WeLCOME TO THE UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX

Falmer House, University of Sussex

As you approached the University of Sussex from the main road, or indeed from Falmer train station you walked through the archway of the modernist (Basil Spence designed) Falmer House, the administrative centre and seat of student common rooms and canteens. 

Library, University of Sussex

As you walked on through on your left was the library, richly supplied with books, as you would expect, but also in 1966 with grassy slopes leading up to it, a place where many students met, hung out, and chatted. 

Looking at the grassy slopes, the perfectly balanced buildings, the walkways full of beautiful people made me think - this is the city of god, utopia, a foretaste of heaven! 

Flag of Vietnamese National Liberation Front 

In my view, the student body at Sussex University was over-politicised. My most vivid recollection of student politics is of the in-fighting between different leftist groups: Trotskyites, Stalinists, Leninists, Maoists, Marxists, International Socialists, Millitant, Socialist Workers Party, Communist Party and other groups contesting the true meaning of revolution, socialism, and necessary political action. As someone vaguely leftwing, pro social justice, pro-CND, anti-Apartheid, anti-polaris, anti-Vietnam War I was quite put off radical or leftish politics for over a decade by this vicious infighting. For me the real enemies were the Tories, Edward  Heath, the self-serving priviliged elites in society, and not left-leaning factions with differing interpretations of 'true Marxism', each of which they rigidly cleaved to as 'The Truth'. The very serious internecine struggles between the hard left groups are satirized brilliantly in the Monty Python film "Life of Brian". In fact, being hectored by hard left factions had the effect of turning many of us off politics for years.

Attending the University of Sussex in the mid to late 60s did three things for us. First, it introduced us to 'grown-up' scholarly thought; the greatest ideas in history, which Matthew Arnold termed ‘the best which has been thought and said’. This is undoubtedly the main purpose of university education. Second it plunged us into new interests and social movements like politics but also the Hippie movement. Third, it introduced us to new, like-minded and altogether wonderful friends. Many of these new buddies became friends for life.

Music at Sussex University

Studies

There were several faculties

I recal EngAms (English and American Studies), Biols (Schollo of Biological Sciences

University of Sussex Business School

Departments

• Accounting and Finance

• Economics

• Management

• Strategy and Marketing

• SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit

School of Education and Social Work

Visit the School of Education and Social Work website.

Departments

• Department of Education

• Department of Social Work and Social Care

School of Engineering and Informatics

School of Global Studies 

School of Law, Politics and Sociology

School of Life Sciences

School of Mathematics and Physical Sciences

School of Media, Arts and Humanities

School of Psychology

Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS)

But I've got ahead of myself in this story (again). The first week I started at Sussex Uni in October 1966 I remet Steve Gould, who had been to William Ellis, and who I had bumped into in Afghanistan and Istanbul during my Summer 1966 travels. That first week I recall being quite drunk after a freshers party and smoking some of my hash, brought back from Afghanistan, through Steve's water pipe. We were joined on the pebbley beach of Brighton by another guy called Mike (Jones maybe?), also on my course.

I was following a course called Philosophy and the Theory of Science (with mathematics) founded and run by a philosopher named Peter H. Nidditch (1928—1983), a really nice guy with a warm-hearted Irish wife. He became a famous John Locke scholar and there is a philosophy prize named after him at Sheffield University. You could also study my Sussex course with a physics option, but I opted for mathematics. During the extended period in which I was on this course it changed its name to Logic, History and Policy of Science, and finally ended up as Logic (with Mathematics) as it states on my degree certificate of 1973. 

In the first weeks of lectures I found myself sitting next to a pleasant and attractive young woman named Marilyn Wheatcroft. I invited her to join me for a coffee afterwards, but she replied "No - I have my own set of friends, thank you very much." Despite her cliquiness we remained on cordial terms in the lectures and a couple of weeks later I bumped into her at a seafront club in Brighton. We were all dancing to various soul tracks including Reach Out (I'll Be There) by The Four Tops, downstairs in the club. This song really got you going - disinhibited, sweating, ecstatic as only music can make you! I went outside to smoke a joint and who should I bump into but Marilyn and one of her North London friends Dave Fry (who became and remains one of my best friends right up to this day). I offered them the joint and Dave took it and sniffed it suspiciously before proclaiming "It really is a joint!" and took a couple of drags. He retains his inbuilt scepticism to this day!

Marilyn Wheatcroft

I didn't know it then, but Marilyn's best friend was a young woman called Maggi Gearson. I first noticed her when my Mod friends were giving me a lift to Brighton from the campus one late afternoon and we passed Marilyn and Maggi in the dusk, walking to Falmer Railway Station. I said "Hey, let's give them a lift", the car stopped, they piled in, and the rest is history.

Marilyn Wheatcroft and Maggi Gearson

I didn't know it then, but Maggi had already noticed me and confided in Dave Fry that she fancied me. By then, Dave and of course Maril knew me. Dave had been Maggi's boyfriend from 1963 until Summer 1966 when he had been displaced by their mutual friend Alex Scott-Samuel while they were all on holiday in France. This cause Dave great grief, but he didn't show it. But his replacement Alex had gone to Liverpool University so my luck was in.

(I Last saw Alex at Johnny White's funeral at the Golders Green Crematorium in the late 2010s. His sight has weakened but he still full of life. He lives in Liverpool and has been very active there in the Labour Party.)

Maggi Gearson and Alex Scott-Samuel, Summer 1966.

Maggi was studying at Brighton College of Education across the road from Sussex University. She loved all things French and was studying French culture, literature and language as part of a teaching qualification. It all stemmed from her French mother Marcel who had abandoned her husband Heinz and daughter Maggi when she was about one year old. Maggi had established a good relationship with her mother who lived in Paris and visited her regularly. French culture was a way of regaining her mother and being re-enveloped by her milieu.

From Autumn 1966 Maggi and I were inseperable until she dumped me, Summer 1968. It does not seem so long now but in the chaotic universe of young love, especially since it ended in a downward spiral of hard drug addition, a folie-a-deux, it was an epoch, a bounded eternity, an everlasting dazzling bright star that burned out seemingly all too soon, leaving me scorched in the ashes. 

THIS IS A WORK ON PROGRESS - MUCH MORE TO COME!

Pete Deadman on violin performing with David Bowie 1969

Steve gould shares

Memories of a 13 year old Olly Swingler outrageously drunk, in a  Reading school (we were housed in a school overnight) the second day of the 1961 or 1962 Easter Aldermaston March - see photo of my dad and Bertrand Russell holding the banner.  I missed the first March but the second one was my introductory - I was just 11 years old - in the last year of primary school - I met one of my teachers- mr price- the one whose job it was to administer the slipper 🥿 - the young Gould was not unaware of the irony

The original 1959 March from London to aldermaston. Steve's dad in front, Bertrand Russell to his left

The organisers quickly learnt that bringing thousands of people to an obscure establishement in the middle of the country with barely any transport links was not a great idea for an ending. The the following year's march - 1960 - the first that I participated in - began at Aldermaston and ended with a huge rally in Trafalgar square. I was 15 years old, walked the whole route and had huge blisters on my feet by the end. I was acoompanied by Tony Barnett, Peter Sayers, Roger Silverman and countless other friends.

What is it all about?

 Memories of some of us who were at the University of Sussex or nearby in Brighton  during the mid 1960s