Lord Dainton Interviewed by Paul Thompson C409/028

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CITY LIVES

Lord Dainton

Interviewed by Paul Thompson

C409/028

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The British Library National Life Stories

Interview Summary Sheet Title Page

Ref no: C409/028 Digitised from cassette originals

Collection title: City Lives

Interviewee’s surname: Dainton Title: Lord

Interviewee’s forename: Frederick Sydney Sex: Male

Occupation: Chemist and university Date and place of birth: 11 November 1914 administrator

Dates of recording: 25 September, 4 November and 21 December 1989

Location of interview: Interviewee’s home, Oxford

Name of interviewer: Paul Thompson

Type of recorder: Uher

Recording format: F numbers of playback cassettes:

Total no. of digitised tracks: 11 Mono or stereo: mono

Additional material:

Interviewer’s comments:

Reel 1 Side A (part 1)

Could I start by asking you whether you remember any of your grandparents?

I only remember one grandparent, and she was a widow and lived in Watford in Northamptonshire, which is exactly the village of Watford Gap Station, on the Ml, and her husband was the lock-keeper at the gates which control the locks for the Grand Junction Canal, which can be seen from the Ml. He died in the last century, I think, at the age of about 56, I'm not sure, falling into the lock on an icy night, I think it was Christmas or New Year. But I remember her simply as a lady almost uniformly in black. If you were, in fact, a widow, in those days, you seemed to wear black from then onwards. But she was, of course, quite old when I knew her, simply because I was the son of her second daughter, and that meant that there was an enormous age difference between ourselves. I was only very small at the time.

You used to go and visit her, then?

Occasionally, yes. The...I'm afraid holidays were rather a rarity in my family. Partly it was financial restriction. I mean, I can remember going to Scarborough and seeing the sea for the first time at the age of ll, and not visiting it again. The easiest and cheapest method was to go to Watford and have a free week or fortnight with granny, as it were, though I tended to get into mischief, and succeeded in breaking an arm there, and various other things, falling out of trees, and swimming in the canal, and so on. But it was interesting, because it showed my mother, as she always was, as a country girl, because she came, as it were, to life, back in her own village, and knew people. And even now, when I drive up North, which I often do, taking the A5 to Kilsby, as I pass the locks, I point out always to myself, and to whoever is with me, that that's where my grandfather and grandmother on the maternal side were. A little bit further up, that this is where Mrs. Ruffle's farm was, where one had wholly unpasteurised milk, and seemed to thrive on it! Another place where I used to harvest the corn, and so on, or help to do so, which meant largely carrying the beer round!

How super!

It was fun, yes. And you have to have roots somewhere. My other roots, of course, seem to be deeply embedded in Sheffield, and that's where all my real makings were.

How did your mother come to Sheffield, then?

Well, my father was a stonemason, and as you can imagine, in the last century and the early part of this century, most stonemasons were peripatetic, they moved wherever the work was. And quite often it was the architects who would call for a good mason to come on to a new job with them, so that my father was employed, for example, well, on Sunderland Post Office, to give one example, to coming right across into Lancashire, a church in Lancashire, to coming back to Sheffield, Sheffield Town Hall, both the original building of 1897 and the extension of 1923, and Ecclesall church or whatever. So he tended to be migrant. But he had met my mother's older sister, by whom he had five children. And she died, and he was obviously in a difficulty, and asked my...her younger sister, who was then "in service" - that was a phrase, meaning of course that she was working in either private houses or in her last job - was at the Prep School to Rugby School, Overslade School, and she was called in, as it were, to help look after these young children, and then in due course, got married, and, so I think I mentioned in the record, probably, illegally in the Church of England, because the rules of consanguinity forbade the marriage to the deceased wife's sister. I don't know why, but that was it, and there were four children of that, and I was the last. So that makes nine in all, which is a long stretch over 30 years.

So when you were young, how many would have been at home then?

Four at home initially. Very difficult to accommodate, because it was a terrace house: a front room, a tiny front room, a tiny back room. The front room was referred to as "the parlour", I may say, and very rarely used. The back room, which had an old Yorkshire range in it, on which all the cooking was done, coal-fired, of course, and a scullery at the back, and one cold water tap, and gas lighting on the ground floor only, so that one had to take candles up to the two bedrooms, which were above the two rooms, and an attic. And accommodating with parents in one room, two girls, two

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 1 (part 1) Page 3 boys, the only way, I slept with my brother for some time in the attic, until he was married and went off, and I had it to myself. And a small back yard which my mother tried to grow things and brighten it up, but there wasn't much room. I mean, the back yard was smaller than this room we're sitting in now. And an outside closet, which I can remember the pleasure that it was converted to water closet from an earth closet, just as I can remember the bringing in of electric light, which to me was a Godsend, because I was able to play about with this, and do quite illegal extensions to it, as I rose in the school and began to understand about electricity! And the remarkable thing is that I never seemed to blow anything up! And I can remember, I mean, no sense of deprivation at all. It was a poor house. My father would be out to work five and a half days a week, and leaving very early in the morning to go to his employers, George Longden's, where he was in charge of what was called "The Yard" which was the Masons' Yard, and he might be going away to jobs where, which they were doing work for some time. But he'd reached that stage of seniority, which enabled him to really be permanently within this firm, which was the same firm that did the building of the Sheffield Town Hall. They obviously hung on to his services for that reason. And people went off and caught the tram to school, as I did, or walked to school when it was the elementary schools.

What were most of the, what sort of jobs did the neighbours have?

Oh, the...in this terrace, each two houses were divided by a common passageway. Half way up the passageway on either side, there would be a so-called front door. It was the type which led directly up on to staircases, and on the other side of this passageway, which was covered over, because it was a terrace, in fact was our landlady, who was a terrible spinster woman; I've forgotten what the rent was, but she was really a kind of female Uriah Heep. And I can remember keeping out of her way at all costs, and our yards were divided by some simple trelliswork. Her garden was neglected; ours was carefully looked after, limited as it was. I mean, when I speak of a garden, it was the size of that carpet, but it provided a few flowers.

But presumably your father would have been regarded as rather a successful working man?

Absolutely. And there were miners in the road, all kinds of people really. Steelworkers. Next door we had, temporarily, a professional footballer for Sheffield United, Pickering, who, of course, I thought was a god, who was an untypical footballer. He was studying accountancy at night school as well, and he never made much as a footballer, but I expect he did rather well in the end. And they were very varied, on the whole, manual and low-grade clerical, I would think. One tended to meet them in two places, either at the corner shop, which was one of those funny little corner shops, which was...I remember it now, it was Lucy M. Simcox, Licenced Retailer of Wine, Spirits and Tobacco, and it was a kind of grocer's shop with an off licence, you see, and she knew everybody. In fact, I can remember, when I was in my 30s, and she was an old lady, going back to Sheffield and calling in, and wanting to purchase something, and I never forget what, because she recognised me at once, and she said, "How are you getting on at school, love?" And I hadn't the heart to tell her that I was a Fellow of a Cambridge college, I thought it was best to leave it and say, "Well, not too bad, not too bad!" And she was content. And the other place you met them, of course, was in Chapel, because, as in the West Riding fairly generally, the working folk were Chapel, the higher class were Church. And so in my case, it was the United Methodist Chapel, where one was enrolled in what was called the "Cradle Roll", you were baptised there, and you went on in a natural progression, and Sundays were, of course, for a long time, the service at ll, the Sunday School at 2.30, and evening service again, at 6.30.

Were your parents active in the Chapel?

My mother was slightly. My father wasn't. I think he was an intelligent man, and I think he...curiously, he was a working class Tory, but a man of very independent views, and it was he who made all the children, because he couldn't read, you see, go out to the public libraries and borrow books, and read to him. Now, that was a marvellous education for me. And one of the great and interesting circularities in my life, is to find myself in September 16th 1980, asking Mrs. Thatcher at No. l0, in fact insisting, that "We must have a great building, to be called the British Library, next door to St. Pancras", because libraries shaped my life in many ways. And I owe it

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 1 (part 1) Page 5 entirely to him. And, you know, one read, two or three paragraphs, and then there would be an argument, discussion.

What sort of thing did he like reading, then?

Well, my ration, broadly speaking, was Scott, Stevenson, and, oh damn it, that's it, Rudyard Kipling, oddly enough. Rudyard Kipling amazed me by his variety and range. I can remember 'The Light that Failed' which was a story of a person going blind. And the one about the Newfoundland fishermen, and then comparing that with the 'Puck of Pook's Hill', and those with 'Soldiers Three', 'Plain Tales from the Hills'. The range was terrific, and much underestimated. And when I came up to Oxford, my closest college friend was reading English, and I remember him telling me that a don at Balliol had produced several sheets, which contained on them cyclostyled paragraphs from various authors, and people were asked to identify the authors. And all these clever young men identified all sorts of different people, and I was tickled pink when my friend said, "In fact, they were all taken from Kipling." I mean, it was an interesting commentary on the poor quality of literary criticism, these people should have reacted in this way. So I...I don't feel that I had a deprived background; as I was saying, it was often bread and dripping for breakfast, and one's pleasures were cheap ones. There was marvellous countryside around.

And you were saying you would sort of argue about these books that you were reading to your father, so you had kind of debates with him?

Oh yes. Oh yes. Well, to take an example, you see, I don't know whether you've read 'Plain Tales from the Hills', or 'Soldiers Three', but there were several characters in it, Learoyd, a private Ortherio, Irish, and so on. And I mean, my father, having been in Liverpool for some time, had views about the Irish. So you get launched into particular Irishism, mentioned by Kipling, and that would lead into a discussion about the Irish question. And which my father had typical, as I say, working class Tory, member of the Volunteers' views, but you...he didn't think of the Irish as equals!

But he didn't mind sort of debating with you as a boy?

No, though he did get, you see, I mean, you have to remember, he was 57 or 58 when I was born, and I suppose when I was lO or ll, you see, he was getting on, and I think he...in fact, I can remember him once saying, "Bang your head against the wall". That was because I was arguing too much, and I thought then, "What an impatient man". And years later when we had children of four and a half, two and a half and six months, I thought back, that he'd had young children round his knees for 30 odd years, and he was a saint! Marvellous patience!

Was he actually a rough disciplinarian then, or not?

Oh, we had a...we had a strap, which I can remember where it hanged; it was about so long, and it was cut at the ends, and it was used occasionally, yes. My mother hated it, but he used it, I think. I can remember most occasions, I can't remember the details; I had a feeling, "Well, it's a fair cop", so to speak! So, if you asked me whether I was afraid of him because of this, and you haven't asked me that, I don't think I can really answer it from memory; undoubtedly I didn't like the strap, but I don't think I disliked him because of it.

Would you say you felt close to him, then?

Certain extent. And a funny thing happened when he died. He...he got a bowel cancer, and as quite often happens with that disease, of course, it has a bad effect on your outlook on life, and he turned against my mother so that for one week, I was the only person he would have round him. And my memory of that age, the age of 14, or 15, was horrifying, horrifying. I was...I was grateful when he was taken off to hospital and died a week later, because there was nothing they could do for him. But that left a tremendous mark on me, certainly. And why, why it was me, I don't know; maybe the only one left at home, who knows?

Do you think, as the youngest, maybe you had, sort of more space?

Oh yes. And I was spoilt by the others, in the sense that I was the only one who went, as it were, daytime, to a university, and when I did go, they all invested in me. And I still have the Revelation case that was bought for me, and it still works! Which is 56 years ago. Another bought a dressing gown; I wouldn't have a dressing gown, you wouldn't...I mean, I had no pyjamas at home, as such; one of my father's old shirts, and flannel shirt, I can remember it. They were handed down when he'd finished with them. And various things. And, of course, when I came home, all who were available, many of them had moved away by that time, gathered round for the sort of, what we call "tea", what you call "high tea". And I can remember that very very clearly, because they all chattered away, except my mother, during teatime, and at the end, she was washing up at the stone sink when they'd gone, and I was drying, and she came out with a very interesting remark, looked exactly like one of those Millais paintings of the potato gatherers, you know, hump-back, leaning on the side of this stone sink with washing up bowl, and she looked round at me, and when I said to her, "You didn't say a word during tea, Mother", she said, "Well lad, tha's not changed a bit", and I realised at once that there was both pleasure and saddness in that. I mean, she didn't want to lose me, and yet she wanted me to get on. And the odd thing later was, that when I invited her and one of my elder sisters to Oxford, to come up here, and I am ashamed of myself, that I thought, "I wonder how she'll behave, with, you know, these other people round here, quite different background, and particularly whether my scout would look down on her", which I would have been very angry about. And, of course, having been in service, she knew how to behave better than the gentry. She carried the whole thing off. I was as proud of her as could be. She knew her manners, she knew how to treat the servants, having been one! It was a good lesson for my humility that.

Did you find her very easy to talk to?

My mother?

Yes.

Yes. And so did my wife, fortunately, she was still alive when we were married and she was a very easy person, a very fine face, and a very non-demonstrative, affectionate and caring person. She had to be, to look after all those children. Because she'd looked after virtually all of them, you see, the young ones of her sister, and then her own young ones. So it's been a long and hard life.

What happened to all these other children?

All dead now. But they produced eight nephews and nieces for me, who are older than I am! Well, it's such a long family, you see. Well, they varied. There was talent, there were two older brothers, one of whom had a...the elder of them, began as a mason with my father, was in the First World War and wounded three times, but...and decided that Europe was finished, that he would...he'd served in Mesopotamia, that he would find warmer climes, and he went out to Shanghai in 192l, as a craftsman, and ended up as Chief Architect to the Shanghai Municipal Council. He then got his family out when he saw there was trouble, when there was the invasion of Manchukou by the Japanese, and he himself went with them to Singapore, and of course, Singapore fell, but he got his wife and son out to Queensland, and he managed to escape within about a week. I'll never know how, because I never knew him since, but I did see his widow in Queensland in '59, and he built an entirely new career, and ended up as Chief Engineer of the Queensland State Railway. Another brother left school at 14, and went to night school to get his Matric, and from there went to Sheffield University at night time to, where he took what was essentially a pass degree: it was not possible to take an honours degree by night school, the Associateship in Metallurgy. And then he was a victim of the great slump, because he'd already learnt two languages, French and German, in order to be nominated, as he was, as the European representative in Brussels of Vickers, and then the slump came, and he was rationalised out of existence. So, I mean, I saw then, what happened. I had another sister who was a teacher, now dead. Gifted as a water colourist as well. Oh, they were all over the place. One who went out to South Africa, and then was submarined in the First World War - torpedoed, I should say, so there was a great range.

And were you particularly close to any of them?

I think they were closer to me than I was to them, which sounds an odd thing, but I was the only one, you see, who went away, so things were tugging me away from home, and I think they were always proud of any success, but in some ways, unable to share in it. I mean, one or two College friends whom they got to know, they got very fond of, but they couldn't really share this different world. I mean, if you were still going to Chapel three times a day, the kind of society that one would find in Oxford or Cambridge was really not comprehensible to them, so it was very difficult. But as I say, I think they took pride, and I think, you know, it was inevitable that there would be a separation of experience, but not necessarily one of affection. Difficult to know. I mean, I see it from one side, and they're not here to be asked.

I think you built a crystal set with one of the brothers?

Oh yes, that was next one up. I can remember that, that was about 1925 or '26, I reckon. I'm trying to remember whether it was before or after the General Strike. Anyway, it was when Sheffield Station was established, which was, I think, Code 5FL, and then it was possible to reach it via crystal set, and that was a great excitement. And my brother and I wound the coils, and cut the ebonite out of the crystal, and my father, knowing all about buildings, got a very long scaffolding pole and put it in a barrel of earth, and got that up, and we had a long cable just like...a long aerial, sorry, just like the aerial you would find between the masts of a battleship in those days. And I can remember very well, with the headphones on, getting these words out of the immaterial ether, as it were, quite extraordinary! Well, by that time, I, yes, I must have been ll, because I'd gone to secondary school at lO, and it was then, so I think I was ll, probably. I can remember that, and I can also remember, of course, the General Strike, when, which, in fact, put me on the road to silver, because we had a very perceptive geography master named Campbell, at this remarkable school I went to, who, just before the General Strike was announced, saw that it was inevitable, and he said to me, "Dainton, I see in you all the signs of incipient idleness. I will not have this if there's a strike, so I want you to map out the geography of the Porter Valley", which was where we lived, it was one of several streams which ran down off the

Pennines, into the Sheaf and the Don, and, of course, their water power made possible the grinding wheels and the tilt hammers of the steel industry. So I mapped out the Porter Valley, which I knew well, and in the course of this, I spotted Whiteley Wood Hall, which is the Hall where Thomas Boulsover bought after he'd invented Sheffield plate, and also the dam, and Shepherd's Wheel, which he operated, where he had a little forge. Well, Sheffield plate, old Sheffield plate as you know, is an amalgam of silver onto a surface of copper, and that got me interested in silver. And another nice circularity was ten years ago, perhaps, something of that order, when I was Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths' Company. You may know that there are four Assay Offices in the United Kingdom - London, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Sheffield, of which Edinburgh's by far the smallest, which assay gold, silver and platinum articles, and 1773 was the foundation date of the Sheffield Assay Office, which is called, officially, "The Guardians of Wrought Plate in Sheffield", and very nicely, they asked me to open an extension to their Office. So that I feel that my interest in silver is, as it were, embedded in Sheffield, and there's the foundation stone of the extension which shows that. And just recently I've been given a very fine piece of silver, designed by David Mellor, and made by a Sheffield craftsperson, and I've also designed a medal in silver myself. So I really got interested in the silver trade, as it were, quite early on.

The atmosphere at home really was encouraging, this learning and so on.

It was the only way.

I mean, did your parents actually say that sort of thing?

No.

Was it just an unspoken atmosphere?

No. No, they wanted us to "get on lad". "Think on." That's all, I mean, there's no more to be said. They knew, I mean, that they'd not had it, and particularly my father. I mean, I don't think people realise, the Forster Education Act was 1870, and that was a Bradford Councillor and MP who really made possible free primary education, and

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 1 (part 1) Page 11 it took time to get going, and before then, you paid for primary education in England; not so in Scotland, of course, they were more far-sighted. So he was conscious of what he'd missed, and it was a handicap to him throughout his life. How he managed, I really don't know. My mother, on the other hand, could read, but she had little time, it was hard graft for her. I...I don't imagine that I was in any way unique. I can remember horrifying stories which my elder sister Mabel told me, when she was a teacher, her first job was in the slums of Sheffield, of the kids who couldn't read or write, even at the age she was having, indeed, in those days they had to have boots and shoes found for them, very often, and...and to be cleansed first, deloused. And I look at the areas, and I often go to Sheffield now, and I look at where those areas were, and I've no regrets that they've been replaced by tower blocks, no regrets at all, I mean, they're incomparably better.

What was the name of the area where you were living?

Well, if you wanted to be posh, you called it "Ecclesall", if you were to give it its true designation, it would be "Endcliffe"! Either way, I mean, those who knew, knew, and there was no mucking about, as they said. But another thing which was of interest to you, maybe, that, give you an idea on aspirations. I can remember boys, of course, at school, always talk about "What are you going to be?" And the advice of my miners' sons, who were friends at school, their fathers all said to them, "Tha'll not go down pit, lad." Which has been something which has stuck in my memory, when Arthur Scargill has pointed out the joys of the...keeping the mines going. A total illusion. I mean, miners who could get out then were glad to get out, and you could see why; I mean, they suffered from chronic bronchitis, emphysema, pneumoconiosis, the common industrial diseases, and affected the miners particularly, quite apart from the accidents. So it was a hard life in that sense. You saw it all around you. But children take things in a very matter-of-fact way, life and death, it's one of the things you accept. It's not until later that you begin to think it can possibly affect you.

What about attitudes to money?

Well! There weren't much brass! It was pretty tight. I mean, I can remember my spending pence going up to tuppence, old tuppence, and thinking it was riches beyond the dreams of avarice! Because, for a ld. in the slot, you could buy a little bit of Nestlé's chocolate, and that was...that was marvellous, of course. And, in fact, we lived about two and a half miles from the Central Secondary School, which I attended, which is in the centre of Sheffield, and a marvellous school, and has a very distinguished place in the history of education, as a matter of fact, and it was a halfpenny on the tram. And normally, I would make four journeys a day, in, out, in, out, coming home for 20 minutes for lunch, because it was cheaper, because a school lunch cost 5d. believe it. Now, if I were to walk to and from school morning and evening, I think you can see, I could save 5d. in a week, and 5d. in a week meant that one day I could stay at school for a dinner, mid-day dinner, that is, and at dinner time there were all kinds of other activities went on, chess club, for example, in which I was interested, as well as after school. So that I used to walk backwards and forwards, and save the money whenever I could. I couldn't walk back at lunchtime if I were coming home, but it was worth...worth it. And again, I'd...I...there were boys who were brought to the school by motor car in the morning, I know that, I could name some of them now, but I don't think of any sense of cause of friction between us because some were rich and some were poor. You found your level within the school. Of course, I would have liked to have...the family to have had a motor car, but it never occurred to us that it was possible. In fact, I was grateful enough when one elder brother let me ride his bicycle! Which I did, to come up and down to Oxford, to save the rail fare.

What, you cycled all the way to Oxford?

133 and one-third miles, it's inscribed faithfully on my left and right buttock! And I used to pay somebody else...there were quite a number of boys from Sheffield schools up here, and if I gave them a shilling, they could take my luggage to Sheffield on their ticket, and that saved money. Oh yes.

You did that in a day?

Yes, in a day, on a sit up and beg.

You must have been....

I don't think so, I mean, it's possible to do it. I was defeated once, and I was just talking about it with Andrew, Duke of Devonshire, a week before last, because it was in March, and it was all right going from here, until I got just North of Derby, to Matlock, and then there was snow. I pressed on through Rouseley, and through Chatsworth, where I had to walk through the Park because there had been no...no clearing of the road. And finally, when I got North of there, to Carver, and I thought, "I've got to go over that bloody great hill, 1600 feet, to get down into Sheffield, I'm not equal to it." So I pushed on another two miles to Grindleford Station, and took the train through the tunnel! That was the one time I missed, it was hard. And yes, but that's the only occasion I remember. What I do remember is, it saved money, and in my first year, I was very hard up.

I think we'll come back to that. But perhaps it would be a good idea to go back to your first school, and can you tell me about that...

Oh yes, well, the first school I was at was Hunters Bar Infants School, still there, still an Infants School, not far away from it is Hunters Bar Yorkshire Penny Bank, as it then was, office where I worked, when my father died, for a period when I left school. And that was an Infants School which I remember very clearly, and I remember one of the teachers, Mrs. Winter, because she was a marvellous teacher. She knew how to get kids going, I mean, 5, 6, 7, that sort of age. And I can remember, the walls had slates right round, except where there were windows, and on that were where friezes were done with coloured chalk, and I can remember having to produce a centurion, which really caused me agony, but having done it, you see, it stood there for some time. I knew every bit of the names of the armour and the clothes of a centurion, and how he was distinguished by having a sword rather than a spear, and the kind of helmet he wore, and I had a real feeling for the Romans as a result of that. I also remember very clearly, because we didn't have paper until the second year, and pencil, I remember very clearly, the excruciating scratch of pencil on slate. We had pieces of

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 1 (part 1) Page 14 slate, about so big, bounded with wood, on which we were supposed to write, and the noise of the scratching was, oh, awful! We were, that's what we used first, and then, of course, later, paper became available, which was lined, irregularly, two lines close together, one further apart, so when you were writing a letter, like L, the top of the L had to come to the top one, and you would cross over, so one learnt copperplate writing, but it was enjoyable, school, except, of course, I did the silly thing, I slipped on a banana skin going to school, and broke an arm, and I enjoyed that! [laughs] Well, it wasn't painful, I got to the hospital, and I saw my first X-ray set, which, in retrospect, horrifies me now! I mean, the exposure of the people to it. And they showed me the picture of my elbow, I can remember very well. I thought it was marvellous! Got a lot of attention. Very quickly mended, of course. And from there, one went on, I was moved from that, I don't know why, to one slightly closer to home, Greystones Elementary School, which I went to, I think, from the ages of about 9-ll, and that proved to be quite a good school in many ways, though, although it was closer to home, I was often late; I wasn't good at getting up in the morning, and it was only at the top of the road, but I was often late, for which you used to get whacked, I can remember it, with a cane. And I can remember the Headmaster's name was Chas T. Gold, and he had a rubber stamp with which he stamped your Report, you see, and I can remember my Reports always had this remark on, you know, "Punctuality is not his great virtue." But it was useful, because I found the work very easy, and I used to do homework for other boys, in return for favours of one kind, either protection from bullying, or actual gifts, like an apple! It was a very strange school, I mean, you were finding your way around, and learning about market forces, though I didn't know it at the time! But otherwise, it was an unremarkable school, and the school to which I went from there, was really quite remarkable, in retrospect.

Didn't you say, in the bit that you wrote, that you were actually caned for doing that?

Oh yes I was, yes, yes, yes. Mrs. Thatcher wouldn't have approved of that caning! Yes, it was found out, of course, it always was! Also at that time, a curious thing happened, in that I was constantly being moved from the front of the class to the back of the class, and back again, and that was because I had short sight. I didn't know it, but what was happening was, that if I was at the front and could see the arithmetic and

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 1 (part 1) Page 15 other questions that were on the board, I did them quickly and easily, but if I was at the back, I wasn't seeing them correctly, so I was making mistakes through not reading it. And I can remember, it was this oscillation between front and back, because if you were good you went to the back, if you were bad, you came to the front, you see! [laughs] And it was my first experience of what you might call the "feedback mechanism", and then it was found by the School medical exam that I was not able to read at a distance, of course. Yes, it was, in some ways, the school, you learnt to be streetwise, as you did in the street. Of course, with nowhere to play, you had to play in the street, that meant you were at the mercy of bigger boys or, and so on.

You're talking about at home now?

At home, yes. Yes.

What sort of things went on in the street?

Well, we played football, believe it or not, we played cricket up against the wall if you could, without...by marking it on the wall, you also flipped cigarette cards for...for, you know a halfpenny. If you were bold enough and had a halfpenny, you played games like tag and relieve-O, which were really running and touching people, and if they were touched then they had to chase others, and so on. And there were all kinds of pranks which you would play, for example, in these little corridors between houses in the terrace, with doors immediately opposite them, one game was to take some tough twine and tie the handles, the knobs of two doors, you see, and go away, and somebody knock at the door, and [laughs] to the door, and they couldn't open it! That was regarded as amusing in those days. The other was, of course, jobs you did. I never did a paper round or anything of that kind. You could pick up a penny or two by "going errands" as it was called, for people, and one did a bit of that.

And how did you deal with these older boys?

Not very well. I got out of their way mainly. That was the best thing to do. You had to have a good pair of legs, and if you didn't, obviously one didn't, you would get

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 1 (part 1) Page 16 punched about a bit. You learnt all kinds of tricks. There were rhymes one had, you know, if people would abuse you verbally, say "Sticks and stones will break your bones, but shouting will not hurt you", or something like that. There were all kinds of things. Election time was quite amusing, because boys used to go along whichever candidate it was, shouting, just for the fun of it, and sometimes for a halfpenny. "Vote, vote, vote for Mr. So and So, you can't vote for a better man", and this would be sung, you see. It was a kind of corrupt elections, in a sense, after all, what was a halfpenny to Sir Samuel Roberts?! [laughs] Strange life!

And then you went on to the school which I think you...

Yes, the Central Secondary School, marvellous place.

Can you tell me more about that?

Well, it was the second higher grade Elementary School to be established after the Forster Education Act - second in the country, I mean, and the interest of its history was that, "The citizens of Sheffield built a grand building for it in the centre of Sheffield, it was completed in 1879, it was socially comprehensive, intellectually selective," and so scarce were the places for secondary schools, that the people who did go there were genuinely better intellectually. They hadn't reached so far down for secondary education that it became...the 11+ became unreliable, if you like, in its predictive power. Moreover, its staff were quite remarkable, I mean, even then the Headmaster was an MA, B.Sc., LL.D., no D. Litt., sorry, D. Litt, Dr. W.I. Moore; we had two Ph.Ds. on the staff, some with Higher Degrees, one was a Barrister at Law, admitted to Temple and so on, and the school, it had 30 boys at Cambridge, all of them Scholars or Exhibitioners, as they had to be, or State Scholars. They were marvellous masters, by and large, I mean, some were not much good, but they did interest one in the subject, and the span of study was very broad. I did ten subjects at what would now be called O level, I did six, three at A level, and three at AS level, well, four actually: I did Maths, Additional Maths, Physics, and Chemistry, at what was called Principal Level, Higher School Certificate, and then subsidiary French,

English, German. It was a marvellous education, I mean, reaching for it now, it seems to have been forgotten that that was done.

So it was really like an old grammar school in many ways, was it?

It was better.

Why do you think it was better then?

Broader, much. Public schools, by that time would be focussing on Oxbridge entry, for example, and many grammar schools were doing the same, but we had a broader span of studies to school leaving, and we were, in a sense, making our way, the others were established. And, of course, mistakes were made, I mean, I didn't realise until actually I'd got an Exhibition at St. John's, that I had to have Latin to get in here, so I had to drop everything else for three months, and learn Latin!

That's amazing!

Pardon?

That's amazing, yes.

Well, it was quite enjoyable, actually, and it paid like fun, because when I was at Cambridge, I was Praelector at my College, which meant I had to present people for Degrees and so on, and it was still done in Latin, so I got paid extra for that.

[End of Reel 1 Side 1]

Reel 1 Side 2 (part 2)

The Central School, though, was the... as far as the free system was concerned, it was the major school?

Oh yes, it was the major school. There were developed, during my time, Firth Park School, Nether Edge School, as secondary schools, and one or two others. As time went on there were more of them, but at the time I went, it was this splendid school, and what was remarkable about it was that the citizens of Sheffield very much wanted their kids to be taught science. Now under the Act, science could not be taught at elementary schools, so it changed from being a Higher Grade Elementary School, it became a Secondary School, which allowed it, under a thing called the "Casperton Judgement" - Casperton was a judge who sort of looked at the law in this respect, to build for itself, a splendid Science School. Now it was splendid, not just because the citizens were proud of it, but because it was intended that it should be used at night time as well, for people preparing for external London B.Sc.'s. So, in fact, you see, the staff of the School were very good, because they were attracted by night school opportunities. The equipment was excellent. We had three chemical laboratories, a tiered chemistry lecture theatre, two physics laboratories, a tiered physics lecture theatre, a biology laboratory which also did geology as well, and equipment to go with these things. Two splendid workshops for wood and metal, a machine drawing room, a machine drawing lecture theatre. So it was really very well-equipped. In fact, when I came up to Oxford, I thought how inferior the labs were, and the staff were, as I say, of very high quality.

Were there particular staff that you, you know, you thought a lot of?

Oh yes, large numbers of them. [Traffic noise on tape] Some of them would be regarded, nowadays, as poor teachers, by any of Mr. Baker's judgements. There was a man whom we...named Buckley, who we called "Knickerbod", and he was supposed to have prepared us, for example, for English, for subsidiary level at Higher School Certificate, but in fact, what he did was something quite different. We read, what was then regarded as rather, how shall I put it, progressive. We read plays of George

Bernard Shaw, in class, and we argued about them, and we wrote essays on all kinds of different things. He told me once to write an essay on colour. I thought, "Well, he can't mean this as a scientist", and so I wrote about colour and music, and colour and literature and so on, you know, in the figurative sense. And he also was the kind of master who, over lunch time, would play chess with us, and, in fact, he taught me a game called "Kriegspiel" which is a rather interesting variation of it. And you could always go to him and guarantee that you would get some interesting comment from him. We also had splendid school Societies, and we had a Biology master who taught Chemistry, whom I never knew give any kind of punishment whatsoever, he was so fascinating, and who was a world authority on some minute insects, and I can remember finding a parcel addressed to him from Japan, which he showed me contained specimens which he'd been asked to identify for a Japanese museum. There was that kind of thing. We only had one very bad master that I remember, and he was in Chemistry, and was responsible for me becoming a Chemist! Paradoxically. I don't know whether you'd like to hear about this.

Yes, yes, I'd like to know how that happened.

Well, and I'll tell you his subsequent history, too. His name was Percy Lord, he was a first class honours Graduate in Chemistry from Manchester, and he got his colours for cricket, and he undoubtedly was a very cunning cricketer. And he came over to Yorkshire, determined enough, I'm sure, to show off. Well, he was a poor chemist, and I don't mind that, I mean, you can have a chap who doesn't know anything, but if you put a question to him, and he says, "I don't know, let's find out together", that's marvellous. But he wouldn't, he would flannel, and try and put one off with a bogus explanation, so I refused to go to his lessons. This was in the Sixth Form, and I nipped two minutes down from the school to the new Public Reference Library, which I knew; I mean, I was habituated to using libraries, and found two books there, one by N.V. Sidgwick, who was a Fellow of Lincoln, here, and the other by C.N. Hinshelwood, who was a Fellow of Trinity, and whose Chair I subsequently occupied. And these books were absolute revelations on chemistry, and I decided I wanted to go to Oxford and study chemistry. Now, I had an immediate penalty for that, because the Headmaster wasn't very imaginative, that one, and decided that my insubordination

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 2 (part 2) Page 20 meant I could no longer be a prefect, and I had to hand in my prefect's badge. Well, that was no skin off my nose, it gave me a bit more time! And then, Percy Lord disappeared from the school, having failed at his first attempt to get a Master of Education Degree, by part-time study at Manchester, until the staff took his thesis in hand, and re-wrote it for him, and then he got it! Well, he ended up as Chief Education Officer for Lancashire! And one of my great pleasures in life, when I was a member of the Planning Committee of the University of Lancaster, was to sit there, covering my head like this, on when he gave evidence, and raise it at one point, and say, "Well, Mr. Lord, pleased to see you again. Can you tell me...." And the look of horror on his face! [laughs] I ought to be ashamed of that incident, but I got a lot of quiet pleasure out of it! [laughs] Of course, a little chemistry as we all know, can carry you a long way! But it was a marvellous school, and the other thing that was marvellous about it, was the Societies, we used to have a lot.

Yes, can you tell me about those as well.

Oh yes, there were many of them. I mentioned the chess club. There was a natural history society run by this remarkable man, which went out every Saturday. There was a rambling club which did some, and also did climbing as well, and, of course, you see, you could do it on foot from Sheffield; people don't realise, there's good climbing ground within the City boundary.

Within the City boundary?

Oh yes.

Which is that?

Well, on Stannage, and just a little further in from that. Oh yes, lots. Do you know Sheffield?

Yes, I do a bit, yes. I didn't realise that was within the boundary though.

That's why. And Hallam Moors, of course, which is... and also, we had a thing called the Shakespeare Society, which got national renown, in fact; we were invited every year, on Shakespeare's birthday, to put a wreath on his statue at Stratford. And that was run by a very remarkable man named W.B. Marshman. What it comprised of, really, was every Christmas, before Christmas, the last five days of term, you put on a performance of Shakespeare's plays, which we did everything. We built the stage in the hall, all the electrics, of course, some carried over from year to year. We provided the orchestra, all the boys did all the parts, and it was a marvellous education, in fact, not just in Shakespeare, but in lots of other things too. And from my point of view, it meant that we rehearsed every Friday evening throughout the Michaelmas Term, which would have been, what, 12, 13 weeks, and you stayed at school; school finished at 3.30, and you stayed at school until lO o'clock, and you had dinner at school. They put this on for 5d., and well, the place was full, from all over the place, the Lord Mayor came, the Bishop came, you know, it was quite an event, and a book was produced about it, called "All Right on the Night", which I have, and it...the performances were better than schoolboy performances, and quite a lot of the interpretations were, I think, very good in their own right. And so it was a great thing to belong to. And there were many other activities. There was another dramatic club produced, which was non-Shakespearian as well. There was, of course, the orchestra, which you'd expect, and art club.

Were you musical, in fact, as well?

Well, I played a very poor violin until I blew a finger off, and that was the end of that! And I used to play in...in Cums at Cambridge also. Didn't play up at Oxford at all; I was too shy, as a matter of fact, I thought I would meet people who were so much better I wouldn't find a place. I realised when I went to Cambridge that was a mistake, so I did play in the Cambridge University Music Society, second fiddles.

And the Natural History Society, what sort of activities did they have?

Oh, all sorts of things. I mean, I could show you school magazines now, which...and there was a Science Society. They went out inspecting habitats, sometimes, in fact,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 2 (part 2) Page 22 doing research, marking out quadrants of land on which they would count the plants throughout the year. Or discovering bugs, as we called them, and learning about them, putting them under the microscope and so on. And then boys would give papers, we used to meet once a week, you see. There was really far too much to do.

It's most extraordinary, isn't it, in the Natural History Society, that you were doing research and reading papers, it must be very unusual.

Oh yes, yes, but it didn't seem, we didn't call it research, you see, so it wasn't elevated, it was just what you'd do, and, well, I'll give you another example which changed my life in a way. In 1927 there was a total eclipse of the sun by the moon, and it could be seen over a band of middle England, about 50 or 70 miles wide, and we prepared for this, boys, we had to pay to get a bus to go to Ingleborough, which was regarded as the best place to see it, and we took pieces of glass which were, in fact, plate glass from making photographs, the old plate glass, and you stripped off the cellophane, then you put on, smoked it with carbon black, from a candle, you got a layer of darkness through which you could see, and then you covered that with a little gelatine, to hold it on. We prepared these very carefully, we all went up to Ingleborough, and, of course, the cloud covered the sun! But, it went, this was, was it June 1927? May or June, I think, May probably, but what was striking was, that when, there was the eclipse, of course, it did go dark, but everything went silent, not a sound, not a bird, nothing. It was a moment I'll never forget. But more than that, we came down from Ingleborough to Clapham, where the bus took us down via Austwick, and I saw some extraordinary things, structures, which were white columns, about, well, two or three feet wide at the bottom, one to two feet wide at the top, on which were some black stones, single black stones. These were the Roche Perchey, which are a common feature of limestone, but the same geography master, Campbell, when I asked what it was, said, "Well, those are blocks of cyanide(?) on the top, brought down by the Ice Age, from the Lake District, where you'll find many rocks of that kind. When the ice melted they were left there, perched on limestone, water would then wash in with rain, and dissolve the column of limestone, except that the top would act as an umbrella, so you got these things looking like mushrooms." Well, that started an interest for me in geomorphology and, in fact, only two or three weeks ago we were up in Malham,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 2 (part 2) Page 23 looking at the so-called limestone pavements there, and, of course, once you get an interest in that, you can't walk in the countryside without looking round you. But this was encouraged at the school as well, so I owe that school a very great deal.

Did you make important friendships there as well?

Oh yes, yes, indeed.

Anybody particularly you'd like to single out?

Well, a lot, really. I mean, one boy my year is Chief Education Officer for Birmingham, Ken Brooksbank, came up here as a scholar of...no, he was a State Scholar, of Teddy Hall, reading English. Another is the retired Dean of Manchester, Alf Jowett, whom you would have heard giving, two or three weeks ago, the"Thought for a Week", the, what they call it in the mornings, and who was another State Scholar who went up to St. Catharine's Cambridge, and was one of the early worker priests. The closest friend of all, I suppose, was the product...now, this will give you an interesting sideline. There was a man named Stuart Turner, who was either a Man of Kent, or a Kentish man, working in the Admiralty, Chatham Dockyard, and he was sent with his wife, who, a lady who had been in service, up to Sheffield, because Sheffield was the only inland station of the Admiralty, because it made armour plate and guns, and they had to have an Inspection Department there. Well, that family had five children, four boys, one daughter, and the eldest, Philip, went to night school with my brother Ernest, so that I already had some contact in the family. The next one John, got an open Scholarship to Selwyn, and at the age of 29 was appointed Professor of Botany at the University of Melbourne, leaving his young fiancée in my care, at Cambridge, she is not my wife! She is not my wife, her friend is my wife, you see. Now, following that, was a girl, who naturally, was not prized as much as the boys, so she only went to College and became a teacher. The one below that, Bert, got an Open Scholarship to Sidney Sussex Cambridge, and then to the Civil Service, and died when he was an Under Secretary, but he would have gone on, no doubt. The fourth who was my closest friend, a year younger than me, Tom, got an Open Scholarship to Peterhouse. Now, going to their house was better off than our house,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 2 (part 2) Page 24 but not well off by any means, it was like going to a University. They, you know, these people, there was a botanist, two historians, all of them natural historians, all of them musicians, it was a marvellous house, and we had tremendous political arguments, and we used to stay out at night, walking, I can remember walking from Tom Turner's house, where I'd been, back home, and then back again, then back home, because we were arguing so much, you know! [laughs] These were marvellous days, and we all reacted very violently to the rise of Hitler, and, oh, we had a lot of fun, but they are now. In fact, there's only one left, who's John, the Professor of Botany in Melbourne, with whom we were staying last year on his 80th Birthday, up in, well, he was not in Melbourne, he lives in a place which you will know, because it is, oh damn it, the place where that XXXX beer is made, you know, on the television adverts.

I don't know I'm afraid.

No, well, it's on television adverts, and you know, marvellous, it was, as I say, a small University. That and the WEA.

Ah, you were involved in the WEA?

Well, the next door neighbour of a married sister, was a Managing Director of a Thompson Capper's Chemist, and he was the Secretary of the Sheffield WEA in his spare time, and I used to go to classes there.

What sort of classes?

Oh anything. Economics, History, in my vacations. I never paid, I should have done, I'm sure, but he used to work me in, and you get to know interesting people. Miners were the best. Miners were as sharp as can be on Economics! That's right.

Anybody else from school, sort of friends from school to mention?

Well, well, there were lots really. I mean, people whom I got to know later, who were older, who were Fellows of the Royal Society, for example, a man named Thomas Padmore, who was Permanent Secretary, I think in two Departments, and there were professors galore, all over the place, English in Kings College London, Chemistry in Newcastle, Metallurgy, a whole range, always coming across them. Another great pleasure I had, was conferring an Honorary Degree on one of them, Sir Thomas Lodge, one of our distinguished, most distinguished radiotherapists, who, interestingly enough, came up the Arts side of my school, switched to study medicine at Sheffield, took to it as a duck takes to water, and, oh, you'll find them all over the place.

And then, I mean, how was it that you decided to apply to go to Oxford?

Well, I was, I was really rather idle at school, because I enjoyed so many of these other things, you see, and then suddenly, as I say, these books fired my imagination, and I wanted to go to Oxford. I therefore took the Scholarship Examination in December '32, and was absolutely overwhelmed by the place.

But why did you decide to go, to go to Oxford? I mean, you said...

Well, because of these two books.

Just because of the books?

Yes. I think they were...they were a revelation. I mean, that was...that was a real subject, and I had friends who'd come here before, as well, but had friends who'd gone to Cambridge as well, and friends at the local University, and to Imperial College, and I thought this was, I wanted to come here, because of these two books. And I remember the Scholarship Examination, because, first of all, the previous Saturday, I'd been playing soccer against Holgate Grammar School in Barnsley, I think it was, and found myself on the Sunday Morning waking up in Barnsley Cottage Hospital from concussion, somebody having mistaken my head for the ball! [laughs] And the Monday I went off to Oxford, and I must have been slightly confused, because the

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 2 (part 2) Page 26 exams were Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Now, who'd ever heard, in the school that I went to, of Saturday school anyway? And to have the notion of a Saturday afternoon exam as well, was daft! I forgot about it, which meant I missed the Advanced Maths paper, and I came home in, oh, a deep depression because I realised this about Banbury, and I was also...it wasn't the concussion or anything of that kind, I was also overwhelmed by the beauty of this place. It was the white stone, glorious stuff, you see. Everything in Sheffield was black. And so, I walked round a lot, and the exams were very peculiar, 9.30 in University College Hall. At ll they brought in coffee. We were only invigilated for about 20 minutes or half an hour, and then people went away, we were left to ourselves, and then they came in to stop us at 12.30. In the afternoon, one began at 3.30, and tea was brought in at 4.00, it was marvellous. So there were gaps there when I could walk round and take in, take in Oxford, and I was really quite overwhelmed by it. Apart from the labs which I thought were pretty poor!

And you had a chance to see the labs, then, on that...

Well, I did practical exams, you see, as well, which you had to, practical physics and practical chemistry, and so I came home in a great state of depression, particularly because it had cost money to come up here. You had to pay for the travel and so on. And so I was overjoyed when, about a week later, a telegram came, saying I'd got an Exhibition, which I think, was a, a marvellous form of self-indulgence, because any, not self-indulgence, of indulgence on the part of St. Johns, because anywhere else, if you'd failed to complete a paper, been absent, they would have said, you know, "He's out." And then St. Johns was extremely helpful to me, so I'm devoted to it.

And what was the coming up, to do those exams, did the social atmosphere strike you?

Not particularly, though I made a lifelong friend, my closest living friend now, who ended up as a Director of Education for Derbyshire. What, I mean, amazed me, I stayed in Christ Church, in the meadow buildings, was, you know, having a bedroom and a sitting room, and a scout, who came in and served breakfast in your rooms:

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 2 (part 2) Page 27 never had anything like it! I got up and almost stood to attention when he came in! [laughs] It was extraordinary, and then, of course, dining in Christ Church Hall, I mean, that, absolutely overwhelming, and that great staircase, so the whole thing was overpowering really. But I wasn't conscious of any social thing because we were all Scholarship Examination people, and you have to remember that many commoners came in by a different route, which was an easy route, and didn't take the Scholar Exam. No, I'm not conscious of that until I came up.

So, let's see, now, which year are we at, now, 1933?

1933, yes.

You came up in 1933, yes?

Yes. Yes.

So, I don't know if there's anything more before then that we ought to talk about, perhaps we should slip it in here.

Well, it's difficult to tell, you've got the home. I think I ought to tell you about the Anglo-German Friendship Schools. Having done German at school, and continuing it after Matriculation, when the Weimar Republik decided to have Anglo-German Friendship Schools, the City of Sheffield decided to co-operate, and 20 English boys joined up with 20 German boys, in Germany, and likewise, another 40, equally divided English and German, in Sheffield, and I was lucky, because in 1932, I think, I was in the Sheffield party, which improved my German, and the next year, '33, was in Germany. Now, what is important about this, from my point of view, was the beginning of the formation of my politics, as it was, because the first year, the three German masters who came to England, one of them was clearly rather right-wing, quite a new phenomenon for me, and didn't fit in with the kind of Anglo-German Friendship School, he was always talking about the renaissance of Germany and so on, and we didn't take to him. He was the Turnlehrer, that is to say, the Gym Master. When we went to Germany the following year, it was worse, there were two masters

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 2 (part 2) Page 28 who were Nazis, and also I remember the shock of seeing the...when we went to Berlin, the graffiti, "Juden heraus", "Get out the Jews", or "Deutschland erwache" "Germany Awake", or "Wir scheissen auf die freiheit", "We shit on freedom", and things like that. And I also saw Brownshirts attack some people coming out of the offices of Die Rote Fahne which was The Red Flag in Neukoln when I was buying some presents to bring home, looking out from a store, the Karstadt Store, and saw the Berlin Police standing idly by, letting these people be beaten up. And also the, again the gym master then wanted that we English boys, to march through the streets, two by two, with the German boys, singing songs "Wann wir streiten zeit bei zeit" [sings], and we said "Bugger off", we refused to co-operate, he almost had apoplexy! But we were so, all of us, absolutely incensed by what was clearly developing, and so, in 1933, when Hitler came to power, our minds were already formed, I mean, this, Berliner people don't understand the mood of young people who went to universities then, out of which grew, so they say, this traitorgroup, you know, the Apostles and all the rest of them in Cambridge, don't understand the effect of that, of the Spanish Civil War, of Mussolini, Albania, Somaliland and so on, the effect which it had on my generation. The traitors were not the people from my background, they were from the middle and upper classes... and, on the whole, they were the clever, drunken lot, I mean, I could name some of them, but...

You knew some of these people in Oxford, in fact?

Well, I mean, there were people who [pause]...yes, talked that way, but you didn't pay much attention to them; I mean, they wouldn't understand if you were to say...Alan Bullock would understand, because he came from a similar background, what we were to say to somebody like that, if we were at home, if we were being extravagant, and we didn't believe what he said, "Now think on't lad". You know, stop and pause - just reflect on this a bit. But they were too clever by half, you see, and I wasn't clever by half. I had no conversation, that wasn't one of the things, and if you were engaged in conversation generally, from our point of view, you meant what you said, or you didn't say it. Now, all this brittle Oxford stuff, you know, washed over our backs like water off a duck's back, didn't pay any attention to it, on the whole, despised it. And the clever, I never would join the Union, Oxford Union, I thought that's a debating

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 2 (part 2) Page 29 shop, that's not for me. Some did, of course, but I couldn't have survived in that. What I found much more valuable was, well, one or two dons, one in particular, the English don at St. John's, a man named Gavin Bone, who kept open house on Tuesday evenings, when he read Anglo-Saxon poetry. You went to that, with that you were learning something.

But did you get actively involved in politics at all?

Not at all here, except when the hunger marchers came through, when I did what I could to help. The daft thing I did, I had a spare pair of football boots; it was all I had to spare, and I gave them those, but what use they would be in walking, they'd have to take the studs off! But that was all, I didn't join the Labour Club, I was far too happy doing chemistry, College and friendships.

So, so you came up in October '33.

That's right.

It was really more at that point that you were struck by how different the social atmosphere was?

Yes, yes.

Can you talk about that a bit?

Well, I think my first introduction to it was early on. The shock, I joined the Boat Club briefly, but that was simply because there was free beer! And I dropped out of it within a week, because of my tutor, who imposed...I ought to tell you this. My tutor was H.W. Thompson, later Sir Harold Thompson, President of the Football Association, Fellow of St. John's, and, of course, an 'ad hominem' Professor in my Department, which was rather amusing, and we're still in touch with his widow. But I can remember a notice on the College notice board, saying, "The following gentlemen", and there were three of us, "are asked to call on Dr. H.W. Thompson,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 2 (part 2) Page 30 armed with a copy of the 'Oxford University Gazette' lecture list edition, price 3d." So I went along dutifully, and he looked at the subfaculty chemistry, the lectures, and he struck most of them out as not worth going to. Go to Soddy's lectures, and you'll see the apparatus with which the radio-active disintegration laws were determined, then, but he's a poor lecturer, when you've done that, drop them, go to Hammick, who's a marvellous lecturer, but doesn't know much about the subject he's lecturing on. Of course, you'll come to mine! And so on! And then pointed out that there were a lot of emigré German physicists in Oxford, who'd been driven out by Hitler, why not go to some of those? So I did, and so on. And then he said, "I want you to write an essay for me, which, drop in the night before your tutorial next week, which will be Thursday at 9", or whatever it was, cutting right across a lecture, you see. So I accepted that, and it was on the kinetics of homogeneous gas reactions. Well, I didn't know what the words meant, so I went along to Radcliffe Science Library, and looked on what you'd now call the "key word in context" on the spines of these books, and I was rather pleased with myself, dropped it in, and left it, and I never forget the next morning, because he said, "Read it." I said, "Well, it's too long to read." He said, "No, read it." I thought, "All right, you asked for it, you'll get it." So I started to read it, I've gone two or three paragraphs, and he said, "I see you agree with me." I hadn't the remotest idea what he was talking about, so I said, "Well, what do you mean?" He said, "You want to vomit." I said, "It's not as bad as that!" He said, "It is!" And we had a great argument, so I knew his background, and so he tore it to bits, and left me, at the end. He said, "Now do that again properly." And he gave me a lot of papers, original papers to read. Remember, I was just left school, and he said, "Also, do an essay on the determination of the atomic rates of the elements. Good Day." And so I went out, and I can remember going straight across to the Captain of Boat Shiffhams(??), leaving a little note saying "I've resigned from the Boat Club", because I was going to get this fellow Thompson, and I'd cut all my lectures and labs, and I did both these essays, and, of course, the result was, that within a fortnight of coming up here, I learnt how to use the Radcliffe Science Library, learnt how to get hold of original material. I learnt how to write an essay, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and so on, and it was a hard way, but it was a, by Jove, it worked! And it was marvellous, and I found myself, I mean, a few weeks later, writing an essay on heavy hydrogen, so-called, just been discovered, I was writing an essay on that. Can you

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 1 Side 2 (part 2) Page 31 believe it, straight from school? Well, this suited me down to the ground, and so I owe a lot to H.W. Thompson. I never had any other tutor, in any other branch of Chemistry. He covered the whole thing, and, of course, that would now never happen, and I owe him a great deal. Now, to come back to your question. First, as it were, drunken party, my friend, Henry Fowler, whom I've mentioned, my life long friend, had been invited and took me along, to a chap named Adlard, who was a Marlborough chap, I think, in his rooms, after dinner one night. I've never seen anything like it, there was drink of all kinds, you see. It was like, I suppose, it reminds me now, after the event, of a passage in Evelyn Waugh, you know, 'The Decline and Fall', and I really found these people were absolutely despicable, I just couldn't take it. It wasn't that I was being forced to sign the pledge, through Sunday School every year, they obviously hadn't much faith in my capacity to keep a promise, and I wasn't teetotal in that sense, I'd grown out of it, but the sheer vulgarity, almost bestiality of it. I mean, it was dirty stories and drink. Now, I don't mind drink, in fact I like a drink, if it helps the conversation, but this wasn't conversation, and this was just boys, out of school, Public Schools, where, as it were, the lid had been taken off the saucepan, they hadn't been out in the world. I realised I'd had a better background than theirs. I'd been in the world as a day boy, they'd been incarcerated, and they didn't know how to behave, and they'd got money, of course, and I hadn't, I couldn't possibly reciprocate it.

You'd worked as well too?

Yes, I'd worked a bit, yes. That didn't make much difference, I mean, that, and, of course, I knew by that time, that I was short of money. And in fact, Austin Lane Pool, whom I told you about, the medieval historian had found this out, and this, calling me in front of him for being on the list for low battels, which I was incensed about, and really it was just his way of finding out that I hadn't enough to live on, and the College giving me a bit more.

You mean, you think he actually suspected that?

Oh yes. Yes. You see, we got to know one another, as I mentioned, in that little piece I gave you. Did I give you 'Vital Spiral'?

I don't remember the title; you gave me two. [pause]

Well, I had a friend at Corpus, named George Hills, a year ahead of me, from the same school, a Scholar in Chemistry, and his, they had no Chemistry tutor there, but his moral tutor was a man named F.B. Pidduck, who was a very distinguished mathematical physicist, who bathed at Parsons Pleasure every morning, and persuaded as many of his pupils as he could to go along with him, at quarter to eight, and I think George Hills, who was the last of his pupils, going with him, with whom I'd swum at school, rather felt he needed dilution of the company of this eccentric tutor, so before I came up, he inveigled me to do this, you see, and I said, "Yes", cheerfully enough, I'd swum outdoors. And then I found when I got up here, we had roll calls at quarter to eight, in the College Hall, and also I had to read in Chapel occasionally, and so I had to get out of this. And I went to see the Senior Tutor, who was Austin Lane Pool, and I remember clearly, because his room was very large, and very dark, it was semi- basement in the North End of St. John's, in an old cottage, and I could hardly see him, and I said, "Could I be excused from roll calls and reading in Chapel?" And a voice came out of the back of this room, somewhere, "Are you an atheist?" I said, "I wasn't sure what I was. But that wasn't the reason!" "Why do you make this request?",he said. So I said, I explained, you see. "It is now October, you shall desist by November, I assume?" I said, "Well, no, I promised to go on, and I couldn't give backword". And I can remember saying "give backword" because I wondered whether he'd understand this Yorkshire expression. But he said, "Next term, the river freezes." And I said, "Well, I know I would have to give up then, I don't know I'll have the strength of mind to continue. But if ever I give up, I'll never have that!" He said, "Would you repeat your extraordinary request?" So I took a very deep breath, I can remember this moment perfectly. And then said it very slowly, I can't remember the words, but I said it very slowly, so I thought it would be unmistakeable, and there was a long pause, and then he said, "You must be mad! We can't have madmen reading in Chapel. Permission granted!" [laughs] And that was my first lesson in flexible administration, you know! So I never went to roll call, except in...oh yes, I did, I did, in my third year, when I was out in digs at Summertown, and couldn't swim; I didn't swim all four years, I swam three out of the four, and then I came into

College for breakfast sometimes. I did roll calls then, but not before. But old Austin Lane Pool was really quite a remarkable chap. I mean, he called me up on this list for low battels, and discovered that I was buying corn flakes and milk in the Corn Market, and so he pushed another £30 a year at me, and he also did something which connects with the Goldsmiths. In my first term, this was three weeks into the term when he called me, being on this list of low battels, he said, without telling me that the College were going to give me some more. He said, "Why don't you put in for a Goldsmiths Company Exhibition?" I didn't know what they were, and he explained that they were given, allcomers I think, I can't remember, two or three a year, and they were worth £100; oh, and I said, "Did you say allcomers?" And he said, "Yes." And I said, "Well, I'm only three weeks here." And he made another remark which I've never forgotten, he said, "Well, it can certainly be said that if you don't put in, you won't get one." And so I thought that over, and had a go, and got one, and so the Goldsmiths Company not only gave me £100 a year, but they also fought Sheffield City Council, which had given me £40 a year and £40 loan, and proposed to take the £40 grant away. And they fought that successfully, so I ended up in my second year with £80 from the College, £40 from Sheffield, and £100 from Goldsmiths, which was enough. And then the Goldsmiths subsequently supported me when I moved to Cambridge, refusing to stay on here. So I'm devoted to the Goldsmiths Company.

So they supported you through your research period as well, later.

In Cambridge, yes.

How many, was there a lot of competition for that?

For?

For this Scholarship?

The Goldsmiths Scholarship?

Mmm.

I've no idea, I mean, there were a lot of people sitting the papers in the Examination Hall, but I don't know who they were, or anything. I could find out, because oddly enough, you see, I'm both Chairman of the Charity Committee, and the Education Committee of the Goldsmiths Company, now, and I could easily find out, but I have no idea.

And did you have to go up to Goldsmiths after that? I mean, you had a relationship with them?

Well, things broke off, you see. I hadn't put in my Ph.D. when the War broke out, and in fact, in June 1939, I went off to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, before the War.

But I meant in this period up till then, would you go up...

To Goldsmiths' Hall?

Yes.

No. No, I don't, I don't, no, I wasn't interviewed or anything of that kind there, so I'd never been there until, I think, after the War. They had one or two Goldsmiths Exhibitionist parties there, purely social events, and I went into the Hall. But my next real contact with them was about 1970, when, maybe a little bit before, I can't remember, they asked me if I would like to become a Freeman. It was all a put up job. The next year I was clothed with the livery, and the next year I was on the Court of Assistants. And although it seems very bizarre, the Goldsmiths' Company is quite a remarkable body, in that it still does real work in the trade; it also tests the currency of this country and New Zealand, and the Queen's Maundy Money, and it also has sound educational and charitable functions, and its Court of Assistants has five FRS's, one FBA; it's very different from most of your City livery companies.

And what's your main role with them, being....

Now?

Mmm.

Well, I'm on the Court of Assistants for life, and on its Standing Committee, which agrees all the charitable things. I chair its charity committee, and its education committee, and I suppose that's...

A very active involvement really.

Very active, yes. And, you know, one's been able to do various things recently which have been quite valuable. I've actually been able to persuade them to put £100,000 a year, north of the River Trent, which is a total departure, £50,000 a year of which is going to a charitable foundation in Tyne and Wear, and another, not chosen by me, South Yorkshire, which is based in Sheffield! It's rather pleasing, but it wasn't...I didn't select it, I only want it to go to those places which could best use it.

So the Goldsmiths' Company came in early on in my life, and I owe them an enormous debt.

That was obviously a crucial help at that moment.

Absolutely. And then when I went to Cambridge, they actually wrote to ask if they could help me.

Really?

Yes. And so, I mean, I really feel anything I can do for them, I will do. And it is a marvellous Company. The membership is quite varied, and you have, on the one hand, a former professor from the Royal College of Art, and another, the Chairman of Rolls Royce. You have Sir Nicholas Goodison, the Stock Exchange, on the one hand, and on the other hand, you've again Rosemary Murray, you see, it's a very interesting group of people. And we don't fuss, we don't dress ourselves up.

So you meet them in committees, or dinners?

Well, we, the Court of Assistants meets once a month, and the Charity Committee meets once a month in between, and the Standing Committee meets once a month in between, and the Education Committee meets three regular times a year, and then two years, two days running for interviews for Schoolmaster Fellowships, and Schoolmistress Fellowships, so there's quite a lot going on, quite apart from special functions, and, of course, we founded Goldsmiths' College, and that's been a great joy too.

[End of reel 1, side 2]

Reel 2 Side 1 (part 3)

4th November, 1989.

So you were going to...

Yes, I think if I talk a little bit about the style of chemistry in those days, it will link up with Hinshelwood, who was, of course, one of my predecessors as Chairman of the Education Committee of the Goldsmiths'. I think the main thing to say was, I mean, what has struck me as astonishing when I came up to Oxford as far as the teaching was concerned, was the rather casual attitude, not only of everybody, but my tutor to the lectures, and the fact that they were not compulsory, nor were the laboratories, though you had a report on attendance and how you'd done the experiments, which went back to your tutor, and the complete freedom from examinations for three years, which was marvellous in one sense, because I decided, in my sixth term, to have a good time, as my financial problems were solved, which brought a certain opprobrium down my head from my tutor whose notion was, you worked till you dropped, though he had been a Blue in soccer! But the style of the work in the laboratories was interesting, and you have to remember then, that as far as chemistry was concerned, physical chemistry, had no university laboratory, there were College laboratories in Christ Church and Jesus, Balliol and Trinity, and so on. And in the Balliol/Trinity labs, I can remember what happened was, a very informal atmosphere in which you got on with some of the experiments, and on one occasion I was doing an experiment, and I've forgotten what it was now, and I heard a voice over my shoulder, "Oi say, that's a bloody dull experiment - isn't it?" I turned round, and there was a very young man, in a most glaring tomato-red plus-fours, and I wasn't sure who he was, but he had this very marked Worcestershire accent, and it turned out to be a man named E.J. Bowen, later FRS, very distinguished photochemist, and he went on to say, before I could really reply, because, you know, not knowing who he was, I didn't know quite what to say, and he said, "Come with me, we'll do some experiments on hydrogen peroxide." [laughs] And for the next six weeks I played about in his laboratory, having discovered he was a Fellow of Univ., and we, I did some experiments which

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 1 (part 3) Page 38 were totally inconclusive, but they got me used to the atmosphere of a science research lab, than which there is nothing better in it, at its best, marvellously friendly, and you get on with the job, and age differences vanish. And this man, Bowen, was a most attractive character, he was a polymath, he was interested in geology, he was interested in history, he was a distinguished Fellow of Univ., he had those, that plaque put up, up outside Univ., about Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke, and he was full of joy of life, and he was also, as a matter of fact, at that time, Junior Proctor. Now, you have to remember, that in those days, a Junior Proctor, undergraduates, rather, had prohibited from their attendance, certain bars and pubs in the City, and they were regularly patrolled by the Proctor and his bulldogs. You didn't, in my day, have to wear gowns after dusk at night, as you did in Cambridge, but you still had this, and I can remember sitting, with two friends of mine from St. John's, having a quiet pint in the old Clarendon Buttery, that's in the Cornmarket Street, there was a hotel called the Clarendon, where that horrible glass arcade thing is now, the Clarendon Centre. It was a rather nice old pub, and in came the Junior Proctor, Bowen, whom I recognised at once, and his bulldogs, and he came up to us, and progged the man on my right, progged the man on my left, looked me in the eye, and bearing in mind I was working in his lab at the time, he said, "You're not a member of the University, are you, sir?" [laughs] I thought, "I like this chap!" But he later became a kind of honorary godfather to our children, because he was so full of life and fun, and I used to invite him up to Leeds, to come and, when I took all my research students, and some members of staff out to Malham Tarn Field Centre for three days, you see, because he loved the countryside too, and his geological knowledge was absolutely invaluable and enlivening, plus his personality, that science was fun. Well, that's one example, and in the same lab, on one occasion, a man named C.N. Hinshelwood, about whom you found a plaque on the side of Balliol, which lies between, in the entry between St. John's, Balliol and Trinity, off St. Giles, if you know that, if you walk in there and look up right, you'll see a plaque about Sir Cyril Norman Hinshelwood, Fellow, President of the Royal Society and Noble Laureate in Chemistry in 1956, or whatever. Well, he was there, very distinguished person, changing the face of his subject, and just one evening, I suppose it would be about 6 o'clock, he said, "Come and have a talk about reaction kinetics", which was his speciality, but I didn't really know him from Adam, I'd been to his lectures, which I didn't think were terribly good, and I

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 1 (part 3) Page 39 thought his books were super, and so he took me along to rooms in Trinity, which were just by where the Cardinal Newman bust is, and we had dinner in his rooms, in those days, brought to him, very nice dinner, and he talked about this subject, and I was fascinated. And about 8 o'clock, when it was finished, we were having coffee, he said, "I'm feeling tired, come to the flicks." The flicks were, of course, the cinema. We went along to the Scala Cinema, and there was a film which he wanted to see, I knew nothing about it, and I've forgotten the name of it, but it could easily be recognised from what follows, and when we went in, there was this extraordinary chap, with long hair, and a walk like a gorilla, and a painted on moustache, it was Groucho Marx, of course, and he was walking up and down, and on his right, was a very large and bosomy female, about to give vent some aria or other, and then suddenly, the camera switched to Groucho, who came right up to the camera, or the camera came right up to him, and he said, "Say folks! I gotta listen to this, but you can go out into the foyer and smoke till it blows over!" [American accent] You see, and I thought, "What an extraordinary film this is, to be brought to by this distinguished man." And it was towards the end of the first session, it was a continuous programme, you see, and so then it stopped, and they had a break, and the news, and, I think, a tiny supporting film about something I've totally forgotten, and then there was this first Marx Brothers film. I roared my insides out with laughter, I was absolutely splitting, and the funny, I mean, that I should be introduced to the Marx Brothers, by this extraordinarily clever man, who spoke French, German, Spanish, translated his books into those languages, some Russian, was later President of the Royal Society, and simultaneously a President of the Classical Association, who taught himself Chinese, collected jade, and so on. I mean, it really was, that gives you some idea of what it was like, so obviously, I loved it. It went to one's head.

And you said, though, that you did decide to enjoy yourself.

Oh yes.

Can you tell me more about that?

Well, I don't think there was anything, except I, instead of going into the labs in the afternoons, I tended to play a bit of cricket, and go on the river, which I'd never done, and I think it was 1935, yes, yes it was, and therefore it was the year in which George V died, and then there was the, Edward coming to the throne, and a great sort of Coronation celebration and dinner, which I also remember, because I'd never seen such drink and wine offered to undergraduates before! I remember going out in the evening with some friends, one of whom is coming to stay next week, and we went out up towards Headington, where there was a tremendous firework display, and I'd never actually experienced before, crowd hysteria, and I can remember thinking, coming back from it, as I sobered up, although it was very jolly, there were masses of people up there, "This is just bloody well like the Nuremberg Rally", you see, and it sobered me up very much, and it just sticks in my memory as a moment when all that pre-War period began to focus itself, and, of course, I've forgotten, I think it was a little later, we had the hunger marchers coming through Oxford.

Who were your best friends during those years?

Oddly enough, still my best friend from those years, who's coming next weekend when I shall be, precisely a week today, I shall be 75, and he's coming up with his wife from Somerset, a man named Henry Fowler, whom I met taking Responsions Latin. He had been to a little school in Beccles in Suffolk, called the Sir John Leman School, I think - L E M A N, and we met coming out of Examination Schools, since we were staying a night at St. John's, having done the two Latin papers, the translation, and the unseen, or whatever it was. And I just taught myself Latin over the preceding three months, and he was coming up to read English, and then, happily, we were placed, I mean, I thought no more about it, we were placed in adjacent rooms on the first staircase, and so we were in and out of one another's room, if, for no other reason than sharing this bloody tray, which I told you about, you see, with one or two others, and, oh, he was a good footballer, he read English, he introduced me to Gavin Bone's sort of Tuesday night's reading some Anglo-Saxon poetry, which I went to, and the Essay Club, and he was more, much more socially accomplished than I was, he came from a better family, so he was part of my education, and I discovered from him, that it was possible to invite a person of a better social background to my home in

Sheffield, which I was very dubious about, and he was, he's such a nice person, that, so, I'm godfather to one of his children, and he to one of ours, it's been a lasting friendship, and sustained throughout the War, although he was a prisoner at Changi in Singapore, and on the railroad, and yes, that was important. And through him, I was introduced to others, and on the whole, I used to watch them, I suppose, because, he knew how to handle certain situations that I was totally unaccustomed to.

Such as?

Well, there was a man named Adlard, who was a pain in the arse, to use a favourite American expression! From Marlborough, who had far too much money, and Stephen Crozier, who was weak, son of the then editor of 'The Guardian', who also had plenty of money, and they had drinking parties, and I just didn't know how to behave at these. I'd never been to anything like that, where you drank and you told silly stories, and there was no serious discussion at all. That was at one end of the spectrum. I only knew how to cope with this and when to go, and how to say when, "Look, don't be so bloody daft", and [incomp]. So I learnt that, and I also learnt at the other end, on the Sunday evenings Essay Club, where we all wrote, I'm sure, rather pompous essays, how undergraduates could have serious discussions, in an organised way. So, from, so I learnt a great deal from him, oh yes, and he got me drawn into the Oxford University Experimental Theatre Club, which was founded by Neville Coghill, who translated Chaucer, but was a great thespian, and used to produce the plays of it, and I got drawn in there, and I had been interested in this at school, because of the Shakespeare Society, but I'd no time, and then suddenly, they used to have their performances in the Taylorian, and they'd nobody to look after the electrics, which they wanted for Jean Cocteau's 'The Infernal Machine', so I was, you know, arts people on the whole regard chemists as mechanics! [laughs] Would I go and help? So I did that, and that got me to know Coghill and one or two others, and see these extraordinary characters who fancied themselves on the boards, and so again, it was an enlargement of experience. I would never have articulated these things then, in this way. It was just happening, and I didn't know what was happening, but in retrospect, it was obviously part of one's education. If you'd told me to do these things because it

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 1 (part 3) Page 42 would've enlarged my education, I'd have told you to bugger off, you know, but, but it happened, through friendship.

Did you have any women friends at that time?

Absolutely none. Until...no, not even then. I'm just trying to remember how I knew...got to know this Jane Aitken Hodge, I really can't remember. No, College, all its activities, science, all its activities, my friends, swimming, walking, playing games or whatever, filled every hour of the day. I mean, there was just one time, I was absolutely exhausted when I went home, particularly having to cycle from Oxford to Sheffield, and I was jolly tired, and for a few days couldn't do any work until I'd pulled myself together and went to the public libraries. Absolutely none, I don't think I can recall meeting anybody until I started research, and I really don't know how I met Jane Aitken, as she then was. I can't think.

Don't worry.

And, but we went, I can remember a walk we went up, beside the Evenlode, and she was reading English, and I was quite interested in English, as I've forgotten whether I've told you, but I read quite a lot, and I think she was quite amused, maybe even touched, that a scientist should know any English! But these things were never articulated in that way. I can't really remember. And if I were to write it down in any way now, the danger is that I would romanticise it, but I honestly cannot remember.

Going back to chemistry, at what point do you think that you got the feeling that you wanted to do research?

I don't know, I mean, I just knew I was happy in the lab, for a whole variety of reasons. I mean, first of all, I had a lot of glass blowing to do in the research side, I don't know if you know what glass blowing's like, but you get a lot of fun.

This is something you made?

Yes like that. And it's very easy to do. Well, if you like, it's a tree in the wind, and so on, or whatever you like! But it was just fun.

You made that when you were an undergraduate at Oxford?

No, no, I made it much later, but I had to do a lot of glass blowing in the way of my work, and I took rather a pleasure in it, and used to make little things, in fact, made, since we were married during the War, the only things, there couldn't be any wedding cake except home made, and I decorated it with, on the one hand, a retort, which a little retort, which I made, and so on, and so it was just a, there was that, you were using your hands. A lot of the time there was a great deal of camaraderie. There was a great deal of interchange, and the most important thing was, I think, that if you had a good supervisor, and if the atmosphere of the lab was right, then you could be treated as an equal, in a co-operative enterprise, and it was a very pleasant experience. And, of course, I was interested in, in what might be done, so I was quite clear that that was the life for me, and it also represented, I suppose, and this would be at the back of my mind, that whatever else it was, life in a university was not the life of a stonemason's son, or a bank clerk, which is what I might have been, so that was a way forward, anything else that I knew was the way backwards! And so I had no hesitation when there was this opportunity to go to Cambridge.

So were you, I mean, and you got a First, were you working to get a First?

Yes, I was, desperately. Like a black! Used to stay up late. I was determined to get it, because there was, well, let me tell you, I mean, I wanted to stay on. If I tell you there were 13 Firsts in my year, out of about 57, I think, which was, in itself, most of them were Scholars and Exhibitioners, some of them already had Degrees from elsewhere, Americans on Rhodes Scholars, one or two English and Scots who had taken a first degree, and were trying to do it in two years instead of the four, and the competition was hot, and also, one also has to remember that even getting a First was not a guarantee of a job. A couple of people, I can remember, one of them, six months after he graduated with a First, had just been promoted from being a bus conductor to a bus driver, as I think I told you perhaps. Another got a job as a

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 1 (part 3) Page 44 labourer in the packaging department of Hudson's Soap in Manchester. It was a very different life. So it was both bread and butter, and if you add to that, the fact that there were two awards from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to Oxford, for students to do research, who wanted to stay on and wanted some money, because colleges very rarely gave any for post-graduate work then, you had to have, be one of the top two, and it was desperate, so I, I felt very lucky.

Did you put in really long hours?

Work? I worked always from 9 till l, perhaps at least one afternoon a week, I would play football, and perhaps have a game of squash fitted in once or twice a week thereafter, yes, I used to work late at night, and if I had this English Evening, or Essay Club, I would go back and work afterwards. I still have the essays that I wrote, I mean, they were 30 pages long, and I, oh yes, and labs, I was sometimes cut, because it seemed to me, that doing experiments which had been done by other people before, just to demonstrate to me that something actually existed, weren't necessary. You know, that after Newton, it's not necessary to sit under a tree and let apples drop on your head. I believe gravity! And so I sometimes cut the labs, and, in favour of going into the Radcliffe Science Library, which I greatly enjoyed, it was a marvellous library, still is.

Had you already begun to focus on particular problems, or was it that the offer from Cambridge really led you in that area?

Well, I wanted, actually, to do my Part II, with a great man called Robert Robinson, who also became President of the Royal Society and was Nobel Laureate in organic chemistry, because I was absolutely fascinated by him, and I had played chess at school, and there was a man, I think his name was Perkins, who was a great chess player, mathematics Scholar at St. John's, who asked me one Saturday, he was a Blue, or half-Blue, I've forgotten what they were in chess, would I take part? And I think it was 12 or 24 boards, playing the County Chess Champions, he would play them all simultaneously, you see. I thought, "Yes, I'd like to do this." And this extraordinary chap, went round moving, very quickly, pieces, and I thought, "That's a remarkable

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 1 (part 3) Page 45 bloke!" Next term, I went to his lectures. It was Professor, as he later became, Sir Robert Robinson! You see, who was a Manchester graduate originally, and a remarkable chap, and I was very much attracted by his approach to chemistry, and I wanted to do that, but my tutor wouldn't let me. He said, "Oh, you're too good to waste on organic chemistry, work with me." And no doubt, there was an element in that, of him recruiting...a little bit of what, after all, was the last reservoir of non- Unionised labour, the research student, you see! So I, I became a physical chemist by accident, and, but once having become launched on it, I quite enjoyed it. So I remained there.

And then how did this opportunity in Cambridge come?

Well, partly, as I think I described, it was the connection between St. John's and Sidney, which led to that as a College invitation. Then it was Professor Norrish, another Nobel Laureate, whose biographical memoire I wrote, some years ago, when he died in 1978, who was looking round for somebody to work in the field of what's called, "Gaseous Explosions", the theory for which had been partly produced by this man Hinshelwood I mentioned, and partly by a man named Nikolai Nikolayevich Semenov, whose biographical memoire I have just handed into the Royal Society this week, having finished it. And I knew, I came from Oxford, and therefore I would know about these things, and somebody must have said I was okay, and he said, but I had to go to his lab, so that's how it began to be fixed up, and then, of course, the Goldsmiths' heard about it, by routes I do not know, and offered me some money. So...

So this, I mean, was this before your degree that this was...

Well, yes, in Chemistry in Oxford, you get your BA degree at the end of three years, but it's unclassified, and you have to do a fourth year of research if you want to classify a degree, which in those days, was given on the basis of your performance in six three-hour papers, unless you were doing a supplementary subject, like biochemistry, or crystallography, which, in that case it would be seven three-hour papers, and three or four full day practicals, six hours practical, vivas if need be, and

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 1 (part 3) Page 46 that got you to the end of the third year, and then you had to do a year's research, or, well, it wasn't a year really, it was from, well, the end of August, until the end of June, you had to have your thesis in by June, and you were always viva'd on that, and then you were classified.

So the opportunity came while you were in this fourth year?

That's right, that's right.

And you were working on, on what, in that fourth year?

Oh, on a very interesting thing, actually. It didn't seem to me to be interesting at the time, it was called, "The Photochemistry of the Alkyl Nitrites", now, I won't describe it to you. What I will tell you is this, that it made a point to me, as recently as ten years ago, the work was judged sufficiently good for publication, and it appeared in the 'Transactions of the Faraday Society' in 1937, jointly authored with my supervisor, H.W. Thompson. I'd forgotten all about this work for years and years and years, and 40, just over 40 years later, I had a letter from Derek Barton, who has a reaction which is eponymously called "The Barton Reaction", which is very important to organic chemists, everybody knows it, and he too is a Nobel Prize winner. He's about my age, and he gave a review, which he published, of the Barton Reaction, you know, people do this when they're foolish and old, and he said, "Look at reference so and so", that's where it's already, all began. No good work is ever wasted." The reference was to Dainton and Thompson, 'Transactions of the Faraday Society', 1937! You know! So, at the time, it made very little impact on me, I mean, I enjoyed it, and thought that was the kind of work I'd like to go on doing. I refused to go into ICI which I was offered a job for, and then this opportunity came, which gave me....

Why did you refuse to go into ICI?

Well, I'd, one vacation I'd done two or three weeks in the Thomas Swinden Laboratories at Stocksbridge, which is a part of Sheffield, the labs of Steel, Peach and Tozer, and I thought it the most dreary, repetitive work. It was, what you might call

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 1 (part 3) Page 47 technical service, and I thought, "If that's industrial scientific work, that's not for me." And, of course, I really didn't know what they did in ICI, so I didn't do it. Oddly enough, because I spent, later, 30 years of my life, as a consultant to various branches, and got to know a great deal more about it, and what a splendid place it was.

So, so you feel that there would have been more opportunity with them, you mean?

And I didn't know about it, didn't realise it. Perhaps I didn't want to. Some things you shut your eyes to, subconsciously, and there may have been that.

And so then you came to Cambridge, and so you, at this point, sort of shift on to a different subject area?

Related, but quite different. In intellectual knowledge of the subject and the ideas in it, I was much better placed than the Cambridge people, and soon I was, for that reason, and for the fact that they needed people, I was supervising, as they called, that's the same as tutoring in Oxford, people, and being very successful, because I made them write essays, rather than answering Tripos questions, and made them think about the subject. And that was a direct benefit of having been at Oxford. But in terms of research, the experimental techniques were far far better. Thompson and Hinshelwood were sloppy, by comparison. In terms of knowing more about cognate subjects like mathematics and physics they were better off, so I began to go to some undergraduate lectures in those subjects to bring myself up to date. And I had a, my supervisor was a very awkward man, you can see this in my memoir of him, and I learnt a technique of dealing with awkward people there, and learnt it empirically. He would come round the lab frequently, and talk to you, and say, "Well, what have you done?" "Well, now you should do so and so." And I knew that was not the right thing to do, and initially, you know, I said, "No, I don't think so." And that put him into a fury, and so I developed the technique of saying, keeping him only up to date with what I'd done the week before, then he would go on and say, "You know, you ought to do that now", and if I, it was all right, of course, I'd say, "Oh yes", and if it wasn't, I would say, "Well, as a matter of fact, sir", because he was like that! "I've done one or two experiments which seem to show that's not...." and so on, you see,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 1 (part 3) Page 48 that's where I got my own way. But despite our many quarrels, and I was there, if you count in the war years, which is not really right, for 13 years, he, in his will, left me a black japanned box with all kinds of private things in it, and the clear indication that I was to write his memoir, which was very funny.

Extraordinary!

Yes. Now, he was, he wasn't a good scientist, by the term of understanding the fundamental principles, but he was good experimentally, and he had flair. He knew what the molecules were doing, but couldn't tell you why, and he was more often right than the average, so he was extremely infuriating to work with. I think people who are right, and can't tell you why! But I used to play squash with him, and he was one of these ambidextrous people, used to worry me, because he would change the racquet from the right to the left hand, as he found it advantageous, and I never knew where the ball was coming from! Oh yes, and of course, Cambridge was marvellous at that time, not in chemistry, although it was quite good, but physics was just terrific, world- breaking, Rutherford was still there. He died, I think it was November '37. But there were other people around the place who were world class, and everybody who was anybody came through the Cavendish Lab if they were visiting England, in science.

Anyone in particular you can remember?

Oh yes, I remember Niels Bohr for example, John Wheeler, and a tremendous range of them. One or two of my stories of that period, have been recorded by, oh, what was his name?

[pause in recording]

And I had to go, and this may interest you. When I got there, Norrish said to me, obviously terrified of Rutherford, he said, "Rutherford's got a, a George Kent multilee recorder and temperature controller, which I want. He says he'll give it to me if the research student can justify the use of it. So go and see Rutherford", you see. And I'll never forget it, because Rutherford, by then, was, was slightly unwell. No one knew

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 1 (part 3) Page 49 he was going to die, this was July, I think, 1937, or early August, and I went to see Rutherford, and he was sitting in his room. I have to think of him with a wing-collar, and this bluff New Zealand farmer's son, says, "What are you?" I said, "Well, sir, I'm a physical chemist." "I can understand chemists. Some chemists make no measurements at all, that doesn't matter, on very pure compounds. Leave the measurement, whatever it is, the precise measurement, to the physicists. Physical chemist, you say? Well, I suppose you make very bad measurements on impure compounds." [laughs] I was irritated by this! I said, "Well, no, I think you've got the wrong end of the stick!" At which point he sat up, and we had an argument! And at the end of it, "All right, take it away." Oh, he was a character. And was a great leader. So, oh yes, Cambridge was a, an eye opener.

And you also had contact with a few radio astronomers, I think?

Oh yes, Martin Ryle did a, where did you pick that up from? Was it...

Well, Martin Ryle, you see, was an exact contemporary of mine, he may have been a year younger, I think he was at New College, and I got to know him quite accidentally, through another friend, who, when he was in the electrical lab, which is part of the Clarendon now, and I rather liked him, didn't know much about him, we chatted, and surprise, surprise, he turned up in Cambridge, working with a man named Jack Ratcliffe, and so I, by that time, I had joined a thing called the Cambridge University Rambling Club, because I'd always been interested in this, and we used to go out walking on Sundays, anything from 20, 30 people, you see, and it was a tremendously friendly body. Martin Ryle was one of them, Fred Hoyle was another, Max Perutz came out occasionally, though he wasn't a very good walker, oh, Austin Mair, now retired from engineering, and this was absolutely splendid. We just walked around the Cambridge countryside, which, on the whole, is very dull, unless you're a biologist, and chatted about everything. And then Martin Ryle's father was Professor of, Regius Professor of Physic, that's medicine, at Cambridge, but really was the first of the people interested in social medicine, he saw the origins of disease lay elsewhere, very often, and that's how he came to be Nuffield Professor of Medicine here, switched over. But Martin's mother was a remarkable lady, and their house was pretty well

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 1 (part 3) Page 50 open house to Spanish Civil War refugees, Republicans, and so through that, I used to go round and help Martin and his mother with these Spanish refugees, who needed both money, clothes, help in learning English, and all sorts of things, and you have to remember that, you could not be young at that time of life, unless you were totally insensitive, without being left-wing. The rise of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, you name it, and a Government that didn't seem to understand this. It was Baldwin, Chamberlain, even Ramsay Mac, so, when people point the finger at Cambridge for all these terrible left-wing attitudes, they have to remember this, and there was no sense in which we felt that the Government was preparing this country for a war, which even if we didn't want to go into it, it would happen to us, you know, they, and some of us, therefore, got ourselves involved in testing a civilian respirator, which we didn't think was much good, and said, "It isn't much good", to the chagrin of the Government. And then about 1938, after the, oh, what was it called? When Chamberlain went to Munich? The mood changed, I mean, it began to be clear that that silly fool Chamberlain, saying he'd got peace, you know, it was such a manifest untruth, and everybody began to realise it in Parliament, and, of course, Churchill was active, and others, and the mood changed, and conscription was introduced too, of course.

But I mean, were you talking politics, for instance, when you were going on this Rambling Club with these people?

Oh yes, yes. All sorts of things, and I became Chairman of the Association of Scientific Workers, some time about that time, which was precursor of ASTMS, do you remember ASTMS?

Yes, indeed.

Which has now changed it's name again. And in that capacity, I was on the Cambridge Trades and Labour Council.

Did you enjoy that experience?

Not particularly, [pause] because it would have been better and more natural had I been doing it in Sheffield, but there were a lot of intellectuals involved in it, and I didn't think, in some ways, that they were very well equipped to talk with some of the Trades Union people who'd not come up that way, in Cambridge. We were privileged and that puts, raises a great barrier, so no, I don't think so. And some of them, too, were highly theoretical, and they didn't understand, I mean, the University people, they didn't understand that it's, you can be theoretical and go back to a college dinner, and it looks really pretty shameful, on the part of somebody who was unemployed, if you start preaching, so I, no, I wasn't, I felt it was something one might do, but I don't think I felt altogether happy with the, the people in the University. But the chap who would have had, I was, I was not a Communist, I never joined the Labour Party until the end of the War. A chap who'll give you a much better understanding of the period, of course, would be Dennis Healey.

Did you know him then?

No, I didn't, though we had a mutual friend in Balliol, called, (damn it, I'll forget my own....) Dan Bourstin, the historian, who later became Librarian of Congress, and I was alleged to be one of his disreputable companions, when his nomination was opposed! You probably know that great trilogy of books, 'The Americans'.

Yes.

And we, we're still in contact. No, but Cambridge was really very interesting at that time.

Is it possible for you to explain in lay terms, the sort of intellectual scientific problems that you were thinking about in these years?

Yes. Let me give you a simple example. Hydrogen, you know, burns in air. If you take a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, two parts of hydrogen to one of oxygen, in principle, they should form water, but they won't, until you raise the temperature to a certain level, and then they will only do so if the pressure lies between two limits, a

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 1 (part 3) Page 52 low limit, if you take a temperature of something like 50O degrees centigrade, a low limit, below which there was virtually no reaction, and suddenly within a fraction of a millimetre pressure, it explodes, and it will continue to do that until you come to a higher limit, and suddenly it will stop exploding. Now, that's a very funny phenomenon, you don't expect great discontinuities of that kind and those are called "explosion limits". Now, also other funny things happened. A trace of certain materials, one of which is nitrogen dioxide, which you've heard a lot about being up in the atmosphere with nitric oxide, and nitrous oxide, the nitrogen dioxide, something like, oh, less than l part in l,OOO, will make the temperature at which that explosion occurs, drop by 20O-250 degrees, very dramatic effects. Now, obviously, within that, there is something fundamental, and the principle is very simply this. It is the rate of that reaction, whether it is uncontrollable and explosive is exactly like population growth, well, not quite like it, but very like it, and that is to say, the nature of the reaction is such that it is carried forward by some intermediates, and the rate of the reaction overall, is proportional to the concentration of these intermediates. If those intermediates, in converting the reactants to the products produce, as they are bound to do so, another reactant of similar capacity, then you've got a chain reaction. If, very occasionally, that chain will branch, and in one of these reactions produce not one new intermediate capable of carrying on the chain, but two, then, you see, you've got branching, branching again, and branching again, and before you know where you are, you've got explosion, so the theory of branching chain reactions is what it's all about, and what determines it, and what stops those chains from branching, which happens at the walls of the vessel, or with inhibitors and so on, and that's quite important, chain reactions, because it not only affects all chemical explosions, but it's involved in the, what goes on in combustion in engines, what happens in coal mines when you get methane firedamp, and you get a firedamp explosion. It's involved in making polymers, plastics, so it's a fundamental bit of chemistry, and Nicholai Semenev, and Nicholai Semenov wrote a book about that thick about it. That thick.

That's your chain reactions.

That's a chain reaction.

1956 you published it?

That was the first one, yes, yes.

Yes. But you were working on that problem, those problems, from the moment you arrived in Cambridge then?

Yes. Yes. And then when I, when I was away, in 1946, I had a letter from Norrish saying that I'd been pre-elected to a University Demonstratorship, which was like a...one here, really, a lectureship, and St. Catharine's College offered me a Fellowship, and so I was all set, but with that letter, I must find it sometime, was this extraordinary statement, he was very much looking forward to having me, as it were, back in the lab, when the opportunity offered, "but it must be clearly understood that I did not work on any subject of interest to him". Now ...

[End of Reel 2 Side 1]

Reel 2 Side 2 (part 4)

Well, as I was saying, I had this extraordinary letter, which, welcoming in a formal sense, except that I mustn't work on any subject of interest to him, Norrish, you see, and I was very irritated by this. I thought it was exclusion, which it clearly was, and the reason, I thought, was that it was so that he would not have competition, and in fact, it turned out to be very much for my own good, because it meant I had to carve out new niches for myself, and although some of them were within the field of chain reactions, and photochemistry, which were interests of his, they were quite distinct areas, and I think if I'd not gone into them, I would have not made an independent reputation early, so it was helpful in the end. But at the time, I didn't like it.

Perhaps it would be useful just to talk about those other areas that you went into?

Well, I don't know to what, how much you understand.

Yes, if you could try and talk about it in a way that the public will understand a little bit.

Well, was what I said before intelligible?

Yes, oh yes, absolutely.

All right, I think everybody understands that the rate of a chemical reaction increases with increasing temperature, and, in fact, if you plot the rate of a chemical reaction against temperature, it goes up very very steeply, a rising slope, and that's, the explanation to that was due to a Swedish chemist, called Svante Arrhenius and is part of the fundamental stock-in-trade of chemists, and it rests on very sound physical principles. Well, to give you an example of one area, when I had blown my finger off, in the lab, just at the end of the War, and I was therefore unable to get into the lab for some time, I was reading in the Library to see what things I could take up. And I suddenly came across a paper from Phillips Petroleum Company in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, which looked

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 2 (part 4) Page 55 to me like arrant nonsense, because it described a reaction, the details of which I won't bother you with, which if you lowered the temperature, took place, and if you raised it, stopped, which is just the opposite of what you'd expect. In fact, it was a very sharp stopping point, and they introduced the term, "ceiling temperature" a temperature above which a reaction will not go. Well, this, to my mind, flew in the face of nature, so I didn't believe it, and thought, "Well, perhaps we'll just try it." And I had a good research student who joined me at that time, from Christ's, named Ken Ivin, and I said to Ken, "Look, I can't do this, will you just see if what is reported here is true?" And to my horror, it was! Well, that meant nonsense, because if you go back to this curve that I was describing, of rising temperature causing rising rate of reaction, when we really investigated, this went through a maximum, turned round very sharply, and fell to zero. And that presented us with an absolutely intractable problem, there was no way you could explain it by orthodox ideas, and I can well remember, it was a chain reaction which was involved, that was the first thing, and I can well remember thinking, one weekend, the same weekend as this young research student approached it from another angle, and he rang me up and we talked together, and we got the same idea from two different points of view, that the explanation of it was very simple, it was concerned with the principle of microscopic reversibility, and that is, that any reaction which will go forward, will come backwards, and if it is a reaction which gives out heat, then that means the higher the temperature, the more rapid the reverse reaction. So everything becomes undone. It's like a zip fastener, which will go up slowly, making this material, which you call a polymer, but as you raise the temperature, it comes down ever more quickly, so a point comes when it comes down so rapidly that the going up can never take place, as it were! And that's the ceiling temperature. And there is a reverse of that, which one can call the "floor temperature", well, that led to, oh, eight or nine years very productive work, when we'd convinced a very sceptical world that this was so, it got into the literature, now, nobody even bothers to put down who were the originators of it. They did originally, but it's part of the general fabric of the thing, that was one thing. Another, which I greatly enjoyed, and which I got put into a portrait, was the discovery of the hydrated electron in water. Something that everybody had thought was a hydrogen atom in water, produced in various ways, I had been convinced might be an electron, but everybody told you, and the Nobel Laureate, named James Frank, told me, I remember

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 2 (part 4) Page 56 very well, in October 1952, in the Argonne National Laboratory, near Chicago, when I gave a lecture on this subject, that what I was saying was rubbish, that in lO_¹¹ of a second, which is 10 million millionths of a second, any electron in water, would decompose to produce a hydrogen atom, and a hydroxide ion, thereby discouraging me from, seven years, from embarking on the experiments I had in mind, and as soon as we did these experiments with a young Canadian, named Don Smith, a young Japanese Shigeo Tazuke who was with me at the time, and has just sadly died, and a young colleague I brought to Leeds, that was from Cambridge, Edgar Collinson, as soon as we started these experiments, it was immediately obvious that the electron could live in water, and it could live for almost 1000th of a second, and it had a chemistry all of it's own, so I mean, I found myself, 15 years later, writing a review lecture, the Faraday Lecture of the Chemical Society, "The Chemistry of the Electron", we know more about that than we know about sodium hydroxide or sulphuric acid now! So, and that's part of the excitement, you see, occasionally you get things like this happen. And I could name others which are of less importance, which were puzzles, things that puzzled me for years, and one day, suddenly, I thought, "Well, well. Let's try this." And you get the answer, and either you get that thrill of that kind of intellectual discovery, or you'll get something which you know you are seeing for the first time, however unimportant, nobody else has ever done it, nobody's trodden this pathway before, and you're like a discoverer, I mean, in the jungle, and it's a marvellous feeling. The thing that I always learnt from this, I think, was, what you look for in science if you want to make progress, is that which does not conform. If you spend yourself time trying to verify an idea, that's ridiculous, but if you hunt the paradox, then you'll make progress, make something new. I once was invited to write an article for a new scientific newspaper in the States, which is still going, called 'The Scientist', on, on one of these things, and I chose it as hunting the paradox, a bit like, you know, hunting the snark!

And I made a note that radiation chemistry was one of your areas.

Oh yes.

Is that different from ...

Well, radiation chemistry, in fact, was the means for discovering the electron. The radiation chemistry was, in a sense, forced on me by Norrish's letter, and by the fact that I had been invited out to Canada, at the end of the War, to be consultant to the Anglo-Canadian project, which was building the NRX Reactor at Chalk River, heavy water reactor with the heavy water, much of it taken from the French who were brought over here, in 1940, and then taken over to Canada and so on, it had a romantic history, and nobody knew what a heavy water moderated reactor would do, they didn't know whether, under the high flux of radiation which there would be, water would start corroding things, so I really had to start off the radiation chemistry of water there, and there was some work had been done in the Manhattan Project, but by that time, the shutters were down, because of General Groves, he didn't honour the bilateral agreement, and so it had to be 'ab initio' work, and so I came back and started a lot on that work, but also there was another reason for doing it, which interested me, and that was that working on the radiation chemistry of water, everybody, I think, knows that Madame Curie died of persistent aplastic anaemia, which was a form of cancer, which she got from overexposure to radiation, in the search for radium, and subsequent radioactive work, and that people using X-ray sets for diagnosis, got themselves their fingers badly burnt and so on, and this meant that radiation had an effect on tissue, and that was capitalised in the beginnings of radiotherapy, and the reason it does that, is because living cells in the human body, are at least 85% water, and most of that radiation, the energy from it, is absorbed in the water, so if you want to understand both the damaging effect of radiation, and the possible therapeutic effect, you have to begin with the fundamentals of the study of the effect of X-rays, gamma rays, alpha particles, beta particles, on water. And so I was on that, and that too, led to all sorts of interesting things, not least where I was yesterday, I mean, I was Chairman for seven years of the National Radiological Protection Board, which is near here, at Chilton, outside the fence at Harwell, and I was there yesterday, and I'm about to organise a Royal Society discussion, I hope, two days, on the topic of great interest to a lot of people, which is on the biological effects of low doses of radiation, so it's, I've led in another direction.

It must be very difficult to keep these different directions ....

Not really, not really. If, it, people think that you need knowledge of a wide range of fields, in order to keep all these balls in the air. That, in principle, is true, if you want to be concerned with detail, but at the end of the day, all those elements of detail, which may seem unrelated, must, in science, be capable of being related, because there are certain fundamental principles, which unite them. So if you have a grasp of the principles and how to apply them, and that's what university education is about, then, in a sense, the facts can look after themselves. You always find them in books anyway! Or in journals! And this is one of my great quarrels with the way things are going at the moment. I mean, people are talking of, that you've got to "cover the subject". Rubbish! What you want is an understanding of the fundamental principles, how to apply them, and of course, you have to know some facts, but you don't have to know every fact, you have to know some facts, and you have to be able to recognise when facts that you see, do not fit in, because that's the starting point for something new, so I'm rather a radical about these things, and in some ways, as I think I may have mentioned, when I went to Leeds holding these views, I cut down the lectures in my own special subject, reaction kinetics, from 42 to 25, and I think the students had greater interest, and understood as much, even though they didn't know as much, in a factual sense, but the business of universities is not burdening students' minds, but quickening them, and you're getting another lecture, aren't you!

No, no, I'm very interested by what you're saying, because I, I mean, would one implication of that be also that it would be possible to become a scientist, for instance, later in life, if you could grasp the principles?

Only one thing would stand in your way, mathematics.

Yes.

If you haven't got the language of numerate communication, you're going to be handicapped, and it's much easier to get that when you're young. I have just, I don't know whether we'd met after I'd come back from Hanover had we? After I'd come back from Hanover.

You didn't tell me about what happened.

Yes, well, I went there to the Leibnitz Society, and I was asked to go into the special collection which they'd set up in the Staatsbibliothek, Leibnitz's papers, you see, and marvellous, to see and handle letters from Newton to Leibnitz, and Descartes, and traffic between them, and the first time, Leibnitz was the first user of the integral sign, which you know, in mathematics, was ever put on paper, think of what that's done, I mean, such great occurrence, anything in the world, and the world can't get on without it, and it's astonishing, this extraordinary chap, you know, was the Librarian to a, the Elector of Hanover, quietly doing these things which were transforming the world. Astonishing! And, but if you don't have, if you can't handle things which are quantifiable, then you have a great handicap, in the physical sciences. Less so in the biological sciences, but even so, true there. I mean, there's still a lot of scope for observational, stamp-collecting biology, but ultimately, of course, even that will have to be submitted to principles.

Going back to your own fields of interest though, you know, more particular fields of interest, there were two other ones that I jotted down, one was the photochlorination, now that is same, or different from, ....

That's quite different, but that too is a chain reaction, and that has an interesting history. As long ago as early nineteenth century, who was it? I've forgotten. A man named, a Scot named Cruikshank, wrote in 'Nicholson's Journal', which is an Edinburgh journal, which has long disappeared, that hydrogen and chlorine, recently discovered, under the influence of light, would go [clicks fingers] off like that, they'd bang, you see, and Davy, I think, had isolated chlorine, and at the Royal Institution discovered there was a very rapid, he didn't call it photochemical reaction, a reaction which was stimulated by light. Now, there are masses of such chlorination reactions, whether it's of hydrogen, to form hydrogen chloride, or carbon monoxide to form phosgene, or whatever, which are very very long chain reactions. One startling event, and a million events follow thereafter, in rapid succession. Well, in this photochlorination, which I decided to take up, because the interesting thing to do

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 2 (part 4) Page 60 there, is, you know the rate of the first step, which is directly proportional to the light intensity, the number of light photons that are absorbed when you put them into the chlorine molecules. But there are a lot of intermediate steps and one wants to know all those individual participatory reactions rate constants, their characteristics, and there was a recently developed technique, which I saw could be applied to this, and so we applied it, with great success, and it worked like a dream, until we came across the photochlorination of an unsaturated hydrocarbon, which behaved differently. Well, I'm not going to worry you with this, because it's difficult to explain, but that turned out, this anomaly, which I couldn't explain for about five years, and my research students were getting pretty fed up with this, because I would not publish their work, because I could not see that it would be anything more than just a record of fact, and then suddenly, I got an idea, which, immediately, and I can remember it, because the children were off to see their grandmother, and I was just having a quiet afternoon at home in Leeds, and suddenly it struck me, and I began to work it out, and it was all done in two hours. A very simple idea, and therefore, when it hit the world, was not very striking, but it was a very classic example of something that was there all the time, if you only started to think, and not along the established lines, but slightly offbeat, and that's where, I mean, many people think that science is a dull, logical progression, along this and that road, and some of it is, obviously, if you're wanting to make something, you use existing principles and apply them, but if you're wanting to make advances, it's not that way at all. You have to be more lateral in your thinking, and that comes to us exactly like, I imagine, composing, painting, writing a poem, you know, having a new idea is what it's called.

Can you explain this particular idea, or is that too complicated?

It's a bit complicated. It's connected with what's called "the transition state" to the "intermediate state" between reaction and reagents there, the products there, they go through an intermediate mixed up state, in which all the atoms are all het up together, and vibrating madly, and this entity, which everybody has thought of as infinitesimal duration, is suddenly turned out to have a lifetime, would explain my strange observations, of something like l0__ of a second, which is l000 millionth of a second, but that's long enough for certain strange things to happen which would account for

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 2 (part 4) Page 61 these phenomena, and then other people had found ways of investigating this directly, by better methods, of course, and tidied it all up much more efficiently than I could. But the original idea was certainly there.

And what about polymerisation?

Well, polymerisation was partly the ceiling temperature I was telling you about, because polymers are long chains of molecules, immensely long, which can be branched or otherwise, which we all know of in our everyday life, whether it's polythene, polymethyl methycerylate, which I have in my right eye, or polypropylene buckets, you name it, gutters, and the understanding of those reactions which are chain reaction, the way in which they're produced, was something that interested me, and out of the ceiling temperature phenomenon, came a general theorem, which would enable us to predict whether substance X would polymerise, or not. Now, that was an immensely useful piece, thing to do, to be able to look up in a series of tables, and see a compound, you think "Well that would make a nice polymer", and then look at Dainton and Ivin, and say, "Well, it won't do it, it's not worthwhile doing it, for obvious reasons. The ceiling temperature is too low, it's below room temperature, therefore if we want to make it, we'll have to go in for the expensive business of refrigerating it to make it go." Or conversely, "if we do make it go at low temperatures, will it unzip and reverse when we bring it to room temperature, because it's metastable?" So that was, that was a very useful guide. And then I did some polymerisations in water, and all sorts of other things, but I think that's probably a bit offbeat! [laughs] Yes.

And, I mean, I think you've given a very good sense of the sort of thing you're interested in, and the excitement of discovery, what about the, the sort of more practical applications, were you equally interested in that?

Well, yes, and it tended to happen the other way round, you see. I mean, you get a firm like ICI Plastics Division at Welwyn, seeing this published work, would come and say, "Well, come and be a consultant, because we have problems in this field, with methyl methycerylate for example, and its manufacture, and so I got to the point

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 2 (part 4) Page 62 where I was, in fact, publishing papers with them too. And soon, I became known as a polymer chemist, and British Nylon Spinners were after me, and the General Electric Company in the States, and Grace Chemical Company, and so on. And you get interested in these things. I'd already been interested in the way in which industry works, because of the War time.

Yes, yes.

You couldn't avoid it.

Yes, well, that in a way, brings me back to, I think we've rather raced on, and it would be quite useful to actually say something about that wartime experience you had, but just before you say that, I was wondering about, I mean, you went to Sidney Sussex College. You haven't said anything about the College and whether you felt it was different.

Oh yes, well, I lived a year in College and could've stayed on, which, but I decided to go out into digs, which I did, for the second year. What I did notice there was, that there were more research students in Cambridge. Oxford and Cambridge are about the same size - about five and a half thousand in total in Oxford, and 6,000 in Cambridge, which seems small by present standards, but a large proportion of the Cambridge student population were post-graduate students, larger than in Oxford, and particularly in the sciences, so at dinner, for example, there was a BA table, where, where I was invited to sit, though I was not acknowledged to be a graduate. You had a special status as a research student, and still in statu pupilarii which I greatly resented, and you know, supposed to take a gown along to the labs when I was working at night, and I thought, "To hell with that", and also being, having to climb into College when I'd been working late at night was a terrible nuisance, so I wanted the, to get out into digs after one year, but I made quite a number of friends at that period, but I found Cambridge, if anything, a bit more formal than Oxford, but I made a lot of friends there, through the Rambling Club, and through the lab and so on, again, I mean, the retired Manchester Professor there, who's godfather to another of our children, and I'm godfather of his son who's one of my early research students

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 2 (part 4) Page 63 again, a Fellow of Emmanuel, and then a Fellow of Churchill, and, but I found Sidney Sussex College, on the whole, the Master of the College, George Weekes, as I think, with the possible exception of the Senior Tutor, B.T.D. Smith, the most stupid man I've ever met!

How did that show up?

Canon Weekes. Well, can you imagine it? He and his wife, what was her name? Katy? I don't know, but, used to invite people to tea on Sunday afternoon, and you solemnly went into the lodgings in their great big, I think they called it, parlour, and you were distributed around a big fire in a semicircle, this was in the winter, and George on one side, and Katy on the other, and after a fixed period of time, which was quite unchanging, you were swapped over, now it would have been easier for them to move over, but you all swapped over, and this was obviously, in quotes "Getting to know them"! [laughs] And then, this was about, I think, tea was about 4.15, and then you were all dismissed about 5.30 with the regular words, "Well, now you will all be anxious to change and go to Chapel." And nothing, absolutely nothing transpired during this, except to talk, you see, so I didn't think much of that. And I didn't have much contact with the dons, as a post-graduate student, I had, my supervisor wasn't there, he was at Emmanuel, so my friendships were made with my contemporaries, like Martin Ryle, and Fred Doyle, as I was saying, Bernard Kilby whom I haven't mentioned, and, oh, a variety of, I got to know some girls there who were in the Rambling Club, who had interesting careers, but it was all very, how can I describe it? It was all very much a jolly gathering. There were no intense one-to-one male/female passions that I could discern, I mean, life was too interesting, and ...

What about BT you just mentioned?

Oh, B.T.D. Smith?

Yes.

The Senior Tutor. Well, my everlasting memory of him was this. He was a man who always wore a silk MA gown, you know, that tells you something! The Reverend Canon Dr. B.T.D. Smith, I think he was a Canon, I'm not sure, Reverend Doctor, and he was one of the most pompous men I've ever known, and in June 1939, I went off to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, to, under a special Government scheme, and War broke out in September, and I thought, "Well, I'd better come back and explain to B.T.D. Smith that I wouldn't be coming back, as I thought, and therefore that was that." And I came back, it was on a Sunday, and I can remember it very well, because I saw him at about 2.15, and he was just having a glass of madeira, after lunch, you see. And I'd come from the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough [laughs] where I was working on trying, which I knew was impossible, to stop hydrogen-filled barrage balloons from exploding when hit by German incendiary bullets, I knew it was impossible, but I had to, as they say, "prove it" to them, and that struck me as rather important, because these bloody balloons were up over every city. I don't think you, have you any feeling for this?

Yes, indeed, yes.

And if they came down, German aircraft would come lower, you know, and it seemed to me it was quite important to do something about this. And there was B.T.D. Smith, in his room, looking out over the garden, which then was kept very well, and he was the keeper of the garden, and he said, "Take a glass of madeira", and poured one for me, and we chatted, looking out over the garden, and at one point I said, "What do you think will happen to the College during the War?" And he held up...and I had come back, I may say, to Cambridge, through Bedford, and there were people there who were evacuees, you know, lots of kids and so on, on the station and so on, and I...he held up his glass to the sunshine, which although the sunlit sky, because the sun was in the other direction, said, "We'll rub along on the skeleton staff, I suppose." And took a sip! I thought, "You old duffer. You're going to be protected here, and enjoy the comforts of life, and a lot of other people are going to have a bloody miserable existence", and he ... talk then turned to something else he was very interested in, of which I knew nothing, I've never been interested in fishing, trout fishing on the River Test, I think it was, so I took my leave and said a mental "Bugger off to you", so I

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 2 (part 4) Page 65 really, and I didn't have much contact with Sidney from then on, though I had to take my Ph.D. as from that College, and there was one man there, who was very nice, later became Master, was then Praelector, who presented me for it in 1940, and that was David Thomson, historian.

Oh yes.

But he was made of different material, and then, you see, out of the blue, I went to St. Catharine's.

Your Ph.D. was about precisely, which of these many...

The hydrogen/oxygen reaction.

And then you, you went to the Farnborough Laboratory,

Yes.

In June, is that assuming that the war was...

Oh yes, yes, well, we all knew it was coming.

So you wanted to go for that reason?

Not, no, not particularly, no.

Why did you decide to go?

I had no, very little choice really. You see, we had a National Scientific and Technological Register, which ultimately was run by a C.P. Snow, and I was on that register. The question was, what would one do with this damn Government? And then Cambridge had various schemes in which physicists went off to man the radar places. By that I mean some of them actually manning stations, or seeing them

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 2 (part 4) Page 66 erected; others of them going off into the RAF for interceptor purposes, or going to what became the Royal Radar and Signals Establishment, some of them going to the Admiralty. I was sent, as a chemist, with three others, to the Royal Aircraft Establishment, where the first job I was given, was a ridiculous job, I was furious about it. I was asked to mix black paint in a wooden bucket, with a stick, to paint on fabric, which was the underside fabric of Wellington bombers, to make them as near invisible as possible to enemy searchlights. And we knew, I mean, the next department was working on radar, and they knew that the Germans were also working on radar. Somehow that seemed to me, rather nonsensical! And I was not, anyway, a lab assistant, in my own judgement. Perhaps I was puffed up with pride, so to speak, so I said, "You know, this is not work." Then they gave me a job which was on lubricating oils, which I solved quite quickly, much to their irritation, and so then they,

Why do you think they were irritated?

Well, because the, the test was the, the Inclined Plate Test for lubricating oil. You took a plate of glass, you put a drop of oil on it, and then you tilted it up until it began to flow, and that was the angle of flow, and that was supposed to tell you about the qualities, and I kept asking questions like, "Well, when two metals, one rubs together, and you want them to rub smoothly, and not abrade one another, you put oil in. What are the properties you require of the oil? Is it viscosity, control, is it surface tension, is it resistance to oxidation at high temperatures and so on?" And, "Don't ask those questions." So I was given this job of barrage balloons.

It was a very bureaucratic sort of place was it, then?

Well, it was fighting the last war.

I see, you mean these were two, I mean, I don't understand why you shouldn't ask those questions, if you've been given this job.

Well, they thought of getting on with the job, and the practical business, what shall we say, of an aircraft engine which had not to wear out, and therefore, you tested oils, made up by recipes, see which had the best angle incline and then you put that in the engine, and tested the engine, but it seemed to me that you could do much better if you really thought about it, and also, of course, that was a manifestation of the fact that they hadn't thought about it earlier, when they should have done.

But did it, I mean, it seems very interesting to me, I mean, are you saying that the, this RAF laboratory really was much too close to immediate problems and not

It varied from department to department. Chemistry was bad. The Engine Flight Department was good; that was run by Hayne Constant, who was very good. Likewise a Miss Bradfield, who was in aerodynamics was good, but they, of course, were concerned with the aerodynamics, with the outline of an aircraft, to give it the properties it was needed in the sky, for given weight and well, I was going to say thrust, but actually it's pull with propellor aircraft, and that required wind tunnels and it required sophisticated mathematics, and so on, and they were good, and both he and she were elected to the Royal Society for the quality of their work. And without that, you would not have got planes like the Hurricane, the Spitfire, and so on. But chemistry was in a bad state, it was run by an extremely dreary chap, whose name, I think, was almost unbelievable Ramsbottom, and he'd got a mind like that! So then I was given, as I say, this barrage balloon thing, and finally, I got so fed up I walked out, having done that, I thought, "Well." The next problem, I've forgotten what it was now, I said, "I won't do it." So I quit, which raised a great furore and came back, wrote up my thesis, I mean, I'd already done two years - well, less than two years work on it - but I thought I could squeeze through, and I took six weeks off, went home to Sheffield, went into the public library, wrote it up, and that was that, and got that out of the way, and then things started to happen in May, when the fall of France began.

May 1940?

Mmmm.

Yes. What began to happen then?

Well, Britain was divided into regions and there was a Regional Controller for East Anglia, who was based in Cambridge, he was Sir Will Spens, the Master of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, and he sent for me, and a man named Jack Shulman, who was in the College Science laboratory, and said, "We've a lot of dumps of underground, underground dumps of petrol, which, if the Germans invade, and fall into their hands, will refuel their fighting vehicles. There must be a magic chemical." You see the attitude which people had to chemistry! "There must be a magic chemical", said he, "which will make this petrol unusable, find it." "Well", I said, you know, "I must think." [laughs] And he says, "Well, it's got to be done quickly." So I was given authority at once to buy two motor cars, mine was an Austin 16, I think, and to this man, Ashmore, whose son Fred I am godfather to, then a research student, I said, "Look, Sandy, we've got to do this." We started putting additives into the petrol, and the petrol tank was at the back of this car, you see, and we were doing it in highly suspicious circumstances, because at that time, the Police were armed, there were road blocks in and out of cities, and if you were playing about with a car, well, you know, every moment, nuns were supposed to be, German soldiers disguised as nuns were falling from the sky! Anyway, to cut a long story short, armed with authority which got us through all these difficulties, which was really, we found something, quite by accident, which actually turned out to be very interesting. Later, when I was able to look at it, which would gum the petrol, and therefore make a whole lot of the works begin to stick up. And we had that ready, and I had to go, I can remember, in the summer of 1940, when we'd found this, to Albright and Wilsons, who were the largest phosphorus makers in the world, at Oldbury in Birmingham, and say, "I've come to commandeer a year's supply." And I can remember being very conscious of the fact that my, I had detachable collars at that time, as it was dirty, and I'd turned it inside out! And there I was, staying at the Plough and Harrow Hotel, in the Hagley Road, in Birmingham, and being driven out by a Company car, to talk to the managing director! At the age of 25. It made you grow up a bit quicker! So that was that, and then that was over, and then all sorts of things began to fall in.

And then what did you do?

Oh, a whole variety of things. By that time, the Government had really got moving, the armed forces in particular, and there was a, a central body called the Ordnance Board, which was concerned with weapons and what you fired in them, and there was a Pyrotechnics, Incendiaries, Fuses and Initiators Committee, which I ran for some time, and did contracts for that on, on, oh, well, incendiary fillings for weapons, why did British planes in North Africa, sometimes, having been struck by German incendiary bullets, why did they come down, land safely, left for half an hour to an hour, suddenly inflame, and that was another problem. Then the time came when Air Ministry, having the jet engine, having been developed by Whittle, and Hayne Constant, beginning to fly, and they used kerosene in it, which was called "Air Ministry Vaporising Oil" - AMVO. And the problem was that that would not inflame when you fired an incendiary bullet at it, and we couldn't shoot down, therefore, German planes, which had this, so some weapon had to be found, and that meant studying what happened when an incendiary bullet struck a self-sealing container of this fuel, and so I was involved in that. And then towards the end, of course, I was roped into the bomb project. Oh yes, and I had a little bit,

The bomb project, you mean the nuclear bomb?

Yes.

Yes. What was your role there?

Oh not, mainly in radiation chemistry, and a little bit in explosives.

This is before you went to Canada, presumably?

Yes. Yes. Which I can't really talk about. Then I had an interesting period in which I had to produce sabotage devices, which had its comeuppance, in a way, during student troubles in the late sixties, at Nottingham. [laughs] Because some of them decided, you know, that they were going to do all sorts of wonderful things, and so I thought I'd get them all together, in the notion that I was going to speak to some of the

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 2 Side 2 (part 4) Page 70 radical students, they flocked in. The only message I had to tell them, I said, "Look, if you're going to go down this particular road, I will tell you a story about how I was required to produce for the Maquis devices which, with simple components, would enable them to do certain things, like stopping trains, and derailing them, or blowing up houses with the minimum amount of explosive, I can tell you, I've made a special study of all these things. And I don't want you to trifle with me on these matters." [laughs] And I did it as a joke, and they took it seriously! They were extremely deferrential! But that was quite amusing. And that went back to some of my earlier work, because I was, knew about the Safety in Mines Research Board work on what were called "coal dust explosions", when you fire a shot in a coal mine, you produce a lot of coal dust, which is lying about on the floor, gets dissipated, and if that ignites, you get the combustion of carbon with an enormous release of energy, and that will produce enormous forces, so one of the ways, if you were a saboteur, and want to, well, say, destroy this house, is, you take a small bag of soot, or flour, and inside you put an explosive, fire it off, and you create a cloud of dust, which is ignited, and you push everything out and the roof falls in, and there you are! Or if you want pencil fuses for trains [laughs] you know, I can produce them! Oh, one did what one was called upon to do, you see, and it may have been Ministry of Aircraft Production, or it may have been, as I say, the Ordnance Board, or it may have been the Inter-Services Research Bureau, which was the name for Special Operations Executive, scientific end, and you had to be a handyman.

And that went on until 1944?

'45.

'45?

Yes. Yes. And I was glad to get out of it. Well, '45, one began to think of, you know, that the War is going to end in our favour, and what then?

I thought you had begun teaching in Cambridge?

Well, I was in Cambridge for most of this period.

Were you actually teaching?

I was teaching, as it were, very much part-time, because there was a, scientists were in terrible demand, you see, and all the classes were reduced, but in science they were kept up, and you did shortened courses, intensive four-term year, that sort of thing, and then they were immediately snapped up for all these activities in the whole range, whether it was in the Royal Engineers, or whether it was chemical warfare, which I haven't mentioned, because I wasn't involved in that, but there had to be chemical warfare officers in the Forces, there had to be engineers, there had to be...

[End of Reel 2 Side 2]

Reel 3 Side 1 (part 5)

You asked me about attitudes towards the Bomb. I think it's well known that when Roosevelt died, and Harry Truman succeeded, Harry Truman was quickly faced by the fact that they had both the uranium bomb, and following the Trinity test of the night of July 15th, it was on the 16th July, the test of the plutonium bomb, in 1945, at Alamogordo we also had a plutonium bomb. And the question was, should these be used? Now, those scientists who knew what a terrible thing this was, a vast majority of them were absolutely against its use on the population. Perhaps it could be used as a demonstration, I mean, its effect would be so devastating, sort of, in airburst or, that had its disadvantages, because of radiation, or ground burst, in Yokohama Harbour, where there's a high density of population, and would have had the psychological effect. But poor old Truman, of course, had to decide, and the decision was to drop the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and, well, that led a lot of American scientists to warn the American Association of Atomic Scientists, the Triple AS as it was called, to try and inform people and also inform one another what the implications of this were, in all kinds of ways, medical, biological, political, moral, and so on. And I can remember my spending time in Cambridgeshire, after the bomb had dropped, going round to Women's Institutes and village colleges to say, you know, "This is a new era. Really, life was not going to be the same. Politics would be transformed." And the reaction was, "That's ridiculous, it's been, you know, the best thing," not since sliced bread, because sliced bread wasn't available! But it had brought all those boys home, who had been sent out towards the Far East, or were being kept out following the Burma Campaign, for the next stage of island hopping to Japan. And the world at large was as pleased as could be, I'm afraid. So it puts a certain irony on it, that those of us who felt that way, and also knew that it was inevitable that the Russians would get it, whether there were spies or not, I mean, we didn't actually think of spies, but they would get it because the physical principles involved were absolutely straightforward. The real problem was just have you got the industrial potential to make the enriched uranium? Or to make a pile, and so on? And the technology, we knew the Russians could do it, given time, so then one comes into the politics of balanced deterrence, which the real problem there, is the irresistible allure of getting a technological advantage over the opponent, so that you can never stay at a low level of

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 1 (part 5) Page 73 balance, very difficult to do that. And for that reason, it is very difficult, once you've got to a high level, to come down, and yes, it was obvious that all this was a waste of resources, and the problem of getting nuclear disarmament is tremendous. I mean, my own view as far as Britain is concerned, is that has been a great waste of money, because we don't count as a nuclear power, as compared, nor do the French, as compared with the Americans and the Soviets, and indeed, it can be said to the extent that we do have nuclear power, which is independent, we will not deter the Russians that much. The damage that we can do to them, compared with what they can do to us, is so disparate that it's not worth it.

And these sort of doubts about the usefulness of the bomb, when did they first come to you as a group working on this?

Oh, I think, it's not, weren't doubts about the usefulness of the bomb, you have to remember, during war time, at any rate, none of us knew, and every attempt was made to find out, that the Germans weren't doing it, so then it was absolutely essential to do it. I mean, I would defend the making of it, absolutely, during the War, but I mean, suppose, suppose Hitler had got this, I mean, he'd have dominated the world. And so there was no question that it had to be, and even a very peaceful man like Nils Bohr was drawn into it, and a lot of people were, but when it was over, what then? I mean, you wanted to devise a world system which would stop this thing happening. And techniques became sufficiently sophisticated, of being able to detect both airborne, ground and underground tests, so that you knew very much better what was going on. And then, of course, as you got into the satellite area, you can observe to within about a yard, what anybody's doing anywhere, at any time. So it's, the doubts, the question of Britain having it's own deterrent, for the Labour Government, I'm quite sure, was, yes, we must have it. I mean, people who didn't live through the period, the whole idea, post-war, was preventing a recurrence of German aggression, and the whole effort was given to that. One didn't look, initially, until Stalin got really going, at the Soviet Union, in the way in which some people did, well, that was forced on one later.

But before we sort of diverted into that, you were saying how you realised in, in 1945, that the War was coming to an end, and you had to decide what,

Yes.

Can you go on from there?

Well, I was really thinking, I mean, I hadn't much to decide, because I got the job at Cambridge. What I wanted to decide was, what was I going to do research on?

The job at Cambridge was the one as a demonstrator?

And as a Fellow of Cat's, yes.

The Fellow of Cat's, I thought, was '45?

Was it '45?

It was at the same time.

About the same time, I think, '44 or '45.

Were they directly linked, then?

Yes, oh, I think it, no, I think Cat's must have been a little after, because Cat's was a poor college, and it wanted somebody who was going to have a University post, so it didn't have to pay the full stipend! Which, I think, was #300 a year, and so it must have preceded it, yes, but I can't remember the exact date, did I write it down in that thing?

I can...

That would be right, I would think, that would be right.

And how did you feel about it as a college?

Oh, I enjoyed it enormously, for two reasons. One was, the first year or two, I had all these ex-servicemen coming back, you see, they were marvellous people, thirsting for knowledge, and they'd had experience of life, they were as old as I was, and it was a great period, and I enjoyed, splendid. We'd no money, we had rationing, it was very hard in all sorts of ways. We had good wine still kept from before the War. It was an extremely friendly college, and I enjoyed it enormously. I never thought I would leave, but, perfectly happy, and then, you see, anyway, in 1946 I was appointed Humphrey Owen-Jones Lecturer in Physical Chemistry, which was the plum job, apart from the Chair, and what was I? Well, '46, I would be 31, 31.

So at that point you thought you'd stay on, and hopefully become the...

Well, at 3l, a Cambridge Fellowship, a prize lectureship, the world was open.

And you've talked about the research you then did, the teaching, you had quite a heavy teaching load did you?

Oh yes, a lot, doing about 22 hours a week. I didn't mind that, it was generally done about 10, 10 or 11 hours supervising, as I say, tutorial work, generally done between 5 and 7 at night, and lectures, I would be giving, sometimes three lectures a week, sometimes two, this was during the 24 weeks, well, really 20 weeks of term, and then, of course, laboratory demonstrating, and supervision and devising experiments for them, and so on, and then there was research and supervising students, and Committee work, and so on. Oh yes, it was very very full, it was on the go from 9-7, and then if I got home, you know, it was working in the evenings as well, or sometimes I would stay in College for dinner and go back to to the lab in the evenings. It was very hard work, but you didn't mind it. No car, of course. Rationing, one bicycle each, small family, we hadn't got a pram, that was given to us by somebody, an old Fellow of St. John's who married late in life, and then his wife was pregnant, and then she had septicaemia and the child was delivered dead before term, and they very kindly gave us what they had saved up, you know, it was like that. You went to British Restaurants, and Quiller-Couch if that name means anything to you!

It does, yes!

I can remember Quiller-Couch going to a British restaurant often, lunchtime, to have his sort of horrible rissole, and mashed potatoes, all those sort of hard, slightly green potatoes one had, and cabbage, carrying carefully a bottle of vintage claret, which he poured into a tumbler and drank! And I thought, "God bless him!" Oh yes, it was, but nevertheless, there was a great spirit, and, on the whole, you see, you had this sense of a fairer society. Everybody was in it, everybody went to the British Restaurant, it was a great leveller, you couldn't get, the rationing really worked in the country, and so there was a great camaraderie, but also a great tiredness, but not for me, partly because I'd not been fighting, I suppose, but mainly because, I mean, I was doing what I wanted to do, and enjoying it, and it was marvellous. The only thing where, of course, I missed out in that period of my life, was any foreign travel, I mean, of the kind, you know, whereas young people in their twenties were going overseas, I never did, and nor did my wife, and we were tied down with children for many years.

Now, you mentioned your wife, and it would be quite good to put on the record, how did you meet?

Oh, that's an interesting story. A school friend of mine, rather older than me, was a don at Cambridge, named John Turner, and a botanist, and at the age of 30, what age would it be? He was born 1908, yes, he'd be 29 or 30, he was appointed Professor of Botany in Melbourne, and he had just got engaged to a young Newnham girl, and he left this Newnham girl in my care, chemically, so that she could get through Part I of the Natural Science Tripos in Chemistry, and I suppose, some degree morally! And she had a couple of girlfriends, through whom I met my wife. And so that's how I met her, and she was, graduated in 1940, in Zoology, and we were married in 1942.

And what was her name then?

Barbara Wright. And her father was a distinguished geologist, then dead, and her mother was a geographer. At that time her mother had bought, come to live with her

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 1 (part 5) Page 77 daughter, in Cambridge. Mother was Director of Studies in Geography at Girton, and...

So a very academic family background.

On that side, yes. Not on my side, at all. Oh yes, very much so, and...

She was doing research?

She began research in 1940, and she was doing research when we were married, on a subject which has occupied her for the rest of her days, on the activity of slugs! [laughs] Very important, of course, agriculturally, and she was directed to work on something of use, you know, what can you do about slug infestations which will eat all your cabbages and cauliflowers? was the thing, and a neighbour had a bit on potato eelworm, and continued it after the War.

Did she find the answer then, too...

Oh yes, I mean, it's all now part of the literature, but she still keeps on, she was giving a paper earlier this year at some meeting, and when we were in Australia this time last year, she was talking to people in Auckland and Sydney about it.

So she, has she had an independent career of her own, or not?

Oh yes, I mean, she's still a Supernumerary Fellow of St. Hilda's, I mean, she's retired under the age limit, but they kept her on as Supernumerary Fellow. She was the Tutorial Fellow in Zoology at St. Hilda's, but her career being broken up, she, when we were in Leeds, with this young family, occasionally she would...people would appeal to her, and say, "For God's sake, we've got nobody at Leeds Girls' High School to teach biology, we've just lost somebody, would you do it for three months?" And she would do that, because we had au pair girls at that time. For one period, we had a proper nurse, proper nanny, and that enabled her to do it. And then about 196l or '62,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 1 (part 5) Page 78 when our youngest would be lO or ll, there was the thalidomide scare, do you remember that?

Yes.

The teratogenic effects of thalidomide, and she saw a way of looking at this rather quickly, by working on the tadpoles of the African toad, where you can see all their biology, and examine it quickly, and started administering thalidomide to them in the Zoo Lab at Leeds, and soon her Professor got a grant from the Medical Research Council for this, and that got her back in, and then she had to give it up when I was Vice-Chancellor of Nottingham, which was ridiculous, but that was just due to the fact that the Professor of Zoology, who ought to have been very interested in her work, hated the idea of the Vice-Chancellor's wife in his lab, and so she then gave that up, and as it were, went public, became a magistrate, and on Regional Health Authority and so on, enjoyed that work, but it was a distinct substitute, and when she came here, she went on the Bench here, and also the Oxfordshire Regional Health Authority, but was invited by the Professor, John Pringle, whom she'd known from years ago in Cambridge, who said, "Why don't you come and talk about molluscs, in the, what's called the AK course?" The Animal Kingdom course, and she did this, and he gave her a room, and before long she was having pupils sent to her, and St. Hilda's asked her if she'd like to become a Fellow, and so she was a Fellow of St. Hilda's, and got in in that way. So we had a very academic life.

Absolutely, yes. And you had three children?

Three children.

Yes. Could you say a little bit about that? What they're doing?

Yes.

You'll roar with laughter! One is a Senior Lecturer in Nuclear Physics at the University of Liverpool. He, married a physicist, who can't have any children, alas, so

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 1 (part 5) Page 79 they live in great style in the Wirral, and he has a very interesting life, in a very good physics department, I'm glad to say. The next one, Mary, she's a, oh, very interesting mixture. She's a very gifted musician, she plays clarinet and the cello, and she's even paid for her performances. She's a doctor. She was Captain of Oxford Women at cricket, and defeated Cambridge single-handed, [laughs] she's a good athlete. She's got two children, and is in practice part-time in Manchester. And then the third one, in some ways, the cleverest of the lot, and the most independent; she was bone idle, I thought, at school, and she came home with A levels in Maths - Grade A; Additional Maths - Grade A; Physics - Grade A; Chemistry - Grade A. And she took two of those at Scholarship level, in which she got l's, you see. And the phrase which has never been forgotten in my family, I said to her, "There's been a mistake, Ros." There wasn't, of course, she just deceived us all, she's very clever. I said to her, "What, what are you going to do with this, you can go anywhere", you see. And she said, "Well, I think I'm going to go to America for a year." That was the second shock, and that left me more or less speechless, and I can remember saying words to the effect, rather haltingly, "Well, have you considered the financial implications of that statement, for me?" And then I got the third shock, which was, "Yes, I think next week, or shortly, I will hear I've got an American Field Service Scholarship." And I took her for an interview, to, of all places, from Nottingham to Sheffield, where she was interviewed, and got one. So she spent a year in the mid-west of America, and also travelling round a bit. Chose not to go to Oxford, because John and Mary were there, her elder brother and sister, and went to Bristol, where she did all sorts of things, including singing in the choir, and helping disadvantaged people, and got a First in Physics, with ease, and they asked her to stay on, and she said, "No, get stuffed." And went off to Tanzania for four years, and worked about 150 miles west of Dar-es-Salaam, partly teaching, partly self-reliance programme, living in a hut, and ended up by hitch-hiking alone from Dar-es-Salaam to Capetown! [laughs] At this time absolutely convinced she wanted to be a teacher, and so she came home and did a year doing a teacher training course at Bangor, where she could combine physics and outdoor activities, and went to be a teacher in the State system, which you never leave, and is now running physics and also careers mistress in a sixth form college at Shrewsbury. Married to a young man who came from Pontefract, near Sheffield, up to Univ to read

Chemistry, and he's a master at Shrewsbury School. Marvellous swap over, so there they are. She's also a very able person, but they're all able, fortunately for us.

As an extremely busy person, it must have been quite difficult to, I imagine, to spend enough time with them, but I mean, what did you want to, what sort of a parent did you really want to be with them, would you say?

I never thought about it consciously. But at times, certainly I wanted to wallop them, and at times I wanted to hug them! I wanted to give them as good a chance as one possibly could, obviously, but that was not difficult. I mean, they, it was clear that they, they were intelligent, the problem was motivating generally, and then seeing them through various difficulties, and financing them, of course. We were, we were not well off, I was, I'm not thinking now of mortgage, but we were in debt when we were married, and I can remember for several years afterwards that I was not in debt, not in, and no money coming to us...but the great thing, I think the thing that I was interested in doing for them, more than anything else, quite apart from music, which I wanted them all to have a bash at, if they could, on the belief that it might take, and if it did take, it would give them enormous satisfaction, because I wanted to get them out of doors, and I wanted to get them reading, and out of doors was very easy, and I used to drive them on that, but that's paid off handsomely. I mean, living as we were, in Leeds, we went out on Sundays, sometimes just me with them, or one of them, and we explored the Yorkshire Dales on foot, and we, for several years we went to the Lake District for holidays, we took a cottage which belonged to Balliol, and lived there most of our holidays, and then, when, as they got older, I wanted them to see something of Europe, so we took them there, and, of course, took them to America when I was at MIT, which was very good experience. The main problem was, as it always is, I think, with young people, is, is giving them some idea of forethought, which is very difficult. I'd say, "You're not going to be able to do something X weeks from now, unless you do something now." You know, and that refers to work, for example, in relation to exams, and John, the eldest, he kept in the top forms at Bradford Grammar School, which I regard as giving a poor education, very narrow in one sense, but when he came up here, he was admitted as a commoner to Merton, and he had two physics tutors there, Baker and Bowler, and they did what I was unable to

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 1 (part 5) Page 81 do, they fired him off in physics, and then he took off, you see, and he got a First in Mods and a first in Schools, and then, and a post-mastership, and a D.Phil. and so on, and it all went back to that. So, I mean, bringing up the kids is that, in a sense. We tried very hard, and I think, successfully, to make clear to them, our expectation was not that they should become scientists, quite the contrary!

But did you talk to them about science?

When they asked, yes, but, and of course, I had a lot of scientists through the house. How it seemed to them, was probably not science, but revealed in a, a letter, a thank you letter to granny from one of them, I can remember, at Christmas, for a Christmas present. You know, sort of, "Dear Granny, Thank you very much for your Christmas present. I did like it. Thank you very much. We had a Pole, a Japanese and a German for lunch, and then at dinner, we had ...." you know, that was the kind of letter they wrote, and I just don't know what impact that made on them, except that there were people from outside, but I don't think, we didn't talk science at home in their presence, with these visitors.

Did you, did you involve them in discussions and debates quite a bit, or not?

[pause] I can't remember. I think it was rather different. I mean, when I took them out, or we went out into the country, they would turn into geography and geomorphology lessons, simply because there was the countryside. Why were there, for example, these limestone pavements at Malham, which were so difficult to walk over? How did they come about? Why was there Gordale Scar and Malham Cove? Or whatever. Why was it that suddenly you could step, with one foot, from the limestone to the gritstone? And the flowers were so different? I mean, they were things which they saw for themselves, you can see those things there, which you can't see here, and I think, occasionally, they were inclined to feel, you know, "I'm tired of scenery, can I have a comic?" But that sunk in, there's no doubt, and, because they all do it now whenever they can.

But I was wondering too, though, about, I mean, obviously in your own earlier life, going to homes where there was debate and argument going on, whether you created a home like that, or whether it was different?

That means I'll have to ask about their friends, and what they were doing and where they went. I think some of them were musical, for a time we had a thing called the "Lindain Quartet", which was people called Linden and people called Dainton, they had two children, and we had two children, who formed a quartet, which won something, a shield of some kind, I've got it somewhere, for the final performance in Leeds Town Hall, sometimes it was that there was a children's theatre in Leeds, in which John was involved, and he had friends there, and one of them came up to Oxford and remained friends with them. What went on between them, of course, parents never know, by definition! Their, their friends would come to the house from time to time. What they talked about amongst themselves, one can't tell. I just don't know. But I think if I did know, or told you I knew, I would probably be conning you! Don't you think that's likely?

Yes. And would you say that you tried to impart particular moral values?

Yes, one or two. You don't give backword, if you know what that means.

I do, yes!

Where do you come from?

Well, I've heard you use the phrase before!

I see.

But I think I'd understand it.

A promise, that you keep it. Oh, straight dealings, consideration for others. Oh, we made them do the Brownies and Cubs, of course, and let them choose whether they

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 1 (part 5) Page 83 wanted to be Scouts or Guides. The reason behind that was, partly mixing with other groups in their neighbourhood other than just schoolfriends, of course, and making friendships that way, but also it was to make absolutely sure that they got the exposure to that kind of values and since it was associated with church and chapel, they had that, though I made no secret of the fact that we didn't go to church or chapel, and although I've been brought up Chapel, and my wife agnostic, and if they asked questions about that, which they rarely did, that's the, I think they took it somehow for granted that we didn't talk about that at all. I made no secret of the fact that, I don't think, sorry, I disapprove of striking children, I made that absolutely clear, but "if you seem to me to get out of hand, and hysterical, I will slap you to bring you back to your senses." And I used to do that, and I think they all know a phrase which I stole from Bernard Shaw, and that was "Never strike a child, except in anger", you know, and really let them see that you've got to a point of intolerability, and that's part of life, and oh, I think the other thing we were absolutely clear about, was reasonable bounds, that you wouldn't go beyond reasonable bounds of conduct, and that if you did, you'd get pulled up. But I can't, I can't remember any real troubles with them. The youngest was prone to tantrums when she was young, but that was simply frustration, I'm sure of it, that with her quick intelligence, she couldn't physically do what her elder sister was doing, and she was getting so irritated with this, and it all disappeared the day in which she outswam her sister! Because she was young and powerful, very big and strong, and that made, you know, nothing was said, but one noticed it, and she became a person in her own right, and secure. I greatly enjoyed their childhoods, and we took them to see all sorts of things, of course, we felt exposure was the great thing, whether it was a zoo, or the countryside, or music, or whatever. They were welcome to have books, of course, of any kind. The house had plenty of books, which they used to take down, we encouraged them to get their own.

Just one other thing about family life, to what extent would you say you'd shared work problems with your wife?

Totally. We began, as we've kept up, with a joint account, and it's been a complete partnership. So that, for example, she's just come back, you saw her come back, from having spent a very happy, I'm sure, I don't know, not having seen her, evening,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 1 (part 5) Page 84 staying with a girl I knew in, this Jane Aitken, and no problems about that at all, and we've had a very happy married life.

I mean, if you had, for instance, sort of difficult problems with, as a Vice-Chancellor, would you discuss them...

Oh yes, oh yes, certainly, certainly. And she showed great solidarity when we had a sit-in once, and I found the academics were cowards. There were only four people went into that sit-in, myself, the Bursar, and my wife, and a Professor Haycocks, Professor of Education, and identified some of the students, apart from the actual portering staff and so on, the other academics wouldn't go in. I was disgusted by that, but my wife went in, and she can tell some funny stories too, about it. And, yes, she played a great role, as a matter of fact. She ran a women's club, which they all enormously appreciated, and she, during a period of the student troubles, she would stop and talk with them on the campus, and she came round with me and met some of them, and she would invite them to the house, mostly they wouldn't come, because they regarded that as being enveloped by the Establishment, and, you had to be pretty blunt with them, and we wouldn't have done it without her, I'm sure. And, oddly enough, my son was very good.

Because they would, your son would have been about the same age as the students...

Yes, and he, of course, when he had, what year would this be? About '69, I would think, yes, he'd not gone back to Oxford when the Nottingham term started, and we had a sort of Freshers gathering of all the people in a very very large hall, in the Portland Building, I don't know whether you know Nottingham at all.

Not very well.

It's very well provided with this, and that was a kind of welcome to the University, and also to the City. I used to get the Lord Mayor to come, he loved it, and he used to put on his Chain on this occasion, this was '69, they decided to disrupt it, you see. They let the Lord Mayor have his speech, and then they tried shouting me down and

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 1 (part 5) Page 85 so on and so forth, and well, I didn't like this at all, as you can imagine, but I was already inured to a certain amount of it, because I'd decided a year earlier, after three weeks, that this was a game, a battle, which I had to win, and so I was going to behave in that way, let's say tactically, rather than in any other way, and suddenly, I heard a voice from the back of this room, enormous room, saying, "What about fair play? Give him a hearing!" It was my son John's voice. He had gone along just out of interest, and he didn't come back to our house when I got home, this was after dinner, you see, and I thought, "I wonder where he is?" And he didn't arrive until about, oh, half past eleven, and I remember saying, "Where have you been, John?" And he said, "Oh I've been off, I've joined the radicals." I said, "What?" He said, "Well, I thought I would go round to see what they were up to", and they were very much taken with the fact that here was an Oxford graduate with a First, [laughs] "And so I sat with them until the end, and then I told them I was the Vice-Chancellor's son." I was rather touched by that, and he, he obviously was deeply offended by it all, and got into a little trouble here, because that was the time when the media was exploiting it, and I can remember Alan Bullock was Vice-Chancellor, and the media were in Radcliffe Square on one occasion, and getting about a dozen people together, who were burning their, this was Matriculation time, burning their matriculation cards, and carrying placards, "Gowns are for clowns", and that sort of thing, and John was walking back to the lab, and there were some television people and saying, and he overheard this, "No, bunch up, bunch up, I want a crowd scene." So he went and stood between the television camera and the crowd, and interposed himself, you see, and stood there, made it impossible, knowing the laws of physics, for them to do anything, and really got into a very awkward situation, because he felt so strongly about this, that it was a form of deceit on the public, and I admired him for this. So, it's rather fun nowadays, to find that he is sometimes arranging my life for me! [laughs] He's recently arranged a thing at, at Chatsworth House, during the British Association Meeting at Sheffield, because he's the Recorder of the Physics Division of the Association, for an evening, to be focussed on Henry Cavendish who was, of course, one of the forebears of the Duke, and it was a glorious evening which he got organised, so I just fit in with what he tells me now! No, on the whole, we've been a fairly happy family, I think.

And you're now a grandparent?

Yes, only two, alas. I mean, John can't have any, and Ros shows no signs of it, she's so active in Shrewsbury, and Mary has two daughters, charming little girls, very able, too, obviously. So I keep saying "very able too" as if it followed as if night follows day, it doesn't! But they are.

Reel 3 Side 2 (part 6)

18th December, 1989

Why did you choose to leave Cambridge, which was obviously such a nice place to be in?

Yes, yes. Oh yes, well, that's quite a funny story, actually. [laughs]

Can you tell me about it?

Yes I can. Well, about 1949, I guess, the Chair at King's College, London, had become vacant by the death of Professor Allmond, and I was asked if I would be interested in this, and I decided no, because I was perfectly happy in Cambridge, and saw myself staying there for the rest of my life. I mean, I might have been teaching, which I was, I remember taking a count one term, 22 hours a week, which was a hell of a lot, but I had good students, it was a very fine atmosphere, times were hard in terms of rationing, but the atmosphere was absolutely marvellous, and you'd get on with it, and I was full of ideas, and you know, could work 24 hours a day, but, the, oh, I may tell you, incidentally, if we can do a little digression, it's just occurred to me: since this was 1949, we moved house, from a tiny house where we were paying rent at, I think, the rate of 26 bob a week, to a house which we bought, which was a good semi-detached house, in Cavendish Avenue, in the southern side of Cambridge, and the morning we moved in, I will never forget, because it, as we arrived at 9 o'clock in the morning, all our goods having left in the pantechnicon the night before, from the old house, a telegram arrived, saying, signed by Sydney Smith, President, University of Toronto, which said, "Will offer all expenses + $1000 fee, if you will open Warburg Memorial Chemical Laboratory, University of Toronto. Signed Sydney Smith, President." He was later, incidentally, Foreign Affairs Minister for Canada. Well, that, I was so busy, and although $1000 then represented riches beyond the dreams of avarice, and it would have paid for, at that rate of exchange, which then existed, something like, easily one-tenth of the house we'd bought. I put it on the mantelshelf and neglected it. And about two hours later, there came another telegram,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 2 (part 6) Page 88 which began ominously, "Disregard President Smith's telegram." And continued, hopefully, "Will offer $1500, etc., etc., [laughs] Signed Andy Gordon, Dean, Science." So I was so busy by this time, that when it arrived I put it on the mantelshelf, and hoped another multiple of two hours might give further advances, but there was no change. However, I went out to Canada then, and I remember it very well, it was December 1st, 1949, and it relates to this King's College invitation, because I'd just been asked, just before then, about King's. But there's an interesting sideline on this, to show you the relationship between the intelligentsia and the military. I was, gave this lecture, which was on rates, heats, and entropies of polymerisation, absolutely nobody there that I recognised, but my slides were in the hands of the projectionist, there was no way in which I could change, although it was totally inappropriate for an inaugural address, but it was at the request of the Canadians, so I couldn't go back on it, and I couldn't sing or dance, as it were. And at the end of it, a very magnificently garbed military man, who was obviously very high up and representing the Governor General of Canada, was, I was introduced to him. I didn't know what to say, so I said, "I suppose you have to go to a lot of these dull occasions." "Yes", he said. Huh! So I was now in for it, couldn't get out of it, you see. I said, "I suppose you found this rather boring." "Yes", he said. [laughs] So at this point, I couldn't do anything else, except say, "Well, you're having got to go to so many of these things, do you have other topics you think about whilst it's in progress?" "Oh yes", he said. So I said, trusting my luck, but very foolishly on this occasion, "What did you think about on this occasion?" And it was a date I should mention, when zip fasteners had not become the general article of use in men's dress, and he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, "Your second fly button was undone!" [laughs] I was put down! However, I was, the fact that I was invited to open this great new laboratory, at that young age, was quite a feather in my cap, and I know that, well, I'd had several offers from Canada to go over there, but all these I could resist because I was so happy in Cambridge, and that's the main point of both these stories, and then one day, there was a knock at my door at Cat's, and I...

What, were you going to tell me about King's College?

Well, I just, just didn't do anything about it.

You weren't interested? Why were you not interested by that, then?

It was London. I didn't like London, still don't, and it was a department I knew would require a lot of work doing on it, to bring it up to the right standard. And although it was in King's College, London, and so on, why should I? I mean, I was perfectly happy where I was, and it wasn't a question, money was no object, far from it, we were in debt, but we were perfectly happy. Well, then, one day, as I say, then there was a knock on my door, and I've forgotten the exact date, and a small man on the other side, with grey hair, said, "I'm Charles Morris from Leeds." And I didn't know who Charles Morris from Leeds was, but I said, "Come in." And he came in, and we chatted for a bit, and I said, "Would you like some coffee?" Yes", he said. Now although there was rationing, there were still College servants, and I could summon coffee from the kitchens in a grand way, which I did, and we chatted a bit more, and then I said, "Well, would you like to see the College?" "No", he said, but by this time I'd found him a very engaging person, and he was Vice-Chancellor of Leeds, and he'd been at Balliol and so on, and he knew people in chemistry I knew, finally, in desperation, because I didn't know what he was after, I said, "Well, you know, what can I do for you? What do you want?" And he opened his hands in a marvellously open gesture like this, and said, "We want you in Leeds." By this time, he'd hooked me on himself as a personality, and, of course, Leeds was the West Riding of Yorkshire, and had a good reputation as a chemistry department, and so I went to have a look at it. I tell the story, because I learnt an enormous amount from Charles Morris in Leeds, mainly by osmosis, certainly not by precept, and I owe him a very great deal, and he's still alive, aged 9l, and I hope when we go up to Lancaster, early December I'll have time to call and see him again, as we did last year. But he was really quite a remarkably creative person, in the Balliol style, but he had two weaknesses, one was, he never believed, and he once admitted this to me when I faced him with it, that a Professor in Leeds would get a Fellowship at Balliol! [laughs] That was very characteristic! And the other was, he had this curious Balliol ellipsis of speech, so that you had to infer from what he said, as to what he actually meant. The case I have given you of his speech, was probably the most direct statement he ever made to me, and to give you an example of this, and the way in which he did a great deal for me in

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 2 (part 6) Page 90 just one simple answer to a question. When I was at Leeds, we needed extensions to the already large chemical laboratory, but the place was booming, and lots and lots of research students, and wanted more space and so, in those days, I set about collecting the money myself, this was about 1953 or '54, I guess, and so I had written round to pals and various industrial firms, and I had a magnificent offer, which was a very large sum in those days, of #30,000 from Unilever, and what was needed for the building was only #85,000, so that gives you some idea, and this was a, one, two, three, four, four or five storey building, there was quite a lot of square footage in it, and with this letter from Unilever, in the same letter, was a suggestion that I should become a consultant to them, at a fee that I could not, with equanimity, disregard, given my parlous state! And certainly not ignore. But I didn't want to do it, because that would have been more encroachment on my time, and I really was, you know, enjoying myself enormously at Leeds, so I wanted advice as to how I could ensure the #30,000 without putting this thing at risk by refusing the Consultancy, and I needed someone to talk to. And I can remember thinking, "Well, this is a matter for the Vice- Chancellor since it concerns a building, and could disappear if I didn't do it." So I thought, "Well, I'll go and talk to him." And I can remember him, he was a small man, looking out of his window at the trams passing by on Woodhouse Lane, and I told my story, rather more coherently than I've told you, and with the letter in my hand, which he never looked at, and didn't look at me, just continued to look out of the window, and said, "I trust you. I trust you absolutely." I thought to myself, "That's a fat lot of use!" And went out, and I can remember, as I walked back from his room, through the Parkinson Building to our lab, which was adjacent, I began to think, "Well, that's not actually bad advice. What he's really saying is, 'You get on with it, and I'll back you and trust your judgement.'" And that was quite a turning point, I realised in retrospect, though I didn't fully see the significance of it at the time, but what I did notice was that from then on, he, I was, as it were, put in a category which was, whilst I could not, couldn't be said that I could do no wrong, he was generally favourably disposed to anything I might suggest, and that was a great encouragement. I mean, I was still quite young, not, late 30s I suppose, and to have that sort of faith put in one. The sadness was that at the end of, when he retired, which must have been '63, I think, he tried to reform the constitution of the University, and to rush it through, and it fell to me, sadly, on a memorable day, the Senate met on a Wednesday, this was

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 2 (part 6) Page 91 the last Senate he was taking, and I was due to speak on behalf of Senate at his farewell dinner, but he chose, very unwisely, to try and push through his own reforms at this last Senate meeting, and I, I'm afraid, had there, to say, "No, we can't." And there were only three or four, out of a gathering of eighty, I suppose, on Senate, that voted for him. And that was a sad day. I mean, the two extremes were there. To be fair to him, a year earlier, he'd had a mild heart attack, and I think it warped his judgement. And there he is now, 91years old, and a great man. And Denis Healey's Tutor.

Oh really!

Yes.

Could you tell me about what sort of a department it was when you arrived, and what you tried to do with it?

Well, yes. When I, Leeds had a reputation and the previous Professor was a man named M.G. Evans, from Leigh Grammar School in Lancashire, who'd been at Manchester in the great days as a student and as a research student, and as a young lecturer, with Michael Polanyi, who's name you may know, who was a refugee, Hungarian originally, was then in Vienna, then Berlin, and then was a refugee brought over to Manchester about 1932 or '33, and was Professor of Physical Chemistry and was, made it a great Department, and this bright young man was M.G. Evans who got the Chair in Leeds, and he had built that up too, although it already had a very good Professor before then, named H.M. Dawson, but M.G. Evans went back to Manchester when Polanyi gave up the Chair of Chemistry, can you believe it, for, Drummond, not Drummond Chair, I've forgotten the name of the Chair, Political Economy, he was a polymath, and so the Chair was vacant, and I don't know many other people they'd asked before me, probably quite a lot, but I was asked, and accepted to go to Leeds, and I found it a department with quite a strong tradition, but M.G. Evans had taken all the research people away with him, so for me it was, in a sense, an empty room, in large measure. There were three Professors, one in Inorganic Chemistry, Gordon Cox, now Sir Gordon Cox, who left to become

Chairman of the Agricultural Research Council, and an old-fashioned Organic Chemist, and when I got there, as I say, there were empty rooms, literally.

He hadn't got much of a following?

Gordon Cox, you mean?

Mmmm.

Well, not a lot, he had a very good crystallographic section there, but what I will say about him is this, and in no grudging sense whatsoever, quite the reverse. I very quickly filled it up with a lot of young people, some of whom I brought from Cambridge, who wanted to come with me, about five, some of whom were ex- Cambridge people who had been overseas, one very good one from Canada, for example, and then I had a lot of others, research students and post-docs with people from overseas too, so it very soon filled up, and I began to overflow the space that had been allocated, and what I would want to say about Gordon Cox, was that it would have been very easy for him, as a man ten years older than me, to show envy, and difficulty, but he did not, he showed very great generosity, and he's a man in whom there is no envy, and that was a very happy relationship for us, but it, it burgeoned like anything, and I think, well, I had a great gathering in Leeds in September of this year, and I got a lot of letters which, you know, from people all over the place, Canada, Australia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, saying that their period in Leeds in my lab wasa great formative era, and I don't think anybody would have denied that it was an outstanding physical chemistry laboratory.

You're talking about research students now?

Research students.

Because, I mean, the undergraduate place was quite small at that point?

The undergraduate numbers, when I went there, there were 23 in the Final Honours School, graduated in any one year, which was tiny, but the University was only 1500 strong, you see, and then, of course, growth occurred in the Fifties as a result of two things. First of all, the Labour Government had already begun to see the necessity, first of all to cope with the returning ex-Servicemen, and that meant a bulge passing through the system, and then the need for more trained scientists, technologists, and engineers, and so they'd begun to put money in higher education, and about 1956, the Conservative Government, in considerable measure activated by Lindemann, started this movement towards increasing technologists, and began to think of the, some kind of national qualification for them, and that led to the Dip.Tech Degree which was invented for the regional colleges of Technology, some of which were upgraded later, to become Colleges of Advanced Technology, CATS, so-called, and at the time of the Education Reform Bill I couldn't help thinking the interference of Government in the Universities, one would be justified in changing the names of Universities,from Universities, to Degree Offering Government Schools, the acronym of which would be DOGS and then we'd have CATS and DOGS! And, but, I mean, I've always felt very strongly about the need for independent universities, even though Government funded, and then, of course, things began to grow quite rapidly, before the Robbins Report, and the two things that made that possible were, firstly, the proviso which was an instruction to local authorities that any young person admitted to a university, should be entitled to full support, subject to a means-test, and all fees paid. That was the first thing. The second thing was that more institutions needed to be created, and some of them were, in fact...[Break in recording]

So what numbers did you, in fact, rise to, at the undergraduate level?

Oh, well over 100, and then in 1964 we had, normally had about 1200applications for these places, by that time, suddenly it dropped to 800. And I wondered why, I didn't know what had gone wrong with it, and I started to begin to make enquiries, and suddenly began to discover that there was a swing away from science in schools. Now, in December 1964, I was one of the founder members appointed by the then Labour Government, to the new Council for Scientific Policy, which had a very wide remit, and of which I later became Chairman, and I thought, "Well, this is a very

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 2 (part 6) Page 94 serious situation. Here we are wanting more qualified engineers, scientists and technologists, and, in the schools, once I'd begun to look at it, the percentage of sixth formers who were studying science subjects only, maths, physics, chemistry, for example, was steadily declining at l% a year, and that began to get me interested in some of these more national problems.

So, in fact, you became Chairman of the Committee on, on that?

Yes I did, yes, yes.

Were you really the author of the report?

Oh yes.

This is the, I'm not sure what the report was called.

It was called "An Enquiry into the Flow of Scientists and Engineers into Higher Education", or some such title.

So there was a committee on the swing away from science?

That's right, yes.

What did you see, at that point, as the solution to this problem?

Very simple really. We came out with a very clear pattern that school studies should remain broad until school leaving, and the idea was, and you'll forgive my hollow laugh, that we should, all schoolchildren should have the language of numerate communication, the languages, plural, because you can't study your own language without having the benefit of a deeper penetration of it by learning another one, so therefore these two languages, verbal communication, that you should have what one might call the social sciences generally, which meant, in school terms, history and geography, which enabled people to identify their place in the world and in time, and

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 2 (part 6) Page 95 then the natural sciences, which enabled one to understand what one's identity is in relation to, what shall we say? The whole of the cognitive process of looking at the world, and also, of course, equips one with skills, and then the fifth section, obviously, since human beings are not just cognitive beings, but they're affective too, is the whole world of aesthetics, about creative arts, of music and so on, and that's what we wanted to see. And when the Report came out, in 1968, I persuaded the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, since the key to all this was to change the nature of the school leaving examinations, which was the General Certificate of Education at Advanced Level, and make it into five subjects, and that meant having a, not detailed marks available to people interviewing in universities, but a global assessment, what is now called "profiling" of the pupil and his or her potential, as well as a statement about what had been accomplished at school, and, of course, it never came about because, sadly, a friend of mine, Eric James, who was High Master at Manchester Grammar School had become first Vice-Chancellor of York, started a campaign against it, and said, "This must be referred to the Standing Conference on University Entrance", which was a body of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, and the Schools Council, which was a body concerned with school examinations, and was a DES body, and one was Chaired by Professor Colin Butler, and the other by Eric Briault who was Chairman of Inner London Educational Authority, or Chief Officer, and that was the kiss of death. And then we had NandF levels, which were bogus, and again, in this round, with the great Education Reform Bill, they've shied back from that, and Gordon Higginson, who I may say was at Leeds, [laughs] Vice- Chancellor of Southampton, who produced a report, very much on the lines that I wanted to see, that was turned down by Kenneth Baker, so I'm afraid I'm a bit cynical about it, I mean, it's 2l years ago. Well, you win some, you lose some. I mean, one of the things I did, when you can see rising up by St. Pancras Station.

The British Library?

Yes.

Yes. Perhaps we should come to that.

Well, that comes later, but we're still on Leeds, aren't we.

Let's think a bit about undergraduate teaching,

Yes.

I think you had...

I did.

...quite strong ideas,

Yes I have. Well, M.G. Evans was my predecessor at Leeds, and his interests were very similar to mine, what is called reaction kinetics, and a very good man too. But, in my view, he greatly overloaded the curriculum with this, and he also was, I think, highly didactic in his style, and I've always held to the belief that if a subject is really advancing in science, paradoxically what you say about it gets less and less, not more and more. So I started cutting down the lectures in my own subject, just to prove that it could be done, and I think it, it can be fairly said, and I've had all this feedback later from, particularly this last year, this year, on the occasion of my 75th birthday, when there was this big jamboree, and people said, "Well, it was more interesting", because they got the principles, they were able to apply them, they didn't know all the kinds of, the whole rigmarole of situations to which they could be applied, but then nobody could predict new ones anyway, so, if every time they applied them they were understanding them better by having to think about them, that was a very good thing. And I also introduced, with Gordon Cox, a seminar, early on. Now that was really very interesting, and in some ways alarming. The idea of the seminar, as I saw it, was that I'd take a dozen of this 24 or so, and Gordon Cox would take a dozen, in a small room, and we'd sit down, and I would not be teaching them as a positive act, they being the passive recipients of my pre-digested pabulum so to speak, but that I would engage them and get them involved. They disliked it intensely to begin with, and never were really comfortable with it, because they had not been used to this. I mean, you have to remember that most of them came from backgrounds such as I came from,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 2 (part 6) Page 97 where there weren't many books at home, there wasn't much discussion at home, I was lucky, and they expected university, which they'd stepped on to as an escalator after they'd left the escalator of school, without any break generally, and because they got excused National Service, and they did not like to be made to think, and well, that may be doing them an injustice, they didn't like to feel exposed amongst their contemporaries. Now, I'm not a sarcastic man when I'm teaching, so they weren't under any hurt or threat of hurt from me, they were just uncomfortable with it. And one of the major problems was getting them to be able to articulate their views and arguments in speech and in writing, and that was a major educational task, actually. And I found it so much so with post-graduate, particularly those from North America, that I actually instituted some talk courses which involved them in writing essays! Difficult to believe, but quite true. But I also felt that they needed a place of their own, a kind of club room, within the Department, we couldn't find any adequate space because, as I said, we were bulging at the seams, but I did manage to get hold of a house, a terraced house, and they could have one floor of this, quite near to the University, where they, people who were in digs, or whatever, could go and work if they wanted to, and it was called the Colvin Room, after a dead member of staff who'd gone to a great deal of trouble to provide pastoral care for the students in the Chemistry Department, and used to take some of them away on holidays, actually, and that Colvin Room, I'm delighted to say, has now been brought back into the Department, and to a splendid common room and library, but the need for that was absolutely critical, in my view, and you have to remember that, unlike Oxbridge, where these things are there, they're in the colleges, there was nothing like that, and only a very small proportion of the students could be in halls of residence, I think, when we went to Leeds there were, one, two, Lyddon Hall, Devonshire Hall, and then Sadler was introduced, and between them, they could not have had more than 350 students, so these things were very necessary.

But you presumably had a...

Oh, another thing I must mention. I persuaded half the, I persuaded Philosophy I Course, which was given by the Department of Philosophy, to accept Chemistry students, who provided half the students of Philosophy I. And I did that quite

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 2 (part 6) Page 98 deliberately, for two reasons. One was, I had a colleague on the staff, Calder, who was an exact contemporary of mine at Oxford who, when he got his First in Chemistry, was given a Junior Research Fellowship at Queen's, and he decided to read Philosophy, part of PPE, as well as doing his chemical research, and he then wrote a book on the power and limits of science, so we had, on the staff, in the Chemistry Department, a man who was a good chemist, which meant that he had a kind of, what shall I say? Certificate of Probity, amongst the chemists, who believed in Philosophy, so it was easy to persuade the undergraduates that they should go to Philosophy, and were strong in philosophy of science too, to help them in straight thinking, and I think it was of benefit to them.

That's interesting.

I mean, presumably your closest contact, though, was with the Ph.D. students?

Mmm, personal contact.

Mmm.

They all came to the house, and to give you an example, just, in September of this year, they organised a, a sort of "do", which they thought I would immensely enjoy, and they were quite right about this, to celebrate my 75th birthday. One day, we had a scientific symposium with a, a very nice, but very free and easy lunch, and a formal dinner at the end of it, and all sorts of funny things happening, which they organised, and a presentation to me of two gifts which I greatly enjoyed, one was an old Sheffield plate tankard of beautiful design, produced in 1757, and they knew I was fond of Sheffield plate, and two eighteenth century maps of the West Riding of Yorkshire, one the northern half, one the southern half, which contained my birthplace on it, the name of Leeds obviously, and also of Cookridge which was where I established a special laboratory for radiation research, which still goes on, and also the Yorkshire Dales. Now, the Yorkshire Dales are important for the second day, because, in September, I used to take all my research students, old and incoming new ones, especially those from outside, as well as the local ones, and we'd go to Malham Tarn Field Centre for

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 2 (part 6) Page 99 two or three nights, and in the mornings we'd talk about work, in the afternoons we'd walk around there, and they'd see me slip in Gordale Scar, and then the German research students would stop calling me "Herr Professor" and roar with laughter, and you know, we'd establish a friendly relationship as colleagues, and the same is true with others. And so, the second day of this celebration was, they'd hired buses, and out we went to Malham and had a splendid lunch, and then walked round Gordale Scar and Malhan Cove and so on, and they also put on a, over lunch time, a display of some cartoons, which the Canadian contingent had drawn, together with what, presenting me with an official pardon for my incarceration as a prisoner in the town of Pembroke, Ontario, in 1946, which was part of the folklore, you see. But they'd gone to this trouble, if you can imagine it, it was really very moving, and then there were lots of letters which people wrote, saying that this was the experience which changed them in their lives. So when the Cambridge Chair became vacant in 1964, I had absolutely no desire to leave Leeds to go to Cambridge. My department was good, and why do you upset all that and give it away for having to do, resuscitate a department which had some very good people in it, but had nothing like the spirit that Leeds had.

And were there any of these pupils who you could pick out as having been outstanding?

Oh yes. I mean, there are lots of them. Chairs all over the place. A man has just retired from Queen's University, Belfast, Ken Ivin, very good. My successor at Leeds, when I left, Peter Gray, who's just become Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, after a very successful tenure in the Chair at Leeds. Lots of people overseas, including the Vice-Chancellor of Adelaide, sadly, just died, Don Stranks, the Head of Chemistry, also in Adelaide, in Melbourne, Saskatchewan, the Vice- President of the National Research Council of Canada, all over the place, and it's, it's a real sort of international club, and I think, I'll tell you a story which illustrates the spirit of it. I used to go around, every day I was in Leeds, in the morning to visit my research students, and, of course, one saw them at coffee and tea anyway, but I used to go round in the lab, and, of course, I was away a lot, so this was not every day in the week, but if I had visitors, which we often did have, from overseas, well, one year I

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 2 (part 6) Page 100 had Henry Taube, whobecame a Nobel Laureate, another, Dick Noyes, and it was Dick Noyes I was taking round, who was from the University of Oregon, and we were chatting in the corridor, and I just opened a door about an inch or two, and the voice came out which I recognised very well, "When's that old bugger Fred coming round?" I pulled the door to, and decided I wasn't going to go in there! But I sent for this young man, about when, I suppose it was two or three hours later, and I wasn't going to tick him off, on the contrary, I just wanted to tease him and see if he would react. And he reminded me of it, because he came to this party, this year, and he said, "I", and recollection, he said, "I didn't know what it was about, I had to enquire around until I finally found out." But I sent for him, and gave him a reprint of a scientific paper to read, and I said, "Well, read this." And as he was about to go, I said, "Oh, and when you do read it, read it with clean hands and a pure heart", you see, he looked at me in this enormous astonishment, [laughs] and it took several days before the penny dropped! Oh, and we had a lot of fun like that, as you can imagine. And we used to play cricket on Woodhouse Moor, we even played softball, you know, there, because there are a lot of North American students I had.

Could you tell me a little bit about the kind of research that you were doing at that time?

Yes. Well, just before leaving Cambridge, Ken Ivin who was an early research student of mine, we found that some other people had discovered this extraordinary phenomenon in which a reaction appeared to stop rather than accelerate, if you raised the temperature, and I think I mentioned this to you before. And we found the explanation about 1947, and that proved to be such a gold mine of research, we pushed that forward very rapidly. That was one thing. The other thing was, that I had become interested by force majeur because I was looking for new fields because of what Norrish had said to me, if you remember, about "Don't mind you working in any field other than mine", and I had had to be out at Chalk River, where forced to look at the question of nuclear radiations on matter, and I was interested in it too, because of the biological effects which stem from that, because we are all made of matter, as it were, and there was a current hypothesis which was that water was broken up, being H20, into H, a hydrogen atom, and to a hydroxyl radical, OH, but there had been the

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 2 (part 6) Page 101 slightest hint of a suggestion, as long ago as 1922, that if you dropped an electron in water, it would quickly change into a hydrogen atom, and a hydroxide ion, H+OH-, and it struck me, as it struck others, that perhaps the first thing that happened when you put radiation into water was that it produced, not H+OH, but a free electron and the H20+, which would quickly break down to a hydroxyl radical and something else, and so the question was, was an electron produced in water, if so, would it live long enough to have a distinctive chemistry of its own? Well, that was a question which I think many people had thought of, and in 1952, I gave a lecture in the Argonne National Laboratory, this was October, I think, saying that I thought one could create electrons quite easily by a photochemical method, in water, and that they would survive, and be, and therefore one could study the chemistry of what was called the "solvated electron" or the "hydrated electron", and the man who absolutely rocked me, on that occasion, sitting on the front row, was a man named James Franck, Nobel Laureate in Physics, who said, "Ridiculous, ridiculous." Never forget it. " An electron in water will collapse in l0_¹¹ of a second, which is lO million millionths of a second, into a hydrogen atom and a hydroxide ion", which was what everybody thought, you see. Now, at that time, I actually had, in my mind, the idea of doing some experiments to see whether the electron produced in this way, or in any other way in water, did, in fact, live long enough for it to be detected. And I was so discouraged, I never got round to trying this out until seven years later, and the very first experiments we did showed that there was an entity with unit negative charge, which was doing the chemistry, and it could be nothing else than the electron, and from then on, and simultaneously, as a matter of fact, the Brookhaven National Laboratory, which is another big laboratory in the States, within two months of our publishing this, by a similar method, but quite independently of us, this group produced it, and that led to an enormous burst of activity, so that I found myself in 1973 or '74, giving the Faraday Lecture to the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the title was, "The Chemistry of the Electron", and oddly enough, I opened it up by describing that Faraday himself, of course, whose father had come to live at Clapham in the Yorkshire Dales, and Clapham Wood Hall is where, in fact, he was, before he went to London, and secondly, described this experience of mine in 1952, and to encourage all young people "Never to believe what their elders and betters told them, but to have a go and try it", you see, because that was the only way one made progress.

Never trust the theoreticians. And it, there were lots of other fields too, that we worked on, polymerisation, making polymers and that, and photochlorination.

But wasn't the, I mean, perhaps the most important thing, the Cookridge development?

In a sense, yes, and it's very nice that this year, two people whom I, one of whom was a Leeds student who, oh, was a superb experimentalist, but very nervous, and with a stutter, who failed to get a First, and whom I rescued with some private money I had, because I put often, my consulting fees, into a little fund for helping students. It wasn't that I wouldn't have been glad of them myself, but they needed it more, and this chap, and another man whom I brought in, who had been an undergraduate in Exeter, and done a Ph.D. there, and then went on to California and wanted to come to Leeds, and I found some money for him, and those two have shared the Weiss Medal of the Assocation of Radiation Research, this year, so the wheel's come round full circle. But in this hard day, these hard days of universities, it's a thing that could easily be closed unless they fought for it, but happily for me, and I hope, for the subject, the successor of my successor, as I say, there was me and then Peter Gray, now Master of Caius, his successor is Mike Pilling, whom I brought to Cambridge! And I had nothing to do with this, I mean, it just happened, and they've got a first rate chap who understands the importance of this work, so I think their future will be supported very strongly by him.

Could you explain about Cookridge?

Well yes. What happened was, that in 1951 or '52, I had a letter from a man named Gerald Pomerat who was the European representative of the Rockefeller Foundation, and he said, "The Rockefeller Foundation have noticed your work in radiation chemistry, and they would like to support it in some way, say, to the tune of $5000." Now, $5000 in the early fifties, was, in a sense, riches beyond the dreams of avarice, and so I said, "Well, that's very nice. Yes, what I really could do with, is a large radiation source, and I know exactly where I can get it, from the reactor which has the highest neutron, slow neutron flux in the world, which is Chalk River, and they can

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 3 Side 2 (part 6) Page 103 make me a very small piece of Cobalt-60” and I got this organised, and they did, and it was shipped over and we built a container for it, but in the meantime, I'd worked out with the 1000 Curie Source, with what, which was an indication of the intensity of the radiation it could emit, that this could also be used for treatment, and still leave plenty of time and radioactivity for us to use for research, so I conceived the idea of a joint research and treatment place, which would be an excellent thing to do, and the Leeds Regional Hospital Board was about to designate a new radiotherapy centre, and so the obvious thing to do was to put it in that same place, and so, with funds provided by the endowment….

[End of Reel 3 Side 2]

Reel 4 Side 1 (part 7)

Yes, well, the, what I realised about this was that we needed a centre, and that meant a building, that should be located where the Regional Radiotherapy Centre would be, and it, I got the money from the Endowment Funds of the Leeds General Infirmary, they gave money. From the British Empire Cancer Campaign/Yorkshire Council, and, oh, various other bodies, ICI gave me money and so forth, and we made this a little centre, and it went on, and was absolutely filled up very very quickly, and then just before I left Leeds, we managed to get a huge accelerator, because I got a grant of #100,000 in 1963, I think it was, from the old DSIR, which was a tremendous thing, and so it was, it went, it was booming. And one of the amusing things is, that first of all, life is full of circularities, I never expected that I would be Chairman of the National Radiological Protection Board, or that they would have sited their Northern Laboratory, for very good reason, next door to the Cookridge Centre in Leeds, so I have two reasons for visiting it now. Nor did I expect that I would be asked to open an extension to the Radiotherapy Centre some few years ago, and that really, there is a part of me, as it were, in Leeds, very much so, 15 years, very, very happy experience.

And at Cookridge, what sort of treatment, were they developing new kinds of treatment there as well?

Well the point about Cobalt-60 Source, was that it's very penetrating radiation, so you could do with that, what you could not do with the then existing X-ray sets, which, because they were about l million volt gamma rays which were emitted from the Cobalt-60 Source, and the most one was then doing in the 1950s was 250 kilo volts, one quarter the energy from a so-called Philips Maximar X-Ray sets, but then along came the linear accelerators, of course, which largely have displaced both the Cobalt sources and others, so it was, at the time, it was an advance in treatment, and very useful for research.

And also, in connection with radiation chemistry, you were, Chairman, I think, of the Association for Radiation ...

Oh yes, well, that was something we formed. Also I formed, in, a little earlier in 1957, the so-called Miller Conferences. Miller was the man who was with me in Canada, we were about the same age, and who was also incarcerated with me in jail one night, in Pembroke, Ontario, and he died rather suddenly and sadly in Edinburgh, where he had a job as, I think, a Senior Lecturer, and when he died, I was so fond of him, I started these Miller Conferences which are now internationally known, which people meet together for a whole week, under extremely relaxed circumstances, from all over the world, and that is both a memorial and a really good working conference, but we also needed an Association for Radiation Research in this country, and it started, and I became its President, yes. And, in fact, I was just telephoned yesterday, which shows I'm not forgotten, by a man at the Radiobiological Unit at Harwell, which is part of the Medical Research Council, saying that the ARR is meeting in April next year here, and would my wife and I be their honoured guests at dinner? Which, of course, is delightful to be remembered, and see a lot of old friends, and a lot of old students.

How about the, the life of the University generally?

It was, I got more involved in all sorts of aspects of it, as time went on, I mean, I was on the Council of the University and on various Council committees, like Estates and Buildings Committee, and briefly on Finance Committee. I invented the notion of a Council for each hall of residence, the penalty for that was to become Chairman of two Hall Councils, the Devonshire Hall and the Womens' Hall when these started to be being built under the money that became available, and I was always interested in student affairs to that extent, and in fact, as a matter of fact, the problem was to keep down the Committee work, particularly as I was also very much involved outside as well, both in consultancies for industry, and then Government things, like the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, where I was Chairman of the Chemistry Committee, for example. And I was doing a lot of travelling abroad, I had, was Arthur D. Little Professor at MIT, for example, and George Fisher-Baker Professor at Cornell, and doing lectureships for a day at Alberta, and a whole range of places. In Paris, I did a course at the Sorbonne, so my life was extremely full, and perfectly happy for that reason.

Did you enjoy university politics, would you say?

Some of it I actually hated. It used to strike me as an enormous waste of time, and I used to do, amuse myself calculating the cost of a Senate meeting, for example, that went on for two hours, with 80 Professors, shall we say, when they could've been working. The flaw in that argument was, I don't think some of them would have been working! I wasn't a good public speaker, but one had to learn to do something with this, and that came slowly a bit at a time, but I liked decisions, of course, to go the way in which I thought they ought to go, and you pay a price for that, you have to do a lot of work. What I never did do, and that was foolish, I didn't understand the elementary politics of developing a lobby, and a group of supporters until right at the end of my stay in Leeds when, as I mentioned, Charles Morris made this error of judgement in trying to force through something in Senate, and knowing he was going to do this, I then, with one or two other Professors, called a meeting and said, "Look, this is going to happen, I don't know what you feel, but I don't feel it should." They all said they felt it should not. I said, "Well, what are we going to do about it? We need, we shall have to stop it in the kindest possible way." And they said, "Well, you started this, you can so and so, you know, speak about it!" Which, unfortunately, I had to do. And as I said earlier, it was very sad, because that evening I had to speak in the sort of final eulogies, of a man I dearly loved. No, I, I think any university institution is something which commands your loyalty if you really believe it's doing a good job, and Leeds certainly was doing, and, of course, it was growing, you see. I mean, Leeds is now 10,000 students, and it had some places which were, parts which were extremely good. It's not as good now in the research ratings, I mean, the top civic university is Sheffield, I am glad to say, in the research ratings, with something, I think it's 5 in the sort of very top category, and 14 in the next top category in its departments, but, oh, there was a lot of get up and go in Leeds.

And when did Boyle come? Is that before...

After my time.

After your time.

When Charles Morris went, he was succeeded by Sir Roger Stevens, who was an ex- diplomat, an Ambassador in Iran, and had also been in, in Africa, with Ian McLeod, a very nice man indeed. He stayed there for, till about 1973, I would think, five or six years, maybe a bit longer, and then Boyle came. And Boyle and I were already friends, which is one of the reasons why, of course, another of my activities has been Chairman of the Edward Boyle Memorial Trust, 'cause although politically we were not in the same party, and I was never in a party, I had a very high regard for him as a person.

Didn't you find that, I mean, you tried to maintain a relationship with Leeds after you left, didn't you/

Oh when I was at Nottingham, yes.

And did you not find that he was unable, in a way, to understand this, as Vice- Chancellor?

Roger Stevens found it perplexing. Everybody found it perplexing, that I should go to another university as Vice-Chancellor and want to keep the Cookridge Unit at Leeds, to carry it on. But I wanted to do it for two reasons, one, that the work there was booming, it was very successful, and it was not yet ready for Arthur Salmon or George Buxton to take over. And the second reason was a selfish reason, that I did not I want to become a Vice-Chancellor, I was tricked into it by a very clever man. I never wanted to be a Vice-Chancellor, I never felt myself as an institutional head, but I went to Nottingham because of the challenge of starting the first new medical school since 1893, and the possibility that offered for reforming medical education, but I also knew I should get very bored with all the ordinary work of the University, and I must have some relief, and since I would not have a garden to look after, it would be looked after for me, the only alternatives were walking in Derbyshire at the weekends with the dog, or going up to Leeds to get on with the work, which I used to do, go up early on Saturday morning, it's only about an hour and a half's drive, and then come back late

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 1 (part 7) Page 108 on Saturday night. And that was very good, as a matter of fact. It saved a sit-in on one occasion. Are you interested to know?

Yes, yes, well we've actually come round to Nottingham! But I was really thinking about Boyle, I thought that, from the material you gave me to read, that he really failed to understand.

Oh, he didn't understand, he didn't understand science ever, but he came to have a respect for it, and perhaps I had something to do with that, in, in a very real sense, though such a man with a marvellous memory, absolutely devoted to British political history in general and, of course, absolutely absorbed in music, he was culturally deprived. He had not a glimmerings of the understanding of science! [laughs] And there was one period when we spent a week together at the Rockefeller villa, 'Serbelloni', at Bellagio on Lake Como, and we were discussing all sorts of things with some other heads of institutions, in the States, and other countries, and all this came out very clearly, I mean, I was quite unable to generalise about political ideas in the way in which they could, but that seemed to me to be of very little value when you're actually running a tea shop in the form of facing a sit-in or whatever! Then you were essentially, you know, at the sharp end, and no amount of theory would help you, you had to live on your wits! And science is a lot of living on your wits. There's an element of opportunism, there are some ineluctable laws of force, which you have somehow to use to your own advantage, so I think sciences, in some ways, are better preparation for some of the ordinary ways of living and surviving, than shall we say, non-scientific studies! And if ever I'm asked, you know, to 'Desert Island Discs', I shall have no problems in the end about survival!

Yes! So, I mean, just one more question about Leeds, did you like the city?

The situation was very good and it is a remarkable city in a number of ways. It's the second largest city in the Kingdom, I think, larger than Glasgow and Birmingham, and it has a large number of very large parks, like Temple Newsam, you know, 1000 acre parks, this sort of thing. Roundhay Park, and these, and Temple Newsam has this glorious - is it sixteenth or early seventeenth century ? - house, which is a museum,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 1 (part 7) Page 109 and it had a kind of style in the centre, and it was different from Sheffield in that it was a, its industries were very miscellaneous, it had also been invaded in the nineteenth century, and later by Middle European, and later, German Jewish refugees, who had brought music and culture to the city, and it was nice from that point of view. It also was beautifully situated in relation to the Dales, of course, it was very easy to get out of into that, and I enjoyed, and I enjoyed the people, and I enjoyed their local pride which, oh, it's, it's not something you find in Oxford or Cambridge.

So did you meet leading local people there, then?

Yes, quite a lot.

What sort of people?

Well, Geoffrey, Geoffrey, Geoffrey, oh dear oh dear, the name's escaped me: the name of a historian at Trinity, Cambridge.

Elton?

No, not Elton, before him, a great Leeds family, I'm sorry it's escaped. Lots of Leeds families, Tetleys, for example, I knew well, some mine owners, whose names again have escaped me, and I'm sorry about this, I can easily look them up, who were on the University Council, for example, and that's where one met them, and they were doing, one of them was a Director of the old LNER, and therefore of British Rail, another ran the Yorkshire Engine Company, which in fact, made the mounting free, not quite free of charge, but very very cheaply indeed, for this great big cobalt bomb that we had at Cookridge, and we also met, people mentioned in Denis Healey's book, I noticed from the index, Bernard and Rose Gillinson. Bernard Gillinson was a Jewish refugee, his father had brought him over, and he got a Scholarship to Univ and got a First in Greats, found he could run father's factory very easily on two or three days a week, and began to collect books and pictures, and on Saturday evenings, made his house a salon for people, that's where I met Denis Healey, and various other MPs as well, so yes, it was a lively place, and we enjoyed it. My wife enjoyed it too, because the great

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 1 (part 7) Page 110 difference of going from Cambridge to Leeds, was that wives were regarded as perfectly normal! And University invitations to "do's" in the University or elsewhere, included the wives, not so, of course, when I left Cambridge. In fact, in 1948, was the first time women had dined in St. Catharine's' Hall, within its memory, at a public occasion, and that was the occasion of the Commonwealth Universities Congress.

Extraordinary!

Well, so it seems, yes.

So you were obviously very happy at Leeds,

Very happy, yes.

And you've hinted that you were tricked into leaving. Can you tell me a little bit more fully, why did you decide to leave?

Well, when I was in Cambridge, I had to act for one year, as Director of Studies for medical dtudents at Cat's, St. Catharine's College, and I was horrified by being brought to sign their Grey Books, those are the books which said what they had dissected in Anatomy, in the anatomical laboratories what parts of the body they'd dissected and to who's satisfaction, and that led me to question them about anatomy teaching. And it seemed to me to be largely rote learning and a hell of a lot of it, and I didn't think this had anything much to do with natural science. Moreover, I'd been a patient in Addenbrooke's when I blew off this finger, and I wanted to get one finger which was fixed, like that, to move, and I started looking at anatomy books, and I thought how bloody awful they were, so this was just at the back of my mind, and then when I went to Leeds, I was ex-officio, a member of the Faculty Board of Medicine, and where there were great arguments going on between the full-time Professors who were Honorary Consultants, and the full-time Consultants who were Honorary Senior Lecturers or whatever, about the medical curriculum. There was a Medical Curriculum Committee, and to produce ability and bottom(??) to this body, I was appointed to it, and after a period of about two years, I resigned publicly, I said, "I

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 1 (part 7) Page 111 can't get on with these thugs who...", and those were the words I used at Senate, "who seem to think that the Medical Curriculum should be apportioned, the elements of time to each speciality, in direct proportion to the private beds devoted to his subjects in the Leeds General Infirmary and St. James' Hospital". And I don't, with respect, think that is the way to devise an educational curriculum. So I'd been fairly outspoken. Well, to come to Nottingham, in 1964, I received a letter from a man named Sir Francis Hill, Chairman of the Council of the University of Nottingham, saying that they were very interested in me, and would I go and have private lunch with him in the White Hart Hotel in Lincoln. And I had been asked to be Vice- Chancellor of several other places before, and so I sat down at once, and wrote a letter, saying, you know, "Dear Sir Francis, I am very much touched by your invitation", and so on, "but really, I feel the answer must be 'No'." I was about to sign this, and my wife looked at it, and said, "You can't send a letter like that." I said, "Why not?" She said, "You must give some reason to show you've considered it." And so I added, "But I've just got a very large grant from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, and I want to see this work through." Two days later, the Vice-Chancellor of Leeds, Sir Roger Stevens, sent for me, and said, "What's this mean?" It was a letter from the Head of Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to Sir Francis Hill to say, "Of course, Professor Dainton may take all the equipment we've ever provided for him at Leeds, to Nottingham, if he so wishes", you see! And I hadn't even bothered to tell Sir Roger Stevens that I had been approached about Nottingham. So he was perplexed, and I explained it to him. And so I thought, "Well, this chap Francis Hill is not to be trifled with." And by the following post there came a letter to me including a copy of this for me, saying "Now you've no argument, will you come and have lunch?" So I went to have lunch with him, and I found this little bird-like man, who came from a poor home, got a Scholarship to St. John's, Cambridge, got a Double First in Law, gone back to his native city, started a business, and ended up by being Lord Mayor of ... run a very successful business, Lord Mayor of Lincoln, Chairman of the County Council, Chairman of the International Association of County Councils, and so on, and was really a very very bright-eyed, bird-like man, and he'd also written four books, all huge tomes, on Roman Lincoln, Georgian Lincoln, Elizabethan Lincoln, and so on, for which he'd earned his D. Litt. from Cambridge. Now, this was a really formidable character, and

I thought he was absolutely splendid, and since I, everything I put to him, he accepted, and explained that the deal was, that if I would go there, then it was likely that the thing could, because of my own interests, that the Department of Health would agree to site a new teaching hospital there, and that they would get a medical school, and so on. Well, that was too seductive, and so I went, and the first thing we did was to establish a Medical Curriculum Committee, because I saw that the thing that one would be doing with this new medical school would not be so much producing another 150 medical graduates a year, as, in fact, by reforming the curriculum, teaching the rest of the profession by example, if we could do it.

Can you explain the kind of new of medical

Well, the essence of it, it was, the Committee was chaired by Sir George Pickering, whom I knew of, who was Regius Professor of Medicine here, and a bit of an old revolutionary himself, and we met everybody we possibly could, including students from other places, and the idea was that traditionally, pre-clinical and clinical medicine were separated. Now, that's wrong, because what very often happens in medical studies, is that the medical students get bored in the pre-clinical period, they don't see the relevance of chemistry or physics or whatever, to what they're doing later, so they lose motivation, and in addition, they do, used to do an awful lot of rote learning, so what you want is real principles in this first part, with, always relating it to the actuality of the patient, so, in a sense, the complete blurring of pre-clinical and clinical, and you would have presented to you on Day One, when you went into the place, the whole of the class, with a patient, might be suffering from nephritis, that is to say, an inflammation of the kidneys, in which case you would have presenting to you there, a general practitioner, the urologist - the specialist - somebody who would tell you about the biochemistry of the kidney and why osmosis was important, and immediately you begin to see that relates back to chemistry and so on and so forth, so that all the parts seemed interconnected, and that was the underlying idea, plus the fact that we cut down on the rote learning enormously, if anatomy and histology, which at Leeds took about 720 hours, could be done in Harvard in 170, it seemed to me, you know, there was real scope to do much more interesting things like a little social medicine, like learning how to handle people, quite apart from the new material of a

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 1 (part 7) Page 113 technical sense. So that was it, and it was a success I think. But I mean, I had #22m. I think, was the figure, something like that, may have been a little more, in 1964 pounds, and that's why there's the Queen's Medical Centre, just by the University in Nottingham, and that was very interesting, building that up, and that was why, when in 1968, I was asked to go to the UGC and I refused because I hadn't finished the job that I set my hand to in Nottingham.

And did you bring in people that you found particularly sympathetic to...

Oh yes, I mean, we tested them on this, foundation Professors, they, they were the, what shall I say? Paid up party members on this! [laughs] And the first Dean we appointed, also came from St. Mary's, where Sir George Pickering had come from. David Greenfield was absolutely clear on this, so was the second Dean, who was a man named Rex Coupland, whom we got from Leeds, whom I knew quite well; he'd moved from Leeds to be a Professor in Dundee, but he came to us from there. Oh, we were able to pick very good people, who were excited by the prospect. One or two we didn't get whom I'd have loved to have had, but, and it's a very popular medical school.

And more generally, I mean, how did you feel about the move to Nottingham?

Hated it at the time, hated it. I always have hated moves, and then as the new place got hold of me, you know, the things to do.

Did you like the town once you were there?

Not as much as Leeds. It's not so well situated in country terms, and I had a funny encounter with the Lord Mayor, and very corrupt, I thought, local administration. The Conservative Party was in the hands of the then Lord Mayor, Alderman Derbyshire, who was a man with a Jimmy Edwards handlebar moustaches, a toupee, and was in the import/export business, which always excites my suspicions, and he, he'd run the Tory Party, you know, by his favours, "You set up a little firm, make you a director of it," or whatever. The Labour Party at that time, was run by a much more open

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 1 (part 7) Page 114 character named Forsythe who'd been Chairman of the Co-Op, and if you were a Labour man, and wanting time off and couldn't get it in your firm, you'd get a job in the Co-Op, you see. It was understandable in one sense, and these were the two opposing groups. Ten days after I had got Nottingham, and I'll never forget it, and I'd never met the Lord Mayor, he rang me up to say would I like to go and have lunch? And I thought, "Oh, that's very nice, of course I will. Town and gown relations." And then he began to talk, he said, "We can talk like man to man, can't we?" I said, "Speaking for myself, yes." [laughs] He didn't get that point! And then he went on circumlocutary fashion, and I had to pull him up, and I said, "What you're getting at is that you'd like me to remove Professor Davies from the Education Committee of the City? Is that it?" Because the University nominated him, you see. "Yes", he said. I said, "I've only been here ten days," and, of course, by this time I was very annoyed with this, I said, "I don't know much about the University, but I know one thing, and that is that I don't make the appointments, Senate does. So, Mr Lord Mayor, what I can promise you, is that I will report, absolutely verbatim, to Senate, all that you have told me." You see! Oh no, he didn't think that was necessary! So Professor Davies stayed on the Education Committee. So I learnt very early on that politics in the City was, and, of course, you'd have the famous Popkiss case, of the Chief Constable, you know, and oddities there, you had to walk very warily in the City of Nottingham. And also there were tensions between the City and the County, and between the City and Derbyshire, which was also on it's fringe, partly because they were all partners in the regional College of Technology and the regional College of Art, and they competed like anything, and I was ex-officio member of the governing bodies of both, so I saw quite a bit of the politics there, and didn't like it. The campus was lovely, of course, beautiful. And the house we lived in, begun in 1760, finished in 1820, was a splendid house, but it was in the middle of the campus which had its disadvantages later when the student troubles began.

Now, before the troubles began, did you enjoy this switch to being Vice-Chancellor rather than a research ....

No, not particularly, it cut you off from students, to begin with. There's an awful lot of paperwork. There is a kind of, some would say quite proper, and indeed, so would

I, inertia, about academics, they're not the revolutionaries they're supposed to be, very far from it, they're extremely conservative, so trying to get change in a university which was extremely smug, and I told them so, and I can remember, I told the students, I gave them a long talk on the desirability of dissent under the Law, and later, four years later, when the troubles began, I couldn't help thinking that they'd got the first part of that message, and not the second, you know!

What sort of changes were you trying to introduce then?

Well, for example, some of them organisational changes. We had a Department of Industrial Economics, of Economics, of Economic History, of Agricultural Economics, and I asked myself the question, you know, "Is there a subject called Economics? And are these just not branches? And wouldn't you be better together, with a common library, and a common building, and with a lot more exchange, and then you'd have much more opportunity in a larger group of staff, of changing direction when there was a vacancy? Rather than having two men and a boy departments?" Now, that I failed to accomplish, that I failed to accomplish, and on the other hand, there were questions which one asked about why it was, for example, that whereas you would get a, I used to survey the whole of the results of the Final Examinations, and one thing that stood out at once, was that in science and engineering, and so forth, you would have something like 10% of the people would get Firsts, 10-15% would get Thirds, the rest divided between Upper and Lower Seconds, but in the Arts and Social Sciences, you'd be lucky if you got 3% Firsts and 3% Thirds, and everybody bunched in the middle, and they didn't want to divide them. And I said, "This can't be right. I mean, there's no reason why the spread of ability shouldn't be the same, whatever the subject being studied." And I can remember raising this, and I was assured by the Arts and Social Science people that they were very careful in their marking, and that, in fact, every paper was marked twice, and when I said to them, "Well, that's a recipe for producing an average result", you see, there was a great throwing up of hands, and I said, "Even more so, in subjects where the marking is, of necessity, to a greater degree, subjective, than it is in the sciences and engineering. And it follows as night follows day, you've a clear choice here, you abandon all classes, [laughs] and people rely on what you say about people as

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 1 (part 7) Page 116 individuals, or perhaps you ought to think a little bit harder about the nature of the examinations, or indeed, of your courses, and what you're trying to achieve." Well, that was regarded as deeply insulting, as indeed, I was wanting to stir them up, of course! Students, we got on very well with initially, they used to hold some of their committee meetings in our house, and my wife was a member of one or two committees, very happy in the early days. And then it all changed, nothing connected with Nottingham, just the general fever. The place was very very comfortable, for the students, there was a high proportion in residence on the campus, a lovely campus, very nice situation in all sorts of ways, so there's a good deal of contentment, and with it, as I say, smugness, which I think needed sharpening up. And I first came across this in your subject, in a way, because, shortly after I got there, the History Department began to fall apart, in the sense that a modern historian, Königsberger went, I think, to Cornell, and Jim Holt in Mediaeval History, went of to Reading, and that created an opportunity to stir them up, but they were very resistant to this, with one exception, and that was the lady whom I brought in at my first Senate, because I was determined to let them know that somebody new had arrived. So at the first Senate, I said, "Well, I'm going to change the order of business in Senate. We're going to divide papers that we receive, into Part I and Part II, Part I will go through on the nod, because they seem to me to be non-controversial, unless anybody wants to raise something. And Part II are papers which I think need weighty discussion. And maybe prolonged discussion." And I said, right at the beginning, "There's going to be a new item called 'Vice-Chancellor's Business', and what I propose to do there, is to give you a review whenever we meet, of what I think has been happening in the world at large, as a kind of backdrop to the decisions you're going to make, so that you know what's gone on in the Vice-Chancellor's Committee and elsewhere, that it's my business to keep in touch with, and explain to you. And also", I said, "I will bring forward proposals that I want to make, of my own, which are generated solely by me. As, for example", I said, "At this, my first Senate, Dr. Kathleen Major has just retired from being Principal of St. Hilda's College, Oxford, and she is a very distinguished historian, you've already made her an Honorary D.Litt., she's coming to live in Lincoln, with her sister in Nottingham, and I think she could be of a very great strength to us as a part-time Professor of History at a salary to be determined. She is willing to accept this post, and I am therefore asking Senate to agree." And Senate

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 1 (part 7) Page 117 accepted it! And, of course, she was marvellous value. And on another occasion, I told them about my, I was going to keep back, as a kind of levy, instead of distributing all UGC monies, I was going to keep back some in reserve for the purpose of endowing new Professors, and also having enough money to pay them over the odds if we wanted them. Because there was never, which Oxford and Cambridge have never understood, there was never any maximum to the sum you could pay a Professor, no rules nationally about that. And that's how we got some very very good people in. I mean, I got a man at the Chemistry Department, who had just been appointed to the Chair of Chemistry in Manchester, and he gave it up to come to us. And likewise, I stole a man from Rothampstead Experimental Station to Environmental Physics, and you had, you had to move that way, I think, and they soon began to realise that life would be less comfortable, but perhaps more interesting! And oh yes, the things that academics bother about! There was an annual garden party in the summer, in the grounds of Highfield House, and we found this absolutely miserable, because we had to receive everybody, which meant we shook hands and never met anybody you see. So I said, "Well, this is ridiculous, let's abolish this. Let them all come and we'll move around and .." But of course, that was wrong, because all the wives had got their new hats and so on, it was a great day for them, and we were not behaving, and they had not shaken us by the hand! And that was just intrinsic conservativism! But there were enjoyable bits, but on the whole, it was pretty routine, and I got to the point when, after five years, you see, I was, I knew what people were going to say in Senate, so it lost its interest. The only occasion which I did not know, there were two occasions on which I took, only two occasions had a vote, in Senate, which horrified people who have been Fellows of colleges here, where they're forever voting, because I thought it was my job to hear all the debate, and then try and produce a form of words which would be generally acceptable as encapsulating their views, and I would say, you know, "Well, it seems to me that Senate is of a mind to do so and so, and so and so. And", I said, "I take it you're agreed." They had opportunity to dissent and if they didn't, then it was recorded as agreed, but the two occasions when I did have to take a vote was one on the question of whether we should join the University Superannuation Scheme, the new scheme to replace FSSU, where it had been explained to them in writing, and in question and answer sessions, ad nauseum, and it touched their pockets, and I felt they must decide, the only way to do it was by a vote.

The other occasion was on the question of whether students should be members of Senate, and if so, how many? And that produced the most furious 2½ hour debate, with about half a dozen on pro, and half a dozen against, and a vast majority entirely silent, and I had no idea which way they were thinking, so I took a straw vote on that, and then since that was clearly mixed up, abandoned the debate, and adjourned it to another occasion. But otherwise, it was not necessary to have votes. But there's a boredom about every month, having this, or every month having a Council meeting, Estates and Buildings Committees, and Sub-Committees of this and that. The only things that I really felt were important there, were the appointment of people, because that set the standards, and I would go to endless trouble to get good people, to Chairs in particular, and because, if you do that, everything else follows.

But the aspect of Nottingham which we touched on more than once is what happened in 1968, I was wondering whether you could say something about that?

Oh yes. I should say, before that, of course, that whilst in Nottingham, just before I had gone there in December '64, the Government established its Council for Scientific Policy, and I was one of the founder members of that, and I was already doing quite a lot in that sphere, I mean, we've talked about swing away from science as the problem, the 30O GEV machine as it was called, there was the Brain Drain, all these problems were boiling up in the period of the Labour Government, and I got more and more involved in these things as well, and I was also Chairman of the Universities and Industries Committee, Joint Committee of CBI, and the CVCP, and it was fairly common knowledge that they wanted me to be Chairman of the CVCP, something which I was very glad to escape, but the student thing was a great shock. I can remember it very clearly because it was beginning to happen elsewhere, and then suddenly, in June, 1968, whilst I was at Cambridge, at a meeting of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, they had asked me to write a document on the proper place of students in University Government. And I had written it, and I still have a copy somewhere, and during that stay at Downing College, my wife rang me up to say, "I think you should know, that they are all over the University. There are notices, have been put up," to the effect, this, I think it was Monday, June 15th, "Join with us on the assault on the future, on 15th June, l0.30 am. June 15th. We move into

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 1 (part 7) Page 119 the Senior Common Room of the Portland Building, to establish the Free University of Nottingham." All this was preceded by "5,000 students, 500 admini...500 staff, 50 administrators", one Vice-Chancellor, in red, "Where does the power lie, where should the power lie? Join with us in the assault on the future." And I could hardly believe it. And she said it was all over the place, and she thought I ought to know. And then a friend of mine, the Vice-Chancellor of Bristol, John Harris, came in and said he'd been out to dinner at Christ's, his old College, and said, "My Registrar's just rung me up and we've got these extraordinary notices", virtually the same. And I said, "Well, one of us is going to be next, obviously." But on the way home, I thought, "It can't be true, the only way to deal with it is to give in to it", so I drafted something out, arranged for the Bursar and the Registrar and the President of the Students Union to meet me on the Sunday afternoon. And I said, "What I'm going to do, with your agreement, is to put out a notice everywhere, wherever these notices have appeared, and we'll get it photolithographed, that the Senior Common Room of the Portland Building is reserved for four days, by order of the Vice-Chancellor, for the acronym of Free University of Nottingham. And those will be in capitals, FUN, you see!" And well, naturally, it died a very quick death of, after about 2½ days through ridicule, because people went in to look at them and laugh! But it worried me, and I actually, the Bursar urged me to go in and see them, because they were doing their stuff, and it worried me, because I thought they needed care and attention. To give an example, there was one man lying on a sofa when I went in, there were only about 60 or 70 people there throwing his hands up to the ceiling, saying, "What is society? What is society?" And it was a very unresponsive ceiling! But I watched them, and they suddenly realised I was there, and the noise died down, and I said I had come because the Bursar had told me that they were, had proposed to take over the Albert Hall, which was a big hall in the centre of Nottingham, to establish the Free University of Nottingham, and then call me to arraign me for my misdemeanours, and I said I thought that was entirely unrealistic, and they ought to know that the only person who would be taking any building in the name of the University of Nottingham, anywhere, would be me. And I thought, "Well, that's pretty harsh." And I was really rather shocked by the fact that here were students who obviously didn't trust me. So I said, "Look, you obviously have some problems, why don't you come and see me one by one, if you want to, and talk with me?" I didn't recognise many of them, and, of

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 1 (part 7) Page 120 course, I later learnt some were from outside. But I said, "The only condition is that it has to be by pre-arrangement, because I'm a busy person, and I must know who's coming." The reason for knowing who was coming, of course, I wanted to know something of their background. Well, I started these, and the first two or three of them were all right, and then an underground newspaper called 'Red Blob', which was a pretty revolting thing, began to be produced, in which were recorded, entirely distorted accounts of these conversations, which were meant to help them, so I was really rather incensed by this, and by that time, realised that one had a battle and it had to be won, for the sake of the University. But I went on doing it, because I'd given my word, and I wasn't going to give backword, and there were some very funny episodes, but also some very uncomfortable ones. The funniest one was when I was stigmatised in this damn journal as "V-C is bourgeois, liberal, rational obscurantist." I wondered, often, if they ever knew the meaning of the words! But it was rather sad, and it was a phenomenon of the middle-class, they weren't the working class students, by and large. I think they had a guilt complex.

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Reel 4 Side 2 (part 8)

Well, as I say, they were largely children of the middle-class, one of them was the daughter of the Bishop of Birmingham, Hugh Montefiori, another was the son of Lord Young of Dartington, and they were all well off, and very well off, and they found me difficult to take, as one of them said, complainingly, "You make it very difficult for us to see you as a symbol of repressive authority." And that gave the whole show away in my book! But it was quite unpleasant, and I think every Vice-Chancellor, I know, found it so. We only had one sit-in that went on for any length of time, that was five days, I think, and was, by that time, I'd got the technique that I would cancel lectures and labs and get the, you know, the scientists and engineers out, and they would quickly vote it down, because the vast majority of the students hadn't the slightest interest in it, and I can't really understand what motivated these people, because it was unrealistic of them to imagine they were going to change the world like the October Revolution. They had all the language of the communes, they had all the techniques of irritation, hoping to provoke a reaction, and it annoyed them intensely that I came from a working class background! [laughs] And they had no sense of humour, that was the astonishing thing, none at all. But what kept it going, was the thing that you would probably know about, is student solidarity. The very nice reaction of young people, to rally round if they think somebody is being victimised, and if due process produced penalties, then that person was victimised, but I had one weekend in which there were eleven people who were identified as having broken rules, and I saw them all individually, and asked them to accept, to sign a statement that they understood that if they did this again, and to sign it within 48 hours, they would be out. And oh, there was a great furore, I was turned from being a dove into a hawk by the weekend press, and the last one signed quarter of an hour before the due time, [laughs] as I knew they would, but it was pretty hairy whilst one was waiting for it. But the tediousness of it was that you always had to be aware that this might happen, and at awkward situations. But what I could not find out was what they wanted, that was in any sense practicable, that there was a reasonable case for a student voice on Senate, I'd accepted, always had believed in talking with students anyway, but I wanted them elected on a faculty basis, which we did not get through, but it later came through that way, and I think, on the whole, it has worked, at least in the sense that the vast

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 2 (part 8) Page 122 majority of those who are elected, get bored stiff very quickly with the proceedings of Senate! But we'd had students on all kinds of bodies which concerned them, for years and years, of course. For obvious reasons. Oh, it was an episode.

When you talk about them really trying to irritate, what do you mean by that?

Oh well, I would get obscene and threatening telephone calls, anonymous, at any time, but then I always answered the phone at home, because you never knew when somebody might be in distress, and they knew this, of course. They would intercept our youngest child, daughter, coming home from school, and thrust some piece of paper into her hand, which was pretty nasty, about her father. There would be attempts to write on our house, things like, "Creative Anarchy", and so on, which, the thing had to be cleaned off, you know, it was just annoying. And if there was, oh, some meetings of Council, for example, there would be people lying about on the floor, making it difficult for you to get in. I was always polite and trod over them, you know, and they found it difficult to do much about it. [laughs] The great thing, I think, was not to use force, and I tried to run a whole day seminar on the aims of a university, and I was so dismayed by their ignorance, it was awful, I'd prepared a very thoughtful, I thought, paper. It took me a long time, which I did a lot of work on, the nature of a university and what it tries to do and what it stood for, and then there was some discussion, and other people gave papers which were incoherent, and somebody was saying that we were, university people, were not intellectuals, they were intellect workers. And I couldn't understand this distinction. And I said, "Well", you know, "Just to help me forward, was Faraday an intellectual, or an intellect worker?" And as the conversation went on, I realised this chap didn't know who Faraday was and what he'd done! And I pursued this ever so gently, and finally I said, "You know, I'm wasting my time, you're so ignorant, I can't talk with you. You'd better go away and learn something." And that, to my astonishment, had a very good effect! LAUGHS) But it was horrifying, too, to find that there'd been such indiscriminate absorption of an ideology, and, by people who were so ignorant they really ought not to have been there. And, of course, I don't know who they were, very often, how can you tell, you don't recognise them, so it was a sad episode, in a way.

Did that blow over fairly quickly, or was it always a bit ....

Very suddenly, very suddenly, almost overnight. I can remember it very well. 19...first three years, the President of the Students' Union and the Officers, they used to take us out to dinner, in the summer, to the Blackamore, at Southwell, just for pleasure, you know. All that stopped, all the meetings in the house stopped, they wouldn't have it, that was "collaboration with authority". Very odd. And I think there's a whole epidemiology of student unrest, just as there is of Hong Kong flu or whatever, and, but initially, I was, and I think most people would have been, I was very hurt, because I'd never had any transaction with a student before, in which it was not clearly understood by him, but unspoken, that I was there to help him or her. And the notion that all this was suddenly washed away, was quite a shock. Like being rejected by a child, I suppose.

Did it ever get back to something like it had been?

Well, of course, it did, and after my time, a long time after my time, it got back to the situation we have now, which is a rather sad one, in many ways, that there seems to be much less concern and much more self-interest on the part of students, and that was, if I can think of the phases in my lifetime, when I was an undergraduate myself, as far as I was concerned here, coming here was doing what I wanted to do, and it also might offer me the chance of a living. After the War, this enormous thirst for knowledge of the ex-Service people and the general feeling throughout the country that education was a good thing at any level, and that was a splendid period, and that led to the opening of university doors to a larger number of people, and all went well, except that, as I say, in Nottingham, it was rather smug, and they took things for granted, and I would have liked them to have questioned things, and been subversive in that good sense, but then they went mad, or some small proportion of them did, and the others followed, and now we've come back to a reaction which, it seems to me, that every other student, at any rate, is coldly calculating on the university course, and what it's going to give him in terms of money, because it's that kind of society in which we're now living. I'm not saying that all students are like this, of course they're not, but the general ethos of the student body seems to be one of, you know, fitting in with the

Government idea of the enterprise society, I'm afraid. And I don't like that, because I think if you're a, as Shaw said, "If you're not a Socialist by the time you're 20 you've no heart, and if you're still one by the time you're 30, you've no head", or some such phrase! But young people ought to have feelings about injustice, and I don't think they have as much.

Now, after Nottingham, you decided to come back to Oxford.

Well, [laughs] Yes, I'd largely done the work for the medical school, and when, one day, I was telephoned by Sir Ffolliot Sandford who was the Registrar of Oxford at the time, saying, would I remove my name from the list of electors to Dr. Lee's Chair of Chemistry. I was intensely irritated, and more or less put the phone down, saying, "Well, if that's your attitude, of course I will", and that was the end of it. And then some, week or so later, I can't remember, I had a telephone call from the Vice- Chancellor, Alan Bullock, saying that the electors to Dr. Lee's Chair had met, and it's their unanimous wish to invite you to be Dr. Lee's Professor! And that was too funny! And by that time, of course, I was also Chairman of the Council for Scientific Policy, and I really had, I'd been Chairman of the Council for Scientific Policy, and the Vice- Chancellor, and having student problems, really, my plate was too full, and I also felt that as Chairman of the Council for Scientific Policy, it would be better if I were seen to be a scientist, which meant that the cap, if you like, of Dr. Lee's Professor of Chemistry, fitted better there, and I could do that work well, and, of course, I could also, since I was still keeping Cookridge going, it would be easier to build a link between Oxford and Leeds there, and so I accepted coming here. But unfortunately, it was not for long, because immediately I ran into the trouble, which I knew was likely to arise, and which the Government were wanting to take away money from the research councils for which I was responsible as the Chairman of the CSP, and that led to the great public argument between myself and Lord Rothschild.

So shall we perhaps talk about that now?

If you like.

Yes, this whole issue of scientific policy.

Oh well, books could be written about that!

Yes, well, if we can try and sort it out in some way!

All right, yes. Scientific activity can be divided, I think, into three types, at least where it's related to Government. The first is what one would call basic, self-chosen, curiosity oriented, if which, what is researched upon is chosen purely because of its intrinsic interest by individual, or a group of individuals, because it is thought it will add to knowledge in some way or another, with no practical object in view whatsoever, nor can you determine the amount of time by which you might or might not get an answer, it is clearly not something which you can plan. It is equally something which may have enormous consequences, but you just don't know it at the time, and you're not thinking of it. Right at the other extreme, there is what I call "tactical scientific work", by science I mean to include engineering and technology as well, and that tactical work is something in which a Government Department sees that in order to serve its own policies, it needs certain scientific work done, and it gets it done either in-house in its own laboratories, or out-house in universities, or in industry, and it is, on the whole, short-term, it is known that an answer can be obtained, either by applying existing knowledge, or by gaining new knowledge in known ways, so that's quite different. That is what Lord Haldane called research for departmental use. It is science to serve public policy. Right at the other extreme, the basic that I have mentioned, is what Lord Haldane called, at the turn of the century, "science for general use." In between there is an intermediate group called "strategic", where you see that there is an area of knowledge, which is likely to have important implications, but you can't be absolutely sure what they're going to be because the research has not yet been done, and whether you invest public money in it is a question which can only be decided by a group of people sitting round, who are researchers with the ideas, and people who are people of affairs, who know about potential and translating potential into reality. And an example of that might be, a decision to establish a molecular biology laboratory, it wasn't called that, in Cambridge, to try and discover something about the chemical structure of

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 2 (part 8) Page 126 fundamental molecules in life processes, and that, of course, has led to a whole range of things, including now, molecular medicine, and it's transforming the whole of medicine, and a whole lot of other subejcts, agriculture, genetic engineering industry and so forth. Another quite different one would be the establishment of a laboratory of applied psychology, which, in effect, led to, what shall we say? Aptitude tests for choosing pilots, for reform of penological practice, for layout of workshops in the manufacturing industry, none of which could have been foreseen before. Now, who's to pay for this, and how is it to be handled? This is the real problem of scientific policy. Well the tactical is easy, that remains in the hands of the departments, but the notion of the research council, which began years and years ago with Haldane and Viscount Addison, was that Government should, must provide the money, because only it had enough money, and therefore the paymaster, but must not interfere with the basic or strategic, strategic had not yet been distinguished, but that doesn't matter. And one had the notion of the arm's length principle, in which a group of people would be set up called "The Research Council", ultimately, to administer this. And the problem of the interface between science and government is simply, the scientists spend the money, the Government provides it, and that's always awkward. A Government wants accountability, scientists want freedom, and mediating that awkward interface is the role of the research councils. Now, the money was allocated to the five research councils by the Council for Scientific Policy, and some people in Government, having seen the growth rate of money, which the research councils had had, which was over 10% per annum, in real terms, and seeing also that the economic state of the country declined during this period, made the false correlation that if you spend more money on science, the economy declines. Now, there's no causal connection between the two, but that was the mood and therefore there was an attack on the Research Councils, determination to detach money from them and return it to the spenders, to allocate themselves, and that was the cause of the row then.

But wasn't there also, I think you said, a feeling that scientific research effort had gone in the wrong directions?

Yes, I think that was so.

I mean, for example?

For example, there was too much on the basic research, and too little on the applied. That's always an arguable thing. But the trouble was that the people who needed the applied, in my view, didn't know that they needed it, because we had full employment, and we did not realise, in British industry, that whilst we had full employment, in countries like Germany and Japan, productivity was much higher than ours, and therefore, in the freely competing world, our industries would be doomed. But it wasn't research that was needed there, it was capital investment in new machinery and the management of men, the workforce, and possibly even the abandonment of a full employment policy, which is the only way in which it seems you can get that kind of realism into the minds of the Trades Unions, that would allow practices to change. Nothing to do with science.

But on the scientific side, I think you were suggesting that, for instance, that the effort spent on the Concorde, and so on, I mean, examples like that

Oh yes, but they were a waste of money, but that was not science that they were doing, I mean, that was engineering, to put something of prestige value into the air, with the French, something to hold our heads high with, I suppose, which could never have been a commercial success, and never really has, but it's not something that the scientists would have embarked upon. It was what Government determined it was embarked upon, but because it was, in their view, at least high tech, and because it was a failure, it was a failure of those who promoted high tech, although they weren't promoting this particular activity.

But I mean, what about, surely the, in the power industry you have a case where scientists were following their own instincts.

In?

In the power industry.

Do you mean in, are you thinking of nuclear power?

Yes, I was, yes.

Nuclear power's got quite a different history. In the first place, the decision to make the bomb by Attlee, was a private closed decision, not disclosed even to some of his Cabinet colleagues, you know that?

Mmmm.

And it went on in that way for a long time, and then it, the need to produce bomb material, and also triggering material for the bomb, led to Windscale and the first power reactor, and then we seemed to be in the front, and it had got its own momentum. Added to which, the coal industry was vastly inefficient, and also extremely dangerous, in terms of life and limb, and illness, of course. So there seemed to be everything in favour of nuclear power. The scientists, I don't think, were extremely keen on it. I mean, I got out of the game because I had no particular faith in it, as a method, I mean, it appealed to me, but it didn't seem to me that there was enormous enthusiasm, though once you got into it, and were working for it, of course, you had a vested interest to push it forward. But I did not take the French view, the French view was that they must have nuclear power at all events because the only coal mines which were accessible to them, in French territory, were running down, and the only coal then was in Germany, in the Ruhr, which they might not have access to, and they distrusted Germany, so they also had, in the French Congo, of course, some uranium, and so they went hell for leather for it, and they'll have problems in consequence, of course.

But how this applied level, I mean, we're really talking about how you saw it around 1970. I mean, what did you feel that the scientific effort in relation to industry ought to have been?

Well, I think much of it ought to have been used. You see, when I went to Leeds, taking 20 years earlier, I was horrified, I knew about nylon, I knew about polythene, I

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 2 (part 8) Page 129 knew about what we call terylene, that the Americans call Dacron, and perspex, polythene, terylene, all British inventions, some of them fibres, the, and including the nylon, and yet when I went to Leeds, and I can remember meeting people in the wool industry, wool textile industry, and they used to send their children, if they went anywhere at all before going into the firm to follow father, they would do the Diploma in Textile Industries, which was the softest option, one year, which we abolished to their immense dismay, rather than a degree course, and talking to them at cocktail parties and so on, I would say, you know, "What are you doing about synthetic fibres?" To which the automatic reaction was, "There is no substitute for wool." Well, of course, substitutes for wool were there! And the decimation of the cotton and wool industry by the synthetics, has really been very marked, but you couldn't get them to see it, just as you couldn't get British industry to accept quite a lot of innovations, and the reason for that was, in large measure, due to the fact that Germany and France were decimated as a result of the War, and that therefore, our antiquated equipment and overmanned factories, were producing goods for ten years after the War, that the world wanted, because there was very little competition. And we went down the drain through lack of foresight, and it was very comfortable, thank you very much, for those industries. But scientists tried again and again to get something moving. And where we did get it moving, as, for example, in British Nylon Spinners, at Pontypool, that made money, and then Courtaulds over-extended, and over, had far too much labour, and then had to shrink, of course. No, I don't think it was the scientists' fault, genuinely, I think they could see this, those that thought about it, the vast majority did not. Like anybody else, they were glad to go to work, and have their take-home pay. That's human, isn't it.

But anyway, you were obviously thinking about it, and then you, you developed a policy, and came into conflict, did you?

That's right.

Perhaps you could explain.

Well, in retrospect and hindsight, I know exactly what the difference was between us. At the time it was clothed in other verbiage, which you can see in our two reports.

This is, can you give us the titles of the two reports?

Yes, there's a White Paper of the Government, containing my Report and Victor Rothschild's report on, really, it was a framework for scientific research and development, about 197l, I think. And incidentally, he had a sight of ours, and we never saw, I saw his informally beforehand, but my Committee did not. The fundamental difference between us is this. That I think, and you have to think of his background, Victor Rothschild, very brave man, clever in a certain way, but with a banking background, never believed that you got co-operation of one man doing another man's bidding, I think, unless money changes hands, you know, you buy what you want. I knew from my own experience that if you want to get scientists to do things, you get them interested, and then they'll do anything for nowt. And that was the fundamental psychological difference between us, but he'd been appointed after a lot of searching, as the first Chairman of the Central Policy Review Staff, he didn't know what to think about, so he took the first subject that came to his mind, which was research and development. Oddly enough, we had both served for three years on the Central Council for Science and Technology, set up by Wilson, we both served for three years, from '67-70, on the Central Council for Science and Technology, which Wilson had set up, to, as it were, be an advisory body, to encapsulate his Chief Science Adviser, Solly Zuckermann. So Victor and I knew one another, and I knew him from Cambridge days, and he'd once offered me a job, which I refused, so that was the problem. And he proposed to take money away from the research councils, some of which would be used to commission work from them. So, in other words, they would have contracts with the Government to do work, as distinct from being self-governing chartered bodies, although there would remain some free money. Well, inevitably this created a great bureaucracy, as you can imagine, and in the case of the monies transferred from the Medical Research Council, I'm glad to say that nine years later, that money was transferred back, because it was shown to be unworkable. The Department of Health didn't know how to use it properly, and it was busily setting itself up a mini Medical Research Council, and that was ridiculous. The other

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 2 (part 8) Page 131 difference between us was illustrated in the fact that Victor always thought that I, won in the end, to use his own words, because although I agreed with some of his recommendations about having a Chief Scientist in every Department, what I was anxious to ensure, and was able to ensure, is that the Chief Scientist of, shall we say, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, would get on well with the Head of the Agricultural Research Council, they'd understand one another's problems. Now, what Victor wanted there was a certain tension, because Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries would be placing contracts with the Agricultural Research Council, you see. Well, that was a fundamental difference, and it has not, and never will be resolved. It's one of those permanent problems. If you want, I can give you a paper which I gave to the Economic Section of the British Association this year, to read on this self-same subject.

I'll be interested to see that.

Yes, I'll let you have that. And it's always been there.

What sort of a person was he, then?

Victor?

Mmm.

First of all, very rich, educated at Harrow, and Trinity College Cambridge. I think, had a, a yen for recognition by the academics, a very brave man, incidentally, got the George Cross during the War for, I think, defusing a bomb in Richmond Park, very arrogant, became Head of Scientific Research and Development for Shell, and that's when he tried to recruit me, and I refused because I knew we wouldn't get on. Very sure of himself, not easy in argument. Difficult to read, in some ways, pretty tight- fisted, except with regard to Israel. You wouldn't get Chateau Mouton-Rothschild if you went to lunch with him, as I did! Which I rather looked forward to! Not much sense of humour, I would have said. Admired my wife's skating, because he admired people who had athletic skill, and she was, three years running, the North of England

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 2 (part 8) Page 132 figure skating champion, and when she went out on Coe Fen in Cambridge, people moved off the ice to let her do it, you know, and he thought, and she was in the same laboratory as he was too, at Cambridge, so they knew one another.

What was he like as a scientist?

He's not my field, but, he's a zoologist, but what I hear was, run of the mill. He investigated the motility of spermatozoa, but the techniques were not adequate to do it, and, well, I don't hear it spoken of much now, but then I wouldn't, I'm a chemist. But you'd better ask a zoologist about that!

Yes. And you had quite a sort of public debate then, about ....

Oh yes, I mean, the newspapers were full of it, 'The Times' leaders, "Rothschild is not Dainton", and so on, and a protagonist on either side. I was slightly embarrassed by the fact that almost all the scientists, to a man, were on my side, and were writing to the papers endlessly, and, of course, this didn't do my cause a great deal of good, because everybody thought that this was simply scientists defending their own interests, and there was an element in which that was true. So, Victor was not loved by his fellow scientists!

Did you succeed in getting the backing of the Ministers you were dealing with in this?

Well, at that time, the person who had been given charge, oddly enough, yes, Mrs. Thatcher, very much so. I explained all this to her, and she would give a solid backing to me, I must say that. But the responsibility for hammering out Government policy on this matter, was ultimately given to Earl Jellicoe, who's now the Chairman of the Medical Research Council, he was Lord Privy Seal, and he and I got on very well together, with Sir Frank Cooper, as he now is, and that led to some considerable modification of the original Rothschild proposals, with which Victor was not involved, and as I say, after the event, some money was returned. But this will always be a perennial problem, I think.

And, and did you have much to do with Mrs. Thatcher at this point?

Oh yes, oh yes.

And how was she to relate to?

Well, I had four years with her, you see, really, because, although I gave up the CSP in 1973, it was to become Chairman of the UGC, which is... Well, initially, we had a row, because I, she'd just come into office, and I was aware of this threat to the research councils looming, and I tried to explain to Ted Short, her predecessor, but he wasn't interested, but I had got the point over to a Minister in his Department, Shirley Williams, who saw it at once. But that was about, oh, early 1970. And then, you see, it must have been about April, I think, an election was declared for June 18th, so nothing could be done then, at all; absolute stasis in Government once you have an election announced, they won't pay attention to business, they're out on the hustings, and so on. And then they, Labour lost, and the Tories came in, and I thought, "Well, now I've got to tell the new Secretary of State." So I sought a private interview with her, and tried to tell her, and she kept interrupting me, so I, you know...she graduated, I was Dr. Lee's Professor still then, I was only part-time in the Department, I thought, "I'm not taking this". And so I said, "Well, Mrs. Thatcher, if you remain silent for ten minutes, I'll save both of us half an hour", and she went very pink! [laughs] I thought, "Well, that's blown it! Never mind! It makes no odds to me, I can always go back to Oxford full-time." And then it died away, and I have to say that she...I think, then, some time during that period, she made a kind of mental tick beside my name that "He's okay", and she backed me thoroughly, and I can remember occasions going into big meetings, and she would say, you know, "You lead, I'll back you up", which she did. So, yes, but one had one's problem with her, over, for example, she didn't like the Social Science Research Council. I did do one thing for her, which was a very tricky thing, which she asked me to do, which, before there was the '74 election, which the Tories lost, she was very worried about Oxbridge college fees, which were an open- ended commitment on public funds, because, as I think I mentioned earlier, when Government said that "anybody who's admitted to a university must have full support, subject to a means-test." The Oxford fees were made up of university and college

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 4 Side 2 (part 8) Page 134 fees, and the college fees were set by the colleges, and they were, therefore, an open- ended commitment on public funds, and the Controller and Auditor General had got hold of this, and referred it to the Secretary of State for Education and Science, and she didn't like it at all, and so I had to clear that mess up, which was a very difficult bit of work, I may say, because the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, in the form of their Vice-Chancellors, immediately disclaimed any responsibility for the colleges, and I had to persuade, fortunately I knew both the Vice-Chancellors very well, there was John Habakkuk here, who'd been on my National Libraries Committee, and it was Rosemary Murray whom I'd got to Cambridge, at Cambridge, and I said, "Well, you know, the choice is a very simple one: either you come together and devise a scheme of which I think I have the elements, and I come as your friend, or you face the prospect of the Vice-Chancellor and the Registrar and the Heads of Houses, and all their Bursars appearing in front of the Public Accounts Committee, and I don't think it will be a very pretty sight, when somebody asks you why the fees at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, are higher than those of, shall we say - I don't know - Trinity? And indeed, what are those fees for anyway?" [laughs] And well, that had to be sorted out, and in the end, I, since I knew how to read college accounts in both Oxford and Cambridge, I was well placed to do so. And she was very grateful for that later, although, of course, she had nothing to do with it, it was finally settled with the Labour Government in post, and the Minister concerned was Oakes, and, but it was an interesting episode. And yes, she defended me in Parliament, there was a madman in Scotland who always got hold of his MP to, what was he? Criticising about me? Oh, it was something, oh yes! I know what it was, it was because I'd been influential in, as Chairman of the Advisory Council for Scientific and Technical Information, and I'd put my weight behind establishing the Document Supply Division of the British Library at Boston Spa, and there was a man who was trying to establish an Information Unit of his own in Scotland, who thought that the sole object of my existence was to do him down financially! He used to get his MP to ask questions about me, and there were others who asked questions in the House of Commons. She defended me.

Did you have, you mentioned her hostility to Social Science, did you have to actually defend Social Science against her, then?

Well, I soon learnt the thing to do, was not to defend it, because that just led to interminable argument, but to exert pressure on it, myself, because there were some indefensible things, and try and prevent her from getting so interested that she would find these absurdities, which I had noticed, and was trying to deal with, and make them the excuse for beating the good things that were going on. Because there were some good things too.

What do you mean by absurdities?

Well, one thing which she seized on, you know, they had, at one point, a research project, all these were reported in their annual report, and she spotted that the question of the investigation of the size of women throughout the United Kingdom and its variability, because of, I suppose, wanting to get at nutrition patterns or something of this kind. "It's ridiculous. You don't want to do an enquiry", she said to me, she said, "All I need to do, and you can do it, go to Marks and Spencers, find out what they sell, what sizes they sell in Newcastle and in Taunton and London". And she was absolutely right, of course, that's the way to do it! You've got the raw data! [laughs] Size, height, bust, everything! And that, that was silliness on their part. Also what I'd spotted and called them to account for, was the fact that so many of the Ph.D. and Higher Degree theses, were not completed and submitted, on public funds, and that was indefensible, in my view, as also, the general neglect, so that the research student was a lone individual in many universities, in the Arts and Social Sciences, and they had to put their own house in order on this. Then, of course, the original first Chairman, Lord Young, saw the Social Science Research Council as an instrument of public policy, which it isn't, it shouldn't be, it should be a disinterested research body. I mean, what research councils are doing if they make policy is not doing it deliberately, but simply, with their findings, change other peoples' points of view, whose responsibility it is to make policy. And so there was a lot of problematic thing there, and yet, having been so recently established, they needed growth money, so they needed a higher growth rate than some of the other research councils, and yet they were more vulnerable to criticism, and that was not easy to handle.

And was it partly because of that that you had the idea of a united research council?

Oh, yes. But not, that wasn't the main reason. I mean, it wasn't, don't get the idea that I wanted these things hidden in a large research council, what I wanted a large research council for was that I knew the pattern of research expenditure must change, because science is never static, and that it's easier to move things around, the larger the organisation, to redeploy people, and where there's an opportunity, put some weight behind it, without upsetting others, whereas in a small research council, you have an opportunity cost of going in one direction, which is greater than in a large research council, so there was that consideration. There was also the fact that so much of science now is increasingly inter-disciplinary. You find biology, obviously, in the Medical Research Council, in the Agriculture and Food Research Council, in the Natural Environment Research Council, in the Science Research Council, and, you know, that's silly to have all these things which are interpenetrating, and not having them dealt with all together. And I still believe that's the true outcome, and will one day, will one day come, for that reason.

Why do you think you couldn't persuade people at the time?

The external threat was not big enough, and they all had empires, oh yes, I've been quite open about this recently, and I mean, somewhere, I must have the paper, notes I wrote for the first meeting of this little group that I asked the Secretary of State, Margaret Thatcher, to appoint to look at scientific research and development, because at their first meeting I gave an introductory talk. I believe in, you know, not just making it a general background talk, but indicating the ways I thought it might go, and it was badly received, it was too early. But it's coming back again now as you probably know.

[End of Reel 4 Side 2]

Reel 5 Side 1 (part 9)

21st December, 1989.

You ask me the questions, whatever you want.

About the accident in the laboratory, yes.

Well, that was 1945. The War in Europe had come to an end, and I was only too desperate to finish with War work, and I'd begun to look round for new fields of work to engage in, because, as I think I may have said, my Professor wanted it clearly understood that I didn't work in any field in which he was interested. And I thought I was going to do some work, and I won't bother you with the subject on polymerisation in the gas phase, for which I needed a catalyst called di-acetyl peroxide, which you won't be able to spell, but I can provide that. And I made this stuff which is extremely explosive, and then, because I was in a hurry and wanted to get on, I, as it were, tickled a very small quantity of it in a test tube, and it blew up as I was holding it, taking the index finger of my left hand away, and removed a very bad violin player from the scene! And that was that. And oddly enough, the interesting thing to me was, that I was in, had three operations here, was in Addenbrooke's Hospital, and things had struck me, where, first of all, the devotion of my own students, one of whom is here, Sir Peter Hirsch, who's Professor of Metallurgy, now about to retire, who used to come and see me with great regularity. The other was that the notion got around in the Hospital, that I had something to do with this terrible bomb, and they wouldn't, you know, they got really very uptight about it, very different, as a matter of fact, from the reaction of the ordinary folk in Cambridgeshire a year later, who thought that it would be a marvellous thing. And I realised that news of a mind- blowing character, can produce extremely diverse reactions, and indeed, if you get the reactions to the Americans' attempt to try and grab Noriega, a day or two ago, you get exactly the same thing. Most of it, most first reactions are gut reactions, and thoroughly unreliable as a basis for policy!

But just going back to the accident, were you very shaken by it?

Not at all. Not at all. The person who witnessed it, now just retired from a Chair in the Queen's University of Belfast, Ken Ivin, went as white as a sheet, I saw my finger disappear to the other side of the room, and I adapted to that in a matter of seconds, I said, "It's gone." And what I wanted, I said, "Get some cotton wool, we'll wrap this up, and take me to Addenbrooke's please, get a taxi." And I was fully in charge of the situation. When I was not in charge of the situation was, oh, three or four weeks later, when I was home, and I'd had two operations, one to tidy it all up, and then a second one in which, I was very lucky, because I had, I think I told you, I was the first civilian to receive penicillin, and also I wore unbreakable spectacles because I used to play games a good deal, so my eyes were protected, though my spectacles were pitted, and what I did notice about this, was that when, having come home, after a second operation, and I was in plaster all the way up here, because this was broken, in five pieces, and they wanted to get it under traction.

Your other finger was broken in five places?

The other finger disappeared, yes, the next finger was broken.

The next one.

Yes. And in fact, there's the back of my first finger, and what happened suddenly, on, I think it was a Sunday morning, there was an arterial burst underneath here, which I couldn't get at because it was in plaster, you see, and we'd filled half a saucepan with blood, and of course, we had no car, no taxis, and taken down to Addenbrooke's Hospital, and then I was really shaken because I didn't see how I could possibly stop it, there was no pressure point I could get at. But my wife was very good about this, being a zoologist, and that was that. And then the other thing was, later, this having been in plaster under traction like this, for some time, then when it came to releasing it, or the thing having healed round here, this was then fixed in a position like that, and they said,

Sorry, so it was fixed so that one finger was straight, and the other bent.

Like that, yes, simply because it had been, you know, immobilised for a matter of weeks, and they tried to get it moving, without any success, and the point came when the surgeon said, "Well, that's in your way, we'd better take it off." And I said, "Well, buggered if you do. If you take it off, that's an irreversible step. I'm going to have a go at this." They'd tried all the devices for Faradayism in physiotherapy, and then they totally disbelieving, I got hold of a little bit of sticking plaster, and put a stylus on the end of that finger, locked this on a desk...

This is on the end of the one that wasn't moving?

Wasn't moving. Worked very hard at this, four hours a day, massaging it in hot water and so on. And then over the graph paper, saw if I could see a twitch, which I did, and over six months, well, there you are, it's worth having! Now, the interesting thing about that was not so much my experience, but the fact that I'd begun to look into the anatomy of the hand, and the first thing that I came across was the classic book on anatomy, 'Gray's Anatomy', which has gone into unknown editions, which deals, you see, with the skeleton, with the muscles, with the nerves, the tendons, and so on as separate things about the body. It wasn't at all functional, and I thought that was no use to anybody, and it wasn't until I came across a book by Wood-Jones, an Australian anatomist in this country, called 'The Anatomy of the Hand', that I began to see how it worked, and what I had to do in order to release what I thought, were the tendons were calloused, and they had somehow to remove that adhesion, by just persistence, and then, at the same time as I was working away at this, I was responsible, oh, sorry, just after, responsible for looking after the pre-clinical people of St. Catharines, Cambridge, in the absence of the Medical Director of Studies, and I saw just how terribly bad that anatomy was, it was rote learning, hour after hour, hundreds of hours of it. I said, "This is not education. There must be a better way to teach doctors than this." And that's what got my interest in medical education, so probably the most important memorial to the loss of my finger, is the Nottingham Medical School! Really! And so that's the story of that.

Thank you. And there was another less serious mishap which you mentioned, which was getting imprisoned in Canada!

Oh yes, well, that was an extraordinary experience, and I've just got an official pardon actually!

Oh really!

Yes! Well, to begin at the wrong end, I was 75 in November, and a lot of old students got together, and decided they were going to have, in Leeds, a one-day symposium in the subjects in which I was interested, followed by, well, during that day a lunch and a dinner, and all sorts of nice things, and presents and so on, and the next day we were going to go into the Dales and do what I used to do regularly in September, which was to take them all to Malham Tarn Field Centre, for a couple of nights, or three nights, depending how many nights we could get, and we would walk in the mornings, in the afternoons, and work in the mornings and in the evenings, you know, seminars and so on, people talking about their work. Well, people came from all over for this, I mean, an enormous range, Australian, Hungarians, Poles, Canadians, Americans, Indian, you name it! And one, the Canadians had got together because of this story, and actually located the Chief of Police of the town of Pembroke, Ontario, and I will show you the official pardon I have. The story was a very simple one, it was one of misunderstanding. I was at Chalk River, which was the Anglo-Canadian base for the atomic work, in what was, we worked in what was known as "The Factory" [The Plant] at Chalk River, and lived at Deep River. Now, being there as a bachelor, my wife was here, I had to get my laundry done, so on Friday evenings I used to travel, with a friend, 20 miles from Deep River to Pembroke, Ontario, the nearest hand laundry, collect what had been done, and deposit what needed to be done, only on this occasion, the man named Nicholas Miller, we had to go to Ottawa to collect some chemicals on the Saturday morning, and that was about 130 miles away. We called at the laundry, did the usual exchange, drove on another 30 or 40 miles, to a place called Arprior, and had a meal, this was a Friday evening, now about 7 o'clock. At 8.15, 8.30, I said, "Well, I'll pay for this", and then I reached for my wallet and it wasn't there, in my pocket, and I realised I hadn't got my

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 1 (part 9) Page 141 jacket either, and then I realised I'd been carrying my jacket over my arm, in this laundry when I paid the bill, and it was probably there. So we then telephoned the laundry, and nobody there, of course, and then there was nothing for it, because we hadn't enough money between us, and no credit cards in those days, we hadn't enough money to pay for the bill of the hotel in Ottawa, so we had to drive back, and this was a Friday evening in August, very warm, I went to the laundry, absolutely shut up, so we went to the Police Station, which was in the semi-basement of a Methodist church, only one half of a basement, the other being occupied by a pool hall, and we had asked, there were no policemen there, the place was open, so people were sitting on their verandahs as they do in North America, in the hot August, just flopping away, and said, you know, "Where's the policeman?" And they said, "Oh, he's gone down to watch the train", the train was, sort of, one train a day arrived at this place, on the Canadian National Railway, and so I thought, "Well, let's walk down and see if we can meet him." As we did, we walked past the laundry, and my friend Nick said, "Look, I think that window's open there." I said, "Well, I think I can get in if you give me a hand." So I went in, and found my jacket hanging up on, very nicely, and inside, the wallet, and I shouted out in a very loud voice, "It's all right, Nick, I've got the money.." Unfortunately, at the moment the policeman was coming by! Now this, this was an incredible story to him, secondly, we had foreign accents, thirdly, we wouldn't tell him where we worked, because we couldn't, you see, we were not supposed to, so this was very suspicious! And the sequel to it was that we were taken back, and he thought we ought to be held in a, showed us a cell which was absolutely terrible, and stank to high Heaven. I said, "I'm not going in there." And he said, "Well, yes, it's pretty bad isn't it. Tell you what, I've got a pal coming in, let's make a four for poker." And we made a four for poker, and that was a more expensive evening than I'd bargained for! [laughs] And next day, we got our release through the security people, and didn't go to Ottawa. And so that's the story, but, as I say, these Canadian students produced this free pardon for something 43 years earlier, which was rather nice of them, I thought.

Very nice, yes.

So that's all that story is, it's nothing much, but it's grown over the telling, in, in other people's mouths, to the notion that I'm the only whatever it is, whatever it happens to be, Fellow of the Royal Society or this, that or the other, who's been in jail in Canada! [laughs] It loses nothing in the telling I suppose! But it does speak, I think, to a rather nice relationship with these people. And they also drew some cartoons, would you like to see them?

I think I saw the cartoons on a previous visit.

Yes, yes, but I didn't show you the pardon?

No, no, you didn't, but you didn't tell me the story.

Oh, I didn't tell you the story, yes, oh well, that's the story, yes, yes.

It's a good story, I think!

Very odd!

So apart from that, I was hoping we could talk about, really, your work, since 1970, when you came

When I came here?

Came back to Oxford.

Well, I came back to Oxford, really, I suppose two reasons. One is I felt I had done what I had gone to Nottingham primarily to do, which was to get the Medical School launched, and the building secure and going up, the site, the style of the education, and the good people who would carry it on far beyond me. There was also, as I think I have told you, I was being, by that time, Chairman of the Council for Scientific Policy, and I knew of problems that were coming, and I thought I would be better placed as a scientist, and better regarded by the people who's regard I needed to

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 1 (part 9) Page 143 operate effectively, by being a Professor of Chemistry, so that when the University offered me the Chair here, without interview or anything else, you know, on a plate, I thought, "Well, that's nice." And also, of course,I had a kind of sentimental attachment to the place, having been an undergraduate here, and generally, it was regarded as the sort of premier Chair. So there I was. And I came.

And what did it feel like coming back to Oxford after being in other universities?

Irritating. In one word. First of all, seven and a half centuries of participatory democracy are not a means of getting things done quickly! [laughs] And I found that, whereas, having gone from Cambridge to Leeds, I could get things altered in Chemistry, within a year. The prospect of doing anything here was almost impossible, almost the only powers I had, were to keep the building warm and the windows clean, so to speak, under the Statute of the Chair, and I could have a control of things, by a devious means, which was allocating accommodation to people, so that if somebody who'd had a sort of an inalienable right, he was elected to a Fellowship, and therefore felt he had a right to lecture on whatever he thought was fit, irrespective of whether I, having persuaded colleagues, thought it was nonsense, and we should have a coherent intellectual framework for the subject. Now, that was a new notion in Oxford, you see, in a sense! So I would say, "Yes, yes, you can lecture on that by all means. How would 12 noon on Saturday suit you?" [laughs] And that was the way in which one did it! Or if this person who felt he had a right to the lab, and wasn't doing any research, I could say, "Sorry, no, you, you don't have a place here. Go find somewhere else." Because colleges did, from time to time, appoint people who were no good, who'd never have got a place in a provincial university, that was one aspect of it.

So did you not have a crucial influence then, on College appointments?

On some, yes, new ones. I mean, oddly enough, the very first person I appointed here, who became a Fellow of Jesus, has just gone to Leeds, to occupy the Chair which I occupied, and I was replaced by an old student of mine from Cambridge, and I had nothing to do with this appointment at all, so it's a great joy to me. And there I had,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 1 (part 9) Page 144 oh yes, no overriding influence on that appointment, but I'm thinking of people who were already in post, and the tendency for colleges to appoint Research Fellows, you know, and think that they're going, as it were, automatically, to get accommodation, which costs money, you know. The other thing which one, I was anxious to do, was to get, as I say, an intellectual framework for the subject, and we did get that. I think that's possibly the only thing I've left.

I mean, what was the state of the sort of teaching when you arrived, the lecturing, when you arrived?

I think it was probably better in physical chemistry than it was in, inorganic chemistry, and certainly better than it was in organic chemistry, for the reason that the physical chemists were more open minded, and also the subject deals with the fundamentals, in a sense. Inorganic chemistry and organic chemistry, are just particular cases of general principles, and the physical chemistry is the general principles, so, we did get a reasonable framework the, but it had to be argued over a great deal, and in the end, we got a systematic structure of lectures which were related to one another, without, I think, detracting from the opportunity of able young people, whose blood was coursing through their veins, to have the opportunity to display what they were doing, which is always extremely important, but if you let very young lecturers of that kind, do some of the basic stuff, usually, they try to be too clever. The other thing which I tried to do, was to get the students to think in a large lecture theatre, by not lecturing to them, but distributing Xerox copies of, same copy each, of the same paper, and saying, "Look at that. We'll look at it together, and I will go through it paragraph by paragraph. Anybody raise his hand, honestly, there's no penalty to this at all, because I don't know who you are, who doesn't understand the first thing he comes across." And by taking a live piece of scientific work, one could then pull out a whole lot of things and then begin to build up a relationship between them, and say, "Well, look, all these begin to fit together, but if you want to understand that, you must know that chemistry is about atoms in molecules exchanging places. Therefore, first we must learn about atoms, then atoms in molecules, how they're fixed together, in time and in place, how they will vibrate, how they will rotate, how, when you get a hell of a lot of them, one grammole, which is 6 x 10_²³ of these, altogether, you have an assembly of

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 1 (part 9) Page 145 what their bulk properties are going to be like, can we deduce them 'a priori', you see, which, in fact, in principle you can, you can't do it perfectly, but you can, and then we will come to the point, we know about matter in bulk, we know about it's thermodynamic properties, we see the reasons why, what about these strange things when two molecules start exchanging atoms, which is called chemistry. Chemical change. There is no chemistry without chemical change." Once you'd got that, then you could give them something which is important, because I think I may have said earlier, my belief is that a university education is not about stuffing facts into people, it's about principles, how to apply them, and sufficient competence and self- confidence in that to know how to deploy them in novel situations, and to recognise when they break down, and that's the best intellectual survival kit you can give a young person. It's not having the latest details of some particular interesting and exciting thing, though that may serve as a very interesting stimulus and appetiser for getting at the root of the matter.

You went back to research, I think?

Oh yes, I did, yes.

What did you do?

Well, mostly it was a continuation, but different aspects, of things I'd been doing at Leeds, but on a reduced scale, oddly enough, and I did keep the connection with Leeds, and some of my research students here, would go up to Leeds and do experiments there, because we hadn't got the equipment here, you see. Now that, I thought, was a very good thing, because it introduced them to another world, and some of the Leeds people came to, to Oxford, we used to have little meetings here, and it, I think, worked out quite well. But the thing that actually destroyed all this, was this great political row between myself and Lord Rothschild over science funding, and that meant that instead of what should have been about one day a week in London, in my office there, it became sometimes four days a week, moving around Whitehall and so on, and that, that really was the death blow, and so when I was asked also if I would be Chairman of the UGC, in 1973, I thought, "It's going to be

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 1 (part 9) Page 146 impossible for me, I think, if I stay here," because I would have continued in the other job, it was necessary to continue, "I don't want to see anybody else in the UGC", which was a job I'd been offered in '68, and refused at Nottingham, "because I can see there are storms ahead there too," with the then Conservative Government, and I had been working, you have to remember, with Mrs. Thatcher, for three years, so I knew what the omens were, and so after a very great deal of heart searching, I took it on, and the very first day I went in, on October lst, 1973, was cancelled all university building projects, they had to be stopped. Well, at that time, students were sleeping in lecture theatres and so on in October, when they came up, something had to be done, so I had to get my skates on and go round Whitehall, and persuade people that this just wasn't reasonable, people had to sleep. So we did get excused from this moratorium on building, we did get halls of residence excused, and that made a difference, and from then on it was non-stop, of course. I mean, next, having had that, the first year.

Well, shall we come back to that, round off the Oxford bit first.

Yes, yes. Well, that really, as I say, ruined that, and the argument with Rothschild in the science organisation, but it took so much time, that it took all the pleasure out of Oxford.

But you did do some research, though, with Mike Pilling, I think?

Yes, that's right, he's the one who's gone to Leeds, and that was on some of the intimate details of what happens in liquids, in chemical reactions. In most chemical reactions, between Substance A and Substance B, of course, they have to collide, if they don't meet, nothing will happen. Normally, every collision does not lead to reaction, only a very small fraction of those collisions, and that's because they have to collide with a certain degree of violence to cause the exchange, it's called "the energy of activation has to be obtained", but there are some reactions where that energy of activation is so low that what limits the rate of reaction is how fast they can be moved together, pushing other molecules of the solvent out of the way, and I thought, "Well, one of the interesting and simple ways for detecting this, would be to take a fast reaction, and put it in a viscous medium, where it's difficult to push them out of the

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 1 (part 9) Page 147 way, and then we would be sure that they were diffusion controlled." And that proved to be the case in what's called "The transition from activation control to diffusion control", was one of the things which we showed very clearly, but also, it led us into an interesting sphere of determining what is called "the internal viscosity of glass- forming liquids" on which, which there's no other way, really, of measuring this viscosity, so there's a whole new field open there, to go for, that was one aspect. The other was, I got interested in the theory of the electron, now theory is something. You need, sometimes, long, sweaty hours to get at it, and sometimes you can do things in railway trains, and have ideas, so that was something I could fit in, and really, I did some work on the, again, reactions of the electron, but that was really all I was able to do in research. So in research terms, it was not very productive.

But you, you did manage to continue some kind of social life in the, in the lab, I think?

Oh the lab, yes, that was very nice, I mean, we had these tea parties every Monday afternoon, which were very useful, and as I say, made the statutory termly meeting a farce, because we'd done all the business, so we had to invent an agenda, [laughs] and solemnly go through it, and, of course, most, most laboratories anyway, had done that for years, that sort of thing. And yes, then, of course, John Albery, who is Master of Univ. now, did one of his satirical musical shows about the wicked and lascivious professor! [laughs] Which was put on at the Playhouse here, and also, I think at Farnham, in Surrey. Yes, and there were quite a number of interesting characters around.

Are those musical shows at Oxford a tradition, then, do you think?

Well, there's always been a kind of tradition among scientists that you have fun and games, you know, I mean, they are children at heart!

Generally, you mean.

Oh yes, yes, I mean, yes, we didn't have them in, Christmas parties, when I came back to Oxford, as we did when I was at Cambridge, but then the place got too big for that, and you broke down into smaller units, but there was a, there is, in science, something which is, I think, different from the Arts and Humanities. If you're a research student in the Arts and Humanities, on the whole, it's a lonely life, you see your supervisor very rarely, and people get desperate, don't know quite where they are, and I think this is partly bone idleness on the part of the don. In the sciences, it's not so. I mean, you're in the lab together all day, you make friendships, you have to work together, you see each other's flaws and also merits, and there develops a kind of camaraderie. I mean, the supervisor, if you can't do anything, even practically, will show you how to do it, you need to learn, it's much more a kind of apprentice/master relationship, and you develop, well, you've heard me speak about my own students, and I mean, you don't get called anything, and this has always been the tradition, you are very soon known by your Christian name, and you go and have a drink together, and so on and so forth. This happens very very often, you're never alone. And also, of course, there's a camaraderie amongst the students themselves in a particular group, they know one another, they have common problems, they are mutually educating themselves, and far from being alone, they're very convivial, and it's a very nice atmosphere generally, of course. There are cases in which it is not. And sometimes, you see, you will have all kinds of pranks and, as I say, jests played by one on another, tease them and distort their results just for a joke! And this happens.

Distorting their results? I mean, this is very surprising to me!

Oh, you do it just, just do it for fun. I can remember one of my students coming in and saying to another, who was W.G. Burns, Bobby Burns, "Oh, Bobby, I saw your graph the other day, and it struck me as very interesting, it was like this, you see, wasn't it? It must be so and so, mustn't it?" And produced an absolutely bogus explanation of this, you see, and got poor old Bobby Burns absolutely worried for a day or two, and we watched him sweat it out! And then, of course, in due course, he would get his own back. This is just to relieve some of the, I mean, scientific work is very often, there's a lot of very hard slogging to be done, which can be rather tiring, I mean, a lot of late night work and so on, but some of it, of course, is often co-

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 1 (part 9) Page 149 operative, two or three people together, and so you develop a kind of friendly, sort of, within a family, and also the quarrelsomeness.

And these jokes about the Professor, I mean, you'd find that at Leeds as well as...

Oh yes! I don't know whether, did I tell you the story of my taking, how I was known in Leeds?

I don't think so, no.

Well, I used to go around whenever I was in Leeds, as I did in Oxford, in the morning, go round and see the research students, you know, say, "How are you getting on? What have you done?" etc., "Tell me about it." And we'd talk. It might take half an hour, it might take two minutes, you could never tell, it depended on the work and how it was going and whether they wanted to get down, they would also come in and see you when they wanted, of course, but I used to go round and talk to them, well, even when I had visitors, I would take the visitors round and we'd, the visitor and I would talk business in the corridor, and I can remember on one occasion, I had an American visitor in Leeds, and I'd just got to a door with him, and got my hand on the door handle, and opened it about 2", and I heard a voice come out, which I recognised at once, "When's that old bugger Fred coming round?" [laughs] So I shut the door and never went in! I thought it would have been too embarrassing for him! And I sent for him the following day, and gave him a paper to read, a reprint of a paper which I knew he needed to read. And I said, "Read that." And as he was going out, I said, "Oh, and John, read it with clean hands and a pure heart." And I got a very peculiar puzzled look from him, you see, and then I waited, and for a day or two, until another student said, "What did you say that to John for?" I said, "What?" He said, "Read something with clean hands and a pure heart." I said, "Well, I'll tell you all over tea." And you know, it's that kind of atmosphere which, and it, that makes things go, of course. And also, another thing, you see, the Professor has to be seen to be a fool from time to time.

Why do you think so?

Humanness, there's far too much authoritarian approach, particularly amongst, still, Continental students, Germans and Poles and all the rest of it, there's a great sense of hierarchy there.

So, you mean in terms of intellectual development, people have to be able to sort of...

Yes, yes, indeed. And I mean, even here, I and my successor, are still referred to as "The Professor", you know, that's no way, you can't kowtow to people, because in science the only ultimate boss is nature. I write to all the students that I know of, at Christmas time, about 300.

Really?

Yes.

That's amazing.

Yes. I could let you have a copy of this year's letter if it would be of use to you.

Oh, I'd like to see that, yes.

Oh yes, all right.

So you add a personal message.

In there, yes.

Yes, I see. That's interesting.

So it's a sort of, they've become quite well known amongst people now, and they very much appreciate it, to my astonishment.

I'm sure they will.

I think these aspects of the social side of science are very interesting. Like you say, they're a big contrast with the Arts.

Absolutely, and it's the lonely life of the Arts person, and the gregarious nature of the scientist, although you have to have lonely periods, you know, as the Germans knew in this famous phrase, "Einsamkeit und Freiheit" - Solitude and Freedom, which, I think, but it makes science, you see, you may have noticed it, though, at Essex, of course, you don't have many scientists, but what you find among scientists is an enormously greater sense of belonging, and as I say, camaraderie and than you get in Arts, and the Department is of crucial importance in the sciences, and the relationship extends to the technical staff as well, incidentally, I mean, just recently, my daughter, who's coming here for Christmas, with her two children, has been in Cambridge for a year, she's a doctor, and to our enormous surprise, a message came to us from an old laboratory assistant, who must be in his early 80s now, who happened to be her patient, and was a lab assistant when I was a research student and a don, and he very much wanted to be remembered, you know, and said he'd often felt responsible for my loss of a finger, it worried him very much that he should have done something about it, as he was my lab assistant at the time, Fred Webber, and so I've just written him a note, you know.

Could you describe one of these sort of theatricals, which you've mentioned?

Well, for example, to go back to Cambridge, what we used to have in the old Perse Room, which was the school hall, of the old Perse School, which had been incorporated first into an engineering laboratory, and then that became a physical chemistry laboratory, at the Christmas party, we would put on shows of various kinds, oh, a whole variety, which would be burlesque very often, of anybody, staff, students, who had outstanding and burlesquable qualities to them, you see, and also there would be a lot of fun poked at the, the Professor, in particular, and it might take the form of a playlet, or it might take the form of a song, or it might take the form of a hymn that had been Bowdlerised to adapt to the thing, and we'd all sing it together, you see, and

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 1 (part 9) Page 152 it was really like an old-fashioned Victorian family party, and it would be entirely organised by the young people. Staff would take virtually no part in it, unless they were drawn into it deliberately, and you know, on a few, sometimes, simple costumes would be used, and the jokes were always very in-jokes for the Department or for the subject, present, President of the Royal Society, George Porter, who received his OM the day before yesterday, with Cicely Saunders, I can remember we christened him, because he worked on a subject called "Flash photolysis", we had a little joke about him, a presentation of "Flash Porter", you see, as you can imagine! Well known criminal! [laughs] Oh, it was great fun, and I look back at it all with enormous pleasure. And it's a general characteristic of science, you'll find it even in laboratories outside this country, and I think, in particular, you will find the old German tradition, in which you had the notion incorporated in students songs, "Ich bin ein fahrender Gesell. Kenne keine Sorgen", I am a travelling student, I know no sorrow, and I wander, you know, from university to university. That was the old tradition, to...from one master to another. And the sense of apprenticeship was there. And it deteriorated, I think, in the nineteenth century, because of this enormous sense of hierarchy; in fact, I used to invent, which used to irritate German colleagues, a pompous title, which I held in the University of Leeds. I said I was the "Geheimer Sanitätsrat Professor Extraordinarius, der Graf, Bumfahrten von Flushing"! [laughs] And this, these German professors didn't particularly like, though they didn't exactly understand the fact that the "farhten" they thought of was, of course, the journeying, and Flushing had no meaning for them, except the Belgian place!

What sort of music do they have at these theatricals?

Oh, very often existing songs. I mean, I had a student, Edgar Collinson, at Cats, at St. Catharine's, who was an absolute adept at this sort of thing. We had a sort of College group called "The Midnight Howlers", as you could imagine, and another one called "The Kittens." Now, Edgar was one of these chaps who could play the piano for anything, give him a tune and he'd both get it and then embroider it, you see, and he would sit at the piano, I mean, and go on for an hour or so. And, of course, you have to remember as well, that there is a tendency in science laboratories, when you're

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 1 (part 9) Page 153 getting very tired, you go out for a drink with some of your friends, and in The King's Arms, for example, at the end of Parks Road, in the...

In Oxford?

In Oxford. Before the war, the chemists had their own tankards up there, with their names on! [laughs] Oh yes! Yes! And in The Dew Drop in Cambridge, where the chemists used to frequent, they are well known, and, of course, they weren't just social occasions either, they were mainly social, but occasionally you'd get quite good discussions going, and that's what makes such a nonsense of all these attempts to produce performance indicators and the management of scientists, you don't manage creative people. Don't get me on that subject! It raises my blood pressure!

We'll go on to one other aspect of your time at Oxford, what about the college side? You were at Exeter then?

Yes, I was Professorial Fellow of Exeter, which I found a pretty dull college, on the whole, I'm bound to say, and not much life to its Fellows, and certainly, very little experience of the outside world, though great pretensions to feeling that they did. Very welcoming in a nice way, but often, I mean, I think I may have mentioned to you, that when we came here, they were very hospitable to us. Did I tell you this? I mean, we virtually ate our way in for a couple of terms, and other colleges invited us out, a new Professor and his wife, but quite often, they spoilt the evening, to a certain extent, for me, by a remark which was very well meant but revealed how ignorant they were. And it was precisely articulated by the late Kathleen Kenyon, who was the Principal of St. Hugh's, who, at a dinner party for about a dozen, 14 or 16 people, and I was sitting at her right, said, absolutely precisely, in a kind of Maudie Littlehampton voice, "How nice, Professor Dainton, for you to come back to Oxford from the provinces", you see. Well, it was just one stroke too much for me, and I had been reading Louis Namier, you know, the historian, who'd...Balliol and Manchester, and who loved Manchester, and also came back to us, and something clicked in my mind about something he had said, I'm not sure that I got it right, anyway, but what I said was, "Well, Principal, I find the transition from the provincial to the parochial,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 1 (part 9) Page 154 interesting", you see! Nobody, in Oxford, ever raised that matter with me again! Demonstrating, absolutely unequivocally that it is a parish, that it is a village you see, and they are, in...as it were, inward looking; however, that's a gross generalisation, there are many of course, who have been outside, who have different views, and who would share my feeling that Oxford is really quite peculiar, I mean, you take people, oh, at Nuffield, in particular, who have more of the outside world, but there are many dons who don't have any experience of the outside world, and one doesn't mind that; what one minds is the assumption that either (a) that this is the centre of the universe, or (b) that they really have a very close connection with London. There's a nice story of the American who asked the Oxonian where London University was. Did I tell you?

No.

The response was immediate. "London University? That must be in London, where one changes trains in going from Cambridge to the University." [laughs] You see! And there's an element of that. And even now, if I talk in college about, well, the big civic universities, there is a slight suprise when I say, you know, "Most people come here from there, if they do come as Professors, have finished their good work, they've done it elsewhere."

What do you think keeps people, you know, in the college system, and creates this sort of ...

It's a very comfortable club, to begin with, there are extra financial advantages, quite significant in some cases. Well, I can tell you, when I went to Leeds in 1950, my salary there was #180O a year, and that was really what I was making in Cambridge, so I went for greater freedom, and opportunity, and because I liked the West Riding, I was brought up there. And also, I think, on the Arts side, there are certain advantages in the way of libraries, which are better, I mean, there's a ratio of books to students of 4:l, in university libraries alone, forgetting about college libraries, and there is a proximity to London, the British Library, other things, there's a lot concentrated here, and the sheer roses and wine of collegiate life is attractive.

[End of Reel 5 Side 1]

Reel 5 Side 2 (part 10)

You used a rather nice expression there, I think, about collegiate life, just as we went off the tape.

Oh, the roses and wine of collegiate life, yes.

What do you mean by that?

Well, we, we enjoy it ourselves. Let me give you an example. We go into College on Sunday evenings, when I say "we", my wife and I, and we go to Chapel first, and we dine subsequently, well. It's a very nice dinner, it's very civilised in the way in which the wines are produced and served, what is, the actual things you eat off, and eat with, are very well done, and you go into a lovely Common Room afterwards for dessert, and you can have a lot of interesting chat with people who are interesting, and we greatly enjoy it, and sad to give that up, I think, because you don't get anything like that, except very occasionally, and certainly not in the setting that you would get in Oxford or Cambridge, in a provincial university. So, I mean, that, some people fall for that, it's very beguiling, and I could enjoy it myself, but not all the time, so to speak, to the exclusion of other things. One needs to get away.

What about the, many of the things which are done in Oxford are, you talked about seven and a half centuries, and the Colleges are sort of, very traditional, in the ways that they do some things.

Oh yes, I mean, it's an absurdity. They vote on things. There are groups of 20, 40, 50 Fellows, voting on issues, and I can remember a discussion at Exeter, which I had with a Mathematical Fellow, one evening, and he said to me, "What happened in Senate?" which was a body of about 100 in Nottingham, "how did you come to decisions there?" And if you say, as I had just said, "There were only two occasions on which I had a vote there. One of which was on the question of should we join the University Superannuation Scheme, from the old FSSU scheme, which touched all their pockets. They'd been informed, and questions had been answered endlessly, and

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 2 (part 10) Page 157 they had to make up their minds. And the other one was on the question of student membership, where there were two extremes, both very small, both extremely vocal. I had no idea where the middle was. But those were the only two cases, and in all other cases, I took it as my function, as Chairman, to get something started by a preliminary statement, or invite somebody who had been Chairman of a Committee to get it started, listen to the debate, and then find a form of words which would say, 'Well, I think Senate is minded to do this, that or the other.' And that would generally be accepted."

By contrast, I mean, how would you describe a College meeting?

Well, a College meeting, there would be a lot of clever dicks around, who would argue minutiae, and begin to forget principle, or cite precedent, which is terrible, of course, [laughs] and they would talk, with great authority, very often, on things that they did not know much about, and then the thing would be, very often, put to a vote. And the sad thing about it being put to a vote, is that the majority of them had very little knowledge of the issues which were at stake. And that's what was deeply worrying about it, to me. I can remember many an occasion on which this took place, and the worst feature of this was illustrated to me by the fact that at Exeter, we decided to appoint, we had a Medical Fellowship, and because of my interest in medicine, Ken Wheare, who was the Rector, do you know him?

Yes.

Sir Kenneth Wheare said, would I be prepared to join a little committee to do this? And I said, "Yes, of course I would", anything I could do to help. And we went through all the motions in a proper way, and at the end of the day we, I think we had four or five, I can't remember, people whom we had shortlisted, and the Committee interviewed them very carefully, and we came to a very clear, unanimous conclusion, that we wanted so and so, and I, this was all in the morning, and I was just about to get off back to the lab, and take my lunch and sandwich at Halifax House, you see, and Ken Wheare said to me, "Well, you're coming to lunch, are you?" I said, "No. Why? Is there something I should come for?" "Oh yes", he said, "This is when the College

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 2 (part 10) Page 158 will be interviewing socially, these people, and we shall then make a decision." So I said, "Ken, are you telling me that this unanimous view of the Sub-Committee, which has worked like a black for several months, is, has the chance of being overthrown?" "Oh yes", he said. I said, "In that case, I will come along to lunch, and if it is overthrown I shall never serve on another College committee again", you see, "of this kind", and that was not the point, I mean, I was not so much affronted by the, the fact that there were a lot of people who knew nothing at all about medicine, and who had not been acquainted with the Committee who were going to vote on these people, on the basis of having a glass of sherry with them before lunch, and these five people dotted around in a single room, between people, but what then passed was really extremely interesting to me, was a man on my left, who was in English, and then beyond him, was the man whom we, in fact, appointed, and then beyond him another fellow, and I didn't have a candidate on either side of me, for obvious reasons, and then somebody on my right, of the College. And after this person on my left, who's still around, had been talking to this man, and then the Fellow on the other side of this candidate had engaged him in conversation, I talked and I said, "How did you find them?." "I saw no light illuminating his eyes" I said, "Beg your pardon?" He said, you know, "There was no sparkle there", "Well", I said, because the person we considered was an epidemiologist, I said, "Well, Jonathan, I had no idea you were an epidemiologist." He didn't see the point." But I was deeply affronted by that. I mean, what right had he got to express an opinion? He'd not done any of the work, he didn't understand the man's kind of work, he couldn't have a meaningful exchange of views with him, he could see that he didn't hold his sherry glass the wrong way, and he didn't put his knife in his mouth at lunch, but, and the notion that he would have an equal vote with any one of the Committee that had done this work, was really quite ludicrous. I mean, it ought to have been a matter of reporting the Committee's decision, rather than, in fact, recommending it with the possibility of overturning, and that, I'm afraid, was, and again, some of the, I've heard it said, you know, "Do you think that so and so will fit in?" That's not the question, the question really is, "Is he good? Will he do his job well? And if he irritates us, it may be that we can learn something from him." But no, I mean, they were so secure in their own "family", if you like, that they didn't want to be disrupted, and I think that, the knowledge of that, so evident in some of the things one's seen in television and in books, has, in fact,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 2 (part 10) Page 159 done both Oxford and Cambridge a great disservice, because the world outside perceives them, sometimes, in this way, and it's very difficult to deny, you can't deny that there are some people like that. There are less than there used to be, thank God, but there are still some.

Was the College, while you were there, was that all male?

Yes it was, yes.

This is an issue that came up later, then?

Yes, it was being talked about, of course, and the first seven colleges were, were looked at, with some interest, and, of course, Oxford had an agreement that it wouldn't follow these until a lapse of time, but in fact, there was a rush of the Gadarene swine, because they, colleges who hadn't got them, women in, thought that would reduce the quality of their intake, and an argument that never seemed to me to have any objective evidence one way or another. I mean, I was always in favour of women coming into some of the colleges, but I always saw the case for some single-sex colleges too, but what people did not realise, was that the step was irreversible, following the equal opportunities legislation, so they had to take it seriously. And when I was Chairman of the UGC, the College proposals for changes of Charter and Statutes would come up to the Privy Council, and be automatically referred to me, and I used to always write back, in the case of a womens' college, "I hope that the College can consider the following question, that if they were to do this, they will be diminishing the number of places which women dons are likely to secure." And in fact, that has turned out to be the case, as you know, because the mens' colleges, on the whole, have appointed very very few female Fellows, and the womens' colleges have drenched themselves where they've gone mixed, with male Fellows, Girton and LMH, which has, of course, it's, even a male Principal now, and I think that's sad.

Shall we move to the U.G.C.?

It's up to you.

Yes, I think that would be a good point to start on that. You've described briefly, the sort of, as it were, the crisis of the first days. Perhaps it would be better to try and look at it as a whole, and see ...

Mmmm. Well, I think the UGC was the most marvellous body. It incorporated the, I don't know how to describe it, principle of keeping Government at a distance, where it should be kept at a distance, where certain freedoms from Government are essential, whilst giving a responsible response. In other words, avoiding direction, and ensuring that you get the best out of people, by giving them absolute freedom in the universities of the kind of students they admit, what, in fact, they teach, how they teach it, and how they manage their own affairs, based on only two sentences, namely, the terms of reference drawn up in 1919, and revised in 1946, briefly, which gave one immense flexibility to do almost anything, and which meant that the UGC could be both a very good spokesperson to the Government about the needs of the universities, and at the other end of the day, turn round, and face with confidence, because it was trusted to the universities, with, what were the limitations which Government faced? And how was it, the UGC, to enlist the universities' creative powers, to meet some of the problems that existed? Instead of, what we now have in the UFC, which is something which is "top down", in which the universities are following, I'm sorry to say, slavishly, but they have little option, what the UFC prescribes, this is in, and the UFC has taken itself to making assessments of universities, which it is not fit to do.

Why do you say that? That it's not fit to assess?

Well, I'll give you a very simple example, if you take the least, most recent research ratings, now abandoned, of course, as you probably know, as a basis for anything. They spent #4 million. on getting information in, hired a warehouse because there was so much paper, and how do you think, whatever it is, between 15 and 20 members of the UGC can possibly assess the mountain of paper? There isn't time to read it! So it's not been read.

So how did they reach their evaluation then?

Goodness knows, I think by prejudice! And, of course, they've made their visits to universities, where you catch the flavour of them better than anything else, very much. I mean, whereas in my time, and before me, they used to have visits, and this was something seen by Lord Haldane, as essential, there was a visit every five years by the main committee, but there were subject committees coming round to talk with people in between, and these talks were ones in which there was an exchange of views. Now that doesn't happen any more. But then, of course, the UGC and this has been strengthened by the UFC, has gone down the road of formula funding, which is crazy, because there is no objective evidence for the formula in the first place, it's just because you've got to have, satisfy some managerial notion that there must be a formula, and if you have a formula, what does it do? It says if you have a bad department, you give them less. Now, in fact, if you have a Department of Physics, which is bad, what you often need to do is to spend more money on it, you know. And the other point about the formula is, of course, it tends to project the past into the future, so they've fallen for all these simple things, and I think it's, they should've stood out against Government, and it's not surprising that the Government in the Education Reform Bill, had the notion that there were to be contracts between universities and the UFC, which we, in fact, got changed in the Lords, to grants. It won't do a great deal of good that we got it changed, because at the end of the day, the money will still be determined by, how the way in which the UFC looks at it, but all this was done in the notion, paradoxically, by this Government, of setting the universities free of Government interference, which, theoretically, they were subject to during the UGC days, but which never happened in 70 years of the UGC, or in a preceding 40 years, of the proto-UGC, established in 1879, simply because Government had enough sense to keep out, so that, and it wasn't that the UGC was powerless to effect change, it started new universities, different types of universities, technological universities, it closed departments with the agreement of universities, I myself was involved in quite a lot of this, and saw six mining departments disappear, three agricultural departments, and it was done without any fuss, because it was seen to be the right thing. The other thing was, of course, the universities then, through the Block Grant, which I fought to retain intensively, were able to do things because we very rarely earmarked money. We did it, for example, I wanted it done for

Nottingham in Medicine, in it's early days, when there were too few medical faculty around, to defend their own corner within the University. So I wanted five years earmarking by the UGC of funds for the Medical School. But by and large, thereafter, a Block Grant was the thing that one wanted, because what the UGC would say in allocating it's money, "We have earmarked so and so", which would be very rare, "We have taken full account of your desires to do so and so", which means "We have provided the full money for it", or "Partial account" or "No account", which means "We didn't approve it." But "No account" was not a way of saying, "You must not do this", for a very good reason, and this happened on a number of occasions with me, that you never have all the wisdom at the centre, and I can think of, well, Kent comes to mind at once, which we all thought should never have started a School of Law, it did, and made a huge success of it, and showed the UGC to be wrong. That was not only good for our humility, but it was to get the right decision, whoever makes it, is more important, than getting the right people making all the decisions, "Right" in inverted commas there. Do you see the point?

Yes, yes.

And the result of the new arrangement is, as I am sure, you will know, the UFC now is largely, well, certainly disliked, and in some cases I would say despised by Universities. Is that right?

They're certainly not liked very much.

Yeh.

But I think that's partly a consequence of the Government diminution of funding, the pressure on salaries, and oh, anybody would be much less liked now.

But that, you may say that, but you see, you have to remember that the second year, 1974, I was in the UGC, inflation ran at 30%, and the inflationary protection had been taken away the October of '73, so I had a crisis of universities going bankrupt, which has only been matched in this period by Cardiff and others that they thought might,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 2 (part 10) Page 163 and I threw everything in that we had, and I made one tactical error there, which you needn't worry about, and, but at no point, you must ask people, at no point did the universities, I think, fail to trust us, and see that we were trying to do our best for them.

I didn't know there were universities on the point of bankruptcy then.

Oh yes. One university, which shall be nameless, I had to call in for three monthly reports on its finances, because it had done a very unwise thing, it was over-extending itself, and it had used as collateral for a bank loan, the title deeds of a building bought for it, and erected with UGC money! And it had got desperate, you see, and, oh yes, there were quite a lot of problems.

Vis-a-vis Government and what was the main issue there, mainly salaries and manning levels?

Oh, a whole variety, as a matter of fact. One was keeping universities afloat, following the oil crisis, then there came, of course, always there's the problem of dons' pay, and the complicated minuet through which one went in order to arrive at it, and there, the AUT was a total and absolute disaster from the dons' point of view, I mean, if ever there was a body which could have mucked things up, it was the AUT, it was led by Laurie Sapper, who was absolutely hopeless.

In what way was it so ...

Well, if you take, I think it was, you remember the income freeze coming in, now, the UGC's position in the old way of determining dons' salaries was this, there was Committee A and Committee B. Committee A consisted of discussions between the AUT, and the Vice-Chancellors' representatives. Committee B involved the Government and the Vice-Chancellors. In both these cases, the UGC took the stance that it was not its views to determine salaries, its job was to take its money that was allocated to it by Government, give it to the universities, and tell, keep the Government informed about universities' needs. But it was a source, and a

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 2 (part 10) Page 164 storehouse, of factual information, which could destroy or strengthen a case of either the AUT, or the CBCP, or the Government, and so it had a knowledge base, if you like, and we would deploy that, at this stage, but when it got to the discussions with the Government, of course, we were part of the machinery of Government, so our advice had to be given to Government on this matter. Now, therefore, we were deeply involved in this, and I can remember Laurie Sapper, now dead, I think, who was the brother of Alan Sapper, the cinematograph peoples' union, saying to me, "Well, you know, first of all, dons could have more pay, I've been round universities and there's lots of equipment in, scientific equipment locked up and unused, I've seen it in cupboards in university departments", and I was absolutely livid with this, this was at a meeting that we were having with them, and I had to report, respond, "Laurie", I said, "I think I must tell you that if I were to come round your house, at this moment, ll a.m., I am very sure that neither your iron would be working, your blender, your dishwasher, your clothes washer, etc.. But you use it, nevertheless, for important functions", and so on. Well, there was that degree of stupidity, but it was obvious to me the way things were going and with my contacts in Whitehall, that they should settle for what they could get, and they refused to do it, and they were caught by the pay freeze, and that led to three years in which the academic staff of universities were less well-paid than those in the polytechnics and colleges of education. I don't know whether you remember.

I do remember, yes.

And it took the combined efforts of Shirley Williams and myself to get this rectified in a very difficult period, 1980 [1978], when inflation had been got down and was beginning to rise again, and we got, it was called the rectification of the dons' pay anomaly, in two bites, if you remember, and that caused me more grief and tears than anything else, and all the influence that could be mustered. So that was one great thing. The other was having a whole variety of Secretaries of State, and during the freeze, the pay freeze, the awkwardness of Fred Mulley wanting to know what Vice- Chancellors' salaries were, and I wouldn't tell him! [laughs]

Why was that?

Why was that? Because it was none of his business, in my view, and what I certainly was not going to have, was a situation in which there was a pay freeze, and yet a university wanted to appoint, shall we say, as a Vice-Chancellor, who was a Professor in Clinical Medicine, or Dentistry, or Veterinary Science, who had a merit award as well, and was being paid more than the Vice-Chancellor, and if he was needed in another university, it was not reasonable to expect him to go down in salary, so I was determined to retain freedom of action for that, and as it turned out, I mean, I was in no fear of Fred Mulley, because I think I may have told you earlier, his first job was in Cambridge, as a result of my getting the money for a Fellowship at St. Catharine's! [laughs] So I had no hesitation really, in saying "No", and there was nothing he could do about it. Another was also a difficulty with Fred Mulley, that was in 1975/6, I was writing the Annual Report, I was changing the character of the Annual Report of the UGC, 'Annual Survey' it was called, because I thought it needed 10-20 paragraphs of short kind, at the beginning, highlighting the statistical information, and I made some observations about the shortage of people in the Physical Sciences, and in Modern Languages, and Fred Mulley said, "No, this can't be published, I won't authorise it." "Why not?" "Because it's an implied criticism of the schools." I said, "Well, you are interpreting it as a criticism of the schools, I am stating a fact. It's something which the universities have to face, is that they're going to appear to be overstaffed in the Physical Sciences and in Modern Languages generally, because the students are not coming forward. Now that's an absurdity. And I think it's important to bring this to public attention." Well, he was absolutely adamant about this, and I got to the point of saying to him, "Well, I'm prepared to resign and to publish this myself privately. You know, we can extract the information, anybody has access to the data base of the UGC, if they want it", and there was a great meeting in which the Senior Chief Inspector of Schools, Miss Sheila Browne, now Principal of Newnham, was present, and I remember, she'd got a very quiet voice, and a certain amount of argument, and my maintaining my position, and she said, "Secretary of State, what the Chairman of the University Grants Committee says, is fully confirmed by my Inspectors." That's why you'll find in that Annual Report, this, and then, of course, other things, trying to get change. I did something which was regared as revolutionary, which was to invite all the universities with engineering departments, to tender for extra money for very

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 2 (part 10) Page 166 tough four year courses, instead of three year courses, which would include an element of management, technological economics, industrial relations and so on, because I saw that these engineers would be going out into the real world, and had nothing of this, and to my interest and amazement, I also, with Shirley Williams, went round talking to industry, to start some National Engineering Scholarships, pound for pound, Government and industry, we were not really needed, because the students who came forward for these courses were so good that industry sponsored them, and that was a great success, and are still known in some quarters, eponymously, as the Dainton Courses, but getting that change of attitude on the part of the UGC to invite the universities to tender to do things, was, I suppose, the harbinger of what was to come in a much more different way, but I think that was the right way.

You've mentioned a couple of the Ministers that you had to deal with, I mean, would you like to say a bit more about some of them?

Well, when I went, of course, it was Margaret Thatcher, and I had been involved little earlier in the production of the White Paper, in 1972, called "Education: A Framework for Expansion", and there's a chapter in that on the universities, and it will interest you to know that in 1971, Margaret Thatcher agreed to the statement going in, that by 1981, the age participation rate, in higher education, should be 22%. It is, I think now, 15%! [laughs] So she was the first person I had to deal with, and she gave me another little job to do, which was to solve the problem of the open-ended commitment on public funds, of Oxbridge college fees, not strictly part of the UGC Chairman's job, that was one job I had to do for her which was very ticklish indeed. But the next one was in the Labour Goverment, was a delightful man, who later became a Conservative, that was Reg Prentice, could not have been nicer to work with, who pulled out the stops, gave me some supplementary money in this year when we had 30% inflation, twice he had to fight for it, and he really did extremely well, and was extremely nice to deal with. But then he was followed, I think, by Fred Mulley, and then, of course, Shirley Williams.

Fred Mulley, you clearly didn't think so much of?

Oh, I liked Fred Mulley, because I'd known him years and years ago, you see, and also he was an MP for Sheffield, but we had our battles which were of the direct kind. Shirley was extremely good, she wanted to do all the right things. She had tried in a previous Ministry in the Sixties, when she was Minister in the Department of Education and Science, she had been good, but her problem was that she would go into detail on everything, and there isn't time for a Secretary of State to do that. And she did it out of a sense of conscientiousness, and she would have killed herself, but she understood certain fundamental things extremely well, like academic freedom, like the necessity for the teachers to have, in schools, to have that degree of autonomy which liberates their creative energies, rather than to be dictated to. But she also found all the irritations of trying to get people to move in the professions, because professions are like priesthoods, peoples' sets of values are set by those they hope to step into the shoes of, if I can end with a preposition! So they're all different in different ways, and, of course...

Wasn't Gerry Fowler...

He was a Minister, a Minister of Higher Education, and very good actually, far better than, for example, Crowther Hunt, who was a Fellow of Exeter, and later Rector. [laughs] I can remember, Crowther Hunt thought that he was going to attend meetings at the UGC. I always invited new Ministers, or new Secretaries of State, and sometimes, particularly invited them to come to particular elements, to come and hear our views, and to discuss with us, or to tell us what they thought the scenario was for the coming year, in all sorts of ways financially, because what I did lose, of course, I forgot to mention, was the Quinquennium, the day I walked in, and it was annual funding till then on, until 1978 when I left in a blaze of glory, because we'd got back, through Shirley Williams' efforts, a Triennium, and universities had a planning horizon, and they, over three years, had, in real terms growth, I think it was eight and a quarter per cent, which was, I went out a very happy person, and in 1979, of course, was the Election and all bets were off. But, to come back to whatever it was we were talking about,

Gerry Fowler, you were...

Gerry Fowler, was good, quick, intelligent, but Crowther Hunt was meddlesome, and would have liked to have come, as I say, to all UGC meetings, and I had to tell him, "No, it's not your business." Why buy a dog and bark yourself? I remember was the phrase I used! [laughs] And coming, as he did, from Keighley or Bingley, he understood!

And Gordon Oakes, again?

Oh yes, well, he was, he was involved in the college fees settlement, oh, he was very dull, very second-rate. Leeds [Liverpool] graduate in Law, who practised law in that area, I think, and nothing's been heard of him since. Oh yes, not an enormously impressive character.

I think there is at least one other area of policy which is important to say something about, which was to do with libraries.

Oh yes, that's a fascinating story. I told you, I think, how I became involved in it, didn't I?

Well, you told me about your earlier interest in libraries, but not really in National Library policy.

Oh well, that, I continued to be interested in libraries, I had been from childhood, of course, seen that they were great places, and great liberating places, in a way, books, and what you could get out of libraries, but I got drawn into them, first, I suppose, knowing something about how they worked, because I was, for years and years, Chairman of the Library, not Chairman, a member of the Library Committee, and briefly Chairman, at the University of Leeds, for the Brotherton Library, and used to be on all the appointment committees there, and Leeds was a great training ground for university librarians over many years.

That's a magnificent library, in fact?

Yes, you know it, do you?

Yes.

Yes. And so I got somewhat identified with it. Then I was asked to be Chairman of the Advisory Council on Scientific and Technical Information, I don't know why, I must've made some remark somewhere that the computer was going to revolutionise libraries. Oh, I know, and the old Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, saw this, and it had, within itself, an Office of Scientific and Technical Information, which really made research grants, to try and explore this particular area, and so I was asked if I would be Chairman of this body, and I got very interested in that aspect of it. Well, then, of course, I finished my term on that, I think I did a long term, and I resigned, I think, for some reason, I've forgotten what it was, I think I had other things to do that I hadn't time for it, and then suddenly, I was approached by Sir Herbert Andrew, who was the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Education and Science, which I remember very well, because it was on a Saturday, and I was, I had just handed in my report, the final report, on the swing away from science, that's an enquiry into...

You talked about it.

Yes, I talked about that. And did I tell you about being conned into taking on the library job?

No.

Oh, as Herbert Andrew, who was a very devout man, and when he retired from the DES, took Holy Orders, and had the cure of souls, he rang up on Saturday when I'd just finished this job on schools and was very tired, and said, "We're in a mess over libraries, which Government funds, they don't like us, we don't like them, we don't think they're getting value for money, and so on, and you're just the chap to sort it out." And I said, "Oh, no, Herbert, I won't, I certainly won't". This was 9.30 on

Saturday evening, and we went to bed, and I thought, "Well, I'll bet Herbert goes to Church tomorrow morning, and during the prayers, he comes back, having got some argument!" And at quarter to one, he did! I said to my wife, "Get on the other phone and listen to this!" Because I had thought, in the interim, on the Sunday morning, exactly how I was going to defeat him. He was a very nice man, I loved him dearly, and he was persistent, but I felt I couldn't take it on, and so I said, "Yes, Herbert?" And he said, "I'm sure, Fred, you've had an opportunity to think this over when you were a little less tired, and we ought to have another talk, so I'm telephoning you, I hope it's not inconvenient, etc., etc.. It isn't too close to lunch time is it?" I said, "No, Herbert, and I will do it." "Ah", he said, "I knew you would." I said, "Subject to four conditions", which I'd devised, any one of which would have been impossible for Government to accept. He said, "What are they?" I said, "Well, the Committee is restricted to five, and I nominate all the four members," you see, "I'll take soundings, but I know exactly the people I want. I'll represent Science and Technology, I want somebody in the Social Sciences, I want somebody in the Arts and Humanities, if possible, related to Fine Art, I would like a publisher, but not an avaricious publisher, but somebody who really understands that publishing is to serve people, and you know, I would like somebody from business, because the libraries are big affairs, but who has a love of books." "Oh yes", he said, "What next?" I said, "Well, I can't give you more than 15 months on this, and I must have all the resources to do it, without any questions being asked, services, you know, provided", and that was that. So I was fairly sure, you know, that no Secretary of State would accept this. All that Herbert said was, "Done!" I was landed beautifully, like a fish! So then we started on it very quickly, that led to the National Libraries Committe Report, which I should tell you has been translated into several languages, and I have the Japanese copy, which is a set book in all library schools, incredible really, because there wasn't a librarian amongst us, and we recommended the bringing together of five nationally supported libraries into the British Library, and the, also of course, made some observations on the need for a building, and so on, and a whole lot of other things. And then having done that, that was that, and I was doing other things, and I never noticed that there was a British Library Act in 1972, and that it began on the lst April, 1973. My first real awareness of it was, in 1978, Shirley Williams sent for me, and she wanted some advice about libraries anyway, and I had, by that time, started the thing which was

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 2 (part 10) Page 171 generally hated in the universities, called 'The Atkinson Report on University Libraries', did you ever hear of that?

Yes, I remember it, yes.

Which was a tactical manoeuvre on my part, to be able to persuade Government that we had very good arguments to ensure that we needed more capital money for university libraries, but in order to do that, I had to be, appear to be very hard-faced towards the universities, which attracted some flak, but when it was over and then we put £3.4m. into Manchester University Library, and one and a half million to Loughborough, and extended wherever it was, Newcastle, rebuilt Newcastle, of course, people began to see the force of it. But coming back to the 1978, Shirley Williams sent for me again, and said what was I going to do when I retired from the UGC? I was then 63, I think. I said, "Well, I'd thought", I knew I was going to be Chairman of the National Radiological Protection Board, I'd other interests, she said, "Well, would you like to be Chairman of the British Library Board?" And I can remember saying, "What is the British Library Board", and her reply was, "Well, you invented it, you ought to know!" Oh, I said, "You mean - yes, it's the British Library?" And we tended to call it the National Library, you see, and so I thought about it, and I thought, "Yes, that'll be jolly interesting", and so it was, and in particular of course, there was the problem of getting the building for it, which was a story in itself.

Well, perhaps we should move on to that story.

Well, what happened was, that the, when I went to the British Library Board, the Labour Government was still in power, and we, they'd just given authority for something like, I think it was #40m. worth of building, having got the site of the old goods yard, next door to St. Pancras Station, and then, of course, in the May was it? I think, 1979, there was the election of the Conservative Government, and that put a freeze on everything, and the problem then was that we had a site, but no prospect of the building, and a Government that would probably want to sell it off back, so it was important to get it anyway. The situation was desperate, with 3 million books in

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 2 (part 10) Page 172 wooden huts at Woolwich Arsenal, and, oh, all kinds of horror stories I could tell you about. But it was absolutely essential to have a new building, and to bring all these things together, and so I marshalled my arguments. The Minister of Arts and Libraries then, was a terrible person, Norman St. John-Stevas, who was terrified of Mrs. Thatcher, though he made snide remarks behind her back.

He was terrible in what sense?

Well, first of all he's a snob. Second, he's clever, without being wise, thirdly he's extremely vain, so that he believes that he got this library building, and he didn't at all, because on, I think it was the 16th September 1980, whilst he was skulking in his boudoir in his house in Montpelier Square, with Sir Harry Hookway, Laurence Brandes, Head of the Office of Arts and Libraries, and Mary Giles, who was then his private secretary, I was interviewing Mrs. Thatcher alone at Number 10 Downing Street, and telling her we must have it, for various reasons. And I knew she'd been got at, particularly by John Vaisey, the late John Vaisey, who, having been left-wing, swung right to the right, and had written to her, my friends had kept me informed of this, saying, "You don't need to build a library, everything can be put in microform now." So my approach to her was very simple, I mean, we knew one another well, you have to remember, and she was a graduate in Chemistry at Oxford, I said, "Well, Prime Minister", when she came out with these criticisms, "quite apart from anything else, as a scientist you will understand that even archival photographic copies are...have their limitations, and from time to time they have to be replaced and redone, and you lose a little bit every time you do this, because you only replace them if, in fact, they've deteriorated a little, and in any case", I said, "What are you going to do with some of the splendid manuscripts and things that we have? Are you going to destroy them, or what? Give them away? Sell them? I mean, it's going to look very odd if you do that. And," I said, "just take the facts of the matter." We then, was the case, "We had the equivalent of 16 million volumes, it cost 12p a page to produce an archival microform, multiply that up, you're at #480m.! And it will take 11,000 camera years." "What do you mean?" she said, "Well", I said, it would take 110 cameras, working flat out, 100 years to do it!" Which it does, it's a very simple sum to do. "Oh", she said, "they can put it on disc and tape", I said, "Yes you can, but

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 5 Side 2 (part 10) Page 173 unfortunately have their limited life too, and you must never go through in a tape room with a magnet, must you? You will understand this! It will wipe it all clean and so on, and they deteriorate anyway." So, I said, "The real thing, the cheapest thing is, of course, to prevent the deterioration of the paper, and for that, you need an environment which is pollutant free, at constant humidity and constant temperature.

[End of reel 5 side 2]

Reel 6 Side 1 (part 11)

So, you were just describing your conversation with Mrs. Thatcher.

Yes, of course, she had to agree that it wasn't practicable to use microforms, that simply postponed the problem, was very expensive, and the building was cheaper, but the building had to be something which was very heavily engineered, to provide good transport of books from where they were on closed access, to the people who needed them, all within constant humidity, constant temperature, and free of pollutants, and so it was best, really, to have a building in which the cost per square foot was quite considerable, and in total, of course, the holdings of the British Library are under 360 miles of shelving! You know, if you think of it in these terms, you can begin to see the size of the problem. The economic advantages were enormous, we had 15 buildings in London, and we would be left with two, at that stage - it's now going to be three, the third being the Indian Office and Library and Records, which I managed to get absorbed into the British Library, just as I got the National Sound Archive absorbed into the British Library, and those were other little minor successes, so to speak. Well, minor, I mean, there's the greatest collection of Orientalia anywhere, the Indian sub-continent, to get that in, is tremendous. And the thing really, was quite inescapable, it was the only way to go, so it was agreed. And then, of course, that was only agreed to a limited sum, so-called "Phase IA" "IAA" actually, and then there was the getting of IAB, and IC, all now approved, and keeping them in the programme, despite the vicissitudes of public expenditure control and so on. So it was a fight, but what I remember very clearly was, I was asked by Norman St.John- Stevas to go back immediately, to Montpelier Square, which I did, and I'd also arranged with the only other person who was privy to this conversation, which was her private secretary, we did it not in her office, but in a little study room she had in No. lO, to send a memo, quickly, of this, of course, minutes of meetings were always kept, and I have a copy of that. And I can remember telling Norman St. John-Stevas, who was dancing around on tenterhooks to know what was happening, I said, "It's all right, it'll come." Oh no, no, no, he wasn't satisfied. And we chatted, and had a cup of tea for a bit, and within half an hour the minute came over. That was it! And, I mean, I confess, I mean, quite often I go to St. Pancras because I come back from

Sheffield via London, or have to, and I look at that and I say, with, perhaps, I hope, justified pride, you know, " Si monumentum requiris, circumspice - there it is." And it's done something for the nation, it's given it something to be proud of. And it will transform the Euston Road, it's going to have a great big open piazza with an amphitheatre and statue around, you'll go into a great atrium area in which you'll be able to see how the Library is working, services and so on, you'll be faced at once by Roubiliac's statue of Shakespeare which is now in the King's Library, which was commissioned by Garrick for his home at Hampton. And you can't miss the impact of it all.

What will happen to the King's Library, then?

What will happen to it as a building, you mean?

As part of the British...

All that, all that will revert to the British Museum, which will then, you see, it's a domino, that will then be able to bring back the Museum of Mankind from behind Burlington Gardens, and that will be able to have a sensible, I mean, it's got masses of material there, which is very rarely seen, they can develop more galleries. The great round Reading Room, over which there was so much fuss, will not be touched at all, since it will be, you don't take down a building of that kind. It'll be a marvellous place, and will retain some of its old character, because some of those radial benches and the book stacks will be filled with some of the books which they have, of necessity to have, in the British Museum itself. I mean, you can't have prints and drawings without having books about them. You can't have ethnography without having some books about them around too. Just as the Natural History Museum has a marvellous Natural History Library, which I said, should not be disturbed when we were considering the British Library, so there will be books there too. So the character of it will be retained, but what irritated me, and I must make this absolutely explicit. Here was I, characterised as an illiterate scientist, defending the Arts and ensuring that the heritage of the printed and written word was secure for the future. And there were about 30 people who subscribed themselves, protestors, including

Isaiah Berlin, to his eternal shame, led by Hugh Thomas, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton, you may know of, another man swung right across the political spectrum, 19 of these people had never held reader's tickets in the British Library. What right had they to speak? And then because of his own enormous vanity, Hugh Thomas could never accept this as a defeat, he was to, from his position of power as being at the Conservative Policy Studies Centre, make sure that it was frustrated if he possibly could, and he invented this absurd notion of an underground railway from a storehouse in St. Pancras, so that things could be read in the building at Great Russell Street. Well, now, to take something out of a place where it's air-conditioned, through, into an un-air-conditioned tunnel, under the ground, ship it to another un-air- conditioned place, you know it, if you take a newspaper, wet it and dry it, the paper's destroyed, essentially, and that environmental stress of changing the temperature, changing the humidity, would have done more damage than keeping them wet all the time, almost! And I mean, he even went to the length of suggesting that sort of thing, quite apart from the fact that, of course, one doesn't know whether one could construct a tunnel of that kind! You don't know what's in the way. All sorts of things were encountered, as we know in the British Library building, which is eight floors above ground, but four massive floors below, and I'm afraid I had nothing but contempt for these people, and they ought not to be selfish, just wanting to have their own way, they ought to recognise that there are generations of scholars in the future, with interests in their fields, who will want what they have seen, and will want it to be produced to them, and taken care of in the meantime.

Would you like to say just a little more about the National Sound Archive?

Well, only, only a little, I mean, I've given the story of this, that I've told you today, to the National Sound Archive, together with some of the things about the British Libraries as I remember, because, of course, they have a natural interest in this. Well, of course, do you know Chris Roads?

Yes, of course I do, yes.

Yes. Well, that was one which, that was the British Institute of Recorded Sound, I think, wasn't it.

It was, yes.

And it was a natural, to come in, in my view, right from the beginning, but there were a whole lot of problems of sensitivities. The staff did not want to, I think, what did they call themselves? Was it Trustees, or Board of Management? I've forgotten now. I think they saw that there had to be a change there, a change of attitude, a change of financing, a bringing into proper discipline, not that books and tapes are the same medium, they're not, obviously, but the principles of custodial care are the same, though the techniques may be different. And it was also necessary to establish, in the public mind, in my view, this was what was very important, that the material, however recorded, ought to be all together. I mean, just as music and stamps are in the British Library, so sound ought to be there. Different if you're just collecting artefacts to illustrate a civilisation, that's a museum; or pictures, which is a gallery, or, well, not just pictures of course, metalwork, silverwork, and all kinds of things, but there is a kind of intellectual coherence which brings sound and printed word together. There are some anomalies. I mean, it might be more sensible to have put some of the birdsong in the Natural History Museum, but what you can do in the Natural History Museum is have display cabinets, in which you pick up a telephone and listen to the birdsong which goes with the bird in the cabinet, and that's all right, but what they have in the National Sound Archive tends to be that associated with particular expeditions, which have been collecting birdsong, or human song for that matter, or dialect, or, and I think it's right it should be there.

Was that quite difficult to negotiate then?

Oh, it had its, it had its awkwardness’s, but I think, at the end of the day, if you were to talk to Chris Roads and his friends, if, once they're brought into the British Library, it will be splendid, because they're out on a limb in Exhibition Road, and well, you know the house, and the house on the other side, it's very unsatisfactory. They, of course, little units like that love their independence. They can operate on their own,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 6 Side 1 (part 11) Page 178 and develop, not a bad thing, they develop a kind of collegiality, which at it's best can be very good, and at its worst, of course, can be corrupting.

Now how long were you, then, with this...

With the British Library?

Seven years, I think, yes.

Seven years.

As Chairman, yes.

So during this period, you also published something on universities and the National...

Oh yes, that's right. That was because the Fulbright Commission asked me to do this. Have you seen that little book?

I haven't read it, no.

It's not published in this country, because if it were, I would be a refugee!

Why is that?

Well, because it's a frank book, you see, for North Americans who are coming to this country, about British Universities, and as they were then, and it meant I had to give them, really, very frank advice about the differences between them, and stand back and look at them as if I were an outsider, and this is, of course, where having had such a lot of outside research students, in particular, and having worked in the States, it was a great advantage. No, that was just a small, well, almost pamphlet, to help people who are thinking of coming to the United Kingdom, about what kind of institutions they were, and periodically, I also, when the new batch of Fulbright and Marshall Scholars come in, the man who runs them, who's a retired Naval Commander, when I

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 6 Side 1 (part 11) Page 179 say runs them, who acts as a kind of friend and pastoral guide to them, I quite often asked him to talk to them, and, because I, I will say to them, what will be regarded as an affront to the whole system. In Oxford, for example, I will say, "Now, don't expect too much of your tutor, you are not going to get graded every week on your essays. You will have to learn to understand the code in which he addresses you if you want to know your progress. And you won't get continuous assessment in the sense that you understand it. Nor will you get quizzes." You see, all those things needed to be explained to them, and in the course of this, I have to say, quite frankly, that I think some of these things, not the ones I've mentioned, are outmoded and you do them better. Which would be regarded here as heresy! So I enjoy life, as you can see!

So now, since you finished with the British Library, and you've also carried on with radiology, I'm not sure ...

Well, yes, that's really, I was Chairman of the National Radiological Protection Board, and that came about simply because they were looking for a new Chairman, and in a sense, I was natural, because a lot of my research had been, I knew about it, and I had, in fact, been over-exposed myself at Chalk River, so I had a vested interest in protecting the public. And that I greatly enjoyed, although there again, we ran into difficulties of one kind or another, but it was quite interesting, you know, suddenly people find in Windscale that the service, that plutonium was being blown into their houses from the sand, or that it was not desirable to walk on the sand, do you remember that scare?

Yes, I do.

Well, at that period, I can remember Patrick Jenkin was Secretary of State for the Environment, he used to get very concerned about all this, and ring me up, twenty minutes at a time, and I would say, "Well, you know, we've got the situation thoroughly understood, and I just advise you not to be alarmed. I mean, it's a public relations problem you've got, not a scientific problem of any magnitude." And then,

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 6 Side 1 (part 11) Page 180 of course, the NRPB acquitted itself superbly over Chernobyl, and, as well as also about radon in houses you possibly know that story too.

No, I don't know that story.

Oh well, first of all, what one tries to do in the National Radiological Protection Board, is to give advice to Government, or anybody with responsibilities for handling radiation, what to do, and to advise Government, particularly, on the statutory limits if there are any, and principles which should be applied to protect the public at work or at home. And the way in which people are exposed to radiation, of course, is an absolutely classic case of cost-benefit analysis. You don't think twice about having radiation if they're going to try and see whether you've got a bowel cancer, or when you want a tooth examined, and there, without knowing it, you are saying, "Well, I will take any risk from the radiation, because of the benefit I will get from it." And people never think about it this way. Equally, they're perfectly content to cross the road every day, which is a very risky procedure, but they will worry about small doses of radiation, because, as they think they're being exposed to it from malefactors of one kind or another, and usually categories as "The Government", which wants to have great big piles which are going to create round them, islands of leukaemia, the problem about radiation is that it's invisible, it's impalpable, you can't smell it, you, and yet it touches at two of the most sensitive areas, it induces cancers, and it also, in large doses, has an effect on progeny, and so people are terrified, who know little about it. What they do not understand is, is that if you construct a pie chart as to where the exposure to radiation comes from, most of it is natural. Much of it is fall- out from previous bomb tests, a good third of it is through medical and dental use, exposure, this is averaged over the population, tiny sort of fraction of a percent comes from industrial things, nuclear piles which are used in the power programme, and that's it. They also find it very difficult to cope with the woolly answers that they necessarily get, because exposure today, may produce an effect which is expressed 30 or 40 years hence, but only a very tiny fraction of the people exposed, because there are repair mechanisms in nature, which negate small doses, so it's very difficult to correlate an event which happens now, with a cancer which appears 30 or 40 years later. The only way you can approach it is statistically, and this is what leads to such a

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 6 Side 1 (part 11) Page 181 great part of the argument. If we had a full understanding of the causal chain between exposure and where it happens in the body, what then happens to all the parts of the cells, the organs which are made up of these cells, and what goes wrong, and why it develops a cancer, which is really uncontrolled growth of cells. If we knew all that, the problem would be so much easier, because you'd have this direct causal chain, you'd be able to point to the positions at which you could say, "That consequence was produced by that event." Moreover, you could identify it in the intermediate phases and stop it. But we're not in that stage, and that's what makes it very difficult. But if you try and get people to think about some of these things, you see, they will sometimes beg you to take action, which is not in their interests. Radon in houses, the case. Radon is a naturally occurring radio-active element released by the radium in the earth's crust. It's a gas, it's invisible, it's like helium, but very heavy. It has two daughter elements which are alpha-emitters. Now if those are emitted by the ground, and in this country they're particularly emitted in Cornwall and Aberdeenshire. And if you build a house on this, what you find rising through your house is radon, and therefore your exposure to this particular natural cause is much higher than if you were living, shall we say, in Oxfordshire. But if you tell a person in Cornwall that this is the position, your house, you know, nine cases out of ten, they will say, "Well, don't tell anybody." And why? Well, because in our capitalist society, they don't want to lose the value of their house, and so then they're faced with the problem of, Is Government going to compensate such people, and to help them to move, and so on? What is the risk? Or what other means can you adopt to protect them? And there are ways in which you can do it, you can put an impermeable film of material, and that brings you up against another point. I've got the window open there now, but most houses now will have, made great attempts, in order to conserve energy, to prevent heat losses, and to prevent flow of fresh air in, well, you can see that there is one thing, saving energy, which is in conflict with reducing exposure to radon! And I'm afraid life is like this! And many of the problems which society is going to face in the future, are going to have a considerable element, scientific element, to them, and one of the reasons why I am so concerned about science education in schools and elsewhere, is that I don't think society, a democratic society, can make wise decisions unless it at least has the elements of comprehension on the one hand, on the other hand, the scientific community is not making every attempt to raise public

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 6 Side 1 (part 11) Page 182 understanding of science and its implications, because scientists are, to use a phrase of an American friend of mine, "the cartographers of the future". They show you the options which are open, which nature permits, and man's use of nature permits you to go, but it's not for the scientists to choose which you can go, they can say, "You can go there, and by a variety of routes there are these snags, which you go, but you must make the decision." The trouble we have, very often, is that people don't understand what these are. I mean, the Greenhouse Effect is one. Svante Arrhenius, a physical chemist in Sweden, said in 1876 that "the earth's temperature is maintained by these gases up here, if we go on burning coal which will increase the carbon dioxide, then the temperature regime of the world will be altered." I met his grandson, who now works in the World Bank, in Washington, last September, when with Brian Flowers and Lord Calver, and Lord Shelfield, we constituted a delegation of this Lords' Committee on the Greenhouse Effect, which went to the States, and I couldn't help talking with Svante's grandson, you know, I said, "Look, here we are, 1896 your grandfather said this. It is 1967, that I began to talk about it in this country. And it's 1989 that we begin to be conscious that we've got to do something about it." Meanwhile, the problem is accelerating, you know, and whose fault is it? I mean, you can't blame the scientists. Everybody thinks that you should have the public as whistle-blowers on the scientist, in fact, the reverse is the situation. It's the scientists who'll be the whistle-blowers for the public, whether it's lead in fuel, which was a Professor of Chemistry at Reading, whether it's national, whether it's radiological protection or whatever. So I've been very lucky, I've had a very interesting life and it still goes on.

Yes, I was going to say, you don't really seem to be retired at all!

I'm not at all! No. And I don't intend to be. I mean, I'm now involved in another interesting thing. You'll see that the Arts Council is being recommended by the Wilding Committee to absorb the Crafts Council. Well, I have an interest in this because I was a member of the Crafts Council, I thought it was a rotten body and said so! [laughs] But, putting it in the Arts Council I don't know whether it'll do good, unless there's a fundamental change, because I see this, not just from an administrative point of view, but I see it as President of the Society of Designer Craftsmen, where

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 6 Side 1 (part 11) Page 183 there are real craftsmen, whereas the people who man the Crafts Council, are people who make beautiful looking chairs which you cannot sit on! If you see what I mean! The people who are designer craftsmen who are earning their living this way, and trying to make sure that the craft is preserved, in a proper way, are earning their living, they make chairs that are not only good to look at, but they sell, you know! And they're not just interested in things which are beautiful shapes, but are not useful, and their belief is that, like any good craftsman, you ask what a thing has to do, and then you make it to do it, in the best way you know, which is congruent with the materials, virtues and it's limitations, and they produce some marvellously beautiful things in consequence. Whether it's in metalwork, or woodwork, or painting, or whatever. And what I cannot bear is these arty crafty people, you see, who, who'll produce you, and they do it with modern materials as well as with old materials, they will use plastic because of the particular properties of plastics, to produce things which are full of great curves, but they don't give, you know. Well, you must know what I mean!

I do, absolutely, yes.

And I can't bear that. And I've just, I keep giving up jobs, and I tried on December llth, I told them that I was going to give up the Chairmanship of the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, and I warned them it was going to be at this meeting, and I did, and I groomed my successor, who was a London banker, and will be very good for them, he's Treasurer of the School, and I was really very deeply moved by the fact that I expected to be appointed an Honorary Fellow of the School, you know, that's the ration for the job as it were, but to my astonishment, they'd done a canvas of opinion throughout the School, and it's Council and elsewhere, and the Office of President is vacant with the death of Peter Medawar and his predecessor was the Duke of Edinburgh, those are the only two Presidents they've had, they asked me if I would become President. So I keep my connection without the responsibility, which is very nice, and...

Could I ask you, I mean, out of all these many different things you've done, I mean, which would you think you were most proud of?

I hope I'm not proud in any sense, in any of them. I feel privileged to have had a part to play in a lot of them, but in terms of personal satisfaction, which is turning your thing around, I think the personal satisfaction that I would put highest amongst it, is the relationship which has been lifelong friendship with so many students and colleagues. I mean, I have a world friendship league, so to speak, if you like. If I am looking for other things, I think I would like, like it to be thought that I had defended some universal values, which I think are civilised values. I would like to think that I, I mean, obviously I've made many mistakes, I must have made legions of mistakes, I would like it to be thought I acted for the best of motives, and that I wasn't afraid to speak my mind. If I'm thinking of actual tangible things, I suppose the British Library must take pride of place, I mean that will stand there forever, and be useful to thousands, hundreds of thousands of people in the future. I think the Nottingham and the medical education is another thing I'm proud of, in the sense I've described pride. Probably my research has had its moments, but, and as you can see, I've got all sorts of medals and things. At the end of the day, that will sink into its place, and probably turn out to be quite trivial, because it will seem to be obvious, like so much scientific research, you do it, and it's marvellously exciting, and it's a breakthrough, but if it's good, it gets lodged in the general fabric of the subject, and your name drifts away from it. I mean, the principle of heats and entropies of polymerisation 40 years ago, is in the text books now, as part of the sort of ordinary literature. People not realising that in 1947, there was a phenomenon which led to it, which was totally un- understood by anybody, and Ken Ivin and I found that explanation one weekend. So that, and that's right and proper that it should happen that way, because science is not only objective knowledge, but it's public knowledge, and they ought not to be, I mean, there are great names in the subject, who would not be denied this, I mean, people like James Clark-Maxwell, and Einstein and Newton and Leibnitz and so on, oh, of course, but for the vast majority of us, we are just toilers in the vineyard and you have a little advance, and then it gets absorbed.

And can I ask you a similar question about your life as a whole? I mean, what would you, could you say which have been the worst and the best things about your life?

I've had a very good marriage, which you've probably detected. Oh, I've loved being in the academic life in many ways, it's marvellous. I think, I think I shall always be grateful for having been brought up in the North of England, there's less pretension. People'll take you for what you are, they'll forget about all these other things. I told you the story of going into the corner shop, didn't I?

Mm.

And there's a kind of acceptance of people for what they are there, which I find very refreshing, and I, I don't think, I mean, I live in the South for convenience, I don't live here because I belong here, and I hope I, you know, if I, if I'm, as I hope, cremated, would be for me to decide, I hope the ashes will be scattered on Hallam Moors, not on, not round here, no sir! [laughs] No, I, that's...

And what would you say were the worst things? Anything that you regret particularly, about your life?

Oh yes, I mean, there are masses and masses of regrets. First of all, that I did not apply myself where I should've done, and later I discovered that I lacked things. I ought to have worked in mathematics at school, which I knew I could've done, and my maths master knew I could, but I couldn't bear him, it was a personality I didn't like, and that was a foolish thing to have done, and I ought to have had the sense to go on with it. They're mainly a lack of resolution things. Ordinary human faults, I think. I sometimes wonder whether I was not competitive enough. I was always hard- working, but the hard-working I think, was not just in order to get on, which was very important when I was young, I mean, it was the only means of getting forward, but I, I found throughout life, perhaps this is an interesting lesson, that things that you don't want to do, if you start to do them, quite often become interesting, so that work, in a sense, generates its own enthusiasm, and that was a great lesson which I think I learnt. You get stuck in and it's no good floating around on top of something and saying, as some people do, "Oh, Mrs. Beetonis trivial", or whatever. Most things to which any human being has given some attention, cannot be dismissed that way. So that whilst I'm, in a sense, a hard-nosed physical scientist, I have never subscribed to the view

© British Library Board http://sounds.bl.uk Lord Dainton interviewed for City Lives C409/028 Reel 6 Side 1 (part 11) Page 186 that sociology is despicable because it's not a hard science. It's always been my view that if Thorsten Veblen and Max Weber, who are not contemptible minds, are prepared to give their life to this sort of thing, there's something in it, and I'd better learn about it, you know, Daniel Bell, whom I greatly respect, likewise. So I find myself intolerant of people who are dismissive of subjects, and equally intolerant, as I used the word before, pretentious to those who pretend that they have the secret of everything. But I still firmly believe in...at the end of the day, if you're looking at human beings, there's the world of cognition, which will help them to discover all of their relationship between the, themselves and the physical world, and the biological world outside them, there is the affective side of their nature, which relates to other things not so expressible, and which are experiential in character, and if you don't manage to get these things in a reasonable balance, you produce tensions within people, but what is absolutely clear, is that these are complementary, and therefore I will have no truck with the notion of people who take the view that they're either scientists, or they're humanists, that seems to me absolute balls, to put no finer point upon it! And that the people who talk in this way, are doing a great disservice. It also follows from this that I think the scientists have a natural advantage over everybody else, in that, having gone down their route, which is a terribly demanding one in time and effort, it's a very hard discipline. They at least have retained the language of verbal communication, and they've retained their eyes and their ears, and they can go into this other world, whereas if you start off by going in the other world, and break it at 13 or 14 from science, it's enormously difficult, impossible for most people to get back. In the first place, if you don't have mathematics, that's a gate, it shuts a gate for you into the whole world of science in universities, doesn't it, and I think, now this is not meant to be a disparaging remark, but it's the easiest way in which I can put it to you. I think the people who are, in a British educational system, who go on the Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences side, are more culturally deprived than the scientists. I mean, I have been able to read these books I've mentioned, but you couldn't pick up, well, let's take 'The Blind Watchmaker', just to take a popular book, or Stephen Hawking’s new book, for me, that begins to be comprehensible. For you I suspect it is very very difficult, if not impossible, isn't it?

Yes. No, you're right, I mean, I do agree with you, that as a, an Arts person whose science education stopped too early, I mean, I do feel at a disadvantage, yes.

Yes. That's why, one of the reasons why I've always pressed for a broad span of studies to school leaving, and if I could've brought that about, I would be really pleased.

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