A Critical Woman

Front matter

Barbara Wootton, Social Science and Public Policy in the Twentieth Century

Ann Oakley

Barbara Wootton (then Barbara Adam), c.1914 (GCPP Wootton)

Contents

List of Illustrations

Foreword by Tessa Blackstone Acknowledgements

Barbara Wootton’s Family Tree (Abridged)

Foreword

This is the story of the life of a remarkable woman. It is superbly well told. It is extraordinarily well researched. It is a magnificent intellectual biography. It is also an engaging account of a long life lived to the full but tinged with sadness in its lack of fulfilment in certain deeply private and personal senses. It begins with a conundrum: Why is Barbara Wootton not widely remembered today, given her manifest achievements in so many spheres? In asking this question Ann Oakley never quite finds the answer, but she certainly convinces me that Barbara Wootton deserves a greater place in the history of Britain in the twentieth century than she has been given.

Few people are better qualified to write this biography. Ann Oakley has worked for many years in social research and public policy, and, like Barbara Wootton, has written both autobiography and fiction as well as publishing widely in her academic field. Coincidentally, twenty years ago, soon after Barbara Wootton’s death, I considered writing her biography myself. However, I realized that I probably did not have the time to do it justice. I may also have been influenced by Jim Callaghan who, when I consulted him about it, said he thought perhaps she was not a ‘big enough figure’. Most people who read this fascinating book will come to a different conclusion. Barbara Wootton was a ‘big figure’. However, she did not fit into any conventional box. She was neither a politician nor a conventional academic, nor a head of an important institution. She could not easily be compared to the great women reformers before her — the Florence Nightingales, Elizabeth Frys or Eleanor Rathbones — who espoused a single issue and gave that issue their lives. The causes she fought for were many and varied, so her energies were spread rather than concentrated. To me this makes her more interesting and more remarkable. But because her contributions were so widely diverse, it is harder to define her and, therefore, easier to forget her.

xii FOREWORD

Barbara Wootton was a public intellectual who applied her searching intellect to many of the important questions which faced Britain from the 1930s to 1980s. She did so from the perspective of a social scientist, having abandoned classics for economics as a student at Cambridge. She had no time for social or economic theory or, indeed, for disciplinary labels of any kind. Instead she wished to use the techniques of empirical social science research to identify evidence-based solutions to policy problems. She was a thinker who wanted to improve the world, not just to define it. The books she wrote were critical and iconoclastic, and they did not endear her to many of her more conventional colleagues in the social sciences. Her output was prodigious; yet her research and writing were only part of the contribution that she made.

In her early career she was a leading figure in adult education, running Morley College and then Extra-Mural Studies in London, and working with the Workers’ Educational Association. She sat as a Magistrate on the Juvenile Bench for over forty years. She was the first woman life peer in the House of Lords, playing a leading part in its legislative work for more than twenty-five years. She sat on four Royal Commissions and many other government committees. She was a successful and sought after broadcaster, appearing regularly on programmes such as “The Brains Trust’ and ‘Any Questions’. As her international reputation grew, she lectured in many parts of the world on a wide range of subjects.

To achieve all this required drive, energy, courage and self-sacrifice. Her achievements must also have demanded good organization in how she used her time and the support of people who she could persuade that what she believed in deserved their loyalty and help. She worked outside the conventional structures of academic departments or political parties. This gave her the freedom to range widely and to be forthright, and to say what she wanted without compromise. Had she been born half a century later she would have been a splendid head of a centre-left think tank focused on reform and finding solutions to the social problems which face us.

Sharing her political values, her commitment to social reforms and her engagement with the application of social science to the search for rational solutions to policy issues, I found it easy to identify with her and to admire her. Many readers of this book will undoubtedly feel, as I do, that it would have been a pleasure and a privilege to know this woman. To have been in her company would certainly have been challenging: she clearly did not tolerate fools and was probably sometimes intimidating. However, to have obtained her respect must have been rewarding.

FOREWORD xiii

She was not blessed with good fortune in her personal life. Her childhood appears to have been relatively happy: she enjoyed a close relationship with her two brothers and adored her nanny whose devotion to her lasted a lifetime. Yet she lost her father at an early age and suffered from her mother’s coldness and overweening ambition that her daughter should succeed as a classicist. Marriage at twenty might have provided an escape. But tragically Jack Wootton was killed at Passchendaele less than six weeks after she married him. She did not marry again for another eighteen years. Her second husband was a taxi driver, a student at the adult education classes she organized, later becoming a Labour Party education officer. She and George Wright had a number of happy years together, but eventually she left him. A close female friend with whom she then lived died of cancer. But Barbara Wootton was no victim: she was committed to life and to the causes in which she believed; she enjoyed many important friendships with interesting men and women of the period, and she made the most of the varied opportunities that came her way for visiting other countries and learning about other cultures.

She had no children. Although apparently she did not dwell on it, she did express regret that she did not become a mother. It is perhaps a paradox that in spite of this she spent much of her working life fighting for a better deal for children in trouble. It is another paradox, and Ann Oakley reflects on this, that in spite of being the first woman to reach a variety of positions in public life, she appears not to have been much interested in questions of gender.

The last years of her long life were lonely but made infinitely better than they might have been by the loving support of Vera Seal to whom this book is dedicated. In doing so, Ann Oakley has recognized the generous and selfless care that women often give to others. Barbara Wootton’s life was enriched by her friends in the absence of a family and no more so than by Vera Seal.

Tessa Blackstone

Acknowledgements

Researching and writing a book such as this generates a long list of debts. My primary debt is to Vera Seal, to whom this book is dedicated. As Barbara Wootton’s longtime friend, colleague, personal assistant, carer and manager of her literary estate, Vera gave the project a very warm welcome when I first approached her in October 2007. She has provided me with an enormous amount of valuable material — lists of people to contact, letters, papers, photographs, mementoes, and many hours of memories of Barbara. Her commitment to the book and her friendship have sustained me through the inevitable hardships of writing, and have enabled me to benefit from many other kindnesses, including a Charles de Mills rose, luscious swiss chard plants and a marvellous unpatented design for a squirrel-proof bird-feeder. Vera has read several drafts of the book and her meticulous comments have contributed not only to the story but to remedying my deficient habits of grammar and punctuation. Without her help, my task in writing A Critical Woman would have been even more daunting than it has been. I hope she feels the final product repays the effort she has put into it.

Vera Seal worked with Kate Perry, the College Archivist, in the Library at Girton College, Cambridge, to place a collection of Barbara Wootton’s Papers there after Barbara’s death. It would have taken me far longer to find my way round those papers and the other valuable assets of the Girton Library without Kate’s help and interest. I remember with particular fondness her determination one day to find the room Barbara lived in when she first taught at Girton in 1920, and our mutual delight in locating this particular room with a view. Kate’s successor as Girton Archivist, Hannah Westall, has continued this tradition of help in supplying references and scanning in photographs for reproduction.

I am grateful for the help of staff in many other archives and libraries, and

(where relevant) for permission to quote from material thus accessed. The

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xv list includes Bedford Central Library; Bethlem Royal Hospital, Archives and Museums; Birmingham District Probate Registry Office; the British Association for Adoption and Fostering; the British Library; the British Library of Political and Economic Science (the papers of William Beveridge, Duncan Burn and Lena Jeger); the Cambridgeshire Association for Local History; the Charity Commission; the Christian Science Archives; the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge (William Haley’s Papers); the City of Westminster Archives Centre; the Cunard Archives at the University of Liverpool; the Dartington Hall Trust Archives; Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Archives; the Hull History Centre; the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London; the London Borough of Camden Local Studies and Archive Centre; the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham Archives and Local History Centre; the London Cremation Company; London Metropolitan University (the TUC Archives); the Magistrates’ Association; the National Archives at Kew; the National Portrait Gallery; Nuffield College, Oxford (G.D.H. Cole’s papers); Milton Keynes Local Studies and Family History Library; New Humanist Magazine; the Parliamentary Archives, Houses of Parliament; the People’s History Museum, Manchester; Queen Mary, University of London (Westfield College Archives); Royal Holloway, University of London (Bedford College Archives); Ruskin College, Oxford; St Albans Library; Senate House Library, University of London, Special Collections; the Stephen Perse Foundation; Trinity College, Cambridge; Trinity College, Oxford; the University of Southampton, Archives, Manuscripts and Special Collections (Neil Kensington Adam’s papers); the University of Sussex (Kingsley Martin Archives); and Wheaton College, USA, Special Collections (Malcolm Muggeridge Archives). My apologies if there are any inadvertent omissions from this list.

For permission to use photographs and to quote from interviews, letters, and archives, I have done my best to contact the relevant people; I apologize to any whom I have failed to trace.

Special thanks for providing information or researching particular aspects of Barbara Wootton’s life and work are due to Anna Baghiani at the Société Jersiaise and Val Nelson at the Jersey Museum in St Helier, Jersey, for help with genealogical research; Dorothy Baker, guide to Goddards at the Landmark Trust, for information about Barbara Wootton’s Surrey home; Helen Bruce at the University of Adelaide in Australia, for retrieving correspondence related to Barbara Wootton’s Australian visit; Shirley Corke, for material on the Farrer family and the history of Abinger; Paul Cox, for information about Barbara’s maternal grandmother; Stefan Dickers at the Bishopsgate Institute, and Naomi Phillips and

David Pollock of the British Humanist Association, for providing information and xvi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS material on Barbara’s association with the humanist movement; Sue Donnelly at the British Library of Political and Economic Science, for responding to queries about Barbara Wootton and George Wright’s student records; Catharine Hanlon at the Stephen Perse Foundation, for researching Barbara’s schooldays; Trish Hayes at the BBC Written Archives Centre, for locating Barbara’s media performances; Bill Hetherington at the Peace Pledge Union, for information on conscientious objectors; Bridget Howlett at the London Metropolitan Archives, for uncovering material about George Wright’s connection with the London County Council; Karen Johnson at the National Library of Australia in Canberra, for access to the correspondence between Barbara Wootton and John Barry; Lisa Kerrigan and Kathleen Dickson at the British Film Institute, for providing transcripts and arranging viewings of Barbara’s television appearances; Tammy Little, for retrieving a copy of one of Barbara’s early publications; Bill Luckin, for details of Barbara’s work as a road safety campaigner; Patricia McGuire, King’s College, Cambridge, for copies of letters relating to Barbara Wootton in the papers of Noel Annan; Nicholas Morgan, the executor of Barbara Wootton’s will, for information on contracts and bequests; Jacques Oberson in the United Nations Library, Geneva, for details of Barbara’s attendance at the World Economic Conference; Sue Slack at the Cambridgeshire Collection, Cambridge Central Library, for tracking down material relating to the Adam family, Barbara Wootton’s first wedding and Adela Adam’s work for the suffrage movement; Mary Turner and Kathy Atherton of the Dorking Local History Group, for information about Abinger; Mike Weaver at the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, for providing a copy of Barbara’s pamphlet on Taxation Under Capitalism; and staff at the Women’s Library at London Metropolitan University, for permission to transcribe fully Brian Harrison’s interview with Barbara Wootton. For information about, and permission to refer to, Barbara Wootton’s correspondence with HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, I am grateful to His Royal Highness and Dame Anne Griffiths. I am indebted to Sergio Graziosi in the Social Science Research Unit at the Institute of Education in London, for translating material in Italian drawn on in Chapter 9 and for invaluable computing support.

To the following who have given me with great goodwill valuable information, access to unpublished material, and/or the benefit of their personal memories and appreciations of Barbara Wootton’s life and work, I record my particular thanks: David Adams; Jessica Adams; Mimi, Lady Adamson; Ann Ashford; David Ashford; Professor Tony Atkinson; Paul Barker; Professor Philip Bean; Professor Maxine Berg; Keith Bilton; John Bird; Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, QC; Audrey Bradley; Don Bradley; Sir Gordon Brunton; Alan Bryant; Anne Bryant;

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xvii

Margaret Clark; Brenda Collison; Baroness Jean Corston; Andy Croft; Professor David Donnison; Professor David Downes; Professor Gavin Drewry; Frank Field, MP; Professor Jean Floud; Sir John Ford; Kate Fox; Tony Gould; Diana Grassie; Professor A.H. Halsey; David Jacobs; Lord Neil Kinnock; Nellie, Lady McGregor; Ross McGregor; Ann Monie; Professor J.N. Morris; Professor Terry Morris; Diane Munday; Professor Michael Newman; Rachel Pierce; Professor Robert Pinker; Dorothy Runnicles; Freda Russell; Professor Sir Michael Rutter; Madeleine Simms; Professor Peter Townsend; Bridget Trotter; Professor Nigel Walker; Malcolm Wicks, MP; and John Melville Williams, QC. For information about Arthur Adam, my thanks to Sue Collins, Rob Dean, Barry Foulds, Professor Jeffrey O’Riordan, Anthony Payne and Jonathan Payne, and to Elliott Lushaba and Nombulelo Lushaba. Gavin Thomas and Rollo Prendergast were generous with access to their genealogical websites, which saved me much time filling in gaps in Barbara Wootton’s family history; my thanks also to Dr Gavin Thomas, for the reference to the Mark Pattison connection and for help with Barbara’s family tree. Without Professor Alberto Castelli’s valuable knowledge of Italian federalism, my understanding of Barbara Wootton’s work in the 1930s would have been incomplete. Professor Philip Graham’s connection with the Perse School enabled me to find out more about Hubert Wootton. Thanks also to Christopher Clarke, Private Secretary to the Lord Speaker, for clarifying the circumstances of Barbara Wootton’s departure from the House of Lords; to Dr Hera Cook, for drawing my attention to the Barbara Wootton interview in the Kingsley Martin Archive; to Professor Graham Crow, not only for correcting my use of the word ‘only’, but for several references to material relating to Barbara Wootton’s work; to Dr Lesley Hall, for various archival pointers, and especially for information about Barbara Wootton’s connection with the Abortion Law Reform Association; to Dr Yvonne Johnson, for sharing her expertise about Barbara Wootton’s role in social work education; to Professor Hilary Land, for her paper updating Barbara Wootton’s zoological comparison of professorial salaries; to Dr Shawne Miksa, for sharing information about Barbara Kyle; to Terence O'Kelly, for supplying a photograph of Barbara’s house; to Stephen Pickles of the Institute of Education Library, for discussions about Barbara Kyle’s work; to Tom Rivers, for advice about legal issues; and to members of the Social Work History Network, for recollections of Barbara’s role in the education of social workers.

For accompanying me on various expeditions to research Barbara Wootton’s family background, and for technical help, I am indebted to Penrose Robertson. The conversations I have had about Barbara Wootton and about biography-writing with Tony Gould have inspired and encouraged me. I am xviii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS grateful to Professor J.W. Winter for our profoundly educational journey round the Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne, and the Somme Battlefields in France. Dr Robin Oakley’s support and help in a multitude of ways is greatly appreciated, and not at all taken for granted (as he sometimes suspects). Tabitha Oakley-Brown’s help with various papers and her interest in Barbara Wootton have energized and impressed me.

In piecing together the account in A Critical Woman of the many places reached by Barbara Wootton’s life and work, I have been enormously helped by the indefatigable researches of Anne Ingold at the Social Science Research Unit. I grew to rely on her tendency to wander down all sorts of potentially promising side-alleys, and to talk so persuasively to total strangers. I know she thinks we need another five years to gather a complete record, but I hope this interim account will do.

For financial support, I would like to thank the Nuffield Foundation. The Foundation’s commitment to the project, and especially the interest and wisdom of its Deputy Director, Dr Sharon Witherspoon, have greatly eased my journey through Barbara Wootton’s life and work, as well as supplying important information about both Barbara Wootton’s and Barbara Kyle’s links with the Foundation. Thanks also to the Titmuss-Meinhardt Fund at the London School of Economics and to the Institute of Education, for additional support. To my agent, Rachel Calder, my thanks for seeing me and my project through difficult times, and to Caroline Wintersgill and Frances Pinter at Bloomsbury Academic, for believing in it — and to Caroline (and to David Owen) for coming up with the title A Critical Woman. I would also like to thank Matthew Hough for once again performing his beautifully critical and efficient copy-editing services.

A number of people have been kind enough to read particular chapters of the book: Professor Tony Atkinson, Professor Philip Bean, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, Professor Alberto Castelli, Felicity Cave, Professor Sir Iain Chalmers, Professor David Donnison, Professor A.H. Halsey, Professor Terry Morris, Professor Robert Pinker, Professor Sir Michael Rutter and Professor J. W. Winter. I am grateful for their time and for their comments. Aside from Vera Seal, some colleagues, friends and family, and people who knew Barbara Wootton have also read and commented on the entire manuscript; for these sterling services, which have resulted in the removal of many embarrassing howlers and errors, I would like to thank Ann Ashford, Professor Jennifer Coates, Professor Graham Crow, Dame Karen Dunnell, Tony Gould, Anne Ingold, Dr Robin Oakley, Penrose Robertson and Dr James Thomas. It is customary to say that none of the people whom one thanks in a book of this kind is responsible for its contents. That is, of course, true. Biographies

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xix require decisions about inclusion and omission, and about interpretation and evaluation which must ultimately be the biographer’s responsibility. I have done my best not to misrepresent anything in this account of Barbara Wootton’s life and work, but there are bound to be places where expert eyes will notice that I have missed something or not got it quite right. For this, I offer my apologies.

I fear that my family and close friends have suffered from having to share me with Barbara Wootton for too long. I am grateful for their patience, forbearance, love and support.

Ann Oakley February 2011

Barbara Wootton’s Family Tree (Abridged)

James Adam Barbara Anderson 1826-1869 1836-1921 5 others Barbara Adam James Adam Adela Marion Kensington 1864-1890 1860-1907 1866-1944 Winifred Wright Neil Kensington Adam Arthur Innes Adam Barbara Frances Adam 1886-1973 1891-1973 1894-1917 1897-1988 1 John Wesley Wootton 1891-1917 2 George Percival Wright 1903-1964 John Bernard Martin Adams Jean Alison Adam Arthur Mylne Adam Margaret George Macdonald 1919-2004 1917-1962 1926-2006 Christina Clark 1903-1967

1916-2006

3 children

Jessica Elizabeth David Peter Carolyn Winifred Timothy John Smith Gardner Kingsley Adams Adams 1951- 1953— 1947— 1954—

2 children 2 children

Married

William Heath Rebecca Marshall

1748-1815 1765-1796 George Le Geyt Rose Marie Heath Angel Heath 3 others 1777-1861 1788-1851 1787-1858 Eleanor Susan Belfield 1 Arthur Kensington Rebecca Le Geyt 10 others 1814-1846 1814-1886 1823-1904 2 children John Eltham Mylne Juliet Kensington Fanny {Frances} Kensington Laura Kensington Arthur Ranken Ford 4 others 1844-1882 1853-1923 1851-1931 1850-1926 1848-1933 Cicely Ford Honoria Ford Roger Gaskell Ronald Mylne Ford Margaret Jessie 2 others 1876-1960 1881-1972 Hetherington 1883-1962 Coghill 1876-1952 1894-1963 __ Mary Roger le Geyt Margaret Arthur Ford Stephen Lonsdale Emaline John Archibald 3 others ~~ Hetherington Hetherington Lacey Hetherington Hetherington Burnette Ford 1907-1987 1908-1990 1914-2004 1911-2002 1914-1993 1921-1989 1922— 2 children Elizabeth Ann James Stephen Hetherington Ann Elizabeth Hetherington David Martin Ashford Wilkinson ~~ 1939— 1942— ~~ 1939— 1940—

4 children 2 children