Early 1970s GCHQ Old Style Recruitment Methods

 

In retrospect, it looks like desperation. Living near Exeter with no affiliation to the university, I have somehow got myself an interview with its Careers Adviser - the exact job-title escapes me. I’m a bit at a loss. I’m taking jobs out of a sense of social obligation and/or political commitment and I’m quitting them at an alarming rate: between autumn 1972 and year-end 1975 I go through three jobs with illness (hepatitis), casual employment as a waiter, and signing on for benefits in between. I need to get my act together though it’s true that in summer 1975 I do self-publish a book (Language, Truth ad Politics) which is widely reviewed and sells well. Still…

I present the Careers Adviser with my rather alarming CV and answer questions. He pauses. Have you got time to sit a little examination? Basically, it’s an IQ test and you will have thirty minutes to complete. You can do it in that room over there - he points to the corner of the room. Well, I suppose it has to be In for a Penny, In for a Pound so I oblige, emerging from the room before the thirty minutes are up to hand in my work. The Adviser scores it in front of me and it seems I pass  - and for the first time since the 11+  though I have never been told my IQ or sought to find out. I’m sure it’s lower than I like to think.

Then he reaches down to one of his drawers and pulls out a little pamphlet and hands it to me, Might this interest you? I read the words GCHQ Cheltenham - Government Communications Headquarters and browse through to give myself time to find an answer. There is a very small temptation to say O, yes, golly! and a larger sense of embarrassment. I don’t want to make this man who has been generous with his time look foolish. As far as I can imagine (based on the one friend I have who did try to join the Intelligence services) I would be weeded out at a very early stage.It's not on my CV that I'm some kind of student or ex-student radical or anarchist who has been present at demonstrations etc etc and not only that (which might be forgiven) but also omitted is the fact that my friendship or comradeship circle includes or has in the very recent past included people who have been or soon will be on the front page of newspapers, starting I suppose with Dr Rose Dugdale. I acted as her MacKenzie Friend ( her lay legal adviser) during her 1973 trial at Exeter Crown Court of which maybe more some other time. 

So I make an excuse and leave. From reading in later years, I learnt that Careers Advisers in provincial universities with a conservative and rather public school ethos (Bristol, Durham, Exeter) were often sought out by the Intelligence services as potential recruiters. Perhaps even more so after some of those recruited by the old methods from Oxford and Cambridge had let down their country so spectacularly. Nowadays, the Services advertise openly which seems a much more sensible approach. 

In the end, after one more disastrous attempt at socially engaged work as a Youth Worker on an old-style white working class council estate in Reading, I make the decision to get myself  a graduate degree and squeeze my way back into university life.