| Description | Interview with Roger Houghton recorded on 23 of June 2001 by John Hargreaves.
Transcript of Interview :
[There is a section of feedback noise before the interview begins]
H When did you first come to Aberdeen University Mr Houghton?
Ho 1973.
H Why Aberdeen University?
Ho I basically lived here, it was my local university. I was a mature student as well and I was living at home with my mother at the time.
H Did you come straight from school?
Ho No, I worked for 10 years in the Bank of Scotland.
H Was your schooling in Aberdeen?
Ho Yes.
H And you decided to take a law degree?
Ho Yes, well after 10 years in the bank, I felt it wasn't for me, and, having taken my bank exams, I went to evening classes to take some Highers as they were in those days and the Highers together with the bank exam degree got me into university as a mature student.
H Yes, and as a LLB student your courses were fairly well foreordained?
Ho Well, that's right, they were similar, in many respects, to the banking exams as well, same kind of subjects.
H Were there any options within the LLB degree?
Ho I think there were. There were various, you could do comparative law and things like that so yes there were options.
H But basically it was commercial law that you were interested was it, having come from banking?
Ho Well, no it wasn't, it was just the general law degree, and that's what I'm doing now, I'm a solicitor in a private practice.
H Which teachers do you remember from the law faculty at that time?
Ho Mr Campbell, who I was actually at school with. David Lessels, Michael Christie, I think his name was, Jim Blaikie, Professor Meston, Professor McCormick, that's all that I can remember off the top of my head.
H And if it isn't too invidious, which do you remember as the best or most inspiring teachers?
Ho There's one that I've missed out, was Phil Love, Professor Love who was a personal friend as well as being my lecturer, he was great, and so was Jim Blaikie who was the Scots Law professor, he was good.
H I've got a question here which says 'indiscipline, eccentricities?' Would it be true to say that law students on the whole were noticeably well disciplined?
Ho Well in my time, this was in the early seventies when everybody was protesting about something, but I remember our class very much buckled down, there were no reactionaries in the class at all. Nothing whatsoever basically.
H And, no memorable eccentrics among your teachers?
Ho Not so much eccentrics, we had some good laughs. There was one time when Jim Blaikie came in with his flies open and we had some young girls at the front who were rolling about laughing and he couldn't understand why they were laughing until somebody pointed out what had happened and that lecture I remember only lasted about five minutes because Jim Blaikie, he was just so embarrassed that he was creased in two with laughter as well and the whole class and we just had to abandon that lecture. Various eccentricities, Mr Campbell used to always come in and drink a glass of water before each lecture and when we were leaving that particular year and not going to be having him any more I remember some of the students put vodka into the glass instead of water and he got a bit of a shock when he drank that. Yes, one or two sort of things like that which were just harmless fun really, but no eccentrics really.
H No, there was a …
Ho We had one lecturer, Mr Rickson, I think his name was, he lectured us in Company Law, he always used to walk around wiping his hands with a hankie all the time, when he was lecturing us, but apart from that there were no other real eccentricities
H And you dealt with something mentioned in the next question about prevailing attitudes of students to authority and mentioned the survival of ragging. Well I suppose it was a mild form of ragging…
Ho Well that's right there was nothing serious, it was never the case when the lecturers had to tell us to be quiet or , really nothing like that. I think Professor Meston once might have said something, but there was no,
H No, but the ragging of the forties and fifties which could be quite boisterous.
Ho No, I don't think there was anything like that. It was maybe just my particular year.
H And what were relations like with your teachers and the professoriat, in the early seventies in the Law Faculty was there any use of personal names, Christian names on the outside?
Ho I don't know, from my own point of view, with Professor Love because I knew him personally, we were on first name terms but with everybody else, it was always Professor or Mr, we were formal because I didn't know the other people that well.
H And you'd be addressed as Mr Houghton?
Ho Yes, Mr Campbell, I knew him from school so we were on first name terms there. Anybody else, I'm just trying to think, David Lessels, he was a friend of the family, so - sorry no, he wasn't a friend of the family until the early eighties when his children went to the same school as mine, no there was no one. It was just Phil Love really who I was friendly with and on first name terms.
H And for younger students, presumably, the question of Christian names probably didn't arise?
Ho No, I don't think so.
H Where were you living? Were you living at home?
Ho Yes.
H Your parental home?
H Yes.
H And, I imagine that provided a pretty good working environment for you?
Ho Living at home? Yes, I had personal circumstances… my mother was a widow, and I was helping to support her basically, she wasn't very well so I didn't have any other option but to stay at home, rather than staying in halls. That's one of the reasons I went to Aberdeen University, as opposed to any other university as well.
H Did looking after your mother encroach on your study time?
Ho No, not really no, with the law degree most of the lectures were in the morning, and I used to stay on the afternoons and study in the library.
H Yes. How did you support yourself? Did you get a grant?
Ho Yes. I couldn't do it now, with the way student loans are structured now, I just couldn't afford now, which I think is very sad, because my own view is that most of the students now going to university seem to be middle class and any poor students simply can't afford to come any more and I think that's dreadful, I think education should be open to all. I got a mature students grant, I was actually financially better off as a student than I was working in the bank. I got a mature students grant, I worked every summer on Aberdeen beach as a life guard which was very well paid because we'd work at weekends and get double time on a Saturday and triple time on a Sunday, I joined the Territorial Army, and I was in the Officer Training Corps at Aberdeen University, and you got paid for that as well. So financially I was probably better off, I actually managed to save up and buy a car by 1975, it was an old Citroen 2CV, but I bought it new, and that was with money at university.
H No problems there. Did you find that being relatively well off had any effect on your social contacts? It should be asked, I suppose, about the students who were not so well off.
Ho Well, not really because I really didn't feel part of my class. There were one or two people in my class who were ages with me but I was ten years older that most people.
H What proportion of mature students were there?
Ho In our class? Maybe about 5-10%. There were about a hundred people in our class, this was at a time when law was very popular. I was very friendly with a few students, George Esson, a chap called Alistair Lawrence, another guy called Harvey Aberdein, you know we were quite chummy together. There was also another lady called Alison Seger, friendly with her as well, and we all used to sit together, and another chap Daniel Edny and we were all much the same age, and tended to keep together, and keep ourselves to ourselves basically. I still had my own circle of friends outwith university who I kept in touch with and I also met a lot of people in the OTC who I was very friendly with and who I still am friendly with. In fact I met my wife in the OTC. So I didn't fraternise with the students in my class, to any great extent except for a very few.
H And extra-curricular activities, well you've spoken about the OTC. What was the nature of OTC training at that time?
Ho Well, it was military training.
H I know it was military training yes, but were you … in my days, long ,long ago, I mean it began with basic infantry training.
Ho Well that's right yes,
H It was still the same?
Ho Yes. We were part of NATO, and in those days the Russians were the enemy and we were being trained to fight on the German plains basically if it kind of came to anything. So it was just basic military training really.
H Did you go on exercise, did you go to Germany?
Ho Oh yes we went to camps. Went on exercises, went to Salisbury, Norway, some of the guys went to Germany. We had an annual camp every Easter at Rothiemurchus, the army have got a hut on the estate near Aviemore, and that was incredible, we were being paid for doing things that we enjoyed.
H How much were you paid?
Ho Well in those days it was about £3.50-£4.00 per day. We had an annual bounty as well if we did so many weekends. So you'd end up coming out per annum with maybe three or four hundred pounds you could, and in those days that was a lot of money, you know, for a student.
H Yes, indeed.
Ho The mature students grant if I recall was maybe about £1200 a year and then that on top took you to about £1600 and then the money from the beach was another £500-£600 so I was working twelve weeks in the summer, so it was … of course I wasn't married so I didn't have any commitments either.
H It would be well paid. Other extra-curricular activities? The beach, I take it you are a swimmer?
Ho Still am, I'm president of the Aberdeen Sea Swimmer's Club and we go in, you know, in those days when I was a life guard, I was in the sea every day. I still run on the beach most days of the week.
H Competitive athletics?
Ho I used to swim competitively at school, and I was a Scottish Schools champion at school. I left school, started smoking and I smoked for about five years before I realised how bad it was doing because I went down to the beach with and had a run with some friends and managed to run only a couple of hundred yards and I thought if this is me through smoking and I'm only 20 what am I going to be like when I'm forty? So I stopped that. So extra-curricular activity, I still come to King's most lunchtimes and I swim and I still go down to the beach and I run and I do a lot of climbing, winter climbing in the winter, snow and ice climbing and hill walking in the summer. Of course, I've a young family as well so they take up some of my time too.
H These were activities that were not within the Athletic Union?
Ho No, apart from the OTC, I didn't really join any University…
H No well you had these clubs.
Ho To be honest they didn't really interest me, I very rarely went to the student Union, I was hardly ever there because as I said I'd my own circle of friends from school and most of them were working or married with young families. We tended to meet up, in those days, it was the Dutch Mill in Queen's Road, you know so I never really, and I used to go the Grammar Former Pupils Club in Queen's Road there, the FP Club Centre, so I never really fraternised at the University in the evenings or at the Union.
H How did you spend your vacations? Well, some of them as a beach guard, you said.
Ho Christmas, I used to get a job with the Post Office, you know, because they needed Posties and that was money as well. And at Easter, I used to get a job in the Baths, as a Baths Attendant, as a life guard there. So I'd be working in the Baths at Hazlehead or Bon Accord Baths at Easter. So I was never without work, it's totally different nowadays unfortunately, you can't get summer jobs so easily.
H And you didn't feel that you needed to do a great deal of academic work in the vacations?
Ho Oh, well there was only one year when I had re-sits, that was 1976, I'd one re-sit which did spoil my summer to a certain extent because I was having to study when - it was a glorious summer in 1976 - and I had to study and the only way I could study, I actually went down to the Marischal Library, underneath the Mitchell Hall because it had no windows and it had air-conditioning and that was the only way I was able to study without looking out, looking at the sun. So that spoiled it to some extent, but no I didn't usually work during the holidays.
H And as far as travel was concerned the OTC gave you the opportunity of doing…?
Ho Oh yes, we'd to camp on Salisbury Plain, and some other guys went to Norway. In fact in summer, during the holidays if you wanted you could even come in and do odd jobs round about the headquarters in Aberdeen and you used to get paid for that as well.
H The next question, perhaps we should take it in two parts: how would you describe the position of women students? Perhaps we ought to distinguish the Law Faculty and the University as a whole.
Ho Now or then?
H Then.
Ho There were very few women students, we only had I should say only nine or ten women in our class then.
H I would have suspected that.
Ho I haven't really given it much thought really. What women there were in the class, they were very bright. In fact two or three of the brightest people in the class were women. I really haven't given it much thought. All that I remember is that there weren't so many women at university in those days, well not doing Law, as there are now. I think now about half the people doing Law are women.
H Yes, I think the University figures would have shown something like 50% in the University…
Ho Possibly in Faculties like teaching, student teaching you'd have more women there but the teaching college and maybe some of the other degrees, sociology…
H Well, the Arts Faculty generally had… my recollection is at least 50% and medicine I think was already doing better …Why do you suppose not many women chose to study Law?
Ho I don't know to be honest with you. In those days I mean there was nothing to stop them, maybe some of them perceived it to be a male-orientated profession at that time?
H That may well have been right I think.
Ho It was the same in the bank as well, I mean the women came into the bank generally as secretaries. They didn't do bank exams or 'get on' and I think possibly there was an attitude amongst women in those days - it's changed now, but in those days maybe it was more of a chauvinistic attitude where they felt Law and some of these other professions were more of a men's thing.
H Do you think that's changed attitudes in practice?
Ho Oh yes.
H You're in a practice yourself now?
Ho There are more women Lawyers.
H In terms of your own perceptions?
Ho I would say in the last ten years there have been more women in the profession.
H As recently as that, yes. And do they still encounter male prejudice?
Ho I don't think so, I'm only speaking personally, I mean I don't care what anybody's gender or colour is, I think everybody should be treated equally, but certainly from my point of view I don't treat them any differently from any other people.
H Politics or social movements of the period, did they make much impression on you?
Ho Our class representative, we didn't have one, so he came from the year above us, and it was Alistair Darling, he's an MP, I think he's the Social Security minister now, but politics in those days, I think there were one or two fairly well known people at University in those days, I actually went to school with Robin Cook at the Grammar School, and there are one or two people from Aberdeen University who have done quite well in politics you know, round about that time, but it didn't play any big part from my point of view to be honest with you.
H You didn't find students talking much, or controversy about any aspect of law reform?
Ho No, I didn't encounter I mean in those days I think there was quite a lot of protest I think in some other universities, I think notably Stirling, I think was quite a hot bed of discontent …
H Yes, the peak of it was a year or two earlier …
Ho Certainly in my year you had some protests from maybe other years but it never affected us, as I say we were very much a docile class when it came to that sort of thing.
H But thinking of it as a law student, I'm not quite sure of the timing of legislation here, issues like homosexual rights…
Ho That didn't figure at all, that came a lot later, you know after my time.
H Yes. But the Wilfenden Commission was before this time, and similarly as regards the law of abortion in Scotland, because I remember rather before this time going to a party with Maurice Backett, Professor of Social Medicine, to celebrate these two reports and there must have been a hangover of pending legislation, raising quite important issues of legal principle?
Ho To be honest with you at the time, I can't recall ever having any …
H No, it wasn't, it wouldn't be used …
Ho I can't even remember it being raised at any of the lectures.
H Yes, I was wondering about that.
Ho We were never asked to write about or to do any essays on any of those subjects.
H Yes, that's very interesting. As far as politics went you arrived under a Labour government and left in the early days of a new Conservative government, were you …?
Ho That's right, it was Heath wasn't it, Edward Heath?
H Sorry, no I've got it the wrong way round, you arrived in the last days of Heath and left in the days of Wilson, yes. Do you recall any general attitudes towards …?
Ho No, not in my year no.
H Although obviously with people like Alistair Darling making their career, obviously there were…?
Ho It must have affected people like him yes…
H The name of Mrs Thatcher would not have registered?
Ho No.
H What happened when you graduated, had you got the, were you taken into partnership or as an assistant?
Ho I did an apprenticeship for two years with a legal firm in Aberdeen, Clark and Wallace, so I was this them for two years.
H Had you previous connections with them or did they just offer you an apprenticeship?
Ho Not really it was just a question of in your last year of doing Law here, just writing to all the legal firms in Aberdeen and asking if they can take on a trainee. An apprentice, a legal apprentice. And I got offered four apprenticeships and I picked Clark and Wallace out of the four.
H And after that, did you go into partnership?
Ho No, after that I joined a major American oil company, Chevron, which was a large American corporation and worked for four years with them in their headquarters in Aberdeen as a company lawyer and then in 1984 I left them and set up my own business, set up my own legal practice.
H Change from general practice to a specialisation in Company Law presumably?
Ho There wasn't so much Company Law, I mean working for a major oil company, it was Contract Law, it was Employment Law. It was everything generally associated with running a large multi-national company with contracts you know buying goods off supply companies with contracts of employment you'd have employee problems, you know all sorts of different things.
H And had the LLB course prepared you equally well for both sorts of …?
Ho The LLB course was good in theory but not in practice because unlike nowadays when they get more practical [?] now I think. In those days we didn't, we just had three years at university and then you had to go out into the big wide world but my banking experience was obviously a big help to me because I'd worked before and knew what it was like to work in a commercial environment.
H So that leads on to the last question, and you've almost answered it, what value did your university education have for your subsequent career?
Ho I wouldn't be a solicitor now if I hadn't had a university education.
H You could have been a solicitor but it was already normal to take a degree?
Ho Oh, I mean certainly I valued going to university. I had my own political ideas when I went to university and it didn't change them, but it made me more appreciative of other people's points of view, it was a great leveller in that respect. So I mean I've got no, I always used to say that if I'd dropped out after the first year at University I wouldn't have regretted going because it was a great leveller and I enjoyed the experience. But practically, from a practical point of view it didn't really help me a great deal because my banking experience, my own commercial experience, you know, in theory it was fine, so really I don't know how other students would have got on, you know young students who would have gone in at seventeen or eighteen direct from school and then graduated four years later and gone straight into an office, I think they would have found it far more difficult to cope than I did, because I didn't have any problems with an office or commercial environment.
H In the course of your three years, there was no practical experience at all?
Ho Things like accountancy, we had accounts to do as part of the course, but there was no actual practical experience as such. What's the phraseology, 'an ounce of experience is worth a tonne of theory' and in my day it was very much the theory and not the experience unfortunately. That's all changed now I believe.
H Well, thank you very much, is there anything else you'd like to put on record?
Ho Not really no, I think you've asked just about everything.
H Well thank you very much.
Ho Thank you.
End of Interview |