, say, give rather than stand up and be counted and say, 'No I won't stand it any more'. This is a very vague thing, but then I did it and it was decided and, yes, one can get it to work but one soon found that when they got one or two adjustments made, then their meetings would be - they would have nothing to say, and then that becomes - it's laid on and one has to do it - it becomes time-consuming, you know, this rigmarole of routine, when it's spent its force and the next lot of students don't want that, they are concerned with other matters and yet it goes on.
M There was another area of expansion, of course, in the university administration and I think before we began recording you mentioned the difference between your earlier experiences of being involved in a move, for example, of departments and compared those to what would happen earlier. Can you just remind us of that?
P Yes, well I suppose the - what points it all up is a conversation I once had with Mr Butchart, who was Secretary to the university before, during and after the war. I think this conversation took place in the early 50s sometime, when he said that - it was when more students were coming and things were beginning to expand a bit - but he had always tried not to grab the money, not to try to get the money diverted to his administration section that should go as much as possible for the teaching/research side of the university and it was his pride that he had kept administrative costs down to half of one percent of total expenditure. And that sort of stuck in my mind as being - well, that's his view. And under Angus, the next Secretary, things rapidly changed. And again, if we had the money, it was nice to have all this, the various auxiliary helps, but it's noticeable that the - I'm sure the fraction of expenditure is much higher now. To give examples, when - I think it was the beginning of the Robbins expansion - the mathematics department moved into the old Greek Manse in College Bounds, Professor Wright gave me the job of organising that. I went to the university Secretary's typist, who looked after these matters; in a cupboard she had a few catalogues of furnishings, of things like chairs and carpets and curtain materials, but that was a starter. I had to find out what there was which would suit our purpose. I went to the shops in Aberdeen like Archibalds and Galloway and Sykes to find out what they had. I discovered where I could get a carpenter or a joiner to make tables for the classrooms to my size, [I] thought it would be cheaper in the end than what was offered from furniture shops, they had nothing of the right kind, and I had to give the dimensions for this joiner to make these things and cost it and get painters to redecorate the classrooms, get chairs from the shops and , cost it, you know, to keep the cost down; and in fact turned myself into a - and this was on top of my lectures. I feel sure that modern lecturers would be rather .... if they were asked to do that. And this was not taken to be out of the way, one did these things, this is just one example of things one did. Anything, one had to turn to anything, one must be flexible, not to play Trade Union rights - you know, 'I'm a lecturer that's all I'm meant to do.' Yes, indeed, when one came to an examination one would move furniture around for the numbers; then yes, one would have to go and collect the papers and give them out, and [go to] the printers. All these side jobs, you know, one did. I can't remember the whole range of them just now but whatever it was one did.
M Yet there had been, I think you mentioned in your first interview, a branch of the AZT in which you had been involved. When did they, or did they, start objecting to the amount of time that had to be spent on these purely administrative functions?
P I can't remember that there was ever an objection. It was more that once the university expanded there was more money and numbers made it more difficult to cope with all these jobs, then gradually extra jobs were created, like someone in charge of furnishings and such like, and that gradually grew and grew and grew and, in fact, I suppose you wouldn't exist in those days.
M No I didn't, indeed.
P And nor would that (indicates tape recorder) exist.
M Indeed, yes. Another area of expansion alongside the administration, has been in the university library. What are your recollections of the change in the size and the structure of the library?
P Oh very much change. Before the war, when I wanted a book out of the King's Library, one filled in a slip and Miss Brown who looked after this would write in the big ledger by hand these borrowing details and that happened for every book for student or staff who borrowed there. She kept this big ledger. And then at the end of the summer term one would go back and take one's books back for the annual inspection and she would check you off, whether you had books out, by looking at the ledger and that was the criterion. And that was, perhaps, a pointer to the scale of things, like hand labour and no assistance whatever. But there was another typist, I think Douglas Simpsons's typist, partly because he was Secretary of the Court, for when there was any election to [be] a member of the Court he looked after that I believe.
M [You mean] General Council?
P Yes, General Council. And during the war, when we had cadets, we had the part use of this typist, a great concession, because we had so much extra work with the cadets that this lady came out so many hours a week to do typing work for us. And I remember the time when there was an election for the General Council which was queried and therefore they had to send out to members of the university by post. This assistance to me was withdrawn while she did this work and I was working until midnight doing clerical work, typing work of that sort or writing up things on my own without any assistance. And it was similar at Marischal. There was a library there and similar simple methods.
M Did you encounter Simpson very much otherwise?
P Oh, very much as a friend. We were neighbours in Old Aberdeen and were very friendly, yes. I have one or two books he gave me actually. Well, yes, he was a great storyteller and very sort of pugnacious man in some ways but very kindly too.
END OF INTERVIEW
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