Love and class struggles

It was 25 years ago, in September 1971, that I first landed in Britain to study for an MA degree. In the spirit of the upcoming 25th anniversary of The THES, I offer these personal reminiscences.

The narrative begins in 1970, when, as a "junior-year abroad" student at the National University of Mexico, I saw a poster announcing "Scholarships to London". Aa an American, I had no hope of British Council support (or, given my grades, a Rhodes Scholarship), but I was intrigued and, when I discovered that overseas student fees were a mere Pounds 250, even the cost of living in London seemed manageable. (Working full-time for much of my senior year at Rutgers, I saved a lot and borrowed the rest.) My "British" education started en route. Taking my seat on the "student charter", I heard a woman calling out the seat number next to mine. Speaking English, not American, she was, to my surprise, black. Having foolishly assumed that all Britons were white, that the only blacks I would meet would be West Indian or African immigrants, I realised I had a lot to learn.

First, I had to find somewhere to live. I stayed a week at London House (the Mecklenburgh Square hostel for Commonwealth and United States students). I found the resident Australians most welcoming and congenial, providing me with a second "ethnic" surprise. Hunting for a flat, I continually received advice to "stay away from Earl's Court, it's a rough area", which, as a New Yorker, I immediately figured had something to do with race. Just imagine my face when I mentioned this to my Aussie mates who, laughing hysterically, informed me that "the Poms" were actually warning me away from the likes of them!

I ended up in multicultural Bayswater. Never having eaten Indian food before, it soon became one of my favourite cuisines. Also new for me - all the more so because Rutgers had been an all-men's college - my roommate, a Canadian art student, was a woman. We became good friends, somewhat like brother and sister - which her parents did not believe until they stayed with us for a week. Our landlord, a Polish count with a beautiful wife, had served during the second world war as a pilot in the exiled Polish air force. The elderly English housekeeper was definitely batty. Sounds like the ingredients for a television comedy?

Pursuing the MA in area studies, my courses were at University College London, the Institute of Latin American Studies, and the LSE. I developed my own daily rituals. Going by tube to Gower Street, my commute included bidding "good morning" to the auto-iconic Jeremy Bentham; heading by double-decker to the Aldwych, I always stopped to play the penny one-armed bandits in Piccadilly Circus.

My fellow students were an impressive lot. Because of my undergraduate studies, and having lived twice in Latin America, I assumed I was better prepared. Again, I was the fool. I may have "known" more. But my British colleagues definitely thought more critically and argued more effectively. I wrote reports, they wrote essays. Fortunately, one of the younger lecturers was a very smart and kindly guy and, through a series of clever research assignments, he aimed me in a more critical direction. He was a Marxist and the questions he posed also instigated my thinking along those lines.

It took a while for me to realise that British academic behaviour was different from American. Contrary to what I expected, arguments were seemingly more pointed and personal. And yet, breaking for coffee at 11am and tea at 4pm, discussions and people mellowed. Evening lectures and gatherings at the institute afforded further engagements, but sherry and peanuts made them especially friendly occasions.

You can take the Yank out of the States, but you cannot keep him from being American. In my young, forward and democratic manner, I treated the Institute's quarters as my own, rather annoying the senior staff. I poked about and asked questions I should not have - you know the type. It served me well, however. Not long after meeting Lorna Stewart, the institute's new executive officer, I bluntly asked her if she had a boyfriend. She did - but I persisted and we have been married for 23 years now.

Britain changed my life in a variety of ways. Like so many of my generation, my politics were firmly radical-democratic. But in London, with its (then) vibrant left culture, I began to develop socialist sensibilities (not to mention that the planned blackouts of the 1972 miners' strike encouraged Lorna's and my romance and led me to better appreciate the intimate connection between love and the class struggle).

Lunch was regularly at the LSE, a local pub (bangers, beans, mash and a cider) or, with Lorna, at UCL (I loved the chips). Afterwards, I would spend an inordinate amount of time in the Economist Bookshop and/or Dillon's, browsing their shelves as if they were the "new arrivals" section of the library. I also bought too many books - particularly Penguins and Pelicans.

Writing my dissertation in July/August 1972, summer seemed even hotter than in New York. However, it turned out the reason I felt so warm was that I was suffering from glandular fever. Still, napping a lot in the institute's seminar room, I finished the project on time.

I did get to travel a bit. In addition to visiting Oxford and Cambridge, I went out to Salisbury and Stonehenge, down to Brighton, up to Birmingham, and over to Aberystwyth. Student fares enabled visits to Geneva, Paris, and Amsterdam. But I loved London the most, and fully subscribed to the proposition that "when you're tired of London, you're tired of life". I remember saying that whereas Paris may be a city for artists and intellectuals, London is a city for students and scholars.

From the collections and talks at the British Museum (I saw "King Tut"), the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the International Institute of Strategic Studies, to the showings at the ICA and more informal venues, London seemed one big campus. On Sundays, Lorna and I would cover the city on foot.

I desperately wanted to stay on for a PhD. But, already burdened with student loans, I was broke. I clearly recall searching the pages of the then-new THES, hoping to find a fellowship.

Returning to the States, I confess to taking a position on Wall Street with Lloyds Bank as its first American international-lending-officer trainee. By all accounts, my future looked bright. But not to me. I had political doubts about it; the daily grind inhibited intellectual activity; and I hated "suiting" up. When the opportunity arose of a doctoral fellowship at Louisiana State University, I grabbed it. Thus, I went from LSE to LSU.

We get back to Britain every couple of years. In fact, around 1980 I shifted from Latin American to British studies. And, of course, much else has changed in the past quarter century. Nevertheless, I continually recommend to my most capable students that they think about graduate study in Britain and, though overseas student fees have skyrocketed, I have persuaded several to do it. So far, like their mentor, not one has regretted it.

Harvey J. Kaye is professor of social change and development at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.