Retirement of Miss Elizabeth D. Barraclough
On September 30th 1993
Celebrations held on October 1st, 1993
University Presentation in the Bamburgh Room at 4.00 pm
Party in the Senior Common Room at 8.00 pm
Speeches
Professor Harry Whitfield
Mr James Wright, Vice-Chancellor
Miss Elizabeth Barraclough’s Acceptance
Professor Brian Randell
HARRY WHITFIELD’S SPEECH AT ELIZABETH BARRACLOUGH’S RETIREMENT PRESENTATION, BAMBURGH ROOM, UNIVERSITY REFECTORY, FRIDAY, 1ST OCTOBER 1993 AT 4.00 P.M.
“Vice-Chancellor, Ladies and Gendlemen,
“It is a very great pleasure to be allowed to speak on behalf of the very many friends and collagues of Elizabeth Barraclough who have gathered this afternoon to wish her well on her retirement.
“In view of the special nature of the occasion, I assume Vice-Chancellor, that I have permission to ignore Senate Minute 193 of 2 June 92 and speak of that which may not be mentioned – the Computing Laboratory.
“Elizabeth came to the newly established Computing Laboratory of what was then the University of Durham in 1957 as its first computer operator. I’m not sure whether she realized at the time that she was the only candidate! An assistant was appointed some 18 months later “to relieve her of some of the heavy load she had borne”.
“She was promoted to Senior Computer Operator in 1963, Computer Manager in 1967, and in 1979 she became Executive Director of NUMAC and Head of Computing Services. She became Director of the University Computing Service in 1992 at the time of the formal separation of the two halves of the Computing Laboratory.
“One good point about this formal sepuration (perhaps the only good point) was that Elizabeth could at last receive full recognition of her efforts over 35 years of service to the users of the Computing Service.
“When I came to Newcastle in 1980 as Director of the Laboratory. I found a single sheet of notepaper in my desk from my predecessor Professor Page. In characteristic Page style this contained very concise advice. It said “You are Director now – do what you bloody well like!” I’ve tried to follow that advice – but he failed to tell me that he’d also left Elizabeth behind to make sure that I didn’t. Nevertheless, I remember having very few arguments with Elizabeth over the years – but then you send to forget the occasions on which you lose!
In 1958/59 Elizabeth investigated with the then Finance Officer of King’s College the application of the computer to the preparation of salary and wages payments.
In 1959/60 she planned the computerization of student registration. A note at the time says “its interest lies in handling a sizeable DP probiem and we look forward eagerly to a computing system with more facilities.
It seems that in thirty years little has changed!
Those of you who know Elizabeth well, know that she is a person of great determination and energy. Whether it be moving up and down the line of weary walkers on the ritual annual trip to the Lake District, when she usually covers at least three times the distance of everyone else whipping on the lagards, or putting the fear of God into traffic, helmetted (like an angry beatle) on her bicycle or worse still at the helm of the Volvo which insiders know is the true status symbol of the real Head of the Computing Service.
Elizabeth has put this energy to good use in many areas in the University, as a member of Senate and Council, as President of the AUT and Chairman of the Senior Common Room. I say “Chairman” advisedly – I would never dare call Elizabeth a Chairperson or even worse a Chair – she has no need of such props to establish her rightful place in what appears (at least numerically) to be a “man’s world”. And I am delighted that she has decided to devote some of her time in retirement to visiting schools to try to persuade young women to take up careers in Computing.
“She was also a member of the University’s Telephone Working Party and was well known in the Laboratory for hcr special treatment of telephones.
“For my own part, I look back on my thirteen years working with Elizabeth as an exciting and challenging period in my life and above all a time of great fun. I am sure that all her colleagues feel the same way.
“Users of the computing services and students in the Department may have guessed that the Computing Laboratory had as its motto:
“All assistance short of actual help”.
“Now that we have a separate University Computing Service, everything is of course vastly improved, and with the recent introduction of Client-Server Computing a decision has been made to change the motto. Customers of the Service will be pleased to know that in future the ethos of the Service will be reflected in its new motto:
COMPUTAMUS ET SERVIMUS
“I am assured by the Senior Latin Scolars in the University (but perhaps the Vice-Chancellor could confirm) that this catches the new ethos correctly.
“Those of you less classically schooled may prefer the rough English translation which is something like
“We’ll Serve You Right!”
“Vice-Chancellor, perhaps you would now like to say a few words and make the presentations.”
VICE-CHANCELLOR’S PRESENTATION SPEECH TO ELIZABETH BARRACLOUGH ON THE OCCASION OF HER RETIREMENT. BAMBURGH ROOM, UNIVERSITY REFECTORY, 1ST OCTOBER 1993 AT 4.00 P.M.
The Vice-Chancellor’s remarks follow directly on from Harry Whitfield’s speech:
“I am tempted to begin, Ladies and Gentlemen by offering my own translation. Purely jocularly you could translate it: (Computamus et Servimas)
“We are computers and slaves”.
“I felt that it was important that someone from the Service who, as Professor Whitfield has shown, knows a great deal about Elizabeth’s work here, should speak on this occasion, but also felt it important that I should on behalf of the University as a whole. It also has a nice rounding off because I was interested to discover that in the happy days of the 1950’s, when Elizabeth came here, the appointment of computer operators was dealt with at the highest levels of the University. The Committee which selected her was chaired by Professor Rushbrooke – and I am very pleased to see him here tonight, again to round off this association – and in fact the decision to appoint her was taken by the then Rector, Mr Bosanquet after consultation with Professor Rushbrooke and he actually wrote a letter to the Registrar instructing him to offer the appointment. Those were happy days in the University when this could be done. I am also grateful to Professor Whitfield because it adds to the historical record – and it shows how written records alone are insufficient to sketch a historical situation – because in fact in his letter to the Registrar the Rector said “we should offer the appointment to her. It is important that this should be done without delay as Miss Barraclough is a candidate for another post but will withdraw if she hears immediately from us”. I now understand his anxiety, but of course it was our good fortune that the letter was written quickly and that Elizabeth came here and has been unable to get away ever since.
“I tend, on these occasions, to misuse the privilege of having access to people’s personal files because it is very interesting to look back on the references which we were given before they came here. There wasn’t a tremendous amount of gold dust in those for Elizabeth because they were tiresomely accurate in predicting her tremendous energy, determination, commitment and ability, and these have been fully borne out, but there were two points I thought I might share with you, and her colleagues may be particularly pleased by the first one, it said, this was talking about the work which she had been doing previously in relation to programming, “she is particularly good at detecting mistakes in other people’s programs”, and one of course having so many mathematical friends particularly delighted me said “in addition to having a considerable knowledge of mathematics Miss Barraclough has sound practical commonsense”. This clearly being a paradoxical piece of information which no one would have devined the second from the first, but I think we are all aware of the way in which from these early beginnings computing has come to be a central part of the University and the tremendous charge in hardware and the whole subject that Elizabeth has lived though and served us through.
“I was given earlier this afternoon by obviously a devoted admirer who wishes to remain anonymous a photograph which he has been treasuring for many years and you can come up and look at it afterwards, but it is of Elizabeth with her Pegasus in the good old days, and if you look at that sort of wonderful picture it illustrates I think very graphically what those of you who are involved in the subject – and all of us know, the remarkable changes that have occurred. To work through the whole of that period and to see the Computing Services of this University through from their very beginnings to the absolutely central part which they play in all parts of our academic life is a tremendous achievement. The University is very grateful to her and this gathering with the presence of people from every corner of the University and every kind of activity in the University bears out the importance of her contribution and it is a great pleasure and privilege for me to be able to hand over to her a whole series of presents – I won’t give you them all, but will just present you with this boquet of flowers.”
Harry to Elizabeth: “It has been decided to give you the Computing Laboratory banner which is not a gift but a loan until the University comes to its senses again.”
SPEECH BY ELIZABETH BARRACLOUGH ON THE OCCASION OF HER RETIREMENT PRESENTATION, IN THE BAMBURGH ROOM OF THE UNIVERSITY REFECTORY, ON FRIDAY, 1ST OCTOBER 1993 AT 4.00 P.M.
“Vice-Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen: “I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you Vice-Chancellor, to thank you very much for those kind words and to thank the University for all it’s done to make all these things happen, and particularly to thank the University both on my behalf and I think on behalf of the Computing Service for giving me the title of Director Emeritus. It means a lot to me because I think it means that the Computing Service has come of age. It you have got an Emeritus Director then you might try and get rid of all of the other directors but I shall remain.
“Now normally on these occasions one looks back and remembers all the things that have happened. Harry has in fact done that for me though of course he was not there in the early days when we had Pegasus and I of course have been very lucky. I was in the right place at the right time and I think it was particularly the right place. I came here when Ewan Page had been Director for a year and the first machine was about to come in. Ewan was energetic, and I had to keep up with him, and the Computing Laboratory really grew under his direction and I hope we have carried it on since, Harry and I between us. But if I do look back of course the things you remember are all the disasters rather than the good things, and most of our disasters were watery ones, and here I am, I’m going to move to Keswick which has twice as much rain as Newcastle, so maybe I am going to head for more watery disasters over there. But we should have known better. When they were building Claremont Tower they had this huge hole in the ground, they broke through Barras Burn and it was full – in next to no time it was full – and that has happened, Roger will tell me, four or five times since. We haven’t actually filled it but we have had a lot of water in there and it is all those disasters I remember, and I am not going to go into them.
“What I thought I would do – here am I, I have a unique opportunity, you are all standing here, you have to listen to me and I am not responsible for anything now – is to look a little way into the future. I think I’ll take it in three steps, and step 1 we will just move forward three years. We have had an election and you may imagine the Liberal Democrats have come into power and we have a new Minister for Education. The University’s Vice-Chancellor gets a missive from the new Minister, and he calls in the Registrar and says: “look, this is important, we must get our senior colleagues together rapidly”. So the Registrar scratches his head and then he calls in his secretary and he says to her “we’ve got to get all of our senior colleagues together as fast as possible, can you do something about it?” She goes next door and he doesn’t hear the telephone ringing or anything like that, she’s there, sitting at her terminal and she consults all the diaries of all the people that were needed and 10 minutes later she’s back and she says “Well, you can have it at 9 o’clock on Tuesday moming, but if you have it then the Dean of Medicine is going to be in Manchester and the only way you can get him on-line is with video conferencing, but that’s going to be alright because Manchester is on SuperJanet, or you can have it the following day at 1.30 when unfortunately one of the PVCs is in the States, and if you have it at that time he will barely be up and anyway the video conferencing doesn’t really work”. That’s a scene that my colleagues will tell you is possible now, and all you need to make that happen is the will, the training and the discipline, and with that it can all happen.
“Now, let me move on a few more years and we’ll call it 1999. The University is beautifully calm. All the students are going around with headphones on and they’ve plugged them into their walkman when they walk around the campus, but they also use them when they are sitting having their “lectures” which all come now through audio visual means. The delight of this of course is that the staff are relieved of an enormous amount of lecturing and they can get on with their research and they can also move back and have tutorials and seminars in the way a real University does, so that you get the contact with the students rather than having to stand up and lecture to them. Now of course, by that time not only are they being taught by computer but they are also being examined by computer.
“Now one of course worries about this slightly and our statisticians look carefully at the results to make sure that they are all normalised and so on, and of course they look alright. Overall they look alright until you look at Computer Science, and there you find that you have First Class degrees and you have 3rds or Fails, and you wonder about this until you realise that the guys who got the Firsts have “sussed” out how the marking works and the ones who got the 3rds didn’t manage to do it and so didn’t do their work either. So, that’s scene number 2, and that too I think is nearly possible – but watch the examining!
“Now, let me move on rather further and I won’t even put a date on this, and remember of course that despite the Lib.Dems getting in there still isn’t any more money for education. We are worrying where to get the finance from. We have had people in English, helped by the Computing Service, working away at the analysis of text and they really got quite good at analysis so then they tried their hand at synthesis. You analyse the text of your favourite author until you’ve got his style and then what you can do is turn it round and synthesise. All you then have to do is feed in the plot and feed in the names of the characters and it churns out the novel. If you hit your market right, there you are you’re making money hand over fist, and the only thing you have to decide is the name of the author. Being a University you can imagine that the discussion and argument about the name of the author went on for so long that, in fact, they didn’t get the novel out at all. I wont hold you to achieving that one, but I would like to say that all these things are possible within some sort of time scale, and if you ask my colleagues, they wont dare tell you because they have got to be here and put up with it.
“I would now just like to thank you all again for coming, for listening, and for the presents and picture that you have given me.
“Thank you very much.”
EDB
Party to mark the retirement of Elizabeth Barraclough
Senior Common Room, University of Newcastle
Friday, 1 October 1993
My role tonight, since it includes the reading out of a number of messages from distant friends, is rather like that of the Best Man at a wedding, though the description “Best Man” will no doube be regarded as an unjustifiable exaggeration by many of you.
But before I do that I’d like first to welcome the many guests who have according to my list here travelled from places as far and wide as Turkey and British North West Gosforth, just to be with us tonight. It is very significant that so many are so keen, as John Lloyd put it yesterday, to celebrate Elizabeth’s retirement!
So to the telegrams and messages that have come from people who could not be present tonight
. . . . . .
Elizabeth has had to listen to many speeches recently reminiscing over her career, and extolling her many virtues. So have I unfortunately – I say unfortunately because almost all the nice things that could be said about Elizabeth have been said already – so you guess the sort of things that largely leaves for me to say.
So, Elizabeth, let me get on with it!
Elizabeth has (it says here) been a wonderful colleague to have on one’s side, and a marvellous opponent in the friendly arguments between the two sides of what was until recently and what should still be a single entity, the Computing Laboratory. But others elsewhere in the University – I particularly have in mind some of the senior administrators and their lackeys – have perhaps been slower to penetrate past the image of “The Redoubtable Miss Barraclough” to recognize her essential kindliness and helpfulness, a mistake they also made at times with Ian Scoins. (I might suggest that with Harry they made the opposite mistake, but that would be going to far.)
These sometimes hidden aspects of Elizabeth’s character come to the fore, as a number of us have several times found out, on the Computing Lab’s mass invasions of the Lake District. I shudder to think what would have happened on occasion if she had not been there to accompany the slower more timid walkers (a group in which I definitely include myself), and to discourage Tom Anderson from attempting ascents or descents which he probably couldn’t have managed even years ago when he was young and comparatively fit. Mind you, as a Lake District Warden, she provides a very different image to anybody who is so foolish as to discard a toffee paper or piece of orange peel within her sight on her beloved fells, or in the lovely piece of woodland that she has so generously bought and made available for public access.
But let me turn back to University matters. As many of you know, the University of Reading made a great mistake when they stole Ewan Page from us to become their Vice-Chancellor. But what I have in mind is not the obvious mistake, which even Reading soon realized, but rather the mistake of not also stealing Elizabeth. She would have shown them how to stand up to and to work with, as opposed to for, Ewan. But that was their lost opportunity, and our and the University’s good fortune.
As a result, Elizabeth has through all her activities at Newcastle had a great effect on a number of University institutions besides the Computing Service, including the Senior Common Room, the AUT, Senate, and Council – (to list them in decreasing order of public esteem if not importance). One could indeed say that throughout the University she has cast a large shadow – though that I think is a description more appropriate to the person who has just had his arm twisted to become Acting Director, namely Denis Russell.
Ably hindered by first Ewan and then Harry, Elizabeth has of course been fundamental to the growth in size and strength of the computing service – and to the University getting the computing facilicies that it needs and deserves, rather than simply what some of the more vocal users have demanded. Though I must admit that it is perhaps significant that we now have, as David Hartley put it, one of the most centralized distributed sysens imaginable.
Elizabeth has also, I think I should mention, sometimes been regarded as a supporter of lost causes. This is not a comment on her political activities (which needless to say are largely in line with, and in the style of, Shirley Williams rather than Maggie Thatcher). Rather this has been the somewhat naive assessment made by some of my computing science colleagues because of what they thought was her continued support, long past their sell-by date, for Pink Book, MSDOS and even MTS. But the way she has turned a blind eye as a large number of her staff became secret Apple Mac users makes it clear that her judgement is fundamentally much sounder than that of various University and National committees.
One definite lost cause was however her championship of Ewan Page, when she acted as his defending counsel in his trial some years ago here for offences under the Megalomania Act of 1647. I had the much easier task of being prosecuting counsel – but I must admit that even I was moved by the closing speech she made starting “The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strained”, a phrase – indeed an entire speech – which has since become famed throughout the English-speaking world.
Let me end on a personal note by mentioning another aspect of Elizabeth’s character that some of you may not be so aware of, though I am – to a sometimes quite painful extent. This is her love of opera. Many a time have I been frogmarched to the Theatre Royal by the two Elizabeth’s in my life to hear the Scottish Opera perform, and see the theatre show off its mist making machine. But I must not complain too much – Elizabeth and Liz have now relented a little and allowed me to avoid at least the Benjamin Britten effusions that they both unaccountably find so pleasing.
In fact it was only yesterday that I found myself providing her with a large cheque for tickets for yet another Scottish Opera season, so it is clear that these pleasures are not to come to an unseemly end, just because Elizabeth is hanging up her virtual Doc. Martins in permanent favour of her actual fell-walking boots. So I am sure that we can and do all look forward to meeting Elizabeth for years to come both here in Newcastle and in the Lake District, and to seeing her enjoy a long and and well-earned retirement!
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the toast “Elizabeth Barraclough, and her happy retirement!
Brian Randell