MPA1
MUCH TO PRAY ABOUT : 1971-72
OPEN TO INFLUENCE
It might be thought that my job as a Senior Lecturer at a Polytechnic would be entirely mundane and completely devoid of the kind of interference I had experienced over the previous decade. In fact, the reverse was true. My job had nothing to do with teaching undergraduates but was solely to act as management tutor to mature students in Industry, Commerce, and various branches of the Public Services. As will be seen, this left my situation wide open to external influence. Also, I knew from before the start that there would be some unusual features of my presence in Hatfield Polytechnic for while completing the formalities to taking up my appointment I had been told by the Registrar, Ted Roberts, that the Directorate had been briefed about me by the Police. I had little doubt that a few Officers and members of the County Council had been similarly briefed.
I was known to the Police in Hertfordshire. In late 1961, just before I moved from Cambridge to Harpenden, as Regional Scientific Training Offer in Civil Defence I had given a talk on the effects of the H-Bomb to Senior Police Officers during a War Duties Exercise. The session was introduced and chaired by the Chief Constable, A.F. Wilcox.
Then, when in the mid to late 60's a number of puzzling and distressing disruptions to my life occurred, New Scotland Yard put me in touch with a Hertfordshire Special Branch man, an Inspector Aspinall, with whom I had an open and friendly talk at the County Constabulary H.Q. Nothing significant arose out of my talk. However, as already reported, I learned from a Masonic friend - S.W. (Bill) Lowe G.M. - that as a result of his enquiries on my behalf at top level in the County Constabulary, he had been told that the Police knew what was going on but had been instructed not to intervene. Interestingly, the Chief Constable’s son asked to join Safeguard Group,
I have no idea of the details of the Police briefings on my taking the Hatfield Polytechnic post but apparently they were wholly favourable. There were as it happens two Police Inspectors on a Diploma in Management Studies (DMS) course when I arrived at the Management School. I kept the little I had to do with them on a strictly tutor/student footing. I maintained the same role when I visited Gordon Chambers, a civilian training officer at Constabulary H.Q., in connection with a Senior Management Development (SMD) course I had designed.
Within days of taking up my duties at Bayfordbury I met Norman Lindop, Director of the Polytechnic, in the corridor there. He was very welcoming and I was told by a colleague that he had come to Bayfordbury to show a high-level flag of interest in me personally. As things turned out, I should have believed him.
Next was a visit to me at their request by two people named Hall of the Management Services Department of the County Council who expressed great interest in a joint endeavour. Mr. McCauley, the MOD/Cabinet Office man with whom I had discussed the USSR invitation less than a year before, had been contactable through the Management Services Unit of MOD.
What I had not expected was an almost constant Ministry of Defence presence at the School, namely serving Officers of the Armed Forces and the Security Service on 6-week Part 1 DMS courses. Some of the communications from them were very interesting. For example, a serving Army Officer attending one of my MOD course sessions came up to me afterwards and asked if he could obtain a grant. Something in his manner, coupled to the fact that I was not his personal tutor or in any way the person to ask, gave me the impression that his request was not genuine but was an allusion to my conversation with McCauley about a Russian named Grant. Then there was the open statement by an MOD-sponsored course member in an Introduction session that he was from the security service. There were two or three such pre-demobilisation students, one of whom went further and said he was an MI5 communications officer, looking after their electronic equipment -rather as Peter Wright had before he moved upwards in the Security Service. Other than revealing themselves as members of an organisation which was then supposed not to exist, but with which I had been in contact at top level, I gleaned no information whatsoever about their occupation, nor did I seek to do so. Indeed the only glimpse behind the scenes I obtained from all the security/intelligence services people sponsored by the MOD was from an Army Intelligence man some ten years later, who told me there was a short section in their handbook on Veiled Communication. Apparently the section did little more than warn the officers to be watchful for it.
I was also surprised that my introduction to investigatory organisations continued. One such communication occurred when I went to a meeting of my Cambridge Mark Lodge. I availed myself of a standing invitation of one of the members, Dr. Stanley Aston, to stay overnight in his rooms at St. Catharine's College. My breakfast at High Table the following morning would have been lonely had I not been joined by two men from Inland Revenue who were quite open in telling me that their Department 19 was a secret one, which carried out discreet enquiries into cases of fraud.
In due course I learned that the Head of the Management School had worked on ciphers at a forerunner of GCHQ and still had connections with the secret services. Then a newly-recruited colleague said he had previously been travelling the world for the Intelligence Service - he had married a Russian girl, which tended to confirm his story.
SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENTS
Very soon after I joined Hatfield Polytechnic there were several quite significant developments.
First, I received a pressing invitation to attend a Harpenden Conservative Association meeting entitled "Education Under The Conservatives". It was held under the auspices of the very Ward in which I lived. In my covering letter to Reggie Maudling I had countered any disinformation about my political views by describing myself as a “consistently marginal Conservative” and I would not be surprised if this is what led to the invitation. I was after all now in Education myself.
One of the speakers, John Watts, was from the Conservative Central Office. Anthony Sheradin, the principal speaker, was the Deputy Chairman of the County Education Committee, which had confirmed my appointment to the Polytechnic post. I very much liked his flexible, undogmatic approach to Education. Something else I found particularly interesting was that he was a senior manager of an instrument company. I greatly enjoyed the occasion and as a result I attended meetings of a local CPC, in which there were discussions on topics set out in leaflets issued by Central Office. A year later I was invited to a meeting on Education at the Conservative Office, St. Albans, and asked to chair a group which included Anthony Sheradin, who by this time was Chairman of the County Education Committee and thus in effect my local top-level ‘boss’. This meeting also had Central Office involvement.
Also within weeks of my joining the Management School, Mrs. Margaret Thatcher, the Secretary of State for Education, announced that up to 12 "regional centres of management education" were to be established, generally in or associated with a polytechnic. Within days of her announcement, two of Her Majesty’s Inspectors visited the Management School and made it clear they would support its becoming one of the new Regional Centres. As with other developments favourable to me, the Head of the Management School put the kybosh on this Government initiative.
Another extraordinary event occurred around this time. About six weeks after I joined Hatfield Polytechnic I went on an administrative matter to the Mark Masons H.Q., then in Upper Brook Street. I was Secretary of a Royal and Select Masters Council of which the Treasurer was a Mr. Wilbur Cocke and we wished to check our list of members against the list held at H.Q.
As well as being the owner and/or Chief Executive of the Cheshire Cheese hostelry, the ever-delightful Wilbur was General Secretary of the London Region of the Chartered Institute of Company Secretaries and Accountants. I had been to see him at his office some six months earlier when he had told me that following enquiries he had made, I should feel honoured that the City had an especially high regard for me. Anyway he made the arrangements for our visit and it was while I was examining records at a window looking out on the backs of the buildings that Wilbur drew my attention to a person I did not recognise, waving to attract my attention from a room almost opposite but at a lower level. When I asked where the waving was coming from I was informed it was a library. I am not sure if the library was associated with Mark Masonry. Afterwards Wilbur took me to lunch at the Marlborough Head. Peter Clifford of Hawker Siddeley Dynamics, an enthusiastic Instruments & Measurement man, was there.
I had no idea at the time what the library incident might be about but very soon afterwards it was announced that Lord Snow would be opening Hatfield Polytechnic’s new Library building and had agreed to become the Polytechnic’s Visitor.
Given the past history of ‘encounters’ with Lord (C.P.) Snow I had good reason to wonder if his appearance on the Hatfield Polytechnic scene was linked to my taking up a post there and that the puzzling Library incident at Mark Masons' Hall was a signal to that effect. Moreover the Instruments & Measurement element in that morning’s incidents indicated a link to M.I. I do not think Lord Snow could have done anything for me as Poly Visitor.
Another early development started with a telephone call from Rev Peter Graham, Rector of St. Nicholas Church, Harpenden, which with the ‘daughter’ Churches of All Saints and St. Mary's covered, respectively, the Centre & West, East and North of Harpenden. The Parish is known as a 'Royal Peculiar' with appointments authorised by the Lord Chancellor. Peter Graham asked if he could come and see me on an urgent matter. What Peter Graham wanted was a short paper from me on the form a Stewardship Campaign proposed for 1972 should take. He filled me in there and then with the background, gave me some relevant papers and asked me to get my proposal, to be considered along with others, to the Secretary of the Committee by 15th March.
By early April 1971, on the initiative of the Rector I had become a member of the Parochial Church Council and a month after that, on the proposition of Rev. Roger Davis (Priest in charge of All Saints Church) I was appointed Chairman of the Stewardship Council charged with implementing my own proposals for a 3-week Stewardship Conference to take place late the following year. It was clear I had been helped in coming in just a few weeks from having almost no involvement in Parish administration to being responsible for quite a major undertaking within it.
MANAGEMENT SCHOOL ACTIVITIES
Within the Management School I received further confirmation of the behind-the-scenes influences and favours in Industry, corresponding to the old boy networking in Government and the Establishment. The links between the top managements of large companies - even competitors - are a source of amazement to those who have not worked at that level.
My three professional specialities were Measurement, Design and Management. I had dropped the measuring instrument side but was keen to apply the basic approaches of Measurement to Management. The Design side had been severely curtailed in the IEE but I maintained a strong interest, especially in the evolution of products within industrial companies. In the field of Management per se I had something to contribute to general management and had become particularly well-versed in the behavioural aspects.
For some time after I joined, the Head of School’s line was that I should not progress in the Management School nor communicate with anyone in other parts of the Polytechnic. Conversely, in the early days, the longest-serving Principal Lecturer who was de facto his deputy, encouraged my involvement in the administrative side of the Polytechnic. Sometimes the two worked against each other, as for example when by invitation of the Deputy I attended a meeting on the main Hatfield campus. On hearing of this the Head instructed me not to attend further meetings and appointed a recent junior recruit to take over all internal and external administrative matters. I have no doubt this was a deliberate action to block me from progressing in Education Management. There were also some cryptic rumblings by the Head about CCL, where he said his son had worked.
The earliest task set by the Head of School, other than teaching on courses, was to organise a cocktail party Reception for the Press at the Oxford and Cambridge Club. I was instructed to liaise with the Deputy County Education Officer (probably also briefed by the Police), about getting a Press Release sent out. The Reception turned out to be a gathering of Management School staff and friends (or in my case a relative - my Home Office brother, John) invited at short notice to make up numbers. I do not think any Press representative attended.
The Deputy Head was instrumental in getting the School moved from Bayfordbury, near Hertford, to Birklands, which was near Marconi Instruments of St. Albans, the firm I had resigned from 5 years before. He also put together a course at short notice for Hawker Siddeley Aviation (HSA) of Hatfield and I was asked to take sessions on Responsibilities of a Manager and Leadership. The purpose of the course was to integrate Design and Production, a topic on which I had lectured to IEE Centres. It was of 6 days duration and apparently had first been mooted as a Design course. As soon as I heard this I wondered how the course had come about. The identification of The Prisoner as No.6 corresponding to the Prime Minister as No.10 was of course well known - and I lived at No.6.
In May 1971 I discussed management courses with Brian Lusher, the newly appointed Management Development Executive of Pye of Cambridge, who hereafter I shall refer to as Pye Trainer. There was some sort of rivalry between Pye and HSA because the Hatfield company immediately commissioned from me a special course for its senior managers at the best hotel locally, Sopwell House. But Pye Trainer prevailed for after asking permission of HSA (as it was put to me) he commissioned a series of 6-day courses called Management in Action (MIA), of which he and I were joint managers. Thus began another saga, which included further attempts to get me back to Cambridge.
HOME SECRETARY
Meanwhile, what had happened to the report I had delivered to the Home Office on Friday 15th January? I had not expected a postal acknowledgement of receipt because of a statement in my covering letter that I would call for a reply at 1130am on Thursday 21st January and hopefully see someone. I had put forward this method of making contact mainly because I thought it possible that my communications were not secure but also, because I had received some communications from a high level I wanted to see how far up I got in seeing someone.
What happened on 21st January was quite surprising. First, I heard on the radio before I set out that the Home Secretary had called a meeting of the Cabinet at No.10 for 11 o'clock. Reggie Maudling was acting as Deputy Prime Minister because the Prime Minister, Ted Heath, was abroad. Since the Cabinet meeting was timed for half an hour before I was due to call at the Home Office, I knew as I travelled up to London that I would not be seeing the Home Secretary himself.
I arrived at the entrance of the Home Office building in Whitehall at 1130am - and at that exact time a Daimler drew up outside the entrance. I went inside and asked at reception if there was a message for me. There was not. Disappointed, as I made my way out again and down the steps I saw that the Daimler was still parked in the road directly in front of me. I wondered if the appearance of the car at 1130am, the time I had specified was a response to my communication to the Home Secretary. I memorised the registration number of the Daimler but when I went to write it down, I had a hazy and perhaps inaccurate recollection that that the number was 210. If I had asked the chauffer to take me to the Palace, I wonder which one it would have been.
Unknown to me, there was an acknowledgement from the Home Office on its way at the time I called in on the 21st. J.F.Halliday, Private Secretary to the Home Secretary, had written on 18th January as follows:-
The Home Secretary has asked me to thank you for sending him the papers which you enclosed with your letter of 15th January.
However, although the date on the letter indicated a very prompt acknowledgement, due to industrial action by Post Office staff I did not receive it until about seven weeks later. About a month after I received the acknowledgement I sought information on what was happening regarding my Report by writing to the Home Secretary, Rt.Hon. Reginald Maudling. I made it clear that the malpractices were still taking place.
IEE
My letter to the Home Secretary of 14th May 1971 will have been received on the day I attended the opening session of the IEE’s Centenary Celebrations in the Festival Hall. The principal Address was given by the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, who arrived late due to legal duties. Among the interesting phrases he used was “It was long my belief that professional engineers of all kinds, particularly designers, are the creative artists of modern society”. The word “designers” was omitted from reports circulated to IEE members. John Davies, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, was absent on urgent business and his keynote speech was read by the IEE Secretary. The Minister’s three references to one form or another of 'manipulation' were particularly striking.
Ten days later I attended the Centenary AGM of the IEE at Savoy Place. The President, Lord Nelson of Stafford, Chairman of GEC, was in the Chair and there was an item on the Agenda proposing changes in the government of the Institution. At an appropriate point I got up, went to the microphone and read a prepared statement which referred to submerged groups acting behind the scenes. Later in the proceedings the President made brief comments on the contributions and when he came to mine, knowing very well from our previous ‘interactions’ what hidden processes I had in mind, he not only omitted reference to the issue I had raised but obscured it by saying in essence that pressure groups were an important and essential part of the machinery of democratic government! The proceedings were recorded and I also gave the top copy of my statement to the Secretariat but the subsequent records of the AGM did nowhere near justice to my remarks and my attempts to get the minutes and records corrected came to nothing.
ROBERT MAXWELL
In July 1971 there occurred an event which made me sit up and take notice, namely the Report of the Enquiry into Pergamon Press was published. In my Report to the Home Secretary I had outlined my extraordinary contacts with Robert Maxwell M.P. in the context of CCL and his antics in the House of Commons in January 1970. One feature of the Report by the two Inspectors which I noted with particular interest was their reference to “stewardship”. Given my intensive leisure-time preoccupation with Stewardship I doubted that the use of this word was coincidental.
BIRKLANDS, ST. ALBANS
The move from Bayfordbury to Birklands took place in September 1971. I was particularly intrigued to note that on the day of transfer there was already a board up outside saying that Birklands was the Management and Design annexe of Hatfield Polytechnic. The Design side referred to Drawing Office facilities for engineering undergraduates. Although this interpretation of Design was far more limited than the one I had in mind it was strange that Birklands now reflected my two main areas of professional interest.
On 15th September I received from Pye 6 massive Trainers' Manuals for the MIA course. These had been prepared by Pye Trainer and incorporated material I had supplied. I was particularly interested to note that my session on Leadership was associated with Exercise 6 and my other main contribution was labelled Exercise 10. The Manuals were circulated among the nine Birklands staff teaching on the course.
105 RUSSIANS
We now come to a particularly striking event - the expulsion of 105 Russians from Britain, announced on 24th September 1971. It was clear from the invitation by the Russians at the Edinburgh Symposium and the appearance of the Russian physicist at the May Day Feast at an Oxford college, that there are fairly close links between parts of the Establishment of the U.K. and the USSR. There was also the appearance of USSR Academy of Sciences people at my IEE Conferences and other events. Lord Nelson of Stafford's comments about my coming up against communists might also be relevant. There had been the Grant affair and the dinner in Cambridge with the Anglo-USSR Friendship Society couple and a few other USSR-linked incidents. I had informed McCauley of MOD of these events - except the Oxford college meeting which came afterwards. I forgot to mention the tourist trips to East Berlin.
In The Times of 22nd January 1998 (p8) it was reported that in 1971 a meeting was held at top level in the Government about the running (and attempted recruitment?) by Soviet intelligence of secret agents in Government and in industry. Did my original Report or my follow-up letter to the Home Secretary of 14 May 1971 precipitate or reinforce the need for that meeting and lead to the expulsion from the UK of 105 USSR personnel?
When the expulsion of Russian diplomats and others was announced, what intimated to me that it might be a response to my protestations was the account of the use of the Financial Times in dead letter drops. This was quite possibly an ‘identifier, which was taken from my Report to the Home Secretary, for in it I had described the quizzing by the F.T. Editor of a Design lecturer on 23rd January 1970 and the EDitor's subsequent appointment to the Committee of Inquiry into Privacy.
In my Report to the Home Secretary I mentioned ‘identifiers’ in my summary of indirect communication techniques:-
Communications Security considerations. Use of indirect communication techniques, e.g. role-playing, games, analogy, allegory, word association, double-entendre, word coincidence, word omission, event and time coincidence. .......... Use of intermediaries. Word, time, occasion and speciality identifiers.
Inadvertently I omitted reference to number signalling - the number 105 might also have been a personal ‘identifier’ for 3, 5 and 7 are of very great significance in Freemasonry.
PYE
The first MIA course for Pye of Cambridge started on Sunday 3rd October 1971. The residential accommodation was at a local Hotel, at which the Introduction session and Dinner took place. All sessions and most meals after Sunday evenings were at Birklands.
It was during the second MIA course that Pye Trainer started a drip-feed of hints. For example he said, cryptically, that H. Leavitt and E. Schein were flying over from the States to give Pye the benefit of their expertise, Pye having paid them a retainer. I had quoted the writings of Leavitt and Schein in my evidence to the Privacy Enquiry and in my Report to the Home Secretary. On another occasion Pye Trainer told me he had close connections with the Home Office. He also told a colleague that he was associated with a Government Think Tank.
At one time Pye Trainer suggested I should join Pye as his assistant, adding that Peter Threlfall, Pye Group's Managing Director, had asked if I was worth employing and Pye Trainer said he had replied that I was. It was at this time that Pye Trainer made an offensive personal remark about the dilapidated state of my car, which I recognised later as a ‘stick’ to make the ‘carrot’ of getting a more lucrative job as his subordinate more acceptable. I regarded this as yet another attempt to get me back to Cambridge - I had at great cost resisted the Cambridge Consultants campaign and I was not going to fall for this one. Pye Trainer later surprised me by apologising for suggesting that I should work for him.
Then, after a meeting at Pye Trainer’s Cambridge home he took me to lunch at a hotel at St. Ives near Cambridge - he said he had to make 6 phone calls to book a table. He added that to get to the hotel we had to go past AIM Electronics! This was the tiny company offshoot of Cambridge Consultants of which I had been offered and had declined the chairmanship. Later, Pye Trainer said that Lord Thorneycroft (Chairman of Pye) wished to visit the School - he wished to talk to its Head and I was to be around. Pye Trainer went on to say that Lord Thorneycroft was well-connected in Conservative circles and that it would do me alot of good in the Party. When, later, I asked when Lord Thorneycroft would be visiting the course I received the extraordinary response that Lord T had been told that Hatfield Polytechnic wished to see him. Pye Trainer also made a remark linking F.E.Jones (Managing Director of Mullard Ltd, who I knew) with the Prime Minister, which I did not understand.
Pye Trainer also said that one of the directors of Philips, which owned Pye, had visited an MIA course during my absence and that the President of Philips wished to visit Birklands. He added that the Philips family were very anti-communist and supported those who stood out against them. The remarks about Philips were particularly interesting. From the time I was ‘winkled out’ of the Cavendish, Philips people had been very supportive. Did Philips have its own submerged ‘law and order’ organisation or special relationship with the Government as had Marconi? I first thought of this when a close friend in the Home Office quite unexpectedly presented me with a box of Philips screws.
Then Pye Trainer offered to get the Head of the School out and me into his place - he said "we have" two men on the Council who would use their influence to this effect. I declined the offer. It occurred to me after this particular exchange that the request for me to be around when Lord Thorneycroft visited to see the Head might be interpreted as a hint along the same lines. In fact the offer triggered memories of when Ray Burnett some seven years earlier said he and another member of the Governing Body, John Coales, would get me the job of Principal of Hatfield College. I had declined that offer likewise. At another time Pye Trainer said complainingly "if people do not make it clear what they want, how can anything be fixed up for them?”.
Meanwhile Management School colleagues teaching on the MIA courses were getting adverse feedback from course members. The Head and his Deputy and four others were one by one pronounced unsatisfactory and on Pye Trainer’s demand were removed from the course. The dissemination of the feedback by Pye Trainer and their removal greatly upset colleagues. By the end of the 8th MIA course (which was for senior managers) only three were left, of which I was one. Then, behind my back, the Head of School went to the other two and suggested they do a deal with Pye Trainer to provide their services on a private basis. The net result of the Head of School’s clandestine action was that Pye Trainer wrote me two letters, one official and the other personal (a particular kind of Direct/Indirect communication) the first withdrawing the courses and the second praising me for my efforts. At a personal level, this combination of treachery and greed on the part of my colleagues was a ‘ghost’ which could not be entirely ‘busted’ in future relationships. Whatever the intention may have been, the overall effect was that Pye Trainer had come in, been around for a year, dropped a lot of hints and then departed leaving behind a series of wrecked relationships.
CHURCH
In the meantime there had been another interesting Church development when Rev. Michael West, Industrial Chaplain of the Diocese of St. Albans, came to see me at Birklands to discuss the possibility of providing courses for clergy at the School of Management. The idea was that if they had more understanding of Industry they would be able to cope better with pastoral problems arising from industrial 'casualties' among their parishioners. As a result a course entitled 'Industry Today' started on 13th January 1972. I think it ran for a ½-day a month for five or six months. I taught on about half the sessions.
On the first ½-day of the course I had to take a colleague's session at very short notice and I used it to say something about my departure from M.I. to the clergy. It was both rewarding and frustrating for they agreed with what I was able to tell them but I knew that was only a simplified fraction of the whole story.
PRIVACY
In July 1972 the Report of the Home Office (Younger) Committee of Enquiry into Privacy was published. This caused me great concern for there was no mention whatsoever in it of my evidence nor even that I had submitted some. At the request of G.P. Pratt, Secretary of the Committee, I had clarified some points in my original submission so there was no question of material being lost in the post. I wondered if its consideration had been stopped by the Home Secretary, Reggie Maudling (who had just had to resign over the Poulson affair).
I took the matter up with James Allason, who was still the M.P. for Harpenden, who came to see me. He offered to write to the Home Secretary (by then Robert Carr) about the omission of my name and the various topics I had raised, and especially T-Groups, which was a topic we had considered at length in the Safeguard Group. Later, James Allason wrote saying he had asked if the Committee on Privacy could be re-convened to deal especially with the T-Group problem. He enclosed a letter from the Under-Secretary of State, David Lane, saying he was sorry if there was any inadvertent omission of my name among those who gave evidence to the Committee and that the T-Group question was under consideration by the Commissioner of Police.
There were no further developments from James Allason’s representations. This omission of my name or of anything to do with me was the first example of what seems to have become standard practice - for example in two biographies of Robert Maxwell there was not even a mention of his involvement with Cambridge Consultants Limited or Computer Technology.
CHURCH & POLYTECHNIC
Meanwhile I had been getting very involved in Stewardship issues. In October 1972 I attended a 1‑day Needs and Resources Conference at Luton. Bishop Robert Runcie opened the proceedings by saying that the Conference was the first of its sort in the country and was a communications exercise. Its emphasis was on Money whereas the approach of Harpenden’s Stewardship Conference was that all forms of God’s gifts (e.g. Time and Talents as well as Money) should be examined and then it was up to each individual to decide on his or her pattern of contribution of these resources.
However, in a leaflet which went out to all Parishes in the Diocese for Stewardship Sunday, 21st November, the Money approach to Stewardship, although evident, was moderated. For example, Bishop Robert Runcie, in a message wrote "What we give in money, in time and in talents is a measure of how far we respond with the whole of ourselves to the love with which (God) embraces us".
Also in November 1971, Rev. Dr. Tolley addressed a meeting at Hatfield on Christianity and the Polytechnics. This was particularly interesting because George Tolley was Director of Sheffield Polytechnic as well as Curate in a Parish Church. It crossed my mind that a role model was being offered to me - and with George Bosworth now a Director of a Polytechnic but formerly Group Personnel Director of English Electric and knowing of my involvement with the Church, it was easy to see how such a man-made hint could be organised. But, being man-made, I was averse to following it up.
STEWARDSHIP CONFERENCE
The intensive work on the Parish event was proceeding well. I was Chairman of the Stewardship Council and hundreds of invitations were sent out in my name. I also issued on behalf of the Council invitations to a number of prominent speakers and preachers. Muff Hunter, Registrar of the Conference, wrote an exuberant article for the Parish magazine which gives a glimpse of the behind the scenes activities - her son Andrew, who became M.P. for Basingstoke, asked to attend the Conference.
Among the preparations were CCTV training sessions at Birklands for those who had agreed to visit other parishioners, to help them determine their approach and response to Stewardship on an individual basis. I invited the Bishop of St. Albans, Robert Runcie, to "drop in" on one of these sessions, to see what was going on, and just before I was setting out for Birklands I received a telephone call from him saying that regrettably he could not come as he was dealing that day with a clergyman with whom his Parish was having problems.
The 3-week Conference started on Sunday 5th November 1972 and despite a perfidious glitch just beforehand achieved all it set out to do and more. There was a very varied range of events and topics. Conference Sermons were given by, for example, the Bishop of Bedford (John Hare), the Bishop of Hertford (Victor Whitsey) and Rev. George Austin (later Archdeacon of York).
Stewardship Conference Sermons
In Learning Sessions on the two Saturdays of the Conference we were at pains to contrast the various forms of Stewardship. Thus a contribution on the Stewardship of Money was followed by one on Stewardship of the Spirit. My own Learning Session contribution on the many different patterns of Stewardship was followed by one on Sonship before Stewardship by Rev. Michael Mayne of the BBC.
On Sunday 3rd December 1972 there was the following announcement in the Pew Leaflet:-
The Reverend John Waller, Rector of Strood, in Kent, has accepted the offer of the Lord Chancellor to become the Rector of this Parish. He hopes to be instituted in March.
In March 1973 there was a thoroughly enjoyable run-of-the house party at the Rectory to meet the Wallers at home. Prominently displayed was a telegram of love and best wishes from Stanley Betts. Stanley Betts had been our Vicar at Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, and had then become Bishop to the Armed Forces and Dean of Rochester.
JOB CHANGE?
Just before Christmas 1972 that there had been a telephone call to my home from a Lord Hall, who said he was with a headhunting agency. He said he had been looking through "Who's Who in Engineering" and had come across my very interesting entry. He asked if I knew of anyone who might be interested in an appointment as Director of Engineering in a major group of companies at a salary of £10,000 to £14,000 per annum. The salary was about 4 times what I was getting as a senior lecturer. I did not respond as I considered the Vulnerability To Manipulation index too high. On whose behalf was Lord Hall acting?
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