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.
.JPG)