B, M (interview)

B, M (interview)

Testimonal about the life on campus of Oxford University in the 1970s

2023-10-26

Sunstrum, Emily

B, M

Ottawa, Ontario (via phone call)

Emily: Okay, so section 1 of the interview revolves around the impact of popular culture at the time. So, within the society that you were living in at the time what were electronics like during the 1970’s? How was your leisure time structured? Or what did most students at Oxford do for fun in the 1970s?

MB: Well, of course there's no Internet. There's lots of sports and different clubs like, you know, drama club and I mean there was a sort of religious club. The Oxford University Debating Society was very famous. I didn't participate in that sort of organized stuff. We would go to the movies and concerts, lots of concerts. Live music and classical music, not rock music. Of course, the Beetles were really big at the time, they came from the place of England that I had gone to school. Actually, when I was in elementary school, just before I went off to boarding school, the Beetles were just starting out so that would be 1962 and they would come to the village fairs and sing. I would see the Beetles live; I was about 3 feet away. But then they became so big we could never afford to go to their concerts or anything like that. We didn’t watch TV or anything like that.

Emily: Yeah, that sounds good. What were the most popular hangout spots on and off campus?

MB: There were lots of pubs at Oxford. But also, there's about 35 colleges at Oxford, there is no sort of university building, and each college would have its sort of bar and dining hall and library and stuff like that. Depending on your cluster of friends at the time you hang out at your college or their college, not many people wanted to hang out at the women’s colleges. The colleges were all single sex at the time except for one, it had just become coed. I was in one of the five women's colleges and there were 30odd men's colleges and some were more prestigious than others. Mine was the most prestigious of the women’s colleges and the men's colleges. There were about 5 or 6 really sort of really ancient but kind of like the place that Prime Ministers went to. So, people from my college tended to date people from those colleges. And there were lots of dances and balls and stuff. When I say balls, I mean you dressed up in black tie, sometimes white tie and women wore evening gowns.

Emily: Okay, that’s cool. OK. So, you kind of talked a little bit about this. My next question is, did you attend any live music events during your university years?

MB: Yes. So that would be. Chamber music, orchestral music, choral music. I participated in a choir. Just remembered. And we would later on we would, I started going into London. I lived quite a cosmopolitan life; I had never been into London until I started dating an American. And he was studying English, so he wanted to go to all the future he possibly could. So, we would go into London sometimes three times a week to go to, you know, West End theatre or opera or concerts of some sort, you know, classical concerts.

Emily: OK, cool. Yeah, that does sound cool. So, my next question is, we use the term “party culture” to refer to social activities outside the classroom. How would you describe the party culture at Oxford during the 1970s?

MB: Well, there's kind of two types. There's the very serious students, you know, sort of nerdy types. And then there's the people like Boris Johnson. Imagine Boris Johnson. Not the least bit atypical. And that goes back to probably the Middle Ages. They had this sort of heavy drinking and throwing people into the river and stuff like that. I'm sort of straddling the two because for one thing there were the proportion of women was very low. So, it's about seven guys to every woman in the university mostly. Especially the ones that went to the sort of prestigious colleges didn’t want to be getting in touch with a potential date and being told “oh sorry I have to study” “I have to finish my lab”. So there are lots of art colleges, you know, people could study art, history, whatever, but it wasn't part of the university. So, these colleges became known for providing the competition to female students. To the point (6:32) where, you know, I’d go to a party with my friends and people would say “where are you” they’d say and you would say “Oh I’m at college” which is very sort of neutral. And they pressed and would say “oh well which college” and then if you said, “well I’m going to ‘the college I went to’” and then they would start looking over your shoulder and say, “Oh I just saw Joe, I’ve got to go talk to him” and that was the end of that conversation. It was a whole, it was a very, somewhat divided sort of feeling. And it’s true, if you wanted to, you know, get your work done, you obviously had to take some time out. But it was definitely a party culture. Some of those young men would go to, they had a club which did not include women where they would go and eat fabulous food because the different colleges had wonderful chefs and then they would drink on ancient port which was in the college cellars. And start throwing oranges at 20 century portraits in the dining hall. You could imagine (8:14) it was not all prim and proper. By the way, King Charles was at Cambridge all this time so lots of people were going back and forth. This is probably too much information, I'm just remembering back how it was lots of fun, extremely creative, extremely stimulating intellectually, we met so many interesting people. So many interesting people would come and give lectures. We were just coming out of the deprivations of World War 2, about 25 years since the war had ended. It was a really really depressed society after that, lots of building going on and things started to settle down in the 70s. That’s around the time Britain on its second effort joined the European economic community(10:04), which they have since left. But it's hard to imagine going from really destroyed major towns close to where my family was living at the time, like Liverpool and Manchester. I mean Liverpool was just completely, chunks of it were flattened, burning.

Emily: OK, so my next question is what did the student body think about the Vietnam War?

MB: Well, I think initially, it was a very conservative place, Oxford. Lots of people's parents were sort of establishment figures, and you know, stockbrokers and bankers and stuff like that. And you know, my old father was an industrialist. And so, they were horrified by the threat of communism and stuff like that. So. I think initially it was sort of, well, let those guys get on with it, but they should be doing bad things. But we shouldn't intervene. But then very quickly, the student body, certainly as the defining thing that happened right before I went off to university was the movement in France (12:31) and Germany and in the Eastern European countries as trying to throw over government and become equitable and especially stop the war. So, there was a huge engagement in the May of 68 riots in France that sort of shut everything down and Germany and so on. Lots of radical movements. So, a wind has started to build at Oxford, and we actually did have some marches and demonstrations and we found out that the deans of the different colleges and also sort of leadership of the university were identifying students who might be good candidates for let's say MI5 or the spy agency and they were forwarding information to these services and saying “oh you might want to interview this person or that person” and that person would get invited to London to have a nice conversation. Of course, we were horrified that the university authorities were sending information to try to identify students who were good candidates without their permission or consent. So, that was the rallying cry at Oxford, of course some of those people went on to work with allies like the United States, which could of course get themselves involved in the war. The cold war was in full swing and that by the way was a terrifying thing that was always around us, sort of equivalent to the climate change crisis today. And a lot of the students were activists against nuclear arms, so people used to go on marches to you know, ban the bomb. My parents took me to visit a boarding school when they were looking for a good school to send me too and it was a very famous school and known for its academics and stuff like that and nice buildings, walking around like a college tour. And then my mother said, “but where are all the girls”, the teacher said, “they're in London at a ban the bomb march”. And it was a quaker school (15:47), run by quaker and they were pro-peace so my parents said “oh we can’t send our daughter there”. But yes the attitude of the Vietnam war, the circles that I ended up in, were very much against the war. But it took a while for me too, it was very hard to sort of when you’ve heard for years this very negative view of students, I mean in the family, of students to rise up and say we should do this, we shouldn’t do this. To sort of switch to the, when we went on marches there were TV cameras and I sort of said “oh what if my father sees me on TV” then I just stopped worrying about it. I don’t think he ever did.

Emily: So, my next question for this section is Rock and Roll artists in the 1960s promoted various forms of protest. Was Rock and Roll becoming popular within this society that you were living in? And if so, did your parents see Rock and Roll as rebellious or just a form of popular music?

MB: They probably thought it was rebellious, but I went to boarding school, I didn’t really live at home much after I was 10. I just saw them on Holidays but also sometimes I went to Holidays somewhere else. So, in a sense we got to make up our own minds, initially I didn’t like the Beetles at all. I would sort of run into them at those village fairs (17:45) and then, I remember, in the summer of 63’ or spring of 63’ we went to this village festival and they would crown the rose queen every year and it was usually a little girl like 14 or something like that and she had little page boys who were much younger and she was dressed in this sort of beautiful queen dress with a velvet cape. And the Beetles started setting up over where they had the stage and amps and stuff like that, and the crowd started to rush over there, and they trampled over the train of the rose queen. I was just horrified; I was very anti Beetles for a couple of years and after that I liked them. I remember for my birthday one year my parents took me to the Beetles movie “Help” that came out, it was pre-made I guess in Liverpool, so we went to go see it. So, in that sense they were supportive, “what movie would you like to see? Ok the Beetles, let's do that then.” But I didn’t have a radio, my sister who was a bit younger, acquired a portable radio, I should have mentioned, that’s probably more like the electronics of the era. But she would do all her homework, everything, going to bed at night, she had to have this radio on and people in the family did not like it. I couldn’t imagine having the radio going when you’re trying to work on something. So that’s another part of the evolution.

Emily: OK. That's my next question is some youth culture. Voices of the 1970s promoted taking recreational drugs. To what extent were drugs available at Oxford during the 1970s?

MB: I don’t know how widespread it was. I became aware of drugs when I became aware of Americans. Oxford has this program called road scholarships and students came from commonwealth countries and also the United States (20:26) and Canada but because the US had the biggest pool of students, they always had the largest number of scholarships. So, I became aware of these students who, for the most part, had already graduated, they already had their undergraduate and they were always like 3-4 years older than us, and they were very puerile young men of our cousins of our friends from school who didn’t like dating actual college students, these young men were completely open to that. But some of them had gotten into using drugs in the states and some of them had served in the forces in Vietnam and they would come back and say “we’ve got to end this” so there was quite a bit of it. I never bought it myself, but I did use it a few times. To be honest I’d be quite happy to use it but it made me paranoid that it was the drugs that was doing it, not me. That’s a side effect that some people experience. There was lots of booze.

Emily: Right, ok. That’s all for the first section. So. Now we're moving on to the second section, which is the female experience. So, my main question for this section is culture. Cultural historians have written a lot about what they call second wave feminism, that as part of the counterculture movement. Women during the early 1970s sought to break down gender barriers. Does this argument resonate with your experience on the Oxford campus during the 1970s?

MB: Absolutely. can I just do a parenthesis and go back a bit Because this reminds me of the student movements and the the radicalism that was building up on other campuses, I would say partly triggered by the Vietnam War, which is all part of the Cold War. The thing that really changed my view happened between when I graduated high school and I've already been admitted to Oxford, and I spend a few months off and started at Oxford in the fall of 69’. There was a Czech student who burned themself to death and it was all about the, sorry I hope that’s not triggering for you

Emily: No, that’s okay.

MB: The communist Eastern European countries that were under the Soviet domination started to rise up (23:46) in Czechoslovakia in particular had what was called a Prague spring. They were moving more into representative democracy or trying too throughout 1968 and I was completely unaware of that and then this young man, that seemed like my age I actually don’t know how old he was, in January of 69’ so it’s before we went off to France and he burned himself to death. And from that moment, he was protesting the Soviet occupation which was still gradually wiping out the liberal experiment of the Prague spring. And that got me into thinking more about politics and economics as well and then I went to France and lived there for 9 months until university started. I was doing an internship in a chemical firm. And the student people that I started hanging around with were having a lot of activisms on the anniversary of the events of May, 68’ so May of 69’ they had general strikes and so on and it all succeeded forcing the President to resign. So that was also an activated moment that got me thinking about how politics work and I was a very nerdy science student. I was trying to go up to Oxford to read engineering and I was starting to get cold feet about engineering, so I ended up doing physics but by the time I became activated or engaged, I eventually took my high degree of math's and moved over into economics, politics and philosophy where I went into economics. But there was a feminist side to that, in that it was very unusual for women to even do pure science much less engineering. Only one other girl entered to do engineering (26:20) at the same time I did, but of course I dropped it and switched to physics and became the first woman in the history of Britain to become to head of the Engineers association of Britain and this was like 10 years ago. Thats how unequal things were for women at the time and of course it persisted and it's still persisting like we’ve had more women prime ministers for example. I was lucky that I went to an all-girls school so there was no negative thought through the school of doing science, other people would say things like “oh she should be careful because it's hard to be in a lab with just men”. But the other big thing we did during my time at Oxford, so 69’-74’, we gradually pushed and pushed, this was in between sort of major world type movements and individual actions like this idea to become a schoolteacher, so this middling thing at the university level, we pushed to get more colleges to become co-ed. Rach college had its own rules so it happened very gradually, I think most of them are co-ed now. But they would say things like, we had staff, cleaning staff that would come and make up people's rooms and the deans would say “we can't possibly have co-ed colleges because men and women would sleep together”. If the staff came in in the morning and found a man and woman in the same bed, then they would quit so they couldn’t keep the staff. After a bit somebody said, “well maybe we don’t need to go in the bedrooms” and then the answers were (29:13) “well the staff are there to make sure there aren't any young men in your room”, it took a while to get that changed. And the same thing was happening at the time in the US in the ivy league, I don’t know if the dorms at U of O might have been going through the same thing, whether or not they should have co-ed residences. One of our heroes for women and men by the way from American university was Angela Davis. She was a very left-wing activist in the US, and she was jailed at the time, and it was to do with having guns and trials and stuff like that and she became one of our heroes. One of our marches was about free Angela Davis, I think at one point she may have come later on when she was released in 72’, she came and lectured at Oxford.

Emily: So, gender distinctions were more pronounced in the 1970s than today. So how did being a woman result in different treatment and expectations in classrooms or at social events?

MB: I kind of alluded to a whole bunch, do you want me to repeat some of it?

Emily: You don't have to repeat it all, but just a little bit of a summary would be good (31:06).

MB: Yeah, ok. Well, all but one of the residential colleges of about 35 were single sex, the proportion of women on the university campus was very low and the anecdote about when you would go to social events, many of the men had gone to similar high schools and were the same age as us and in our same classes didn’t particularly want to date women confronting the same work load, deadlines and things that they were. So, we ended up drifting towards grad students or maybe Americans or Canadians. And we were very active on the topic of making things co-ed, you had to enroll in the college, its not like choosing your dorm after you’ve been accepted so if you were in a particiular college you would discover that it was very strict on keeping men and women separate. People used to do things like siging in and out of college, they had these gate hours that the staff had to monitor. So my college closed at 11 so you knew you had to be back inside by 11 o’clock. If you knew you had something that was going to end later, you could sign out a key, but it was really a big deal. What people would do is they would climb over the walls, sometimes injuring themselves, a couple people were killed, probably they were drunk, but they wanted to get in and out so that’s what they would do. Or they stayed out all night.

Emily: So, my next question then is in the 1970s were there programs, departments or clubs where women were less present and accepted?

MB: I'm not really aware of any. I know that some of my contemporaries, from school age contemporary, not a classmate but somebody I knew, went onto to become the first woman president of the Oxford debating union society but I can't even remember when that was (33:58), it happened after I left. But we certainly were aware of women who graduated from Oxford went onto political success in their respective country so like the first woman Prime Minister anywhere I think had gone to Oxford. Margaret Thatcher went to Oxford, actually the 3 woman PMs were all conservative interesting enough and they all went to Oxford.

Emily: So that's it for the feminism section. My next question has to do with ideology and generational differences. So, historians have written a lot about what they call the counterculture revolution, meaning that your generation rebelled against the values of your parents' generation. To what extent did people in your social circle see themselves as needing to mobilize for a more just society and a better world? (35:51)

MB: I mean that would be 100% what was going through my mind at the time. I started off as a very focused on a very technical career and I mean I have to say my father was an engineer so that was partly the only role model I had. But that meant lots of very serious studying and you didn’t do much reading around other things and then I became engaged in the particular incidents gradually. We weren’t really in our families you know, so it wasn’t a case of going home every evening or week or month or something and having to argue this stuff out with your parents. You could carry on with your own way of thinking, form your own ideas. I mean they were very interested; I don’t want to make it out that they were not interested in these kinds of things, but they weren’t particularly day to day observing whether you skipped classes or whatever. The good thing is you didn’t have to go to lectures there, the key thing is having tutorials one on one and working on a research project and preparing that with your tutor. I would start every single term planning to go to lectures because there were so many interesting ones but then I would get so much work on my plate (37:39), I had my social life and my activism that I didn’t have time to go to lectures. Because it wasn’t obligatory, that was the one thing that was sort of laid back. I did work in mini-shorts and stuff like that, flower child clothes and certainly the young conservative clubs where people like Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May and Liz Truss were making their mark. But they were very serious political wonks, so they weren’t going to go dressing up like flower children, they were all suits and ties and stuff like that. Of course, when we went to dances and balls, we were all elegantly dressed.

Emily: OK, so then my next question is to what extent did your generation believe that your parents' notion about gender family dating were outdated?

MB: Well, I guess I probably did feel that, I didn’t really confront them, but I did leave Britain right after I finished all the various bits of studying that I did there, and I didn’t go back for a decade. And it was really because I began to be aware, especially well young men, because road scholarships at that time were only open to men. By the way you couldn’t be married to accept a road scholarship. There were all kinds of romances that had originated from these ivy league universities or whatever universities were sending those. And they had to put off their plans for over a year if they wanted a scholarship but then they would meet their eventual wives and they would come over and then I realized these kind had a much more equal relationship than I thought other people, my parents, my aunts and uncles and so on, their relationship did not seem to be so equal and I thought wow there's a certain respect here, they could open their own banking account, I had to get my father to open my account for me. And, you know, I really thought the US (40:11), I was watching what was happening with water gate that was opening up, the protest against the Vietnam war and the water gate breaking and I don’t know if you’ve been looking but it was just the 50th anniversary recently, it was just amazing to see that unfolding and then when they moved to the US, it was actually the first year I was living there, was a combination of water gate and the resignation of Britain in 1974. It was just to me, the most dramatic thing that the government could be, I've seen that happen in France with the goal it 69’ and here it was France was even more socially stratified in gender imbalance society than Britain. But I thought wow you could have really a self-respecting career or life in this place. And I remember my mother saying to me, “but don’t you realize that all these men that you met who are American or Canadian at Oxford are the best of the best, the people that you'll find there are probably not very friendly or feminist or very welcoming to women” and at first I thought yes that’s a good point but then I thought well actually the young men that I met that were British were also supposed to be the best of the best and I was finding them wanting so I thought guess I'll try so I did. Of course, there's lots more nuance to American politics and British politics and French politics.

Emily: So yeah, so, my next question is, did you feel that the political system was democratic, fair and responsive to the citizen's needs?

MB: In Britain?

Emily: Yes, when you were in university in the 1970s

MB: No, not at all, I felt that it was extremely trapped in ancient stereotypes, some of those things were very obvious in the single sex colleges and schools. The famous schools don’t accept co-ed students either. But the economy was clearly very biased towards men (42:51). I mean I quite enjoyed when I was still thinking I was going to be an engineer, my father eventually came around and thought it was kind of a neat thing so he started finding out if there was anything that could show yiung women what it might be like to be an engineer. So, like a winter program of two weeks at a university, sort of a lab or an internship or something, so he found a few things like that. I quite liked being the only, or one of two women in those programs, you know you get a lot of attention. And I don’t mean sexual attention, it was just the idea that “here they are doing all their stuff” and then I would stick up my hand say something, and they would all listen but then quite often just carry on what they were doing before. Anyway, it was yes. These things go in lurches I've of course discovered since then, those political changes and economic, I won't say equality, but justice shall we say.

Emily: OK, so then, looking back at the 1970s, what aspects of your society did you see as the most out of whack and in need of fixing? (44:19)

MB: Sorry what aspects of the time seemed out of whack?

Emily: Yes, like when you were in university

MB: Well, I think the gender imbalances and the fact that political action was concentrated in very small, tight, circles. I mean Bill Clinton was there when I was at Oxford, I think Hillary too. I didn’t know them though, but these people were all floating around, creating their own establishment. But to me watching the televised hearing of how I saw it was a very good exercise in democracy and seeing how lawyers, a lot of whose assistants were people I had been studying with, to being assistant to the prosecutors. Really opened things up but now of course you look back on that and sort of say “well you know, Jim Jordan holds hearings and it's just a political rant you know”. So, it's things lurch and sometimes they go back, 2 steps forward you hope, 1 and a half steps back.

Emily: So, I have one more section for you. Um. And my first question is cultural historians have argued that introduction of the birth control pill, legalization of abortion, and dissemination of the free love ideology changed gender relations and dating practices in the early 1970s. Do you agree with this statement?

MB: I'm not sure I agree with all of it but certainly I'm not aware of any of my little group of friends that was not on the pill (46:26). I think there were probably many that were Catholics and were not but in my circle. Everyone knew there was a particular place you could go for abortions; I don’t remember when it became legalized, I don’t think it was legal at the time in Britain, I don’t think it was legal until after I left, but there was a place you could go. I mean I never used it because the pill is pretty effective. And I think it did make us a little more, I suspect, I mean I don’t have any older brothers, but I suspect it made us a little more free and easy about dating. By the way we werent completely subject to exactly the same sort of para relationships and psychological abuse as others.

Emily: Then what did dating look like on campus in the 1970s?

MB: Well, you met people at parties, there's no internet, and we called them cattle market and that’s where people would look at you and go “oh my god you go to college, you’re a university student oh nah”. They preferred to date people that didn’t have other commitments, they wanted to be able to decide when to go on a date and not be told that they had to do a paper or a project or lab or something like that. You know people did pair up, they had their relationships and some of them got married right after university so that was in a sense very 1950’s conventional. I went through a whole phase “oh I'm never going to get married” and then I mean they guy I did marry; I'm still married to (49:02), I met him when I went to Alberta and I thought I was just moving there briefly but I've been here in Canada ever since, about 45 years ago, sort of a love at first sight paradigm. I certainly left Britain on my own initiative and a couple of guys from the States I had known and even dated at Oxford, they would say things like “I really like you why don’t we just get married” and I kind of said “No, I don’t want to get married”. So, I think that liberated me in a sense that not to get into a situation that would be more complicated than it needed to be. I had lots of issues with the whole 5 years before I lived in the US, I had constantly tried to get my visa extended.

Emily: I feel like this kind of ties into a little bit of what you were saying just then but my last question is how did your generation look at family and marriage?

MB: Many of us were quite determined not to get married and then later on even when we had got married not to have children. I think you still hear some of that but of course it happened so we kind of changed that for the world. And by the way, I don’t know if this is part of your thinking at all but, gay life at Oxford was extremely well established (51:16) and quite common and that goes back centuries and that’s because it was all male for so long. And profs could not be married so they kept their families outside the city limits or outside the limits of the university jurisdiction but that was only in late 19th century. But you could think people like the guy who wrote “Alice in Wonderland” he was a very typical Oxford prof. And it was I wouldn’t say celebrated, gayness, but it was definitely, and the other thing is because it was World War 2 a lot of the school teachers and I, which happened to be in Oxford had no boyfriends or there weren’t any young men around or maybe they weren’t interested in young men. And so, it was perfectly normal for two women to be living together and my math teacher and gym teacher and on and on and on and you were totally not bothered by it. When I was in my upper classes in high school, I started going to clubs and parties at Oxford events and you'd see certain young men and you’d say, “oh I kind of like that guy” and then a bit later you’d realize “oh he's with this other guy, that’s fine”. It was legalized in Britain in 1968 (53:18) so right away from the time I was at boarding school it was illegal and the when I went to university it was legal. It was certainly a very open...

Emily: It was accepted

MB: Ya, accepted, that’s a better way of putting it because I'm sure there was a lot of prejudice elsewhere in Britain and probably Cambridge and some of the other universities were very much welcoming and supportive.

Emily: Well, that is all the questions that I have for you today.

MB: I hope I wasn't too much of a fire hose

Emily: No that’s okay, thank you so much for your time (55:17)

Emily : D'accord, la première partie de l'entretien porte sur l'impact de la culture populaire de l'époque. Au sein de la société dans laquelle vous viviez à l'époque, à quoi ressemblait l'électronique dans les années 1970 ? Comment était structuré votre temps libre ? Ou que faisaient la plupart des étudiants d'Oxford pour s'amuser dans les années 1970 ?

MB : Bien sûr, il n'y avait pas d'Internet. Il y avait beaucoup de sports et différents clubs comme, vous savez, le club de théâtre et je veux dire qu'il y avait une sorte de club religieux. La Oxford University Debating Society était très célèbre. Je ne participais pas à ce genre d'activités organisées. Nous allions au cinéma et à des concerts, beaucoup de concerts. De la musique live et de la musique classique, pas de la musique rock. Bien sûr, les Beetles étaient très populaires à l'époque, ils venaient de la région d'Angleterre où j'étais allé à l'école. En fait, lorsque j'étais à l'école primaire, juste avant d'aller à l'internat, les Beetles commençaient à peine, c'était en 1962, et ils venaient chanter dans les foires de village. J'ai vu les Beetles en concert ; j'étais à un mètre de distance. Mais ils sont devenus si importants que nous n'avons jamais pu nous permettre d'aller à leurs concerts ou à quoi que ce soit d'autre. Nous ne regardions pas la télévision.

Emily : Oui, ça a l'air bien. Quels étaient les endroits les plus populaires sur le campus et en dehors ?

MB : Il y avait beaucoup de pubs à Oxford. Mais il y a aussi 35 collèges à Oxford, il n'y a pas de bâtiment universitaire, et chaque collège a son bar, son réfectoire, sa bibliothèque, etc. En fonction de votre groupe d'amis à ce moment-là, vous fréquentez votre collège ou leur collège, mais peu de gens voulaient fréquenter les collèges de femmes. Les universités étaient toutes unisexes à l'époque, à l'exception d'une seule, qui venait de devenir mixte. J'étais dans l'une des cinq universités féminines et il y avait une trentaine d'universités masculines, dont certaines étaient plus prestigieuses que d'autres. La mienne était la plus prestigieuse des universités féminines et masculines. Il y en avait 5 ou 6 qui étaient vraiment très anciens, mais qui ressemblaient un peu à l'endroit où allaient les Premiers ministres. Les gens de mon collège avaient donc tendance à sortir avec des gens de ces collèges. Il y avait beaucoup de danses, de bals et d'autres choses. Quand je parle de bals, je veux dire qu'on s'habillait en cravate noire, parfois en cravate blanche et les femmes portaient des robes de soirée.

Emily : D'accord, c'est cool. D'ACCORD. Vous en avez un peu parlé. Ma prochaine question est la suivante : avez-vous assisté à des événements musicaux pendant vos années d'université ?

MB : Oui. Je dirais donc que c'est le cas. Musique de chambre, musique orchestrale, musique chorale. J'ai participé à une chorale. Je m'en souviens. Plus tard, j'ai commencé à aller à Londres. Je vivais une vie assez cosmopolite ; je n'étais jamais allée à Londres jusqu'à ce que je sorte avec un Américain. Et comme il étudiait l'anglais, il voulait aller dans tous les futurs qu'il pouvait. Nous allions donc à Londres parfois trois fois par semaine pour aller au théâtre du West End, à l'opéra ou à des concerts classiques.

Emily : OK, cool. Oui, ça a l'air cool. Ma question suivante est la suivante : nous utilisons le terme " culture de la fête " pour désigner les activités sociales en dehors de la salle de classe. Comment décririez-vous la culture de la fête à Oxford dans les années 1970 ?
MB : Eh bien, il y a deux types d'étudiants. Il y a les étudiants très sérieux, les intellos. Et puis il y a les gens comme Boris Johnson. Imaginez Boris Johnson. Pas le moins du monde atypique. Et cela remonte probablement au Moyen-Âge. Les gens buvaient beaucoup, jetaient les gens dans les rivières, etc. Je suis en quelque sorte à cheval entre les deux parce que, d'une part, la proportion de femmes était très faible. Il y a environ sept hommes pour une femme à l'université. En particulier, celles qui allaient dans des universités prestigieuses ne voulaient pas entrer en contact avec une fille potentielle et se faire dire "oh, désolé, je dois étudier" "je dois finir mon labo". Il existe donc de nombreuses écoles d'art, où l'on peut étudier l'art, l'histoire ou autre chose, mais qui ne font pas partie de l'université. C'est ainsi que ces écoles sont devenues célèbres pour la concurrence qu'elles offraient aux étudiantes. À tel point que, lorsque j'allais à une fête avec mes amis, les gens me demandaient "Où es-tu ?" et vous répondiez "Oh, je suis à l'université", ce qui est tout à fait neutre. Ils insistaient et disaient "Oh, quelle université" et si vous répondiez "Eh bien, je vais à l'université où je suis allé", ils commençaient à regarder par-dessus votre épaule et disaient "Oh, je viens de voir Joe, il faut que j'aille lui parler" et c'était la fin de la conversation. C'était un sentiment très, très divisé. Et c'est vrai, si vous vouliez, vous savez, faire votre travail, vous deviez évidemment prendre un peu de temps pour vous. Mais c'était vraiment une culture de la fête. Certains de ces jeunes hommes se rendaient dans un club qui n'incluait pas de femmes, où ils allaient manger des plats fabuleux parce que les différents collèges avaient de merveilleux chefs, puis ils buvaient du porto ancien qui se trouvait dans les caves des collèges. Et ils commençaient à jeter des oranges sur des portraits du 20ème siècle dans le réfectoire. Vous pouvez imaginer que tout n'était pas rose et correct. D'ailleurs, le roi Charles était à Cambridge pendant tout ce temps, si bien que beaucoup de gens allaient et venaient. C'est probablement trop d'informations, mais je me souviens simplement que c'était très amusant, très créatif, très stimulant intellectuellement, et que nous avons rencontré tant de gens intéressants. Nous avons rencontré tant de personnes intéressantes. Tant de personnes intéressantes venaient donner des conférences. Nous sortions tout juste des privations de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, environ 25 ans après la fin de la guerre. La société était vraiment très déprimée après cela, il y avait beaucoup de constructions en cours et les choses ont commencé à se calmer dans les années 70. C'est à cette époque que la Grande-Bretagne, pour son deuxième effort, a rejoint la Communauté économique européenne, qu'elle a quittée depuis. Mais il est difficile d'imaginer la destruction des grandes villes proches de l'endroit où ma famille vivait à l'époque, comme Liverpool et Manchester. Je veux dire que Liverpool a été complètement détruite, des pans entiers de la ville ont été rasés, brûlés.


Emily : D'accord, alors ma question suivante est : que pensait le corps étudiant de la guerre du Vietnam ?
MB : Eh bien, je pense qu'au départ, c'était un endroit très conservateur, Oxford. Les parents de beaucoup de gens étaient des figures de l'establishment, des agents de change, des banquiers, etc. Et vous savez, mon père était un industriel. Ils étaient donc horrifiés par la menace du communisme et ce genre de choses. Donc. Je pense qu'au départ, c'était un peu comme si on laissait ces gens faire ce qu'ils voulaient, mais qu'ils devaient faire de mauvaises choses. Mais nous ne devrions pas intervenir. Mais très vite, le corps étudiant, certainement parce que la chose déterminante qui s'est produite juste avant que je n'entre à l'université a été le mouvement en France et en Allemagne et dans les pays d'Europe de l'Est pour essayer de se débarrasser du gouvernement et de devenir équitable, et surtout d'arrêter la guerre. Les émeutes de mai 68 en France, qui ont en quelque sorte tout bloqué, ainsi qu'en Allemagne et dans d'autres pays, ont été l'occasion d'un engagement considérable. Beaucoup de mouvements radicaux. Nous avons découvert que les doyens des différents collèges et la direction de l'université identifiaient les étudiants susceptibles d'être de bons candidats pour le MI5 ou l'agence d'espionnage, par exemple, et qu'ils transmettaient des informations à ces services en disant : "Oh, vous voudrez peut-être interviewer telle ou telle personne" et que cette personne était invitée à Londres pour avoir une conversation agréable. Bien sûr, nous étions horrifiés que les autorités universitaires envoient des informations pour tenter d'identifier les étudiants qui étaient de bons candidats sans leur permission ou leur consentement. C'était donc le cri de ralliement à Oxford, et bien sûr, certaines de ces personnes sont allées travailler avec des alliés comme les États-Unis, qui pouvaient bien sûr s'impliquer dans la guerre. La guerre froide battait son plein et c'était d'ailleurs une chose terrifiante qui nous entourait en permanence, une sorte d'équivalent de la crise du changement climatique aujourd'hui. Beaucoup d'étudiants militaient contre l'armement nucléaire et organisaient des marches pour interdire la bombe. Mes parents m'ont emmenée visiter un internat lorsqu'ils cherchaient une bonne école où m'envoyer. Il s'agissait d'une école très réputée, connue pour ses études et d'autres choses du même genre, avec de beaux bâtiments, où l'on se promenait comme dans une visite d'université. Et puis ma mère a dit, "mais où sont toutes les filles", le professeur a répondu, "elles sont à Londres à une marche pour l'interdiction des bombes". C'était une école de quakers, dirigée par des quakers et ils étaient pour la paix, alors mes parents ont dit "oh, nous ne pouvons pas envoyer notre fille là-bas". Mais oui, l'attitude à l'égard de la guerre du Viêt Nam, les cercles dans lesquels je me suis retrouvée, étaient très opposés à la guerre. Mais il m'a fallu un certain temps pour que, après avoir entendu pendant des années cette vision très négative des étudiants, je veux dire dans la famille, les étudiants se lèvent et disent que nous devrions faire ceci, que nous ne devrions pas faire cela. Lorsque nous avons participé à des marches, il y avait des caméras de télévision et je me suis dit "Oh, et si mon père me voyait à la télévision", puis j'ai cessé de m'en préoccuper. Je ne pense pas qu'il l'ait jamais fait.