Margaret Joachim (née Carpenter)
1. When you were at Brighton & Hove High School, and what is your fondest memory of school?
I was at BHHS from 1960 – 1967, coming from a local primary school on a ‘direct grant’ place. Perhaps my fondest memory is of the currant buns we could buy at break. More seriously, it was the sheer pleasure of exploring anything and everything that I was interested in, and being encouraged to ‘go and find out’ rather than being told the answer.
2. Who was your favourite teacher and why?
There were lots of good teachers, but my favourite was Miss Sinclair, who taught geography. She was our Upper Fourth Form Mistress, and we lived in the geography room which had maps and pictures of fascinating foreign places on the walls. Two years later I was in a small group for O-level ‘quick geography’ (which we did in a year, having done ‘quick history’ the year before; some sort of timetabling miracle thus enabled us to do German or Greek as well). She made the subject come alive. I can still draw most of the maps and diagrams we learned (features of a glaciated landscape, rivers of Yorkshire, etc. etc.). She was really interested in us, and in one post-exam lesson she told each of us what we were going to do with our lives – I was going to be an MP! I tried three times but never quite succeeded at that, but I have been involved in politics for the last fifty years. She also inspired me to go on to read geology at university, which I have never regretted.
3. What were the benefits of being in an all-girls school?
To begin with – not being knocked over by bands of boys aggressively playing football in the playground, or teased unmercifully for being short, clever, and always the last person to be chosen for a games team. Later on – not having to worry about clothes (we wore uniform even in the Sixth Form), gradually building some lifetime friendships, and being encouraged to realise that I could do and be anything that I aspired to. As all the pupils and teachers were female there was never any feeling that girls just ‘didn’t do’ some things. It built a level of self-confidence that was very useful when I subsequently repeatedly found myself to be the only woman in the room and had no intention of making the tea or taking the notes.
4. What did you want to be when you ‘grew-up’?
When I was six or seven I just wanted to be famous. Later on and in no particular order I wanted to be a lawyer, a librarian, a research chemist and a biologist. I never got anywhere near any of it!
5. What do you do now, and what are the most rewarding and challenging parts of your job?
My main career was in the IT industry, which I managed to squeeze into before there were any computer science degrees. I wasn’t much good at programming but I turned out to be rather better at managing people who were, and I ended up running very large multi-million pound projects, which was rather high-risk because if they went wrong it could all end up in the newspapers. I loved managing and developing people and trying to persuade customers to be reasonable – which was also challenging. When your team is up against ridiculous deadlines you have to stick up for them, protect them from the flak so that they can get on with the job, and order in the pizzas when everyone is working until midnight yet again. Alongside that I helped set up and run several employee-management forums which were places where representatives of staff and management could talk about the tough issues that affected work and company profitability. In the 1990s I also did three years’ part-time training at a theological college and was ordained as an Anglican priest, and have combined priesthood, project management and political activity ever since.
Technically I retired ten years ago – but the only thing I’ve actually retired from is being paid. I no longer work in IT but I still run projects and people, most recently as Chair of the Candidates’ Committee for the English Liberal Democrats and as a Director of Ordinands for the Church of England. And I’m facing a deadline again – only eighteen months left before I have to submit my PhD thesis on heraldry in medieval psalters.
6. What are you most proud of so far?
Four things, I think. Being employee co-chair of Fujitsu Voice and in 2009 persuading the management that the very limited money available for pay increases that year should all go to the people in the lowest pay grades. Seeing the first ordinand that I have accompanied through the church discernment process being ordained deacon this summer. Being presented with an MBE by Princess Anne on International Women’s Day this year, for services to women in politics. And having a daughter who is a chartered electrical and mechanical engineer and is currently Chief Engineer for London Overground – something which would have been unthinkable for a woman when I started out in employment.
7. What was the best piece of advice you were given whilst at Brighton?
When I went to tell the headmistress (Miss Ashcroft) that I had got an interview for Oxford and ask her what I should do, she said: ‘Take a hot-water bottle!’ She was right – it was mid-December, the college room I stayed in was freezing, and I would have been thoroughly miserable and unable to sleep without it.
8. What advice would you give to your 18 year old self?
‘This above all, to thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.’ Or woman – but I forgive Shakespeare because it wouldn’t have scanned.
9. What book, film or piece of music would you recommend to your younger self and to your fellow alumnae?
The book which was recommended to my younger self and which really kicked off my interest in politics generally and women’s role in particular, was Testament of Youth, by Vera Brittain. I read it when I was in bed with measles just before A-levels, and I still have the same (now very battered) copy. The book I would recommend to everyone now is Invisible Women, by Caroline Criado Perez. This exposes the gender data gap and the horrifying extent to which everything from car seatbelts to national financial policies is still essentially designed by and for men, because no-one bothers to collect detailed data about women and what would work for them. We still have a very long way to go. (Oh, and for your desert island, the complete works of Anthony Trollope.)
10. How would you like to be remembered?
It would be lovely to be remembered. If by some outside chance I am, I hope it would be as someone who tried to make a difference.
