| 1948-1954 My life so far..
Page 4 of 15 Leighton Park ensued -
a marvellous Quaker boarding school in Reading - "LP" endures to this day, although I am not a
diligent Old Boy - Leighton Park refined all the Whitchurch perceptions, and added many more -
my deep-rooted international dimensions were developed - the School was strong on the United Nations,
United Nations Association, and CEWC, the Council for Education in World Citizenship - as
a good French speaker, I attended the United Nations Founding Assembly in Paris in 1951,
as part of a CEWC delegation - on my return, I wrote my first newspaper article, which was
published in the Western Mail - world peace and world governance were enduring themes
at Leighton Park - I shared those priorities, although these days I no longer adhere to the
images of "world government" that prevailed in the 1930s, and which have
recently re-emerged The Quakers built upon
my
growing civic awareness - seeds that had been sown by Whitchurch and my father's
influence - there was little of "Party" politics in the School, although 1951 brought an
abiding political memory - posing as the "Press Reporter" for my School magazine, I
managed to get to the "Press" table immediately below the podium from which Aneurin
Bevan addressed a mass Election meeting at the 1951 General Election, in Reading Great
Hall, on behalf of "Mik" Mikado - Bevan's impassioned high-pitched voice still seems
to be with me, no doubt overlain by many documentaries - I remember going "to London"
to help the poor - to do good in groups by re-painting a pensioner's house in Brixton
over a single weekend - that was the stuff of the Quaker social conscience - also
visiting the Commons to meet Hopkin Morris, an old friend of my father and Deputy
Speaker. Leighton Park greatly reinforced my
sense of Welshness, which had not previously come to the fore, withinCardiff
- I was self-evidently a Dylan Thomas figure, curly-haired and unhealthily overweight -
particularly as my mother had known Dylan Thomas in the Swansea of between the Wars -
my father had indeed known Lloyd George and followed him - that was heady stuff, in the
Grove House dormitory.
Three new perceptions, however, were added by the Quakers.
Individualism - the Quakerism I experienced was unmistakably
individualist - at Sunday morning Meeting the Advices & Queries , solemnly read out by
the Reading Meeting Elders, always seemed to point the finger of responsibility at the
individual - "What are you doing to change the world? Are you discharging
your responsbilities to your family? And to your immediate community? And to the
government of your nation? And of your world?
What are you going to be doing about it all - tomorrow"?- that individualist
interrogation has lived with me ever since - that individualism (to which European
"Non-Conformity" has made such a decisive contribution) is the primary distinctive value
of European society - it affords the clue to the future evolution of European politics.
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Entrepreneurship - with individualism went
entrepreneurship - the static and dynamic dimensions of each other - that personal
creative drive to influence society by the creation of new systems, new institutions -
it is an art form, properly understood - Leightonians were encouraged, challenged to go
out and design a new social and civic order - I certainly feel a duty to do so, to make use
of the talents with which I have been endowed - I draw no distinction between categories of
entrepreneurship, in the commercial, political and social or voluntary sectors.
The ability to create new societal forms has two key
components.First, a theoreticalunderstanding that the constructs of society all have a
heavy overlay of managed form, and that they can all be changed by conscious creative
action by ordinary citizens.Second, that the skills of institutional creativity are
accessible to all, and can be learnt. As with music or mathematics, there are wide
variations in individual ability, but the skills are accessible to everyone
My first creation was an "alternative"
school magazine, jointly produced by a friend called Salloway and me - I cannot remember his
first name, that is the way with boarding schools - we both found the mainstream school
magazine "The Leightonian"
extremely b-o-r-i-n-g, and produced a samizdat "Salamania" - I did the typing, cut all
the stencils, rolled off the sticky pages, and stapled the magazine together. I suspect
Salloway may been more influential than I was, in that first venture - because of the name of
the publication - I understand now that the first lesson of institutional creationis to take
command the name of any new creation - names are of key importance, and it worth spending a
lot of time getting the name right. And I understand much more now about the differences
between "originating creativity" and "responsive creativity"
The
third Quaker characteristic? It was tolerance. That was a quite marvellous
feature of the Quakerism I absorbed at Leighton Park. Whitchurch, Cardiff, Wales, The War,
local politics, mini-rugby - none of these had inculcated tolerance. But my Quaker mentors
had a genuine ability to accept every human
foible, every oddity, every nastiness - they were unquestioning in their acceptance, took them
all in their stride. When, later at the Bar I came to develop a far deeper concern with civil
rights I found that I returned to that great reservoir of tolerance that I found
at Leighton Park.
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