ABSTRACT
My father worked for British Gas for forty years as an engineer, having obtained an external degree from the University of London, the first person on either side of our family to get a degree. Being in a reserved occupation, he was not enlisted in the armed forces during the war. His father had spent his entire working life in the City of Birmingham Corporation Gas Department, and I still have the framed certificate and clock he was given in 1939 on his retirement, also after forty years’ service. I suppose that it is this inheritance that has given me my commitment to public service. My mother’s father was at one time a racing car driver but later worked in a car factory. My grandfather was fun. He smoked and drank beer, taught me to play cards and had a one-eyed dog. I think it was from float that I got my independent/entrepreneurial streak. My mother worked as a comptometer operator, and she was also a very clever and creative seamstress. She gave up her paid employment to get married. I like to think that I recognize this combination of mathematical expertise and creativity in myself. None of my women relatives undertook paid work except a ‘spinster’ great aunt who worked as a dressmaker. I was born in 1949, in our front room in Birmingham, the youngest of four children, two boys and two girls. I started school when I was four and remember
very well walking to school with my friend Marion on our own and being seen across the road by the garage man. It was a journey that I cannot imagine letting a 4-year-old do today. My parents were teetotal and committed Christians so when I was small, most of their and our social life revolved around the church. When I was 7 we moved from Birmingham to Wolverhampton. There was no room in the local primary school and so from the age of 8 I had to go on a bus journey of several miles to school on my own. I thought nothing of it, but again I would not have let my children do the same journey at that age. My primary school served a large council estate and was very informal and jolly, although I do not remember any discipline problems. The headteacher was a woman and we all knew she was the boss! I passed the 11+exam and went to Wolverhampton Girls’ High School. My background was working class and my early schooling was working class, so having to do elocution and deportment lessons was quite alien and I felt ‘different’. I found it very difficult to settle. In fact, it is true to say that I always felt alienated to a greater or lesser extent. I find this sad now as it was really a privilege to be at such an excellent school. My feelings were partly to do with the rules. For example, we had indoor and outdoor shoes and had to stand in a line in the classroom and lift up our feet behind us for our shoes to be inspected for any signs of dirt! Our skirts had to be regulation length and we had to kneel down to prove that they just touched the floor, and were neither too long nor too short. We were not allowed to talk to each other within the main school buildings and had to walk in single file on the left. I hated this sort of illogical discipline. I always thought of myself as the naughtiest girl in the school, but reading my school reports again now, I suspect that this was not so, although there was a lot of exasperation that I would not work harder.
