Trevor Witton studied BSc Geography and graduated in 1977. He reflects on his time at Queen Mary as an undergraduate student and shares how the University still has a special place in his heart.
"I had £3.27p in my pocket and my life’s belongings in a backpack as I made my way to Queen Mary College (as it was then) at the end of September 1974. At eighteen years old, this small sum of money and my worldly possessions constituted my entire net worth. My excitement grew as I exited a grimy, poorly lit Stepney Green tube station and stepped into a windswept Mile End Road for the first time. Consulting a dog-eared London A to Z street finder (no phones or satnav in those days), I nervously made my way to the building which housed the Geography and Geology Departments – my academic home for the next few years.
It is perhaps difficult to appreciate today, but 48 years ago the East End was still scared by the ravages of the Second World War, and the Blitz in particular. Patches of derelict buildings and waste ground cordoned off by rusting corrugated iron fences pockmarked the areas of regeneration and repair that had taken place since the war had ended only 29 years ago. My first impression was one of a sharp assault on my senses, coming as I had from the gentle, green rolling hills and well-to-do housing of the Chilterns in Buckinghamshire.
The East End exuded a grittiness which left no room for uncertainty about its pretentions, which were few. Diversity was even then everywhere; different in composition to that of today, but no less multicultural. Unlike today, however, that diversity was less well reflected in the student intake, though with hindsight QMC was very much in the vanguard of the radical social change that would sweep through the UK and leave its welcome mark in the coming decades. Another key difference then was the male dominated student intake, reflecting the College’s reputation for excellence in engineering and science-based subjects, though women did of course prevail in these and many other degree courses.
In the 1970s, the student Halls of Residence were in the leafy suburb of South Woodford, some five stops on the Central Line and as many miles to the east of the main campus. There were three concrete tower blocks and an older brick building dedicated to women. Then, the sexes were strictly separated, at least in theory. Each hall had its own Warden drawn from the College’s academic staff. Wardens varied in personality from the fearsome female academic who kept her beady eye firmly fixed on her flock of young ‘gals’, to the kindly, worldly-wise Professor of Mathematics who lived in Creed Hall, where I was billeted. The sixties may have been the decade of free love, but such liberal attitudes had not yet arrived at the QMC Halls of Residence. Despite this, the atmosphere was convivial; there was a bar, TV lounges and tennis courts – and it was quiet, with lots of trees and fresh air – a welcome oasis of respite from the ravages of the Mile End Road.
Every student can surely remember their first encounters and impressions formed during Fresher’s Week. Meeting new friends, attending concerts, and signing up, wisely or otherwise, for the ‘Socs’ of their choice. Fresher’s week then was perhaps rather more hedonistic and certainly less ‘PC’ than it has become today – such changes probably for the better. Nonetheless, for most, this rite of passage was the introduction to the sweet box of life hitherto denied or, more likely, still unknown to them. Some thought they had died and gone to heaven; others were utterly bewildered by the haze of parties, cheap beer (it was 15 pence a pint in the Student Union Bar) and desperately gauche attempts to meet a prospective partner. For men, long hair and mutton-chop sideburns was all the rage. As I couldn’t grow a whisker, let alone sideburns, any aspirations that I might have had crashed and burned. Nonetheless, Fresher’s Week played an important role in breaking down the barriers, especially as many of the students then had never left home prior to their arrival at college. Coping with that change and a big, fast-moving city such as London was not for everyone. Most, however, took to it like a duck to water and never looked back, the shackles and ties of childhood broken forever.
I am always proud to say that I attended Queen Mary, and I always swell with pride when I hear the many and varied Queen Mary academics who are called upon to present their views in the media on nearly everything, such is Queen Mary’s international standing and reputation.
The second year for undergraduates was marked by finding external accommodation. Then, student digs in the East End were in short supply, forcing many to improvise. I spent time in various dilapidated rooms among the serried rows of condemned terraced houses that made up the Isle of Dogs. These roads no longer exist, having been demolished to make way for the skyscrapers that characterise the multi-billion-pound banking services centre that now occupies the area. I also found places to stay in various insalubrious buildings which lined the River Thames in Wapping, some lacking power or water, some both, to which I will return later…
Part of my studies involved learning how to program a computer using a code called Fortran. Because the College was big in maths and engineering, it was the proud possessor of what was then called a ‘super-computer’ which occupied an entire floor of the Maths Faculty. To use it required standing in a cafeteria type queue before dropping your carefully coded cards into the reader, which invariably jammed. One minor error in the code or the punched cards and it was back to the end of the queue. Today, my mobile phone has more processing ability than this beast of a machine, but at the time we were all in awe of its power!
Students have always struggled with finances, and I was no exception. I covered my costs through hard work and an ingenious wheeze. The hard work was labouring on a construction site during the long summer vacations to make ends meet. No swanning around the Greek Islands or North Africa for me. Ironically perhaps, I helped to build the Pooley Halls of Residence at South Woodford. I dug trenches, laid pipes, mixed cement, and distributed bricks, but the biggest learning by far was the management of people. Labour gangs then were typically all from one extended family, many of them Irish. Things often became volatile when the horses failed them, or when they argued over just about anything. Learning to manage these tense situations was an eye opener to real life and served me well later in my international career.
The ingenious and rewarding wheeze was to sell my gastric juices to an eminent Harley Street Consultant. They were needed to make a drug called Interferon. Volunteers were required to turn up at Harley Street at 6am, give a blood sample, followed by an injection in the buttocks of a substance which made the stomach think it had just eaten a huge meal. This stimulated the production of gastric juices which were then gently sucked out via a long, perforated, rubber tube which had to be swallowed. We earned eight Pounds per session – a small fortune to a student then. A further upside was that to take part you could not eat the day before, thereby saving even more money. My arm and bottom looked like a pin cushion, but I was solvent!
In my final undergraduate year, I was elected Captain of Boats. QMC had always enjoyed an enthusiastic if not that successful rowing fraternity and I was proud to be involved. I made an appeal to the Governors for funds to support a rowing expedition which proved successful. With finals completed, ten of us set off with the college minibus and rowed from the North of France to the South over four weeks. Having navigated the Canal du Nord, the Seine, the Soane, the Rhone and the Canal du Midi, our swansong was rowing along Tahiti Beach, Saint Tropez thanks to the generosity of the QMC Governors.
And so, my undergraduate days at QMC came to close. On my return from France, I opened the letter that contained my degree results and found that I had won a research grant for my PhD studies in aeolian sedimentology. It is with a sense of profound regret that lasts until this day that, despite my enthusiastic beginnings, I am ashamed to say that I threw in the towel after a couple of years of toil in very difficult economic circumstances. But the experience launched me into a career in the energy industry which kept me out of the UK and out of mischief for nearly 40 years. By a quirk of fate, however, my links with Queen Mary were to be restored when I briefly returned to the UK in 2006. My partner embarked on an LLM course in dispute resolution that was run by the Queen Mary Faculty of Law. It also brought me back to the East End, where I bought an apartment in one of the old warehouses on Wapping High Street – now unrecognisable from when I had left it all those years ago. I had come full circle. My student days at QMC, now the modern, sleek, Queen Mary University of London, were undoubtedly some of the happiest days of my life. I am always proud to say that I attended, and I always swell with pride when I hear the many and varied Queen Mary academics who are called upon to present their views in the media on nearly everything, such is Queen Mary’s international standing and reputation. I wish all those who now study under the hallowed dome of the Great Library the same good fortune."