My second year at Exeter

This was a contrast with my first year with all sorts of things falling into place.   I had got to know Chris Garland who was a PhD student in Theology working on heresies in the early Christian Church.   As far as I could see this was a power struggle framed in ideological terms.  We rented an annex at the back of a house in leafy Pennyslvania, a pleasant ten minute stroll down to the University.

Chris was an excellent cook on rather limited facilities and a series of divines from the many Exeter churches or from the Theology department itself were invited for Sunday lunch.   They were also rather 'high' in terms of their outlook.

An exception was Philip Giddings from Politics who went on to be a rather controversial leader of the evangelical laity in the Church of England.  He was like a character out of a Trollope novel.  Despite us having very different values, we got on well and I started to teach seminars on his Public Administration course which, along with other teaching, helped to integrate me into the department.

Victor Wiseman had been head of department when I arrived but passed away in my first year.  He was replaced by Tony Birch from Hull.   Tony was determined to shake the department up which did not go down well with everyone.  Many years later I was at a dinner in Fremantle, WA hosted by a former member of the department.   Tony was the guest of honour, but the host's opening line was . 'I hated you Tony.'  At Exeter, like many universities before the arrival of the research assessment exercise, it was possible to have a very agreeable life as a lecturer if you were not ambitious for promotion.

Indeed, Exeter was not very good at internal promotion so talented people tended to leave.  An example was Doug Pitt, who helped me with my interviewing of voters in Dawlish, and became head of the business school at Strathclyde.

Because of its location Exeter in those days probably gave more opportunities for the good life than most universities.  Concrete examples:

• Join the yacht club and potter about in the Exe or just frequent the bar
• Have a nice place in the country and garden
• Renovate a Victorian house in Exeter available for a song
• Play cricket
• Have the occasional drink, or perhaps another one
• Walk along the coast or on the moors
• Go to the beach (attendance at seminars in the summer term fell away badly if the weather was good)
• Have an affair with a secretary
• Go to the point to point

Annie Phizacklea arrived in the summer after spending a year at McMaster in Canada, a university with which I was later to have a close association.   She had benefitted greatly from an intensive masters course.   Her only failure had been at ice hockey where it had been assumed that she could contribute because she had played grass hockey, in fact she could barely skate.

Annie had been an undergraduate at Exeter and was joint social secretary of the student body, attracting some big groups to Devon.

It was immediately apparent to me that I was dealing with someone who was a lot smarter and much more sophisticated and cosmopolitan.  Nevertheless, Annie was never condescending to me.  She was living with her mum ( a nursing sister) in Topsham and she always made me feel welcome at 95 Fore Street.

I had undergone statistical training at Strathclyde and Annie was clued up on the possibilities of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences.   Economics managed to get a line to the main frame computer from Streatham Court (up to then it had been monopolised by Physics).  No more counter sorter, I could get print outs of my tables with the statistical significance tests already applied.

Tony Birch rightly required PhD students to give a presentation on my work.   He was well disposed to me as he saw my work on small Devon resort towns as in the tradition of his study of Glossop, Small Town Politics.   My presentation was data heavy and really only two people in the room understood my analysis: Jeff and Annie.

Annie pointed out that a lot of my results were not statistically significant.   I rather lamely answered that analysis was still in progress and Annie didn't follow up, choosing not to hole me below the waterline.

In fact we both knew that there were limits to linear two variable regression and correlation.  Even discounting outliers, the assumption of linearity often did not hold.   My Devon ward data would have benefitted from a logarithmic transformation.  (The wards with very high retiree populations along the Devon coast, some at 60 per cent or above, showed a very high propensity to vote for ratepayer candidates).

It was evident that if electoral studies was going to advance it needed to borrow from econometrics which is what has happened.   I realised that my maths wasn't good enough for that and decided to move into other areas of political science.

Unfortunately, Annie did not have a good supervisor, in fact it is questionable whether he ever read her work properly.   She finally managed to get a supervision meeting with him at his house on a Saturday evening.   She asked me to go with her for moral support.

Annie could drive and had access to a car.   She also designed and made her own clothes/   She turned up at Hillcrest Park looking like a stunning rock chick.   We had to walk past the kltchen window of my landlord and he was goggle eyed. 

Needless to say, the meeting was useless/   If I had been Annie, I would have been less equable, butI can never remember her losing her temper about anything (unlike me).

We did find time to relax, particularly after I had handed in the first draft of my thesis in early summer.  A group of us including Mike Hawkins rented a cottage for a week in Padstow for the 'obby 'oss festival and were able to emjoy the build up before the crowds arrived.  And, yes, back in Exeter, we did inhale.

Farewell to Exeter

The publications I had accumulated at Exeter enabled me to secure a permanent post at Warwick University, my first interview.   Around the beginning of September I headed up to Warwick.

At the end of the month Annie's supervisor organised a political socialisation workshop at Exeter in beautiful late summer weather.  I stayed at Fore Street, but was unable to go to the presentations by Annie and Terry on the Thursday as I had to return to Warwick for the pre-term departmental meeting.

With Annie and her mum away, I filled the flat with fruit as a thank you for their friendship and then closed the door and caught a bus to Exeter.

I turned up at the departmental meeting wearing pink trousers, leading Wilfrid Harrison to acidly enquire whether this was 'the Exeter style'.  Annie wrote to me asking me to return to Fore Street for a weekend, but it was to be 55 years before I was there again.   The Exeter chapter in my life was over and the rest of my life was to be in Warwickshire.

When I went back for my PhD oral in the autumn of 1972, most of the people I had known well were no longer there.

My first year at Exeter

I went to Exeter after a year taking a MSc at Strathclyde.  I lived in the centre of the city in Balmanno Building, Rotten Row and it was.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed my year in Scotland which I saw as a return to my native heath, albeit many generations back.   The research I did there for my dissertation on Scottish Nationalists was highly productive.   I could have stayed at Strathclyde for a PhD, but my prospective supervisor disliked the English.  It was a race to get my MSc dissertation submitted and then travel down south overnight 'on the cushions'.

Exeter was a big contrast to Glasgow. At the end of the 1960s was a rather sleepy county cathedral town, although much of the historic heart had been destroyed in the blitz.  The M5 was still on the drawing board.   As for the university, it had a quite strong contingent of minor public school boys who couldn't get into Bristol.  There was even said to be one hall of residence reserved for those who had been to public school.  A very different city and university to the Exeter of today.

My first year at Exeter was probably the least happy of my life.  This is not to say that there were no positives, but the second year was much better.   I didn't know the town so I was pleased when a local contact suggested a bedsit in St. Thomas's across the river.  It was a decent bedsit in a nice area, but it was 25/30 minute walk into the university, not that I minded that.

A PhD is necessarily an isolating experience, no one else is as interested in your topic as you are, but we were a small cohort at Exeter.  As there were no training courses for PhD students in those days, it took me some time to actually meet fellow PhD students like Mike Hawkins.

One positive was that I was able to hit the ground running with my work, essential as I had only two years funding left.  I had come to Exeter because I wanted Jeff Stanyer as my supervisor and he didn't disappoint.  He was thorough, encouraging and meticulous. 

Jeff Stanyer (right) in conversation at the 2016 reunion

I also became friendly with Terry who was working as a research assistant: indeed, her boss banned me from her office for distracting her, but we just went off to the Northcott Theatre for coffee.  Although Terry came from a very different background from me (girls private boarding school), we got on well (she was engaged to a politics PhD further on in his studies).

When we walked across the marshes in 2016, I asked Terry what her recollections were of me.  She said that I was the sensible person in the room (not so difficult in a university).  However, she (and her friends) thought I was uptight.   I think that I was still afflicted by imposter syndrome in a university environment, particularly one like Exeter.  I had confidence in my intellectual ability, but was socially less assured.

Terry made an effort to give me a cooler image.  Her parents owned a company producing suede goods and she let me have a suede jacket at cost.   I loved it, but Jeff Stanyer thought I was more suited to the kind of old fashioned sports jacket worn by train spotting gricers.  In 2016 Terry recalled selling the suede jackets in the rain at Glastonbury several years later.

Terry came to my 70th birthday party (as did Annie and Mike Hawkins).  Her former fiancé was also there, but did not recognise her and asked her name which she described as 'interesting'.

Subsequently I had to give evidence at the Sennedd in Cardiff on a couple of occasions and took the opportunity to have an early evening meal with Terry.  On the last of these occasions, probably knowing we would not see each other again, we hugged for a long time prompting the taxi driver to ask 'what's the story with that one?'

Thinking back on my friendship with Terry, I recall that my parents had adopted a sister for me when I was about seven.  Her father was a widower and when he found a new partner he wanted his daughter back.  My parents (rightly) agreed, although the LCC wanted to fight it in the courts.  I can still remember seeing Karen walk down the road with her father and I tbink that ever since then I have looked for a sister figure iny life.

My PhD was data heavy and in that first year I had to use a machine called a counter sorter. (They are so retro, I couldn't find a picture of one).  This involved putting through a set of data cards (one for each local authority in England, many more then) through  this machine, some of which inevitably got chewed up.   Tabulations had to be noted down manually and any statistical tests worked out on paper.

I did try and get involved in some university societies and I became secretary of Amnesty International. I enjoyed the film club.   I visited the Isles of Scilly for the first time in 1970 with my parents and in later life I was to enjoy them a great deal, inspired by my original visit.

It wasn't a wasted year, because I made great progress on my PhD, but it wasn't a happy one.

Second year ar Exeter here: https://uniexeter6971.blogspot.com/2023/09/my-second-year-at-exeter.html

The 2016 reunion

The title of this blog is inspired by a comment by my late colleague Roger Duclaud-Williams, 'nostalgia ain't what it used to be.'   Psychologists warn us about the phenomenon of 'rosy recollections', so I have not simply portrayed my years studying for a PhD at Exeter  (1969/71) in a retrospective pink glow.

On August 7th 2016 my former fellow Exeter University PhD student and later Warwick colleague Annie Phizacklea drove across Leamington to collect me for a trip to Exeter for a reunion.  We talked continuously all the way to Exeter.   Annie dropped me off at the former eye hospital where she had once been a cleaner, now an up market hotel.  She went to her sister's and that evening we all went out to dinner.

From left to right: Terry, Annie, Bill, Wyn

The next day we took a taxi to a café in Fore Street, Topsham next to Annie's old flat.   Bill Tupman and Terry Rees (Dame Teresa Rees) were already there.   terry passed away in October 2023: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/oct/25/dame-teresa-rees-obituary  Bill and Annie passed away this year, as did Mike Hawkins who could not join us on that day., although he was able to come to my 70th birthday party.

Mike was a competitive weightlifter.   He was a very down to earth person with a good sense of humour who lightened up the day.   He lived in lodgings which were still available then.  A Physics postgraduate was also there whom I got to know and a typically sardonic school master from the boys selective school.  In his youth he had been a member of a pop group called the Classics who went round village halls in the Swindon area.   Turning up at one venue, one girl was heard to say 'Oh no, it's those ****ing Classics.'   Ian Gordon was a temporary lecturer at Exeter at this time and Mike later joined up with hm in a successful politcs team at Kingston.

Bill and Terry in conversation at the café

Terry and Bill on the Topsham Ferry

After coffee we walked to the Topsham Ferry and crossed the river.  Bill and Annie walked ahead and Terry and I walked together.   It was if it was not forty years since we had met.  We talked in the open and friendly way we always had.   Arriving at the Swan's Nest pub, where the decor and carpet seemed to be the same as in the 1970s, we were joined by a number of former staff members including my supervisor Jeff Stanyer.

Malcolm Shaw, still teaching at 90

How had this reunion come about?   In 2015 I was contacted out of the blue by Terry Rees who sent me a series of satires I had written about the Exeter department in 1969/71.  We then set about contacting our contemporaries with the idea of organising a reunion.  I had lost touch with Annie Phizacklea after she had retired early from Warwick and gone to live in Spain.   I managed to contact her by email and she said that she was in England and could come.

She did not say where she was in England, until a casual conversation with the late Bob Fine from Sociology, who was a neighbour, revealed that she was back in Leamington!   I asked her to meet me for coffee the next day at a Portuguese place in Regent Grove not too far from where she lived.  I was standing in the queue when I heard a 'boo' behind me and there was Annie.

Coffee with Annie

After the reunion, I cooked lunch for Annie on the following Sunday and we continued our conversation about times gone by and our lives since Exeter.  We then met regularly for lunch, sometimes at a restaurant, but quite often Annie would cook me a delicious vegetarian meal, sometimes letting me have fish.   I ferried her to and from Birmingham Airport when she went to her place in Spain and to various medical appointments when she developed cancer.   When I was in pain after a knee operation, Annie was round in ten minutes and cooked me a meal.

With Annie at a birthday lunch

First year at Exeter here: https://uniexeter6971.blogspot.com/2023/08/my-first-year-at-exeter.html