Another voice
Public school justice
Auberon Waugh
T spent Friday morning, under some .1protest, listening to an application be- fore the judicial committee of the Privy Council for leave to appeal for a rehearing of a postgraduate student's petition to have her rejected PhD thesis re-examined. The thesis was on a subject about which I know nothing — entitled 'Lysosomes in the coelomocytes of three species of polychaete annelids with particular refer- ence to Nereis diversicolour', it concerned itself with problems of cell biology.
The problems of cell biology are not my own problems. I have no idea whether or not the thesis was up to PhD standard nor, of course, had the three judges any opinion on this matter. The Committee was made up of three Privy Councillors, all with some legal training: Lord Brightman, the law lord, Mr Mark Carlisle, the former Tory minister, and Lord Mulley, formerly known as Dozey Fred Mulley, the Labour Defence Secretary who distinguished him- self by falling asleep while sitting next to the Queen during an RAF fly-past. The Queen, as Visitor of London University, appointed these three to hear the Petition on her behalf, and I could not help wondering whether the appointment of Lord Mulley might have been some sort of Royal revenge.
For it is no good pretending that every- one is interested in students' grievances. Only an Irishman like Edward Carson who never attended an English public school — would have made such a fuss of the Winslow Boy. Anyone who follows the courts will know they were just as likely to he wrong when they exonerated him as they were when they originally found him guilty. The whole purpose of a public school education is to teach a chap to accept injustice like a man; it should leave no mark on him beyond a certain resolve to get his own back on the next generation. That was how we ran our Empire and it was also the way, for better or worse, that we lost it. What emerges from the case of Janaki Vijayatunga is that some Indians, at least, still do not seem to have learned this simple lesson.
Her case was first referred to me about 18 months ago by her father, the disting- uished Indian author and journalist J. Vijayatunga. It sounded a simple enough example of a troublesome Indian student who would not accept the umpires' verdict. With Indian patience, they continued to bombard me with further information affidavits, copies of letters, counsel's opin- ions — and even the gift of a curious oriental object which unscrews to reveal a sort of dip-stick, possibly used to apply rouge to the cheeks or kohl to the eyes. Suitably bribed, I read the papers and decided I could not give an account of Miss Vijayatunga's complaint without defaming various academics involved in the story; I was reluctant to commit any of my em- ployers to defending a libel action on an issue . which might depend upon the word of a poor Indian research assistant against that of a senior English academic.
The essentials of Miss Vijayatunga's petition are as follows: in September 1974, as a young Indian graduate, she simul- taneously started a PhD course and a job of research assistant in the zoology depart- ment of Bedford College, London. Her supervisor on the course and her employer in the department were one and the same man. Between that time and the comple- tion of her thesis, by her account, various incidents occurred which led her supervisor to adopt a hostile attitude towards her. When the time came to deliver her 350- page thesis ('Lysosomes in the coelomo- cytes . . .' as above) he appointed two examiners of his own choosing; one was a botanist, the other a biochemist, neither a zoologist having the necessary special in- terest in Coelomocytes, let alone polychaete annelids.
Shortly after delivering the thesis, Miss Vijayatunga received a letter from her supervisor which led her to suppose that her PhD was in the bag. Lord Brightman, in his Opinion, summed up: 'As worded, the letter was almost certain to be mis- understood. The terms of the letter are regrettable.' Instead of which Miss Vi- jayatunga heard a month later that her PhD thesis was rejected, although she might apply for the M.Phil if she so wished. Instead, she applied for re-assessment be- fore a board of five examiners, which included the original two, one of whom, at her oral examination, interrupted with cries of: 'This is rubbish' and offensive gestures. The second board also rejected her thesis.
Miss Vijayatunga's first appearance be- fore Lords Brightman and Mulley and Mr Carlisle was on 25 February 1983. She was represented by counsel and her legal bills on this occasion were £2,720, no legal aid being available. Counsel restricted himself to two points — no suggestion of malice was allowed: first, that the examiners were unqualified; second, on a technical point, that by asking for corrections and altera- tions they had implicitly accepted that the thesis was of PhD standard.
I propose to ignore the second point as being too boring. On the first point, Lord Brightman summed up: 'It would not be
proper for the committee to express a view as to the choice of examiners, or to criticize the decision on such matters of the Uni- versity authorities' — never mind that a previous High Court decision had estab- lished that all such matters were within the province of the Visitor, rather than the High Court — save in a case, which is far from the instant case, where it is apparent from the facts that the examiners appointed by the University were plainly not qualified to perform their task. The Committee are of the opinion that the petitioner is not entitled to any relief by reason of this complaint.'
The second Privy Council hearing, which I attended on Friday. 20 months later, was before the same committee to decide whether Miss Vijayatunga should be allowed to have the case re-heard on the grounds that its original decision was pig- headed and wrong, taken in disregard of the evidence before it. Lord Brightman seemed disinclined to favour this view.
On last week's occasion, Miss Vijayatun- ga argued her own case. It was presented on a basis of natural justice, with the implicit assumption that her counsel's pre- sentation had been, if not incompetent, at least inadequate. Their Lordships were unimpressed. Although Mr Carlisle (Rad- ley) was invariably civil and Lord Mulley (Warwick School, and Christ Church, Ox- ford) appeared a little out of his depth, the noble Lord Brightman (who, like Lord Goddard before him, went to Marl- borough) was plainly incensed. It was as much as he could do to be polite. Did Miss Vijayatunga's counsel raise this matter at the previous hearing? If so, it was a waste of time to raise it again. If not, it was inadmissible now. The petitioner fell back on the formula that she could not remem- ber if it had been raised previously.
Lord Brightman adopted the snap-off smile technique, a well-known device Of lawyers when they wish to suggest that they are much cleverer than those around them. 'What right have you to come and argue now when your counsel could have raised this point at the time?' he rasped, in answer to a legal argument.
Obviously, I do not know whether Miss Vijayatunga's views on cell biology are worth one shake of a ragworm's tail. If she marshalled her coelomocytes half as pa- tiently and intelligently as she presented her case, I should think her thesis should be devastating, but that is not my point. She produced affidavits and letters from other professors to say that her thesis was original, brilliant and deeply relevant to the problems of the Lysosomes in their vexing coelomocytes, but it could have been a load of codswallop. I neither know nor care. What interested me was the puzzlement on Miss Vijayatunga's face when she heard their Lordships' masterly verdict: Their Lordships regretted that they had insufficient jurisdiction to over- rule their own previous ruling. Then we all sloped off to lunch.
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