Twenty years on

PERSONAL COLUMN SIMON RAVEN

When I read, some weeks back, that a Minister of the Crown had just been hounded out of Cambridge by a mob of students, my first thought was that no such thing could possibly have occurred when I was up there twenty years ago. It was not that hooliganism was unknown in my time (there had been, for example, a particularly disgraceful and destruc- tive rumpus on the Guy Fawkes' Night of 1948); it was simply that no visiting politician, however prominent or controversial, could ever have been the occasion for it, and this for four reasons: first, because very few of us cared enough about politics; secondly, be- cause we would have regarded such behaviour as a breach of hospitality; thirdly, because we were disposed to be courteous to our elders, even when we despised them; and, finally, because in any case at all we should have had more amusing or profitable things to do.

In other words, though we might run riot spontaneously and for the sheer fun of it (as on Guy Fawkes' Night), we were incapable of deliberate public demonstration. Our pre- occupations were private. We were not con- cerned to change the world, the country or even the university : the problem, as we saw it, was how to make the best of matters as they stood. A conservative attitude? Perhaps; for we were certainly not inclined to quarrel openly with existing institutions. On the other hand, our interpretation and use of these insti- tutions was essentially liberal in spirit, and it is this liberalism, so much the most amiable and pervasive characteristic of the Cambridge of my day, and the sad fate which has since overtaken it, that I wish to discuss here.

Let me try to set the scene. For a start, the Cambridge of 1948 was still recognisably pre- war in its administration, its curricula, its accommodation and its rules of conduct; but there was this important difference, that almost every undergraduate was adult in years and experience (indeed, there was one on my stair- case, by no means the only one in the univer- sity, who had commanded his own battalion). Here, one would have thought, was a basic cause of conflict: surely ex-officers (or even ex-corporals) of twenty-three years old and upward were not going to put up with restric- tions and instruction devised for ex-schoolboys of eighteen. A few, of course, did not—and disappeared. The rest were humble enough to realise, as regarded their work, that after a long absence it was necessary to go back to first principles; and they were also flexible enough (i.e. liberal enough) to appreciate that college discipline, so far from being vexatious, was very mild and could even be turned to positive advantage.

Take, for example, the famous rule which forbids one to have women in one's rooms after a certain hour (in those days, if I remem- ber rightly, 10.30 p.m.). In 1968, wrathful teenagers look on this as an outrage against liberty; but in 1948 mature men welcomed it as a handy tactical asset in amorous affairs. 'One can get it all over and done with,' as a contemporary of mine remarked, 'in time for a good- night's sleep. It stops the women hang- ing about and nagging.'

Discipline, in short, was seen as something which, if rightly construed, often increased freedom rather than reduced it. Of course, rules could from time to time prove incon- venient, and in that case they must be quietly evaded (a challenge to ingenuity); but to resent them, to protest 'on principle'—that, in our view, would have been merely childish. We re- garded the evasion and the twisting of college or university rules as one more important part of our education; for wherever we were later to go, and whatever we were later to do, there would, we knew, be rules which we must cope with, and the obvious answer was to start train- ing oneself straight away in methods of ex- ploitation or elusion.

It was through this kind of sanguine humour and mental agility that the whole notion of pupillage was rendered tolerable and even pleasurable. We admitted, and were happy to admit, that we were at Cambridge to learn. It must be a period (how else?) not of achieve- ment, not of self-assertion, but of preparation: preparation, as I have already explained, for getting round or getting the best of regulations (and how well that early exercise has stood us in stead over the long years of bureaucratic rule, particularly since 1964); and beyond this, preparation for scholarship, diplomacy or adultery, for Parliament or a sporting career, for teaching, acting or spying, for authorship or money-grubbing, for giving gourmet dinners or even (so broadminded were the authorities) for something called industry . . . for anything under the moon.

Whatever you wanted to do later, you could prepare for it at Cambridge in ideal miniature circumstances; but you must realise, whether you were secretary of the university com- munists or master of the university fox hounds,

that you were only preparing and that you could not expect anyone to take you seriously. Not yet; not until you had served your apprenticeship and proved your worth.

This we accepted. We had no wish whatever to claim public attention, to broadcast our 'rights' or opinions, to interfere with the run- ning of the university itself. Why should we? We were far too busy and contented preparing ourselves, which was what we supposed we were there for. So future pundits read their books, would-be cricketers got on with their cricket, fledgling clubmen had their own little imita- tion club, budding alcoholics experimented in college butteries which were open from eight in the morning, and aspirant spendthrifts prac- tised raising money from a gentleman in busi- ness near the Round Church, who refused, in avuncular fashion, to let them pledge their bed- clothes.

The little world wagged happily and liber- ally along, and no one in it was so idle, boorish

or frustrated that he would descend to hootiin or harrying anyone else—least of all politicians

from London who came as invited guests.

Should such men arrive to speak, they would be listened to and argued with by those few who were interested; then they would have their hands shaken and depart in peace. For this was a civilised and tolerant society, and

if one did not like the cut of another man's jib, were he resident or visitor, one merely stayed out of his way.

But, of course, it could not last. It lasted until I went down, in 1952, and for a few years longer, and then the trouble came: the Radical Young. 'Your generation,' said a don of my acquaintance the other day, 'were almost the last of the liberals. I don't mean in the political definition, of course—just, well, liberal men.' The don who said this is well known as a socialist, but he, too, in the general sense, is a liberal at heart. Fond of pleasure, not averse from splendour and traditional obser- vance, an advocate of curious learning, tolerant of the cricketers, the dandies and the drunks ('an educative force, in their way'), he had loved liberal Cambridge and then, from about 1956 onward, he had watched it die. 'We were outnumbered by the radicals,' he ex- plained. 'We let them in, of course. As fair- minded men, as liberals—whether or not we called ourselves socialists—we had to do it. But I don't think we quite realised how im- patient they would be. How disapproving. How interfering. How self-satisfied. How . . puri- tanical.'

Could he give an instance? He could., College feasts: one by one they were being stopped. 'The Radical Young cannot endure that money should be spent on conspicuous entertainment,' he said, 'and anyhow they find the old type of feast too formal and too slow.' Too slow? But surely, the whole point of a good college feast was that it purposely began rather slowly, like a well-made play establish- ing its personae, and then quickened its pace, as wine succeeded wine, until it ended (with luck) in something near an orgy? Surely even the Radical Young could appreciate that and be patient through the early and more decorous stages? 'No,' my friend said gloomily: 'the trouble with radicals is that they have no taste. They have principles but no taste. Indeed, it is one of their principles not to have taste.'

And worse was to come. 'Liberals,' said my friend, 'elect radicals; but radicals only elect other radicals.' No hope of a reversal then? 'None . . . in the foreseeable future.' But it is already too late. Here and there, I suppose, a potential gastronome or dilettante still lurks nervously in some forgotten court; here and there you will still find a man who realises that Cambridge should be a place of preparation (for future pleasure as well as future work) and that nobody wants to hear what under- graduates think until they know something to think about; here and there you may still listen to an old-fashioned socialist (like my friend) who stands for variety as well as progress. But the old, good days, when a minister could come and go almost unnoticed, and in so far as he was noticed would receive a fair, a well- mannered, a liberal hearing—those days are gone. For radicals, as my friend said, are im- patient, and radicals always know (even when they are too young to know anything else) that they are right. It wasn't only Mr Healey who was hooted out of Cambridge the other day; there is a sense in which it was civilisation itself.