Why we keep remembering Diana

With the twentieth anniversary of her death there's been an inevitable round of revisiting the life of Diana, Princess of Wales and once more revisiting her death. And naturally many wonder why we do this - surely this isn't the British way? Shouldn't we all have moved on?

But this misses much of the point of that strange week twenty years ago. In many ways it was the closest the UK has come to a revolution in my time. People were sad but also angry. And in particular they were angry at being told what was the "proper" way to do things.

At the time it manifested itself in the uproar about the lack of a flag at half-mast at Buckingham Palace. This was down to "protocol". But much of the public neither knew this protocol nor cared for it. Diana had broken the mould in many ways in life and a large section of the public would not accept old moulds in death. I was one of many in the crowds outside Westminster Abbey and remember the surge of emotion when Earl Spencer delivered his eulogy. The massive applause was the crowd agreeing that the old ways would not return.

That act of rebelling against protocol and tradition has continued. And by its nature people who still commemorate Diana's life and death are not going to meekly stop when someone tells them how things are supposed to be done.

Diana's death was also perhaps the last time the country seemed to be as one. This was probably the last big news story before the internet really took off and gave a platform for alternate and dissident voices. Instead the broadcast and print media still gave most of us the news and there were few ways to say "Not all of us!" Thus for perhaps the final time a single mass mentality could truly drive events. And it rejected traditional steering.

Where Were You When You Heard Margaret Thatcher Had Resigned?

In response to Iain Dale's Diary: Where Were You When You Heard Margaret Thatcher Had Resigned?, I was at school that day. My class heard the news from our Latin teacher when we went in after morning break - she had heard the infamous "Thatchy Pog" weather forecast on the radio.

My entire family was staunchly supporting Michael Heseltine - indeed my father had a letter published in the Daily Telegraph in support of him - but I can't remember feeling any particularly strong feelings about the news. Maybe we were all stunned - none of us had lived under any other Prime Minister - or not sufficiently following politics to care hugely (east Surrey was not a place where children were brought up from birth to blindly hate Thatcher).

And so there it is - not the most spectacular memory of that day. But as for some more recent resignations...

The "Where Were You When..." Meme

Normally I'm not one to do these, but Mars Hill: The "Where Were You When..." Meme has explicitly tagged me so here goes. So here is where I was when the following events happened:

Princess Diana's death - 31 August 1997

I was actually asleep and only found out when my mother came into the room at about eight o'clock that day, on the phone to her mother who had just told her the news. Initially I was confused as I thought I heard her say "the Prince of Wales" and I remember commenting that it solved some big dilemmas the monarch was facing. The she clarified and I turned on the news to get the details. I remember then going to church that morning where the congregation was even larger than normal. The rest of the day was spent mainly watching the news coverage of everything going on and the growing hostility to the Royal Family on that day. During the following week I was back at school in London and the conversations amongst strangers on the tube were clear that something big was happening.

Margaret Thatcher's resignation - 22 November 1990

I was at school when my class came in after (I think) the morning break to be told by our Latin teacher who had heard both the announcement and the famous weather forecast of "Thatchy Pog". I was stunned but not entirely surprises, as my family was entirely pro Heseltine. Later on the day on the second ballot I did an opinion poll of my class and found John Major leading to Douglas Hurd and I was the only pro Heseltine person! But I was young at the time.

Attack on the twin towers - 11 September 2001

I was working in the coffee shop at Marks and Spencer in Canterbury and didn't find out anything until after I finished my shift at about six that evening. On the way home I bumped into a local councillor who told me the World Trade Center had been destroyed and my reaction was sheer disbelief. I then made it home to the flat I was staying in to find my flatmate who told me and I saw the footage of the towers falling for myself. Having been up the towers only the previous summer I was amazed at the devastation. It took time to sink in that the world was entering a war.

England's World Cup Semi Final v Germany in - 4 July 1990

I can't remember this one at all! My family was never particularly keen on football so we weren't watching or following it.

President Kennedy's Assassination - 22 November 1963

I was waiting to be born.

First Political Memory

First off apologies for my silence recently as several other matters are currently occupying my time. Normal service should be resumed in October.

In response to a tagging by Iain Lindley on his First Political Memory, I've been wracking my brains for my own.

The first I had direct experience of was the 1982 Kenyan coup attempt which happened when my family was visiting. I wasn't even two years old but have very vague memories of hearing shooting in the street. But I can't remember anything else about it.

Of the later events it's harder. The problem is that whilst I can remember a lot of the very biggest names of the mid 1980s - Thatcher, Reagan, Gorbachev - on television a lot, I can't remember particular incidents (and those three, together with Kohl and Mitterand were all in power from early 1985 to early 1989 so memories of a summit conference can't be narrowed down by who was in and out of power at the time). I'm too young to remember the miners' strike (and grew up in a part of the world far away from mines).

So I guess my earliest substantial memory is of the 1987 general election. I remember the various leaders on television (apart from the Little David who was utterly forgettable) and being most impressed by David Owen, whilst finding Margaret Thatcher unpleasant and scary. But that was the point wasn't it? Thatcher was like essential medicine - it didn't feel nice at the time, it wasn't attractive to take but it did all the good that was needed.

I remember going with my father when he voted and then onto a bash for party workers afterwards. There was no sign of the MP, but then Archibald Hamilton was one of those arrogant MPs found in all main parties who took the constituency for granted and rarely showed his face, despite it being on a direct thirty minute train journey from Westminster!

After that I can remember more and more events - the fall of the Berlin Wall, Nelson Mandela coming out of jail, the downfall of Thatcher (in which my family were staunchly pro Heseltine - on the morning of the second ballot I was the only person in my class supporting him) and more.

I'm not one for tagging others so I'll throw it open to my readers - what are your first political memories?

From Vision to Reality

Recently whilst commuting to and from the campus I've been reading the history of my alma mater, From Vision to Reality: The Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury by Graham Martin (the University's first Dean of Natural Sciences and second Deputy Vice Chancellor). The book is a fascinating insight into the origins of the University and some of its distinctive ideas, several of which had either been modified or fallen away by the time I first started there (nearly a decade after it was published).

Much of the focus is understandably on the 1960s, showing how the plans came together, how Canterbury was one of several proposed sites, all with ardent backers and developing plans. When Martin writes that the proposal for a University of Thanet was "furthest along the road" my reaction is that so is Thanet! One of the reasons why I opted for Kent in the end is its location - the view of Canterbury is gorgeous (especially at night when the Cathedral is lit up) and I wonder if I would have wound up going to Thanet had it been sited there instead. The university's original strange name is also explained - at the time the practice in the UK was to name universities after the town whose boundaries they were located in, but the Canterbury campus straddled the border between the-then county borough (a unitary authority in case you're wondering) of Canterbury and the jurisdiction of Kent County Council. With sponsors of the project coming from both "town" and "county" there was much debate and the Executive Committee of the Sponsors was split 50:50 between "University of Canterbury" and "University of Kent at Canterbury". (The chairperson declined to use the casting vote as he was clearly from the county - I wonder if this is the origin of the cautious attitude to casting votes that is particularly strong at the University.) Then it became clear that it would not be possible to have the same name as another university in the Commonwealth. The name persisted for decades even when expansion opened up a site at Chatham, but was finally officially changed to the simpler "University of Kent" three years ago (I think my MA graduation was the last under the old name) when the Medway campus was established. By this time local government changes had replaced the county borough of Canterbury with a much larger district, but Medway is now within a unitary authority! One wonders if this caused any headscratching...

One of the more radical ideas that stands out is the original academic plan to have no Departments below the Faculties and to make all degrees to an extent inter-disciplinary, with the first year by and large being a faculty wide program of study. The idea soon fell to pieces because of problems in individual subjects - for instance new students reading Maths often hadn't taken Chemistry at A-Level and vice versa, meaning that a lot of catch-up work would be required - and eventually the drift towards individual Departments for each subjects and specialised first years developed. Martin speculates that it would take a fundamental restructuring of the way A-Levels are operated for such an inter-disciplinary approach to work. That said the idea is not totally dead - in my first year we were only required to pick half our modules in our subjects and encouraged to take wilds in the other half. And the Open University has a similar interdisciplinary drive in at least the Humanities with most of its BA degrees including the course An Introduction to the Humanities as a core element.

It's also interesting to note that the University's Classics and Theology teaching seems to have come about because of external decisions rather than a specific desire to offer those subjects at the outset. The man recruited to be the first Dean of Humanities, Guy Chilver, was a Classicist from Oxford and so that committed the university; whilst similarly the first appointed Master of Eliot College, Alec Whitehouse, was a Theologian from Durham. I found it surprising that there was ever any doubt about teaching Theology, given the location, but it seems that from the start there was a strong secular drive in certain quarters. The University's religious connections have never been great - the choice of the Archbishop of Canterbury as Visitor was more in mimic of Durham (the University that Kent seemed to copy the most) whilst the view of the Cathedral from Eliot and Rutherford dining halls that was once cited as "evidence" that the institution as anti-semitic by an article in the Jewish Chronicle was frankly the obvious only choice and clearly preferable to the alternative of a gasometer. Holding the graduation ceremonies in Canterbury Cathedral has provided their main redeeming feature.

One of the interesting, and at times controversial, aspects of Kent has been its "collegiate" system. Of all the UK universities that I'm aware of with "colleges" (the others being Wales, London, Cambridge, Oxford, Durham, Lancaster, York), Kent has always struck me as having the weakest. Reading this book it's easy to understand what went wrong. The original idea was to combine accommodation and teaching in single buildings as a means to cut down on dead space, and at the same time to create vibrant academic communities. As note above there were planned to be no Departments, so the College would be unrivaled as the right sized unit for students' loyalties. Each was expected to have about 600 students and equivalently proportioned staff, with about half living in the college itself (and the rest in local accommodation arranged by the university) and all eating and studying there. Every student would be allocated a tutor to oversee them (remember that in 1965 most undergraduates would be legally below the age of majority) and the Master of the College was expected to be a significant figure in their university lives. It also seems that the early view of the colleges was almost like a boarding school with separate houses. However the plan quickly fell apart.

The university's expansion was always planned to be one of the fastest for a new university, but funds for new colleges did not keep up and the result was that only four were ever built. In later years when there was further demand for student accommodation in Canterbury the solution was not to build further colleges but to build non college accommodation. As a result the proportion of students who actually live within the College walls is ever smaller. The hopes that students living out would stay on campus, studying in their colleges, until dinner rapidly proved to be futile. More and more operations and facilities have shifted from the Colleges to the central university over the years, whether alumni relations, the tutorial system, accommodation services, catering (with some dining halls closed and even completely dismantled) and so forth, whilst the abolition of College amenities fees has removed the student's direct stake in their College. With very few college wide activities or competitions, as well as the rise of the Departments, it is little wonder that very few students or later alumni feel much loyalty to their college. (And to make it even more absurd, many graduates who have returned for postgraduate study have been placed in a different college suggesting that even the University isn't too fussed.) Indeed I now understand that accommodation is allocated irregardless of one's college - one wonders what purpose the structure serves at all now.

(I do remember that in my MA year the Students' Union Executive were at one point asked by the University to write a report on what students felt about the collegiate system. It rapidly proved the point that the view a committee will reach can often be preguessed by its ex-officio membership - containing all of the Presidents of the Junior College Committees amongst others. The SU President (Alix Wolverson) was a former President of the JCC in the one College where some semblance of collegiate feeling still resided and where there was a big event put on by the JCC. So she decided at the outset that we would tell the University why colleges were a good thing and told dissenters - mainly myself - that we should be "constructive" - i.e. agree with her personal opinion.)

One other chapter of interest is the one on how the University has coped with crises. Starting with the collapse of the old Canterbury to Whitstable Railway tunnel, destroying part of the Cornwallis Building in the process, Martin proceeds to look at some of the poor press coverage the university has received and explain the problems (one stemmed from a return for league tables inadvertently giving the grades for graduate students not graduating students and this error proved impossible to correct in time). He also briefly looks at some of the student protests. There is a widespread myth of the 1960s and 1970s as being an era of student protest when students were seeking to change the world, yet the protests at Kent seem to have been by and large because of either university or government education policies. Given the paternalistic attitude that the University had in the early years one can well understand the protests as a consequence of broader clashes in society, and some of the issues would doubtless elicit support today (e.g. seemingly unfair expulsions, unreasonable financial charges) even if the vehicle for expressing dissent would be different. However some show the change in attitudes - who today would object to the idea that students should be prevented from graduating if they still have outstanding debts with the university?

Whilst this book never pretends to be an objective history, and as a UKC publication has the possible stigma of an "authorised account" it does nevertheless make for a fascinating and illuminating read.

One year on

Inevitably there's one event dominating the blogosphere today. Amongst the many blogs discussing it are, in no particular order, Anorak, Keeping the tab on the tabloids, Slugger O'Toole, Dodgeblogium, An Englishman's Castle, Politics through the eyes of a teenager, Jo's Journal, Mars Hill, Kerron Cross - The Voice of The Delectable, Take back the voice, Paul Linford and Iain Dale.

My own memories of the day are mixed. The night before a friend had been crashing at my flat as he had been working too late to return home to Coventry. I think this was the first time I alerted him to existence and usefulness of the Gospel Oak to Barking Line which allowed him to travel from Holloway Road to Forest Gate (the stations are Upper Holloway and the misleadingly named Wanstead Park). Otherwise his route would have taken him via the Piccadilly through King's Cross and the Circle Line at Liverpool Street. The next morning he set off at about 08:20 and I got a bite to eat, then flicked on the television at about 09:00 to catch up with what was going on. Later I planned to go down to Mile End to do some work in the library.

It was around this time that reports were coming in of widespread problems across the tube due to "power surges". I thought to myself how lucky it was that I'd told Joe about the railway line, otherwise he might get caught in a tunnel (the GOBLIN mainly runs on viaducts above the street). I then went to tell my flatmate there were problems as, unusually, he had to go into central London that day en route to a course somewhere in Reigate and he might need to leave some extra time. Then I heard the television announce the problems were more serious and there had been explosions.

I sat down at my computer (next to the television) and opened up a mass MSN window with every single contact I had online. For the next few hours I just stayed in the flat, alternating between catching up on the television, making phonecalls to check friends were okay and sharing information online.

Maybe it's my degree, but I think I'd realised before the announcement that this was a terrorist attack. The "power surge" story just rang hollow - I couldn't understand why several explosions had occurred in very different parts of the network all at once. No this was clearly a co-ordinated attack by terrorists on London.

Much of the rest of the day passed in a blur. My flatmate and I set things up to use one phoneline for the internet and the other for phonecalls so we could keep in contact. I received a few "are you okay?" calls and sent out some emails. My flatmate had his course rescheduled because of the travel problems.

The thing that worried me the most was the number of people I knew who either worked in Bloomsbury or who could have been on one of the trains hit. Whilst the actual attack hadn't shocked me as I could remember the last IRA campaign all too well (at the time I was at school in the City and we regularly had bomb alarm drills), the possibility of those I knew being caught in them was concerning. Fortunately I was able to reach everyone eventually, but the difficulties of ringing to and from mobiles that day made many anxious.

It was one of those days when one felt London had pulled together. The emergency services were magnificent in their response and there was a real sense that all communities were united. What was saddening was to hear people like George Galloway being given airtime so they could dance on the victims' graves and use the event as an excuse to make their usual rants. Fortunately very few listened.

One year on I'm not sure much has changed. Maybe people are a little more cautious about abandoned packages and cases but has London stayed together? Current tensions and fears, especially both towards and amongst the Muslim community, enhanced by the notorious innocent shootings, have shown that the metropolis is still deeply divided and there are times when I think things are getting further apart. That would be to let the terrorists win.

The Tory Monday Club

As I promised earlier, here are my brief recollections of the Tory Monday Club from my days as an undergraduate at the University of Kent. I've left names out as, with one exception, I have no idea where they are now.

Many years ago now the Kent University Conservative Association experienced several of the problems that all political societies experience at one point or another, albeit altogether at once. In the 1999/2000 year membership increased hugely (to the irritation of the now deceased Kent Labour Club who drifted into extinction over the next two years) but with it came a number of individuals who were to cause problems. Amongst them was one who frankly fitted the stereotype of the tweed jacket Tory (and I use that word deliberately) with ideas that even people in Lord Salisbury's Conservative party would have been ashamed to be associated with. However he rarely expressed them at first.

When the annual round of officer elections came up that January we had the unenviable situation of two strong candidates for Chairperson. One was the above mentioned, the other was the sitting Secretary. The election threatened to turn into the classic "should the society be primarily a political force or a good political/social body" that almost all political societies face at one point. The meeting was literally divided down the middle - the first ballot tied. After two hours of discussing how to break a tie (no-one in those days seemed to realise there is such a thing as drawing lots - it's good enough for deciding control of Crawley council!). Eventually the tie was broken against him but over the next six months the division in the society continued. The loser was not especially gracious at times and at one point over the next few months went and caused a lot of deliberate confusion by setting up a dining club and making no attempt to dispel confusion.

For some reason I forget now we had to have another set of elections that June. This time round there was a suspicious influx of new members signing up just before the meeting (the rules of qualifying to vote were changed not long after) as well as a mixture of mud throwing and charm offensives. The same candidates stood and this time round the guy won. Over the vacation it rapidly became clear what a big mistake this had been.

All membership organisations require members to survive and university societies especially need to recruit new members every year, with so many existing ones graduating. Nearly everybody understood this and several months of preparation for the new year had been made, including getting a number of high profile speakers as well as the more mundane preparation for the Freshers' Fair. But the new Chairperson was one of the few who didn't, believing instead that the society should be a handful of political obsessives "who are committed", believing that they would seek the society out. Matters were not further helped by his decision not to return to Canterbury until the day of Freshers' Fair itself, lying that he couldn't travel beforehand. (This was the time of the fuel protests but he was traveling by train.) Consequently other officers had to put the whole thing together and it went well, apart from the Chairperson turning up in the middle of things and wanting to start displaying flags that a lot of us were uncomfortable with.

Subsequently over the next few weeks divisions and feuds continued, even though our membership was so large we were having problems finding a room that could seat everyone. What the new members made of all this I'm not sure but there were a lot of nasty things said and some of the meetings were uncomfortable.

It also didn't help that our external image was being damaged. The height came at a students' union general meeting. Some of us had tabled a motion for a campaign for better lighting on campus. But during the meeting the Chairperson and his little coterie of mates called quorum and invalidated the meeting because they wanted a laugh. It provoked a lot of hostile media coverage, both on and off campus, and brought things to a head. A lot of members who weren't at the meeting were given a very distorted account of things.

Matters came to a head at the society meetings afterwards. There was a lot of arguing and one resignation at the first. Then by the second the following week we had the spectacles of the local party agent turning up, most of the officers (myself included) agreeing to a joint resignation if we couldn't force the hands and the announcement that the Chairperson was leaving to form a new group, not affiliated to the students' union, that would be more political. A good number left with him.

Over the next few weeks it became increasingly clear to a few of us just what "the Tory Monday Club" actually was, though some of the members were still ignorant, having joined out of ties of friendship and personalities. But at the students' union annual general meeting the following written question was submitted and answered:

(From the minutes.)
Q: Georgios Charambalos to the Executive: Are you aware of the following:
-That recently an organisation was formed on campus calling itself the Tory Monday Club?
-That it is named after an extreme right-wing, anti-decolonisation, pro-apartheid organisation formed in the 1960s with strong links to the National Front and opposed to non-white immigration?
-That **** ****, the chairman of the TMC, has frequently been overheard around campus making derogatory comments that have deeply insulted and upset many people for their racist, homophobic, sexist and generally insulting tone, such as openly proclaiming that any LGB person who is out should get back in the closet immediately, regardless of the pain such a situation causes?
-That **** ****, his right-hand man, has also been frequently overheard making such insulting and upsetting comments including the frequent reference to numerous black women as Mrs Buthelezi?
-That **** ****, Press and Propaganda Officer of the TMC, has recently posted messages to the newsgroup ukc.misc implying that the AIDS epidemic is the fault of homosexual and bisexual people?
-That the three individuals named above have persistently sought to cause the maximum disruption and chaos on campus, such as the last Union General Meeting when they called "count"?
-That many people have found these statements and actions by members of the TMC to be deeply upsetting?
-That the leaders of the TMC have frequently taken advantage of other students' lack of full knowledge of a situation to present an extremely inaccurate and highly biased point of view to present themselves in a favourable light when challenged over any controversial situation?
-That on several occasions the leaders of the TMC have been informed about the fear and upset that they have generated and asked to correct the information but on each occasion their response has been either personal abuse aimed at the questioner or to come out with ridiculous comments along the lines of "Most students are just here to inject themselves" or "Is this just left-wing bias?"?
-Are you aware of all this?
-What does the Executive intend to do, given the serious nature of the situation?

A: Seb Martineau [SU President]: States that in the previous year a No Platform motion was rejected so people with upsetting views can state them. It is up to every member of SU to respond appropriately. Exercises freedom of speech to state that he thinks these people are "sad, twisted, despicable little bigots."

Despite being by far the longest question I've ever heard submitted and read out, it generated a huge standing ovation, as did the President's response. The Tory Monday Club's response to this was weak and this led to a couple more members leaving, having now realised what they had joined. From there onwards the Club drifted into obscurity and eventually faded away.

Meanwhile Kent University Conservative Association is still going strongly to this day.

That's the main bones of it, although there's a lot of detail that could have been added, including some of the nastiness that went back and forth. But nowadays it's all in the past and everyone's graduated so I'm surprised anyone's even searching for it.

Blast from the past

I've just seen that someone who visited my blog had done a search for university of kent tory monday club on Google. "Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time."

At some point in the near future I'll see if I've still got one or two sets of minutes from my undergraduate days and I will recount briefly a split many moons ago between the Conservative and Tory wings of an organisation.

Five years ago today

On May 11th 2001 I sat my last exam to date - a two hour paper for the History module Britain in the Age of Mass Democracy 1918-1997 at the University of Kent. (In case anyone's wondering, my subsequent courses since then have all been coursework only.) The exam lasted from 0930 until 1130 and took place in a sports hall.

Who'd have thought that exactly five years later I'd be at a sports hall for exam related purposes? Some things never change!

It was forty two years ago today...

That the first ever episode of Doctor Who was transmitted. Forty two years on the series is one of the BBC's most popular shows, having astounded all the fans and pundits and attracted an audience that many television executives claied no longer existed.

Until this year I was arguably part of the final generation, cliched as it may now sound, who had first seen the series with the family as part of Saturday teatime entertainment. I can remember most of the Colin Baker years and despite the myths surrounding them I was never once turned off by supposed heavy levels of violence (which were actually quite tame), excessive continuity (would I have known what that was?!) or guady colours (I never noticed the coat). (However I would like to know just what were these "illegal video levels" on Vengeance on Varos that had to be amended for the VHS and DVD releases and just how they are supposed to have harmed me!) Apart from the removal of some music due to rights, this was the only edit made when that part of the series was released on video so clear the censors didn't have a problem.

The early 1990s were a depressing period for Doctor Who as we waited and waited for news of a new series and had to put up with numerous announcements and confusion. We had the excitement over the announcement of The Dark Dimension, the disappointment of the cancellation of The Dark Dimension (and the later revelation that this was perhaps a mercy killing), all the excitement and speculation about "the Paul McGann TV movie/Enemy Within/the US Telemovie with the Pertwee logo" or whatever it's called this week that ultimately only provided one night of a new show. But the VHS/DVD/tape/CD releases of the old stories, spin-offs and fan activites throughout the years kept everyone going.

And then this year it came true when the series was relaunched. The new series has been little short of fantastic and everyone is talking about it once more. It's no longer considered sad to be a fan of the series. Truly things have come full circle.