| Description | This is an interview with Professor John D. Hargreaves, recorded by Terry Brotherstone, on the 7 February 2002 and 27 March 2003.
he interview transcription is available in three parts : MS 3620/127/1 : MS 3620/127/2: MS 3620/127/3
TB Yes, there were a number of occupations in the early '70s over students' files and that sort of thing, I remember. I can't remember exactly …
JH And there was another protest in the later '70s over South African investments. That again I feel this may or may not be an advantage, and I am talking about administration here there's been an emollient quality which has not been concerned to ignore and override student concerns, but take them on board and deal with them in a concrete manner.
TB I think there is probably one possible view that the University of Aberdeen has been resistant to change at a number of periods and may not have embraced it in a particularly positive manner, that one was to do with the expansion, that it was all conducted rather reluctantly. The next one, later on in our discussions, is how it handled the oil industry in relation to Aberdeen. Is that a view you'd agree with? Or would you …
JH Oh, I would not say that the University has been very good at dealing with the challenges overall. You were asking … We've been talking about student discontents, and, I think, its response to those overall has been a most constructive engagement. But I think, if you are looking at the strategy of expansion and the response of Court and Senate, I think there are a lot of criticisms that could be made. I suppose I take responsibility for them as an ordinary member of Senate and at one period as Dean of the Faculty.
TB What are the main criticisms you would make looking back? I mean, we have you coming into the Chair with this great sense of opportunity, which is general in the country, but particularly focusing on the universities with the Robbins Report. We haven't said much about it explicitly … but that was really laying down the guidelines for the big expansion of the '60s, and now looking back on it, you are saying that the University can be criticised for how it dealt with the follow-on from that. So what do think are the main criticisms?
JH Yes, I think, after the '60s, when the UGC were pushing for expansion, all universities, basically, decided well they hadn't really much choice but all universities went along with them. There came a point around 1870, when it was clear ….
TB 1970!
JH 1970, yes! (Laughter)
TB Another big period of educational change … not within your memory!…
JH … It was also clear that the University [Grants Committee] was pressing Aberdeen to expand very much more rapidly than other universities, and that the reasons for this were probably not that they had unbounded confidence in our academic capacity - I think we genuinely had a good standing as a university where students got a good deal, even if we weren't top of the research ratings. But the main reason was availability of land, and the possibility of expanding relatively cheaply. So Edward Wright would come along to Senate and say: "The new figure is, instead of 7,000 by '79, it's now 8,000".
TB You are saying this was in the late '60s?
JH No, in the '70s is when I recollect it happening. There was no real very effective planning mechanism within the University for saying exactly what would happen. Jones would get up in Senate and say, "This is awful, more would mean worse", and up to a point there were 20% of us who said, "Well, maybe Jones is right." Then Jones would say something so outrageous and reactionary that you couldn't possibly support him. And it went through on the nod and, consequently, the University took on all these new buildings, and with the new buildings the implication that you'd take students. And, the figure … I blame the UGC created … the UGC is to blame for not seeing this earlier too. I am not putting it all on Wright and the University. Then the money really did begin to run out, then the University was so vulnerable to cutting. And we hadn't really, also with this expansion - the greater concentration on teaching - the University was left without an outstanding … I mean, I am not saying it didn't have a good research reputation, but it didn't have an outstanding research reputation on which it could rest.
TB Moving back a bit then, just to think about … because looking back to your inaugural and taking on a Department and everything … big changes took place - Paul, an actual Russian-speaking Russian historian, Bill Scott comes as an actual French-speaking French historian, etc. It is beginning to look like a modern history department, in a way - without any disparagement to those who had been there before - it perhaps didn't before.
JH Exactly. I think that a lot of university departments in the country didn't look much more like it than ours …
TB No, it wasn't unique to Aberdeen, I'm sure. Absolutely not. How do you feel that side of things fared through the '60s and '70s - the main period of your tenure of the headship of department? Developments in African history, certainly. Certainly developments in Scottish history. Are there things you would like to particularly highlight about what happened in terms of the intellectual experience of Aberdeen history graduates in that period, or things, looking back on it, that you wish had been done differently, or with different emphasis.
JH No. I don't think I've got particular comment. I felt that as a department whose primary commitment was the teaching of undergraduates, I think we continued to discharge this tolerably well until my retirement … until the hardships which happened after my retirement. I can't speak of what happened then. We were … it is perhaps a pity that there wasn't more movement, not only in new posts, but relatively few people moved away and there wasn't much new blood and I remember at the end we were looking at the coherence, and you were particularly critical of the coherence of the department, and I would agree that we had perhaps got a little stuck in the groove. People got vested interests about how they would teach their topic and it is always very difficult to tell them to do it differently. To change things round. We'd made a beginning in attracting research students, maybe one ought to have thought harder about how that base could be thickened.
TB … Because it was pretty much in African and Scottish history …
JH It was, yes, very largely these, and for what seemed like obvious reasons, which were accessibility to sources. It was not a University you would think of sending somebody to do research on Modern French history unless their own lines were very much in line with those of Bill Scott, otherwise they'd be unnecessarily spending all their time elsewhere. We were building up - and I had something to do with this - archival resources inside and outside the University for Scottish history; and for certain branches of African history there were things which could be done on the basis microfilm collections, but they still tended to involve travel. And it was not so much because of anybody's intellectual distinction, because when I still had connections in Africa we were getting good applications from some African students.
TB Yes, you said something towards the beginning of that contribution, which made me want to ask you another question. Obviously you were encouraging colleagues to research, and you were very much concerned with your own research - probably your own research proceeded more slowly at that time, than would now be permissible under the regime of the Research Assessment Exercise! (Laughter) And yet I think would it probably be the case that, in accounting to your conscience as it were, as to what was going on under your charge, it was really the teaching function that you saw as the predominant role of the department?
JH Yes, I think it was. My view of research in the humanities, is, in the sense, an old-fashioned one, which is that the symbiotic relationship between the two, and the importance of teaching which is from people who are actually working. And that - this may be a heretical thing but - a fairly high percentage of the learned articles which are published nowadays and which may attract higher grades, mankind would not be that much the poorer … if they had not appeared! (Laughter)
TB Yes, yes!
JH And therefore I think it is fairly true to say that I did not give high enough regard to research. And in the area of the symbiosis, I would include forms of scholarship, which don't issue in recognisable research. And I would regard Doreen Milne, for example, as having achieved a satisfactory symbiosis, though her publishing output is very small.
TB Well … the Rye House plot, [and the history of the] … Aberdeen [History] Department!
JH Yes, yes.
TB A seminal article on the Rye House Plot, I may say, if not the only one… (Pause) I am just wondering where we want to go. I think what was partially in my mind there … was … I wonder if you now have some regret … I am not saying this is anything you could do something about … but in the attempts today to bring the University, the department, into the, at any rate the kind of leading … the top levels of research institutions, something has happened. In the '60s there was this remarkable period where you are bringing in African history. It is giving a distinction to things. It feeds off into Scottish history - the kind of remarks that Jim Hunter is likely to make about how he was inspired to see Highland history seriously through the way you were making African history serious … and yet we have lost African history altogether now. I mean that must be a considerable regret to you in so far as you allow yourself to reflect on what's going on.
JH It is. I understand the rationale for it, but I think it is a regret.
TB Well I personally think it's absolutely crazy and that we're missing out - in the sense that Africa has once again become, in a completely different way, the undiscovered … the having-to-be-rediscovered continent, in terms of the way so much of the crisis of humanity has poured into Africa. You say you understand it, but, I mean, I wonder if you feel there has been some sort of continuity lost along the line somewhere. Aberdeen was being quite distinctive not just because it was Aberdeen, but because it was making itself expert in particular fields, and maybe now what is happening is it is just another university really. I mean do you sense a change like that over time?
JH Oh, I wouldn't dare to generalise about the University about that. I think as we did in African history and still more perhaps in the African Studies Group, which was …
TB … which went on until fairly recently …
JH It went on … It fizzled out in the mid-'90s, because other department as well were finding Africa marginal to their major teaching concerns or research interests. But that was as an interesting example of a university structure, which I then helped to create. It cost the University virtually nothing, except the services of a half-time secretary and a little bit of research money, which produced over the years about eight symposia, some of which are still very widely cited and which are still recalled as having provided scholars from elsewhere with a challenging time. So obviously, yes, I regret that. On the other hand if I'd been sitting … been taking executive decisions about resources, could I have given this priority over other things? I must say I don't know!
TB Obviously not. One way in which the expansion period in Aberdeen ran into the incipient national contraction at least, in terms of funding, or relative funding, was the famous episode of the Scottish History chair.
JH Yes.
TB I must give you an opportunity to - whether under a closure or not - to let us know how you see that. This could have been the moment at which … A second chair had been appointed in the later '60s - I should say that - which Peter Ramsey had taken up. Did you see that second chair … was that a significant moment did you feel?
JH It was a welcome recognition of the growth of the department and a welcome moment, but I would sooner not comment on how it worked out, in particular. Peter succeeded me for a period and also became a Dean and I have been told a very successful Dean.
TB He certainly handled the Deanship during the contraction, because I had direct experience of that. In my view - I was critical of him for not being aggressive enough - but in terms of holding people together, it brought out his talents. Yes, magnificently, I think… But, then, in the early '70s, the idea of a Scottish chair. This would have been the response to your inaugural comments in a way and it was nearly done and then it wasn't done. Yes, you might want to say a bit more about it.
JH Well, yes, and I may or may not want to put it under closure! No I don't think so. It wasn't initially the reason it was frozen was not because there was no money. It was because we failed to make an appointment when there was money.
TB Yes, yes.
JH There were four applicants, two internal and two external.
TB It is on the record who they were now, isn't it?
JH It probably is. Don Withrington, Grant Simpson and the two external ones were Bill Ferguson from Edinburgh and what's the man's name the medievalist from Canada, who wrote a volume in the Edinburgh History of Scotland …
TB Let's move on a minute, we will come back to that. I think I have actually written to who it was, but it has actually gone for the moment. So there were the four candidates.
JH Edward Wright as Principal had the habit it may have been a bad habit when he wrote to referees, asked for not only their opinion of this candidate but for their opinion of the other candidates who were involved.
TB Probably slightly improper, I think!
JH I think it possibly was. But it was revealing. One thing which emerged was that …
TB Ranald Nicholson …
JH Yes, Ranald Nicholson.
TB So the fourth candidate was Ranald Nicholson …
JH One thing which emerged was that every candidate who got a glowing report, he also got a more or less damning report from somebody who was not his referee, drawing attention to very serious doubts. When it came to the interview, the man who was probably in my mind the front-runner, interviewed extremely badly, and although the interview is not always decisive, I think in this case nobody had established an indubitable claim … I was clear in my mind, and I think it was probably shared by the rest of the committee that it would be preferable unless we had a medievalist who was really star quality, and Leslie Macfarlane, interestingly enough, had not wanted to apply, he did not see himself as a Scottish historian …
TB … might be a little bit difficult to deny by that time …
JH Yes. It might have been difficult to deny him. But Leslie never wanted to see himself as a purely Scottish … as I never wanted to see myself as an African historian …
TB I don't think he has ever wanted to see himself as a professor really. He is very much a Reader, I think.
JH Probably, yes. I'd certainly hoped to appoint somebody … who would deal with the history of the modern - political/cultural history - of the modern period particularly, in a lively way. The board was not convinced that either the internal or the external candidate concerned would do this, and we had better leave it. And I think that if we had been able to do that, I think that in four or five years, we would have had a much broader and more exciting field.
TB So it would probably have gone to another generation?
JH Yes, I think it would. I think it would. It would have gone to another generation. In '73, I think it was, or '72, there was no reason to anticipate the magnitude … I think it was before the oil crisis … there was no reason to anticipate that this would be a permanent freeze. I personally thought it was more important to get the right man than to get a man and I think to get somebody who - as Ranald Nicholson might have done - who churned out more old-style Scottish medieval history would have been a flag for Scottish history, but it would not have really served the cause in the long run.
TB So this was obviously - the decision not to appoint - was always one you consider yourself part of … It is not something that was imposed …
JH Oh, yes. No, Absolutely.
TB So the people who were angry about it have to be angry with you and not just …
JH … Yes…
TB So you obviously didn't then feel that this was a disaster really.
JH No. It was a disappointment, not a disaster.
TB I am just trying to remember when you stopped being Head of Department.
JH In 1970 when we went to Nigeria for a year.
TB And you never returned as Head of Department?
JH I never returned as Head of Department. We agreed at that time, and it was the same time that Psychology was doing the same, that we wanted to rotate it. It had not been done before. I had done eight years. I knew I was likely to come up for Deanship in the '70's so we appointed Peter Ramsey for seven years and I think that was the right thing to do. If you regard the Head of the Department as a head and not as a mere chairman, I think it was the right thing to do to give him a long time.
TB Right, because there was the wonderful democratic moment when we actually elected his successor, or pretty nearly anyway. It was a rather bizarre, papal kind of process. But it was an election. The one and only time it happened, certainly in our department. I don't know about the rest of the University. So, you refer to your period as Dean. So this is … in the '50s you had very little role in outside university government. You obviously have a considerable role as Head of Department - and perhaps for this stage in the interview we might end with you commenting a little bit on how things worked out when you were Dean, and how you enjoyed that period. Or what you thought were the main things going on then. This was the mid-'70s?
JH Yes, it was '73 to '76, I think, and it was the period when the storm clouds were brewing up and, looking back, I perhaps ought to have seen them and acted earlier. I didn't greatly enjoy being Dean, but I didn't hate it. I enjoyed some of the contacts it brought and I was able to speak to the Faculty and the various UGC visitations and so on. And it seemed to command a certain amount of approval. But I am not proud of it because as I said I could have seen the signs brewing up. The case which I remember, which is really typical, was the case of Italian. When the Head of Department, whose name I forget, moved on to another job …
End of Tape 2
Tape 3 Recorded on 27 March 2003
TB So John, I guess the first thing I should put on the record is my apologies that it has taken so long to set up this second session. I was shocked to see that it was a full year ago that we were speaking before …
JH It's a comment on the busy life of a modern academic. You are not retired.
TB It is partly that. But for the record, we should make it clear that there has been a year's lapse since we broke off, but we ended the first session of the interview with you about to become Dean of the Faculty in 1973, and I think the best thing would be to ask you to give us some insight into the University of Aberdeen in the very critical period of the very early '70s, from the standpoint of your memories as Dean.
JH I was warned to give some thought to this and it seemed to me that the Dean in my day, which may have been a bit different from modern Deans, had basically three responsibilities. The first and primary one, and perhaps the simplest one, was for the admission and supervision of students. There was something of a tension which has become softer nowadays, between concern for maintenance of traditional academic standards, on which many colleagues were very rigid and indeed we were bound by regulations and agreements with other universities and the desire, which we had even then, to promote access to mature students and others. And all I can say about that it was I, and Andrew Hook who was the assistant, did what we could to tip the balance in the latter direction by arranging interviews and giving waivers in cases which on paper looked deserving. And on top of the admissions there was the supervision of the advising functions and the normal disciplinary procedures and so on. I don't suppose that has changed very much but it may be carried out by different people.
There's a second sort of role I would see in co-ordinating, arbitrating, between departments, a responsibility for maintaining a sort of common view or collegiality within the Faculty. And I think in the '70s there was a consensus about what we were all about, which is probably rather different from what it is now. It would have been centred very much on undergraduate teaching and it would have been assumed that this was our main and primary responsibility, but it was going to be based in departments that the Faculty should so change its regulations as give a wide range of student choice of courses and so on, and indeed and this was the point of some controversy that it should bridge Humanities and Social Science. There was talk in my time of dividing the Faculty and majority opinion, including Social Science departments on the majority, were against that; and there was a separate MA in Social Science set up, for an Ordinary degree, which never became very popular or central. The unity of the Faculty, the unity of knowledge, was left there. Because of that the central concern was expressed in the phrase 'staff-student ratio', or 'unit of resource', because it was believed that the centre of the teaching mission of the Faculty was in personal contact and supervision with students, preferably from the first year, increasingly, onwards. It was taken for granted that staff should have facilities and encouragement for engagement in research of course, as a complement of teaching, but not necessary as a major contribution to human knowledge. There was a growing interest in developing postgraduate studies, which were not at a high level; and a lot of people were interested in introducing taught courses, and there was a steady increase, but still at a low figure, in the number of straight research students. And on top of that of course the Faculty had a keen interest in developing the library facilities; and we were just beginning to have an interest in computing facilities as well. And these were all matters which came with what I would see as a consensus role of the Dean.
The third responsibility of the Faculty was more difficult. For planning. And here I don't think we were very good. I don't think the mechanism was very good. I certainly wouldn't claim that the Dean himself was very good. The background over the years 1973 to '76 there was pressure from the Grants Committee to increase numbers to the ultimate target of ten-and-a-half thousand for the University, not for the Faculty of course. That had been reluctantly accepted by Senate even Edward Wright had hesitated and said he thought it was a bit too much. It would have amounted to a doubling of numbers but it was in still, in '73, the target which we were supposed to have in view.
TB For about when?
JH I think it was the early 1980s, but I think it was a bit elastic. Now, in 1975 and '76 we had a series of visitations in all of which I was involved, two of them actively from the Social Sciences Sub-Committee, for which my role was marginal; from the Arts Sub-Committee and from the main Committee. And there was, I think, general it would be a reasonable comment to say that there was general approval of what we were doing. There was certainly no suggestion we should be doing anything very different, plus warnings of financial tightenings to come. The expansion targets were halved, I can't remember in what year shortly after this but the climate was still to be expansion. Warnings about economy and one so-called measure of economy, which had been introduced already and which of course was met with some resentment on academic grounds, was the differential fee for overseas students. And many of us felt very strongly that we had always regarded overseas students as an enrichment of the University and now they were to be regarded as a financial resource.
TB Was that before ... I thought that was in 1976 …?
JH No, that had begun before this. I think the first fees were introduced in the late '60s … and they were very modest. They were based at £70.
TB Yes, I think on the previous tape you mentioned this and I think it was 1967, I think you said.
JH Yes that's right.
TB Yes, that's right, because the date I always think of is … because I think Shirley Williams made it when she was Education Secretary and must have made it much more substantial …
JH Yes, there were progressive increases in this, and resentment continued, but overseas students did continue to come, though not students who could have come under previous conditions … and of course they subsequently increased very considerably. Now … So we're still to plan for expansion. There is very poor planning mechanism in the University, I think it is generally agreed. With finance and resources generally centralised in the Court and very little actual money passed on the signature of the Dean or anybody in the Faculty. What did pass down to him from time to time was an allocation, an allocation of posts. It was recognised that the government of the University, the academic government of the University, was poor, and there were a series of committees, a Faculty Committee, which I chaired, and a University Committee, on which we were represented by Archie Wernham. And these concentrated very much on internal representation and democracy. The structure of Senate, Faculty, the proper conduct of departments, representation of junior members of staff, of students, of research officers, and so on. Looking back over those reports they really gave very little attention to the inefficiency of the planning mechanism. And that I think was because, in a climate of expansion, this activity worked I won't say it worked well. Departments produced wish lists of what they wanted to do, which were, I assume in all cases, well considered at a departmental level. The Faculty Planning Committee job was to put them in priority and to do this in the interest of all. We didn't apply the staff/student ratio rigorously, because we looked at the interests of small departments. We were concerned to see that a small department, which had something to contribute to the Faculty, should nevertheless be able to function as a department if it was a case of giving it a third member on top of two. But it wasn't merely … a mere matter of adoption, there was some concern about keeping the Faculty going. There had occasionally been suggestions which had come forward for new departments. Linguistics, I think, had been approved just before my time and that was the last of these. There had not been many suggestions for Faculty-based research institutes. There was the Institute for the Study of Sparsely Populated Areas …
TB … which always sounded to me as something out of a David Lodge novel!…(Laughter)
JH Very much so! And I think it was still very much in the David Lodge sort of territory in 1970! It had a director …
TB The now distinguished Lord Sewell, was it not?
JH He was not the Director, he was the one member of staff and the Director was a man called Peter Sadler, an economist. But Faculty hadn't repeated that. That was one possible research centre. There was of course around the Faculty the Medical Sociology Centre, but that was MRC-funded and was not a Faculty concern. So the structure and the habit of the Faculty did not encourage innovation outside the limits of departments, or inter-departmental schemes, and there were a number of these, including such bodies as the African Studies Group, with which I was concerned, the Scottish Studies Centre, and Defence Studies, and Nordic Studies. But these were encouraged by the voluntary efforts of scholars coming together, getting on with their own work, drawing their salaries from the departments. Perhaps if they were lucky, as African Studies and Scottish Studies eventually were, being provided with secretarial facilities and a small maintenance grant, but there was no great planning of research. Well, as I said, this worked not too badly so long as we were under conditions of growth. It was … it became clear in my time, it began to become clear, it would not work so well under conditions of financial stringency. There was the case, towards the end of my time as Dean, of Italian. You had a small department of three. Two of its members resigned. It was not a popular department with the students, there were few members, and in view of what was to follow, it would have been sensible to wind up the Department and perhaps keep the surviving member as a language teacher. There were strong pleas, not least from our dear colleague Judith Hook, who was a very distinguished Italianist in the Department of History, that this should not be done, that the Faculty of Arts ought to have provision for the study of Italian language, literature, culture and history, and that this was a case for continuing to support the small department; and that was done and it was maintained, but only for a limited period. That was just before the end of my time, nobody stopped us from doing it, but I think it indicated the switch from the expansion to the defensive mode, but it was not yet clear how serious the defence was going to have to be.
TB Would you say that, still through that period, what was the commonality, what was holding … the basis of the collegiality of the University … was through a sense of its role as a regional … historic, regional university?
JH Yes, I think I would. Regionality meant different things to different departments from a point of view of content of studies. And to many it meant a great deal, and many departments were very concerned to develop it. There was a sense that we wanted to be more than a regional university in terms of attracting students. We Jennifer Carter, Don Withrington and their colleagues were visiting widely in Scotland, across the border, we were …
TB … these were colleagues who were operating partially in History and partially in the School Liaison Department …
JH Yes, and they were others … Schools Liaison was growing. It was out to attract research students. We were very pleased to note that, in the '70s, that we became increasing attractive to students from Edinburgh and …
TB I remember there was almost in a single year, there was a sort of sea-change when suddenly from very much attracting Highland and Aberdonian and Aberdeenshire students, we suddenly had a flood from the central belt and mainly from the east-central belt. Do you know what was behind that?
JH I imagine it was some sort of push factor from Edinburgh, but I couldn't explain it.
TB Yes.
JH There was a growing trickle from England. We liked to think it was because the University was getting a good reputation as a place for undergraduate education. We were doing … fulfilling the mission reasonably well.
TB I do remember one student from Devon, I think, whom I looked at, and I said 'Why did you come to Aberdeen?' and he said, 'I looked at the list and it was as far away from my parents as I could possible get'! (Laughter)
TB … But I think he was an exception.
JH That may have been a contributory factor!
TB So, so much of what you say about the problems you saw coming up as you were Dean lead us forward into the cuts of the '80s. We must come back to that in a minute, but, when you finished your period as Dean, did you look back on it, regarding it as something reasonably successful and did you feel the Faculty was in fairly good shape, even though you were becoming conscious of possible storm clouds on horizon.
JH I think so. I don't think I thought I was the greatest Dean ever or anything like that, but yes, I thought we'd held things together pretty well, that the Faculty was still going forward, modestly, in this sort of way.
TB Were the you referred to it being the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences was there any kind of … were those tensions growing? I just remember I don't know exactly when it was, perhaps you do when the Social Sciences did become a separate faculty, there were colleagues, notwithstanding what you said before, who regarded this as a great triumphant moment for which they had been working for a long time. Frank Bealey was one of them, I recall. Was that a major problem, when you …?
JH Well, it was a problem and I knew that the political scientists and some of the economists preferred the separate faculty. But other Social Science departments, whose membership would have been essential to the Social Science Faculty, Sociology I think, wanted to stay in the Faculty. Psychology did, Education did… The Faculty voted on the matter and the minority accepted with however good a grace as they could manage.
TB So when you stopped being Dean in 1976 you say you got a sense that the expansion is being cut down, although it's still expansion, I mean, did you have any kind of remote conception that the crisis of the '80s that we did face in the '80s might be going to come. Or did you basically feel that this was a blip and the rest of the success would be resumed after the economic problems were overcome?
JH Remotely, you could say a remote conception, yes I think probably remotely I did feel the claims of universities on the Exchequer were not going to continue exponentially, and there would be some sort of check to expansion, but I certainly didn't foresee the scale of it.
TB You were still an active member of the Labour Party, weren't you?
JH Yes. Not desperately, and we moved out to Banchory in 1977 and this is not a great centre of socialist activity! (Laughter)
TB There was an argument about whether the Labour Party was a great centre of socialist activity! But I am saying that because the year you ceased to be Dean is the year that Callaghan makes 'the party's over speech', or maybe it was Crosland used that phrase but they both make similar speeches …
JH … one was aware of that …
TB … And these have been turbulent times. While you were a Dean, a Tory government is unseated by the miners and it's … it seems to me that one thing that happens in the early '80s is that 'the universities' has become part of the political agenda, and I think this is perhaps a sea-change in post-war university history in a way in which they had been rather remote before commenting on all of these things rather than being involved themselves. I don't know whether you had a sense of that.
JH No … I think that is true. I mean, I suppose Robbins is the beginning of the sea-change. Both, of course, … it presents a public argument for the advancement in university education as a public good, indeed a public necessity, and secondly because it carries such heavy financial implications. It was only a matter of time before it would become controversial.
TB And was there any debate within university circles, or in any way you were involved which saw the mid-'70s as a rather premature … attack at least on the Robbins, conception or was the business about the Robbins era as being short-lived … Does that kind of rhetoric come later, do you think?
JH I don't recall that being voiced at this time.
TB That's my sense, because I know when we organised opposition to the cuts in '81, we were talking about the attack on the Robbins principle. My sense was that it wasn't seen as a great policy change. So, were you quite pleased when your period as Dean was over? You can't have got much done in the way of research and such in that period?
JH No … I was pleased. I had a period of sabbatical leave and a trip to Africa, as the result of which I began on the third volume of the major work I had been doing and did other things as well. I felt I'd done a reasonable whack of administrative duty in the Department and in the Faculty and when the question of headship of the Department came up … now you may remember aspects of this, which I don't really clearly, but my feeling was that I didn't particularly want to become Head of Department again, that it would be an extremely good thing if for the first time in the professorial department there could be a non-professorial head and that there was more than one candidate who could do the job admirable.
TB Not only did we get a non-professorial head, we got more or less an elected head! Laughter)
JH I don't recall … I remember some controversy about this, the mistrust in some quarters of the electoral principle. You may have the constitutional details …!
TB No … it was obviously kept as an advisory level. It was very complex … I mean Doreen Milne devised the process, I recall, certainly ran it, as a kind of senior member who wasn't a candidate. It had this curious principle of voting for somebody and against somebody. You had a choice to, sort of, veto somebody as well as voting positively. That is the main thing I remember about it. But I mean, I haven't checked up on this, but this may well be unique in the history of the University that we got rather close to the American principle of some American institutions anyway of electing a chair of the Department. It certainly came up with someone I thought was excellent for the period, although I thought Roy [Bridges] was very much better in that period than he was in trying to make the enormous changes that we were called upon to make later. And Jennifer Carter, who was the other candidate, might have been better at the latter job, I think, than Roy was. Anyway, these are my views. So, what is your recollection of re-entering as a teacher into the Department? I know we certainly got to a very turbulent period when there was a great deal of argument, and so on. I can't personally remember the chronology exactly. How do you recall the period … between your Deanship and, well, your early retirement, I suppose?
JH Not with enormous clarity. I remember it as perhaps the least happy period in internal history of the Department. There were strong personalities who had views as to how the course should go. There were particularly strong disagreements about examinations. There were partisans of a complete system of continuous assessment, which I thought would be disastrous, and …
TB … Paul Dukes was particularly keen on that …
JH … Paul Dukes was particularly eager for that. I was, I suppose, initially, a conservative in these terms, but came round to see mixed assessment in some form as desirable, and I would have preferred to go further than they actually did at that time. I had been examining in particular at York as an external, where they'd got an interesting system, I'd been impressed by that, so eventually we got some sort of consensus there.
TB We had moved away by that time from a final system that actually examined first and second year work. I don't remember when we exactly moved away from that.
JH We retained a ….
TB We were just discussing assessment, John, in particularly from the standpoint of the late '70s when you were back in the Department after your period as Dean. I was commenting, when I first came in the late '60s, what seemed to me so horrific was that, in the finals system, there was involved what was it? nine papers or ten even.
JH I think it may have been nine.
TB And one of those was a General Paper, but one was a paper that covered British and European history and referred back to the first and second year work the students had done and very often my impression was that, on this, very able students just fell down in being able to get a mark on it; and I think that in those early years there were a number of people, who were surely first-class candidates, who just didn't manage to get Firsts in our Department. Perhaps we don't put on the record any particular names, but I remember that it was very difficult and we're discussing this from the point of view of the changes that were made in the late '70s.
JH Yes, I would agree with you about the difficulty of getting first-class honours, and looking back, I mean, I think, our department and many others in those days were excessively jealous of the standard of the first-class degree. Whereas nowadays people regard it as matter of shame if you don't get a lot of first-class degrees, I am told, I think in those days there was a culture in which if you did get a lot of first-class degrees, there was an assumption there was something wrong with the rigour of your standards. I am sure in fact, as you say, there were people of first-class quality who went away with an upper second.
TB In the late '70s, though, it is the assessment question you recall as being the most divisive issue in the Department. This is before we are dealing with the really major cuts, of course. We're in the 'storm clouds on the horizon' period.
JH That's what I recall. We also, I think, engaged in the discussion of the syllabus, and I remember, I think it was shortly before the cuts, making an effort as an elder statesman, or old fogey, to put forward some other suggestions, and I seem to recall on one occasion we had a get together in this room [in the Hargreaves' Banchory home] which seemed to bring the possibility of a certain amount of consensus as to where we might go. Though that was shortly to be upset by questions of who was going to be going!
TB Right. The meeting I remember was on the 'Common Course'.
JH Yes, that was it.
TB That's the one you were remembering as well. Well, that's a bit later, I think … there might have been another meeting. When you say 'who was going to go', do you mean … were you contemplating the idea that you would encourage certain areas to be disinvested in … as the current phrase is?
JH No, I don't mean in that sense. I don't I wasn't contemplating getting rid of particular areas. Since we were clearly not going to be getting many new posts, the possibility was always there that if Mr. X moved on, that we might not replace him by as we didn't replace John Hiden by a Germanist … I am not sure who we did replace him by but we would not automatically do the same. Nor were we contemplating telling John Hiden that he ought to be teaching medieval Italy!
TB I do remember a moment I am not sure when this would be but this was in the Taylor Building, when you said at a meeting that it might be useful if we sat round and decided what our Department, rationally, would be like if we had, I have forgotten how many we had at that time, but you know … if we were only a department of seven or eight or something, when we were actually about … I don't know.
JH Did I really?
TB Yes, I do remember. I don't know when it was, because Judith [Hook] and I fell upon you with great anger and said it wasn't our job to be planning to cut ourselves out of our jobs, but fighting to carry on the expansion really!
JH Well, I must have been more perspicacious than I thought!
TB When exactly that was, I can't remember.
JH I certainly didn't envisage …
TB But you did, on one occasion and this would be on into the '80's now, I think you wrote a 'Don's Diary' in The Higher. Do you remember this incident, which brought you into conflict with Bill … Bill Scott?
JH I have forgotten what it was about! I remember writing the 'Don's Diary', but …
TB We had had one of our most unproductive, probably, Departmental meetings and you devoted a section of it at least to say how frustrated you were with your colleagues, who wouldn't contemplate anything but defence of all they held dear and wouldn't look towards rational planning of the future. Something of that sort … obviously, you could check that.
JH I was not always at my sweetest and best after a departmental meeting! (Laughter)
TB Because Bill then wrote in I remember trying to restrain him, actually, which may seem odd for me Bill wrote a response pointing to all the very innovative things we'd discussed at this meeting, but the matter then rested. I have forgotten exactly when that was. Well, possibly the next key moment is the point at which … unless you can think of anything else about the late '70s … but the point at which, in 1981, isn't it?, we all returned from the summer vacation, having been assured by Fraser Noble that whatever the Tory government had in mind for the universities, they wouldn't do any damage to the University of Aberdeen. And we came back to a template about exactly where cuts were going to fall. What's you recollection of all that business?
JH Well, obviously my first reaction was one of horror. I'm not sure about the chronology but the notice of the cuts what was obviously going to be a very damaging cut came first. The template came afterwards. And I suppose what was in my mind, initially, was, 'How on earth do we resist this, given that there was clearly a government committed to economies in a great number of fields, and this is an obvious one.' And given that, as we were pointed out, that, on objective criteria, Aberdeen University had not been badly treated by the University Grants Committee. In the '70s, they had wanted us to expand it had been a place where they thought they could expand cheaply they had given us money for expansion which was not going to take place. So I was not one whose first reaction was to say: 'Not penny off the pay. Not a minute on the day!'
TB You are probably one of the few who would have thought about it in those metaphorical terms!…
JH … and I looked at Fraser Noble's template …
TB … Fraser Noble was the Principal by this time.
JH Yes, he was the Principal. He produced this template and it suggested in effect reductions from every department, and it suggested a reduction of three posts for the History Department. If you accepted the arithmetic, I think the template was not an unjust document. … Fraser Noble was a man who set out to be fair and just, above all. And I think he burnt the midnight oil over this. So … and in any case it would not have been a constructive attitude to say, 'Well, we have got to have cuts, but not in the History Department.' It would have been divisive within the university community. And this was the stage to which I'd got when Roddy Begg, I think …
TB … Roddy Begg was Deputy Secretary he went on to become Secretary of the University.
JH Yes. Roddy Begg came and said the scheme does provide a system for honourable retirement for those over a certain age, and it happens in the History Department that there are three people over that age. It so happens that one of them is a medievalist, Leslie Macfarlane, who indeed was past retiring age, I think …
TB Past the normal, but he would have been on a 70 contract, wouldn't he?
JH He was very near to 70.
TB Was actually as near to 70? Right.
JH Yes, he was very near it. He was 10 years older than I was, so he was possibly 68. Doreen Milne, an early modernist. And a later modernist, myself. And before that time I had never thought … retirement had not been a word that had occurred to me. I had a contract which let me go on till 70. I thought that might be rather a long time, but hadn't thought of retirement. So it was put to me, in a sense … as a matter of, we're not twisting your arm, but it might be a matter of public spirit, it might safeguard your colleagues from a good deal of pain, if you accepted it. The alternative, if you accepted the logic of cuts having to be imposed as there was no money to pay …, the alternative was to go round and say that A, B and C are most expendable of this Department. That seemed to me the choice. But the notion of dying in the ditch to stop the cuts did not seem to me likely to be profitable. So, weighing it up, I accepted those terms, and I did very well; they were very generous terms; and I feel, in view of what has happened since … I never regretted having accepted them. I had three years re-engagement, which enabled me to get my research students through and wind down my teaching. This enabled me to disengage a little from the Departmental meetings. They were three very agreeable years from a personal point of view, if not from the point of view of University life.
TB Before carrying forward your personal decision and its impact on your life, just to go back to the cuts for a minute. I mean I don't want to … I was very much a partisan because the university matters had become so public, my interests were converging at that point, but I do recall that you played a considerable role in the History Department in and I think not entirely unsuccessfully in combating the cuts, and I am just wondering what your memories of that are? We had a departmental meeting, we did two things. We put on a series of seminars about the history of the University, or of universities; and, certainly, Judith Hook and I through the AUT were very instrumental in organising a 'Teach-in', which in part arose out of a campaign that we had in The Higher anyway we had a letter to The Higher, I remember … But I am saying too much. Do you remember having any sympathy for these activities? How do you remember that …?
JH Oh, yes, I do. I mean I engaged in the seminar, not sure if I was active in the Teach-in. But what I did do in one of my remaining hats … or capacities … was with Jennifer Carter to organise a series of public lectures on the University since 1945, which were published as part of the Quincentenary history.
TB Perhaps that had a role in the form that that took, I don't know? Because the decision, when it came to the Quincentenary history to publish them in the form of the fascicles, or whatever we called them …
JH No, I think that had already been decided, to go for fascicles. And indeed one … it wasn't the first one, it was the second, but …
TB And, also for the record, you say there was no point in 'dying in a ditch' against the cuts, [and] it's true that the national policy wasn't reversed. But I think two things did happen. One, the AUT did successfully fend off compulsory redundancy. Assuredly the Government had in mind that universities should become more to such a concept. And, secondly, within the University, my recollection is that it turned out that the arithmetic was quite wrong or was not entirely correct at least; that some of the early retirements did it not subsequently transpire? could have been avoided if the sums had been done more accurately?
JH I don't know about that. I was doing, probably … doing less arithmetic than I would have done if I hadn't opted out, but it was certainly … but whether that could have been avoided, looking at the state of the University as a whole, whether staving off a few cuts in '82 would have avoided the problems that led to later cuts, seems to me a bit doubtful.
TB No, I am not suggesting for a moment that, but just … trying to think back to the period really from the point of view of what I was doing … So … But this is an unexpectedly sudden moment for you, and really a life-changing decision in a sense, that you decide to devote the rest of your career because you are not ending your career by any manner of means to operating from outside the University essentially, and the deal was sufficient to make that financially viable for you.
JH No, it was obviously a very important decision. I perhaps ought to have made it a more important decision. I ought perhaps to have considered if there was anything I could do with my gratuity to found a new career, etc., etc. But no, as far as I was concerned, I had begun to … I had got … the third volume of my 'Partition' book was almost ready, but it was completed during the transitional period. I had begun to work on decolonisation and had things, work I wanted to do. I was getting invitations from around the world to take part in colloquia and conferences and so on which I was pleased to accept, so I assumed that I would carry on doing the sort of things I'd formerly done, under less pressure and gradually begin to do other things as well. I had family problems at that time too, to which I was glad to have more time to devote attention. So yes, it was certainly a turning point in my life, but I didn't sit down and consider all possible alternative, alternative courses.
TB You didn't regard it any sense as a moment of I don't mean in an intensely personal way but as a moment of failure, given that in '62 you get the Burnett-Fletcher Chair, this is a moment of expansion, you are looking forward to the ideas of the '60s being fulfilled and you having a key role in it at one university as you said, the Robbins principle, the essential necessity of change, a much more broadly based elite, all that sort of thing … You didn't see it as a moment for some kind of depression about a vision that you had once had, that was shattered as it were, was being brought to an end.
JH I was very depressed about what was happening to the universities, in the general respect of the Robbins vision, in the general respect of the idea of a humane education; and there were personal losses, which I was sad about too. No, I didn't become a disgruntled old man. I felt I'd had … I'd had twenty years when I'd been reasonably effective in what I wanted to do, whether you agreed with it or not.
TB Right. So, yes. Perhaps what structures the last part of the story is your, in a sense, your movement back into very much more focused attention to African studies as the core of your academic career when you were out of University administration. But one thing that occurs to me is you were out of the administration but what was your reaction when to become extremely controversial Principal McNicol, arrived towards the end of your career. You'd worked under three principals? … Edward Wright, Fraser Noble …
JH And Taylor before that.
TB Of course, Taylor …
JH … but not as a Professor. He appointed me a professor and then died.
TB So you didn't know him for very long presumably.
JH I did know him, but not closely.
TB And Fraser Noble has been a colleague … in Economics was it?
JH Yes.
TB Have you thoughts about the McNicol period? You're moving out of things by that time. Partly in comparison with previous principals and of course McNicol has a big story in the modern history of the institution.
JH I don't know. I recorded a number of interviews with people and have spoken about McNicol and I don't know I ought to add much to it. Two very obvious reactions. One, I knew that McNicol had a or whoever was Principal had an extremely difficult and unpalatable job to do, and it was decent to hold back on criticism on particular points …
TB … He arrived as Principal almost contemporaneously with the cuts.
JH Yes, yes. Two, he didn't seem to me, to have the personality to make these decision, to consult on these decisions, to obtain any sort of consensus, which it might have been, who knows, difficult enough to do, and then to implement them. I thought he was not a good manager of people.
TB And because your relationships with the previous principals had been … I am not saying … Presumably you didn't have very close relationships with McNicol.
JH No, no.
TB But unlike what you are saying about him, your relationships, in your view, with previous principals had been fairly positive?
JH Yes… I got on happily with both of them. Edward Wright's great strength was in his sensitivity to student opinion, through what was a difficult time, and the way … that related to his long service in Aberdeen, and his sense of an Aberdeen way of doing things, and I thought he did that well. Whether he there is a question as to whether he too readily accepted the UGC requests about expansion and jumped on board. I thin that's an open question, but I didn't align myself with Reg Jones at the time in opposing expansion. I thought expansion was a good thing, but I am not certain it was done in the best way. Fraser Noble, as a friend, I thought he'd a great mistake in coming back to Aberdeen because I think he was already, I think, a bit tired. But a thoroughly decent fellow … thoroughly decent man, I thought.
TB He came back as Principal. He had been away for a period.
JH Yes, he'd been Principal at Leicester, and people thought he'd been a big figure in the University Grants Committee he would be a great, dynamic figure. He wasn't that. I didn't support him as … when they wanted an opinion for Principal, I didn't support him. I supported another figure altogether, who never became a vice-chancellor at all.
TB Is it possible to say who? It might help for counter-factual history!
JH Well it was a man called Robin Kay, who was the Assistant Secretary with the Royal Society, thought I knew him through African connections.
TB Right. Well, OK. Well, is there anything from the period up to your retirement that you feel that should go on tape? We should repeat that there is your memoir that is going to rest alongside these tapes, and the record of them, in which you cover some of what we have talked about, but goes into more detail about a number of aspects of things and doesn't cover some of the other things we have talked about. But is there anything you feel that we haven't spoken about in the period up to the early '80s?
JH I don't think so. I think these were the big issues.
TB So, I think to complete the story … I mean, it would be very interesting and helpful to have your thoughts on the last 20 years really, and since it is although something very close to a life story we are talking about it is focused very much on the University, your academic life, your academic activity. The kind of thing that one would structure that around would be your continuing contribution to African studies, your views of how African studies have developed, in a period of course where Africa itself has enormously changed and particularly southern Africa. So how do you feel? What has it been like over this last 20 years from this sort point of view?…
TB We just have a slight hiatus there, because John, Professor Hargreaves, in his enthusiasm for African studies disengaged his microphone …
TB … So we are resuming now and talking about African Studies over the last 20 years and John's part in them.
JH I suppose that [the hiatus] might be held as a small parable of what seemed to be happening to African studies in the 1980s. There are a number of things, which meant there was going to be a change and a setback, I think. Because in the '70s in the '60s even more, it persisted into the '70s, there has been great enthusiasm. Both that African studies could add to human knowledge in a number of fields, in social, environmental and historical studies; and also enthusiasm about the long-term future of Africa. Well, the enthusiasm about the long-term future of Africa was certainly diminishing as it became clear that the economic and political consequences of independence were not going to be so golden as they'd appeared. And I don't want to … This is not the time to go into that. And of course it was the failures, the basket cases, which attracted attention, and the new initiatives where they existed tended to get ignored. There was also within Africa, within the academic world, a shift of interest from colonial Africa to South Africa, to southern Africa. It was noticeable from the job-market point of view in the United States, where they had been a great, a rapid, expansion in African history posts, by the '80s it was only southern Africanists that people were interested in hiring and it was in this region of course that there was most political interest because of the increasing Cold War involvement, Kissinger strategy, the involvement of Cuba said to be a surrogate of the Communists … on the other hand, and so on. Internally, within the world of African history, there was also a shift of interest going on. My original interest and that of a great many others had been in politics in a very broad sense, in asserting the existence of African political systems, African regimes which were capable of behaving rationally and constructively in terms of their own history…
Start of tape 4
TB We are at the point where John is talking about his involvement in African studies in the period since his retirement in the early 1980s. So if we could just carry on as well as possible from where we were …
JH In the '50s and '60s historians of Africa had tended to regard it as being rather impure and improper to interest themselves in colonial history as such. This was old-fashioned most of the historiography still seems old-fashioned and it was also seen as an old-fashioned focus of interest. With the witness of independent states, in a sense it threw much more light back on the colonial heritage, which was much more complex and multi-faceted, I think, than people had understood. The first generation had emphasised … had wanted to emphasise the continuities of African history. I think it was also becoming important to emphasise the continuity of colonial history. I myself registered this, I think, when I decided to follow up the work on 'the partition' with work on the period of decolonisation, which was not to be seen simply as a study of heroic nationalism, but of an interaction between those we can call the nationalists and their former rulers and a changing international situation. So that was changing and it was moving away … changing the focus of African political history. Parallel to it there was a good deal, a great deal of interest in the economics of colonialism and decolonisation which in the '70s and '80s, I think, was becoming very much tied up and obscured, from an Africanist point of view, by global debates about underdevelopment, and so on, which did not always regard the complexity of African economic life, how African communities made their living and subsisted, as very important. And the younger generation of historians were anxious to shift from the form of political and economic emphases to cultural, social and increasingly, environmental topics.
TB Yes.
JH And these were, supremely, topics, I think, which could best be studied within Africa, not necessarily by Africans, but by people very deeply involved in those societies.
TB Right, I see what you mean.
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