The JBH Speech Competition at Leighton Park

The Rising Generation Patriotism

England and the Octopus

and Nationality

Hypocrites

Competition Winners Life’s Little Things Big cities breed little men 1914 Joseph Fryer

1948 David Ward

1914 Eliot Wallis

1949 J Fairn

1915 Joseph Fryer

1950 Nick Hudson

1987 Ousamah Aldeghather

1916 R Jennings

1951 Ahmed El Darwish

1987 Tom Penny

1983 Helen Cadbury

1986 western Amanda Dickins The lot of Muslim women is superior to that of their counterparts

Conscientious Objections

The right to revolt

Elverston-Trickett 1954 Robert Slowe The 1919 William Nationalisation of Coa l Secondary 1917 Basil Bunting

1952 J Evans

education for all

1988 Ousamah Aldeghather 1989 Adam Boulter

The White Man’s Burden Better understanding 1920 R Jackson

1955 Robert Slowe

1921 T Russell

1956 David Barlow

1922 W F Hudson

1957 Arjuna Aluwihare

1922 C B Taylor

1958 Jan Piggott

1990 Ali Imam

Vivisection 1991 Tim Dudderidge

in Anglo-Egyptian Relations 1923 Ronald Grimshaw 1959 Thomas Lowenstein

Co-education vs single sex education.

Don’t 1925 Lesslie Newbigin 1960 Rob Webb

1992 Stephen Patience

The J. B Hodgkin Speech Competition

100th Anniversary 20 November 2014 Souvenir Programme

1993 David Goss

1994 Simon McCoy

Jo Haley ban1995 drugs, ban peanuts 1996 Anna Baxter

1924 Sidney Leigh

1960 Nigel Burdett

1926 Duncan Wood

1961 A N Burdett

1997 Marie-Joy Knight

1927 Henry Wilson

1962 Quentin Davies

1998 Sam Burch

Ban the “F” word Everything religion can do, science can

Inter-racial do better 1929 Martin Hawkin 1928 Duncan Wood

adoption be encouraged We should all 1964 Cshould J Leete 2000 Ben Foley 1963 Richard Harris

1999 Miguel Calvo

Free from gender speak a Jforeign language 1931 Williams 1966 Terry Pilchick yourself 2001 Laurie Fitzjohn-Sykes 1930 Jack Cuthbertson

1965 Anthony Hodge

2000 Olly Hunt

Scotland the Brave, Scotland the Free2003 Big Tom Brother is watching 1933 David Goodwin 1968 Tony Baldry MacAndrew 1932 Michael Cadbury

1967 Kojo Bentsi-Enchill

2002 Ezra Steinhardt

1970 The Roy Douglas 2005 Gabriella Patel has you,1935 arePeter youCadbury watching him?

Celebrity Culture 1934 J Gordon Adams

1969 David Day

2004 Matthew Groom

gone

Fox Hunting I’d rather be a woman any day

1936 Philip Headley

o far1937

Robert Turner

1971 Charles Debattista

2006 James Dickie

1972 Simon Rosenthal

2007 Naomi Alderson

Comedy is a serious business Man is totally lacking in free will 1938 Peter Harris

1973 Julian Pitt

2007 Samuel Peat

1939 Grigor McClelland

1974 Guy Smith

2008 Will Stevens

1940 John Slater

1975 Guy Barefoot

2009 Amber Wilson

1941 John Slater

1976 Robert Logan

1942 G Edwards

1977 Guy Smith

2010 Naomi Alderson owing to his dependence on generic and environmental influence The need

to offer

Our duty in 2010 Louis Patel

1943 Karel Reisz 1978 Matt Rowland-Jones 2011 appropriate aid to Developing Countries 2012 1944 Stephen Brewer 1979 Roger Linley

Ben Singer

the war Reform of the House of Lords Moffatt’s 1945 Joseph Whitney

1980 Alice Hudson

Translation of the Bible 1946 Dugal Campbell

1981 Duncan Crossley

1947 Stephen Wall

1982 Jude Durr

Jess O’Hara

Esperanto 2013 Manu Sidhu

Counter-productive aspects of competition of Leighton Park

“ Reading maketh a full man.

Writing maketh an exact man.

Speaking maketh a ready man.”

Lord Bacon

From a letter from JB Hodgkin, regarding the new Prize for the Best Speech.

Welcome from the Head ‘The human brain starts working the moment you are born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.’

In a recent survey, it was found that public speaking ranked fifth in the top forty British fears. No doubt the survey was not overly scientific, but the findings are plausible, and I suspect that surveys in other countries would produce similar results. Sir George Jessel’s well known remark, quoted above, will ring true for many people.

This week we are celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin Speech Competition, and in doing so we are acknowledging the major role it has played not only in the promotion of the skills associated with public speaking, but also in the process of preparing generations of pupils to feel less daunted by their later opportunities to speak in public.

Thank you for being part of this week’s celebrations. I am sure you will want to join me in extending a particular welcome to a direct descendant of JBH – his great grandson, Jonathan Hodgkin. He is here with his wife, Jennifer, who gave many years of service to this school as a governor.

I would like to extend particular thanks to the competitors, the judges and all who have been involved in the organisation of the competition and our celebration dinner. It is good to have these events taking place as we are about to celebrate the School’s own 125th anniversary.

THE J.B. HODGKIN SPEECH COMPETITION 1914-2014

100th ANNIVERSARY COMPETITION Thursday 20 November 2014 7.00 pm Competitors and Topics Finbar Aherne ���������������������������������������� A worse world without war Alex Angwin ���������������������������������������Inequality is our inner-quality Nat Dean-Lewis �������������������������������� Extra time: Postponing failure Victoria Roberts ��������������������������������������������������Live and let me die Manu Sidhu ���������������������������������������Sexism: Why men suffer more Judges Jonathan Hodgkin Ian House (Chair) Zella King Charles Marling Raphaelle-Marie Ransom Presenters Nicola Phillips and John Woodings Demonstrator Fergus Head Administration and Research John Allinson, Graham Carter, Cathy Harman, Penny Wallington

Special Note: Please note that there are two heckling periods in

Nigel Williams Head November 2014

each speech this evening. The first period of five minutes is for current Leighton Park pupils only; the second period is for anyone in the Hall.

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THE ‘JBH’:

PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE The JBH Speech Competition is unique. It is undoubtedly one of the most distinctive features of an education at Leighton Park School. Since its inception in 1914, it has challenged and excited competitors and their audiences, and it has assumed a totemic significance in terms of the value the School places on the art of public speaking.

Elocution had already been introduced into the School’s hobbies programme in the earliest days of the School’s history, and a prize had been awarded since 1899. It soon became a house-based contest, and had four separate components covering the art of reciting as well as oratory.

As the ailing Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin reached the end of his 25 years of chairmanship of the School Governors, he set up and endowed a Speech Competition which was different in character Faint memories Few JBH mishaps are recorded in the annals of the School Archives, but this extract from the Headmaster’s report to Governors in 1943 indicates that there was an occasional drama:

An unfortunate incident occurred. Hugh Beesley fainted on the platform in the middle of his speech on ‘Democracy and Social Security’. But I don’t believe it affected him seriously.

He had to speak at very short notice as one of the chosen candidates could not get back from an interview at Cambridge.

from the house competition.

Participants competed as individuals who chose their own subjects, and heckling was not only allowed, but encouraged. The ability to make necessarily impromptu replies to hecklers has been a distinctive characteristic of the competition since it began in 1914.

In 1915, looking forward to the opening of the Central Buildings (now known as Peckover), Charles Evans, Headmaster, wrote:

The assembly hall will probably be the scene each winter of the competition for the J.B. Hodgkin Elocution Prize: the first competition was held in the gymnasium in December 1914. As a result of this, Eliot Wallis wins a prize of books to the value of £3 and J.B. Fryer a second prize, value £1. D. Gilford and L.S. Penrose ‘also ran’, and very creditably indeed.

These four are pioneers in what I hope may prove to be a notable feature of the school; they spoke without notes to an audience of two hundred; they stood some heckling manfully; they showed

Battle of the Titans This extract from the memoirs of Duncan Wood reveals how pupils who were later to lead distinguished public lives enjoyed the rivalry of the JBH. Duncan returned to LP as a teacher, then became Director of the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva.

Lesslie Newbigin was a highly respected theologian, bishop and ecumenist.

On the list of winners my name alternates with that of J.E. L. Newbigin. He won it in 1925 when I felt too young to enter the competition. I beat him to it in 1926 with a speech in favour of Esperanto. In 1927 he took back the prize with a speech entitled ‘Beauty for Ashes, a Plea for Composting Garden Rubbish and Other Forms of Recycling’. This was a sensible, down-to-earthtopic, whereas I chose the title ‘Education, Religion and Peace’, an invitation to ‘waffle’ with the result that I failed to capture the audience. I won the prize again in 1928 with an attack on the hobbies certificate which the newly appointed Edgar Castle had just introduced. I seem to have carried the audience with me on that occasion.

Confidence breeds confidence Grigor McClelland, whose later prominence in the fields of industry and education must have entailed extensive practice in the art of public speaking, described his JBH initiation as follows:

I won in 1939 after a gruelling series of competitive rounds.

Responding to the heckling required a quantity of self-confidence which apparently I possessed since I won the day, with the topic ‘When we have won the War’ – World War Two, then some months old.

I have never forgotten this occasion, which I found more challenging than most of the other hurdles one had to clear in the final year. It was a formative and very valuable experience.

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us to some extent what not to choose as subjects…. It is a strong desire of my own that Leighton Park should train its sons to be able to speak in public with courage, power and modesty.

is not the gymnasium we have now. And yes, the J.B. Fryer is indeed the young man who was killed in the Alps in 1921 and in whose memory Fryer House was built and gifted to the School.

It is interesting to note that Peckover Hall, which ceased to be the venue for the competition over forty years ago, had not even been open at the time of the first ‘JBH’. Furthermore, the gymnasium referred to in the text

The phrase ‘J.B. Hodgkin Elocution Competition’ continued to be used for the first three decades of the competition’s lifetime, but thereafter it became more common to refer to the contest as the ‘J.B. Hodgkin Speech Competition’. One imagines that this was partly to distinguish between the housebased Elocution Competition, which continued into the 1960s, and the JBH. The demise of the house Elocution Competition was, according to one commentator in the ‘Leightonian’ magazine, due to the increasing pressure on boys to focus on their exams.

The phrase ‘plus ça change’ comes to mind.

It would be incorrect to say that we are celebrating the hundredth competition this week – there

From stammer to glamour One joyful success story concerns a pupil called David Goodwin. He had a serious speech impediment when he arrived in 1931, and obviously found it difficult to rise to the challenge of a Grove House initiation ceremony in which he had to sing a song. When badgered to answer a question, he stammered the answer – he couldn’t speak. There are two ends to this story – one happy: David was given speech therapy and improved to such an extent that he won the 1933 JBH – a massive achievement and a well deserved moment of glory. The other is a very sad end: he was killed in action in the Second World War, at the age of 32.

Gruelling schooling Roger Warren Evans, the 1952 winner, later went on a nationwide tour of America with the Cambridge Union, ‘travelling by day and debating by night’. He later reported that none of the 48 debates was as gruelling as the JBH!

Both Foots defeated Hugh Foot (later Lord Caradon) and Michael Foot were destined to have lengthy and successful careers, respectively as diplomat and politician, yet neither of them won the JBH. Michael’s topic, in the 1930 competition was ‘The Future of the Liberal Party’. He had won a mock election for the Liberal Party in 1929, so perhaps the enthusiasm for the topic was already beginning to wane. Both brothers returned as judges of the competition, Michael wittily describing the event as ‘a number of boys butchered to make a parents’ holiday’ have only been ninety-seven so far. The fact that there was no 1953 competition is simply because its position in the school year changed to July from December. We suppose that the absence of the competition in 1918 was due to the War, but the 1985 hiatus was largely attributable to the judges’ decision in 1984 not to make an award – they did not feel that the competitors that year had reached the standard of previous years. The School needed time to reflect, perhaps lick its wounds, and develop a strategy which eventually resulted in the reinvigoration of the competition.

Within a couple of years, The JBH judged by famous femme fatale Research continues on the circumstances surrounding the recruitment of the international film star Marlene Dietrich to the 1955 judging panel. The photographic evidence is proudly displayed here.

Falling in love again?

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people were claiming that the competition of that year was one of the best in living memory.

It is very good to know that, thanks to the determination of the School and, in particular, the dedicated staff who have trained and encouraged the pupils, the Competition has not only survived, but is going from strength to strength. As part of the recovery strategy in the 1980s, it was decided to limit the audience to the staff, the pupils and a few of their parents.

It is good to know that our anniversary competition will be held in front of a larger audience – quite possibly the largest the competition has ever known.

After last year’s radio broadcast, this year’s podcast continues the technological march forward of the competition. Some of us may not be around in 2114, but we trust this programme will be useful to those preparing the bicentenary version.

Tackling heckling: The Wright way Kenneth Wright, OL 1923-29 and Governor 1949-83, made an outstanding contribution to the financial governance of the school. For most of his life he was hard of hearing. In his memoirs he describes a local newspaper’s report of his participation in the JBH as follows:

I gave a solemn speech about the slum problem; the local paper gave me an accolade:

Wright was effective in dealing with hecklers – he is deaf and did not hear them and continued regardless.

RULES AND GUIDANCE: Extracts from the Founder’s Letter of 25th June, 1917 (Although the competition did start in 1914, this document was not created until 1917.)

In awarding the Prize, the following are chief points to be borne in mind:I. CONCISENESS. It is a painful thing to listen to diffuse addresses.

Many people, when they have said what they meant to say, start afresh and say most of over again in different words. Others may ramble in with little point or connection in their remarks.

II. CLEAR ENUNCIATION. Much of the effectiveness of a speech is lost if parts of it are not distinctly heard, especially if the speaker falls into the vicious habit of dropping his voice at the end of a sentence.

Whist ‘shouting’ should be definitely discouraged, and the competitors taught to adapt their voices to the size of the Hall and its acoustic properties, no one should win the prize who fails to make himself heard in every part of the room.

III. EARNESTNESS. On the whole, John Bright was the most effective of the many good speakers to whom I have had the privilege of listening; and this chiefly because every word which he spoke was the outcome of his own intense conviction and of his longing to make his hearers share that conviction. Some well known orators have so disgusted me with their efforts to win applause for themselves, and their apparent indifference to the moral issues underlying their arguments, that they have influenced me against the cause which they were professedly advocating. I should therefore like each competitor to choose his own subject, so that he may be able to forget himself in his desire to convince his hearers.

IV. SIMPLICITY AND LUCIDITY OF LITERARY STYLE. Here again John Bright’s simple, forceful English was a great factor in the effectiveness of his speeches, and I should like all tricks of oratory or evidence of self centredness to be discouraged.

V. SYMPATHY WITH AUDIENCE. A speaker who can convince his hearers that he is in sympathy with them, even on one point, will do much to secure their sympathy with him, even when their general attitude is hostile. Also it is advisable to adapt the line of one’s argument, or at any rate the words in which it is presented, to the character of the audience.

To give each competitor an opportunity of showing that he can skilfully get into touch with his audience, I suggest that the speech be delivered in the new School Hall to as large an audience as can conveniently be gathered.

VI. PRESENCE OF MIND. I have often feared that the modern practice of reading papers in Friends’ gatherings has lessened the numbers of those who can ‘think on their feet’, and I should like a decided preference given to those competitors who can speak without notes. Read speeches would, or course, be altogether ruled out.

Further, I suggest that a certain limited, amount of heckling by the audience be encouraged, so as to ascertain whether the speaker has any gift of effective repartee.

Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin

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Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin The full name represented by the initials JBH is hardly ever heard in 21st Century Leighton Park School. The celebration of the 100th anniversary of the competition that Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin inaugurated is an opportunity to reflect on the major role that he had in the early days of the school.

1843-1926

When, in 1918, his son, Jonathan Edward Hodgkin, by then a Governor himself, announced his father’s full retirement from the Board, the minute recorded gratitude for his ‘valuable and indefatigable service’.

Charles Evans, Headmaster at the time JBH died in 1926, wrote:

Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin was a member of a prominent Quaker family which had settled in the North East of England. He was a banker, and he served his local community in several notable ways, including being Mayor of Darlington.

‘(Leighton Park’s foundation) is due to a group of Friends who saw the need for a Public School with Quaker ideals: but if an ‘onlie begetter’ is sought …. then he is to be found without doubt in Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin. In a long life given to good works for the sake of others, few things were nearer to Mr. Hodgkin’s heart than the welfare of Leighton Park; before its foundation and for 24 years after, he brought the characteristics of a strong personality, including pertinacity, courage and a personal interest in everyone in the school, to bear on the community.’

It is clear that he had a strong interest in the education of children in its broadest sense, and an equally strong sense of his parental duties.

Though his views would probably be regarded as somewhat unfashionable nowadays, it is interesting to note the deeply rooted principles on which they were predicated:

‘What right has any man to make it harder for his child to yield his will to God by shirking, under any pretence whatsoever, the plain duty of enforcing the habit of prompt, unquestioning obedience?’

Our Children’s Inheritance a pamphlet published in 1899

It seems clear that not only this evening’s Speech Competition, but the founding and the survival through its difficult infancy of Leighton Park itself, are directly attributable to Jonathan Backhouse Hodgkin.

The crucial nature of his role as the Chairman of the founding governing board of the school, The Friends’ Public School Company Limited, is amply evidenced in so many documents and items of correspondence held in the School Archives.

His retirement from the Chairmanship, owing to ill health, occasioned a minute at the Governors’ meeting of 7th November 1914 (see right):

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