The Ruby Reunion
Credit: courtesy of Terry Dignan
Camilla Sterne joins the annual reunion of City’s first journalism class 40 years after they graduated
The original group of graduates take a trip to County Hall, which housed London’s administration and local government. From left: Tom Welsh (with back to camera), Jacky Law, press officer, Peter Kendall, Terry Dignan, Sarah Hawksworth and Steve Howell.
N
ine members of the “famous class of ‘76” sit shoulder-to-shoulder around a table in Le Mercury, a French restaurant in Islington. They are graduates from the first class ever to receive journalism diplomas from City after their tutor Tom Welsh established the programme in 1976. The rare slant of afternoon sun catches the wine and olive oil bottles on shelves and tables, refracting onto the yellow and blue walls as the group chatters over the glug of wine, chink of glasses and the clink of cutlery. They’ve chosen to reunite at Le Mercury out of regard for tradition. The café is around the corner from Welsh’s former flat, where they often met throughout the 40 years since graduating. A few of the 13 classmates couldn’t attend, but the most notable omission is Welsh, who died in April 2014 at the age of 85. “We might never have met again without Tom,” says Jon Slattery, former deputy editor of the Press Gazette, reminding the group that it was the fatherly Welsh who orchestrated their yearly reunions. “He was our teacher, our guru, our friend,” says Sarah Bayliss, formerly of the Times Educational Supplement and an education journalist. Welsh edited 13 editions of McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists – still a set text on all media law courses
today – and left City two years after launching the course to edit the North West Evening Mail at Barrow-inFurness, Cumbria. “He thought journalism was essential to a liberal democracy,” says Terry Dignan, formerly of the BBC and host of the Radio show Westminster Hour. “He was all about challenging the establishment.” Welsh remained in close contact with the first City graduates, whom he lovingly nicknamed “the famous class of ‘76” (though they graduated in 1977). He is at the heart of their reminiscence on this sun-flecked Friday in Islington.
L
ike all good journalists before them, the ‘76 alumni seem adamant to convince me that the glory days of journalism are over. “I feel really sorry for people going into the profession today if they can’t have the fun that I had when I was doing it,” says Dignan. “Because we played!” They are brimful with stories of “the real old days of Fleet Street”, rubbing elbows with sources, smoking in lectures (long before the university went smoke-free in 1993) and an infamous and slimy court reporter who “lived and breathed crime reporting.” When they weren’t crammed into the one-room journalism department, studying Teeline shorthand
6