How the hell can I go on holiday?

In connection with the previous post, my colleague Fabian has commented to me that nowadays, even if someone felt as I did about the hopelessness of their position in being deprived of an academic career, they would feel too inhibited to admit it, perhaps even to themselves.

In fact I myself wished not to violate social taboos, but I was certainly very strongly aware of the hopelessness of my position as the dominant and overriding consideration in my own mind, and it is not realistic to give accounts of what I said, in these early situations, which often had such far-reaching consequences, without mentioning my own mental processes.

I was always having to find alternative ways of replying to questions without breaking the social taboo. So when Lady McCreery asked about holidays, I might, if a direct and natural reply had been possible, have said, ‘How the hell do you think I can go on a holiday at all, when I have been thrown out without a usable qualification, I have no tolerable way of earning money or of drawing income support (as I would not be supposed to be qualified for any job that I could accept) and my college will give me no support in any plan to get a qualification or to get appointed to do anything that I really could do, whether supposedly “qualified” or not?’

So my reply about curling up with a book on theoretical physics has to be seen as an attempt to say something that was true, but not too violating of social taboos, and which would probably have been true even if I was on a suitable academic career track. I never did set much store by changes of scene per se, and the holiday I remember as having got quite a lot out of when I was eleven had included the reading of H G Wells’s Outline of History, and a popular introduction to atomic physics.

If I had been in a normal life I might have considered going on holiday for some particular variation of intellectual input, and because other people considered it a natural thing to do, probably something like the summer school at Grenoble University which I had been prevented from going to when I was 15. So I might have been able to reply to Lady McCreery, ‘Oh, I usually like going to France or Germany, but I might go to Italy next year.’

As for Lady McCreery’s description of me as ‘patronising, offhand and humourless’, to the extent this was not just projection, whatever in my manner seemed to her to support such a description may well have arisen from my awareness of my horrific position, in which I certainly had no social identity. My position was exceedingly grim, and to the extent that my outlook came across, she might easily describe it as humourless. Comfortable or cheerful it certainly was not.

Similarly, when I met Charles’s sister Sarah, if I had had any normal social identity by which to be introduced, I might have avoided the humorous self-dramatisation. As it was, what I said was true of the underlying realities of my position, and would have been so even if Charles had been able to introduce me as an Oxford professor of physics, chemistry or anything else. In that case, there would have been no need for me to give any further account of myself.

Since the time the events described took place, I have observed many other illustrations of the type of behaviour referred to (in fact it has been a constant feature of my life ever since I was thrown out), and I have concluded that it is part of a general syndrome. People seem not to notice your bad position, talk to you in ways which call for responses from you that are incompatible with that position, and then express surprise or contempt when you do not make adequate responses of the required kind – or, when you make efforts to do so without entirely denying the facts of your life, they mock those efforts. It is pragmatically useful to assume that they are not really unaware of the underlying realities, but that they are enjoying the fact that they can put you under socially sanctioned pressure to distort yourself, and can denounce you to others if you fail to do so.

An MP and the Education Minister: joking about my position

With regard to the events described by Charles McCreery in the previous post:

I always felt that I was in a most unnatural position of intolerable deprivation in having been thrown out of Oxford with no recognition of my need to get back onto a normal university career track (meaning normal for me) as soon as possible.

And so when anyone started to talk to me as if getting to know me, or even interacting with me about something, I was always surprised at their failing to recognise the obvious, and not saying ‘What a terrible position you are in! We must find a way of helping you to get back.’

When they did not show any signs of recognition and instead talked to me about holidays, or criticised the way I interacted with people, I was always shocked and amazed, although I said nothing. I was not in a normal life, and until I was, nothing like holidays, or concealing my awareness of people’s hostility towards me (I was called ‘tactless’ for failing to make my antagonists sound sweetly reasonable), could be expected of me. A down-and-out living in a packing case cannot be expected to welcome visitors to tea in the same way as a person living in a semi-detached with lace curtains.

And then again, if a person is in a terrible position so that their only chances depend on someone being prepared to make an exception in their favour, surely responsible influential people would be especially careful not to say damaging things about that person. Obviously the ‘Celia of the universe’ slander, like so many others, could only be damaging to any chance I had of a benefactor recognising the anomaly of my outcast position.

Charles refers to his conversation with Norman St John Stevas in the presence of the then Education Minister – just the sort of person that I thought should be interested in hearing about how so anomalous a situation could have arisen, and feel it his business to remedy it. But here was Norman talking about me, in front of him, as being associated with a ludicrous slander that distanced me from any possibility of being regarded as an exceptionally able, but otherwise perfectly normal and respectable, academic who was only prevented by an egregious anomaly from re-entering a suitable career at a senior level.

A student of the universe

The following is an account which my colleague Dr Charles McCreery has sent to the prospective biographer of his father, the late General Sir Richard McCreery, which describes two further episodes concerning my interactions with his family.

I attach a copy of a piece which Dr Green blogged recently which refers to her first (and virtually only) meeting with my mother.

This occasion dates to a time when, as I have already mentioned, far from cutting myself off from my family, I was attempting to include them in my chosen line of work, and before I had realized that these attempts were futile, indeed counter-productive, inasmuch as they were used by my family to generate fresh canards of a destructive kind.

In this instance my mother emerged from the meeting (I had left them alone together) looking triumphant, and saying: ‘I sized her up immediately: completely humourless’.

In fact it might be argued that it was my mother who had displayed the sense of humour failure on this occasion. During the interview she had asked my colleague where she went for her holidays. Dr Green had not been able to afford a holiday for years; or perhaps I should say that, having been driven out from Somerville without a research grant, she had chosen to save every possible pound from her small salary from the Society for Psychical Research towards being able to buy a house in Oxford.

To avoid making my mother appear tactless, Celia had replied to the effect that her idea of a holiday was to curl up with a book on theoretical physics.

My mother reported this exchange to me with apparent glee, as if it supported her ‘humourless’ assessment.

My family apparently suffered a similar sense of humour failure following my sister Sarah's first (and, again, virtually only) meeting with Dr Green. The latter is given to making layered or provocative remarks of a would-be humorous nature to people she considers open to such things, and on seeing my sister for the first time she felt, rightly or wrongly, that my sister fell into this category. Accordingly, she introduced herself to my sister by saying, ‘I am a student of the universe from Oxford.’ Both elements of this statement were true on a literal level, since my colleague specialized in theoretical physics during her first (maths) degree. It could, of course, also be taken on a more philosophical level, if someone was so minded.

This utterance became transmuted by my family into something not at all humorous, and seriously damaging, namely ‘I am Celia of the universe’. This slanderous version proved to have much more staying power than the real one. Decades later (in 1987), I met Norman St. John-Stevas (as he then was) while he and the then Secretary of State for Education and Science, Kenneth Baker (now Lord Baker of Dorking), were queueing outside the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford to vote in the election for Vice-Chancellor of the university. Norman came out with: ‘And how is Celia of the universe?’ This was despite the fact that Dr Green and I had met Norman on more than one occasion in the intervening years and we had both corrected him in person as to what Celia had actually said. Clearly the risible and slanderous implications of the distorted version had far greater appeal.

As my colleague remarks in another of her published aphorisms: ‘The mature person never tells the truth when a lie will do.’(1)

(1) Green, C., The Decline and Fall of Science, Hamish Hamilton, 1976, p. 169.

Civilisation and capitalism

Capitalism is often referred to pejoratively, as in this quotation from popular author Oliver James.

Selfish Capitalism, much more than genes, is extremely bad for your mental health.

Oliver James is an Old Etonian who has managed to succeed in modern society, but who does nothing to help us, who have been less fortunate than himself.

Last year my colleague Dr Charles McCreery attended an Old Etonian reunion dinner at Blenheim Palace at which Oliver James was supposed to be present, although Charles did not see him there. Charles was attempting to raise awareness of our situation among the Old Etonian population, but neither Oliver James nor any other of them has taken any interest in finding out about our needs for help of all kinds.

* * *

Civilisation does not arise because anyone wants or appreciates it. It is an unstable and accidental by-product of commercialism, superimposed on a population which has a long-standing property-owning (capitalistic) hereditary aristocracy. Until the commercialism arises, the aristocrats do not arouse hostility on a significant level, because their abilities are fully engaged in stressful and excoriating activities, such as defending and running their estates, fighting in wars, etc.

With the advent of commercialism, however, some of them start to be free to use their abilities in ways to which they are well-suited, which they are getting something out of, and which may lead to extensions in the understanding of reality, such as scientific enquiry, exploration or composing music. This arouses hostility because they are seen as ‘too happy’ (as I was before I was prevented from taking the School Certificate exam at 13) and they are then described as ‘leisured’ and ‘idle’.

The next stage is that democracy sets in, partly on account of the idealistic respect for individuality which the ‘privileged’ elite has started to develop. Unfortunately, this transmission downwards of aristocratic values, such as self-determination, means that the incipient civilisation is doomed. Instead of liberating autonomy-loving instincts, the extension of freedom liberates destructive impulses. The possibility of owning property on a scale sufficient to provide freedom of action is rightly recognised as the most important thing to be destroyed, and society heads back to a state of communistic tribalism.

This is the inevitable result of democracy; the majority of people have no interest in maintaining a situation in which at least a few people have the freedom (i.e. capital) to use their abilities in a way which suits them, so capitalism and thus individual liberty become eroded, as is now happening. This is in spite of the fact that a relatively civilised society was in some ways advantageous to the general population.

* See here for an interesting twist on James’s affluenza theory.

The absurdity of the ‘social tariff’

Recently there was a proposal that the winter fuel allowance, paid to those over 65, should be effectively means-tested by being paid only to those who already qualified for some other means-tested benefit. Those receiving the basic state pension, but not the supplementary income support, would stop receiving it, thus noticeably increasing the disadvantage of not qualifying for the supplement.

Probably this was considered too obvious a form of means-testing, so this benefit (winter fuel allowance) was continued as payable to all over a certain age, regardless of their assets. But what has now been surreptitiously introduced is another form of energy-related concession, which will (effectively) be means-tested: the so-called ‘social tariff’ of the energy companies.

One is now informed that if one is over 60 one ‘should be better off’ on the ‘social tariff’, though one can only find out if one is eligible by ringing up one of the energy companies. So now, presumably, there will be less need for pensions to be adequate, since all who cannot ‘afford’ energy will not have to pay for it. This will therefore probably drop out of the ‘cost of living’ used to assess pensioners’ needs, in the same way that the cost of healthcare has dropped out of it, since you are supposed to regard the ‘free’ NHS as an acceptable alternative to medication for which you might formerly have wished to pay.

No, the newspaper says, if you are on the ‘social tariff’ the supplier will not worry if you are late paying your bill but (although the newspaper does not say so) they may of course notify the social services to see if you would not be better off in a ‘care home’. As, of course, they might when you make your first telephone call to them to find out whether you are eligible for the ‘social tariff’ .

When the state pension started to be effectively ‘means-tested’, and to ‘wither on the vine’, I thought that however far it fell below one’s real needs it would at least have to preserve some relationship to the cost of the most basic physical needs. But no. Never underestimate the cunning of governments.

How about food and clothing suppliers being made to set up ‘social tariffs’ as well, so that the cost of food and clothing will vary according to the means of the purchaser?

Then it would not matter if the basic state pension is clearly inadequate to pay for the costs of living in food and clothing, as well as gas and electricity.

More on the state's infidelity

I wrote previously about what the government has now announced it will not pay to Christine and Fabian by delaying the age for receiving pensions, although they are both already fully paid up (or very nearly so) after decades of hard work in making qualifying contributions out of a low and often non-existent income without ever getting into debt. Only of very recent years has the threat arisen of changing the pensionable age from that which was known and expected throughout those decades.

Of course, old-fashioned private pension schemes could not get away with breaking their contracts in this way. Perhaps modern ones can if the government legislates that they must. The government itself, of course, can claim that it cannot afford not to without damaging its provisions to the real needs of foreign aid, the medical and educational oppressions, and social interference of every kind. It would not do at all if someone were rewarded for conscientiousness in making voluntary contributions by getting a pension of greater value than the benefits which could be claimed by the unforethoughtful. You might call that elitism.

Recently a new pension scheme was proposed which would not depend at all on contributions made, but only on some years of residence in the country. Those who had made contributions under the old scheme would receive their pensions under the old system, which would be less.

With a bit of delayed reaction time, it started to be suggested that it might not be fair for those who had paid contributions to get less than those who had not, and I think it has now been reluctantly agreed that those who had paid into the old system would get their pensions upgraded to the level of the new system.

The changing face of paternalism

In my piece about Christmas Benefits, a lady receiving benefits is quoted as saying that if the government gives her money she has a right to spend it as she pleases and should not be criticised for doing so. Evidently there is sufficiently general sympathy with this view of the matter for many people like herself to continue receiving similar forms of support with no detailed enquiry into the use that is made of them. (I am not suggesting detailed enquiries should be being made. Apart from anything else, it would be prohibitively expensive. In principle I agree that if the state gives an individual enough taxpayers’ money for him or her to save out of, that is the individual’s business. The problem is that it is not realistic to go on paying benefits on this scale.)

The attitudes which I have encountered throughout my life, and certainly from the time when I was prevented from taking the School Certificate exam at 13, have been diametrically opposed to the permissiveness and generosity which is shown to people in the position of the Christmas Benefits lady.

When I was 21, thrown out at the end of the ruined education with no usable qualification, I found that I could get a research grant from Trinity College, Cambridge to do a postgraduate degree, which I hoped would get me back on to an academic career track. Rosalind Heywood at the Society for Psychical Research, presumably not yet in focus on my unacceptable outlook, and thinking of me as of any other impoverished young student, suggested at that early stage that I should apply to the Parapsychology Foundation in New York for supplementary funding, to which she would evidently give her influential support. I remember discussing with W H Salter and Sir George Joy in the office how much I should apply for, and Salter said in a throwaway manner, ‘Americans always give enormous grants. See what you think you really need and apply for twice as much.’

In fact I saved money throughout the period of my postgraduate degree at Oxford (in spite of taking more taxis than other people would have done) by making the most economical arrangements possible, and continuing with the policy which I was already applying to my paltry SPR salary of regarding only half of my income as available for spending.

At various stages during my postgraduate studies, Rosalind became suspicious and tried to force me to give an exhaustive account of how every penny was disposed of. I was not very good at making up an acceptable cover story. I am sure that many students spent a lot more than I did, but I was not in focus on their most expensive activities, and most of what I spent the money on was unacceptable.

Eventually, at the end of the Trinity College grant, it became necessary to obtain funding for the next stage. I did not conceal from my chief supporters, Sir George and Salter, that I had saved a couple of thousand pounds. Both of them, at different times, appeared shocked at my saving money, but the income from my capital was clearly trivial, so Salter, overcoming his horror and dismay, filled in ‘negligible private income’ on application forms for funding.

However, no funding at all could be obtained from any source, and all prospective support broke down. So I was forced to finance myself and any associates without any outside funding, and without being eligible for ‘income support’ since, as I have explained before, I could not apply for ‘social security’ as I was not considered qualified for any job that I could have accepted.

The rigorous withholding of support continued for years, in fact until the present day, and I suppose the idea was that I would be forced to run down my small capital until even that tiny piece of independence was destroyed.

At the end of the seven-year covenant from Cecil King, Lady Hardy (wife of Sir Alister Hardy and sister of the Bursar of Somerville) asked a friend of mine what we were going to do when the King money ended. Would we be leaving the house in the Banbury Road? ‘Well, no,’ my friend said. ‘We will be continuing to live there as before.’ And, my friend said, Lady Hardy’s face dropped unmistakeably, which implies that Lady Hardy was anticipating as a pleasurable experience my being thrown out on the streets without a salary or a roof over my head. Being deprived of this anticipated pleasure was enough of a disappointment for this to show visibly in her expression.

One may contrast this situation with Miss Bookey’s apparent pleasure and enjoyment of my joyful happiness on having the opportunity to get ahead in the Lower Fifth.

At the end of the King money, one might have expected senior academics, enquiring into the position of much younger people attempting to do progressive research in a situation of great difficulty, to be doing so in order to examine ways and means of replacing at least some parts of the vanishing support, so that the aspiring and hard-working young people could carry on.

In fact everyone was always obviously pleased at any misfortune that befell us, and obviously displeased at any disaster we managed to avert.

Miss Bookey, and the Reverend Mother before I was prevented from taking the School Certificate exam, clearly represented an attitude that had only been possible to an earlier generation, of being pleased to see an exceptional person deriving benefit from their ability, and being glad to have the opportunity to help them do so.

You could call both attitudes paternalism, in the sense of thinking you know what would be ‘right’ for someone. In one case you think it is right to help them, in the other that it is right to ruin them.

Your name will be up there one day

The following is an extract from a piece which my colleague Dr Charles McCreery has sent to the person who is planning to write a book about his father, the late General Sir Richard McCreery. It gives some background to my post about the sacrifices of sadism, which refers to his father paying his Eton school fees.

I started to read when I was three. By the age of five I was reading Biggles books, of which there were a large number in the house. When I was four and my sister was six we acquired a governess, Miss Gigg. At first she gave us lessons separately, on account of the age difference (my sister is a year and nine months older than I). However, it soon became apparent that I was able to keep up with my sister academically, and the governess gave us lessons together.

In this context it may be relevant to mention that I was told that the whole of my sister’s boarding school (St. Mary’s, Wantage) was once given an IQ test, and that my sister came top.

When I was sent to boarding school at the age of nine, I came top of the introductory class and my colleague Celia Green remembers me telling her soon after we met (in 1963) that the lady who took this class, Miss Wright, on one occasion looked at a list of boys who had won scholarships to public schools in the past and said, ‘Your name will be up there one day’.

However, my parents gave me to understand that the reason for my apparent exceptionality was that I had had a governess from the age of four. They then colluded with the headmaster to prevent me from taking a scholarship to Eton.

As one of Dr Green’s aphorisms points out, ‘It is very easy to make someone into a failure; you have only to prevent them from being a success.’

The Food of the Gods

The following text is from the last page and a half of H G Wells’s The Food of the Gods. When I was twelve I regarded this as the most inspiring passage of prose I had ever come across. I still find it expresses something I can feel identified with.

‘It is not that we would oust the little people from the world,’ he said, ‘in order that we, who are no more than one step upwards from their littleness, may hold their world for ever. It is the step we fight for and not ourselves.’

‘We are here, Brothers, to what end? To serve the spirit and the purpose that has been breathed into our lives. We fight not for ourselves, for we are but the momentary hands and eyes of the life of the World ... Through us and through the little folk the Spirit looks and learns. From us by word and birth and act it must pass – to still greater lives.’

‘This earth is no resting place; this earth is no playing place ... We fight not for ourselves but for growth – growth that goes on for ever. Tomorrow, whether we live or die, growth will conquer through us. That is the law of the spirit for ever more. To grow according to the will of God! To grow out of these cracks and crannies, out of these shadows and darknesses, into greatness and the light!’

‘Greater’, he said, speaking with slow deliberation, ‘greater, my Brothers! And then – still greater. To grow and again – to grow. To grow at last into the fellowship and understanding of God. Growing. Till the earth is no more than a footstool. Till the spirit shall have driven fear into nothingness, and spread ...’ He swung his arm heavenward: – ‘There!’

His voice ceased. The white glare of one of the searchlights wheeled about, and for a moment fell upon him, standing out gigantic with hand upraised against the sky.

For one instant he shone, looking up fearlessly into the starry deeps, mail-clad, young and strong, resolute and still. Then the light had passed and he was no more than a great black outline against the starry sky – a great black outline that threatened with one mighty gesture the firmament of heaven and all its multitude of stars.

The state’s infidelity

copy of a letter to an academic

Apart from means-testing the pensions, i.e. depriving Charles and me together of about £4,000 per annum, maybe more – which we would have been getting if the means-testing had not been introduced – the pensions due to Christine and Fabian have been delayed by a total of 9 years, thus depriving us of at least £50,000 (9 x present pension as reduced by means-testing) which the government should have paid to us if pension qualifying ages had not been retrospectively changed.

Thus the means-testing and change in qualifying ages together have deprived Fabian and Christine of at least £70,000 which they were due to be paid on reaching their former qualifying ages, both being fully paid up, or very nearly so, in terms of qualifying years (i.e. years in which requisite contributions have been made).

This income would not have been adequate to set up a satisfactory residential college with at least one research department, but the future loss of it is a serious drag on our continuing attempts to make progress towards the start of our 40-year adult academic careers.