The Ascent of Man

New Month Old Post: First posted 21st March, 2016

Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape – he is a shaper of the landscape.

Everyone needs at least one role model to inspire them: probably more – different role models for different roles. One of mine came in the unlikely shape of a little man with glasses who looked like my grandfather and had trouble pronouncing his ‘r’s.

How could anyone be so clever? How did Jacob Bronowski’s life come to be filled with such grand ideas while mine was littered with the tedious transactions of budgets and profit margins? Why was his world populated by brilliant minds while I shared mine with dreary accountants and businessmen? Why couldn’t I shape the landscape rather than being just a figure within it? I wanted to be an omniscient polymath, too.

I missed most of Bronowski’s momentous thirteen-part BBC television series The Ascent of Man when it was first broadcast on Saturday evenings between April and July, 1973. I would have been out at the pub. Even when it was repeated at the end of that year, twice a week on both Thursdays and Sundays, I doubt I caught it all. But it affected me profoundly.

Bronowski was passionate and mesmerising, with fascinating hand gestures. He spoke straight to the camera in precise sentences for minutes at a time without background music, rapid cuts, or unnecessary images. Yet he held your attention. He gave us a warm, intelligent, gimmick-free exploration of science and humanity. It was unsettling that a single individual could be so knowledgeable about so many varied subjects, from architecture to evolutionary biology, from poetry to relativity. When he appeared on other programmes, such as Parkinson, you realised he was not reading a script. The breadth of his knowledge and understanding were genuine. 

I bought the book. I read it, and then read it again. I knew all thirteen chapters. Turning through the pages now brings back so many fascinating things: the flying buttresses of Rheims Cathedral where the building hangs like a cage from the arched roof; the Peruvian city of Macchu Picchu; a demonstration of the Pythagorean proof in the sand by drawing real squares on the hypotenuse and the other two sides; the coloured shafts of the spectrum that beamed out of Isaac Newton’s “Triangular glass-Prism”; Gregor Mendel choosing to test for seven differences between peas when he could not have known that the pea had just seven chromosomes; the surreal massive model head, several metres across, that was visible to a radar scanner while the real man standing beside remained invisible to its long electromagnetic wavelength.

Of course the answer to the riddle of Bronowski’s erudition, as he himself might have said rhetorically of others, is that the man was a genius. When the television series was repeated again in 1975, I saw every episode, and something else then struck me. It was that Bronowski’s journey through science was personal and autobiographical. He recalled his own moment of revelation around 1950 when he was working on a mathematical model of the teeth of an Australopithecus baby, the Taung skull, to discriminate them from the teeth of apes, when, “... having spent a lifetime doing abstract mathematics about the shapes of things,” he said I “... suddenly saw my knowledge reach back two million years and shine a searchlight into the history of man.” From that moment his commitment moved from the abstract to the human.

He was able to talk about periods in his career when he had collaborated with other people of genius. He had known Einstein, Daniel Lehrman, James Watson, Leo Szilard, and John von Neumann. He spoke of them with fondness and enthusiasm.

He remembered Einstein’s lack of materialism in lecturing at Cambridge in an old sweater and carpet slippers with no socks. He talked of afternoons spent with Leo Szilard at the Salk Institute in California, and recounted a tale about the moment when, in a mental flash, Szilard conceived the idea of the nuclear reactor. He had stopped at a red light, and before the light had turned green had realised that if you hit an atom with one neutron, and it broke up to release two, then you would have a chain reaction. The only improbable part of the story, said Bronowski, is that “I never knew Szilard to stop for a red light.”

Bronowski described John von Neumann, the founder of game theory and computing science, as “the cleverest man I ever knew,” and “a genius, in the sense that a genius is a man who has two great ideas.” He shared an anecdote of how, during the war, after they had been discussing a particularly difficult nuclear problem, he had telephoned von Neumann early the next morning to tell him he was right, and von Neumann complained that he only wanted to be telephoned early in the morning to be told when he was wrong.

This anecdote served to illustrate how von Neumann was in love with what Bronowski called “the aristocracy of the intellect”, with which he fundamentally disagreed and considered dangerous. What we need, he argued, is “democracy of the intellect”, where knowledge sits with people who have no ambition to control others. Elsewhere, in what is perhaps the most often repeated sequence from the series when he walks into the pond at Auschwitz crematorium and scoops up the mud of human remains, he talks of the dogma and arrogance that comes from a false belief in absolute knowledge. He talks about the devastation of Hiroshima. It was a moral and ethical lesson that all knowledge is imperfect. Bronowski would surely have been dismayed by the Monty Python quip that he knew everything.

Even today, despite subsequent developments in computing, neural imaging, molecular biology, robotics, and so on, his book and series remain an exemplar of intelligent broadcasting. I was in awe and in envy. His intellect ranged across areas as diverse as literature, poetry, art, architecture, chess, mathematics, nuclear physics and biology, and yet he retained a deep sense of humility.

It was unsettling. From that time I wanted to embark upon my own version of his personal journey, starting by going to university. It felt a failing not to have been. I was drawn towards the ideas Bronowski had talked about: the human sciences, cultural evolution, psychology, sociology and anthropology. I had no idea where it might lead except that it would be a step in the right direction. At twenty-four, without university entrance qualifications, when it was not easy to get in, when completing a degree was just as difficult, it seemed a mountain to climb, but I knew I had to try.


Jacob Bronowski
The Ascent of Man (5***)
When I read The Ascent Of Man again in August, 2015, I gave it a book review rating of 5*** because I had indeed read it over and over again, possibly six times, since I bought it in 1975, through which it became of considerable personal influence. I noted that reading it yet again, it may have lost a little of its freshness, but I remained in awe of Bronowski's encyclopaedic knowledge and ability to explain things. I keep wondering whether to buy the DVDs, or whether that would spoil it for me.

The Commercialisation of Universities

New Month Old Post: First Posted 29th November 2018

Two items in the recent press about Higher Education:

1. Universities are awarding too many first class degrees. The think-tank Reform argues that universities risk losing their credibility due to “rocketing grade inflation”. Apparently, 26% of U.K. students now get first-class degrees and one university awards them to over 40% of students. Similarly the proportion of 2:1 degrees, nationally, is now nearly 50%. The think-tank suggests the number of first-class degrees should be capped at 10%, 2:1 and 2:2 degrees at 40% each, with the lowest 10% getting a third. (Guardian; BBC).

2. Universities are making too many unconditional offers. Ucas reports that a third of 18-year-old university applicants received some form of unconditional offer last year, made up of true unconditional offers, and conditional offers which became unconditional when an applicant makes that university a firm choice. Some institutions are also offering students four-figure bursaries. (Guardian).

The reports highlight massive increases in the numbers: a doubling of high grades over ten years, and an almost thirty-fold increase in unconditional offers over five years. 

Well, when I graduated in 1980, out of the 70 people who started the course, just 2 got firsts, less than 3%, and that was an exceptional year. Some years there weren’t any. And it was completely unknown for universities to make unconditional offers to 18-year-olds yet to take their ‘A’ levels; it might not even have been allowed.

Isn’t it simply a case of commercial organisations providing the service their customers want? In almost any other sector it would be singled out for praise. Perhaps if universities had not been turned into competing businesses in the first place, these things would not be happening.

Self-Doubt, Imposter Syndrome and Hegemonic Masculinity

New Month Old Post: first posted 26th January 2018

A couple of weeks ago, the normally impeccable Hadley Freeman, writing about self-doubt in her Guardian column [in 2018], said:

 “I have yet to meet a man who has worried he’s not good enough for a job he’s been offered, whereas I have yet to meet a woman who hasn’t.”

Well, I don’t know what circles she moves in, but that is simply wrong, as many of the responses to the online article make clear. Imposter syndrome is not just a female thing.

She finds it impossible to imagine a woman who, like certain men she amusingly identifies, is “perennially mediocre, untouchably arrogant, and eternally gifted by opportunity and protection by the establishment”. You only have to look at some of the women in high political office to see the error in this.

As regards men who worry they are not up to jobs they have been offered, there are lots, myself included. When I got good grades at ‘A’ Levels the second time round in my mid-twenties, and then a good degree, I felt that almost anyone could do it, and still do. When that led to jobs in universities, it felt like unmerited good fortune. When I got research papers into academic journals, I wondered why no one had seen the gaping holes they contained.

This is, of course, both blowing and sucking my own trumpet at the same time, but I just want to say that even for those who invented the concept*, hegemonic masculinity was never assumed to be universal.

* Connell and Messerschmidt.
The cartoon is from startupbros.com - click to link to its source.
Here is another relevant article from The Guardian.

Pen And Ink

 

Prompted by these long-unused fountain pens in my desk, I tried to think back to when I last used pen and ink; not biro, felt tip, gel pen, or any of the other variations, but proper liquid ink. It must have been around 1987. 

At primary school we only used pencil. Every classroom had a large “industrial” sharpener fixed to a desk near the front, with pencils at the ready. I seem to remember pencil monitors responsible for sharpening the pencils. But, at some point during junior school, around the age of 10, we were allowed liquid ink: by then no longer nib pens dipped in inkwells, but fountain pens. I do still have my Dad’s old inkwell, though, glass and heavy, almost impossible to knock over, encrusted with decades of dried ink.  

We used mainly blue or boring blue-black ink, permanent or washable, Stephens or Quink. I liked Stephens Radiant Blue, and once had a bottle of red. Brilliant blue light shone through the bottles, like sunlight through a prism. It was as if you could touch, feel, taste, and hear it. 

We definitely had fountain pens by secondary school. All my school notes, work, year-end examinations, Ordinary and Advanced Levels, as well as personal letters and everything else, were in fountain pen. Biro was forbidden at school without saying: horrible, messy, blotchy things. Useful paraphernalia included blotting paper to ensure the ink was dry before turning the page. 

In accountancy in the 1970s, our working papers (the equivalent of hand-written spreadsheets), drafts for typing, year end ledgers, and so on, were still in fountain pen. We only used biro to tick (check) things off, usually in red and green in alternating years. Then, again, a few years later, taking Advanced Level examinations for a second time, my notes and exams were all in fountain pen. It continued through university: one clever chap, who got a First, fascinated us by the way he worked his fountain pen through exams, steadily without a break. For me, it was fountain pen again through my Masters course and early work as a university research assistant. I remember having to pay to have my dissertation typed. 

What changed is that biros gradually improved, and other types of pens became available. From about 1983, I became an early user of electronic text. We had a BBC Micro Computer with a WordWise chip, and a dot matrix printer. Dot matrix was low quality, but the software enabled you to write straight into a computer. Then, two years later, I got a job in a computing department with a good quality printer. You printed into the system from your office, then walked down the corridor to collect the output.  

I bought a decent printer to use at home. The regulations for my thesis stated that it must be typed, but I used my home printer anyway, and got away with it. By then, it was near impossible to tell the difference. I believe I continued to write personal letters in pen and ink until I lost touch with Brendan in Tanzania, mentioned in previous posts, and that would have been it. I probably used biro after that. 

Most of us as school had Platignum fountain pens, not the more expensive Parker, who still emphasise quality (“a free Parker Pen when you take out our life insurance policy”), but I tend to press so hard I wear them out just as quick as any other. I must have worn through 30 fountain pens in my time. 

The earliest had a small lever on the side, which you opened, dipped the nib in ink, and closed again to suck up ink. The later ones pictured are all filled by unscrewing the barrel. The yellow one is squeezed by hand. It was the last of four cheap ones from the stationer W. H. Smith’s I wore out while re-sitting my ‘A’ Levels, and being the kind of obsessive I am, I wrote the date of March, 1977, inside. That cheerful shade of yellow must have been worth at least an extra 5%, and the radiant blue another 5%. 

The silver one is a Parker Pen that works the same way, but better quality. It may have been my dad’s. The red one is a Sheaffer cartridge pen. These were refilled by replacing a disposable plastic ink cartridge, which was more expensive but much less messy. They were available from maybe 1970, and most of my last pens were of that kind. 

I imagine most followers will remember fountain pens well, but those under 50 might find them as strange and archaic as quill pens and inkwells. My daughter was not really sure what a fountain pen is. Things have changed very quickly.

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny

New month old post: first posted 1st October, 2018

Haeckel’s 1874 drawing of stages of development in the embryos of
fish, salamander, turtle, chick, pig, calf, rabbit and human.

Professor Clarke glowed with assured elegance. It was not only the beauty of his layout and lettering, it was his whole demeanour. With just the right proportion of wrist and cuff beyond suit sleeve, he grasped the chalk delicately between forefinger and thumb, and proceeded through the lecture with scholarly sophistication. What a privilege to be taught by someone whose work was so well-known and highly regarded throughout the world. We were rather in awe of him.  

He was talking about pre-natal and neo-natal human development: physical and mental growth before and around birth. He concluded with a short quotation. None of us quite caught it, but we felt too stupid to ask. He said something like: “Antigen capital file genre.”

In those days, students weren’t given all the slides and notes on the internet to learn and parrot back in examinations. We used to read around lectures. We went to the library and made notes from text books and academic journals. We even owned quite a lot of expensive text books ourselves. So before long I worked out that what he had actually said was: “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.” Furthermore, I understood what it meant: a chunk of lecture succinctly summarised in three words.

The point is, as became clear when we later learned about how we acquire the power of speech and language, if we don’t understand something, if we cannot make sense of how the words fit together, we find it difficult to say. Think of the novelty song Mairzy dotes and dozy dotes and liddle lamzy divey.

Twenty-five years later, the children were laughing.

“I bet you can’t say “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppercorns,” said my wife, and recited the full verse, faultlessly. She followed it with “She sells sea shells …” as an encore.

“The British soldiers’ shoulders,” I added, not to be outdone. “The Leith police dismisseth us,” and then out of nowhere, “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”

Within a few days, our eight-year-old son had got it. “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” he would tell anyone who would listen. At school, he was in Mr. Price’s class.

“Hello Mr. Price,” he said. “Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.”

“Aunty Jenny was late for what?” queried Mr. Price.

“It means when a baby grows in its mummy’s tummy, it starts off like a little tadpole, and then looks like a little frog, and then like a little bird, and then a little horse, and then a little monkey, and then a little baby.”

That guy is now a solicitor. 

What a pity that Meckel and Serres’ theory of embryological parallelism, perfectly encapsulated in Ernst Haeckel’s catchy phrase, illustrated by his somewhat dishonest drawing and so urbanely recapitulated by Professor Clarke, has been discredited as biological mythology.

Class Journey

When I describe myself as working class, it irritates my wife and family no end. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” they say. “You had professional jobs in accountancy, computing, and universities. Your father employed fifteen people, and owned a four-bedroomed detached house with a double garage and garden in a nice part of town. He had a good car. You had books and music at home. How can that be working class?” 

I protest that much of that came later, but they won’t have it and excited voices are raised. They don’t like the idea that if I am working class, it might make them working class too. 

“I would not have married you if you had been working class,” my wife once said. 

No, we are not working class now. The kids were embarrassed at school to be called “posh” because they did not have particularly strong local accents. But I grew up working class. 

Like many of my age and background, especially from the North of England, I have been on a kind of class journey, and changed. It was not a deliberate or conscious change, but without it, I would not have been able to do the things I did. Class was, and to a large extent remains, a big influence on opportunity in England today. We make scores of micro-judgements about each other’s backgrounds all the time, and treat each other accordingly. It influences whether or not we are offered a particular job or promotion, or who we select as friends or partners. 

The street where we lived until I was 6, although it seemed shabbier then

It is largely the circumstances of your childhood that define you: how you lived and the friends you had. We lived in a rented two-bedroomed terraced house until I was six, and then moved up in the world to a three-bedroomed semi. My dad worked as part shot assistant, and part salesman travelling around the local villages three days a week. Some days he was not home until seven or eight. On Thursday mornings (half-day closing) he went to work in a boiler suit to clean and maintain the firm’s four vehicles, which took a lot of time in the forties and fifties. He worked on Saturdays and had only two week’s holiday a year. 

Like many ‘housewives’, my mother did not work. Ordinary jobs paid enough to bring up a family quite comfortably on one income in those days. Work was social, without the intensity it can now have. 

We then lived in one of the semi-detached houses on the left until I was 18

It might be more accurate to say we were well-brought-up working class. We did not rent a council house, and my dad was not a manual worker. He took over the business when I was 12, but we did not move to the larger house until a few months before I left school. I never really lived there. I moved on to shared houses in Leeds with ordinary lads from ordinary parts of Wakefield and Manchester. 

Let me list how the fathers of my schoolday friends earned their livings: dock worker, railway labourer, engine driver, joiner, council lorry driver, gas meter reader, clothing factory worker, scaffolder, stone mason. They were the children I mixed and played with, and was influenced by. Many lived in council or rented housing. A little above were a butcher with his own shop, a chiropodist, an electricity board clerk, and a man who selected ships’ crew, but it was a working class area in a northern working class town. We used local pronunciations such as “watter” (water), “owt” and “mowt” (anything and nothing), “whee-ere” and “thee-ere” (where and there), and “moo-ere” (more). I knew the difference, but did not mix with any children from professional families except, in my late teens, one whose parents were teachers. Some years later, I felt perfectly at home working in a canning factory. 

A few years ago, I came across an old cassette tape recorded at a friend’s house when I was around 17. We switched on the recorder and let it run: five of us I think. The accents, the bad language, how we spoke about girls at school: you would be in no doubt that we were uncouth working class. It made me so uncomfortable I threw the tape away. 

We moved to a large house in this (then) leafy part of town when I was 18

Although I soon moved to shared houses in Leeds.
The first was a wrong-way-round house, with entrance at what was built as the rear.
The front entrance was only on foot.

But I am speaking about the economic working class. There are other indicators. Culturally, we were not typical. My dad had educated interests. He read a lot, listened to the BBC Home Service (now Radio 4), and liked poetry. He was a churchgoer, and followed up the monthly Bible Readings they sent. We had encyclopaedias and books, and my dad talked to me about them, and I read them. He involved me in his Thursday jobs around the house, such as maintaining bicycles and cleaning boots, and interested me in things around town such as ships in the docks, the railways, and the shipyard. I had hobbies and used the public library a lot. I had good general knowledge. 

Mum also read a lot, and was in a drama group. Although she was clever, and could have gone to the Grammar School, she chose to stay at her village school and left at fourteen. She helped in her mother’s grocery shop until she married, where they provided tea (i.e. an evening meal) for my father’s travellers out late on their rounds. 

I think this background helped get me into the Grammar School where I had a good education and intelligent friends. The Grammar Schools were created to supply the country’s need for educated professionals: social engineering on a grand scale. It took me into the accountancy profession, and contact with privately educated colleagues and business owners. We had to get on with everyone from office and factory workers to the rich. My accent began to shift, my language became more elaborate, and I began to understand how the world worked. 

Going late to university and working in higher education around the country brought further sophistications. My accent still reveals my Yorkshire roots, and some even detect which part of Yorkshire, but it is unsettling to encounter those who never moved away, and realise just how different I am now. They often sound uneducated. 

Do genetics influence class? How did my great-grandfather lift himself from a background of agricultural labourers to become a ship’s master after running away to sea? And my grandfather successfully started his own business, and employed others. Another great-grandfather was active in the Methodist church, with wide religious knowledge. My mother’s father worked in a paper mill, but his family had (and still has) an almost innate understanding of all things mechanicals. They can mend almost anything. These things run through families for generations, although the genetic elements no doubt interact with other factors in complex ways. 

Perhaps class differences are no longer what they were, but they are still there in the background. It shows in what you do, your interests, how you spend your time, your friends, the language you use, how much wealth you have, and many other things. The private education sector perpetuates class differences by handing more opportunities to those whose families have paid the enormous fees. I don’t want to make “chip-on-the-shoulder” excuses, but my culturally rich family background is nothing compared to the advantages some have. 

I did all right in the end, and it has been mainly down to merit. Some academic achievements cannot be bought. I hope that is not being smug. Although selection was not entirely unbiased, I regret the abolition of the state Grammar Schools and the social mobility they gave to so many from ordinary backgrounds like mine. 

Career Analysts

Another self-indulgent piece I have been hesitant to post, but what the heck, it was all so long ago. 

Long-time readers may recall I left accountancy to go to university in my mid-twenties. Nearly everyone said it was stupid, and even my most supportive friends were dubious. “Don’t cock it up this time”, Brendan said, face contorted at the thought. 

My record hardly inspired confidence: weak and failed exams at school, the same in accountancy, and teacher training abandoned after just one term. I couldn’t succeed at anything. Examinations either asked questions I could not answer, or questions I could not remember the answers to. It was destructive and self-defeating, but you keep it to yourself and pretend to the outside world that all is well. What gave me the nerve to try again? 

Desperation, you could say. But there was one other factor. In 1976, I sought professional careers advice. This was not the free-of-charge Local Education Authority service I had tried a couple of times and found superficial and low in quality. It was from a leading London firm called Career Analysts. I can’t remember what it cost, possibly around £80. It also involved a day in London. It was not cheap. Career Analysts still operates, and similar advice is nearly £900 now. My employer might have paid, they were good like that with staff development, but having given notice, I had to fund it myself. It was money well spent.  

There was a lengthy morning of pencil-and-paper tests, followed in the afternoon by a searching face-to-face discussion with an Occupational Psychologist. It is interesting, after fifty years, to look back at the report. 

One test, the Connolly Occupational Interest Questionnaire, identified preferences for different kinds of activities. I scored highest on the Welfare and Literary scales, but below average on Persuasive, Artistic, Computational, Scientific, and Practical activities.  

Another test looked at values. I had above or well-above-average Altruistic, Intellectual, and Aesthetic values, but much lower Power, Material, and Religious. This was said to indicate someone “rather emotional, sensitive and imaginative”, making me “fairly quiet, reserved and introverted”.  

But it was the longest and most extensive set of tests, the Morrisby Differential Test Battery, that surprised the psychologist. This was an intelligence test of seven different aptitudes. It was very difficult. I was above average in everything, scoring exceptionally high in problem-solving and numerical skills, and in the top 10% for Verbal items and handling detail. Perceptual, shape, and mechanical aptitudes were also high. The report said it showed a “very high level of ability”, and I was “certainly capable of passing an Honours degree or professional exams”. And I had thought I was no good at anything! 

It was flattering, but before being accused of showing off it is no big deal. The tests simply say that I am good with numbers and can concentrate on detail. As regards the CST (Compound Series Test) of problem-solving, it is only like Sudoku with shapes instead of numbers. The other things are not unusual; for example, lots of bloggers are better writers, blessed with wit, wisdom, and powers of expression the likes of which I could never hope to have. And whatever intelligence may be, the tests show but a part of it. They say nothing about important qualities such as memory, motivation, social skills, emotional intelligence, plain common sense, and so on, in many of which I am sadly deficient.  

However, it did raise the question of why my exam results had not been what they should have been. From our discussion, the psychologist thought I had been scraping through without proper study and exam techniques, and that emotionality had held me back. It explained the inability to do exams. He was not surprised I was unhappy. I was not occupied in ways best suited to my interests, aptitudes, and values, nor at an appropriate level, my succession of accountancy jobs having deteriorated into the compilation of monthly reports. Career-wise, it left the difficulty of obtaining the basic qualifications to change or progress. 

One of several suggestions was to take two Advanced Level subjects at evening classes, with a view to university the following year. I could work full-time until Christmas and save enough then to concentrate on studies through to the exams. They would be happy to act as referees for my university application. It was only what I wanted to hear, but to be told it was not unrealistic by an unbiased, objective, third party, helped repair confidence and sense of direction. 

Regarding subjects, the aptitude tests rules nothing out, but interests and values suggested avoiding the scientific and mathematical in favour of people and ideas, such as Literature and History. Then at university, Literature, History, Psychology, or Sociology would be appropriate, depending on whether I might prefer an administrative or welfare type of career. I took English Literature and Geography at evening classes, and Psychology at university. I worked hard, got the syllabuses, practised answering past questions, followed all the advice, and things began to go well. 

Considering my interests were not “of a scientific, technical or design kind”, it might seem odd I later went on to gain qualifications and work in Computing, but occupational interests give a snapshot in time, which reflected a desperate wish to escape accountancy and work more with people. At other times the results might have been different. Also, my kind of computing involved a large slice of psychology and creativity. Most areas of science and technology are exciting if they catch your imagination. They crush the wonder out of it at school. 

Unlike interests, I doubt personality values change much through life. My dad always said we were too sensitive as a family, and I say the same to my children now. Should I worry about being labelled “emotional, sensitive, quiet, reserved, and introverted”? Does it sound weak and ineffectual? It probably overstates it, I am no pushover, but I would certainly not be much good as a ruthless salesman, or in dominating a class of unruly teenagers. Much as we might wish we were different, it is better to know and be happy in ourselves. I sense that most bloggers have this kind of contemplative nature. 

It makes us easy prey to those who do score highly on the Power and Material scales, especially the shits that seek to control and use others to further their own careers. It has been my misfortune to fall into the jurisdiction of two such individuals. They cannot understand that some of us are cooperative rather than competitive, and work for satisfaction as much as material reward. It helps to understand this. DLTBGYD. 

Grandad Dunham’s Flight Simulator

New Month Old Post: first posted 18th November, 2015

SGI Dogfight for the IRIS workstation

Like something from the future, it was the most amazing colour graphics workstation I had ever seen. I had got a job in a university where it was used to understand complex proteins by constructing and manipulating computer-generated images of the kind of ball and stick molecular models photographed with Watson and Crick in the nineteen-fifties. These models give insights into life at the sub-microscopic level, such as how molecules of oxygen displace molecules of carbon dioxide in haemoglobin. The details are so magically implausible you could come to believe in creationism. One researcher was moved to tears on seeing for the first time an image of part of the antibody she had been working on for three years.

It was the nineteen-eighties. The workstation came with a set of demonstration programs, among them a flight simulator. It was well in advance of anything any of us had seen before. The best you could have at home at that time, which replicated the dynamics of flight and motion with any reasonable accuracy, were black-and-white wire-frame simulations such as ‘Aviator’ and ‘Elite’ for the BBC Computer. The workstation simulator had coloured graphics and a choice of aircraft. You may now pause for a moment to speculate about the relative amounts of time we spent flying aeroplanes and modelling proteins.

At first, I was the only one who could land the Jumbo Jet without crashing. I had not wasted hundreds of hours flying under the ‘Aviator’ suspension bridge for nothing. I was one of the glorious few to have fought my way through to the secret code for my ‘Elite’ badge. What the others did not seem able to grasp – and some of them are now eminent professors – is that the pilot of a Jumbo-Jet sits the equivalent of three storeys high. You are still thirty feet up in the air as you touch down. If you try to land with your seat at ground level you will be too low, and smash into the runway with terrific force and die.

It all seemed terrifically futuristic. Yet my brother had a flight simulator twenty years earlier in the early nineteen-sixties. You might call it Grandad Dunham’s flight simulator. How could that be? Grandad Dunham was our great-grandfather who died in 1941. He spent the last two years of his life living with his daughter’s family. When he moved in, his son-in-law carried his chair through the streets of the town on his back.

I now have that very same chair, twice refurbished, and very comfortable it is too. On its back and covered with an eiderdown it makes a wonderful aeroplane cockpit. My brother played in it happily for hours. Sometimes he would let me be his co-pilot. He chalked some controls and instruments underneath the seat. They are still there after sixty years.

What makes it particularly poignant is that my brother died at thirty-six. The grandchildren he never saw are now about the same age he was when he drew those simple chalk marks. They can have all the latest tablets and smartphones, and simulators so realistic you forget they are only software. But one thing I do know. No matter how advanced the technology, it will never be one-half as much fun as Grandad Dunham’s eiderdown-covered chair with the chalk marks on its upturned seat.

Elite and Aviator for the BBC Computer

Infallibility

Gordon Allport (1897-1967)

I remember reading, around forty-five years ago, something by the influential psychologist Gordon Allport, who developed Trait Theory. It was about very highly successful individuals. He asked whether there might be any particular quality or qualities common to high levels of achievement. 

The successful people he studied were distinguished academics: university professors known internationally for their work, who had published shelves full of academic articles, attracted large amounts of research funding, and influenced lots of others in their field; people like himself, perhaps. 

There seemed to be only one factor common to them all: a total, unshakeable belief in their own infallibility. The trouble was that this sense of infallibility often extended beyond their area of expertise. 

I suppose a modern-day example might be a very rich and successful engineering and technology entrepreneur, who becomes an instant self-appointed expert on politics and social policy, making pronouncements on topics such as child protection, and belittling the judgment and experience of those who have been working in the field for years, because “they know better”. 

But then, what do I know? I have tried to find the Allport article again, but been unable to, so am working from memory, and personality psychology has never been my area, anyway. Although things like that don’t seem to matter much these days.

Template

This is my entry for the Weeping Horse award for the most boring blog post of the year. Another item stuffed in the back of the drawer of things I didn’t know what to do with.

We were told to buy one of these when I started my Computing Masters course in 1980. Except for the square and rectangular boxes, I never used it. 

What is it? I don’t really know, other than to say it is a template for drawing symbols used in computer flowcharting. I hardly gave it a second glance until now. It relates to an approach to programming that was becoming outdated before the course began. I think it was used for designing COBOL programs that took ages to run with no human input once started. I have no idea how to use the symbols. What is an auxiliary operation, a terminal interrupt, or a transmittal tape? And there were even more symbols on the packet it came in, on both sides. 

The packet it came in, and an example of how the symbols are used

The course taught us a different technique called Jackson Structured Programming (JSP) which was more suited to programs that interact with the user, as in most of today’s software. JSP defines programs as combinations of sequences, selections, and repetitions. It uses a notation consisting only of rectangles, plain for sequences, marked O for selections and * for repetitions. If you adhere to its rules for putting them together, you avoid the unintelligible, spaghetti-like tangle of code that defeats most novice programmers. I found it invaluable. 

Later, I used something called Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM). This employed a further set of techniques with names such as Data Flow Diagrams, Logical Data Structures, and Entity Life Histories. It organised data into the most flexible and efficient form, which was helpful in systems that handle complex information, such as customer orders, stock control, or bus timetables. This figure shows some of the notations. I could probably just about remember enough to explain them further, but it would be gobbledygook.  

Jackson Structured Programming example from my Masters Dissertation
SSADM Logical Data Structure and Data Flow Diagram

I know it is off the end of the autistic spectrum, but I enjoyed this kind of stuff and took great pride in it (and in what I was paid to do it). If the design is right, software works as intended without bugs that need fixing all the time. At the computer company I worked at, our large and complicated service management system did what it was supposed to do. It was used throughout Europe and elsewhere. The design was right. I would say that, today, companies like Amazon and Ebay largely have it right. So why don’t government systems such as for the DSS Carers Allowance? Why didn’t the Post Office? There used to be a saying based on the quality-time-cost triangle which was that you can have it good, you can have it quick, and you can have it cheap, but you can’t have it all three. 

To come back to the template, it was not used. Like with books, do not buy anything a university or college recommends until it is needed. It might not be. 

What to do with it? It takes up little space. It is back in the drawer with all the other useless rubbish. 

Politically Incorrect

Son gave a look of disapproval. I had used an unacceptable word (yet again!). 

Because of swollen feet, a side-effect of pills to inhibit Exon 14 tumours, it was becoming difficult to put my shoes on. I had been wearing mainly walking shoes for some months, but even these had become tight, and I had bruised the side of my ankle making it painful to walk. Shuffling awkwardly, I stepped down heavily and hurt my back. It took three inactive weeks to get better. In the meantime, I finally gave in to nagging advice from our resident family occupational therapist, and bought some wide-fitting, wide-opening Cosyfeet shoes. And cosy they are. I can walk around the village again.  

“I’ve had to get some spastic shoes”, I told my son. 

The thing is, “spastic” was once a perfectly acceptable word. It was not until 1994 that The Spastics Society renamed itself Scope, the charity for people with cerebral palsy. “Spastic” had become a term of abuse, and parents were being put off. Children would call each other “a daft spastic” for clumsiness or mistakes. Just as a word, it sounds effective and humorous. It actually means subject to spasms, and remains in medical use in other circumstances. “Scope” is neutral, but the Society lost public awareness. 

In contrast, Mencap, the society for children and adults with learning disabilities, continues under a name with negative connotations, but everyone recognises what it is. The name went through several changes after the charity was founded in 1946 as The National Association of Parents of Backward Children. “Backward” became another term of abuse. “Are you a bit backward?” was hurled at someone slow to understand a point. 

Many other terms have fallen out of use. Mongolism was the scientific name for Downs Syndrome. Cretinism was thyroid deficiency severe enough to cause confusion and physical changes. They were accepted medical and academic terms into the 1980s. I still have a small book by a professor at the university where I did my psychology degree, an internationally respected authority in learning disability, that contains a table setting out the legal and scientific uses through the years of terms used to describe ‘mental deficiency’, ‘mental retardation’ and ‘subnormality’ according to I.Q. It is interesting that ‘idiot’ denoted the lowest I.Q., with ‘imbecile’ slightly higher, and ‘feeble-minded’ and ‘moron’ above, which does not seem to be the pejorative usage today.

From Clarke, A.D.B. and Clarke, A.M. (1975): Recent Advances in the Study of
Subnormality. MIND (National Association for Mental Health), London. Page 5. 

Such terms were used to discriminate and exclude people from society, irrespective of ability. Until perhaps the 1960s, eugenics, sterilisation, and euthanasia, were openly discussed. Institutionalisation lasted even later, although, with support, many occupants could have lived independently. Alan and Ann Clarke did a great deal to alleviate this by showing what people could do, rather than what they could not. 

Then there are the labels for nationalities, ethnicities, and race. They were not always used maliciously. When a Canadian-born great-nephew turned up on leave during the Second World War, my great-grandfather said that this “Yank” (can I still say that?) had knocked on the door. It was a description, not a judgement. The family put him up for a few days, delighted to hear about their Canadian relatives, and it seemed to relieve some of his anxiety about having to go back to the war.  

Returning to the slang term for Americans, no doubt many will dislike it, and it wasn’t used accurately anyway. I dislike being called a Brit. I am British, or English, or from Yorkshire, but as Brit is now used widely in the British media, and by some British bloggers, I am not likely to win that one. 

National and racial labels are often used to stir up division and hatred. There is a Monty Python sketch about a television show called Prejudice, in which viewers are invited to come up with derogatory names for various nationalities, and contains a section called “Shoot the Poof” (although even Monty Python in 1970 steered clear of race). The sketch can be found online, but some will find it so offensive I am not going to post a link. On watching again, I still find it hilarious. Michael Palin as the awful show host is brilliant, but as with the comedy series ‘Till Death Us Do Part’, not everyone sees that the laugh is at and not with the holders of these views.  

I misused one of these words in frustration. If you saw my feet you would see why. I’ve got some spastic slippers as well now. 

Professional Foul

In 1977, Eastern Europe was still in the grip of Communist regimes controlled by the Soviet Union. In Czechoslovakia, there had been a crackdown following the liberal period known as the Prague Spring, and subsequent Soviet invasion. the playwright Václav Havel had been imprisoned several times for opposing the Communist system. He became President after independence. 

That autumn, I was in the middle of a few idle weeks between receiving the ‘A’ Level examination grades that had got me in to university as a mature student, working for the summer on night shifts in a canning factory, a walking holiday in Iceland, and starting my new course. One Wednesday evening, with nothing to do, I clicked through the three television channels we then had, wondering whether there was anything I might watch. I caught the beginning of a televised play which seemed to be about university lecturers. I quickly realised it was something special. 

It was Tom Stoppard’s ‘Professional Foul’. It opens with a scene on an aeroplane in which a Cambridge Professor of Ethics, Professor Anderson, is on his way to a philosophical colloquium in Prague to give an invited talk. Another academic on the plane from a lesser, working-class university, McKendrick, forces him into conversation, but Anderson shows no interest in the colloquium, or anything philosophical at all. We later learn he has an ulterior motive for accepting the expenses-paid invitation, which is to go to a football match between England and Czechoslovakia, a World Cup qualifier. 

In true Stoppard fashion, the plot becomes more and more complicated from then on, with interleaving themes and clever word play. The main themes are how ethical behaviour can be compromised by real-life events, and the oppression of individual expression by authoritarian regimes. 

In Prague, Professor Anderson spots two English footballers at his hotel. He is also approached by a Czech ex-student, Holler, who despite getting a First, is only allowed in Czechoslovakia to work as a cleaner. 

Holler asks Anderson to smuggle a thesis out of the country. This gives Anderson an ethical dilemma. The thesis concludes that the morality of the state should be derived from that of the individual, which is a position not permitted under a system that denies freedom of thought. Anderson, however, concludes that as a guest of the government, it would be unethical to take the thesis, but agrees to return it to Holler’s flat the next day, rather than risk him being caught in the street with dissident material.

He calls at Holler’s flat on the way to the football match, to find it being searched by police. They prevent him from leaving, but switch on the radio broadcasting the match. One of the footballers from the hotel commits a deliberate ‘professional foul’ to deny the opponents a scoring opportunity. The police also commit a professional foul of their own by planting foreign currency in the flat. 

Anderson returns to the hotel exhausted, with the thesis still in his possession. Later, Mrs. Holler and their son arrive to ask for his help. They tell him that Holler was arrested on the way home from visiting him the previous evening. Disturbed by their plight he promises to do all he can. It makes him think further about his ethical dilemma over Holler’s thesis, and revise his position. 

After dinner, McKendrick holds forth loudly to the other residents in the hotel lounge. He is clearly very drunk, and enamoured by his own linguistic dexterity. He lectures them about the ethics of professional fouls by working-class footballers. One of the footballers thumps him to the ground. Anderson helps him back to his room and leaves him to sleep it off. 

In light of what he has seen, Anderson re-writes his talk to discuss the conflict between the rights of individuals and the rights of the state, including freedom from search and interference, and whether it is ethical to put someone in prison for reading or writing the wrong books. The worried chairman cuts his talk short by arranging a fire alarm. Two more professional fouls.  

At the airport on the way home, Anderson’s luggage is carefully searched while McKendrick is allowed straight through. Another academic is detained for carrying letters to Amnesty International. On the plane, McKendrick and Anderson discuss this, and Anderson mentions the thesis. McKendrick asks where he hid it, and Anderson reveals he took advantage of McKendrick’s unconsciousness to hide it in his brief case. Another professional foul. McKendrick is furious, which Anderson understands, but concludes that his unethical actions were justifiable in the real-life circumstances. He surmises that ethical philosophy can be very complicated. 

Although the play conveys a menacing sense of state repression, it is entertaining, clever and funny. The quick-witted Anderson character is delightful. It is set in very different times to now, in a country where those who held the wrong opinions suffered discrimination. It could easily return, either there or here.    

This misses an awful lot out, but the plot is much easier to summarise than the philosophy. I did not understand the half of it, but it brought home the fun in playing creatively with ideas, and that it might be part of university life. If my course encouraged just a small amount of this, I was going to enjoy it.  

The play is on YouTube (here). I still don’t get all the philosophical references, though.  

Ten Years

I started this blog on 11th August, 2014, which means it has been going ten years as of today. The idea was to write a kind of autobiography covering how life has changed in England since I was little. 

The changes are many. After the war we still had ration books, bombed buildings, gas lights in the street, and Prefab houses. Later, in Leeds in the 1970s, my job took me to banks, building societies, manufacturers, merchants, shops, publishing and entertainment concerns, and businesses of all kinds that packed the city and further afield. Nearly all have gone. You could take evening classes in almost anything, and there were four or five cinemas in the city centre. The Leeds trams were no more, but sometimes I had to use the trolley buses in Bradford. 

I then went late to university, which led to a new career near the edge of the computer revolution, and saw change as it took place. I suppose I played a small part in it. I also came late to having a family, which has been great fun. I wanted to write it all down. 

There were few readers at first, but when I began to comment more on other blogs a few years ago, and chanced upon this friendly community, things began to pick up a bit. 

At times during the last two-and-a-half years I thought I would not see this day. I was as good as told it, but I am still here. The next milestones are more fruits of the garden, my birthday, and then Christmas. And then we will be into 2025 and hopefully it all comes round again. Or will it? That sounds gloomy, I know, but it is what it is, and that is all there is to it. 

It does not get easier, as my comment and response rates are beginning to show. The list of what I can no longer do, am not allowed to do, or would be stupid to try, is depressingly long. My reading difficulties make blogging slow and difficult, and I have thought of giving up, but it is one of the things that keeps me going, and I still have posts to write. I enjoy the exchange of humour, ideas, and opinions, reading what others have posted, and writing creatively. I am amazed others read it. Thank you so much, everyone. 

Marie Tidball

I find it astonishing how some overcome illnesses, difficulties, and barriers that to me would seem overwhelming. 

I think of a student on the university course I took. He had brittle bone disease, and at one time or another had broken just about every bone in his body. Despite the small stature and deformities that often go with the condition, he lived independently in the university halls of residence. He travelled in each day in his three-wheeled Invacar, and moved from class to class in a wheelchair, with books and notes hanging in a plastic carrier bag from the rear handles. We took turns to push. He always had a cheery smile. 

Later, there was Mahir who had muscular dystrophy. He had arrived in England in his early teens as a Bosnian refugee, speaking no English. By then, he had lost the ability to walk, which in Bosnia had excluded him from school. Once here, he did well enough to go to university, and enrolled on the course I ran. He struggled to control his limbs, used an electric wheelchair, and was accompanied everywhere, even to the toilet, by Brian, a full-time paid assistant. What incredible dedication that must have required. 

When you had a bit of a cold or headache, and looked out at the weather in the morning and it seemed tempting to crawl back to bed, the thought that Julian or Mahir would be there shamed you into getting up and going in. 

I came across Brian a few years later, looking after another special needs student. He said he’d heard that Mahir had died, still in his twenties. Julian did not have a long life, either, but lived into his forties. 

Recently, we came across another inspirational figure, Marie Tidball. She was born with multiple physical difficulties, including no hands. It was unclear whether she would live. She did, but missed years of school through medical treatments, such as surgery to enable her to walk. She has just one finger. From school in Penistone, Yorkshire, she won a place at the University of Oxford where she got a degree in Law and a Doctorate in Criminology, and has since worked as a legal researcher, disability rights campaigner, and local councillor. She has now been selected as a Parliamentary candidate for her home constituency of Penistone and Stocksbridge at the next General Election. Our ceilidh band played at the launch of her fundraising campaign.  

Going by last week’s local election results, she is almost certain to be elected, and will quickly make an impression as a Member of Parliament, not because of her difficulties but because she is every bit the fiery, determined woman her story suggests. You heard of her here first. 

“I learned there was no such word as ‘can’t’ and that you have to go out in the world and develop your own skills to use them for others.”   

So, let’s have no more whingeing and procrastinating. Just get on with it.  

https://www.marietidball.com/

Computers, Education and the Conservatives

Conservative governments are non-interventionist. They do not like the state to run anything. They spent the 1980s and 1990s selling off the country’s assets and giving away the proceeds. It continues today in their unwillingness to pay for public services or regulate things properly. Some of them would privatise health and education if they could get away with it. That is why, if my health holds out, I will not be voting Conservative at the next election. I will see the bastards* go to hell before I do. 

And yet, in the 1980s, they did intervene. A 1978 television documentary, ‘Now the Chips are Down’, made clear how woefully unprepared Britain was for the silvery white heat of the computer revolution. It scared the Thatcher government so much that they funded a number of costly initiatives. Two in particular stood out for me.  

A few of the many programmes in the BBC Computer Literacy Archive
https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/programmes

In one, the BBC was recruited to raise awareness of the skills needed. It led to the ‘Computer Literacy Project’, which ran from 1982 to 1989. It was linked to the specially commissioned ‘BBC Micro’, which was taken up by many homes and most schools, with over a million sold.

In the other, the ‘Microelectronics Education Programme’, massive amounts of money were spent putting computers in schools, setting up and funding resource centres, and training teachers. Politicians boasted that Britain led the world in “equipping the children of today with the skills of tomorrow.”    

Did it actually achieve anything, or was it bluster and spin?

At least it got my new career off the ground. After escaping from accountancy into a dream job as a university researcher, I knew as much about these new concepts and technologies as anyone. It would be hard to overstate how immersed, obsessed even, I was in this bright new world of colour and light.

I recently discovered that the television programmes, and more, are freely online in the ‘BBC Computer Literacy Archive’. It has the 1978 documentary which set things off (still informative 45 years later), and Dominic Sandbrook’s wonderfully evocative reflection on the social changes of the nineteen-eighties (not only computers). Incredibly, one programme even shows my own small part in this.  

Watching again now, I am struck by how aware we were of the social questions posed by what was about to come. How would people spend their time in a world with less work? How should wealth be shared across society? It is not turning out as well as it might.

Most fascinating for me is the series ‘The Learning Machine’ (1985), about computers in education, the area in which I worked. Here, once again, are the names and faces I knew and discussed things with at workshops and conferences, such as the main writer and presenter, Tim O’Shea.

He was scathing of the Microelectronics Education Programme, which, he said, had foisted cheap, underpowered computers and poor software upon parents and schools. The attractive message about improving the quality of education, disguised what was really on politicians’ minds: the job market, supporting British industry, and making education cheaper. Eventually, we might even do away with schools and teachers completely.

The then ubiquitous programming language, Basic, comes in for particular criticism. It encouraged tangled, undecipherable code, leading self-taught home and school users to think they knew how to write software, when, really, their knowledge was badly lacking.

I think Tim was broadly correct, but we were all still trying to understand how to use computers in education, and few teachers had the skills to teach programming. I was taught structured methods and had no difficulty creating reliable, intelligible Basic programs several hundred lines long.

It can also be argued that the initiatives did have benefits, but they were two decades in the making. A generation of youngsters became fascinated by computers, seeding Britain’s successful computer games industry. So, perhaps it did work out well in the end. Tim did well too. He became Principal of the University of Edinburgh.

One other series caught my eye: ‘With a Little Help from the Chip’ (1985), about helping those with special needs. I was astonished, in programme 3, to see a one-minute clip of software I designed and coded, being used in a school for deaf children. I have written about the programs before, but never seen the TV programme. It brought back all the satisfactions of going into schools to observe and collect data. 

Do you ever wonder, were it possible, whether you would happily go back to an earlier point in your life? I would, to this time for certain. And I would jump at the chance of another forty years. Most of all, it was an innocent, optimistic time, focused on what we were doing rather than the unrest and disruption taking place. We were trying to make the world a better place. We could do with more of that now. 

* A name used by Margaret Thatcher for Eurosceptic right-wing Conservatives. 

The Nineteen-Eighties

I missed most of the nineteen-eighties. I was working as a university researcher, writing a thesis in my spare time, and volunteering with the Samaritans. As well as all that, my mother was in and out of hospital with breast cancer, and then died. It left little over for anything else, and I gave no great thought to events taking place around me. Even the re-runs of old Top Of The Pops programmes from that time have seemed refreshingly new to me in recent years. 

Yet, in Britain, it was a decade of great change: to commerce and industry, to individual and national identity, in lifestyle, and in politics. Almost every week there was some new controversy about the morals of the young and the state of the nation. Most of it went over my head. 

So, forty years late, I have been back in the nineteen-eighties. I started with a 2016 television documentary, “The 80s With Dominic Sandbrook”. If nothing else, it is wonderful nostalgia. 

It takes us through the years of Margaret Thatcher and the IRA Brighton bombing, her “special relationship” with Ronald Reagan, and her nation of young computer programmers. Our hearts and minds are invaded by Japanese video games and VCR video nasties such as Cannibal Holocaust, much to the outrage of Mrs. Mary Whitehouse, a puritanical Christian campaigner. We fall under the influence of the American consumerist dream, and the lifestyles of television shows such as Dallas. There is the civil unrest of racism, and we are terrified by the “gay plague” of AIDS, fought with surprisingly frank publicity and the example of Princess Diana. There is a gradual increase in sexual tolerance and acceptance of diversity. We go to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, and with the striking miners. 

Is it rhetoric to say “we went to war” with the miners? It was certainly planned like a military campaign. The miners and other trade unions had been causing trouble for years, and the Thatcher government was determined to see them off once and for all. A sweeping programme of pit closures was announced, bringing miners out on strike throughout Yorkshire and elsewhere. The government had prepared by stockpiling mountains of coal at power stations, and were fortunate that the Nottinghamshire miners stayed at work, thinking their jobs were secure. An information assault was mounted, branding the miners as “the enemy within”, portraying then as uncouth animals making outrageous demands, prepared to be violent if not met. The image and persona of their leader, Arthur Scargill, seemed to fit perfectly. The mainstream media reinforced it, with reporting doctored to portray the miners in an unfavourable light. It had elements of regional and class snobbery designed to appeal to voters sympathetic to a right-wing government. 

But another documentary, made to correspond with this year’s fortieth anniversary of the strike, gives a different perspective. “The Miners’ Strike: A Frontline Story”, recalls the personal experiences of fifteen men and women involved in different ways: striking and strike-breaking miners from working and striking areas, their families, and members of the police force. It is powerful stuff, with harrowing recollections of hardship and brutality. 

One of the worst incidents occurred at Orgreave near Rotherham on the 18th June, 1984, where the miners planned to carry out peaceful secondary picketing. The police allowed them to approach and assemble without hindrance, and then brutally attacked them. The police were armed with batons, shields and riot gear, and hacked down the miners from horseback. It was like a medieval rout. At the time, it was widely presented as an act of self-defence by the police, but, later, miners were compensated for assault, wrongful arrest, unlawful detention and malicious prosecution. 

The strike ended after a year when the defeated miners went back to work. Essentially, they had been trying to defend their communities. They accepted that mines had to close, but not that it had to be done so abruptly, leaving whole villages near-destitute. You cannot “get on your bike and look for work”, as one cabinet minister told them, when you have a mortgage on an unsaleable house, and there is no work to be had anyway. And you can’t go to university late like I did when you have a family. The changes could have been introduced gradually, with support, as with later pit closures. Many of the affected areas never recovered, and remain amongst the poorest in Europe. 

Even now, there are many who choose to believe the media propaganda of the day, rather than recognising Margaret Thatcher and her Conservatives as uncaring, self-serving leeches who sold off the country’s assets and gave away the money. 

At the end of his programme, Dominic Sandbrook wonders how Britain might have looked had the miners and IRA succeeded. Would it have remained a trade union fortress holding out against globalisation and the advance of technology? No, it would not. Change was unstoppable, and trying to hold it back would have been futile. But it did not need to be handled with such incompetence.    

LINKS

The second of three parts of the series “The 80s With Dominic Sandbrook” (59 minutes) is online and apparently accessible without restriction at: https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/6b0ca8405623eacd3c490e87398bb3b9  

Currently there appear to be no legitimate copies of parts 1 and 3 online. 

“The Miners’ Strike: A Frontline Story” (89 minutes) is on the BBC iPlayer (UK only): https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001wm1x/miners-strike-a-frontline-story 

However, much more is generally available on the BBC website (search for “The Miners’ Strike”), such as: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-scotland-68442261 

Snowing Like Buggery

Heavy snow was forecast today, with a weather warning for our part of the Pennines, but it was nothing compared to how things used to be.

The guinea pigs snowbound in their hutch at the end of the garden, 2013

Wednesday, 25th January, 1995. It started to snow at half past four in the afternoon, much earlier than forecast, and much more heavily. I was at work at the university, feet on desk, on the phone to someone in Newcastle. Big heavy flakes, like dinner plates some would say, reflected the office light back in through the window. I should have got out straight away. When I did, it was chaos in the car park. Any later and I would have had to spend the night in the sports hall. 

All over Yorkshire, people were trapped overnight at work, on trains, in churches and town halls, and in cars on the M62. Six people died trying to walk home. The audience at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds were forced to stay the night. They had been to see ‘The Winter Guest’, a play about a community cut-off during a blizzard. Realism at its utmost.

My wife, J, was six months pregnant, her last week at work before maternity leave. She worked seventeen miles away. How was she coping? No mobile phones in those days.

It took me two hours to do three miles. The traffic inched forward with longer and longer standstills. The road then steepened and the next few hundred yards took another hour. I turned round and went back to a pub car park, had a whisky and some crisps, and started to walk home.  

I crunched my way through the countryside under crystal-clear stars, along the middle of a now silent road. There were a few other walkers, all cheery and excitable, and a lot of abandoned cars. Where was J? Was she back already? There had been no answer when I phoned from the pub.

The house was in darkness. No messages. I waited up for a time. It seemed best to get some sleep, so I went to bed.

I was awoken by her scathing voice. Her car was outside in the middle of the street, deep tracks through pristine snow. It’s an interesting experience, shovelling two feet of snow off your drive at three in the morning.

It had taken her nine hours to get home. Apart from stopping for petrol and a bar of chocolate, she had simply kept going. She knew she couldn’t get out and walk. On getting stuck, she just went backwards and forwards wiggling the wheels until free. She was rather pleased with herself, the only car still on the road.

The snow melted quickly and we were able to rescue my car the following afternoon. 

Early the following week, it happened again. In no way was the university management going to be caught napping again.

This time I was helping to invigilate an exam for a hundred and fifty students. We were in a windowless, sports hall half a mile from the main campus. I had accompanied a student to the toilet (fortunately, they were still capable of removing and replacing their own pants in those days) when someone came to tell us we had an urgent phone call. Gary, one of the other invigilators, went to take it.

“Evidently it’s snowing like buggery* outside,” he whispered to us. “The examinations office say the university is about to be closed and we should all piss off home quick” (don’t ever think that university professors are urbane and well-spoken all the time).

I wasn’t too happy. It meant we would need to set another exam, and the students would have to prepare for it and retake at a later date. We whispered between ourselves and decided to tell the students how things stood. Gary made an eloquent announcement offering them the opportunity to leave early. None did.

Afterwards, we were supposed to be collected along with the examination scripts by university transport, but none came. We had to struggle back on foot. The university was locked up and abandoned. Even the security staff had gone home. We could not get into our offices. We walked to the car park and put the scripts in my car. I began the drive home.  

If anything, it was worse than the first time. The traffic was even slower and more halting, and I could see I was going to get stuck again. I had the bright idea of diverting by one of the back roads. Wrong decision!

Half way home there is a steep, down and up dip. I slid to the bottom and that was it. Car stuck in the middle of nowhere, boot full of students’ examination scripts. It was going to be hard enough to walk the rest of the way without having to carry the scripts as well. So, I abandoned them. I wasn’t going to spend all night in the car.

There it stayed for two days. What would have become of me had the car been broken into and scripts full of data flow diagrams and entity life histories scattered across the countryside? I suppose it would not have been the first time that examination papers have been lost. It must have happened at some time, somewhere. Or has it? 

Road near our house, 2013

 * a colourful expression I had not heard since childhood, meaning "a lot".