ABSTRACT
The outbreak of the Second World War on 3 September 1939, unlike the first, took none by surprise. Parts of the College had already been blacked out during August, and so the new session opened as usual despite the emergency lighting regulations. But it rapidly became apparent that there could be no real continuation of College work, since so many teachers and students were in the Forces, Civil Defence, or evacuated from London. War service drew away members to such an extent that the normal College committees could not function; and so in November 1939 it was resolved that the affairs of the College should be controlled, subject to Council, by an Emergency Executive Committee, consisting of the ex-officio members of the Executive Committee together with eight members of Council elected by Council. Various parts of the building were occupied by the W.V.S., the Home Guard, the Air Training Corps, the Samuel Lithgow Institute, and the local authorities; while the pavilion at Edgware was taken over for A.R.P. work. The permanent staff at the College was reduced, the minimum age limit for students was reduced from seventeen to sixteen for the duration, and a Work Party under Mrs. Franklin was set up to keep in touch with members in the Forces (and continued after the war as the Ladies’ Association). Throughout the first winter of the war the College struggled along with greatly reduced numbers. But the blitzkrieg of 1940 put an end even to such activities as remained. In the session 1940–41 the number of students on the roll fell to 19; and the College, for the first time in its long history, virtually ceased to function, though it never closed its doors. The end of an era—physically, at least—had been reached. Yet, with characteristic vigour, the College sought to turn even the interruption caused by war to good account. The break in the College's work provided an opportunity for planning the future on ideal lines, and when normal activities were resumed there would be the possibility of putting these plans into practice untrammelled by the mistakes and legacies of the immediate past. Enemy bombing might—as, in fact, it did—damage the fabric of the College; but it could not impair its spirit, which, long before the end of the war was in sight, was already turned towards new hopes and plans. Hence it was that in 1942 discussions by the Emergency Executive Committee about the future of the College were begun, and continued into 1943, the Committee being presided over by Lord Greene, Master of the Rolls and later Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, who had succeeded Sir Arnold Wilson as Principal in 1936. Fundamental questions of the aims and purposes of the College were considered at length, and the advice of various outside educationists was sought. After further discussion by Council, the Committee's report, drafted by Frank Gahan, the Vice-Principal, was adopted, and was printed in 1944 as The Report of Council on the Future of the College. It would be difficult to over-estimate the importance of this document, which was a blueprint for the development of the College in the post-war era. It is comparable with Maurice's original Scheme of a College for Working Men, or the Tansley-Shaw Report of 1901, in that it affirmed explicitly and in relation to the particular needs of the time, the principles upon which the College was based, and the methods appropriate to promote the ends for which it existed. A comparison between the Report of H.M. Inspectors who visited the College in November and December 1951, and the 1944 Report of Council shows how closely the actual post-war work in the College has followed the lines laid down in the wartime policy statement. On minor matters of detail there has been naturally some divergence from the wartime proposals; but by and large the College in its one hundredth year is functioning as was envisaged in the 1944 Report of Council. The principles therein affirmed are those which have guided the College since the end of the Second World War.
