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Has any generation been blessed more abundantly, before or since, than the British baby boomers of the immediate post-war era? The advent of the Welfare State: the NHS; Council Housing; Secondary Education for All; Full Employment, hence a plethora of job prospects; University expansion, with County Major Awards and State Scholarships to fund Tuition Fees and Accommodation.
That’s how it seemed for six of these fortunate products, undergraduates registered at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies, as we submitted our Boarding Passes on the gangway of the Apapa, a vessel of 11,600 tonnage, 479 feet in length, prior to embarking, ex- Liverpool, on a life changing experience, the likes of which our parents could have but dreamed. Thus it was, on March 26th 1965 we made due passage, majestically, out of the environs of the Docks to the accompaniment of the receding strains of ‘All you need is Love’ blasting ashore at the height of Beatlemania as the iconic profile of the domed cathedral-like Port Building receded obstinately from view: each one of us, the products of Middle England, bound for three West African Universities: respectively, Andrew Crozier and Frank Curry scheduled for Ghana at Legon, David Hedges and Ian Piper destined for Ife, and with Tony McWilliams and myself next door at Ibadan in Western Nigeria, courtesy of Elder Dempster Lines, and financially facilitated by virtue of the initiative of Professor Roland Oliver. Tony, with whom I was to share this joint venture over the next few months, was a person for whom I had (fortunately) high regard. Of a Christian background like me, a former candidate for the Priesthood, Tony was slight of build, fair-haired and of fair complexion, widely read with a philosophical outlook on life. Inoffensive, quietly spoken, and above all tolerant (mercifully), our companionship would stand the test of time. We could only hope that the intellectual Frank and the academic Andrew; that the dilettante Ian and the serious minded David were to be blessed likewise with mutually good fortune. Such were our pairings. We’ve all remained friends and kept up with each other ever since; can’t have been bad.
Our application, eighteen months previously, to read History with Special Reference to Africa, at SOAS, had certainly raised a few eyebrows at school from our respective VIth Form UCAS (or UCCA as it was then called) advisers: at the state Grammar Schools in Hastings and Bexhill for example; or in Tony’s case from the Monastic Superiors on his decision to retreat from contemplative seminarianism. From the utilitarian vantage point, how would a such an obscure degree at the end of such academic pursuit enhance our future prospects in the context of an increasingly Eurocentric national perspective, as the retreat from our global Empire gathered pace?
Professor Oliver had spearheaded the African History Dept at SOAS in 1960, along with his then dedicated and idealistic colleagues of like vision, D.H. Jones and J.D. Fage; a pioneering trio whose enterprise went such a long way to enhance the study and research in African History across academia worldwide. Within five years, the Dept. had more than doubled its staff, with the accession of Richard Gray as Reader, Humphrey Fisher as our academic and pastoral tutor, Shula Marks, Anthony Atmore and distinguished visiting staff such as A. Adu Boahen.
So be it, having enrolled and embraced this novel course, now into our second year and setting off for the experience at first hand. Part of the exchange student package that the course entailed and which Professor Oliver initiated, here was to be for us a term’s study at a University in West Africa, plus six weeks or so at the end of it to travel, testing our wits, and interacting at first-hand with the very people who were the focus of our academic pursuit; all of this, a generation prior to the now accepted formality of the likes of the European Erasmus Scheme for example. For its time, such prescience; so life-affirming.