John Bridgen
Profile
John Bridgen, born in Essex in 1926, has lived through some challenging times. His mother – raised in an orphanage and destined for domestic service until liberated by the typewriter in 1915 – was a tough woman who made great sacrifices to put her three sons through grammar school; his father was a gentle, self-educated man who read poetry to the young John and discussed politics with him. Life was hard for the family in the inter-war years and it got harder after 1939, with father and elder brother in the army, and air-raids and food shortages to contend with.
After Royal Naval service from 1945 to 1947, much of it spent in Ceylon and Singapore, John became the first person in his family to go to university. At Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he read History under the guidance of the Senior Tutor, Edward Welbourne, whom John describes as ‘a marvellous man, an economic historian with his own very individual views on the world, ever ready to take on all comers with his recondite observations. I shall sing his praises as long as I live.’ Having taken History Part 1, John took English Part 2 and then trained as a teacher.
He married his first wife in 1949, immediately after graduating; the first of their four children was born in 1950. For three years he taught at a grammar school in Somerset, ‘but my wife abhorred domesticity. With recollections of the blue skies of the tropics, and knowing there would be domestic servants, I applied for a teaching post in Tanganyika [as Tanzania was called until independence in 1964]. I had an altruistic motive too, which was a desire to serve in African education.’ John taught in a school one hundred miles from the nearest town. Later he served as a Provincial Education Officer, with extensive responsibilities for the administration, inspection, and supply of schools over wide areas of vast ecological diversity. John was concerned to introduce the study of African history into the national curriculum, and this involved researching the subject before presenting it to his students at a teacher-training centre in Mpwapwa, Central Province. From 1963 to 1965 he and his wife lived in Dar es Salaam, where students in his evening classes included black Rhodesian freedom fighters, living in camps outside Dar and undergoing training to liberate their homeland. In 1965 his wife gave birth to their fourth child, but post-natal complications meant that they had to return to the UK. John says that Africa remains in his blood; he has been back for short periods several times, to Ghana, Tanzania, and South Africa, to assist in the training of history and geography teachers.
From Tanganyika John took a post at a college of education in Lancashire, preparing mature students for the teaching profession. In 1980 his first marriage came to an end. After a sabbatical year at Manchester University, ‘I was transmogrified into a lecturer in Social Policy. The department at the University of Central Lancashire was controlled by a group for whom Cambridge, the Colonial Service, literacy (equated with elitism), the male sex, and a southern accent together signified the cloven hoof. These were not entirely happy years. In 1989, when I was 63, I took early retirement.’
John played a significant part in the foundation of the Social Democratic Party in 1982/83 and became well acquainted with three of the leading ‘Gang of Four’: David Owen (‘not at all ill-tempered, contrary to his reputation, but shy and reserved by nature’), Bill Rodgers (‘an unassuming man, thoroughly genuine’), and Shirley Williams (‘working with her immunised me against susceptibility to any charismatic politician’). John and his second wife were active in organising the SDP in the north-west of England. It was all very exciting. He had a prominent role at the party’s ‘rolling conferences’ throughout the country and stood as a parliamentary candidate for Hyndburn. He retained his deposit, but the Falklands War had put paid to any chances he might have had. He was a member of a small group spearheading the SDP’s campaign for elections to the European Parliament. This involved frequent visits to committee rooms in the House of Commons; journeys to Brussels and Luxembourg to observe parliamentary and legal business; and visits to NATO HQ (‘where a senior American officer calmly told me over lunch that there was no threat from the Red Army, and that the rush to re-arm was all about breaking the Soviet economy’).
By the 1990s John and his wife were living in Oxford. The years 2000 and 2001 were a bad time for him: he had a triple-bypass heart operation, was diagnosed with bladder cancer, and underwent a second divorce. ‘In coming through it all, I knew I had much to be thankful for – but to whom, or to what? The Dominicans at Blackfriars gave me a greater insight into the Christian faith than ever before. I had loved the Anglo-Catholic rituals during my years as a choirboy, and in Tanganyika I had appreciated the high-church liturgies and hospitality of the Universities Mission to Central Africa, and the Bavarian and Italian Roman Catholic missions. But religious faiths do not come culture-free. I need to feel ‘at home’ in my worship.’
An interest in Islam led John to start attending Friday prayers organised by the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, and it was when we invited Dr Taj Hargey, Chair of MECO, to preach in our chapel in February 2007 that John first encountered Unitarianism. He says, ‘I was attracted by the welcoming atmosphere of the Chapel Society and subsequently by Unitarians’ encouragement of intellectual enquiry, their freedom from dogma, their insistence on the single godhead, and their ready commitment to social justice.’ He felt so at home that he soon applied for membership, and has attended services very regularly ever since. His multi-sourced beliefs prompted a friend to comment that John must be the one and only Catholic/Unitarian/Muslim.
John says that he feels indebted to Myles Hartley for his inspiring music, and to the chapel members who promote such a warm and friendly atmosphere. ‘We are blessed in having a high intellectual content in our services, spiritual stimulus for the coming week, and acculturation to the best of civilised values.’ Asked to find words to sum up his religious faith, he replies, ‘For me there is no rift between the knowledge derived from my five senses and my perception of the spiritual dimension of life. I am uncomfortable with the word ‘God’. The Abrahamic tradition often contains too much of the anthropomorphic. But I am the privileged beneficiary of a glorious heritage and therefore can do no better than offer two quotations:’
Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.
(Philippians ch. 4, v.8)
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour ...
(William Blake: ‘Auguries of Innocence’)
John is still active in public life, serving on the Patient and Public Involvement Panel of the Radcliffe Hospital Trust. He is in regular contact with his two sons, two daughters, and nine grandchildren (aged between 9 and 20). At the age of 82 himself, he retains the intellectual curiosity of his youth and says ‘I have been learning all my life, and when I stop learning it will be time for me to start pushing up daisies.’Catherine Robinson, August 2008