Oxford’s Professorship of Science and Religion

A year ago I applied for the University of Oxford’s recently created Professorship of Science and Religion. This was set up to investigate

questions raised for Theology by the natural and human and social sciences (including moral and social questions), and on the impact of Theology on the natural, human and social sciences.

I was not shortlisted for this post, even though I have plenty of ideas about how aspects of what is called ‘religious’ thought might have implications for science, and vice versa.

I think – and my colleagues at Oxford Forum agree – that if Oxford was genuinely interested in making interdisciplinary progress on the overlap between ‘science’ and ‘religion’ then the individuals responsible for filling this post should at least have wanted to meet me to find out what ideas I have for research and what I might do if offered the position.

In fact of course, it is doubtful that such motivation exists in modern academia, at a level capable of having an impact on such decisions.

Far more important is that mechanical rules are observed. For example, the candidate should have at least so many publications under their belt, they should have at least x years’ ‘experience’ at other institutions. This regardless of whether they have actually contributed anything significant to the advancement of knowledge, or are likely to be capable of doing so in the future.

The successful applicant will be an outstanding scholar, with an international reputation and distinguished research profile in Science and Religion ...

said the advertisement for the post. I suspect that the ‘research’ carried out by the candidates whom they did interview has made negligible contribution to the understanding of anything of significance, though no doubt it satisfied appearances. Something was written which seemed to have at least a nominal connection with religion and may have looked vaguely clever. That anything ground-breaking was said, however, is highly unlikely.

If opportunity is to depend on previous publications, and on ‘experience’ within the system, then those who have been rejected (and implicitly repeatedly rejected, as all their efforts to gain reinstatement have been ignored or opposed) are condemned to permanent exclusion. This has been my position. The difficulties of supporting myself and an independent academic institution, without status or funding, has effectively prevented any but the most minimal expression of my views.

The present attitudes to science and religion are determined by the most fundamental unexamined assumptions in modern philosophy and psychology, and realistic analysis of these assumptions is taboo.

The area covered by the professorship is probably particularly prone to the principle that nothing genuinely progressive should get done. In subjects such as physics it is necessary to pretend that progress is aimed at. The desire that the status quo be maintained has to be kept at a subconscious level. In ‘science & religion’, by contrast, the goal of keeping things safe and unthreatening may well be openly espoused by those in charge.

Needing to expand

text of a letter

I think that Christine has mentioned to you in the past our interest in renting rooms or houses in the vicinity. We would like you to know that this is an ongoing need, as you might hear of something.

We are freelance academics, in effect a residential college, although living in separate houses for the time being. Eventually we are aiming to expand to a larger campus with a dining facility and live-in staff, but at present it is convenient if we expand in separate houses within Cuddesdon, and we do not want to tie up capital in house property at the moment.

The reason we are outside the University is that we are not in tune with the modern ideology, and it is difficult to get university appointments without being left-wing, apart from any other considerations. As the ideology gains ground, it has become even more difficult for us to expand our operations, as our main source of funding is from investment, not from jobs or pensions, and one of the aspects of the ideology is that it extols the norm and makes no room for exceptions. Nevertheless, we are respectable in an old fashioned middle-class way.

In fact we are experienced and sophisticated investors, as I started trying to make money to compensate for the loss of a university career over fifty years ago. I started with no capital but over the years, as my present associates joined me, we have become well-informed about investment newsletters, to the best of which we still subscribe. On the other hand we regard ‘normal, sensible’ investment, as advised by banks and accountants, as risky and vulnerable – as many have found to their detriment of recent years as the government has assailed building society deposits and pension funds.

At best, managed funds are usually pedestrian, and a good deal of the benefit is eaten up in management fees.

It was the change of social outlook which led to the credit crunch, started by the sub-prime lending crisis in America.

We not only need to expand our operations, but also to accommodate visitors who might become permanent associates. Since we have been in Cuddesdon, we have had three, from America, Sweden and Slovenia, and although none have become permanent, we are likely to go on getting such visitors.

Our having visitors from a variety of countries arises from the fact that the books we have published are widely read throughout the world, although they are suppressed and censored in this country and we are no longer invited to express our views on broadcasts. If we could get more apartments or houses with spare rooms, it would be easier for us to have more visitors who might stay longer.

Anyway, if you ever do hear of a room or house going vacant nearby, we would be very glad to know about it.

Modern society is becoming increasingly hostile to those who have been able to keep themselves alive and healthy into later life without the aid of the state. People may like to consider the idea of moving to Cuddesdon, or nearby, well in advance of retirement age. They could do some voluntary work for us and perhaps join in on some of the smaller business projects, in anticipation of more full-scale involvement at a later stage.

Why reparation is due to Charles McCreery

Throughout my life I have often seemed to be in a ‘secret court’ situation in which everyone knew that I had been condemned in some way, but without my being able to find out what it was. The same thing sometimes happened to people who became, or might have become, associates in my enterprise. As an illustration of this, the following is an extract from a letter which I wrote to the biographer of Charles McCreery’s father, General Sir Richard McCreery, about events that took place in 1965. (Some of this material was previously blogged in 2010.)

It is probable that widespread slanders had been spread about me and my incipient research institute from the time I was thrown out in 1957, but one seldom had direct evidence.

However, it happened that one of our Consultants, Graham Weddell, a physiology lecturer at Oxford, rang me a year or more after Charles McCreery had graduated in 1964, at which time he (Charles) had called a temporary halt to communication with his family so as to recover from the run-down state he had got into as a result of his mother’s constant pestering.

Invitation to Dr Charles McCreery to attend the 

Service to Celebrate the 60^th Anniversary of the 

Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

Dr Weddell sometimes seemed a somewhat tactless person, who revealed inside information, perhaps to gain the confidence of the person to whom he was talking. On this occasion, he said, ‘They are making an awful lot of fuss about your research assistant.’

I was nonplussed and thought of various part-time workers we had employed whom I had not known very well, and wondered what any of them might have done.

‘Can’t I at least know who it is you are talking about?’

Weddell seemed to hesitate. ‘Well, he has a very important father and his father is beside himself about his drug-taking.’

‘You mean Charles McCreery, son of General McCreery?’ I said, surprised. ‘There is no question of his having ever taken drugs.’

After a bit more reiteration of this, Weddell seemed to accept it and said that it must have arisen from the association of ideas between parapsychology and drug-taking.

I had reservations about this, because when some really damaging slander or piece of hostility against us was revealed, and we gave our side of it, people always found it easy to brush it aside with, ‘Oh, it’s just the subject’ (‘the subject’ being parapsychology). Actually I thought that was a rationalisation, and the reasons for the hostility were more profound. But I went along with the idea on this occasion, partly to show that we did not regard ourselves as part of some ‘parapsychological’ population.

‘I suppose it has not helped that Steve Abrams [an American parapsychologist who had a research organisation in Oxford] has been in the papers recently,’ I said. ‘He has been going to the Home Office to tell them that marijuana ought to be legalised since he claims it is an aid to creativity for writers.’

I asked who had been saying these things about Charles, and Weddell gave me the names of three people whom Charles subsequently proceeded to tax with it by phone: Oliver Van Oss (headmaster of Charterhouse), John Butterworth (Vice-Chancellor of Warwick University) and Sir Folliott Sandford (Registrar of Oxford University).

Having had experience of such situations in the past, I advised Charles to immediately ring the people whose names I had obtained, before Weddell had time to warn them. Charles did so, and had conversations with the three people [see Charles's account of the conversations here], and finally with his father, General McCreery. Charles told his father of what he had gathered from his conversations and asked the General to account for his alleged part in the goings-on. Charles told me that, after a silence, his father answered that he refused to confirm or deny anything.

* * *

No attempt has been made by Charles’s family to reverse the financial effects of their slanders and disinheriting over the last 50 years. His brothers and sister did nothing to stop the slanders although they must have known perfectly well that they were baseless. They, and their children, have all benefited from the disinheriting.

When we heard that General McCreery’s biographer was about to start writing a book about him, we hoped that this would make Charles’s family think that they should set their house in order before attention was drawn to the General’s life, but they did not do this. Instead, both his brothers approached Charles with disingenuous attempts to embark on social interaction as if nothing had gone wrong in the past that needed to be set right.

I have suggested to the McCreerys that buying a house advertised at £500K, in the name of Charles, would indicate a wish on the part of his family to start making reparation to him for the damage to his prospects that was done, and continues to be done, by slander and disinheritance. This amount is almost certainly far less than the present value of the Chelsea flat which Charles’s mother, Lady McCreery, left to his sister in her will; a will from which Charles was excluded. Our current enquiries show that the value of such a flat at Cranmer Court in Chelsea is not less, and probably more, than £800K, this being the current market value of a one-bedroom flat there. In fact, the flat which was left to his sister appears to have had at least two bedrooms.

It should not be overlooked that, deprived of financial support as we are, the gift of a house would need to be accompanied by a gift of money which could be invested to provide for the running costs, insurance and expenses of the house. £500K in cash could be added to bring the total up to £1m. This would indicate a serious intention to start making reparation to Charles, but would still be a small fraction of the benefits which would have accrued to him over the years by investment of the inheritances of which he was unjustly deprived.

An eyewitness account of the Coronation

This was originally posted 19 August 2010 under the title ‘Genes, prep schools and Eton’. It has been re-posted ahead of the 60th anniversary of the Coronation.

In connection with the absurd claims by Alan Ryan (former Warden of New College, Oxford) that it is 'crazy' to look for a genetic element in determining intellectual ability, I may comment that I have never known, or known about, a family in which the innate variations in IQ and other aptitudes between the various members were not very definitely recognised by both parents and siblings. My colleague Charles McCreery was decidedly the most precocious of his family, although some of the others had IQs well above average, and his precocity aroused hostility and obstruction even within his own family.

Photograph of Charles McCreery
taken by Hay Wrightson, London,
at the time of the Coronation, 1953.

Below is an article by Charles (written when he was 11) which was published in the magazine* of his preparatory school after he had been a page at the Coronation. It aroused agitated reactions, and mockery of the vocabulary he had used, perhaps partly because it was accidentally published with no adult editing or alterations, so that it was unmistakable evidence of Charles’s precocity.

His form master was agitated to find that Charles had handed it in to the headmaster – ‘Oh, but you were supposed to show it to me first’ – and the headmaster, perhaps assuming that it had already been edited, published it in the magazine with no alterations at all. (The spelling, as well as the vocabulary, was all Charles’s own.)

On seeing the article, his mother also became agitated and asked him repeatedly if he had written it entirely without help. Was he sure he had? Really sure? She reverted to this issue so often that Charles started to feel guilty, as if he must have done something wrong.

At about this time his mother was colluding with his headmaster, who was also hostile to him, to prevent him from taking the scholarship exam for Eton, as it had always been assumed that he would. This was allegedly to spare him ‘stress’, but actually ensured that he would get nothing positive out of his time at Eton.

Scholars at Eton were in a different position from the others. Although a bit looked down upon socially, as they included some boys whose parents could not have afforded to pay the fees, they were the only ones in whose case it was regarded as socially acceptable to work; so it was really a necessary position for someone like Charles who had strong academic inclinations. Everyone who was not a scholar at Eton was expected to manifest indifference and to be interested only in sporting activities.

MY CORONATION EXPERIENCES

Acting as page to Lord Alanbrooke at the Coronation was a wonderful experience for me as it is a thing I will remember all my life and I will be able to tell my children when I grow up.

I met a lot of very famous people such as Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister and the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl Marshal, whom I thought was wonderful in the way he managed everything alone and yet remained calm and impassive. I was also greatly struck by the demeanour of our Queen who too remained cheerful yet dignified.

The music was very moving and impressive, with a choir of 400, an orchestra of sixty and a large organ. The service began with the Psalm "I was glad when they said unto me", some of the verses of which I learnt during Scripture.

I got to the Abbey on Coronation Day at 6 a.m. in the morning, and had to wait, in the specially built annexe, about four hours with nothing to do but watch and wait, in rather uncomfortable clothes, for the arrival of the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret. At last the Queen arrived, amid cheers from the people, and, after about ten minutes interlude, took up her place in the already formed procession for the entering of the Abbey. I myself did not carry a coronet because Lord Alanbrooke, being Lord High Constable, and the Earl Marshal, have two pages and my partner, being older than me, carried it instead. Beside me were four other pages, all but one carrying coronets and not far behind them the Queen herself with her six maids of honour carrying her train. On either side of the nave, west of the screen, were tiers of specially constructed seats. Although these people had a wonderful view of the procession in and out of the Abbey they saw nothing of what went on in the Theatre. My parents however were lucky and had seats on the top right of the peers who are on the right of the dais in the centre of the Theatre, on which is the real throne, and saw practically everything. When my row of pages reached the dais four of us turned to the left and one to the right; I turned to the left and proceeded up a gangway between the lovely blue velvet chairs in which the peeresses were seated. About half way through the ceremony, at a signal given by our "Goldstick", all the pages walked back down the gangway, carrying their coronets, and delivered them with a bow, to their respective peers and returned to the steps where they had been sitting. I, however, did not have to do this as my partner went by himself while I remained seated. At the historic moment when the Archbishop, Dr. Fisher, placed the crown on our beautiful Queen's head, all the peers and peeresses put on their coronets, (some of which were so small that they had to be kept on with hair combs, elastic etc.), to the sound of a fanfare of trumpets and great guns being fired from the Tower of London.

At the end of the service, all the pages walked to their peers and formed up for the procession out, to the triumphant music of the National Anthem.

C.A.S. McCreery, (aged 11).

* Cothill House Magazine, Vol. LXIX, September 1953, pp.17-18.

Statement by Charles McCreery: ‘With regard to Dr Green’s piece introducing my contemporaneous account of the Coronation service, and which describes my mother’s reaction to my essay, I can vouch for its accuracy since it is based on accounts I have given Dr Green over the years concerning this episode, and I read over her account before she published it.’

We appeal for funding to enable Dr Charles McCreery to continue and extend his Oxford doctoral research into hallucinatory experiences in normal people, which would have practical and theoretical implications both for the fields of psychopathology and for the philosophy of perception.

Mother Joseph of the Ursulines

text of a letter about the headmistress of my convent school, the Ursuline High School in Ilford, who later became head of the Ursuline order in England

Mother Joseph Powell

Thank you very much for the photograph of Reverend Mother Joseph Powell. I certainly remember her with very much that expression on her face.

She was sufficiently exceptional (and old-fashioned) to come near to giving me the chance in life which I needed to have; but not exceptional enough to stand by me against the opposition which was aroused.

My father was often blamed for wanting me to have a chance in life, but in fact it was not he, but the Reverend Mother, who proposed that I should take the School Certificate exam at the last chance before the age limit came into force.

Being prevented from taking the School Certificate exam left me in a terrible position from which I have never been able to recover, although my position now is less bad than it might be. But the harm done to the lives of my parents was never remedied, although I was always trying to improve my position by building up capital sufficiently to allow me to do so.

Potential supporters or associates could come to live nearby, perhaps by buying a holiday home in the first instance. Cuddesdon is a pleasant hilltop village with clean air and good views of countryside, accessible to Oxford and the main road to London.

Many thanks again for the photograph.

Margaret Thatcher and the BBC

Where she [Margaret Thatcher] did not think she was among friends … she scarcely made the effort to convert anyone. Most Leaders of the Opposition take great pains to woo the BBC: not so Mrs Thatcher. In her demonology, the BBC was the very heart of the pinko-liberal conspiracy which was dragging Britain down. The Director-General, Ian Trethowan – a good friend of Ted Heath – insists that the broadcasters were not ill-disposed towards her. But she certainly believed she was venturing into hostile territory: ‘the lady arrived with all guns firing, she showed scant interest in, let alone tolerance of, the editors’ problems and berated them on their failings over a wide area, particularly their coverage of Northern Ireland.’ Mrs Thatcher came into office in May 1979 already determined to bring the BBC to heel. (John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher: The Grocer’s Daughter, Jonathan Cape, 2000, p.408)

Margaret Thatcher

John Campbell seems to suggest that Margaret Thatcher was mistaken in her attitude to the BBC. Actually she was right in identifying it as a central element in the ‘pinko-liberal’ movement that was ‘dragging Britain down’. The use of the word ‘conspiracy’ is unhelpful, as it deflects attention from what was clearly going on, to insoluble questions about who originated these tendencies, who said what explicitly to whom, and so on.

Communists knew that in taking over a country it was important to infiltrate its centres of influence. Marxist ideas were in evidence when Margaret Thatcher was at Oxford in the 1940s; and active exponents of them at the BBC interacted with like-minded Oxford academics.

Dame Janet Vaughan was already Principal of Somerville College, and Mary Adams was Head of Television Talks at the BBC, both of them committed Fellow Travellers, as communist sympathisers were then called.

A decade later, when I was at Somerville, the ideological revolution had progressed; the Labour landslide and Education Act of 1945 signalled the onset of the Welfare State.

From the start, the forces of collectivism and egalitarianism scarcely even hinted at their real objectives. One needed extensive experience of what results were being brought about in practice to see that a far more extreme and well worked out agenda was being acted upon, overriding previous principles of respect for factual objectivity, for an individual’s right to make decisions about his own affairs, or for individual differences in ability, and so on. This, however, happened without the previously accepted set of principles having been explicitly rejected.

Mary Adams

Mary Adams of the BBC was the mother of a friend of mine at Somerville, so that I often visited her house. On one such occasion, hearing my father's voice on the telephone when he came to pick me up, Mary Adams said dismissively, ‘He sounds very common’. She did not invite him in to hear his interesting views on education in East London, of which as headmaster of a primary school he had direct experience. The only times she spoke to people with accents as common (or commoner) than my father's was when they were members of the Labour Cabinet and hence freely welcome at her tea parties.

Of course, the people I have described as ‘communists’ were usually careful not to identify themselves as such. Like the Fabians, radical socialists in sympathy with communist ideology had to proceed slowly and cautiously. They might agree with every element of the Marxist perspective, but being described as a communist has typically been controversial, and was therefore to be avoided. Rejecting innate ability, inheritance, private capital, inequality of outcome (at least for others), and the idea of anyone having servants, people such as Mary Adams nevertheless had to call themselves ‘socialists’ and wait patiently until the things they believed in came to be regarded as harmless and normal, indeed barely ‘socialist’ at all – which they duly did.

E. Nesbit and the Fabian Society - a topsy-turvy world

Extract from Five Children and It:

[The Psammead to Jane] ‘Just wish, will you, that you may never be able, any of you, to tell anyone a word about Me.’

‘Why?’ asked Jane.

‘Why, don’t you see, if you told grown-ups I should have no peace of my life. They’d get hold of me, and they wouldn’t wish silly things like you do, but real earnest things; and the scientific people would hit on some way of making things last after sunset, as likely as not; and they’d ask for a graduated income-tax, and old-age pensions and manhood suffrage, and free secondary education, and dull things like that; and get them, and keep them, and the whole world would be turned topsy-turvy. Do wish it! Quick!’

Anthea repeated the Psammead’s wish ...

(E. Nesbit, Five Children and It, Puffin Books 1959, pp.213-214)

Edith Nesbit wrote a number of highly popular children's books, under the name ‘E. Nesbit’. Five Children and It, first published in 1902, is about children who find a Sand-fairy, or Psammead (a small furry creature which is able to grant wishes) in a gravel pit.

Edith Nesbit was a founder-member of the Fabian Society, dedicated to social reforms in a generally socialist direction, so she may well have been in sympathy with the developments which the Psammead deplores as likely to turn the world topsy-turvy.

The Fabian Society took its name from a Roman general* noted for his delaying tactics, and its motto was ‘Festina Lente’ (hasten slowly). Its logo was a tortoise. The Fabian Society was soon superseded by other socialist societies with a more aggressive and collectivist approach, which eventually led to the Welfare State in 1945.

By now we have all the social reforms which the Psammead would have liked to avoid (and more), Western civilisation is on the verge of collapse, but almost no one would question the desirability of ‘free’ secondary education, of the vote depending only on reaching a certain age, or of graduated income tax, as well as of miscellaneous ‘benefits’.

The national health service had not yet been thought of in 1902, and Nesbit does not mention it in the extract quoted. But it was not difficult to predict that reforms of this kind, once they started to be made, could never be reversed (Margaret Thatcher’s ‘ratchet effect’) and would eventually ruin any society which adopted them.

* Fabius Maximus

Margaret Thatcher and the educationalists

[The Department of Education and Science] was a department with an entrenched culture and a settled agenda of its own which it pursued with little reference to ministers or the rest of Whitehall. The convention was that education was above politics: government’s job was to provide the money but otherwise leave the running of the education system to the professionals. Political control, such as it was, was exercised not by the DES but by the local educational authorities up and down the country; the real power lay with the professional community of teachers, administrators and educational academics, all of whom expected to be consulted – and listened to – before any change in the organisation or delivery of education was contemplated ...

Politically as well as temperamentally, Mrs Thatcher was antipathetic to the DES. She instinctively disliked its central project, the spread of comprehensive schools, and the whole self-consciously ‘progressive’ ideology that lay behind it. She disliked the shared egalitarian and collectivist philosophy of the educational establishment ... (John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher: The Grocer’s Daughter, 2000, Jonathan Cape, p.212)

No doubt Margaret Thatcher was inhibited in what she could do as Education Secretary and had to implement the intentions of Ted Heath’s government. And no doubt she was also inhibited with regard to the ideas she could express without fear of condemnation.

Expressing approval of grammar (selected) schools was as far as a public figure could go in supporting the idea that there were differences between individuals and that the object of education should not be to iron these out, but to provide opportunities that corresponded to individual aptitude and inclination.

The body of agents of the collective, referred to as being considered ‘above politics’ – the teachers, educational experts, etc. – were actually almost universally left-wing, and this had a strong correlation with their attitudes in practice to educational issues. Margaret Thatcher was in favour of young people being able to rise in the world by their own efforts and by using their abilities as effectively as possible.

The grammar schools were modified by their increasing dependence on the state and by the increasing dominance of egalitarian ideology.

My experience (as a student) of grammar schools and universities was about a decade later than that of Margaret Thatcher, and by that time it was clear that the idea of people rising in society by virtue of exceptional ability and purposefulness was no longer acceptable, even at grammar schools.

Both the headmistress of the Woodford County High (a grammar school) and Dame Janet Vaughan, the Principal of Somerville College, were clearly against this idea. The former stated explicitly that if someone were able to take exams at an earlier age than usual, or to work simultaneously towards exams in more subjects than usual, these things would be unfair advantages and they should not be allowed.

Dame Janet took the view that if a person encountered any difficulties in achieving their career objectives, they should give up. Since, according to her, innate ability did not exist, their ambitions could not be based on anything objective, and they should be told to settle for something more modest.

My unfunded independent university, which could be publishing analyses of the complex issues involved in the area of education, has been effectively censored and suppressed for decades. Meanwhile, misleading and tendentious material on the topic has continued to flood out from socially recognised sources.

I hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed research department. I make this appeal to all universities, corporations and individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

Margaret Thatcher memorial fund proposal

I propose that a fund be set up in memory of the late Baroness Thatcher, provisionally entitled the Margaret Thatcher Memorial Fund for Academic Exiles.

The fund would be dedicated to giving financial support to those high-IQ individuals whose academic opportunities were damaged by the hostility of members of the education system such as schoolteachers, local education authorities and college principals.

In view of her own experiences, I am sure Margaret Thatcher herself would have been delighted that a fund in her name was helping such individuals by providing them with financial support, to enable them to carry out work which might assist them in regaining the academic positions and status of which they have been unjustly deprived as a result of opposition from the educational and academic establishments.

Margaret Thatcher believed that grammar schools were necessary to help people from backgrounds like hers to “compete with children from privileged homes” [1]. As well as being handicapped by the lack of a private education, she appears to have suffered from social and ideological bias against her at university. Her background, demeanour and political outlook may all have contributed to her being dismissed or despised by people who were well set up in life.

She was, for example, said to have been turned down for a job at Imperial Chemical Industries because she was regarded as “headstrong, obstinate and self-opinionated” [2]. But these may be just the superficial characteristics that go with having the drive and ability necessary to make major intellectual advances.

1. speech to the Conservative Party Conference, 14 October 1977
2. quoted in K. Sathyanarayana, The Power of Humor at the Workplace, 2007

Thomas Jefferson – liberty, security and freemasonry

There is a quotation ascribed in various forms to Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States of America (although it may in fact have originated with Benjamin Franklin). This runs something like this: A country, or a person, that is prepared to sacrifice a little liberty for greater security will lose both and deserves to have neither.

One may well question this on various grounds; how do you define either liberty or security, and what could be meant by deserving something? However, its essential meaning is clear, and is plainly illustrated by modern society. Once state intervention has been allowed to arise, there is no longer such a thing as individual liberty.

The income support handed out by the state is known euphemistically as ‘social security’. Security in this sense and individual liberty are incompatible. You may have one or the other, but you cannot have both.

Thomas Jefferson was one of the Founding Fathers of the USA, some of whom appear to have been Freemasons.

It has been suggested that freemasonry may be a descendant, via medieval military orders such as the Knights Templar, of Gnostic ideas.

Gnostic Christianity, particularly in its secret and persecuted forms, such as Catharism, appears to have had anti-social (or at least asocial) and pro-individualistic ideas. It certainly seems to have been considerably different from the exoteric forms of Christianity as a mass religion with which we are familiar at the present day.

It is possible that Gnostic ideas have had more influence, through the action of esoteric societies such as the Masons, on the development of civilisation than is generally realised.

We appeal for £1m as initial funding for a social science department in my unrecognised and unsupported independent university. This would enable it to publish preliminary analyses of areas in the history of ideas that are currently being ignored because they do not fit with the prevailing ideology.

Margaret Thatcher and Oxford’s radical leftists

Further on the topic of the late Lady Thatcher and the former Principal of Somerville College, Dame Janet Vaughan, this is an extract from Margaret Thatcher: The Grocer’s Daughter by John Campbell:

To Janet Vaughan, proud of Somerville’s left-wing reputation, Miss Roberts was an embarrassment, a cuckoo in her progressive nest.

Campbell quotes Ann Dally, an ex-Somervillian, about Thatcher:

In wartime Oxford, most students were left-wing, especially at Somerville ... We used to laugh at Margaret Roberts when she knocked at our doors and tried to sell us tickets for the Conservative Club ball or a similar event. She seemed so solemn and assured about it and we were intolerant of other people’s certainties ... She fascinated me. I used to talk to her a great deal; she was an oddity. Why? She was a Conservative. She stood out. Somerville had always been a radical establishment and there weren’t many Conservatives about.

There is a strong taboo against any suggestion that those who are running other people’s lives can be adversely motivated towards them on account of their personality. In the case of Margaret Thatcher, vague speculations are entertained that Dame Janet’s discouragements may have influenced her direction in life. But even if so, they are not regarded as damaging, since she was ultimately outstandingly successful as a politician.

In the case of those whose prospects in life might be regarded as damaged by Dame Janet’s discouragement, the possibility is not even entertained that Dame Janet should be regarded as in any way responsible.

There are many more ex-Somervillians who have plainly failed to get into the sort of career they wanted or needed to have than there are who have become Prime Minister.

Dame Janet is described as socialist. Indeed, she was what at the time was called a Fellow Traveller, and was in sympathy with much of what went on in communist countries. This included the rejection of innate ability.

It is not usually supposed that differences of political opinion between educator and student can have an impact on the academic work and success, or otherwise, of the student. However, it is unrealistic to think that the attitudes of those involved in someone’s education may not be significantly favourable or, alternatively, damaging, even if it is not clear why their reactions to a particular person should be negative. (In Margaret Roberts’s case, the reactions were partly due to politics. In my own case, the hostility was not obviously linked to any differences in world view between Dame Janet and myself.)

It can never have been easy for a person to rise to a different social class by exercising exceptional ability. Those already in the higher social class would be threatened by the potentially intrusive outsider. Those who managed to get to Oxford from state schools, such as Margaret Thatcher and myself, aroused antagonism and a wish to prove to the newcomers that they were not so clever as they might think.

Dame Janet’s attitudes were mirrored by those of the Somerville dons, when I was there.

An undergraduate at Somerville who had obtained a scholarship in classics despite her unfavourable state school background, and who was particularly proficient in writing Greek poetry, was told by one of her tutors when she had a Latin epigram published in a prestigious Oxford magazine, ‘It's the first thing you have done since you came up that justifies your scholarship.’ Subsequently, she was told that her tutors did not think she was good enough for an academic career, although they thought she should be able to hold down a non-academic job.

Dame Janet seemed to look down on those from a less exalted background than her own, but tended not to be antagonistic to students from an upper-class background, nor to those of a socialist inclination. However, even being a thorough-going socialist from an upper-class background was not necessarily enough to protect a student from arousing her hostility if the student was also ambitious, especially if they had ambitions to become an academic.

We appeal for £1m as initial funding to enable the relevant departments of my unrecognised and unsupported independent university to publish more adequate analyses of the many unexamined issues in the fields of education and academia. It is high time that an airing was given to many issues which contribute to the ongoing deterioration of modern society.

Trying to compete us out of existence?

I was disgusted, although of course in a familiar way, to hear recently that someone is receiving a grant (from the Perrott-Warwick Fund, administered by Trinity College, Cambridge) to work on an area of research that was initiated by myself and Dr Charles McCreery, which led to no opportunity for us to develop our research in those or any other areas, nor to any career advancement that could lead to opportunity now or in the future.

I was also disgusted to learn of the existence of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, a department within the University of Oxford, while we continue to be prevented from producing constructive work in several areas which should come under that heading.

From a very early stage in my holding of the Perrott-Warrick Studentship, organisations began to be set up in Oxford, none of which had been heard of before, but which succeeded in the objective of ostensibly mirroring any work which I might propose doing, so that financial support, media attention (which we needed, to get supporters) and potential associates were diverted from my incipient organisation.

A rule that the Perrott-Warrick Studentship could not be held by the same person twice was instituted while I was in contact with the Society for Psychical Research. I supposed that this was in order to prevent me from holding the Studentship for a second time, a supposition based on the consistency with which possible other sources of funding were cut off.

Even if it is the case that such a rule still applies, so that Dr McCreery and myself could not hold it for a second time, there are people here now, and have been other people in the past, who would be able to carry on our research in these areas, and who have, like us, no present sources of income.

Dame Janet Vaughan, the ‘old dragon’ of Somerville

There follows an extract from a review in the Daily Mail by Quentin Letts of the book The Real Iron Lady: Working With Mrs Thatcher by Gillian Shephard.

Janet Vaughan, principal of Mrs T’s Oxford college [Somerville], is several times unveiled as a frightful Lefty snoot – she thought young Margaret Roberts no more than ‘a perfectly adequate chemist’ – but can we not have some description of the old dragon? Did Mrs T ever mention her? Did Vaughan’s dismissiveness fuel the great journey from Grantham to Downing Street? (22 March 2013)

Margaret Thatcher was at Somerville about a decade before I was, so Dame Janet was in situ at the time of the onset of the Welfare State. This shows how well worked out the egalitarian ideology of the Welfare State already was, although at that time seldom made explicit. For example, I do not think that anyone at that time would have said explicitly that there was no such thing as innate ability, or no such thing as genetically determined individual differences.

The appointment of Janet Vaughan as Principal of Somerville sheds a strange light on the underlying intentions of the establishment.

They could hardly have regarded such an appointment as unimportant, or been unaware of what Janet Vaughan’s attitudes were likely to be. Somerville was one of a small number of developing women’s colleges which could be expected to attract the cleverest and most ambitious young women from all over the world, a number of whom would return to their native country to become influential in its government. Dame Janet was strongly communistic in outlook, and communism is opposed to precocious ability. Furthermore, there is every reason to think that Dame Janet herself had an IQ which was well below that of the majority of the undergraduates in her college. It is therefore not surprising that she blocked the way of many of them.

State education might have been expected to provide opportunity for exceptional ability, whatever its original circumstances, but in fact egalitarianism was to mean that there was no such thing as an exceptional individual.

When undergraduates at Somerville encountered difficulties, Dame Janet would deny them permission to take the exams for which they were working and also tell them that they should content themselves with less exalted careers.

I knew of one undergraduate who went regularly to a college of further education in the centre of Oxford to work for an external Honours degree in physics from London University, having been told by Dame Janet that at Oxford she would only be allowed to sit the examination for a Pass degree (a degree without Honours).

Margaret Thatcher was told by Dame Janet that she was nothing more than ‘a perfectly adequate chemist’. I was told by her that I was ‘a competent mathematician, and wasn’t that enough for me?’ I wonder how many others, with IQs far above that of Janet Vaughan herself, were told similar things.

And, denying support for a research scholarship to a Somerville graduate I knew who had a high IQ and was really keen to do research, Dame Janet said – perhaps with the implication that the graduate should not mind about it – that ‘research is dull’. The so-called research which she (Dame Janet) did herself certainly was.

Suing your headmaster

It is a feature of modern society that it is impossible to express a need. If society has ruined your education and thrown you out without a usable qualification, this gives you no claim on anyone. The fact that you are suffering, for lack of the sort of high-flying academic career you should have had all along, gives you no claim. The only way to get anyone to take any notice is to assert that someone in the system did something wrong.

The local authority was wrong to persecute my father. But, of course, you cannot prove this. They are delighted to tell you that nothing can be proved. And then they say (as I was told by a Shadow Minister of Education) that you would have to sue for reparation from the actual individual who made a false statement or unjustifiable decision. This is not, I believe, legally correct; the person or persons involved were acting as servants of the local authority, and it is the local authority that should be sued, even if the individuals concerned are dead.

Bu you cannot claim that you were wrongfully treated in terms of your IQ, because IQ is supposed not to exist. And you cannot claim that you were forced to accept arrangements that were in no way in line with your own perception of your needs, because ‘education’ authorities do not have to provide what any child wants. ‘The child has no valid volition’, as someone with long experience of working in the ‘education’ system once said to me.

And then I know that if I tried to sue anyone I would only be risking money – money which I so badly need to work towards setting up my own institutional environment – and the judge would no doubt be in sympathy with the modern ideology.

A colleague of mine was in a similar position to mine, even if less extreme and less obvious. It should have been possible for her to sue her headmaster for his unjustifiable treatment of her. Her parents should have opposed him and demanded her reinstatement in the top stream, given her obvious ability. Or, better, taken her away from so bad a school and helped her to prepare for the scholarship exam at home.

In the event, it was an indictment of the ‘education’ system that she approached the end of it with no suitable opportunities open to her, and was forced to join forces with me in the establishment of an independent academic organisation. She could have no idea that the modern ideology would lead to her family discriminating against her financially, so that they gave her less support than families are in the habit of giving to those who follow socially recognised careers.

In fact what she was doing was no less respectable (even if less respected) than any normal academic career in a university. More respectable, in fact, because standards have declined severely, and a great deal of what goes on in recognised universities is rubbish.

I understand that her headmaster had no heirs. He should have left everything to her in reparation. If her parents had put her case to him forcibly enough, as they should have done, he might have actually done this. In fact, since her parents made no protest or complaint, he felt under no pressure to make amends.

My unfunded independent university, which could be publishing analyses of the complex issues involved in the area of education, has been effectively censored and suppressed for decades. Meanwhile, misleading and tendentious material on the topic has continued to flood out from socially recognised sources.

I hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed research department. I make this appeal to all universities, corporations and individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

New pensions arrangements: ‘pro-family’, anti-intellectual

The population of existing pensioners is one which has an average IQ above that of the population as a whole, and therefore, as the modern ideology works, is one from which resources are to be transferred to populations with lower average IQs (a process known as ‘redistribution’).

Previously, suggestions were made by which all pensioners could pay some new tax on capital or income, but for the present these suggestions have lapsed, and the only new tax on existing pensioners is to be the ‘Granny Tax’ – a tax on their earnings, if they have any, which was not previously payable above a certain age.

Additional resources are being distributed to populations of pensionable age with lower average IQs, even if it is not clear where these resources are coming from. Extra resources are to be paid to pensioners in the future, but none are to be received by the existing population of pensioners.

The new proposals for taxing the elderly will adversely affect those, like myself, who need to employ people, for purposes of building up an independent academic institution or otherwise. In particular, employees over a certain age are currently free from paying national insurance contributions, which greatly reduces the bureaucracy involved in employing them, and it has been proposed that this exemption be removed.

Losers: Existing pensioners

The most aggrieved at the new rules will be ten million existing pensioners who currently get less than the proposed flat-rate pension. Only those retiring after the single-tier pension is introduced on April 6, 2017 will qualify for the new £155 a week payout. If you get less today, you will keep getting less.

This will create an apartheid. For example, a man who turns 65 on April 5, 2017, and who has worked all his life is likely to get about £118 state pension payout. But had the same person been born the following day, their state pension would be £37 a week more. Over 25 years of retirement he will have missed out on £48,100.

To compound matters, anyone who hits state pension age (currently roughly 61 and five months for women and 65 for men) between April 6 this year and April 5, 2017, will have a double blow. Not only will they fail to get the higher pension, but they will be victims of the so-called Granny Tax. This will strip them of the higher tax-free allowances that over 65s currently get.

Winners: Women and carers

Those who will gain the most in the state pension overhaul will be people who have long periods out of employment, such as stay-at-home mothers. This is because your entitlement to a state pension is [currently] accrued by paying National Insurance contributions [...]

Stay-at-home mother Kate Wilkinson, 36, is in line to benefit from the state pension shake-up. Under current rules, parents who take breaks from work frequently miss out on the full payout when they retire [...]

Mrs Wilkinson says: ‘These changes are fantastic because at the moment it feels unfair – as if you’re being punished for wanting to bring up your children. It is great to get that extra support and get a bit back for being a stay-at-home mum.’

(Extracts taken from Daily Mail, 16 January 2013)

Existing pensioners have qualified for their pensions by paying a full number of contributions, whether out of a percentage of their earnings or, if they were not earning, by making voluntary contributions. Thus this population has demonstrated above-average functionality over a long period.

Non-means-tested pensions are to be paid only to a population which is much less highly selected, including those who have been unemployed for long periods and have not taken the trouble to pay voluntary contributions.

So redistribution is again to take place, by distributing more resources to a population with a lower average IQ, without any additional resources being allocated to the population of pensioners with a higher average IQ.

The proposed legislation is said to be ‘incredibly pro-family’. What it is also, though this is not mentioned, is antagonistic to outcast intellectuals, still struggling at pensionable age to recover from their ruined ‘education’. But not ‘incredibly’ so, only anti them in the accustomed way.

The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources.

I hereby apply for financial support on a scale at least adequate for one active and fully financed research department, to all universities, and to corporations or individuals who consider themselves to be in a position to give support to socially recognised academic establishments.

Causes of absenteeism in a bootlace factory

text of a letter

You said that you found our questionnaire on out-of-the-body experiences (OBEs) ‘inspirational’. Please do not imagine that I myself found it so, when Charles McCreery and I did the projects on OBEs. The projects were just the best method I had available at the time of working towards a university appointment and a professorship as soon as possible.

You may object that it was a very bad method of trying to work towards it, but my position was determined by the impossibility of getting support from my college (Somerville) for any way of getting back into a career path, for example by taking another degree in any of a wide variety of subjects as quickly as possible.

So I was lucky to find that there was a way of getting a postgraduate grant from Trinity College, Cambridge, which did not depend on support from my college, in an area of research that was new to me.

It is true that I saw the possibility of further research by me on OBEs (unbiased by the prevailing ideology) on a much larger scale as leading eventually to significant theoretical advances on important and totally ignored issues. However, doing work on the restricted scale that was possible in bad circumstances was of no greater interest to me than would have been research, on the same scale and in the same circumstances, on ‘Causes of absenteeism in a bootlace factory’.

Research of extreme theoretical importance remains possible in this area, but this is only going to happen in a future which we need to be given help in working towards. The potential importance of the research is probably the reason for OBEs having been so totally ignored before I started to make my appeals for them. It is probably also the reason why Charles and I have been deprived of any source of finance to carry on further work, while money has been lavished (relatively speaking) on people who already have academic status and salary and who can be relied upon only to do research which will not risk challenging the prevailing ideology.

Although I was, and still am, represented as having some peculiar ‘interest’ in hallucinatory experiences, it was in fact the case that my only motive for doing small-scale work in bad circumstances was to increase my claim on academic career progression with the implied improvement of circumstances.

The theoretical importance of an area of research does not make it any more rewarding (or less damaging) to do boring and tedious work in that area, without even the hotel environment and other circumstances provided by a university career that could make life worth living.

After doing the research for which I got a BLitt, and eventually a DPhil, which I had hoped would give me an entrée to some academic career path, leading as soon as possible to a professorship, I found I was actually as devoid of opportunity as before.

I was not supposed to mind if I was as outcast and destitute as before, after attempting to establish a position for myself by doing research in previously unrecognised fields. Only those who already had academic status and salary would be permitted to do work in the new fields. I and any associates I had would be left without status or income; the years of hard labour having resulted in no reward, being as totally abortive as had been the decades of work in schools and universities which had been supposed to give one access to a university career.

So society threw me out again, as badly off as if I had never been to school or college at all, admittedly now with contacts among the establishment population who could have supported me but who unfortunately had made a universal decision not to do so.

An outlaw is defined as ‘a person who has broken the law, especially who remains at large’. I remained at large, having committed sedition; hence I was an outlaw. I was neither a drugged zombie nor a wage slave, so all the more beyond the pale.

Dr McCreery, in spite of the DPhil gained by his supervised research on OBEs, found himself unable to obtain funding for further research, or an academic appointment well-paid enough to relieve the pressures of survival sufficiently for him even to make progress with writing a book based on his DPhil work. Such a book would include more discussion of individual cases and future possibilities for research than had been possible in the thesis.

We are still appealing for financial support to make possible at least this level of productivity. Dr McCreery could now proceed with the editing and publication of this and other books if he were provided with funding of at least £100,000 per annum.

As the new fields of research developed, in universities in North America and elsewhere, we hoped that Dr McCreery might also become eligible for research grants and appointments. But with no financial support at all, he could only lose ground to academics with status and salary, who were able to publish books and papers at a much greater rate, so that they became the leading ‘experts’ in the field, although their work was far less analytical and free from prejudice than his had been.

People like to talk as though, provided you stay physically alive, you are competing on equal terms with salaried academics enjoying the facilities provided by their universities.

The figure of £100,000 per annum to finance Dr McCreery’s work has to be seen in the context of his having to pay for all the facilities, staff etc. which are provided for those having university appointments. Some years ago we worked out that the average Oxford University research department was spending about £100,000 a year to support each of its research workers. There has been inflation since then, so £100,000 is probably an underestimate and much more could be done with £200,000 per annum.

Letter about my Professorship applications

text of a letter

Dear ...

I attach herewith a copy of a letter which I have been sending to members of electoral committees when I apply for Oxford and Cambridge Professorships, for which I am not shortlisted.

I hope the letter will go some way to explaining how I got into a social position so bad that it not only arouses hostility against myself, but is liable also to arouse hostility against anyone, such as Dr Charles McCreery, who attempts to give me any support.

Modern education is geared against exceptional ability, which is how I came to be thrown out without a research scholarship at the end of my ruined ‘education’.

I went on, nevertheless, trying to return to an academic career by proceeding to do research independently, and this was seen as seditious, in the sense of implicitly questioning the meaningfulness of my rejection by society, and hence suggesting to the world at large that such acceptance or rejection was not the sole criterion of merit or ability.

copy of letter to members of Electoral Boards

Dear Professor [...],

I am writing to you as you are a member of the Electoral Board for the Professorship of [...].

I applied for the post in [...] and was informed later that I had not been shortlisted.

It is likely that my application was put in the ‘reject’ pile (on account of my age and other factors) before you read it. In which case I need to fully explain my situation to you.

I was a precocious child. I was reading books at the age of two; and given my extreme precocity, it was both cruel and unreasonable to expect my education to consist of taking about the normal number of exams at about the usual age. The post-war legislation which prohibited the taking of any exams at all until after the 16th birthday had a particularly terrible effect on my life. I therefore took many fewer exams and at much later ages than I could and should have done.

My life was one of agonised frustration and deprivation. I did not get to university until far too late an age, by which time I was too old and had been suffering for too long to take any interest in the process of taking a first degree. My college continued to apply the policy of refusing to accept that any problems which arose from a retarded education needed to be taken into account.

Recently people have been suing the educational system for providing them with inadequate skills and qualifications. I should have been able to sue for being left with no paper qualification with which to enter the academic career which, in view of my ability and aptitudes, I needed to have.

I did not accept that I could have any other sort of career or that life would be tolerable without a career.

In spite of my lack of paper qualifications I was perfectly well able to teach or do research in several subjects, so that the lack of a paper qualification and of support from my college was the only reason for my not applying for appointments teaching e.g. maths or physics.

My only motive in everything I did was to effect return to a full-time academic career as quickly as possible. The research I did was not determined by considerations of interest to myself but by what I could get funding for.

It may be considered that I was ill-advised to attempt to do research in what would be, even if accepted, a new area of academic work, as a means of returning to an academic career. In fact I was not advised at all, as my college refused to give any consideration to my need to work my way back to a university career. Whatever advice I had been given I would, in my desperate situation, have been forced to work on anything for which I could get funding.

There appears to be a social convention that a person is not subjected to suffering and hardship by being deprived of a career, however high their IQ and however great their temperamental need to put their drive and effort into a progressive situation. Anything they do in exile is supposed to have been done because of a particular interest in it. Neither of these things has been true in my case. My life without a career has been one of severe hardship and deprivation and the increasing desperation of my urgent need to return to a university career has caused me agonising frustration for many years past.

It is these difficulties that have prevented me from applying to return to an academic career at an earlier age (any applications I did make being turned down) so I must ask that my age be not held against me since I have made the best progress I could. So far as I am concerned I am just in the position of someone in their early twenties attempting to start on a full-time, full-length academic career.

It is an indication of the oppressiveness of modern society that nobody considers it their business to enquire into the predicament of the victims of social outrage perpetrated by the educational and academic systems, and to support them in recovering from it.

A form of help which you could certainly give me would be money. Without a salary, and having to provide myself with an institutional environment as best I can, it is almost impossible for me to write books expressing my views, to publish those which have already been written and stockpiled, or to carry out any of the research which I have now been prevented from doing for several decades, and which I need to do to enhance my claim on restoration to the sort of career I which I should have been having all along.

This is a standing invitation to you or any senior academic to come to visit me at my impoverished independent university, to discuss ways of supporting me, morally or financially, so that I do not continue to be prevented from contributing to the intellectual life of my time, as a headmistress (who perhaps lost her job for the crime of allowing me to be too happy at her school) once said that I was certain to do.

However, I am not inviting you or anyone else to come without warning, and an appointment would have to be made well in advance, and accompanied by a donation of at least £5000 towards the support of my institution, or to me personally. In fact, it would be better if made to me personally, as our affairs are too constricted and under-staffed to accept any additional burden in the way of processing and accounting for donations.

Yours sincerely,
etc.

Pretending that nothing is wrong

text of a letter

I am sorry that I have not yet been able to meet you again. I could have put you in the picture about all the interaction connected with Charles’s claims for reparation, up to and including the two years or so during which Richard Mead, the biographer of Charles’s father, has been writing his book. As it is, no one has heard Charles’s side of it, and it is probable that the fictitious distortions put around by his family have continued to circulate quite widely. From time to time we get indications of this from some quarter or another, as we did from Richard Mead himself.

We are in a position in which it is apparently considered right and proper automatically to presume that we are in the wrong, and to refrain from considering that anyone else might be at fault.

We have always thought that his family's treatment of Charles was so deplorable and unjustifiable that other upper-class people who got wind of it would, and should have, put them under pressure to reverse the harm that had been done, and to give Charles positive support in the future, to enable him to make up for the delay in his productive intellectual career.

We were shocked at the time that apparently no one attempted to put pressure on his family to do so, including relatives and former friends of Charles. We were shocked again when the publication of the biography of Charles’s father did nothing to produce any expression of sympathy with Charles's position, or of any intention to attempt to remedy it.

When we heard that Richard Mead was about to start writing this book, we hoped that this would make Charles’s family think that they should set their house in order before attention was drawn to the General's life, but they did not do this. Instead, both his brothers approached Charles with disingenuous attempts to embark on social interaction as if nothing had gone wrong in the past that needed to be set right.

As Charles did not accept these approaches, and had previously made it clear that the resumption of social relationships could only take place after reparation for the wrongs of the past had at least been started upon, it seems that his family relied on getting Richard Mead to accept their version of events, and he (Mead) certainly showed every sign of wishing to do so.

I have attempted to deal, in pieces which I have posted on my blog, with some of the worst misrepresentations which we have encountered, and I hope that you will take the trouble to read them, so that you will not support any misrepresentation of Charles's position which may be made. (In the same way that, even now, I am widely supposed to have 'followed my interests' in being thrown out of an academic career.)

Sedition

Things are often defined somewhat differently in modern English dictionaries, by comparison with dictionaries published earlier.

“Sedition”, for example, is defined in Chambers’s Twentieth Century Dictionary (mid-century version) as

insurrection; public tumult; vaguely, any offence against the state short of treason

In the current Oxford English Dictionary, on the other hand, “sedition” is:

actions or speech urging rebellion against the authority of a state or ruler

It is clear that on the later definition I have not been able to avoid being seditious, since I was attempting to do research without having been selected by society to have the cachet of authorisation to do so. Why was I attempting this? Because I had been rejected by society. So either there was something wrong with the system which had rejected me, or there was something wrong with me which justified the system in rejecting me.

As I went on trying to do research without being socially authorised to do so, I was implicitly asserting that there was something wrong with the system which had rejected me, and that it was right and proper for someone in my position to act against the wishes of that system. Hence I was being seditious in the modern sense of the word.

This, I suppose, accounts for my having been treated as a criminal from the start, and continuing to be so treated to the present day. Practically everybody will immediately jump to the conclusion that there must be something wrong with me, and not something wrong with the system.

When I met General McCreery (the only time I did) he said “Could we not get the University to accept us working under their supervision?” I said that, at present, the areas in which we were proposing to work were not recognised by the University but that we hoped to do research which would gain recognition, so that perhaps later we might aspire to status within the university system. I said that we had thought of seeking university affiliation straight away, but that we did not think it would be possible unless some senior person made an approach on our behalf, which no one was doing.

Apparently this did not satisfy General McCreery, and later he said to Charles that we should seek to become subordinate to the university before attempting to raise money to finance the research. Clearly he thought that we should actively refrain from doing anything that might fail to be approved of.

The General did not add that if Charles continued to support me in my attempts to raise money, he (Charles) would himself be regarded as a reprobate and an outlaw, whom it was right to slander and disinherit. However, in practice that was how the General proceeded to treat him.

The psychological syndrome requiring the subordination of ability to socially conferred status is evidently extremely strong, although not openly expressed. Several people, other than the General, had expressed the view that since I and my associates were attempting the impossible in setting up an independent academic organisation, it would be kindest to put an end to our suffering as soon as possible, while actively choking off support that we seemed about to secure.

In a similar way, General McCreery advised Charles, as if benevolently, that it would be impossible for us to succeed, and proceeded to ensure that it would be, by using his position as a Patron and ostensible supporter to disseminate hostility, and by impoverishing Charles and bringing about his exile from the social class of which he had previously been a normally acceptable member.

* * *

At the time of my conversation with the General, I had not published anything which was overtly critical of the prevailing collectivist ideology. I was treated as a criminal only on account of the seditious attitudes implied by my continuing to attempt to make a career in academic research despite having been rejected by my Oxford college. This, as may be seen, was apparently considered to be bad enough.

Since that time, I and my associates have published criticisms of various aspects of the modern collectivist ideology. My blog is one of those which have been blocked by China, presumably because China wishes to shield its population from any awareness that such critical attitudes are possible.

Although less explicit, the attitude to any expression of our views has been the same in the West. Our books are given as little publicity as possible, and we are treated as if we do not exist. Thus, although our books must have reached the attention of a wide readership, no financial or other advantage reaches us, of the sort which might make possible further publication, or intellectual activity of any kind.

Open letter to the family of the late General Sir Richard McCreery

We have posted below advertisements for some of the properties near here which supporters might buy or rent to help us expand our activities to a more adequate level.

I would suggest that buying the house advertised at £500K in the name of Dr Charles McCreery would indicate a wish on the part of his family to start making reparation to him for the damage to his prospects that was done, and continues to be done, by slander and disinheritance.

The value of this house is almost certainly far less than the present value of the Chelsea flat which Charles’s mother, Lady McCreery, left to his sister in her will, from which Charles was excluded.

Our current enquiries show that the value of such a flat at Cranmer Court in Chelsea is not less, and probably more, than £800K, this being the current market value of a one-bedroom flat there. In fact, his mother’s flat which was left to his sister appears to have had at least two bedrooms.

It should not be overlooked that, deprived of financial support as we are, the gift of a house would need to be accompanied by a gift of money which could be invested to provide for the running costs, insurance and expenses of the house. The cost of the house purchase would be £500K, so £500K in cash could be added to bring the total up to £1m. This would indicate a serious intention to start making reparation to Dr McCreery, but would still be a small fraction of the benefits which would have accrued to him over the years by investment of the inheritances of which he was unjustly deprived.

* * *

Further information about this situation can be found at Charles McCreery and his family.

Supporting us by buying or renting houses

Lenin is said to have declared that the way to crush the bourgeoisie was to grind them between the millstones of inflation and taxation.

This seems to be the programme that has been, and is being, followed in this country and throughout Western civilisation.

There is a smallish house for sale near here, and also a small house for rent near here. Any potential supporter could buy or rent one of them, as a holiday home and/or for us to use. It seems that in modern society we have no potential supporters, but I just mention it.

The agent for the house for sale is Penny & Sinclair.

The agent for the house for rent is Morgan & Associates.

Professor Colin Blakemore and 'near-death' experiences

‘Near-death experiences’, which have become a staple of popular journalism, were never heard of (or at least I had never heard of them) until a decade or so after the publication of my book on out-of-the-body experiences in 1968, so it may be supposed that they arose in reaction to my having publicised the concepts of out-of-the-body experiences, lucid dreams, and apparitions.

I should explain how it was that I came to publish work on these topics, as it has been widely assumed that I found them particularly interesting.

In fact, I was thrown out at the end of my ruined ‘education’ with no usable qualification, after eleven years of state-funded oppression which was aimed at producing an egalitarian outcome, i.e. at cancelling the advantages which I might have been able to gain as a result of my exceptional ability. I had no research scholarship nor any way of proceeding with the high-flying university career which I needed to have, in any field.

In this shocking situation, serendipity led me to the Society for Psychical Research and I was able to obtain a research studentship (the Perrott Studentship) on account of the relationship of the SPR with Trinity College, Cambridge.

I do not know of any other way in which I could have obtained a grant for postgraduate work in any field in the absence of support from Somerville (my Oxford college).

I had therefore to survey the fields of potential research that fell under the auspices of the Perrott Studentship to find the areas most likely to enhance my claim on a university appointment.

Out-of-the-body experiences (OBEs) appeared to me to be the phenomenon which would most readily lend itself to research leading to advances in scientific understanding. They were, however, and perhaps for this reason, ignored by those working or interested in parapsychology. They were predominantly associated with a belief in an afterlife, and the cases compatible with such a belief which were sometimes published by spiritualists or theosophists were supposed by those without such beliefs to be imaginary or dreamlike experiences.

Dr Charles McCreery and I made appeals to the general public for reports of anomalous experiences. As a result of our work, it now appears that such appeals can be expected to produce a substantial number of cases. The cases often had various characteristics in common, which could provide plentiful scope for further research, but we did not see any of this as having any bearing on the question of spiritualistic survival.

We hoped that we had released OBEs as a topic for research from this unrealistic issue. However, the way to our doing further research was blocked by a lack of interest in providing financial support for us to carry it out. (There had all along been hostility to our commencing research in this area, even from members of the SPR.)

After a decade or so, we started to become aware of the previously unknown category of near-death experiences, which began to receive publicity on the television and elsewhere.

For example, a near-death experience was quoted in the Daily Mail recently.

Death was beckoning but I was aware of everything around me. Suddenly, I felt my entire body being sucked up into the white light above. I found myself in a white tunnel — and I knew I had died. Away from the cursing of the medics and the bleeps of the machines, there was a wonderful sense of calm.

But I also became aware of somebody standing a few feet away from me... it was Ruby — wearing her new school uniform and with her hair tied neatly in bunches. She smiled and took my hand. ‘Come with me, Mummy,’ she implored.

At the end stood a gate. I stopped, feeling an urge to walk back down the tunnel, where I was sure my beloved grandmother and other family members who’d passed away would be waiting to greet me.

But little Ruby was insistent. ‘Mummy, step through the gates NOW!’ Her urgency brought me to my senses. I stepped through it and Ruby slammed it shut behind me.

The shock jolted my body — and I am sure it was at this moment that the defibrillator pads being used by the medics shocked my heart back into a rhythm. (Daily Mail, 10 October 2012)

Also recently Professor Colin Blakemore commented in the Daily Telegraph on a book (Proof of Heaven, by Eben Alexander) about near-death experiences.

... NDEs have taken on a new cloak of respectability with a book by a Harvard doctor. Proof of Heaven, by Eben Alexander, will make your toes wiggle or curl, depending on your prejudices. What’s special about his account of being dead is that he’s a neurosurgeon. ... His, and the multitude of other memories reported by people who have been close to death, have to be seen first through the prism of hard science. The crucial question is not whether such astounding experiences should lead us to abandon materialist accounts of brain function, but whether materialist accounts can possibly explain them. ... Since the lucky survivor can only tell you about them after the event, how can we be sure that these things were perceived and felt at the time that their brains were messed up, rather than being invented afterwards? (Daily Telegraph, 16 November 2012)

And this is what has apparently resulted from our attempts to establish out-of-the-body experiences as a field in which we could carry out further research. The concept of OBEs has been replaced by the new concept of NDEs, and these are seen as only of interest in relation to the question of spiritualist survival.

The relevant departments of my unfunded independent university are effectively censored and suppressed. They have been prevented for decades from publishing analyses of the complex issues involved, while misleading and tendentious representations of them have continued to flood out from socially recognised sources.

Biography of General Sir Richard McCreery

On Wednesday (14th November) a book was published about the life of the late General Sir Richard McCreery, the father of my colleague Dr Charles McCreery. According to the book, Sir Richard was ‘arguably one of the finest British fighting generals of the Second World War.’

The book gives a misleading impression of the life of Charles McCreery and of our past history as an organisation for academic research, an organisation which was intended to supplement the university career of Dr McCreery, among others. The General was, in effect, antagonistic and his hostility had damaging effects on Dr McCreery’s prospects in life and those of the Institute of Psychophysical Research, with which Dr McCreery had become associated.

What is said in the book omits most of what happened and gives a misleading impression of the little that is mentioned.

Other members of the McCreery family should have exerted themselves (but have never done so) to repair the damage to Charles McCreery’s prospects, by disinheritance and otherwise, which resulted from the General’s unjustifiable hostility towards this organisation, and towards Charles McCreery’s association with it.

Readers of the book might like to look at the category Charles McCreery and his family on this blog which provides further insights into the General’s life. The following six posts may be of particular interest.

A Registrar of Oxford and other deflating gas-bags

Slandered by academics

Treacherous parents and a treacherous fund-raiser

Slandered by aristocrats (part 1)

Your name will be up there one day

The sacrifices of sadism are the greater

Hostility to research on hallucinatory phenomena

text of a letter

This is an account of the conversation about Charles McCreery’s sister Sarah, which I had with Sir George Joy.

Sir George was the only one of our ostensible supporters who visited us fairly regularly and to whom we talked about what was really going on. During my early years at the Society for Psychical Research he had been more like a wholehearted supporter. This had lasted long enough for him to play the role of senior supporter in getting the covenant from Cecil King, chairman of the group that owned the Daily Mirror, but by now he (Sir George) was as worried as anyone that we might get enough money to enable us to do something noteworthy, and acted as if threatened by anything that might increase the chance of that.

The conversation with him about Sarah McCreery must have been fairly early on, because it was very much in the context of everyone having made a lot of effort to convince Charles’s parents, and Sarah, that there was no reason why types of experience which had been associated in the past with parapsychology could not be studied quite objectively and scientifically. What we were proposing to do was in no way different from other psychological research, and we had a large number of prestigious academic Consultants to ensure that we never deviated from the best standards of experimental design.

So I said to Sir George something on the lines of, ‘I hope Charles’s family are genned up enough by now.’

Sir George conveyed to me that Charles’s sister certainly appeared not to be, and that she was stirring up people connected with the SPR, including himself, in demanding further details about what it was really all about, and what Charles’s motivation could be for becoming involved in it.

I was rather dismayed to hear this and said something on the lines of: ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. What more is there to know? She sounds like a troublemaker. Can’t you get her to simmer down?’

It was clear by that time, although we accepted it philosophically, that Charles’s family were a bad investment. A good deal of time and effort had been expended on dealing with the usual prejudices about anything connected with parapsychology but, after making trivial covenants of £10 a year each when they first became Patrons, General and Lady McCreery had not made any further donations. Nor had any of their relatives or contacts, many of whom were wealthy.

In the years that followed, each time we started a new research project, we applied to the Research Committee of the SPR for funding to supplement our small covenanted income from Cecil King, and we were always turned down. There were plenty of ways in which the projects could have been made more informative, and a better preparation for future work, if it had been possible to spend more than the absolute minimum on carrying them out. Of course the negativity of the SPR might have been as bad as this anyway, but certainly it was increased rather than decreased by the agitation frequently expressed by members of the McCreery family.

It seemed that the most we could hope for was passivity on the part of the McCreerys. Nevertheless, Charles continued to work hard at keeping in with them, because it was so important that he should retain his position as an accepted member of his family and of his social class.

Sarah McCreery certainly did us no good with the SPR, which was already hostile, by contacting Sir George to express her doubts and criticisms.

* * *

Hallucinatory phenomena, as well as other phenomena associated with psychical research, aroused, and still arouse, strong reactions or prejudices. For example, there was a prejudice that the existence of such things must be regarded as a proof of spiritualism or other belief systems.

In fact, the work which we were able to do on them, restricted as it was by a lack of adequate finance, established the existence of some types of experience convincingly enough for them to become acceptable in academic contexts. Nominal research on them began to be done in university laboratories around the world, while complete resistance remained to allowing us to carry out research on them any further. We were as unable as before to obtain academic appointments, or funding for an academic institution, including facilities for research on the topics which we had pioneered, although research of a kind was now being done on them by people with the initial advantage of academic status and salary.

The only recognition of our position as pioneers in these fields was that Charles McCreery and I were, many years later, offered the opportunity to work for DPhils, as the hallucinatory phenomena had by then become acceptable topics for academic research.

* * *

Charles McCreery’s family have treated him outrageously. I was shocked that a respectable family with professed high moral standards could behave in such ways. His appeals for reparation, or even for support independently of any admission of responsibility for harm done, were greeted by assertions that his father was such a great man that other members of the family felt that respecting his wishes was the primary consideration. (I.e. that if he wished one of his sons to be unjustly treated, no right-thinking person could wish to remedy that.)

I was, however, amazed that no friends or relatives of the family felt it incumbent on them to use their influence to make the family behave honourably.

We are seeking money to enable us to do the research which we need to do outside the university system to establish our claim to be given suitable, high status positions inside the university system, and to take much further our work in various fields, including those associated with hallucinatory experiences which were initiated by us.