Harrison's poem 'V.' became a cause célèbre when it was televised in 1987 by Channel 4, dividing the nation on standards of literary taste and moral rectitude.  The cultural rift between his origins and his university education is encapsulated in imagined dialogue with the Beeston skinhead who sprays racist graffiti in his ancestors' graveyard and addresses the poet in a rich and blunt vernacular.

Conclusion:

The ‘New Monumentality’ exhibition offers a good deal of reflection on the university and its local community.  The premise of the New Monumentality was that architects should embed the fine arts in a wider context of social interpretation (Catalogue p.36), whilst an AJ review of Chamberlin Powell and Bon's development plan in the mid 1960s was that 'cleverly and impressively they are creating a new order, correct as a stand against the surrounding chaos of Leeds' (Catalogue p.46).  Lance Wright's 1974 critique of the university campus included the observation that 'Though physically near to the city centre, it is socially a thousand miles away' (Catalogue p.34), compared with a Spanish review of the new architecture of the university as a 'city within a city' (Catalogue p.47).

Whilst exploring and enjoying the ‘New Monumentality’, we need to:

Firstly, see the new campus architecture of the 1960s in a wider context of expansion in higher education, acknowledging especially the 'other half' across the binary divide, more or less unrepresented by the new monumentality or by architecture of great distinction, until they too achieved the status of 'new universities' in the early 1990s; and secondly reflect on the wider social implications of this newly expanding 'tertiary sector' recalling the rich local experience on which historians might draw.  We need to delve into the archive but also into personal memory to document these outcomes. Gerard Byrne in his exhibition piece for ‘The New Monumentality’ quotes a reflection of the historian E.P.Thompson, apt indeed for researching the impact of higher education policy in the 1960s:

‘The question, of course, is how the individual got to be in this ‘social role’, and how the particular social organization… got to be there.  And these are historical questions. If we stop history at a given point, then there are no classes but simply a multitude of individuals with a multitude of experiences.’

Bibliography

Patrick Nuttgens (1988) What should we teach and how should we teach it?  Aims and Purpose of Higher Education  (Aldershot: Wildwood House)

Harold Silver  (2007)  Tradition and Higher Education  (Winchester: Winchester UP)

Brian Simon (1991) Education and the Social Order 1940-1990  (London: Lawrence and Wishart)

Brian Thompson (1971) Portrait of Leeds  (London: Robert Hale)