Apologies (as usual) for sparse commentary here. I remain having problems accessing this blog, and Google provides no support in overcoming the access problem. I am considering moving my blog to WordPress - more detail to follow.
An additional problem has been that, following the completion of my doctorate, and the on-set of the Coronavirus lockdown, I have been wholly focused on my job and found little time to write.
So this post comes on a Sunday morning prior to looking at emails etc. And, in that email is the very welcome newsletter from the Ruskin College Fellowship. The Fellowship has been engaged in a particular challenging conversation with the current management/leadership of Ruskin College, but I am pleased to say is overcoming considerable hurdles set by the College.
The latest newsletter from the College piles further misery on an institution bereft, in my personal opinion, of any sense of mission, purpose or history. In a section of the newsletter titled 'When is Ruskin College history, not its history' it points out the following.
The answer is: ‘When
it is in the College Prospectus’.
In the Prospectus that has been on the College’s website throughout the past
year, there are several factual errors in respect of the College’s history. We
wrote to the Principal to advise him of the mistakes. We said:
19
May 2020
Dear Paul,
May we draw your attention to mistakes about the college’s history that appear in the Prospectus for the current academic year. As the college’s history is its Unique Selling Point we thought the following points needed rectifying.
On page 14 you say:
In 1976, Labour Prime Minister Jim Callaghan laid the foundation stone for Biko House, named after South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko.
This is incorrect. The building was originally called The Cyril Plant building. Cyril Plant was a former Chair of Governors. The 1979/80 Prospectus was fronted by the Plant building, as you will see. The mistake is easily made for those people who have relatively recently arrived at the college. You must remember that Jim Callaghan opened the student block called the Plant building in October 1976. Our dear comrade Steve Biko was not murdered by the South African Police until nearly a year later, in 1977. In those tragic circumstances he became a cause celebre. The plaque on the side of what became Biko House in 1979 testifies to that.
There is a second reason that what is now Biko House could not have been Biko House in 1976. The college had a convention that rooms and buildings had to be named after people associated with the college. It was not until the opening of Beatrice Webb House in 1988 that a person other than a governor or an employee of the college had had a building or a room named after them.
That brings us to the second mistake, which is a bit of a ‘howler’.
On page 14 of the prospectus you say that Bowen House was named after Irish novelist Elizabeth Bowen, who resided nearby . . . We have no idea where that could have come from. Elizabeth Bowen had pronounced Conservative leanings and, as above, had absolutely nothing to do with Ruskin College.
Bowen House was named after Sir William Bowen, C.B.E, J.P., who was a governor at the College for 24 years between 1923 and 1965. He was also only the second Chair of Governors in the 66 years of the college’s existence when he died on 1st April 1965, a few days after chairing his last meeting of the Governors. He had been the General Secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers, a Member of Parliament, a member of the TUC General Council and Chair of the London County Council.
We offer these comments, with respect, and if the mistakes could be amended for the 2020/2021 Prospectus perhaps we have been helpful.
Regards
Debbie Hollingworth, Brian Smith,
Alan Shepherd, Bob Anderton, Chris
Watson
(Ruskin Fellowship Officers) We didn’t receive a reply.
I am a very proud member of the Fellowship and will be vigorously supporting its on-going efforts to bring the College management/leadership to account.
In Solidarity
Ian
