Old Bostonian Association Annual Dinner 2008

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The event

The 2008 Annual Dinner of the Old Bostonian Association was held at the Boston & County Club[1] on 15 March. The school was represented by Helen McEvoy and the guest of honour, giving the main speech and proposing the toast to The School was Geoff Brooks, who had previously worked for BT.

Cherry Cawthorne, younger daughter of Stan Cawthorne, was present as a guest of the President.

Speech

by Geoff Brooks

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen;

Liberal Councillor

You have mentioned my service as a Liberal Councillor in Boston. At that time the Liberals had built up a strong party on the Council under the leadership of Cyril Valentine, twice Mayor of Boston[2] and Parliamentary Candidate. Cyril and his wife Emmy were tireless workers and they led by example. I became Chairman of the local Liberal Party and in 1959 I was the Election Agent when Val stood as Liberal Candidate for the Holland with Boston Constituency. We worked like demons for weeks and were rewarded by an increase in the Liberal share of the vote. We were placed. We came third!

However, in 1960 Val proposed that I should take his place and be formally adopted as the Prospective Liberal Candidate for future Parliamentary Elections. To me this had the ring of a Wagnerian Sentence of Doom - like The Flying Dutchman. Doomed to fight election after election as a Liberal Candidate in a Tory Stronghold. Condemned to an everlasting triumph of hope over experience. Fortunately, I was redeemed.

I was a telephone engineer and towards the end of 1960 was promoted to the Post Office Engineering Department in London - a normal career move. I could not have predicted the stimulating and varied career which followed when, six months later, I was specially selected for the Inland Telecoms Department - the ITD. This was the Telecoms Business Executive of the Post Office. It operated much as the Head Office would in any large national business. There was however a restraint on our freedom of action. We were a Government Department answerable to the Minister - the Postmaster General. We ran and developed the telecoms networks, but we also had to keep the Minister sweet and avoid any political embarrassments.

Exciting all the time

One thing that really impressed me at the time was the sheer scale of the enterprise. The Post Office as a whole employed nearly half a million people and the Telecom side had a bit under half of those. If we launched something at Headquarters it could affect every town and village in the country as it rolled out. Take STD i.e. Subscriber Trunk Dialling - which replaced making long distance phone calls through the Operator, or keypad telephones that replaced dial phones. This was a very exciting place to be. It remained exciting all the time I was there and I guess it still is exciting because technology is changing even more rapidly now. I'll try to give you a flavour of the kind of things I was lucky enough to get involved in early in my management career. Things were equally exciting later, but more complex and they don't make such good stories.

Growth of the telephone system

In late 1961, I was assigned to work with Leslie Harris, an Economist who had been given the task of forecasting the twenty year growth of the telephone system. I was sent to Birmingham University to do a course on Forecasting Techniques and Market Research. I also went on day release to learn Statistical Mathematics.

We worked for about a year looking into socio-economic factors like Government Plans for growth of housing, slum clearance, household formation, government targets for Gross Domestic Product, Personal Disposable Income, and so on. Eventually, we produced our twenty year forecast and we had to sell it to the top brass. We forecast a growth rate that was two and a half times faster than the existing forecast - which itself was a lot faster than what had been achieved so far! It was a hard sell! But we persuaded them.

Other people had to work out the extra investment in equipment, buildings and so on that would be needed to meet this growth. A large part this extra money had to be spent up front - before the system could grow. The top brass persuaded the Postmaster General, then the Treasury and the Cabinet. Our forecasts and the investment required were accepted and a White Paper was issued to promulgate this bold new Government policy. It was no longer a forecast - it was a costed and funded plan that had to be achieved. It seems quaint to us nowadays, but Government Departments were expected to deliver their plans in those days.

Just blokes

When Leslie and I saw the White Paper, we got cold feet. The huge sums it promised to spend were all based on our growth forecasts. Could we have got it wrong? We were nervous. I rang the University and told the Senior Lecturer that we would like him to go over our methods and tell us what he thought. We took our files to Birmingham and handed a copy of the White Paper to each of the two experts. They read it in silence, then the senior one said to the other "This goes to show what I've always believed but never been able to test. That all these great national decisions are made by ...Blokes - Just Blokes!".

It puts it all in perspective. Large Companies make bold decisions - but those decisions are not plucked out of the air by the Managing Director - they stem from work done by Blokes - and Blokesses - people like you and me.

A Brahmin now

Some time later I was promoted to Leslie's job when he moved on. In Summer 1964 I was recommended to enter a Civil Service wide Competition for appointment to the grade of Principal. Principals were the key grade in the higher echelon of Civil Servants and they usually headed up a Division. At that time they were mostly Oxbridge Graduates, supplemented by a few people selected from Government Departments by a Competition held every few years. Each Competition started with a day of written examinations. Those who got through that had to attend two days of intensive exercises and interviews based on simulated real life situations. Those who got through that had to attend an interview with the Commissioners for the Civil Service. If you got through that you could be given a Principal Post in any Government Department. I got through and was immediately appointed to the Inland Telecoms Department. I found myself Head of the Division charged with the task of managing the exchange equipment program that was fundamental to turning the White Paper into reality.

This caused some amusement among the senior people. I had been such an evangelist on selling the Growth forecast that it seemed poetic justice that I should now have the job of making it happen. Just before lunch on that first day one of the older Principals came to my room and invited me to join him and other senior colleagues for lunch. "You are one of the Brahmins now" he said.

Perhaps more significantly, it brought me a measure of fame - or notoriety. Four years after I had been working as a hands–on engineer in Boston, with my own little green van, I was a Principal at Headquarters. The Post Office's Director of Establishments called it "a romance".

But it turned out to be useful a week later when the Postmaster General - Wedgewood Benn - invited the senior Telecoms staff to his Christmas reception. The Deputy Post Master General - Joe somebody - was an ex–miner and trade Union Leader. He had been briefed and he made a beeline for me, because I too had recently been an active Trade Unionist. He was greatly relieved not to have to make conversation with too many of my more upmarket colleagues

My experiences over the last three months of 1964 seemed surreal. I could scarcely believe what had happened to me: but I really enjoyed the Christmas holiday that year!

Implementing the white paper

Come the New Year and there was this little matter of implementing the White Paper. That was my job. It could not happen without first enlarging the telephone exchanges and that had to be done quickly. That required a massive increase in production by the manufacturers. Of course they wanted the extra business - but there was a snag. The Post Office used a form of electro–mechanical switching equipment that dated in concept from before the 1920s. Indeed, the first Patent had been taken out in the 1890s. It was called Strowger, after its inventor. It had been modernised and re-engineered over the years, but its basic step by step design was still there.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world had adopted a more modern electro–mechanical system known as Crossbar. The Manufacturing Industry needed to export. All of British industry needed to export. But the overseas market for Strowger was dying fast.

After much deliberation, the manufacturers offered to maximise Strowger production by extending existing production lines to their limit. If we needed more than that limit - which we did - then that would have to be in Crossbar – Seems fair enough?

But here was another snag. The Post Office had a declared policy of changing straight over to Electronic Equipment as soon as possible. Much development work had been done on Electronic equipment, both in Industry and in our own Research Department. We were only a few years away from achieving our goal. To introduce an intermediate system now could undermine the much desired move to electronics.

The top Brass were poles apart on this. The Engineer in Chief would not compromise one bit - no crossbar!. We wait and go straight to electronics. The Accountant–General (lovely Victorian title) disagreed. He wanted the revenue from the earliest possible expansion of the Network. Other Board Members took sides. It was Deadlock.

Weighing up the options

I could not get on with organising a massive increase in the equipment program for the 2,000 plus large telephone exchanges in the UK, until this matter was resolved. I was the Secretary on the High Level meetings within the Post Office and with the Industry: and I knew all the arguments inside-out. The Director of all Inland Telecommunications Services was William Ryland - later Sir William. He called me to his office and asked me to draft him a paper that came to a conclusion - one way or the other - that he could put to the Postmaster General and the Main Board.

I had lived and slept with this issue for weeks. I understood the technical arguments on both sides - which counterbalanced each other. I went back to my room and immediately dictated a paper covering all the issues and coming to the conclusion that we should take a specific amount of Crossbar so that we could fulfil the aims of the White Paper. The White Paper was Government Policy. Government policy had to be paramount. I handed the paper to Ryland's Secretary and shortly afterwards heard that he was delighted with it. It was put to the Board, chaired by the Minister, and accepted. Another Bloke Job it seems!

As it happened, Crossbar proved to be very adaptable and useful in a trunk switching role in the network and we made good use of it.

One of the new Crossbar exchanges came to Boston - in Main Ridge. Our own Maurice Goodwin had the considerable task of planning and managing its successful installation.

Data transmission

My next four or five years involved several high profile jobs and I got experience on many aspects of the Business. They told me it was Management Development!

One of my responsibilities during this period was to push ahead with Data Transmission over telephone lines. Now this idea was actually shocking to some of the older people at HQ. One day I was stopped in the corridor by one CR Smith, who was the Head of Computing and Organisation and Methods - a Postal man by experience. In those days a computer would fill a drill hall and have only a fraction of the power of a modern PC. He said "I've been wanting to have a word with you laddie. I want to tell you that you're wasting your time. So long as we have got the most efficient Postal Service in the World, transmission of data over phone lines will never be more than a gimmick". What would he think today with Internet, downloading music, mobile phones, texting, banking on line, payment by cards and so on? These are all developments following on from those early days of Data Transmission over phone lines.

Auditors

After 5 years I was sent to the Henley Management College on a course for Senior Management. On return, I was appointed to Deputy Director level at Headquarters. By this time, electronic exchanges were becoming available and I was soon immersed in the massive plan to convert the whole UK exchange system to electronics. We were by now a Nationalised Industry, with Board members brought in from outside. It wasn't just a case of demonstrating better service and reliability. We had to produce a full cost–benefit analysis covering the system as a whole and a positive Return on Capital – which I think was 8%. Several Departments were involved.

Everything in the cost benefit analysis was probed by the Board's Auditor before the matter could be put formally to the Board. We had to justify our figures and estimates. The Auditor told us a story to illustrate his attitude towards examining our supporting evidence. He said "An engineer and an Auditor were travelling to do an operational and financial audit of a company. They stopped at a country pub for lunch. Looking out at the fields, the engineer said 'I see that the farmer has been shearing his sheep'. The Auditor said 'I see that he has on this side'".

It was a long day, but we got it through and there have been further waves of modernisation to digital exchanges since then.

Later career

I spent the last eleven years of my career as the Director of various Operational Departments. The largest physically was the North–East Telecoms Region. It stretched from the Scottish Border to just north of The Wash and ran along the Pennines on its western boundary. It had 18,000 staff, seven Telephone Areas, each with its own General Manager, and a turnover approaching ¾ Billion pounds in the early 80s. It was a wonderful job. The region covered the heavy industry of Tyne / Tees, West Riding and Sheffield steel and some of the most beautiful countryside and coastland in Britain. I became a member of the Regional Council of the CBI and of the Nationalised Industries Chairmen's Group[3]. It was a very good life!

The smallest physically were as Director of Strategic Studies on special projects, with a just a handful of chosen staff. These were the most intellectually challenging. They were projects set up to decide how to be ready for some of the new situations coming along in the medium and long term. These involved legislative, technological and social changes here and overseas - including the rapid rise of the Asian Tiger economies.

The hardest Director task I had was developing a new business of my own making. Using the spirit of enterprise we had after Maggie Thatcher's Privatisation I created a separate Profit Centre within the North East Region. This was to capitalise on the increasing convergence between telecoms and computer technology. We built up a core of specialist staff, and we began to get known within BT and outside. The Business traded as Milepost Business Systems[4].

But to make an impact we needed to operate on a much larger scale than as a side-line in the Region. In 1985 the Board agreed that we should establish such a business as a main BT Enterprise and not surprisingly I was offered the job of running it. We aimed it at large Companies who would benefit by becoming dependent on highly reliable networked IT systems to run their business. We were not alone: what is now called "The Digital Economy" was getting under way and we had both national and international competitors.

This is an exacting business to be in! Large scale bespoke software design is a high risk process in itself - think of all the publicised delays to large Government and other projects! Moreover, most business of this kind is won on competitive tender, with penalty clauses for failure to deliver on time. This is not a place for wimps! Mostly these integrated systems form part of the operations of large Companies or Government departments and the public don’t see them. One of our systems that they did see - and still do see and use - is one launched a quarter of a century ago: the LINK system - the hole in the wall and banking transaction system that is everywhere. I guess that the software and network has been updated many times - but it is so reliable that it is taken for granted!

Reflecting on The School

I am proud to have been a product of the Grammar School system. Like many another Old Boy, I have good reason to be profoundly grateful to Boston Grammar School, which I attended in Wartime. I have been grateful for many things we tend to forget.

The attention given to writing Precis is a case in point. The ability to boil down a lot of verbiage into salient points is invaluable.

Thinking Logically is another. Joe Gledhill - our Latin Master - used to say: "More than any other subjects, Geometry and Latin teach you to think logically." Geometry also requires rigorous demonstration. I regret that Logic and Demonstration are not often evident nowadays in Politics and Public Departments. Assertion rules, it seems.

One of my fondest memories is of our Headmaster, Dot Morris. He was wounded in WW1 and still limped from it. He taught RI, but from time to time he would pause, look sternly ahead, and say "Germany must be crushed. Germany must be crushed". Then continue the lesson.

What with that, the Air Training Corps, some great Master–Officers in the ATC, overall teaching quality, and good sporting activities, school morale remained high throughout the War and pupils benefited.

The School has seen many changes over several centuries. Amazingly, it has retained its integrity as a Grammar School despite many pressures. In an age when people have become comfortable with mediocrity in so many fields we urgently need to continue the search for excellence that is the mark of a good school. Our Society and our Economy need that standard. This evening, I have enjoyed a stimulating conversation with Helen McEvoy, the Head teacher, and she has given me confidence that the school will pursue that search.

Mr President; Ladies and Gentlemen. Please rise and join me in The Toast to our school.

Boston Grammar School. Long may it flourish.

References

  1. ↑ Boston & County Club - Official website
  2. ↑ Mayors of Boston, Lincolnshire - Geni
  3. ↑ Nationalised Industries Chairman's Group Miscellaneous Minutes Formation: Headquarters - The National Archives
  4. ↑ Computer Weekly Supplement, 1983 - "Last week a British Telecom region joined the commercial systems houses with the launch by North-east region of Milepost Business Systems"

See Also

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