Chapter 5 A university in (or of) Wales? Vaisey’s folly and St David’s College, Lampeter

R. Gwynedd Parry

This chapter is an exercise in socio-legal history. Not because the author had deliberately set out to demonstrate a particular ideological commitment to the socio-legal method of interpreting the legal past. Rather, because the legal events under examination can only be understood by reference to their social, cultural and political context. It is the extra-legal which makes the legal comprehensible in this instance.

The reported Chancery Division judgment in St. David’s College, Lampeter v. Minister of Education [1951] 1 All E.R. 559, which provides the stimulus for this chapter, when read in isolation appears like judicial balderdash. That does not mean that it lacks historical value or significance. Subjected to the scrutiny of the socio-legal historian, it sheds light on the political milieu of its time, and acts as a window through which conflicts, biases and political machinations in a particular time and place can better be understood. There is hardly anything in it for those looking for legal theory or legal principles. The personalities will matter more than the ideas in this tale. Moreover, the tale with which we are concerned involves men and only men. That is indicative not only of a male-dominated legal culture but also of the male-dominated society of the 1950s. The players in this play are all chaps and the games they played were the games which chaps played in the sixth decade of the twentieth century. Towards the end of the chapter there will be some reflections on the significance of the events described for the present day. But, in short, the overarching objective is to demonstrate not only the value of the socio-legal approach to legal history but also that the socio-legal approach is often the only one which has intellectual validity. Let us now turn to our subject.

In February 1951, the Chancery Division of the High Court was presented with a question which had not hitherto troubled the courts of England and Wales: what is a university? The plaintiff was St David’s College, Lampeter, an institution founded in 1822 upon the initiative of the then bishop of St David’s, Thomas Burgess, and other benefactors. Its founding mission was to offer higher learning for men aspiring to take holy orders and minister within the Church of England, especially in Wales.¹ As the nineteenth century unfolded, the institution evolved and broadened its mission by developing a liberal curriculum across the humanities and sciences, including, at least intermittently, mathematics, physics and chemistry.² It acquired its own degree-awarding powers in 1852 (BD) and 1865 (BA).³ A supplemental charter of 1896 declared that admission to the college was also open to those who were not aspiring to church ministry, and that it was ‘to receive and educate any person whatsoever’.⁴ Such a person, however, needed to be a biological male.

If, by the turn of the twentieth century, it could justifiably claim to be more than a theological college, most of its students were, and remained until the outbreak of the second world war, aspiring clergy.⁵ This only cemented a common perception that it was a church institution in a country where most of the people were communicants with one of the nonconformist protestant denominations. For the nonconformists, Lampeter did not offer the sort of higher education to which they aspired. Therefore, the campaign to establish a university in Wales continued and gathered pace in the second half of the nineteenth century. Led by the newly enfranchised political representatives of the nonconformist, liberal and Welsh-speaking population, this university movement culminated in the establishment of university colleges at Aberystwyth (1872), Cardiff (1883) and Bangor (1884), and, most importantly, the federal University of Wales in 1893.⁶ These institutions were founded firmly on non-denominational lines, as had been the case with the University of London earlier in the century. They were also products of a growing sense of national identity in Wales, referred to as a ‘national rebirth’ by some historians, which was a driving force in the political discourse of Wales at the end of the nineteenth century.⁷ Although the rebirth did not culminate in national self-determination in the way that had occurred in parts of Europe or Ireland, it did beget some cultural expressions of national identity, including the university and its colleges, the National Library and the National Museum. By 1893, Wales had a national federal university, with three constituent colleges, which awarded undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in a broad range of subjects.

But what of St David’s College, Lampeter? Although there had been some discussion about its potential membership of the University of Wales during the 1890s, that did not come to pass. The timing was inauspicious. One of the raging political issues of the time was the disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales. Most within the Church were opposed to it, and most nonconformists were in favour. The Church galvanised support among the nobility and aristocracy in the House of Lords, who voted against disestablishment. The response to and outcome of this resistance to disestablishment was the constitutional reform of the House of Lords in the early twentieth century. We owe the Parliament Act of 1911, which removed the Lords’ veto on legislation, at least in part to the great saga of Welsh disestablishment (Lloyd George’s 1909 budget being the other catalyst).⁸ And disestablishment eventually won out with the Welsh Church Act of 1914, which entered into force in 1920.⁹

The prolonged saga of disestablishment permeated the landscape at the founding of the University of Wales and contributed to Lampeter’s exclusion from the federal university at its foundation. As a leading historian of the University of Wales remarked, ‘an unrelenting denominationalism was largely responsible for the failure to include Lampeter in the new University’.¹⁰ But there were also some more explicit factors at play. Lampeter was ‘a denominational college without a representative governing body, its principal and tutors were subjected to religious tests’.¹¹ Religious tests for students at Lampeter were abandoned in its supplementary Charter of 1896.¹² Yet Lampeter was seen as an English institution in the heart of Welsh-speaking Wales, and its ethos and institutional mentality were long perceived to be Anglicised and Anglican, and out of touch with Welsh sentiments.

Indeed, some suggested that it held a colonialist view towards Wales and its people. Rev. Canon Daniel Parry-Jones, who was a student at Lampeter in the period immediately before the First World War, described the institutional ethos in his memoir, Welsh Country Upbringing:

On my first day there I realised it was not a Welsh college at all, it was merely a college in Wales. Though built in honour of our patron saint, St. David, poor St. David had to be satisfied with that alone, for we were never told anything about him, or the Church to which he belonged. We read English history and English church history, but never Welsh history or Welsh church history … the college lacked sympathy with Welsh aspirations, and showed little understanding of the Welsh temperament … ¹³

Damning evidence indeed. But it is easy to over-simplify. Throughout its history, there had been individuals at Lampeter who promoted an approach that was more attuned with Welsh sentiments. Lorimer Thomas, who was professor of Welsh in the early decades of the twentieth century, was supportive of the Welsh student societies during those years leading up to the First World War.¹⁴ Indeed, there had been lecturers and professors of Welsh at the institution from the outset, with Rice Rees lecturer in Welsh in the 1820s, and the great lexicographer Daniel Silvan Evans lecturer in Welsh for a brief period in the 1840s.¹⁵ Maurice Jones, who was principal from 1923 to 1938, was a Welsh-speaking son of a Trawsfynydd shoemaker who had gained a first-class degree at Oxford before serving for many years as a chaplain in the army. A member of the Gorsedd of Bards with the bardic name Meurig Prysor, he served as treasurer of the Gorsedd from 1925 to 1938 and was a familiar presence at the National Eisteddfod.¹⁶ His Welsh credentials were not in any doubt. Indeed, some would argue that the institutional ethos towards the Welsh language and Welsh culture at Lampeter was no more hostile than in that of some of the constituent colleges of the University of Wales.¹⁷

At the turn of the twentieth century, Lampeter was to continue as an independent degree-awarding institution separated from the federal arrangements of the University of Wales. By the 1940s, Lampeter was in dire financial straits, with dwindling student numbers and no support from the public purse. An institution whose main practical function appeared to be that of training ordinands for church ministry was finding itself in an increasingly precarious position.¹⁸ Although disestablishment became a convenient explanation for many of the ills facing the Anglican Church in Wales after the First World War, the truth, again, was more complex. Church and chapel attendance was dwindling, driven by spiritual disillusionment in the aftermath of the war and increased secularisation. Indeed, even for dissenting Christianity in Wales, the battle for disestablishment was no more than a pyrrhic victory.¹⁹

As the 1940s unfolded, Lampeter’s leaders came to believe that a judicial pronouncement on its university status could act as leverage to force the University Grants Committee (UGC) to provide it with financial assistance. The UGC did not regard Lampeter as a university, and so did not offer it the financial support which other university institutions enjoyed. Moreover, Lampeter students were denied state scholarships that would otherwise support their studies. The Ministry of Education, the real seat of power on the issue, concurred with the UGC.

Lampeter’s principal from 1938 was Henry Kingsley Archdall, a cleric who had previously served as chaplain at Wellington College and fellow of Corpus Christi, Cambridge.²⁰ Like many of his predecessors and, indeed, successors, Archdall was not a Welshman, and often found it difficult to grasp the political milieu in which he sought to lead his fragile college. But he knew that to gain recognition as a university was crucial for financial stability and institutional survival. In the early 1940s, he had begun a campaign to persuade the UGC to recognise Lampeter as a university college and to provide it with the financial support enjoyed by other university institutions. It was to prove futile. Accordingly, from 1949 onwards, he began to build a legal case for recognising Lampeter as a university institution which qualified for state funding.²¹

The legal path was never going to be smooth. Towards the end of 1948, the college sought counsel’s opinion on its prospects of success. The opinion of Mr H.O. Danckwerts KC (later Sir Harold Danckwerts, Lord Justice of Appeal), dated 3 December 1948, advised the College that the UGC had behaved unfairly but that the legal path was less than straightforward, and suggested that political pressure on the UGC would be more likely to bear fruit.²² Notwithstanding Mr Danckwerts’s tentative advice, the college pressed ahead and instructed A.J. Husker as its solicitor, who then briefed Sir Andrew Clark KC, a leading advocate at the Chancery Bar, to make the case for recognising Lampeter as a university.²³ A writ was issued against the ministry and the UGC (but proceedings against the latter were soon discontinued).

The remaining respondent, the Ministry of Education, was represented by Denys Buckley, later Lord Justice of Appeal, who by his marriage to the daughter of the physician Sir Robert Armstrong-Jones had acquired Welsh connections (Buckley’s wife was a sister of Ronald Owen Lloyd Armstrong-Jones KC, and aunt to Anthony Armstrong-Jones, Earl of Snowdon, who married Princess Margaret in 1960).²⁴

A preliminary hearing was held before Mr Justice Wynn-Parry on 3 October 1950 when the ministry unsuccessfully applied to strike out the claim on the grounds of it being vexatious, frivolous or an abuse of process.²⁵ The ministry was clearly digging in its heels, resisting Lampeter’s claims for financial support, and even appeared somewhat belligerent in denying any legal duty to support Lampeter financially should it be ruled that Lampeter was a university or a university college.²⁶ The ministry’s application was dismissed, and a full hearing was listed before a judge in the Chancery Division in February 1951.²⁷

That judge was to be Mr Justice Vaisey. Sir Harry Vaisey (1877–1965) was a product of Shrewsbury School and Hertford College, Oxford. Called to the Bar of Lincoln’s Inn in 1901, he took silk in 1925, and was appointed a judge of the High Court in 1944 at the somewhat ripe age of sixty-seven years. Indeed, by the time the present matter came before him, he was seventy-three years of age. He was a high churchman, an authority on ecclesiastical law, and had served as chancellor of the dioceses of Derby and Wakefield from 1928 to 1944, chancellor of the diocese of Carlisle from 1930 to 1944, vicar-general of the province of York from 1934 to 1944, and commissary general for the diocese of Canterbury from 1942 to 1944.²⁸ With these credentials, Archdall might have had good cause to expect him to be a sympathetic judge, one of our own, so to speak, who would be rather supportive of an institution which seemed to be engaged in a mission to promote Anglicanism in a land of dissent.

But Vaisey was also unpredictable and somewhat eccentric. Among the judicial achievements attributed to him was his celebrated definition of a ‘gentleman’s agreement’:

A gentleman’s agreement is an agreement which is not an agreement, made between two people neither of whom are gentlemen, whereby each expects the other to be strictly bound without himself being bound at all.²⁹

Vaisey had also earnt his place in the annals of the law thanks to his ruling in the case of Re Parrott, Cox v. Parrott [1946] Ch 183. Then, he adjudged that the law does not allow a person to change their given forename and that it was not possible to do so by way of a deed poll. This precedent was subsequently ignored, although a practice developed whereby a person wishing to register a deed of change of name would add a caveat on the deed in these terms: ‘Notwithstanding the decision of Mr Justice Vaisey in Re Parrott, Cox v. Parrott, the applicant wishes the enrolment to proceed’.³⁰

Now, it was to be the fate of St David’s College, Lampeter, that tested Vaisey’s legal intellect. The press took an avid interest in Lampeter’s bid for university status, and the newspaper reports throw valuable light on the deliberations which otherwise went unreported and unrecorded in the official law report.³¹ For example, the press recorded the fact that during the proceedings Vaisey could not restrain his wit, and in an initial response to the question of what is a university, pondered, ‘it is not obliged to have a boat race, is it?’³² Despite Vaisey’s tendency to resort to levity, Sir Andrew Clark KC presented a rational and compelling case on behalf of Lampeter. He elucidated a set of criteria for university status and showed how Lampeter satisfied them all.³³ They were:

1.  A charter conferred by the crown or a comparable high authority (the pope in years past or in other jurisdictions);

2.  That access was open to all regardless of creed (true since 1896, if not earlier);

3.  That there existed there a community of scholars;

4.  At least one of the higher faculties were present (such as theology, law, philosophy and medicine);

5.  Buildings and residence for students;

6.  The power to award degrees.

To support his arguments, Clark called several witnesses of standing, including the registrars of both Oxford and Cambridge, who attested that Lampeter was an affiliated institution and that its degrees were of a university standard which allowed its graduates to proceed to further studies at their institutions without having to undertake matriculation examinations.³⁴ Both Oxford and Cambridge had long recognised the quality of Lampeter degrees, unlike the University of Wales, which of course had taken a more churlish stance towards the institution.³⁵ The registrar of the University of Nottingham gave evidence in Lampeter’s cause, and said that he believed that it was the power to award degrees that was the crucial feature of university status.

The principal of Jesus College, Oxford, also waded in, and said that the difference between a university and university college was that the former could award its own degrees, whereas the latter awarded degrees validated by another institution. Lampeter, clearly, fell into the former category. Adding to this illustrious parade of witnesses that attested to Lampeter providing education of a university standard was Leonard Hodgson, Regius professor of divinity at Oxford, and Arthur Geoffrey Dickens, professor of history at University College, Hull, and chairman of Lampeter’s board of external examiners.³⁶ In addition, there were written submissions on the matter from those unable to attend in person. Among the written submissions was one from Sir F. Maurice Powicke, emeritus Regius professor of history in University of Oxford, who in a memorandum entitled ‘The Academic Status of St. David’s College, Lampeter’ had concluded, ‘I have no hesitation in saying that, in my view, the College is a University College in its own right’.³⁷

Denys Buckley, counsel for the respondents, then cross-examined Douglas Veale, Oxford’s registrar, and it was established that the University College of North Staffordshire and Lampeter were the only institutions restricted to offering bachelor’s degrees. Veale agreed but added ‘with the exception of the bogus universities’. Buckley responded by saying that he was unaware of the existence of bogus universities. Vaisey, sensing his opportunity, at this point joined in and offered his own insight on the point: ‘one would have thought they would have gone the whole way if they were bogus’.³⁸

The respondent then called its witnesses, which consisted of civil servants at the Ministry of Education. Not one of the respondent’s witnesses was an academic or a representative from another institution who might gainsay the testimony presented on behalf of Lampeter. Mr Gilbert Flemming, a deputy secretary of the Ministry of Education, claimed that Lampeter’s case was considered objectively in the light of the prevailing regulations. Mr Flemming also made a point which would later be taken up by Vaisey in his judgment, which was that the ministry treated institutions as universities if they had explicitly asserted that status in their founding charters, or had been granted the title by appropriate authority.³⁹ In truth, the respondent offered little to refute the plaintiff’s arguments, and even conceded that Lampeter was a university college which offered education of ‘a university character’.⁴⁰ But the thrust of the respondent’s submission was that it was for the minister to interpret the 1948 regulations for determining state scholarships and university supplemental awards and to decide if an institution qualified for state financial support.⁴¹

It appears that Lampeter had considered the option of asking the judge to declare the institution a ‘university college’, which would have been a lesser status than that of a ‘university’, but Sir Andrew Clark had advised that such a declaration would not be of great advantage to Lampeter, and that as the expression ‘university college’ was found in the regulations it might only strengthen the respondent’s case that it was for the minister to interpret the phrase.⁴² As such, it would not have overcome the Ministry of Education’s unwillingness to provide Lampeter with public funding.⁴³

When it came to pronouncing judgment, Vaisey prevaricated. He began by conceding that the expression university was not ‘a word of art’, before explaining why Lampeter should not be regarded as a university.⁴⁴ He found that Lampeter’s size and limited degree awarding powers, the BA and the BD, weakened its case for university status.⁴⁵ He then went on to offer a rather circular criterion, namely that whether an institution is a university or not can be decided by reference to what the ‘ordinary man would say if he were asked whether this college is a university’.⁴⁶ What did he mean? The man on the Clapham Omnibus? His ordinary man was ‘the ordinary man who does know what a university is or who has received his education at a university’.⁴⁷ How such a man would justify his opinion, and state ‘what a university is’ was left unanswered. He then stated a further weakness to Lampeter’s case, which was that the institution’s charters did not explicitly state that it was a university. This was, in contrast to the University of Wales, which Vaisey stated was ‘incorporated as a university’.⁴⁸ Lampeter, he said, was a ‘borderline’ case, indeed, ‘in a class of its own’.⁴⁹

Vaisey’s judgment was hardly a pinnacle in legal reasoning. It turned on his ordinary (reasonable) university-educated-man test, combined with a narrow literal interpretation of the institution’s charters. His use of the ordinary, university educated man was arguably a case of relying on a false authority. But such a man provided Vaisey with a suitably vague bystander who could be said to share the judge’s own views, with those views then being largely unchallenged and unchallengeable.⁵⁰ Although the ordinary and reasonable man has a long-standing pedigree in the common law, his deployment to determine legal issues has not been without its difficulties.⁵¹ The potentially subjective nature of the ordinary, reasonable person as opposed to his purported objectivity has been the subject of criticism (after all, one man’s reasonable man is another’s idiot), and he has often been seen as a convenient tool for ‘ad hoc rationalizations deployed to obscure private agendas’.⁵² What was extraordinary in this case was that Vaisey, having employed the use of the ordinary, university educated man, came to the conclusion that he would not have concurred with the views of the registrars of the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford or Nottingham, the principal of an Oxford college, nor two eminent professors who all said that Lampeter was a university institution and ought to be so recognised.

The more constructive, criteria-based interpretation which Andrew Clark had argued for was not adopted. That is, did the institution behave like a university, by providing a university education, did it have staff which could be described as academic university staff (which were highly qualified and had professorial status, for example, which was indeed the case), and did it have degree awarding powers? The fact that the institution was small and only offered undergraduate degrees in the humanities ought not to have been fatal, as that was a feature of North Staffordshire University College (later Keele University), which did receive government support at the time. Vaisey did not press the Ministry on why Lampeter should be treated differently. Interestingly, no-one thought it relevant to mention that Lampeter admitted men only, unlike the constituent colleges of the University of Wales, which had been admitting women soon after, if not at the time of their founding. One might speculate that provoking that hornet’s nest might have created a great deal of trouble to other, more venerated institutions. Women would not be admitted as students at Lampeter until 1965.⁵³

A more substantive stumbling block for Lampeter, mentioned by counsel for the respondent in his submissions, was s. 100 of the Education Act 1944, which gave the minister absolute discretion in recognising an institution as a university for the purposes of receiving financial support from the government.⁵⁴ Vaisey might have ruled that as this was the law he had no power to intervene. But, as his exchanges with Buckley suggest, he found the idea that a judge could not hold the minister to account, even if he had found his behaviour capricious (which he did not in this case), unacceptable.⁵⁵ In this case, nobody had argued bad faith on the part of the ministry, because no evidence could be produced in support of such an assertion. And judicial review was but in its infancy at the time. Power rested with the minister, and it was not open to the judge to interpret the regulations. Vaisey could only appeal for a more sympathetic approach towards the institution by hoping that some special financial provision might be made to support its work. He went as far as sharing his view that the ministry’s intransigence and ungenerous attitude was surprising if not distasteful.⁵⁶

It might also be said that Vaisey took a normative stance. He did not really answer the question, was Lampeter a university as a matter of fact, but whether it ought to be regarded as so in the circumstances. Yet the response in the press both generally and in Wales was one of sympathy towards Lampeter and its plight.⁵⁷ The Western Mail, a conservative-leaning newspaper at the time, expressed the view that the decision against Lampeter ‘will be received with regret in Wales … because its influence upon the religious and moral development of Wales has been profound’. The paper’s reporter added, ‘it is difficult for us to imagine Wales without Lampeter. A comparatively humble establishment, in his Lordship’s words, it has exercised an influence out of all proportion to its size, and it is hard that the excellence of its record should be denied full recognition’.⁵⁸

The judgment was criticised by legal commentators and even christened, ‘Vaisey’s Folly’.⁵⁹ D.J. Christie, in a detailed article published in Public Law in 1976 (then edited by J.A.G. Griffith, a Cardiff-born son of a Baptist minister), concluded that ‘the judgment as a whole should be regarded with circumspection’.⁶⁰ In particular, Christie showed how Vaisey’s resort to the reasonable-university-man test was at odds with the normal principles of statutory interpretation when it came to a term which is not a term of art. In such cases, proper reference to ordinary everyday meaning was required, using a standard dictionary, and Lampeter clearly met the dictionary definition of a university.

Must we therefore simply dismiss the outcome as an example of poor legal reasoning by an eccentric judge? To do so would be naïve and to ignore the political context. The Minister for Education during what would become the dying months of Atlee’s Labour government was George Tomlinson. It is doubtful that this Lancastrian had a strong personal view on the matter, but his close associates in the ministry might well have brought influence to bear on his judgment. Indeed, it is inconceivable that the Welsh Department would not have exerted such influence. In a letter to H.A. Strutt, who was a civil servant in the Home Office, dated 28 May 1953, Archdall pulled no punches when he said, ‘we have known for a long time that there is opposition to us in the Welsh Department: and it seems to us that power is concentrated in the hands of one man’.⁶¹ As Prys Morgan later remarked, ‘the suspicion was that the harm was done by the Welsh Department of the Ministry, a pawn in the hands of the Welsh establishment’.⁶² To what and to whom was Archdall alluding?

Sir Ben Bowen Thomas (1899–1977), who had been knighted in 1950, was the permanent secretary to the Welsh Department of the Ministry of Education from 1945 to 1963.⁶³ A Welsh-speaking Baptist and a calm yet effective operator in Welsh public life, he would not have been a friend of Lampeter. He was a University of Wales (via Aberystwyth) graduate, had been a member of staff at Aberystwyth prior to his appointment to Whitehall in 1945, and he would serve as President of Aberystwyth from 1964 to 1975. His loyalty to his alma mater was not in doubt, and he had ‘maintained the closest interest in the College throughout his adult life’.⁶⁴ Nowhere is he mentioned in the law reports nor in the newspaper reports. Yet, behind the scenes, he was the Sir Humphrey Appleby of our play.

In addition, the cabinet of Clement Attlee had a strong Welsh representation. It is probable that Aneurin Bevan, Ness Edwards and, perhaps more crucially, James Griffiths, appropriately briefed by Ben Bowen Thomas, would have alerted their colleagues to the political sensitivities surrounding Lampeter’s bid for university status. Although not a party to the action, the University of Wales had a vested interest in the outcome. Ironically, Vaisey referred to the University of Wales in his judgment when he described Lampeter ‘as a rival and complement of the University of Wales’.⁶⁵ He was nearer to the truth on that point than on any other which he made. Sir William D. Ross, of Oriel College, Oxford, and vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, sensed that the relationship between Lampeter and the University of Wales was the political problem at the root of things. In a letter he sent to Sir Walter Moberley (Chairman of the UGC between 1935 and 1949) on 7 October 1943, on the question of Lampeter’s status as a university college, he remarked: ‘I understand that a difficulty felt by the University Grants Committee may be that it treats academic institutions on a territorial basis and regards the University of Wales as the one academic institution truly representative of that country.’⁶⁶ Those old hostilities towards Lampeter were unabated. Lampeter degrees were treated with suspicion by the University of Wales authorities even when it came to admitting Lampeter graduates to undertake its postgraduate degrees.⁶⁷ And, as recently as 1944, the University of Wales had rebuffed Lampeter’s advances, choreographed by Archdall, when it had sought to reopen the question of its relationship with and potential admission into the federal university.⁶⁸ Jenkin James, the federal university’s secretary, had encapsulated the University of Wales’s Council’s view of Lampeter when he wrote to Archdall advising him that Lampeter might move forward by ‘entrusting to the National University and its constituent Colleges the provision of all forms of higher education at the undergraduate level, reserving to themselves the provision of facilities for post-graduate theological studies in association with the University of Wales’.⁶⁹

Unsurprisingly, Archdall and Lampeter’s authorities would have none of it. This was a form of bullying, and in a letter to the principal of Jesus College, Oxford, dated 4 June 1953, Archdall vented his feelings by saying: ‘It is an astonishing thing to me to see the readiness of Lloyd George Liberals to become totalitarians in outlook and policy’.⁷⁰ It was not the case that all within the University of Wales had their knives in Lampeter’s back. Among Archdall’s supporters was Professor E.G. Bowen of the Department of Geography at the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. They would correspond regularly, and Archdall confided in him that the application to join the University of Wales failed because, ‘the small junta which controls the University Council simply demanded that we should shut up shop’.⁷¹ Another of Aberystwyth’s academics who gave his support to Archdall’s endeavours was Professor Richard I. Aaron, the head of the Department of Philosophy. An external examiner at Lampeter, he helpfully stated that the academic standards applied at Lampeter were as good as those at the universities of Wales, Manchester and Bristol.⁷²

Yes, the University of Wales had considerable political leverage (James Griffiths had been awarded an honorary LLD of the university in 1946). Moreover, the University Grants Committee, which had initially been added as a party to the legal action but whose involvement had been discontinued, concurred with the Ministry of Education’s view that Lampeter was not a university. It had, since 1948, the founder of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Sir David Hughes Parry, among its members. This resolute defender of the University of Wales, and of Aberystwyth in particular, would become vice-chairman of the UGC from 1951 onwards.⁷³ Archdall had been advised to approach Hughes Parry, as vice-chairman of the UGC, so as to explore the way forward.⁷⁴ Hughes Parry had declined an invitation to meet with Archdall, explaining that although he acted as chairman of the UGC during Sir Arthur Trueman’s illness, the latter was now back in harness. He added, ‘in the circumstances I think it would be improper for me to discuss the matters you mention with you’.⁷⁵ Hughes Parry later agreed to meet Archdall after he had retired from Lampeter.⁷⁶

Archdall’s successor as Lampeter’s principal, J.R. Lloyd Thomas, had found Hughes Parry to be charming and reasonable, and did not believe him to be the ‘villain of the piece’ although he was ‘one of those dedicated Welshmen who had Lampeter delenda est on their hearts’.⁷⁷ Instead, Lloyd Thomas laid the blame for the UGC’s attitude squarely at the door of Sir Walter Moberley, chairman of the UGC, who had rejected Archdall’s entreaties in 1942.⁷⁸ He was probably right. Moberley’s letter to Archdall, following an application to the UGC for a treasury grant in 1944, was curt and unsympathetic, and concluded in a distinctively frosty tone, ‘the members were unanimously of the opinion that no new reasons had been advanced which would justify departure from the adverse decision already conveyed to the College’.⁷⁹

Whoever might have been Lampeter’s antagonist in chief, there can be no doubt that there were some formidable political operators behind the position taken by the Ministry of Education. Of course, Vaisey could have decided in favour of Lampeter, regardless of the opposition. But the Ministry of Education’s objections and their interpretation of the regulations must have weighed on his mind, even if he did not say so openly. Despite the political strength of his opponents, Archdall gave the prospect of an appeal to a higher tribunal some consideration, and even ventured to present a petition for a supplemental charter to the Privy Council in the middle of 1952 that would have recognised Lampeter as a university college. Unsurprisingly, this was also turned down in February 1953.⁸⁰ By then, the combination of financial constraints and physical and mental exhaustion, exacerbated by the death of his wife, meant that Archdall had neither the appetite for a replay before different judges nor the strength to continue the campaign.⁸¹ Sir Maurice Powicke, among others, wrote to him to express their support and sympathy following what had been a long and personal ordeal.⁸² Tired yet indefatigable, Archdall would resign the principalship in 1953, and hand over the care of Lampeter to his successor, J.R. Lloyd Thomas, who would continue the struggle to secure Lampeter’s future.⁸³

In a booklet published in the aftermath, Archdall shared his reflections, and quoted from the leading article in the Western Mail on 9 February 1951, which probably summed up his own feelings by the end.

On strictly legal grounds, of course, the judge could reach no other decision. But he made it plain that he thought it unfortunate that an institution which offered tuition in so wide an academic field should be denied the title of university simply because it had not full powers to grant degrees. On equitable grounds it has earned the title, and the Ministry of Education’s attempt to prevent even a High Court declaration in the matter, on the grounds of ‘unjustifiable expense’, was a mean subterfuge. The revelation of these attempts, coupled with the judge’s expressed hope that the Ministry would take a more sympathetic view, may succeed in putting matters to rights. Official recognition of St. David’s College as a university would not only be welcomed in Wales but by the universities in Britain who have long ago acknowledged its right to the honour.⁸⁴

The postscript is that Lampeter, with the support of the University College in Cardiff, would eventually become a constituent member of the federal University of Wales, and so finally secure for itself financial aid from government.⁸⁵ What became of its degree-awarding powers? This issue was the subject of a letter from the Privy Council Office to Lloyd Thomas, which stated that while, ‘it is understood that the College is prepared to forego any right to opt out of the University of Wales while the federal structure remains, I can confirm that it is unlikely that any objection would be taken to the College’s degree granting power being suspended rather than abrogated.’⁸⁶ As for Vaisey’s judgment, for what it was worth, it would also become redundant with subsequent legislation.⁸⁷ And the irony of ironies is that since the beginning of the present century there has been a steady exodus of the constituent colleges of Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Bangor and Swansea from the federal University of Wales as they have obtained degree-awarding status and become independent universities.⁸⁸ In contrast, Lampeter continues to award University of Wales degrees as an integral part of the newly formed University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

What is the significance of this relatively minor legal episode? The case with which this chapter has been concerned can hardly be described as a milestone in the story of the common law. It is not for its legal content that it acquires fascination. Indeed, when the law report is read in isolation, the judgment is barely comprehensible. But when it is contextualised, it sheds light on the politics of higher education in Wales in the first half of the twentieth century. The case betrayed ancient, deep and unbridged chasms in the life of Wales. Lampeter was unsuccessful not so much because it did not function as a university, but because political forces were at play that meant it ought not be recognised as one. Denominationalism had a strange longevity in Welsh life even after the church pews and the chapel galleries had long emptied. I might tentatively suggest that it still does, as although greater inter-denominational cooperation has been seen in recent times, attempts to unite the nonconformist denominations have hitherto failed.

The story of Lampeter’s day in court also has significance for scholars of a more socio-legal bent. The case illustrates the limitations of legal formalism and legal analysis based principally on ‘black-letter’ interpretation of law reports. Much of what has been presented here is not to be found in the reported judgment. Making sense of things requires a reading between the lines, consulting the archive in search of letters and private papers, the press reports and other non-legal sources, and acknowledging the existence of that political dimension which often colours human, including legal, judgement. Here was a case where the expedient outcome determined the mode of reasoning, and the desired ends mattered more than reasoned argument.

Finally, the tale of Lampeter’s bid to obtain recognition as a university also has a contemporary resonance for higher education in the twenty-first century. The institution which appeared before the Chancery Division of the High Court in 1951, claiming the right to be called a university, had a long and honourable tradition of scholarship. Among former staff it claimed intellectuals of the calibre of T.F. Tout, the great historian who later made his name as the founder of the history school at the University of Manchester. The nine years he had spent at Lampeter had been the making of him and had given him an opportunity to pioneer new ways of teaching history.⁸⁹ Another of the same ilk was Hugh Walker, a fine and productive scholar of English Literature, who served at Lampeter for half a century.⁹⁰ Lampeter was an institution which had behaved like a university although it was not recognised as one by the government (even though, as we have seen, the University of Oxford and other supportive institutions took a different attitude).

It is more than seventy years since the question was asked, what is a university? It remains a valid question. We might ask again, what are universities and what are they for? Do universities still contribute to maintaining an enlightened, fair and free society, or are they no more than trade schools on stilts, or worse still, in the business of exploiting for financial gain? Neoliberalism, globalisation and commodification have all challenged our traditional understanding of the university as a sanctuary for academic freedom and a bastion of rigorous and independent scholarship in the public interest.⁹¹ Academic rigour has given way to employability and the student experience. Academic independence and critical engagement are under siege as sanitised or censored opinions are championed at the expense of authentic enquiry, open debate, and free speech.⁹² Academics live precarious lives, constantly seeking the approbation of ‘users’ of the fruits of their labours to demonstrate the useful impact of their research. The academics of our times, out of a necessity to survive, engage in sometimes seedy collaborations with agents that are labelled as stakeholders, busily telling them what they want to hear (as that is what they are ready to pay for), rather than what they should be told. And although academic malpractice through artificial intelligence appears to be the current bugbear of the sector, in truth we have been silently sailing close to the ethical rocks for many years.⁹³

Here is where the plot thickens. There is a newer breed of institution which is called a university. It enjoys the trappings of the status and is recognised as a university by those in authority. It is often limited to the teaching of one or two disciplines, such as law and business.⁹⁴ Its contribution to learning probably falls far short of that of Lampeter in the century which led to the events of 1951. Indeed, this new type of university has neither the breadth nor the depth of intellectual enquiry that typified the academic community at Lampeter in 1951. Yet, the rise of the private university in the United Kingdom is one of the innovations of our times.⁹⁵ Supported by successive governments, ostensibly in the interests of consumer choice, yet also favoured for its economic benefits for the taxpayer, it is free from much of the oversight, regulation and performance-measuring mechanisms that burden the publicly funded university. Once the private university persuades the Office for Students to grant it university status, it is free from any significant external authority and accountability. This raises justifiable concerns about quality control and market volatility.⁹⁶

As these are mostly for-profit businesses, they will not hesitate to close shop if the going gets rough. There is little chance that they will soldier on for more than two centuries, regardless of the adverse conditions, as St David’s College, Lampeter has so valiantly done. At least until now. As this essay is going to press, the storm clouds are gathering once more over Lampeter as its parent institution, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, is proposing to end all undergraduate teaching at the Lampeter campus. The future looks uncertain, and the status of Lampeter as a centre of academic learning hangs in the balance.⁹⁷

Predicting its future is probably a futile exercise. The only conclusion here is that the treatment of St David’s College Lampeter at the hands of those empowered to determine its status in the middle of the twentieth century was capricious and unfair, the product of an old grudge rather than progressive thought. The bar was set high to deprive Lampeter of its rightful status. The bar since then has lowered significantly, and the political imperatives have shifted, although not necessarily for the better. The quip about bogus universities, which gave such amusement to Sir Harry Vaisey at the time, might have been prophetic. Vaisey’s judgment had its shortcomings, and it provided no ratio decidendi to bind the courts or even to guide the law student. But the arguments that were considered in St David’s College, Lampeter v. Ministry of Education in answer to the question, what is a university, and the context in which those arguments were heard, should continue to provoke us.