Easter vac workers

copy of a letter

Easter is upon us. ‘Holiday’ times are always particularly bad for us, as any domestic or other workers which we can get become even less reliable and tend to announce without notice that they are going to absent themselves for a holiday of weeks or months abroad. So if you know anyone who might like to earn some money quickly, let them know. But they probably need to have a car, as we could not arrange accommodation for them at such short notice, and would not do so in any case if they had not worked for us before.

Seeking supporters

Copy of a letter to someone I managed to speak to (rare event)

Further to our conversation of yesterday, I thought I would like to send you a complimentary copy of my most recent book, which I hope you will accept as a gift.

If you were able to make our presence known about it would be very helpful. We are looking for supporters of every kind. We cannot really be functional in any way as an academic institution without substantial capital endowment, and it is no use our approaching billionaires etc without independent people to represent our case to them. (I have plenty of negative experience of doing so.) The only time I ever got any money I had an ex-Colonial Governor to put my case to Cecil Harmsworth King, chairman of the IPC group.

We would also like people to move nearby to give us, and one another, moral support in protesting against the infringements of liberty which have already been going on for a long time on an exponential basis.

With best wishes, etc.

"We are too unusual"

Copy of letter to someone we read about in the Daily Mail. We sometimes write to people in disastrous financial situations, but even they will never come to meet us to discuss a trial arrangement. As a cousin of mine once said to me viciously, "we are too unusual".

Dear Mr X

We have heard that you would be having to sell your house and this might be jeopardising your plans for retirement.

We are a group of academics setting up an independent academic organisation, at present writing and publishing books, hoping later to add other kinds of academic research. At present we live in two small houses and one apartment in a pleasant village near Oxford. There are always jobs of a gardening, DIY and domestic kind for which we try to get ancillary staff and we often point out the advantages that there could be for retired people living nearby and doing a few hours of work a day, or sporadic jobs. We need such people as permanent support for our organisation. Of course they could also earn money doing jobs for other people in the village.

We would aim to help any such associates to build up their capital to become house owners before too long, and have been successful at doing this in the past. When they had worked for us for some time so that we knew them well enough, we might be able to make them loans to facilitate such things as house-buying.

To a potential worker

(copy of a letter)

Dear Joe,

It would be nice if you would visit us because we want people to know about our situation and our need for people to work with us.

We are a developing and hopefully expanding organisation opposed by the bitterest social hostility; we say we are aiming at being an independent university with several research departments and a publishing company supported by a business empire. I think you need to know this so as not to misinterpret our present embryonic state, which can still do little more than some book publishing and investment. This results from the universal desire that we should be squeezed to death.

Our expansion depends very much on getting to know more people who might come and work with us, and we would like to have people coming as temporary or part-time workers to get to know the situation and spread the word about it among their acquaintances. People need to be unselective about the work they do; it is no use to us if people insist only on doing ‘creative’ or ‘interesting’ things. We need people to be willing to do whatever happens to be useful at the time, especially when they are starting with no knowledge of our office systems.

It is best if people come as voluntary workers, supporting themselves in the first instance, so they can get to know the work. It is only by people coming on a short-term basis that they can get to know about our position realistically, and even if this does not lead to their ever wishing to come permanently, at least they would be in a position to tell other people about our shortage of manpower.

When we say people should be prepared to support themselves in the first instance, this refers to their legal position. We would not want them to be uncomfortable before we could work out if any permanent arrangement was possible, and so long as they were doing a bit of work, would support them ourselves as friends.

We are situated in Cuddesdon, a pleasant village outside Oxford.

Please would you let us know your postal address, as we would like to send you some advertising pens and book leaflets for you to distribute.