Good afternoon One and All. And Welcome. And thanks to Sir Ivan

I prepared a speech and then wondered, as a white, male, elderly, middle class, allegedly privileged, lawyer, interested in cricket, whether I should tear it up and start again in the light of current media reporting.

But I didn’t because I can’t help being any of those things. And given I am one of the 80% of the white UK population I decided that any thoughts I have about advantage should be in relation to that 80%.

Looking around I can see only one brown face and no black faces. Dinshaw Master told me a few moments ago that he was the only brown face at the school in his time. There are a few disabled now, but that is largely from age. That all reflects the school in our era and I see no purpose in apologising for it. Of course we need to ensure we address current problems but were we to consider the population of BHASVIC now I suspect it would be very different.

When I was younger, I guess my ambitions would have included earning money, having a house, a car, and a family. I have achieved those but looking back, it has been the journey that has given me as much pleasure – the highs and lows, of life, work and sport, the people I have met, the places I have visited.  I feel I have been fortunate and I doubt whether that journey would have happened without the grounding I received at our school. Talking over lunch to Norman Wright, the only Football Blue (1971) I know from the School he feels similarly. So thank you School for helping with the journey.
My approach to today has been to look for the benefits I feel I accumulated from this School. How did they influence my life as a lawyer and my involvement in sport?  And how did law and sport come together? At heart it is about friendships and connections in social life, work and leisure.

Of course I passed the 11+ but I was never an academic at school. I was reasonably good at cricket and I was selected to play for the School Under 14 team in my first year when I was eleven. 

Later being cricket captain had consequences. I recall Stan Cave, the Under 14 manager and a delightful elderly northern gentleman, picking me out in class one day to ask what the first rule was. I had no idea what he was talking about. It was a maths lesson. How embarrassing! He had to tell me what was obvious TO HIM: keep your eye on the ball. Perhaps in modern parlance stay focussed on your primary objectives.

School chess also provided a regular but rigorous diversion from academic studies. Matches against other schools were regular features and less physically demanding than football. And who remembers the 430pm train journey to play Steyning Grammar School, until Dr. Beeching destroyed part of our history in 1963?

By virtue of outlasting my peers to a third year in the sixth form, ostensibly to apply for Oxford (there was no chance of that) but in reality to spend more time playing cricket, I became Head Prefect. This was something of a fulfilment of one observation of the Headmaster Harry Brogden, that my abilities were administrative rather than academic.

Nonetheless he encouraged me to apply to study Law at Southampton. I was offered a place by a Professor who must also have had an interest in cricket. I doubt I would have succeeded on academic merit but perhaps the Head’s reference helped out!

My Law Degree was not much to write home about, and my university career was based largely on chess in the winter and cricket in the summer. I captained some very articulate and useful young cricketers – not an easy task but it had benefits in later life.

In 1968 I returned to Brighton where I was offered articles with Sir John Donne, an old friend of my father, both of whom loved cricket. John sponsored me to join the MCC. In a remarkable coincidence of timing I was admitted as a Solicitor on 15 May 1971, the same day as I was admitted to membership of the MCC.

Recently I came across a press cutting in the Brighton Evening Argus of a case in which I represented a fifteen year old boy in Brighton Juvenile Court following an assault at the Annual School Athletics at Withdean. At the time of this case I had been a solicitor for six weeks. My defeated client had put a running spike through his opponent’s foot. My rhetoric described it as ‘just a scuffle’ which the headline writer picked up on. The outcome of a small fine rather than the custodial sentence my client might have expected, no doubt encouraged me to believe in my advocacy. But I was never sure whether the picture of a hot air balloon adjacent to the article was a comment in itself.

One lesson I took from the occasion was that it might not be what you know but who you know. The Chairman of the Juvenile Court Bench on that day was none other than Mr. H Brogden.

You can perhaps see a theme developing here – the interrelationship of school and work and sport.

In 1972 I started to think that a taste of London Life might be fun for a while. An old school friend, Richard Hunt, suggested I apply to the legal department in the local authority where he was working. So in October 1972 I moved to work in the Camden Legal Department.  Richard told me recently that the deal was sealed in the men’s toilet. The Chief Solicitor told Richard he might as well appoint someone who was a friend of his. Equal opportunities was not then the force it is now.

Another old school friend, Doug Fraser, later my Best Man, helped my move when he offered me a space in his flat in Turnham Green in West London.

I also made contact with Roger Morgan, one of the best school cricketers who had been here two years ahead of me. He introduced me to Hampstead Cricket Club, a leading London sports club where I started playing in April 1973. There I also later met my wife Diana. We had two sons, both of whom I am pleased to say still play sport in their 30s.

I thought working for a local authority would be less onerous than family and divorce law in Brighton. How wrong I was.  Camden employed me mainly to conduct legal proceedings in relation to the protection of children, which had become a major social issue following a child death in Brighton.  I worked with some of the leading social workers, paediatricians and psychiatrists of the day. This led to national and international activities in that field, and offers to teach, write and research child law and to conduct child death inquiries.

I found it ironic that I developed my career writing, given that at school my English was the subject of justifiable criticism. The end of education is not the end of learning!

By the mid 1980s I decided there was more scope in running my own child law practice, which in large part through the hard work of my excellent partner, flourished in Croydon for over 20 years. We had a legal aid practice, advising children, parents and many children’s charities and developed an interest in adoption and education law.

In the early 1990s I was approached to become a part-time Chair of the new Special Educational Needs Tribunal. I sat on that Tribunal for 23 years, and in 2007 I got converted – by legislation – to a Judge – a rather more impressive title than a Chair.

I have two main purposes in tracking that personal progress –  through family, school, helpful friends, fellow professionals. My experience has been that so often it is not one’s personal achievements that matter but those that you can develop in coordination with other helpful and maybe like-minded people, including old school friends. And the contribution made to the creation of the journey of others, colleagues, students and family, has been an important part of my journey.

In the last few years I have found a way to combine personal and professional interests. Child protection and adoption work forcefully showed me the hardships experienced by many children and their families. The Tribunal work taught me an enormous amount about their special needs, in particular in relation to physical disabilities and neurodiversity such as autism, dyslexia and ADHD, and the family struggles they can create..

But what I have learnt recently is how much sport and other physical activities, and the arts at large, can contribute to the inclusion, health and well-being of disadvantaged young people, in a way which we did not foresee in our school days. A look at the BHASVIC website shows just how far the educational system has changed with attention to equality, diversity and inclusivity.

Sadly consecutive governments, central and local, still fail to promote systems to support these needs and benefits. We have to look more to private organisations. Locally the community is really fortunate to have both Brighton and Hove Albion – where the Blooms have made a great contribution – and Sussex County Cricket Club and the Aldridge Academy – where John Spencer has done likewise – all provide important social benefits through their Community Foundations.

So in conclusion it has been an exciting and fulfilling, and perhaps unfinished, journey for me – from early school days to the present day.

I believe in the power of communities and shared ideals. My family and this school provided me with a foundation for combining that thinking and continuing to strive to work in that direction. Continuing contact with the Crew on Table 4, support for this event and for the regular Old Boys lunches now organised by Alistair Rapley in London provide opportunities for those discussions.

Two final thoughts. Does anyone know how BHASVIC is described on its website? Be a Happy, Active, Successful, Valued and Independent member of the Community. [PS I learnt later invented by Alison Cousens, Head of Safeguarding and Media at BHASVIC]

And secondly an allusion to the school motto Absque Labore Nihil. Noel Coward said ‘work is much more fun than fun’. I guess those two concepts fit my thinking pretty well.

So to you all – many thanks for listening to my journey and thanks again to the School for helping it to happen.

Richard White 1957 -1965

As you set out for Ithaka

Wish for the road to be long,

full of adventure, knowledge and discovery.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

angry Poseidon- don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbours seen for the first time;

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.

Without her, you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.