0180 International Relations Club
A development from my anti-apartheid activities was my participation in the International Relations Club at Imperial College. This was a useful political vehicle for us to capture. And we did just that, with Dan as chairman and myself as secretary -- though in fact I did most of the work.
The International Relations Club was intended to make students aware of wider issues across the world -- apartheid was only a small part of these -- and as such the college itself gave us significant funds. At the time it was very conscious that -- as a scientific college - it otherwise taught students across a very narrow curriculum. The upside was that this meant I was allowed much greater funds, at my disposal, than most other clubs in the college.
In addition to our anti-apartheid activities, I got on with setting up a programme of speakers. Once a week they came and talked to students at the college over lunchtime. Usually we managed get 20 and 30 students together, sometimes more, in one of the lecture rooms. We had a wide range of speakers including a Nobel Peace Prize winner, Philip Noel Baker, ambassadors (including the charge d'affaires from Cuba - which was very controversial at the time), Wedgwood Benn and a whole range of others. The arrangement was that they spoke from 1.00 to 2.00 o'clock. Then myself and the guest would go to one of the local restaurants. Lunch typically took a couple of hours and, for that time, I had a leading political figure, the Nobel prizewinner for example, all to myself. At the time I didn't think it amounted to much, but I later realised that it provided very strong bedrock for my later career.
We also ran charitable events. One of these, which I inherited, was called a ‘starvation lunch’. The idea was that something like half a dozen people met to eat dry bread and cheese -- to feel good about starving themselves. Out of the charge, of half a crown per head, something like two shillings was given to one of the overseas aid agencies (typically Oxfam). But I was concerned that we used to get only five or six people along to this miserable event. My eventual question was “Are we doing this as a form of masochism or do we genuinely want to raise money for the Third World”.
The result was that I turned the event into what was called the 'Carnival Lunch' -- a much more attractive title. Thus, once a week, we took over the theatre in the union and provided a good lunch - again for two and sixpence. This time, though, we provided appetising rolls - with tuna, cheese and ham - and as much as anyone could eat. We found from experience the most anyone could handle was three rolls -- so we really couldn't lose money! At the same time we had the college jazz band playing on the stage, and students could dance in the space in front of it. It was incredibly successful, arguably the most successful business I have ever run. We only made six pence out of the half a crown, but instead of having five diners we had 500. So successful was it that the refectories had to shut down on the days we ran it - since they had no customers - and we were able to give much greater sums to charity.
This was a major venture, with a team of 20 and 30 people running it. I fortunately was able to delegate this to another member of the committee, since someone had to go to Covent Garden, to get supplies, at three o'clock in the morning! Then the team had to grate the cheese, which we found was the easiest way of getting it into the rolls, and they had to do all of this before lunchtime.
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