LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS A GOVERNOR WARNS AGAINST AN INTELLECTUAL SELL-OCT

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31987, 14 May 1969, Page 16

LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS A GOVERNOR WARNS AGAINST AN INTELLECTUAL SELL-OCT

This letter about peril threatening a world-renowned institution of learning which has suffered deeper disruption than any other university or college in Britain was . written to the “Guardian”, Manchester, by Mr Donald Tyerman, a governor of the London School of Economics and s editor of the “Economist” from 1956 to 1965. The letter was printed in the “Guardian” on May 3.

Sir, —I believe that we are on the brink, at the London School, of Economics, where I am a Governor, of the largest “trahison des clercs” (unwittingly, I am sure) which has yet been seen in any British (though not American) university institution. What is happening is this. Three years or so ago when the radical, revolutionary and Socialist group of students organised themselves for the task of disrupting and paralysing the School by a process of perpetual confrontation, because of its essentially capitalistic character, they decided to focus their aims on the discrediting and destruction of its principal, the Director. Sir Sidney Caine, who was then the Director, would not do as the effective target because he was in any case about to retire from the post.

The campaign was therefore begun, during the incumbency of Sir Sidney, against his appointed successor, who was in the event Walter Adams, though the campaign would surely have gone forward whoever had been appointed. The campaign for the withdrawal of Dr Adams was not based at all on his academic or administrative fitness to be Director. It was based, as similar campaigns in other places have been based, on the totally false denigration of his character, on the incredible accusation that Dr Adams, whose record in these matters since the thirties speaks for itself, had conducted himself in Rhodesia as what is variously called a “racist” or a “racialist," when more obscene epithets are not used. It is important to bear in mind that the campaign against the Director began months before he took over the post, and was not based at all on any of the faults of administration, tact or leadership which are now being attributed to him by some of his academic, and liberal, colleagues on the staff of the School. That is the point of what I am trying to say. The radical, revolutionary and Socialist students, in their bid to break down the establishment of the School, set out to bring down, to “get,” Dr Adams even before he arrived. In their attempts to repel this campaign of disruption through constant accusation and confrontation (not normally the conditions in which a university principal expects to live and work) both Sir Sidney Caine and, after him, Dr Adams himself

have taken steps which, because of the outdated, paternalistic and inadequate constitutional arrangements of the School, have been open to criticism not only by the campaigning students and their always loyal fellows but also by the middle mass of liberal dons who no doubt properly put freedom of opinion and resistance to overweening authority first in their academic confession. So the confidence trick of the radical and Socialist campaigners looks, astonishingly, like working. They set out to “get” Dr Adams. They could always rely, if a creaking and undefined procedure of disci, pline was used against them, on the solidarity of other students. Now, because the good dons can adduce all sorts of good reasons why the “management” of the school, faced with this confrontation, seems to them often to have behaved inefficiently and ineffectively, even sometimes, they say, unfairly, the campaigners against Dr Adams have got this middle mass of liberal dons (as well as their own academic friends) on their side in the campaign. This is the “trahison.” There is an understandable cry now, from the good dons as well as from politicians and people outside, for some sort of inquiry into the affairs of the school. The sound case for an inquiry of some sort is the troubles that go on there. The administrative, economic, topographical and academic problems of the school, crowded on to its nearCity site, are considerable and well-known. But what would be intolerable would be the consummation of what I have called the “confidence trick” of the student wreckers by the appointment of any sort of tribunal to sit in judgment on and indict Dr Adams, Lord Robbins and all those who have tried, even if, inevitably at times, hamhandedly, to keep the school going as a university institution ought to go, against all these deliberate confrontations. It would be intolerable, for instance, as I see it, if the Government were in some way to “step in”—giving offi-

cial as well as academic status to this deliberate campaign against the school. Certainly for what it is worth, I could not stay on the Court of Governors if this happened. The only kind of inquiry which could be justifiable, and even valuable, would be one which would set out to help, not pillory, those who have been striving to the point of exhaustion—within a penny-farthing constitution and without, it seems, the sort of communication with the disturbed and divided academic staff that some of them want—to preserve the school’s integrity as a free acadqmic body. The onus, I cannot repeat too strongly, rests now upon the academic staff. The running of the school should be by the school for the school. This means that the dons must be ready to apply their principles, not just as arrows against those who have at present to bear the responsibility, certainly not as weapons in the present calculated campaign against the school itself, but as guides to their own responsible, as well as liberal practice. What sort of inquiry, inspired by the school for the school, could best help the school to go forward, and not to be wrecked by those to whom at present too many dons for their own good, liberal excuses, are giving comfort and aid? The right answer could absolve the trahison.—Yours sincerely, Donald Tyerman. 41 Buckingham Mansions, West End Lane, London NW 6.

Faced with continual disruptions, the London School of Economics is now firmly established as the melting pot of student revolt in Britain. The purpose and method of the revolt, and the extent of dissent even among the teaching staff are discussed in this letter to the editor of the “Guardian,” Manchester.