Step back to 1960s Cardiff – For Alumni, By Alumni

Did you attend Cardiff University in the 1960s? Join alum Steve Pritchard (BA 1965), Emeritus Librarian at Cardiff, for an immersive tour through the 1960s Students’ Union. Star appearances include Harold Wilson and Paul McCartney. Key events include the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bob Dylan’s first UK concert, and (most importantly) a long-awaited bar opening.

‘Cheers to the Students’ Union at 50’ read the headline in the summer 2024 issue of our alumni magazine Cardiff Connect. And of course, the half-century anniversary of the ‘old’ 1974 Students’ Union on Park Place is well worth celebrating.

And yet, and yet. There was a university before 1974, and a Students’ Union before 1974. To alumni of a certain vintage, ‘our’ Students’ Union was the beloved building that stood on Dumfries Place. It was central to the ‘student experience’, to use a later coinage, between 1951 and 1974.

Dumfries Place? Yes, Dumfries Place. But this was very different from today’s Dumfries Place. And the student life centred in that Students’ Union was a life different in so many ways from what came later. A different life in a different world. Myself and other alumni contributors hope this piece revives memories for some readers, and offers a glimpse into a long-ago student world for others. Despite Shakespeare nearly writing, ‘Old men and old women forget, and all shall be forgot, but we’ll remember with advantages what feats we did in student days’, the following memories have, where possible, been cross-checked against each other or independently verified.

It’s Freshers’ Week, October 1962

We’ll join that crowd of partly excited, partly apprehensive, newly arrived undergraduates milling around on Dumfries Place. Milling around in the middle of the road, in fact, where six lanes of traffic now roar (except when gridlocked) between Newport Road and the sweep of Stuttgarter Strasse. But it’s 1962 and there’s little chance of being run over, since Dumfries Place is still a cul-de-sac beginning at the junction of Newport Road with Queen Street and ending just behind us at the Drill Hall.

There’s the Students’ Union, about halfway along the west side of Dumfries Place, roughly where sixty or so years later Haywood House office block will stand. The Union building resembles a Victorian or Edwardian family home. In fact, it was designed to house the Cardiff Preparatory School established in 1875 to prepare 300 scholars, at moderate cost, for access to the university, the armed services, and the commercial professions. In 1892, the school closed and the building was sold to the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire – which eventually became Cardiff University. After hosting various art classes, technical classes, and government offices, it was reborn as the Students’ Union in 1951.

Let’s slip away from the crowd of new students. Many of the men, we note, are wearing tweed sports jackets and white shirt and tie, and the occasional would-be ‘beatnik’ (a sort of proto-hippy) is donning a donkey jacket and jeans. The women favour frocks and skirts, with just a scattering in trousers. And for men and women alike, there’s not a ‘trainer’ in sight. While they wait for coaches to ferry them to the University Playing Fields at Llanrumney for the Freshers’ Week barbeque, we’ll cross the traffic-free road to explore the Union building.

Up two or three steps, through the porch, and we’re in the entrance hall. It’s a cramped space. On our left is the counter of the little kiosk cum shop behind its glass window. Whatever time you were in the Union, the same kindly lady seemed to be staffing the shop and selling ballpoint pens, pencils, notepads, postage stamps, and confectionary. At the back of the hall is the public telephone. The only one in the building. No frequent mobile calls or texts to parents in these long-gone days. So long-gone, in fact, that many students are from homes without a phone and have nobody to call. Passing the telephone, we’re among a cluster of meeting rooms and office accommodation for the Union President, the House Secretary, the NUS Secretary, and the Athletic Union. Office equipment is sparse. A telephone is standard, but memories will vary about the provision of a typewriter. Somewhere here too is that home of misspent youth, the Snooker Room.

Back in the entrance hall is the staircase which leads to the first floor. We’ll climb the stairs later. Behind the staircase stretches a long corridor. The smell of food pervading the building is becoming stronger. At the end of the corridor is the Refectory, or Refec – a rather Oxbridge name for what is, in truth, a large and somewhat featureless canteen. Now, in the early evening as at lunchtime, students are queuing to pick up a tray and shuffle along to be served.

On the menu: lively debates, cinema nights, and mashed swede

The food is basic canteen fare. But affordable, even if, as the term progresses, the now extinct maintenance grants stretch only to “chips and beans, please”. The menu is displayed in white plastic capital letters pushed into the horizontal grooves of a fabric-covered board. Is today’s ‘PLUM GRUMBLE’ a simple mistake, an invitation to complain, or is the letter ‘C’ in short supply? And the serving women can be peremptory. On one occasion, requests for “no mashed swede please, just the roast pork and roast potatoes”, was answered with “swede’s on the menu so you have to have it”. Proving as stubborn as the server, the two swede-averse students took their appeal to the Union President, whose mediation broke the deadlock. The server agreed that mashed swede might be considered an optional extra.

The canteen/Refec, with the chairs and tables pushed aside, doubles on Friday evenings as the Union debating chamber. Debates are passionate – no quarter given, red in tooth and claw, and despite the speakers wearing academic gowns, respects neither status nor position. And it’s quite a shock to visiting speakers from other universities, who are used to the formalities of ‘as my learned friend has said’ or ‘if Mr President will allow’. Instead, as one Cardiff student remembers, “it was a place where you’d get your arms torn off.”

And it wasn’t only students. MPs who brave the Union debating chamber in these years include James Callaghan (defeated by Harold Wilson for leadership of the Labour Party in 1963), Desmond Donnelly (who changed his political allegiance five times), and Raymond Gower (that increasingly rare figure, a Welsh Conservative MP). Nationally distinguished these figures may have been, but that cut no ice with Cardiff students. One of those speakers, name withheld to spare his descendants’ blushes, began his speech with “I have a friend”. This was howled down with shouts of “impossible”, “I don’t believe it”, and “pull the other one”. From that point there was no going back, and the unfortunate speaker became ever more flustered.

PMQs at Westminster had nothing to teach the Cardiff Union Debating Chamber. Or were we witnessing the pre-history of ‘no platforming’ and ‘cancelling’? This roughhouse debating environment in the years 1961-67 probably proved an effective training ground. One Union President won the Observer Mace, a debating tournament open to all British and Irish universities, before beginning a stellar broadcasting career for BBC Wales. Another became Leader of the Labour Party and Vice-President of the European Commission. And then there were those who went on to careers in local politics, not least one who was, for forty years, a much-admired Labour councillor in his native North of England.

On Sunday evenings, the canteen/Refec becomes a cinema. By an arrangement (perhaps money changed hands, we won’t unravel it), the then House Secretary receives the newly released film that the Park Cinema will be showing from Monday onwards. Why Sunday showings in the Union? Easy – because in those days commercial cinemas, just like pubs, were closed on Sundays. And the cost? At first a very affordable sixpence (2.5p), although this rocketed to one shilling (5p) the next year. Crucially, the profit from those Sunday shillings is reinvested in student life – after just one year, the Jazz Club benefitted from a brand-new double bass.

A feature of student life that will not survive beyond the 1960s are the weekly sing-songs. In February 1963, students crammed into the canteen/Refec, latecomers squatting on the floor, to hear Harold Wilson speak. He had been elected the Leader of the Labour Party only the day before but honoured his commitment to the Socialist Society (Soc Soc, of course) to address the Cardiff students. The Soc Soc meeting addressed by Hugh Gaitskell, Wilson’s predecessor as Leader of the Labour Party, was infiltrated by a group of unruly Swansea students intent on causing mayhem. Which they duly did.

Sample the 60s music scene

We’ll leave the ground floor and those hungry students to their suppertime queue, head back to the entrance hall, and climb the stairs to the first floor. And here we are in the lounge. A carpeted room, rare in the Union building, furnished with an assortment of upholstered armchairs, or bucket chairs. The lounge was much loved, much used, often overcrowded, and accordingly shabby. Did it strike us as shabby back then? Probably not. Perhaps we would have found it simply comfortable and lived in. In a word, for many of us in post-war Britain, it was ‘homely’.

But let’s not forget, the lounge offers the latest in cutting edge entertainment technology – a radiogram, a large oblong unit combining radio and record player. That turntable has a fair claim to fame as possibly the medium through which Bob Dylan was first heard in a public space in Cardiff. Two students, returning elated from the then little-known Dylan’s first ever UK concert (Royal Festival Hall, May 17th 1964), rushed to the radiogram to air their newly acquired Dylan LPs (Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin). Those two were not the Union’s only Dylan aficionados. Another student frequently commandeered the radiogram to play his sole Dylan LP over and over until one involuntary listener, having heard more than enough, jumped up and removed the LP from the turntable, slid it into its sleeve, stuffed it up the offender’s jumper, and sent him on his way.

Another musical memory from the very early 1970s records a youngish, longish-haired individual turning up at the Union offering to play a free concert for the students that evening with his new band. The response? “Sorry, mate, canteen’s the only room big enough, and that’s booked by the Badminton Club tonight.” The musician left, headed eastwards, and that night Paul McCartney and his newly formed band Wings played their free concert in Newport.

Also upstairs is the Top Refectory – smaller, more salubrious, and perhaps, as its name unwittingly suggests, more select than the downstairs canteen. So select that it seems many students never discovered its existence. Nearby is the TV room and its tiny black and white set. Smaller and less popular than the lounge, this room came into its own between the 16th and 28th October 1962, as the Cuban Missile Crisis developed and nuclear war between USSR and USA seemed a looming possibility. Diplomacy eventually de-escalated the conflict and the world breathed again, including those worried Cardiff students. They watched the grainy black and white images while fearing nuclear immolation and wondering whether to go home to parents or stick it out in the city. The TV lounge was a happier place in 1964 as equally grainy, equally flickering images showed Nantymoel-born Lynn ‘the Leap’ Davies winning the long jump gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics.

Meet us at the bar

And on that celebratory note we end our tour of the Students’ Union building as it was in the early 1960s. Very few bells and certainly no whistles. But it was the busy, thriving hub of university life for many of the 3,200 or so undergraduates and approximately 300 postgraduates, a mix of war babies and baby boomers. And remember that in the early 1960s, perhaps as few as 3-4% of school leavers went on to university. And many, if not most, of that tiny minority were the first of members of their family to go to university. A new and unknown world. And yes, there were no tuition fees or student debt in those days. On the other hand, managing the Local Education Authority’s maximum maintenance grant of £10 a week – to cover accommodation, food, travel, entertainment, and not to mention books – very often meant learning what an overdraft was. It was a novel experience for students who had never entered a bank before, coming from families that had no bank account.

Sorry? What was that? I’ve forgotten something? Oh, you mean the bar. Well, that’s because there isn’t one. At least not yet in Freshers’ Week of October 1962. Yes, of course, students drank in those days. The past is not that much of a foreign country. However, the student market was not as targeted by the brewers and distillers as has become the norm since. But we drank. Beer mostly, perhaps wine for a few sophisticates, and cocktails were exotic concoctions that had probably died with the 1930s.

For a couple of years, the university had resisted student lobbying for a Union Bar on the grounds that there was no evidence that the majority of students were in favour. The University agreed to a referendum with the proviso that a minimum of 1,200 votes had to be cast for the result to be binding. The result of the referendum held in February 1962 was 1,181 in favour and 209 against. It is difficult to pin down the exact date that the bar opened, but it was likely between December 1962 and January 1963. And it was the first student bar in any of the University of Wales institutions. And the bar opening was even covered by TWW (Television Wales and the West), the local commercial TV network at the time. This proved embarrassing for one undergraduate from a strictly teetotal family in North Wales, whose father was shocked, if not disgusted, to see his daughter on screen with a half-full pint glass in her hand.

Where did students go for a drink before 1963? The nearest licensed premises to the Union was the much-loved and undeniably shabby ‘Alex’, the Alexander Hotel that stood on the corner of Queen Street and Station Terrace. Negotiating the traffic on Queen Street was easy enough going to the ‘Alex’, but the return trip could be more problematic, risky even. It’s worth remembering also that Cardiff pubs had been closed on Sundays until the referendum of November 1961.

But we can’t leave the bar without recording that within one or two years of opening, its profits transformed the Union’s finances from operating at an annual deficit to an annual surplus. A number of sports clubs received new kit and equipment – rowing, rugby, football, netball, and athletics all benefitted from student drinking. On international rugby weekends, the brewery lorries trucked in three separate deliveries to the Union to keep up with the students’ appetite for beer. And the toilets had to be closed, hosed down, cleaned up, and re-opened at least as often.

And that’s about it for our tour of the old Students’ Union building. As far as possible, all the stories above are as accurate as fallible memory can make them. And, oh yes, there are plenty of other stories, some apocryphal. Did an eminent member of the Union run the length of the building with his trousers round his ankles to win a bet? Was the student who unleashed the contents of a fire extinguisher at a Union officer motivated by politics or personal dislike?

Let’s end with a warranted true story. It’s Friday evening during one of those roughhouse, knock ‘em down, drag ‘em out Union debates, and the motion is ‘This House Would Vote Conservative at the Next Election’. Passions are, as usual, running high. Into the aisle staggers a student, soon to become a successful journalist and author, reeling around and clutching his chest, declaiming histrionically, “oh, my poor heart is bleeding” – for the embattled Conservative speaker.

Acknowledgements

It’s a pleasure to thank the following alumni for their willingness to stroll down memory lane with me: Roy Bailey-Wood (BSc 1966, PhD 1970), Ray Guy (BSc 1963) Peter Jacobs (BA 1964), Neil Kinnock (PGCE 1965), Rita Morton (nee Lloyd) (BA 1965) Karen Pritchard (nee Sorenson) (BA 1965).

Grateful thanks also to Jennifer Wolmar and Anna Sharrard from the University Library’s Special Collections and Archives (SCOLAR) for, respectively, facilitating access to the files of the student newspaper ‘Broadsheet’ and for pointing me to the relevant sections of University College Cardiff, a Centenary History 1883-1983 by SB Chrimes, Professor of History’.

Ah, Prof Chrimes, another figure from the time we’ve been remembering. And sometimes to undergraduates, a figure as fearsome as he was distinguished. Like the stylishly dressed first year student arriving late for a Part One History lecture. Her tiptoeing, high heels tip-tip-tapping progress across the auditorium floor is halted by a peppery admonishment from the lectern. “Miss Sorenson, undergraduate gowns are to be worn, not carried.”

And there are so many other memorable and distinguished academics to salute. After all, we were in Cardiff principally to study, not just enjoy life in and around the Students’ Union. A sample from one student’s memories include Prof R.J.C. Atkinson of Archaeology, who looks forward to confusing the archaeologists of the future: “When they dig up my twentieth century skeleton and find it wearing this Bronze Age finger ring”, he would teach students a valuable lesson.

Dr Mike Jarrett, also of Archaeology, dangling a student essay between thumb and forefinger and commenting “Mr (name withheld to protect the guilty), I wouldn’t touch this with a disinfected barge pole”. And there’s the charismatic Dr (later Professor) Terry Hawkes of English, challenging his students to grapple with the concept of ‘Appearance and Reality’ in Shakespeare’s plays.

Appearance and Reality? The Doors of Perception? ‘Hey, Mr Tambourine Man… take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind…’ and all that. Seems we’ve ended up right where we began. In the 1960s. And we remember some of it.

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