No Plans for Tomorrow
By the summer of 1971, school had become an ending rather than a beginning. The remaining weeks were occupied less by lessons than by counting the days until the final bell. For many fifteen-year-olds, the prospect of leaving full-time education was welcomed with enthusiasm, even if what lay beyond remained something of a mystery.
Such uncertainty was hardly unusual. In industrial towns and cities across Britain, many boys left school with only the vaguest idea of what work they would eventually do. Some had apprenticeships arranged through family connections, others already knew which factory, warehouse or engineering works they would join. Many simply expected to find employment somewhere nearby and make the best of it.
There was little sense of following a carefully planned career. At fifteen, tomorrow seemed a long way off.
The immediate concern was simply to leave school behind. Football occupied far more thought than employment, and weekends were measured by the fixture list rather than any discussion of future ambitions. The idea of mapping out an entire working life belonged to another world.
Schools, of course, attempted to provide guidance. Careers advisers visited periodically, supposedly to help pupils make informed decisions about employment. In theory, the system offered every school leaver an opportunity to consider the possibilities available.
In practice, experiences could vary considerably.
For some pupils, useful advice was undoubtedly given. For others, the process appeared to consist of little more than a brief conversation before attention moved elsewhere. Not everyone felt that their particular circumstances, abilities or ambitions received much consideration.
One school leaver remembered the experience chiefly because there seemed to be no experience at all. The careers adviser never sought an interview, never asked about future intentions and never offered any meaningful guidance. At the time it seemed curious, although conversations with classmates suggested that he was far from alone.
It would be easy, viewed through modern eyes, to criticise such arrangements. That would probably be unfair. Schools dealt with large numbers of pupils approaching the end of compulsory education, while employment opportunities in many industrial areas remained plentiful enough that finding work was often regarded as less problematic than deciding precisely what form it should take.
Nevertheless, the result was that many teenagers entered adult life with little more than a vague expectation that something would eventually turn up.
That was certainly the position here.
There was no long-held ambition to join the Armed Forces. There had been no childhood fascination with ships or aircraft, no collection of military books and no carefully nurtured dream of wearing a uniform. Until recently there had scarcely been any awareness that Manchester possessed docks capable of receiving ocean-going ships, let alone any understanding of Britain's various maritime organisations.
The distinction between the Royal Navy, the Merchant Navy and other seagoing services meant very little. Indeed, it came as quite a disappointment years later to discover just how many maritime careers had existed unnoticed at the time. The Royal Fleet Auxiliary, the Royal Naval Reserve, the Coastguard, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and the Merchant Navy all represented possible paths that had simply never appeared on the horizon of a Manchester schoolboy.
Information was not entirely absent. Leaflets occasionally appeared from one source or another, encouraging school leavers to consider careers that might otherwise escape their attention. One such Royal Navy leaflet found its way into view, although exactly how it arrived remains uncertain. It certainly had not been actively sought.
Even then, there was no immediate decision.
The leaflet joined countless other pieces of information that briefly attract attention before being forgotten. It suggested opportunities, unfamiliar trades and a life that seemed to belong to people from entirely different backgrounds. It was mildly interesting, but hardly life changing.
If anything, the uncertainty simply became more obvious.
Questions began to arise that had previously been easy to ignore. What work should be chosen? What sort of future was actually desirable? More awkward still, what if there was no clear answer?
It is tempting, many years later, to assume that important decisions are reached after careful thought and deliberate planning. Real life is often rather less organised. Looking back, the closing weeks of school appear instead as a succession of small, unrelated incidents, none of which seemed especially significant at the time.
A visit to Salford Docks had come and gone. The memory of a remarkably tidy merchant ship had already slipped quietly into the background. School itself was almost over. Summer beckoned, football remained far more interesting than employment, and adulthood was approaching whether anyone felt prepared for it or not.
The future had not become clearer.
If anything, it had become rather more confusing.
Then, during an ordinary conversation on the school sports field, someone suggested a visit to the Royal Navy Recruiting Office at Blackfriars House in Manchester.
It was not part of any carefully considered career plan.
It was little more than a dare between a handful of equally uncertain schoolboys.
Sometimes, that is all it takes for an ordinary day to begin changing the course of a life.
Part 1 Essay 3
Part 1 Essay 4: Walking into Blackfriars
Primary source: RN-001
RN-E-103
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