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| | | /diary0014 Wednesday 16
January 2002
Death of a great Entrepreneur
 A bit of me died yesterday. Because Michael Young died, at 86. Newspapers carry his obituaries today. Lord Young of Dartington, a great, creative social entrepreneur. And I was a child of his. Metaphorically, you understand. He taught me the trade of institutional innovation, which I value highly and which still absorbs me. Indeed, this very website is an example of innovation, the search for a new genre , a new way of doing things and experiencing the world. I had known Michael for over forty years, since my last year at Cambridge, which was 1959. For over twenty-five years I had been his fellow Trustee at the Institute of Community Studies (Bethnal Green), and a Director of his even more innovative charity, the Mutual Aid Centre (MAC). I am still a MAC Trustee, although I
resigned
last year as an ICS Trustee, when Michael retired.
Our first contact when I was engaged upon the second of my early innovations, namely the Cambridge University Sociological Society (CUSS) 1959 [ checkout my first ]. I was campaigning for the introduction of sociology to Cambridge (principally because I wanted to move on to study the subject myself, having studied History and Economics for my first Cambridge degree. And I had made the key discovery that, by clothing oneself in the garb of an organisation, better still, with the artificial personality of a "company", and by cultivating the collectivity rather than the person, one could achieve a far greater impact than as a single natural person. I found that I could simply get CUSS letterheading printed, on high-quality
paper,in unabashed
imitation of more august University societies (even using the Cambridge coat of arms, as everyone seemed to do, without challenge) and the most august academic speakers could be attracted to the University. Noone stopped me. So with my trusty portable typewriter, I was able to make a big impression. I was learning my trade, as an innovator. And the campaign for the introduction of sociology into Cambridge was ultimately successful.
I approached Michael in the course of the CUSS, though I confess the memory is hazy. I certainly met him again soon in London, after Cambridge, when I was working for a sociology PhD at the London School of Economics. He was courting Sasha Moorsom, who became his second wife. When the Cambridge campaign was later won, and Michael became the first Lecturer in Sociology at Churchill College, he wanted me to join him as his Research Fellow. But by then my enthusiasm for the subject
had cooled, and I went to the Bar instead. We soon teamed up on a permanent basis, from 1975 onwards. Our young families played together, in Victoria Park in Hackney (where we lived, near the Bethnal Green Institute). And I became more and closely drawn in by his personality, his inquisitive mind. We were both lawyers, both barristers by education. And we were both disciples of Weber, rather than Durkheim. Weber is the one who analyses societies in terms of their structures and systems, hierarchies and elites, cadres and classes. Weber had also been a lawyer, before turning to social science. Lawyers like structures, ordered comprehensible systems. | | As an innovator, Michael's techniques were very successful . I wrote about them, in my contribution to his birthday tribute, Young at Eighty. He and I differed,
however,
in our approach to institutional innovation. It is an abstract art form, and so differences of approach are inevitable. Michael achieved his successes by attracting people, experimenting with them and with the ideas, and staying in the background himself. If he got a formula wrong, he would adjust and press on: he was ruthless in rejecting his mistakes, and those associated with them. He was the potter, always returning to the task with new recruits, with new clay.
His studio was his address-book, which was a jealously guarded secret, even from his secretaries. He developed a massive network of personal contacts. He was the ultimate "networker". As each new idea emerged, it would be matched to a new person or group, and a new experiment would be set in train. My role, as his fellow trustee for twenty-five years, was to pick up the pieces when things went wrong, as they sometimes did. No potter,after all, gets
it
right every time. Every painter has to throw canvases away. But on all matters of organisation, structure and law, Michael and I understood ourselves perfectly.
My personal approach is, however, different . I consider that the institutional innovator has a heavy responsibility to get his basic systems right before inviting others to commit, and asking society to adopt. I do not like the practice of experimenting with people, which Michael tended to deploy. It was successful, but it could also be exploitative. The playwright has a heavy responsibility to right a good script, not to expect the actors to make it up as they go along. The architect has a heavy duty to think his design right through, before committing to construction. And the social entrepreneur has a heavy duty to create a viable, durable and robust institutional structure, capable of bearing the load that society will put upon it. Thereinliesthe ultimate test
of
the structure, and of the artist. These differences were minimal. Michael was critical of my style, as I was of his - and we discussed our differences. From Michael, I gained the key insight that man as a species has a unique ability to analyse his own social systems and take action to improve them, creating new and modifying the old. It was Weber in action. Michael was the inspiration of my sole attempt to formulate a general social theory of my own [ Multiple Differential Uncertainty ].
He had a keen sense of the crucible of personal creativity, in which new social forms come to be created. Why did he, seemingly uncharacteristically, accept a seat in the House of Lords? He wanted to be close, I think, to one of the prime creative processes in modern society, namely legislation. Legislation is the
furnace in which new social implements can be most effectively forged. Having made no breakthrough in the Commons in his earlier years, either with Labour or the putative Consumers Party, the great potter wanted to get closer to the furnace, and to understand its ways.
And for my part, I understand that.
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