The UGC as It Was – 1949-59
Extracted from Life, Education, Discovery by W. Roy Niblett

I joined the UGC in 1949, the invitation having arrived out of the blue. For I had had no reason beforehand to think that I was at all the sort of person who would receive such an invitation – which came from the Chancellor of the Exchequer in a personal letter, since the Treasury was the department of state under which the UGC functioned. The Committee met in a characterful room on the ground floor of 38 Belgrave Square, premises which in those days accommodated all the staff working for it – to the best of my recollection a single-figure number.
The Chairman for my first year was Sir Walter Moberly – the first full-time chairman the Committee had had – and there was no Vice-Chairman. The Secretary, whose name was de Montmorency, was also full-time and a career civil servant – responsible, able and well liked by all of us. He was especially knowledgeable about universities, having in the course of the job learned a great deal about them and he was a skilful and penetrating writer of minutes and reports. The Committee met for a day during most months, the meeting lasting from 10.30 a.m. to around 4.30 p.m. The Chairman, of liberal and scholarly mind, presided with an urbanity and informality rather typical of the Oxbridge tradition. But there was a certain missionary sense mixed in with his overview of universities. He was interested in educational purposes as well as policies; but not, I came to think, all that interested in finance. It was possible indeed for any financial matters that we had to consider not to come up until well after lunch and there were occasions on which they were condensed into the last hour or hour and a half of a meeting.
When I became one of the new “younger” members of the Committee, R.H. Tawney and Margery Fry had only just ceased to belong to it, both of them people with a strong individuality and sense of vocation. Several of those who continued to serve, as well as three or four of the newcomers, were undoubtedly people of character: among the continuers I think of Sir Charles Darwin, a descendant of the original Charles and himself aristocratically Cambridge with a very acute mind; and of David Hughes Parry, Head of the School of Advanced Legal Studies in London who later on became Vice-Chairman of the Committee. He brought a feeling for Wales, and especially for Aberystwyth, into our counsels. Among the newcomers there were Eric James (later knighted and afterwards a lord). He was then High Master of Manchester Grammar School and a robust defender of grammar schools in general. George Pickering, Professor of Medicine at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School and later Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, concealed under his modesty the shrewdest of judgements about higher education and its need to be enterprising. Henry Magnay came with much experience of ways of Local Government and was always conscious of the need to keep a watchful eye on what Central Government might be up to.
The company was human and friendly. We normally lunched “around the counter” at a pub in the neighbourhood of the office; but each year there was an annual dinner to which all past members of the UGC as well as present ones were invited. A good many of us belonged to the Athenaeum and since a number of Vice-Chancellors (whom we referred to as “customers”) also belonged to it, there was a chance of natural and informal contacts on occasional evenings. At that time there were fewer than 30 universities in the whole country.
Among those who attended meetings of the Committee was the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education. At the beginning of the fifties this was Sir Griffith Williams who was succeeded after his retirement by Sir Gilbert Flemming. Neither of course was a member of the Committee and on the very rare occasions when something was decided by vote they would not have voted. But they were encouraged to contribute points to our meetings and their massive knowledge of the thinking of the Ministry of Education (and of other government departments too) was a great asset. If their advice was asked for specifically, they knew how to give it in the right way. From Scotland came Sir William Murrie of the Scottish Office – a shrewd top civil servant from Edinburgh.
What has to be remembered in talking of that period in the Committee’s life was the importance of the common traditions fostered by Public School, Oxford and Cambridge and Civil Service life, all of which flowed into the atmosphere. So much could be taken for granted by all of us that it hardly needed to be mentioned. One particularly good illustration, as it seems to me, of the behind-the-scenes working of the best sort of civilised and human spirit is this: Gilbert Flemming, powerfully intelligent, with a great capacity for objectivity but very English, was a pretty close friend of Charles Morris, who after being a don at Balliol for a number of years became Vice-Chancellor of Leeds University. I discovered – much later on in fact – that Flemming and Morris when they went up together at the age of 19 or so as scholars to Trinity College, Oxford, were put on the same staircase and had begun to know each other well from freshman days. In due course Gilbert became best man at Charles’s wedding and when visiting London Charles sometimes stayed overnight at Gilbert’s home. It is unthinkable that two men so devoted to the development of what they thought of as the right sort of higher education should not have discussed a number of its problems together and found one another’s up-to-date viewpoint. Since Charles Morris at the time he was Vice-Chancellor at Leeds had Philip Morris, his brother, as Vice-Chancellor at Bristol and since John Fulton – a fellow don at Balliol with Charles – was Principal of University College, Swansea, and later the first Vice-Chancellor of Sussex University, there was scope for much inter-relationship and much complexity of influence.
One of the ways in which members of the Committee itself came to appreciate each other’s viewpoints and to respect one another’s judgements was through the visits we paid once every five years to all the institutions in receipt of grant. These visits lasted a strenuous day, sometimes a day and a half or even two days, each. Some members might travel to the place of the visit in a railway carriage together and there were a few occasions upon which a journey from one university to another, being visited the next day, was by private coach. At the start of the decade beginning in 1949 there were no permanent sub-committees of the main UGC so that all the official visits which took place were by the Committee itself. Obviously this was a very time-taking business and not all members could go on every visit, since most had heavy responsibilities in their own universities, firms or schools, as well as serving on the UGC and maybe several other national bodies. But my recollection is that the attendance at the visits averaged 50-60 per cent of all the members, who then totalled 16 or 17. Very full notes were kept of all visits and of the impressions we formed.
As the fifties went on the Committee changed somewhat in character, though not in essential spirit. Pressure of business made it inevitable that the attention given to financial matters grew greater and closer. Under the chairmanship successively of Sir Arthur Trueman and Sir Keith Murray this was achieved in a natural way. A Vice-Chairman had started to function in 1950; the office staff increased almost year by year. Specialist sub-committees began to be appointed from the early fifties to help the main committee and started to visit institutions on their own. The chairman of each specialist committee was however a member of the main committee and could report back to it whenever necessary and at any time. The Medical and Education sub-committees made a particularly important contribution during the 1950-60 decade. A Halls of Residence Committee with a limited life was appointed in 1955 with the duty of producing a Report on its remit. Soon an architect was appointed to “vet” the plans for new buildings which were coming into the office from the universities we sought to serve.
The Report of the Committee on Halls of Residence was published in 1957 and had some influence, even if a limited one. It encouraged universities to develop more Halls and regard them as integral to the education they provided. Among the universities which took its recommendations really seriously was Nottingham under Fred Dainton’s Vice-Chancellorship.