"Because looking back now, I realise it has had quite an influence on me.
His father, a native Ulsterman, so Finnegan is an unusual name in Ulster – most people
would think it was Southern and Catholic – somewhere, some Finnegans must have turned coat and come
up and got into the ascendance in Northern Ireland!
But anyway, he studied – my grandfather, that is father’s father, John Finnegan – studied
at Queen’s, in Belfast, and then went across to UCL and studied physics, and then came
back and did various things like teaching.
But interestingly – and this is what I look back to particularly – became the first
Secretary, a senior officer like Registrar, of Queen’s University, just after it became
properly open to people from all traditions - in other words, Catholics as well as Protestants.
In theory it had been, but 1908-1909 was when it really did, and my grandfather, John Finnegan,
stayed there for 16 years, and that was the period in which there were these huge challenges
of opening to all sections of the community, and he, it was said, was really the guiding
hand that led that.
They were a very obviously open-minded and international family, because I know my father
grew up with a German governess, and that also very much influenced him all his life,
because he was a German-speaker … well, up to a point.
And then my father - first of all did Classics at Queen’s, and then went across to Cambridge
to do a sort of second top-up degree, and I think he wondered about going into the Church
and doing theology, but actually didn’t … but taught for a while in a school, and
then went to Magee College.
He was very very much tied up with the Student Christian Union, and the whole story is to
do with that, but just going on with the University thing, during his life, my father was instrumental
in turning Magee College from a Presbyterian-dominated place into a University College, which meant
it had to be an Act of Parliament – this was later, after the War – which was then
open to all sections of the community, and Catholics, and he had to work very very hard
to do that.
So I feel both my grandfather and my father were very much instrumental in opening higher
education to all sections of the community, and I can’t help connecting that with my
own views about the Open University.
So that’s just one strand in my father’s life.
I mean, there were other ones.
Other important strands worth mentioning?
Well, there were two other important strands.
One was his politics, which was also very much influenced by my mother – there are
more stories about that.
But they were both very concerned, again, to bring Catholic and Protestant together,
which was not a bit easy in the North of Ireland there.
I mean, even I growing up in such a liberal, open-minded family, grew up subconsciously
thinking the world was divided into two things – the Catholics who were a bit irrational,
and the Protestants who maybe were a bit dogmatic and Puritanical, but, nevertheless, they were
kind of rational!
Don’t tell me how I could have got that idea, but anyway, they were very concerned
to combat that.
And they were also very left-wing, and one of the things they did in the thirties was
to build up, really for the first time in Derry - which was the second city of Northern
Ireland - a Labour Party which was across Catholic and Protestant.
I remember, even as a small child, the dockers coming into the house, and me thinking they
were rather rough but liking them, and they did a great deal – my parents – to try
to get better conditions for the dockers who had no sort of Health and Safety and proper
equipment, they were always getting injured.
So that was very important in my life. "