When the Iron Lady Ruled Britain (48 page)

Professor Noble had launched SBSS eighteen months earlier over dinner at his Oxford college, Balliol. The diners agreed that the traditional British way of lobbying, softly behind closed doors, was doing science a disservice. Their dilemma was: ‘How does a profession that normally trusts in quiet discussions between distinguished people respond when the system totally breaks down?' They planned a once only ‘SOS', placing an advertisement in
the Times
, expecting two hundred responses and sufficient contributions to pay for the ad. They received two thousand more or less anguished replies, and SBSS was founded. The media response had been overwhelming: the SBSS cause had been in the press virtually every day, and several television programmes were in the making. Polls showed widespread public support for the campaign. The government's attitude, according to Professor Noble, was that British scientists were not hard-headed enough – one junior minister had accused them of being ‘just as happy to work on a white elephant as on a winner' – and that they lacked public support, a notion retained apparently from the 1968–72 days of student unrest and the general feeling against the universities.

The scientists answered that all manner of American companies were beating a path to their laboratories. Professor Noble's own research, which he described as ‘very fundamental', was exciting interest from US drug companies: there is a huge potential world market for successful heart drugs. Had he himself been offered jobs abroad? ‘Yes, of course, anyone in my position has been.' Two or three years earlier he had made a decision to stay, but added: ‘If the situation does collapse entirely, I might – for the sake of my research – have to say that I would be better off abroad under reasonably calm conditions.' The government told SBSS to go to industry, and industry sent them back to the government, claiming that it needed improved tax incentives for research and development before it could justify the expenditure to its shareholders.

I asked whether it helped that Mrs Thatcher had been a scientist. Professor Noble laughed: ‘Just because she had a little bit of science in her background, people believe she understands. It's not true.' There was not, he said, a single scientist in the Cabinet, and precious few in the top echelons of industry. The reason was no longer principally the amateurism of British industry, but the subject specialization at sixteen which removed budding scientists from the world of value judgements. Scientists therefore enter industry ill-equipped to argue their point of view against professional managers. ‘We are told that quite frankly not many scientists are up to it,' said the professor. Being an advocate required very different skills from those of the laboratory scientist, who had to lay out all his doubts on the bench. Professor Noble, a fluent French speaker, supported the idea of an exam like the baccalaureate, with its compulsory breadth of subjects.

He argued that British science was a victim of the government's ideology. Science, according to ministers he had dealt with, should be out in the market-place. But, he argued, they overlooked such foreign practices as massive Federal funding in the United States and 150 per cent research and development tax breaks in Australia. Sir Keith Joseph, when Secretary of State for Education and Science, had told an Oxford audience of scientists – worth, according to Professor Noble, thirty million pounds of public investment – that, since the government could not possibly afford what they wanted, they should go abroad. Colleagues who did not attend the meeting anxiously phoned those who had, asking, ‘Is the outlook that bad?' Sir Keith had shattered the morale of several hundred scientists in one speech.

Professor Noble said: ‘Sir Keith said we couldn't afford more for science. He's an honest man, and I am sure he believed it. But there are right-wing governments in most industrialized countries, and they are affording it.' President Reagan had doubled the budget for the National Science Foundation shortly before SERC halted British research. Commenting on President Reagan's move, the American magazine
Science
said: ‘The nation's science and engineering enterprise must have the financial resources to do two things: remain at the leading edge of discoveries and produce the technical personnel that the country needs. Both are essential to our economic competitiveness and must be done even in times of fiscal stringency … where we have a clear lead, we must preserve it; where we are lagging, we must catch up.'

Egged on by campus journals, American universities and research institutes that had once restricted their raids on British academics to second-tier people, were, by the spring of 1987, going for the very best. One head-hunter from California's Silicon Valley said that he had once enjoyed rounding up British computer scientists, but he had become frightened by his success and that of others. ‘When I recruit in Britain, I am worried I am consuming the seed corn.' More than ten professorial chairs in computer science at British universities were already vacant, and Oxford, having failed to find a suitable candidate for its chair, had readvertised. Traditional, conservative Oxford's refusal to give Mrs Thatcher an honorary doctorate should, said Professor Noble, have posted the danger signals to the government.

The despair felt by young scientists was captured in a letter to Professor Noble from a young woman who had just obtained her PhD. She had an impressive academic track record, and several publications, but was being forced to work as an ‘academic visitor' without pay. ‘I accept the lack of pay and proper position because I passionately believe in what I am doing, and am holding on to a lifelong dream – although I realize I could become a tax inspector and earn £9,000 p.a. (as often advertised in the
New Scientist!
).' She had been, when she wrote the letter, shortlisted for a job in North Carolina. Such was her frustration that she added: ‘I feel I would be foolish to turn the job down if offered it – even if accepting it would mean leaving my husband, family, friends and the England I love.' (She also commented that she felt discriminated against in Britain because she was a woman and married – ‘every application I have completed here asks for my marital status whereas
none
of those for the US and Canada even ask!') The sheaf of letters sent to SBSS included dozens of examples of wasted opportunities at the highest levels. A Cambridge scientist had arrived home from an international symposium in Japan where she had been the key speaker, to find a grant rejection from SERC in the post. She wrote: ‘An area of basic and applied research, where Britain has been pre-eminent and indeed where we are also very successful commercially, is being allowed to collapse in a disorganized, unplanned way. Should I continue to seek funds in this area? Is the expenditure of time and effort worth it? I am seized by a great weariness.'

An area of science in which Britain has a lead at least in Europe is ‘artificial intelligence', the programming of computers for uses beyond sophisticated number-crunching to simulate higher mental processes, like reasoning, problem-solving and understanding language. The acknowledged academic centre for this endeavour is Edinburgh University, and one of its bright stars was Peter Jackson who headed the ‘Experts' Systems Group', which is developing computer programs that can tackle real problems, using the kind of knowledge that a doctor or geologist, for example, calls on when making decisions. It is very much ‘new frontier' stuff.

Dr Jackson had had, in his own word, a ‘chequered' career, starting, but not completing, an English degree, working in London as a social worker, taking a first-class degree in psychology, moving to computers and artificial intelligence in his late twenties. In the spring of 1987 he was plotting his departure to the United States. It was hard to find brain-drainers in the act of stealing away who were prepared to talk, and even Dr Jackson was anxious about the reaction of colleagues and superiors when the news leaked out. The crucial elements of his story, I suspect, would have applied to the hundreds of our brightest and best motivated research scientists who were then exploring American possibilities.

The day before we met, news was released that one of Britain's academic stars, Professor Colin Blakemore, Oxford University's youngest ever professor of physiology and a former Reith Lecturer, was in Los Angeles exploring openings for himself and his entire twenty-strong team. ‘I don't want to leave England, but I might have to,' he said.

Dr Jackson had reached the point at which he wanted to go, come what may. He was thirty-eight, and the battle to get where he was had been intense. At a time when his contemporaries were already well-launched on their careers, he had been struggling through his PhD on £2,500 a year at a university where he had almost no intellectual support, teaching himself advanced computer languages – including LISP, the language of artificial intelligence – and competing for use of the department's one computer with large numbers of undergraduates. ‘If I had not been highly motivated, I would have quit after a year,' he said. His marriage did collapse. He had been qualified a year, when, in 1983, the ‘New Blood' lectureship scheme was launched to create more posts in Information Technology. He applied and got his Edinburgh job, and at the same time the government ‘Alvey' initiative, designed to forge a partnership between industry and university research, pumped a great deal more money into research and development. Through ‘Alvey' he was instrumental in raising £3,500,000 for his project, and created five new posts. After the years of sacrifice, extreme hard work and achievement, he was paid under £15,000 a year.

By 1987 Dr Jackson was faced with the break-up of his group: much of his energy was exhausted on ‘loony people in industry' – his Alvey partners – who often had no technical background, were ‘parasitic on our intellectual contribution' but still wanted equal rights and say. The result, he felt, given the university's narrow skill base and slender resources, had been wastefully overambitious projects. Alvey funds, he suggested, could have been better spent on training fresh people in the basic skills of artificial intelligence. The time and energy he had to put into raising money and administering his team left him with insufficient to pursue satisfactorily his own research into ‘introspective systems capable of reasoning about their own knowledge and belief'. His workload also cut deeply into his private life. Financially, he survived only by outside work, including writing a book,
An Introduction to Expert Systems
, published in both Britain and the United States, for which he had just received a royalties cheque for four thousand pounds – ‘it went just like that,' he said, clicking his fingers, ‘on debts, credit card bills and overdrafts.'

His prospects in Britain were poor: in due course promotion to ‘senior' lecturer, worth another three or four thousand pounds a year. ‘My salary is a joke and an insult. I feel very personal about it. I've given up years of income, and want something back. There's a feeling around that we're in this business for our health. I have not had the personal fulfilment, nor the financial rewards, so why am I doing this at all other than the fact that it is a job and is keeping me alive?' In the United States, where he had gone for six or eight weeks every year to keep in touch, he was expecting between $50,000 and $100,000 a year.

‘What about British industry?' I asked. Dr Jackson laughed sourly. After his Alvey experience he told his head of department that he would not work with British industry again. Even collaborating, he had had ‘terrific rows'. He said: ‘The idea of working for them would be just a joke. I wouldn't last five minutes. The managers are yes men and office boys.' He was particularly scathing about the big companies, which he described as ‘deadheads'. At Edinburgh University his head of department had nothing he could tempt him with to stay. A professor at another university offered to put together a tailor-made ‘package' for him, but no British university could match what was on offer in America.

Professor Noble had fed me one of those nuggets of information that are sufficiently startling to stick in the mind, popping out occasionally when one is thinking of something altogether different. It was that Bulgaria, alone in Europe, had a lower proportion of graduates entering first jobs than Britain had. One of the most overworked British clichés is ‘our well-educated workforce'. It is a consoling phrase, but it is sadly untrue and part of the myth with which we cocoon ourselves. The elitist nature of British education, the early specialization, the poor quality of many of our teachers, our historic hang-ups about the potential of the broad mass of children, the low targets we set children, all conspire against producing sufficient trained workers for the needs of a high-tech society.

Howard Thompson of the British Council was the British ‘education attaché' in Washington DC in the early eighties, and has worked closely with the World Bank. According to him, a World Bank mission arriving to sort out Britain's economy would find the prescription very easy – ‘a massive expansion of post-secondary school education.' No country, he argued, can have a thriving economy without educating a critical mass of its people to a decent level. In the United States, where 87 per cent of children stay in school until they are eighteen, where 40 per cent go to college, companies spend more on internal training than Federal, state and local governments together spend on public education. Although a few days after I met Mr Thompson, the government announced plans to create a further fifty thousand higher education places, Britain still loses out both ways: our educational system rejects 80 per cent as unfit for further formal learning after sixteen, while industry spends derisory sums on training. The Manpower Services Commission attempts to fill the gap, but the number of worthwhile YTS schemes can only touch on the problem. When my family came back from Washington, I met a primary school head teacher in a middle-class district of London, who appeared to assume that it was unusual for a child to stay in full-time education after the age of sixteen: in the States in a similar area the child who is not expecting to go to college would be the exception.