| Description | Interview with Mr W. Nelson, former Finance Officer of Aberdeen University. Fifth interview recorded on 26 March 1985 by Dorothy Johnson.
Transcript of Interview :
J I wonder of you would like to, in speaking of the contribution of the lay members, comment on how people like Dr Ross and Dr Milne viewed the University. Did they see their involvement there as being rather different from that of any business committee they may have been on? Did they have some sort of idea of higher education that you could see?
N I might mention first of all that the Doctors to whom you refer, like Dr Ross and Dr Milne, were Doctors because they were given honorary degrees by the University in recognition of their services to the University - they were not medical doctors. The answer to your question is that I think not that they had an interest in education as such, or that they had general views on how universities should educate, but the outside business men tended to be forceful characters who ran their own business in autocratic fashion and they therefore tended to have subjects they were very keen on. Dr Ross, for example, was very interested in mental health and it was he who was the man who was the driving force behind the setting up of the Department of Mental Health: Professor Millar. I think that what you might call a sectional interest in education was the sort of thing that tended to move the minds of the businessmen on Court.
J Can I side track you there for a moment about this particular issue of mental health? When you say that Dr Ross was the driving force, do you mean that the suggestion was made by him, that he took the initiative in this affair?
N Yes. So far as I can remember, and it is hard to think back years and years ago, I think that the need for Aberdeen University to increase its Mental Health, its Psychology (not Sociology, because that hadn't come up over the horizon yet) - the strengthening of the whole of the University's Psychology activities - was first raised by Dr Ross at Court meetings.
J Was this kind of thing that members of Court like Dr Ross would do?
N Yes.
J So it didn't come from Senatus to Court? In this case it actually originated in Court?
N This is my recollection but, as I say, it is hard to think back and be sure of the facts. Very often, I think it would be a combination of both. There was a move in the Senate and some particular members of the Court would push that move. Normally academic developments were raised by professors who were members of the Court, but sometimes the drive came from the businessmen.
J You mentioned that these were sectional interests. Did Dr Milne have any association with any other particular interest?
N He was really interested in what one might call the strictly business attitude and activities of the University. He for many years was Convenor of what was then called the Wages Committee - I think it is now called the Personnel Committee - and, in other words, everything including negotiations with trades union representatives on the wages or salaries of non-academic staff, what is to say the technicians, secretaries, cleaners, etc. Dr Milne took a most active, in fact almost violent, interest in these matters, and I think, so far as one could control Dr Milne, one had to try to exercise some control.
J In the present political climate, we are getting quite used to the universities more or less being attacked for increasing divides between the business community of the country and the academic community, that courses at universities are not sufficiently practical or related to the growth areas of industry in the country. Were you ever aware of the businessmen at Court feeling that things that happened in the University were rather airy-fairy and irrelevant?
N Of course you are now touching on a much wider issues. To what extent ought universities to go in for direct relationships with business, to what extent should they tailor their academic courses to fit people to take up posts in business, or to what extent should they do the very opposite which was always in the past the academic goal: to train minds, not in specific knowledge that they required but in the ability to think, the ability to analyse a problem, whatever it was, and therefore to make them suitable material to be either academics or to go into business. To what extent, in other words, did you train a person for a job, or did you train him to think? It doesn't follow that those two things are different, but the emphasis could be different and there are some universities, for example Salford, who are now praised by some but attacked by others who say that they have quite distorted their academic balance, that they had tied themselves to industry far too much and that Salford, which was always a rather vulnerable university in that it wasn't really accepted as quite having the grade, is now on a quite different score equally liable to see itself shut down. My own feeling, for what it is worth, is to at least sympathise with the old view that you are trying to train a type of mind rather than to teach that mind a specific job.
J Was this something that would ever have been raised at a meeting, say, of Court?
N Not that I can remember. As I say, I have got to say once again that I have been out of the University for ten years and I don't now know what the climate is. I do know of course that the constitution of the Court, that is to say the make-up of it, the people who are on it, is all very different form my day.
J Well, I think we can move on now to consider a couple of the other individuals who were on Court, continuing our last discussion: a couple of the academics, now. Professor Mackinnon, was he somebody who you would have any particular comments to make about?
N You may have noticed that I have started to grin. [J laughs] Professor Mackinnon was a most able and gifted man. He had a tremendous brain and, as you will probably remember, he left Aberdeen University to go to a Chair of Divinity in Cambridge, which I have no doubt he occupied with as much distinction as he occupied his Chair of Moral Philosophy here. But he was a most extraordinary character. If there ever was the absent-minded professor, that was Professor Mackinnon. The stories about him are legion. There was, for example, the occasion of his new trousers, which was a very famous incident. He had always been extremely sloppily dressed, any old thing thrown on would do so long as it kept him warm, he had no idea what he looked like, but he only possessed one pair of trousers and his wife had been badgering him for ages to go and buy a second pair of trousers. So one day, under wifely pressure and without telling her he was going to buy new trousers, he went out and bought a pair. This was during the morning, and then at lunchtime he went home with his new trousers and took the old ones off and laid them on his bed and put the new trousers on and went back to the office, his wife all this time being out. She came home, saw the old trousers lying on the bed, knew nothing about his activities of the morning, rang up in desperation: 'Stop my husband for heaven's sake he's gone out without his trousers on'.
J And this was a story that everybody would have believed of him, is it?
N It is true, This wasn't made up.
J Was he actually on Court?
N Yes.
J What would his contribution there have been like?
N Most of the time, very little. But when he did speak, he spoke very much to the point. He had a first-class brain.
J Was he somebody who didn't get involved in administration more than he had to?
N This was not his line, administration. His line was all mental, just all brainpower. I can remember once sitting behind him on an Aberdeen bus and he was clearly wrestling with some enormous problem, because he was shifting about in his seat and rolling his head and everyone on the bus was staring at him, wondering whether he was a lunatic who had escaped, or what. Then at last his problems became too much for him because he called out in what in Bible reading days would have been called 'a great voice': 'MY GOD, MY GOD, WHAT SHALL I DO?' He was definitely a character.
J I can understand that. Another person of whom stories are told is Professor Lockhart. Was he somebody you would have come across?
N Oh, yes, he was a formidable member of the Court for many years. But he was not in the least bit like Professor Mackinnon who was in many ways up in the clouds. Professor Lockhart was very much down to earth and he was the Curator of the Museum which was lodged in his department - the Anthropological Museum. He was very forthright and a grand fighter. In many ways he was a bit like Dr Butchart - keep clear or you will get your shins hacked.
J Did his custody of the Anthropological Museum ever come up as an issue?
N Oh, often. He was very anxious that more money should be put into it. The Museum was, I think by common consent in those days, pretty antiquated and very much needing revision. This wasn't merely the view of Professor Lockhart but it was generally accepted, just as the University pictures were regarded as a neglected area. The Anthropological Museum tended to be the same, but to put that right needed money in a big way. I believe that the Anthropological Museum has now been very much reformed. [J affirms] but it was that kind of reformation that Professor Lockhart was always pressing for and never being able to achieve.
J I can understand that he would press for that. From whom would pressure have come bout the University pictures?
N To do something about it?
J Yes.
N No one. It was an accepted area of neglect, that nobody really got round to getting their teeth into. There was an occasion when the wife of Dr Angus was made, I think she was called, Curator of the Pictures, but that was only a temporary appointment and it wasn't a very happy appointment either, it was fairly rapidly terminated. And the very fact that there had been a Curator who had … well really, while she was an excellent artist she was somewhat abrasive and it tended to have and after-effect of increased neglect of the University pictures.
J One or two other names we didn't have time to cover before: Professor Walton, of Geography.
N He was a very nice man. And very easy to get on with. He was perhaps a little too easy in that it was more easy to persuade him than perhaps it ought to have been when he was the Convenor and one was merely the Clerk to the Committee. But he was very co-operative and in his own particular way, he was businesslike. My main contact with him was when he was Convenor of the Equipment and Materials Subcommittee of the Finance Committee which he ran for many years and ran very successfully.
J Do you think he could be assumed to a great extent to be responsible for the fact the Geography got a new building at a time when new buildings were less easy to come by?
N I remember when Professor GM Burnett, who is another person I don't think we have spoken about - I think we might - when he was convening some committee that affected money (he was Professor of Chemistry), I remember him saying with a grin (he had quite a good sense of humour), 'Well, I know one department hat will be well looked after in this matter and that's the department of Chemistry'. So I think that for the particular department of an academic Convenor to do well is really almost universal, without suggesting that it is corrupt or anything like that; it is just that the virtues of that department's case are so well known to the professor, since it's he who is advancing it, that it is all the more easily accepted.
J There are a couple of other names of people who are still very much around, and one is Mr Morrison who, although he is now retired, continues to edit the Review. He is somebody with whom you must have had contacts over the years.
N Quite a lot. And I found him a most reasonable and balanced person to deal with. I can't remember ever hearing him talk nonsense. One usually hears everybody talk nonsense on at least one occasion, but I can never remember Mr Morrison doing so. He was a very nice man, too.
J What about Sir David Campbell?
N Sir David was a most distinguished man in his own right. He wouldn't otherwise have been knighted. He was, if I remember rightly, knighted for his chairmanship of - was the BMA? I can't remember, but for years he was Chairman of one of the top medical bodies in Britain and he was certainly one of the great medical powers in Britain. Around the University the impression I got was that he tended to be restrictive rather than formative, and that his interest was rather in developing the departments and the medical interests that already existed than in setting up or developing new ones, but that it may be unfair. He tended to have that kind of manner and look hat you would think that he tended to be what in slang terms might be called 'stuffy', but that; probably not fair. If he had been that he wouldn't have remained Chairman of Britain's top medical committee for as long as he did.
J Despite he outside activities, he remained quite active locally?
N On the Court, you mean?
J Yes.
N Oh, very. While he was on the Court he was certainly one of its leading members.
J Again in the medical sphere, I am not sure now whether Matthew Hay would have been rather before your time?
N He would have been before my time and I never knew him. I never knew anything of him except that I knew the name as a very distinguished man.
J What about Sir Dugald Baird?
N I must declare an interest here because I didn't like Sir Dugald. I don't mean personally, he was a great humorist, he had got an enormous sense of humour, and if he was a member of a lunch party he kept the whole things in fits of laughter with his wry stories - he had got a great fund of comic stories - but I never take to men who don't face you. While I have no particular interest in the subject, there was a time when the abortion issue was very much public one before the present abortion laws were passed, and they were very largely the creation and the interest of Sir Dugald who was the main pro-abortion academic in the country, I think that's quite a fair statement; and his grounds for holding that view were no doubt entirely sound, they are the grounds that have been accepted in the present abortion legislation. Nevertheless, though not in any way a medic and knowing nothing about these things technically, as an ignoramus it seemed to me that in abortion you were not killing that perhaps rather conveniently called thing, the foetus which would change into a child later - you were killing a child. Now, there is no objection to killing children. We kill them for all kinds of reasons if we think there is justification - we allow them to be killed in large numbers in accidents on the roads; when war takes place we accept that many children will be killed; there is no objection to killing children if one is satisfied on the overriding justification that involves children being casualties. But it seems to me that the argument that a foetus changed into a child at some particular named date is a fallacy. A child is a child from the moment of conception, and the fact that is tiny and microscopic is immaterial. After all, Sir Dugald Baird himself is a very large man, to us as we looked at him, but he wouldn't have been large to an elephant but that didn't in any way reduce his distinction. He was a man of extreme distinction, and size is therefore irrelevant. I wrote to the local papers putting forward these views and Sir Dugald never replied he got Professor Millar to instead. Now I never take to that. But, as I say, it is only right that I should declare what I might call an anti-interest.
J Did you ever meet him after that incident and tackle him personally with it?
N No. He took good care to give me no chance, which again I didn't like.
J Was this something that surprised you?
N No, I knew Sir Dugald. I knew that was how the game was played. But I don't want to be unfair to Sir Dugald. He was a man of extreme distinction and, as I say, terribly funny; he was a humorist.
J Returning to his contribution on Court, was he someone who was very sectional in his interests and his activities?
N Everybody tends to be sectional in the thing they do, and he was distinguished medical man, so the things that he brought up or spoke to were normally medical ones, but he was a well-balanced man, how made very useful contributions on all sorts of subjects, and a very active one: people on the Court always listened when he was speaking. Some people, it doesn't matter how much they talk, nobody listens. But he wasn't one of those.
J Another man who has obviously left a great reputation is Maurice Cramb.
N I worked with Dr Cramb, who again is Dr because it was an honorary degree given to him by the University. He was somebody who probably - when I say 'somebody', I mean a businessman - worked harder than anybody else on the Court. I know that because he was for many years the Convenor of the Finance Committee itself and therefore I worked with him very closely. His predecessor had been Sir William Scott-Brown who was a very nice man, a well-balanced man, but probably really less able than Dr Cramb was. Dr Cramb was in every way totally devoted to the University and to his duties, and I was always very unhappy about the amount of time which he gave to the University because he was a practising lawyer in a quite small firm, of which he was the senior partner, and he more or less ran that firm, and every minute he gave to University business was at his own cost; and I think he was an outstanding example of how businessmen should not be allowed to overuse themselves on University affairs. All done from the best of motives but it ended really be being too much, and at too much financial cost to himself.
J Can you think of any particular areas where we should associate developments in the University with Dr Cramb's advice and experience?
N No, I think that his advice and activities were really all-round and, as I say, they were very great. I always felt that to some extent he had some measure of raw deals in the University, I don't think that he was really appreciated in the way that he should have been. I know he was given an honorary degree, but he was rather taken for granted.
J Was there any particular reason for that? Was he just a diffident man?
N Well, he was a quiet man. Unlike so many other men [laughs] who have done a lot for the University, he never pushed himself, he just did his job. So he tended, as I say, to be taken for granted.
J So his personality was not of that abrasive kind?
N No, not at all. The abrasive one tended to be those who were noticed, because you can't help it.
J His period of involvement coincided with the period when the University acquired a great deal of property. As a lawyer was this something that he advised on? Was he on the conveyancing side?
N No, he wasn't. His activity really was restricted to being Convenor - a most hard working Convenor - of Finance Committee. The property side was, as of course you know, all dealt with by the Edilis Committee of which Principal Wright during that period was the Convenor himself.
J One or two other names also associated with Court. I wonder about Councillor McGee who has had a long association with the University?
N He was a bit of a character, but he was also a bit of a poseur and a show-off. Like all the Local Authority representatives, he didn't attend the court often, but when he came it was usually to raise some specific issue. But if you discounted the flamboyancy and the 'look at me' kind of attitude that tended to go with Councillor McGee, what he was saying was nearly always right and he was sound in his grasp of things that were wrong and were increasingly going wrong and needed to be put right.
J Is there anyone else from the Town side that you can particularly recall?
N No, the Town people tended to take a small part in University activities. They regarded their attendance really as rather nominal.
J What about Professor Graham, John N. Graham, who I think attended in his capacity from the Town?
N Yes, Professor Graham was an exception to what I have just said, because he was a University professor who became Provost of Aberdeen and this was quite exceptional and it was a very useful cross-fertilisation between the Town and the University. During Professor Graham's charge of the City - I think he was Provost twice, there was a gap between - the contact between the Town and the University was very good.
J So that was helpful?
N It was.
J And another lay-member of the Court, who is still active is Dr Harold Watt. Did he come on to the Court after you finished your active role?
N Oh, no. He had been on the Court for a number of years before I retired. He really came in via the General Council, he was a General Council Assessor, and he had been Convenor of the Business Committee of the General Council for many years and really the driving force on the Business Committee. He tended not to take any sectional interest but to take overall academic interest. He did advise most usefully, and he was brought in in order to do so, and on a number of occasions on matters concerning printing, which of course is his business.
J We haven't as yet discussed any of the women members of the Court and there are four that I can think of. I wonder if we can perhaps run through their names.
N Before we deal with names, I would like to refer to women in general. I have always felt that all universities, the universities in Britain, and certainly Aberdeen University is backward in the extent to which it puts women into top positions. No we know of course that there are unavoidable activities of women - marriage, having children and things like that - which interrupt their careers and perhaps at a time when they ought to be carrying out their most active research, which is always an essential element before one reaches the top, but stopping somewhere short of it. But leaving that on one side, I have always had the strong impression that at least Aberdeen University is far behind certain professions. If one takes the Accountancy profession or the Law profession, you will always find that quite a substantial number of the partners are women, and women in their own right on merit, but the universities have always seemed to lag in their promotion of the final ultimate interests of women. But you wanted to speak about specific ones…
J As you raised this, can I ask you, apart from the questions of marriage and children, can you think of any explanation? In observing women in the University in their careers, do you think there is anything that they tended to do which did them down in the promotion stakes? Were they perhaps not active enough in…
N Maybe the weren't active enough or it may have been that they wanted to stop short of the top, that they were perfectly satisfied with becoming a Lecturer or a Senior Lecturer and didn't really want to be Professor. I don't know, that's just something…
J On a general level in observing them on Committees, did they perform as well as you would have expected? Knowing them individually, knowing their capacities, did you ever think, oh I wish she would speak up because she could say something sensible about this. Did you find they were a bit diffident about speaking at a committee?
N No.
J Not the ones you knew?
N The Court and the Finance Committee, which in my day was exactly the same body, the same people, simply the Court sitting with its Finance hat on - it was a very friendly, matey body and nobody needed to be shy. It could sometimes have been a difficult meeting when, for example, Principle Wright was being a little stiff, but, except for occasions such as that, it was a very easy-going body, so no they were not backward.
J Moving then to individuals, I think that Dr Mary Esslemont is the most senior of the people, she would have been on the court for a great deal of the period of your office.
N Yes, I think until very close to the end. She resigned before I retired, and her health and I think her ability to keep matters clear in her mind somewhat lessened towards the end. But while she was fully fit she was a most competent person, and while she did not push the woman's case in the Women's Lib way, she did take a very active interest in promoting the well being of women about the University. But she wasn't just what you might call feminine crank, nothing like that, she was very widely interested and a broadly minded woman.
J I have only heard of her in her very late years and at that stage she seemed to have a great reputation locally and in the University. Did that spill over into Court?
N Most certainly. As I say, her health deteriorated towards the end and this of course inevitably affected her contribution to university affairs, but until that happened she was very highly regarded.
J As far as the other women are concerned, Dorothy Kidd is one of them.
N Yes, she again was another example of a woman who spoke up and spoke sensibly. She was not on the Court really for so very long, but she made a very good impression while she was there and there was not question, as with any of the other women you might have in mind, of her being backward in coming forward, nothing like that.
J Had she got any particular expertise or interests that were evident?
N I think, if I remember rightly, she was interested in students and she was interested in medical matters - these were her main concerns.
J What about Professor Fraser?
N She was very active. She was one of the rare occasions when Aberdeen University had a woman professor. The other was for a short time Professor of Social Work, but she resigned and went elsewhere. Professor Elizabeth Fraser was really the only long-standing Aberdeen woman professor, and she was very good. Again, taking a great interest in student matters which is understandable because women after all do something to do with children, teenagers etc, so it is reasonable that they should gravitate towards the students.
J Can you think of any of the particular things that she would have backed, been interested in?
N I can't really. Her interest was general, I can merely state it in the kind of subjects that she showed most active interest in.
J But she would have been a very active working member of the Court?
N Very much so, yes.
J And finally, Dr Jennifer Carter.
N Well, rather like Professor Fraser - very active and perhaps a little more forthright, if you trod on Jennifer's' toes you got a kick.
J Am I right in thinking that with people like Jennifer Carter coming on the Court, we have anew development in that she is not a professor but she is from the academic side, that Senatus is sending people who are not of professorial rank? Did this affect deliberations in Court?
N No, it was really a reflections of what I think is called 'democracy' - that much ill-used word, but never mind - where it is accepted that not only the top people should run things but that those who are not top people should also be in on it.
J So this wasn't something that was greeted with any alarm?
N No, in fact it was incorporated in a University Ordinance. The Senatus representation was changed from four professors to four academics, who didn't have to be professors - and often weren't.
J And Jennifer Carter would have been one of the first ones?
N That is right.
J Just a few final names from you Court days: you did overlap briefly with Dr Alexander Greig Anderson, I believe. What impression did he leave?
N He was almost before my time, he was very close to the point where he was leaving the Court, but he was a kind of elder statesman on the Court, even in those days - very much respected - who, once again, never talked nonsense. But he was almost before my time and that's really about all I can say.
J And Sir William Scott Brown, you have already mentioned him in passing.
N Now, he was very active. He had been in a very high financial post in the Government of India, he was a very highly ranked civil servant, and when he retired from the Indian Civil Service he came on as Finance Convenor in the University. He was again a most devoted and hardworking man. He tended, perhaps, to be persuaded rather more easily than he ought to have been. I think he tended not to like to say 'no', which is something one has to do very often, but he was certainly a most devoted servant for many years of the University on the financial side.
J And Dr Alexander Lyall, who was General Council Assessor.
N He, again, was extremely active. In fact, he was one of the most active men on the Court while he was there. He sometimes could get hold of the wrong end of the stick, and blow off about his, that and the next thing, when in fact it had to be pointed out to him that he had got it all wrong, but nevertheless he was very valuable for the right things that he did say. He was a great supporter of the Medical Faculty and the whole medical interests of the University and he, again, was another funny man like Sir Dugald Baird; in a party he would keep everybody in fits.
J Anything else about him, about his particular areas of interest?
N He was a very little man, he was short, and many short people are thrusters. I think Dr Lyall's thrust was perhaps partly accounted for by his lack of inches. I am not saying that in any derogatory sense, it is a fact: little people are pushers, and I think that this…
J One individual whom I think we haven't mentioned at all but whom I think you knew very well, is Dr W.D. Simpson, the Librarian.
N Yes, I knew him very well indeed. In fact we were quite close personal friends from the time I was still at school. He was about ten years older than myself and I really knew him very closely all my life until his death, though I had lesser contact with him in later years at the University, simply because being on the staff also tended to cause one to rather departmentalise one's interests. But certainly he was a lifelong friend, and I can say quite fairly that he was the closest friend that I have ever had. I think before I speak about him it is necessary to make that point, that I have to declare an interest. Dr Simpson was a most unusual character. He was, to start with, half-German which is not really appreciated. His mother was German. His father, Dr Morland Simpson, was the highly distinguished Rector of Aberdeen Grammar School, but some of the peculiarities of Dr Simpson's character and outlook may very well have stemmed from the fact that he was half-German, and this, I think, is very often forgotten. He is thought of as a native of the Northeast, of Aberdeen, but he was only half that. In fact, Dr Morland Simpson, his father, was English, I'm pretty sure, so that I don't think that Dr Simpson in fact had any Scottish blood in his veins at all, although he was very attached and coverted to the North East of Scotland and his great life's interest was in castles, and in particular the castles in the North East of Scotland, though he wrote on castles generally - not, so far as I know, on foreign castles. I can't remember him writing on French or German castles or anything like that. On Scottish castles he was one of the experts of his time, though fashions in archaeology change and some people think that Dr Simpson wrote some of his works on castles and his general historical works, such as on the Scottish War of Independence, painting with to broad a brush. This may be because, as I say, fashions change and things may nowadays be considered more right if they an be closely recorded to documents from which the information is taken rather then in general impression which Dr Simpson may be wishing to convey. But while one says that, it does not in any way detract from the fact that he was one of Britain's most eminent scholars on castles. So far as I know, he didn't extend his interests to the successors of castles, in other words he didn't extend his interest for Fort George up by Inverness which is one of Britains' - not only Britain's, but one of Europe's - most outstanding artillery fortifications. His interest stopped with stone-built castles and didn't proceed into the earth and stone artillery fort. But no one can be interested in everything and Dr Simpson's interest in castles was really unique. I don't think that there is anybody else who had ever lived in the North East of Scotland who began to touch the width of his interest and his activities and his grasp of the subject of castles. Now the fact that he spent so much of his time and thought on castles is rather odd, because he wasn't paid and engaged as an archaeologist. He was paid and engaged as a University Librarian, and how could he give so much time to, quite literally, digging into old castles, when he was supposed to be a Librarian? Well, people have their own hobbies, of course, but it's a matter of degree. I've never seen this in black and white but I have heard that there is a reason why the University accepted the measure of Dr Simpson's interest in castles: that, I think it was in Victorian times but quite a long time ago, the University accepted an endowment for a Lectureship in Archaeology and the money was accepted and had always been accepted and held by the University but no Lecturer in Archaeology has ever been appointed. So, Dr Simpson's activities on castles was accepted, however un-stated, as the Lectureship in Archaeology; so the University's conscience could be clear for as long as Dr Simpson was conducting digging parties in castle such-and-such. That is a story which I don't think I have heard anywhere else and I cannot, unfortunately remember the name of the bequest.
J It should be easy to identify.
N I should think so, yes. In many ways, Dr Simpson was peculiar in other things too. He drank whisky in very large quantities and never, not once, was he the worse for drink. He drank it as though it were tea, and if he were out in a pub with some companions, by the end of the session they were all on the floor and Dr Simpson was upright. As I say, he drank it as though it were tea. And the worst fate that could befall one was to be cornered by Dr Simpson as a pub in the middle of the morning and to be expected to keep level with him. But, as I say, it had absolutely no effect on his mind or his body whatsoever, how he did it I haven't the faintest idea - perhaps it was the German half of him.
J Can I ask you perhaps whether, the extent to which you ever became involved or associated with his interests in castle-hunting - you knew him best as a young man, and that interest developed, I gather, quite early for him. Did you, as friends, go round castles together?
N Oh yes, quite a lot. I can remember when I was a small kid, long before I met Dr Simpson, I used to amuse myself drawing imaginary plans of castles which no small boy ought to be doing, but I used to, so that I was grist to the mill when I came to know Dr Simpson; and I used to go out with him to hold the end of his measuring tape, sort of thing, while he was measuring up some ruin or other, and we used to go out together on lots of outings of that kind.
J Can you remember any particular castles that you were involved in surveying with him?
N I took part in several of Dr Simpson's digs, Kindrochat in the middle of Braemar, Coull on Donside, Kildrummy - this was as a member of the Scouts, Dr Simpson was a leading member of the Scout movement in Aberdeen.
J And he recruited Scouts to assist him?
N For his digging parties, yes.
J Were these well organised?
N Yes, yes. He used to have much of his organisation done for him by Archie Hislop, who was a schoolteacher, I think, but how was a great musician and wrote a lot of Harry Gordon's best-known hits, and wrote a lot of songs for the Scouts. And I think that Archie did a lot of Douglas's organising on digs.
J He was a Scout man as well, was he?
N Unofficially. He didn't belong to the Scouts, but he associated with them.
J In more general company, Dr Simpson - I'm just trying to get an impression of the man, how he would have behaved socially. He had such a strong interest in castles. Was he a bore on castles? Would he have talked about it to people who had no interest?
N No. One might perhaps touch on his lectures. He was a marvellous lecturer, he could interest a body of people who didn't know one end of a castle from another, in just the way he put it across. He had, from the lecturing point of view, one or two faults. He didn't do what every lecturer should do - stand still - he used to walk about, and people used to watch him walking about. He also used to shift his glass of water about, he'd shift it from … there … to there, and a moment later he shifted it back again, to there. So that people instead of listening to him were watching this wretched glass. But these were small points. He was a most admirable lecturer who could carry any audience along with him.
J I have heard these lectures referred to. They must have pre-dated the actual establishment of the Extra-Mural Department. Who would most of them have been organised by? Can you recall that? Under whose auspices would you have gone to these lectures?
N I think they were really organised by Dr Simpson himself, but I may be wrong. I really can't answer that question, I'm afraid. I can't help. [J comments] Of course, he was also a most, not dominating that's not the word - but there was never any doubt when Dr Simpson was in the room, put it that way. He was usually the focus of attention, not because he was trying to attract attention but because the things he was saying were always so interesting.
J Again, to return to my point - would he tend to bring up his interests to the extent where he might be a bit intolerant of other people's interests?
N No, I don't think so. I think he was intolerant of the professional outlooks and views of other people who wrote on castles, who he thought had gone off the rails, but that was what you might call the technical side of his job, so to speak.
J Was he a useful contact to you when you came to the University first, in that he had been friend, was still a friend, and was also employed by the University?
N He wasn't involved in that at all. I was lucky when I applied for the job in Aberdeen - there were 150 applicants for it and I had the advantage of being an Aberdonian, and I have always suspected that the fact that out of the 150 applicants I was the only Aberdonian had something to do with the appointment.
J When you actually arrived, I suppose 'showing you the ropes' is the expression that comes to mind, was he a useful contact in that way?
N On the personal side, I was asked round to his house and things like that, but not so far as the job went; and what you have just asked really touches on one of the less fortunate aspects of Dr Simpson's time and that was the very severe clash - which was largely a clash of personalities but it was also a clash on principles - with Dr Angus when he was Secretary. This really goes back to the basic 1889 Act that set up the four old Scottish Universities and which also set up the Library Committee. The Library Committee is not a constitution of the University Court, it's set up by the 1889 Act of Parliament of Westminster and therefore it is a legal entity in its own right. This separation of the Library from the general University structure was of course only partial. The University Court is the overriding University body and the Library Committee is ultimately subject to it, but in all matters of Library business, the Library Committee is the body that takes the decisions; it's the Library Committee which within the finances allotted to it decides what proportion should be spent on periodicals, etc., etc. But because there was this basic degree of independence given to the Library Committee, there was a potential clash between the officials who ran the University as such and the officials who ran the Library, and when it came to Dr Simpson and Dr Angus being the two, there was just a head-on collision, like two trains meeting each other at 60 miles an hour. It became so bad that they weren't even writing rude letters to each other, they had passed the point where they exchanged insult. Now this meant that business for the Library, I won't say came to a dead stop but it was terribly handicapped, and neither Dr Simpson or Dr Angus would budge one inch. Basically it turned not only on clash of personality - two men who hadn't the slightest intention of being crossed - but also it came down to the 1889 Act and the question of who really governed whom.
J You have already indicated in talking about Angus that he liked to be in charge, he didn't like to delegate. Is this the kind of attitude he had towards the Library? Did he feel that he should have run it?
N It was part of Angus's personality. He couldn't easily delegate. It's much better to do things the other way round - delegate, and come down like a ton of bricks on the person if he goes wrong, but let him try first.
J It was none of Angus's business, the thing had been set up in 1889. Why did he ever assume that he had this right?
N It was partly personality clash: the irresistible force meeting the immovable object.
J Was there ever any attempt that you know of to mediate between the two men? The Convenor, for instance, of the Library Committee would have been perhaps a neutral person.
N Neither was the kind of man who would tolerate mediation. Each of them was convince he was right and the other was wrong.
J Was this a situation that was well known to colleagues?
N Yes.
J Did they tend to make judgements about it? Did they feel that Angus, or that Simpson, was being obstinate?
N I suppose there was a certain number of people who took sides, but generally I think it is fairer to say that everybody deplored it because of its ill effects on the conducting of affairs.
J Had it marked a very great contrast between the period under Butchart? How did Simpson…?
N I think Simpson and Butchart got on because there again both of them were a pair that were forthright, but they didn't, so far as I can remember, really clash. I think that Dr Simpson made Dr Butchart roar with laughter, he thought there was something very comic about it - I think.
J Did you yourself as a member of staff use the University Library?
N To some extent, but not much - no, I didn't.
J Would you have any comments to make about how it functioned? Not from the professional point of view, but just as a …
N I tended to keep out of the Library in the same way as I kept out of the Staff Club. I never used any of the facilities for meeting academics; I kept right out because I thought that I needed to, because if I mixed with academics they were forever taking me by the arm saying, 'Oh, by the way - excuse me talking about this matter, but do you mind…', and I found that so tiresome that I decided that the thing to do was simply to keep right out. And I tended to do the same thing with the Library, partly perhaps because of this clash in Dr Angus's time and partly because my own view was that anyone who was the Finance Officer had to make himself isolated - not exactly like the captain of a ship but the same sort of thing: the commanding Officer never has any friends.
J Are there any other particular anecdotes about Dr Simpson or aspects of his work which you would like to comment on?
N I don't think so, really. I don't know whether I have given any sort of clear picture of him, but as I say, he was a very close friend of mine and I may have just missed the points.
J One thing that strikes me as being implied in what you have said is that, as a close friend of yours, the fact that he could remain so while you had this position of influence financially in the University and he was a user-department of yours, speaks highly for him. It doesn't seem to have caused any difficulty between you.
N None. I think we both had the same outlook on friendship, that it had got nothing to do with business.
J He wouldn't have talked shop?
N No, I think we both regarded friendship as irrelevant.
J Can you recall him ever talking in general terms about his responsibilities as Librarian? He coincides with the period when the profession was changing enormously, he is regarded as one of the last of what people perhaps would call the 'scholar bookman' or something like that, who was followed by the managers. Did he see this coming, did he feel he should have had other talents which he wasn't bringing to the job?
N No, I don't think he felt any doubts about himself. I think he would have favoured his own outlook of the academic bookman, but I never discussed that with him. We both tended to keep off discussion of the other's job.
J Moving away from personalities to more general comment about things that happened while you were in the University, one or two points haven't been covered yet. You were Finance Officer at the point when criticism of the University's investments in South Africa became an issue. Could you tell me a little bit about that?
N. It was an issue only for a short time in the University. Whether it is going to be resurrected now as part of anti-South African government moves, I don't know, but it was only for quite a short period and the push towards it came from the students. It did not arise in the Court, it was the students who made representation to the Court that the University should sell its shares in South African concerns, should sell its shares in bodies like - I think I'm quoting the right bank - in Barclays Bank [J affirms] in which the University held quite a few shares. In other words, to dissociate itself from anything that could be judged as giving financial support to the present South African government, and this was pressed by the students in the way that students do press thing, - with vigour and a certain stridency - but only for a comparatively short time. And by and large, again I am speaking from memory, they were told to run away and mind their own business. And by and large, the University continued to hold such shares with a South African aspect partly, I think, because they felt it was no business of students to dictate to the Court its financial policy. This is my recollection of the incident.
J Was there any sense of looking at other universities, because Aberdeen has a very quiet reputation in its student politics? Was there any feeling of 'Well, look what has happened in Paris, look what has happened in the States'?
N No. That didn't enter into it at all.
J They assumed they knew their students, and there students could be cowed.
N I wouldn't say 'cowed'. I wouldn't say that. Everyone should attend to his own job and not butt into other people's - that was rather the … The Court was quite willing to consider the representations made by the students and you have used the word 'cowed' and 'quiet' and this sort of thing - I wouldn't use that word at all because I have the highest opinion of Aberdeen students and the highest opinion of the relationship between the University Office and the academics and the students. I think that Aberdeen has got it right, that the students are equally - equally - part of the University with the Court, within their own province but their province is just their province and they shouldn't overstep the boundaries, and I think this was the outlook of the Court. They were quite prepared to consider 'ought they to hold these investments or ought they to sell them' but they weren't going to be told by the students that they had got to sell them.
J Mentioning the students raises again the question of athletics, which we did mention briefly before, but I wonder whether you had anything further to say on this point.
N Again this is a generalisation, and again I may be out of date, but I always felt that certainly the office, and to a very large extent the academics, didn't play games and take part in sports with students anything like as much as they should. I did a certain amount in boxing and rowing, and I know Mr Angus did a certain amount of coaching in rowing, too - he had been quite a good oarsman in his younger days - and there was a certain amount of squash played between members of staff and students, and I think you yourself, Dorothy, told me that there is quite a lot of joint football played, but even so I don't think there is enough social contact on the sports side that there ought to be between staff and students. That's my general impression.
J Do you feel this because you think sport if a natural way, is perhaps the only way in which the divisions between staff and students can be bridged?
N No, it is the easiest way and it's the most, you might call human way. The students are a little surprised to see that the staff do these things.
J Mr Brittain presumably too was another person who took an interest in …
N Yes, that's right, but I think his interest was on the administrative side, wasn't it? He administered the Athletic Association, didn't he?
J That's an interesting point. I'm thinking now of a couple of things which perhaps have become more relevant since you left and I realise that you haven't necessarily got full information about what's been happening since you left, and so I am really directing the questions to what you would have thought of these developments from your experience. One of them is the question of how the University gets its money. One of the things that has been more spoken of lately is the establishment of what amounts to 'departmental companies' to create money in various ways. Perhaps this had happened before but it seems now to be becoming more like big business. Would you have any comments to make about this sort of development and how it would fit into the University financial administration?
N Well, I can say something, some of which you might think showed lack of sensitivity, lack of sympathy, lack of understanding, etc, but for what it is worth, my view is that the Government cuts in their financial support to the universities will, twenty years from now, be seen as one of the best things that had happened to universities, ever, because, whether they liked it or not, universities first of all, with their government support cut, had to look round to see what real economies could be effected - and by real economies I don't mean using both sides of the paper when you write letters, I don't mean twopenny half-penny things like that, but major areas where expenditure could be cut. It forced universities also to re-think the block allocation of their funds, because the University's job isn't to save money, it is to spend money right up to the hilt, subject to putting aside first what is reasonably foreseen as reserves for the future. Those reserves are not meant just for putting away just for the sake of putting away, but putting away for specific purposes foreseen in advance on the basis of estimates. Now, it may seen heartless to say that because of Government cuts and because a certain department as a result of those cuts has lost its highly competent secretary and all the affairs of that department have been thrown into chaos because of the loss of the secretary… How can one possibly say that that's the best thing that has ever happened? I didn't say that it is the best thing that has happened now - I said it will be seen to be twenty years form now to have been one of the best things that has happened, because it had had the effect of taking all the universities of the country by the scruff of the neck, which is never comfortable, and forcing them to re-think their financial policies and their financial allocations. That goes along with another thing: the university's quinquennial estimates - the preparation of the quinquennial estimates is not just a piece of wasted time, it's not just producing a nice fancy document full of bright ideas, it is intended to be the pattern of work and development over the next five years. It is not meant to be merely prepared and then put away in a drawer and forgotten about. It is meant to be a current working document and it is meant to be stuck to, unless various outside circumstances mean that you have got to change what you have thought of before. Every programme has to be flexible in that way. But I do not see the things that have happened to the University in government cuts as any bad thing at all in the ultimate result, however uncomfortable now. I remember I used to make myself very unpopular with my colleagues at the annual Finance Officers' Conferences, at which representative of the UGC were present by invitation, by saying that while I could not of course speak for the other universities, I could speak for Aberdeen University and I knew - knew, not thought - that the academic purposes of Aberdeen University could be carried out as well as they were now on £1 million pounds grant from the UGC less: frightfully dead silence. (The only person who stood me a drink that evening was the UGC representative.)[J I can imagine] But I was right and I still say it.
J If that is so, I don't quite understand, in my financial ignorance, why when we are cut it is quite evident that the academic purpose are not being filled to the same extent but that academic services are being cut.
N What the UGC were quite properly aiming at, or one of their aims, was to oblige all universities to be more active in obtaining funds from business. Now, this is a very tricky one. We have mentioned Salford and its over-linking with business. It's all a matter of balance. Where do you draw the line between your investment income or your gains you have from your endowment? - and Aberdeen University if very lucky in having endowments stretching right back to medieval times, we are much more fortunate than most universities in that way. How do you balance that kind of income with your government income, with your research contact income (which, of course, is not general income, it is very necessary for universities to be very active in that - this of course depends on the activity of the academics, and some academics are good at getting outside money for research and other aren't, or they are idle. But the big 'ouch' in recent years, the rise in government cuts, has been for universities by either direct legal links with business or tie-ups with certain companies, large multi-national companies or something like this, to produce graduates trained in the activities of those companies with the intention that those graduates should to into those companies, which isn't by any means wrong, because universities since the beginning have produced lawyers and accountants and doctors, so why not produce men who work in companies. As I say, it's all a matter of where you draw the line. And it may be that universities did need a kick in the pants to get them more active in tying up with business, they probably did. One of the things we must always remember, because it is so easy to forget, is that government support - and government support was the thing that enabled the universities to expand to their present size, of course, - government support is quite a new thing. Universities, when I went there in 1948, had trifling government grants. The universities had to carry on with their investment income and their fee income and that was the lot. This of course restricted the sizes of the universities to almost play-school size, as it were, and the government grants were necessary to make the universities the kind of activity they are now. But it mustn't be forgotten that all this government support is new, that universities used to carry on very well in the old days, however smaller in size.
J Do you recall any examples of departments actually establishing themselves as companies, or having a company established within a department?
N That is new since I left. As I say, a lot of this tie-up with industry has come since I retired, and I am not really in a position to speak on that except to say really the negative: in my time it hadn't happened.
J Is it something that, from your experience of the way university finance is run it without dangers? Is it something that is quite an acceptable additional element?
N As I have said, it is a matter of balance. How do you set one thing off against another? And it's not merely a matter of money, it's something far more important than mere money - and because I have dealt with money all my life I know how little it matters, that's a fact: it doesn't matter, you can do what you want to do without money - it needs a great deal more ingenuity and thought and trouble, but you can do it. Universities don't exist for money, they exist for teaching and research not money teaching and research. You can say you can't teach, you can't research, without money. Of course you have got to have some money, but the reality is teaching and research.
J If you saw companies developing which gave individual members of staff a financial stake, gave them financial interests if they did certain kinds of work which of course wouldn't apply if they continued with teaching interests or research or seeing students, or things like this, would you have seen this as a possibly dangerous development?
N It would depend on the academic. It's not right to say, whether he was honest or not, honest isn't really the right word because people can do dishonest things without realising it - but 'clash of interest' I think is the expression. It has to be handled with the greatest of care and no man or no woman should put himself or herself in the position where, as the Bible says, no man can serve two masters. This has to be watched with the greatest care, and this is where really University Principals have a major responsibility to see that the activities of their academics don't overstep the line where personal interest and perhaps even personal financial interest comes in. It is perhaps one of the most vital duties of every University Principal. The first fraction of this had begun to appear in my time, in that departments were beginning to accumulate what they called 'private funds' and they were told that they were not to have any private funds - they were told by me that they were not to have any private funds, that they could have funds which were outwith the University…
End of interview
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