| Description | Interview with Michael Berger recorded on the 9 September 1990 by Colin McLaren.
Transcript of Interview :
M Can you begin by telling me - is it Mr or Dr Berger?
B Mr Berger
M Why you came to Aberdeen University?
B I had been an ex-serviceman in the Royal Air Force, I came from Palestine [as] it was called then, and I got a grant, an ex-service grant from the government of Palestine. I had to get into university here. You couldn't do economics in Palestine in those days. I tried several universities, but it was difficult to do everything by correspondence from abroad, even though I was an ex-serviceman, which helped of course. A friend of the family was a local chap and he went here and pushed it through somehow and I got accepted. I thought, after a year I will go to London, but I liked it here.
M What did you like about the University?
B Well it was small, even though the Professors were not luminaries in their field, it was a small Honours class. There were few in the Honours class. It was the beginning of many more. I felt there was a pleasant atmosphere here, and people were [?]. To come in those days, in 1946/47, from Palestine to Britain wasn't so easy.
M Could you enlarge on that?
B Well there were troubles. There were dissidents in Palestine who were fighting the British occupation and that, of course, had some kind of effect on public opinion here. But I must say that I personally, with one or two minor exceptions, was never given a rough time. I always thought that in Manchester or Leeds or anywhere else it would have been more difficult for me to continue. So I stayed and I am not I sorry I did that.
M How you rate the quality of teaching you received here?
B Well, there wasn't a single famous economist here but on the whole, it was small classes, it was quite good. We had very few classes. I don't think I spent more than nine or ten hours a week actually in formal teaching or lectures. But the people were here, I could consult them, and they were very friendly. You could talk to them. I am sure that in London School of Economics there were better teachers, but I am not sure that I would have got a better education. I don't know. I didn't try it. I stayed here four years.
M Where did you live when you were here?
B Well, in my first year I lived with this man who managed to get me in here. He was a laird, by a peculiar story, he was a Scottish laird. He lived in a large house, Seaton House, which unfortunately has been burned down since.
M This would be Malcolm Hay?
B That's right, I stayed with Malcolm Hay. He came to Palestine then, with his future wife, his second wife, and I was all by myself in that large house, with a housekeeper. When he came back, of course, I stayed in digs.
M He had very strong interests in Zionism?
B That's right. He wrote a book about anti-Semitism [?]. He was a very fine person. His picture hangs in what used to be King's College Library, which has been vandalised by your people here, and we are very sorry about that. He is buried up in St Machar's. He was a very fine man.
M How would you support yourself had you grants or…?
B As I said I was an ex-serviceman and I got a grant. In my first year I got a grant of the government of Palestine, and then I got a grant from the Scottish Education Department, as an ex-serviceman.
M And this was sufficient to support?
B Well, living a frugal existence - my mother was a widow and I couldn't possibly expect anything from her. I worked in two summer vacations, and in the Christmas vacations I worked as a postman for a week or two and eked out my grant with that like, and [?] I managed to do it.
M Did you have a broad circle of friends?
B I had quite a broad circle of friends. Yes.
M How did you form them?
B I don't know. I still have them now. After forty odd years and I still found these friends are still.
M There might be various ways though. I mean did you find yourself gravitating towards other members of the Jewish community?
B The Jewish community was very, very small. There was very few Jewish students at the university there were some Jews living in Aberdeen not connected with the university. I used to go to the service on the high holy days. Twice, I think, I was invited to the Passover holiday by a Jewish family well known here, they had the cinema, a dance hall, and a news cinema - a fellow called Bromberg. In those days they were very well known in Aberdeen, but they have left since, many years ago. I was invited with them. I was also elected to the SRC, I got elected the first year, and I was four years on the SRC. I was for two years Director of Publications. I had quite a few friends.
M Did you make friends across the Faculty frontiers would you say?
B I think most of them were in the Arts Faculty. I had one or two Medical friends. I don't think I had any Science friends. They were mostly Arts people. We were all here at King's. The others were up in Marischal, or at Foresterhill.
M You mentioned your involvement in student representative council matters. Was this a deliberate choice of yours or were you simply encouraged by others to enter it?
B No I think it was a deliberate choice of mine.
M Did you make the choice because it was an attempt to widen your experience?
B Well I thought, actually I think when I first came that I wanted to be here for a few year, I have to be part of the student community so one way of doing is getting into the SRC.
M Would you have said that our students as a whole in Aberdeen in the broadest sense of the phrase politically aware?
B I don't think you can generalise. The majority of them weren't, but there was quite a large minority which was.
M Did they gravitate towards the positions on the SRC as well?
B Some did. There was political clubs: Labour Club, Conservative Club as so on, Liberal Club. You must remember we were almost all ex-servicemen, much older than students are usually at university.
M Did you find as ex-servicemen that you tended to congregate together rather than making friendships with the younger students straight from school?
B Yes I suppose so, but most men I think were ex-servicemen - women, of course, no - but most men were ex-servicemen. You had to look for students who were not. But I had one or two friends who were straight from school. Remember I had served two years only in the Air Force, so I was not that old : I was 21 when I came here.
M What other activities of a cultural recreation sort did you have as well as the SRC?
B Well there was the International Club which I belonged to.
M How effective was that as a forum for students from overseas meeting?
B Well I don't quite understand your question very effective as a forum?
M Did the majority of the overseas students join it or…?
B I suppose so yes, there weren't many. There were very few. There was quite a large contingent - when I say large it was comparatively large - from the West Indies, mostly medical students. This girl Heather Donald whom you mentioned, she was very active in this International Club. It may have been she who suggested that I put my name up for the SRC - I wouldn't swear to that - I met her in this club, and she might have said "Why not go for the SRC?". She certainly put me up in my second year. She was also SRC, I was Sub-Treasurer, and she put my name up for that in the Council, and suggested to me that I run for it - but I wouldn't swear to this… but anyway, in the University as a whole there were very few overseas students. There were some people from Norway. And, of course, there were local people who joined the International Club. I don't think that there were more than 25 students from abroad in those days, most of them from the West Indies.
M With your experience, would you say that the University was slightly insular in its views or not?
B Well I think it was a bit insular, yes.
M Would you like to enlarge on that?
B Well, I remember Richard Crossman came up brought by the brother of MacKinnon, little MacKinnon, Crossman had been his tutor. To look at them you would have thought that MacKinnon was the tutor - he looked older. But Crossman more or less gave us to understand that we were in the outback. People were very hurt but they realised that there was something in that.
M When you weren't taking part in student activities and actually following your academic courses how else did you occupy yourself?
B Dances, the British Council was very helpful.
M In what ways?
B They had hikes and organised all sorts of events for the overseas students. We went to Youth Hostels somewhere up on the West Coast, they arranged a bus for the overseas students who wanted to go to the Festival in Edinburgh. I went to the first Festival, and again in '48, in the summer vacations. They were quite helpful with the overseas students. The then Principal, Hamilton Fyfe, was very much inclined to us - unlike the Secretary, Mr Butchart, who wasn't.
M How would you characterise the role of Butchart in the University affairs. Did you form an impression from your experiences on SRC?
B Well I had a personal experience, being the protégé of Malcolm Hay, and Butchart, of course, knew him. He knew me and was favourably inclined towards me. But there was some mishap in my first year, when I came up I had to consult one of the assistant secretaries about my curriculum and he suggested I should take Constitutional Law as an outside subject. I was doing Honours Economics, I could take two outside subjects and he suggested one of them should Constitutional Law which I thought I would like to do and I did. When I sat the exam, finished the exam I thought I did quite well but when the results were published my name didn't appear at all. And then it turned out there had been a misunderstanding and that Constitutional Law wasn't considered for the Honours course in Economics. So I was rather upset by that and then somebody told me "why not go to see the Principal?". Then to my amazement I went to the office of the Principal, and the Secretary said - well she didn't ask me why, she didn't ask me what she said "Well tomorrow afternoon at 3 o'clock whatever you can have an appointment with the Principal". Which I thought was very fine and I did see the Principal and the Principal thought that my story seemed very reasonable, and that I had a point, why shouldn't I be credited for this course. A few day later I get a notification that the Secretary, Butchart, said no, it was against the regulations, and there it was. I took this course - not that it mattered, I got my MA - I thought it was rather funny that the Principal felt overpowered by Mr Butchart and didn't do anything about it. That was the only time I personally had anything to do with Butchart. Then there was a case a year or two later that, I think they called him the Union Provisor I think the name was - the man who ran the Union, the Student Union. The big thing for that was he lived in a flat, (or was it a cottage?), and apparently and his number two found out that he had been using Union funds to pay for his car. I'm quite sure he meant to pay it back but I don't think he could have done it otherwise. But, anyway he was found out and Butchart came down on him like a ton of bricks on this fellow, from one day to the next he was dismissed and kicked out of this flat. Butchart and the then Principal Tommy Taylor. But apparently Butchart [was] very, very harsh on him. I was quite certain that he didn't really mean to steal his money. But his number two wanted to get his job, and he told how he had paid for his car with a Union cheque. So that is the other episode of Butchart which I remember, but in the SRC as such I don't think I had anything to do with Butchart.
M You haven't mentioned sport?
B Well I'm not a sporting type. I didn't take part in any sport.
M As for other societies was there an Economic Society or…?
B There was no Economics Society, no. I joined the Labour club, the National club, also the German Club. I speak German as a second language..
M Did you? You mentioned amongst the Professors MacKinnon?
B Yes I didn't take philosophy but he was very, very known here and I went once or twice to his lectures, but I didn't take Philosophy, not even as an outside subject.
M So if you were to try and assess the extent to which your University education here prepared you for professional life. How would you…?
B I can't give a very high mark. I never called myself an Economist. I said I had a degree in Economics. Later I switched to Law, so I am a Lawyer now, not an Economist. But I did have this certificate. I spend four pleasant years here, and I managed to get a Second Class degree. I realised quite early on that they had divided the degree into Upper and Lower, as they did in England, and as they do here now. I would have had to pull my socks up very hard to get an Upper second, and I would never have got a First. I thought I would get by without getting a third, and that did happen. I did not get a Third, and I did get a Second. I did not even try to get a First. But in Israel nobody would have looked at us to see if we had First, second or Third. But anyway, I managed to scrape through with a Second. It was a very good four years here. I cannot say I got a very thorough grounding in Economics, and as you have already said we were a backwater. In Economics, the Econometrics part was already very much developed, and this had not penetrated to the Professor. The Professor was a man called Henry Hamilton, he was a historian, and his knowledge of mathematics was nil. He did not teach the mathematics aspect at all. One of his assistants, who later became Principal, Fraser Noble, he was more mathematically inclined, but it wasn't much stressed, this aspect of it.
M And going beyond the academic side to the more, broader educative value of the University education you got here. How would you rate that? You've already said you could have gone to LSE or Universities ...?
B Well I could have I suppose, I don't know, I didn't try. As I said, I liked it here. Well I think spending four years in a contemplative place was very nice experience, lying on the lawn at King's, having coffee at Old Toon Café talking and talking. Also reading and learning at the same time.
M How stimulating was your…?
B Stimulating enough on the whole. Maybe. I don't know what would have happened in LSE or [an] Oxford college but I enjoyed it.
M Good. Thank you very much.
End of Interview |