Sir Peter: vice-chancellor of Cambridge University

We present two newspaper articles. The first article was written when Peter Swinnerton-Dyer was about to be installed as vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge in 1979. The second was written two years later immediately after Swinnerton-Dyer had given his retiring speech as vice-chancellor.

1. Sir Peter: man for the 1980s

Cambridge Evening News (Thursday 27 September 1979), 21.

Early on Monday in a quaint Latin ceremony begun on the chimes of Great St Mary's Church clock, Cambridge University will change its vice-chancellor.

Professor Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, college head, mathematician, industrialist and sportsman, will don the crimson and ermine robe of office, accept the keys of Cambridge University, and lead academics into the 1980s. For the next two years, Sir Peter will occupy Cambridge University's "hot seat." He will be next in the hierarchy to Prince Philip but first in the firing line in the day-to-day running of one of the world's most prestigious universities. And when he is not at home dealing with the complex problems of administration, Sir Peter will be elsewhere in Britain or travelling abroad to represent Cambridge and the interests of its dons and students. What sort of man is the bachelor Master of St Catharine's College, and what does he foresee for Cambridge University in the coming two years? Our University Correspondent, Michael Deaves, spoke to Sir Peter in St Catharine's Master's Lodge.

Sir Peter: man for the 1980s.

The 16th Baronet of a line established in the days of King Charles II, took a long hard look towards the new year and declared: "It's going to be one hell of a winter."

For Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer - family motto "Unwilling to frighten, unacquainted with fear" - is the man chosen to lead Cambridge University into what could be one of the most difficult periods of its recent history.

Passionately loyal to Cambridge and college - what other vice-chancellor would contemplate representing his college at sport - and with an intimate knowledge of Cambridge University politics for a decade or more, Sir Peter's qualifications for the task are formidable.

Indeed, his qualities in this respect were recognised long years ago - some say in the days when he was a young maths don at Trinity - and from then on his progress along the Old Schools' corridors of power was assured.

Certainly he will bring to the job a wealth of knowledge and experience - and undoubtedly expertise - which many of his contemporaries would find hard to match. Sir Peter has come up through the academic and college ranks, served in college, faculty and university government, known and come to grips with the hard facts of industry and agriculture through family connections, and been an accomplished sporting and social figure in the university for years.

Let no undergraduate think that the new head of Cambridge University is unaware of the problems of graduate employment in the 1980s. And no employee, academic or otherwise, should assume that the boss is ignorant of all the intricacies of trade union wage bargaining, even though he is perhaps more at home in the world of higher mathematics.

Sir Peter is a man with an almost daunting zest for life which has led him into involvement - and accomplishment - in many diverse spheres.

Student squash and tennis enthusiasts at St Catharine's might be forgiven for thinking that their Master's two-year stint at the top will leave them less competition for places in college teams. Not so. Sir Peter intends to play harder to retain his place and pre-eminence.

"I cannot but do otherwise if I am to remain at all fit. I simply must play and train harder to compensate for all the dinners I am going to be required to attend and to give over the next two years," he explained.

To him, the job of vice-chancellor with its endless round of presiding over committees and receiving representations as well as hosting official and other visitors, will be something akin to a professional chairmanship and in particular to a professional "listener." But Sir Peter who in the past has been noted for his forthright and outspoken views, admits he will find the chairman's traditional neutrality somewhat difficult to cultivate.

The most serious and pressing problem facing Cambridge University, like all other British universities, is indisputably that of cash. Higher academia is having to take its share of cuts while at the same time coming to terms with the ending of the system under which universities were able to plan their financial commitments over a five-year period.

Cambridge's wealth coupled with prudent financial management has enabled the university to escape the worst effects of sudden changes in the economic climate. Nevertheless the situation which precludes the university from planning ahead and forces it to enter the new academic year with a £ half million deficit has angered Sir Peter.

"In the academic world any new development needs about five years to come to fruition. Unless you can plan for up to five years ahead you are virtually saying 'no new development.'

"What worries me as I look ahead is the complete measure of uncertainty: the reasonable certainty, there will be less money, though we don't know how much, and the strong suggestion that there may be fewer students, though I am sceptical about that.

"Then there is an enormous degree of uncertainty over wage claims. Whereas the previous government was inclined to compensate for somewhat inflationary wage settlements, there is no indication that the present government will follow suit. God knows what wage claims we are in for."

Sir Peter cited university teaching officers' pay with the employers' commitment to a five per cent increase at one end of the scale and a 35 per cent sought at the other end.

"How is it possible to make any forecast of income and expenditure? The whole situation becomes guesswork and it is not very quickly going to get better," he said.

Cambridge University which in recent years had been circumspect about filling staff vacancies as a means of reducing expenditure, had now decided not to consider refilling anymore posts until after the Lent Term. It was impossible, he said, to forecast at this stage how the University Grants Committee would be making its allocations. While it might well be possible to run universities on less money, it was a very difficult process indeed for them to get down to the lower level of expenditure.

Recent developments on the economic front have left Sir Peter sceptical about Cambridge University's part in wage bargaining. Cambridge might enact the "ceremonies" of voting in wage rates but they were invariably determined elsewhere, he has been quoted as saying, and because of its special nature, Cam-bridge has no part in the national universities' pay bargaining machinery.

But all that should be changed, according to Sir Peter "Given that it is going to be a national business from now on, then I would prefer us to be involved in it. After all, I think it is quite likely that we would have something important to say, even more than some other universities," he commented.

"It's going to be a difficult time for all universities and I think there's no doubt that it's going to be one hell of a winter," he added.

On the domestic front, Sir Peter comes to the vice-chancellorship with student approval. He has long enjoyed a measure of popularity within the undergraduate community where he is somewhat affectionately nicknamed "Spinnerton-Dryer." Inevitably, that popularity will be under strain over the next two years.

2. Dons warned: "You may have to take cuts in salaries"

Cambridge Evening News (Thursday 1 October 1981), 9.

Cambridge University needs to shed between 70 and 80 academic posts in order to balance its books in the future, the retiring Vice-Chancellor, Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer, said today.

In his farewell speech he warned dons that they may have to take a pay cut if the university cannot make savings quickly enough.

Jobs and salaries were not yet an issue, said Sir Peter.

But the university would not remain solvent unless substantial numbers of older dons took up the proposed early retirement scheme.

Sir Peter, the Master of St Catharine's College, was speaking in the Senate House shortly before handing over the Vice-Chancellorship to Prof Harry Hinsley, Master of St John's, for the next two years.

He took the opportunity to reflect on Cambridge's "untypical" position within a university system facing an overall reduction of 15 per cent over the next three years as a result of Government spending cuts.

The figure of 70 to 80 posts was the first official indication of by how much teaching and research would have to shrink at Cambridge.

Sir Peter said it would be difficult to dismiss academic staff, as many other universities will have to do, when dons have tenure for life.

But he warned that pay cuts could be easier to impose because Cambridge was not bound by the national negotiating structure for dons' salaries.

"What we are facing is not just a squall that will soon die away, and to come through the storm we need to lighten the ship," he said.

In particular, he said, the university needed to start implementing cuts as soon as possible, and not wait until it was evident to all that the situation was desperate.

He said the university should reconcile itself to giving up subjects which could not attract students, and accepting new conditions of employment for dons.

Older dons should be prepared to take part-time jobs rather than draw a full day's pay for only half a day's work, he said.

Shortage of money has 'hit research'.

The easy way out has been taken by the university in the past, when faced with fewer resources, Sir Peter said.

In what amounted to a criticism of both his predecessors as Vice-Chancellor and of the university administration, he said the balance has shifted away from research.

Money has been spent on teaching instead because politically it was the easiest path to follow, he said.

"I believe that we have been wrong even to go so far as we have, and I am convinced that we must not go further," he said.

"We have a duty to maintain the quality, even if not the range, of our teaching. But it is the excellence of our research that makes Cambridge one of the great universities of the world."

He said the government had made it clear that teaching was to bear the brunt of cuts made now, which was why the income of the research councils had been left almost unchanged.

Campus rebels of 1960s partly blamed for crisis.

The university disturbances of the 1960s must take their share of the blame for the crisis now facing higher education, said Sir Peter.

He said they had led to a loss of public confidence in both students and dons.

As a result of that and other factors, he believed it was unlikely the cuts being made now would be restored in the future.

"The much-publicised troubles at the end of the 1960s led ordinary people to doubt whether all those who were getting a university education deserved it or gained from it," he said.

"And the support which all too many academics gave to rioting and disruption undermined the respect which universities had previously enjoyed."

Sir Peter laid the blame on the Robbins Report, which he said was taken to mean that every 18-year-old with two A-levels who wished to go to university should be able to do so.

But dons themselves had aggravated the problem by refusing to accept economies put forward later in an attempt to cut the cost of this expansion.

"It has left the widespread view, both in Westminster and in Whitehall, that the university system is not to be moved by reasoned argument, and that British universities are as wastefully organised and as feather-bedded as British Rail or British Steel," he said.

He said a university system designed to educate the top 15 per cent of school-leavers was now being used by the top 50 per cent and the emphasis was oriented more towards the needs of employment.

Last Updated December 2025