The Horace Stanley Richardson Papers have, rather pleasurably, consumed the majority of my time as a volunteer in the archives of Magdalen College. Through cataloguing the Richardson Papers, which range from a remarkably witty memoir to a membership card for the Fire Brigades Union, I have become convinced of the immense value they represent for the historical record. Richardson’s papers not only give us an insight into life at Magdalen in the 1930s, they do so from the perspective of a college servant, thereby offering a rare working-class insight on Oxford life.
Horace Stanley Richardson (1906–1979) was born and raised in Oxford, attending East Oxford Council School under the encouraging mentorship of headmaster Edward Greening Lamborn until 1920. As a young man, Richardson dove into the political life of the city, becoming an active member of both the Oxford City Labour Party and the Transport and General Workers’ Union. During the 1926 General Strike in Britain, for instance, Richardson acted a delegate on the General Council of the Oxford City Labour Party. In the opening pages of his memoirs, Richardson colourfully recalls the uproar of his fellow delegates at a meeting of the General Council following the Trades Union Congress’ decision to call off the General Strike. Richardson remembers the dismayed speech made by a railwayman on the prospect of returning to work: ‘I have a friend, a station master out at Charlbury, the first station master to come out on strike. They can’t sack him, no, but they can make him clean out the shit houses until his very soul revolts’.
Throughout his life, Richardson would fiercely embody the spirit of staunch trade unionism found in this speech, continuing to question what he saw as the impossible position occupied by the British working-classes in the twentieth century, who were forced either to accept mistreatment and poverty or undergo the perilous uncertainty of strike action.
Between the years of 1929 and 1939, Richardson worked as a college servant at Magdalen College. Richardson’s memoir is a treasure trove of interesting particulars of Magdalen life in the 1930s, covering topics ranging from his observations on Eights Week to the low wages then paid to college staff.
Specific attention is paid to the dining hall and habits of members of Magdalen College – perhaps unsurprisingly, due to Richardson’s work in the buttery. In one humorous but revealing passage, Richardson writes of the often-ignored labour of college staff:
By this time, the visitor will have had his small walk up to the high table and will point with pride to their glasslike surface. “How do you keep that fine shiny surface[?]”, someone will ask. “Elbow grease, sir, with the aid of a little Johnson’s furniture cream”.
Despite the persistent issues he found with the treatment of college staff, Magdalen still possessed a great deal of intrigue and beauty for Richardson, so much so that he was inspired to write both an unfinished novel set at the fictionalised ‘St Giles’ College’, which is very heavily modelled on Magdalen, and one short mystery story titled ‘Cup and Bells’, based closely on Magdalen’s environs.
The novel follows the college servant Frank Harper, a perhaps thinly-veiled stand-in for Richardson himself, as he navigates an atmosphere of growing political unrest. Richardson outlines the efforts of Jim Pether, Harper’s fellow college servant, as he attempts to rally the staff at St Giles’ College into unionising despite the ‘real danger of finding himself victimised by the college authorities on account of his activities’. The fragment also contains a provocative subplot which details the blossoming romance between Jack Roberts, a communist undergraduate set to return to his former position as a miner in Wales upon the completion of his studies, and Daphne Gresham, the daughter of the Principal of St Giles’.
‘Cup and Bells’, which Richardson unsuccessfully submitted to The Observer under the fittingly Oxonian pseudonym ‘Torpids’, is a comic mystery concerning the misplacement of the college’s Founder’s Cup. The story, Richardson informs us in his cover page, was inspired by the annual Christmas Eve carol service held in Magdalen College Chapel. By the end of ‘Cup and Bells’, Richardson reveals to his readers that a sinister grand theft has not taken place. Instead, the treasured Founder’s Cup has been intentionally mislaid in a juvenile prank organised by the daughter of Magdalen’s Dean and her lover, a Rhodes scholar.
Traces of his socialist ideals unsurprisingly followed the committed Richardson into Magdalen’s hallowed halls, as he, like his character Jim Pether, encouraged fellow college staff to unionise. College staff faced many difficulties, including their low wages and the untenable hours they were expected to work during college festivities, with Richard mentioning that for the May Ball ‘one worked all one day, all the next night and part of the following morning – twenty eight hours or more without a break. For this we received £1 extra’.
In response to these challenges, Richardson endeavoured to develop an increased sense of solidarity among college servants. His attempts were perceived fearfully by a number of fellows, Richardson recalls, ‘[e]ven [by] those who called themselves socialists and maintained that they agree with Trade union membership’. Indeed, Richardson notes the general distaste for trade unionism felt amongst college staff, remarking that ‘[t]he fall of the Labour government in 1931 and the formation of the “national” government was hailed with delight by the majority of my colleagues’. As a result of this widespread antipathy, Richardson’s efforts were largely unsuccessful and he was eventually gently encouraged by Redvers Opie, the Home Bursar at the time, to seek alternative employment.
Richardson left Oxford during the Second World War, becoming part of the London Fire Brigade and later an official for the Fire Brigades Union. From 1945, Richardson became a ‘professional revolutionary’, as he terms himself in his memoirs, holding various trade union positions. The most significant of these was as Organiser and then Secretary for the London and Home Counties Area of the Clerical and Administrative Workers’ Union, now known as the Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff (APEX).
The papers of Horace Stanley Richardson have found a home at Magdalen College after being donated by his son and Magdalen alum, David Richardson (C 1963–66), and granddaughter, Kate Hanna. Select papers from the Richardson Papers will be used for an upcoming exhibition illuminating the lives of staff at Magdalen College.
Written by Laura Gibbs, Archives Volunteer