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Charles Carter: The visionary who
became Lancaster’s first Vice-Chancellor
N
ot native to Lancaster –
and with little connection
to the Lancashire region
for that matter – it
probably came as a surprise to
Charles Carter that he would
become one the founders of a
university in the north west.
However, that is just what the
startlingly interesting man would
go on to do.
Carter was born on August
15th 1919. He was brought up in
Rugby by his father Frederick, an
authority on electrical railways,
and his mother, a Quaker whose
faith Carter later took up. He
excelled academically when he
attended the prestigious Rugby
school before ascending to
Cambridge University. While there
he attained firsts in Mathematical
Tripos and Economics and
sharpened his left-wing outlook.
During World War Two,
however, Carter’s life took a much
different turn.
He was incarcerated
for being a
conscientious
objector, a result of
the faith which he
had inherited from
his mother.
He remained in Strangeways
Prison for three months until he
was sent to the Friends’ Relief
Service, a domestic group for
Quakers in 1941, which helped
people through the process of
evacuation and dealt with the
turmoil of bombing. Despite the
difficulties Carter endured in the
process he may have been glad to
have become part of the Friends’
Relief Service when on New
Year’s Day 1944, he wed Janet
Shea whom he had met while
working for the Quaker group.
After the end of the war
Carter was given a lectureship in
Statistics with his old university
where he worked under Nobel
Prize winning economist Richard
Stone, though shortly after in
1952 Carter left his role, citing
the growing Keynesian debate
as his reason for departing his
university. He then took up a post
at Belfast University and became
an advisor to both the government
in Northern Ireland and the
Republic. While an advisor Carter
was a strong critic of the tribalism
of both the unionists and the
republicans. In 1959 Carter then
returned to England to take up
a prestigious role in Manchester
as chair of political economy,
which meant he was the editor of
the Economics Journal, where he
began to introduce more modern
editorial practices to the Royal
Economics Society.
While residing in Manchester
Carter then began to toy with the
idea of setting up a university.
He first met with Lancaster’s
early administrative council on
December 4th 1962, and just
one day later he was declared
Vice-Chancellor of Lancaster
University. According to the
Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, it was with his
“appointment in 1963 as the
founding Vice-Chancellor of
Lancaster University that Carter’s
reputation was secured and his
powers as an administrator and
leader could reach fruition.” To
Carter it seemed a logical step
given that there was no university
between Manchester, Liverpool
and Glasgow. He intended the
university to “act as a centre
to preserve what is best in our
civilization and culture” but also
“to prepare people for tomorrow,”
directly renouncing the prejudice
from some of his southern
contemporaries which claimed
the university was an attempt
to “do something to civilize the
north.”
In his r