A Checkered Career Across Three Continents
Migel Jayasinghe
©
Copyright 2021 by Migel Jayasinghe
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I
resigned my job as a Sub-Inspector of Police, after nearly five years
of service in Ceylon, because I considered immigrating to the UK. My
underlying motive was to return to my studies and improve my chances
of achieving an affluent, enviable, life-style. I applied to the
British High Commission in Colombo and was awarded a ‘priority
voucher’ to enter Britain.
I was 26
years old. Accompanied by two former class-mates roughly my age, we
sailed from Colombo to Marseilles on a French-owned cruise ship. We
then took an all-night train to Calais, from where we boarded a
steamer to sail across the English Channel to reach Folkestone. We
arrived at London Victoria, by train around midday, on 30th March
1963.
Five
years of menial work, washing dishes, factory assembly, night
security work, ice-cream selling, postman, van driver and the like,
was my lot while changing ‘digs’ almost with every move
from job to job. Meanwhile through self-study, I succeeded in
acquiring GCE A’ Levels in English Literature, British
Constitution and Economics...I had to overcome another hurdle before
I was allowed to enter London University to read psychology for a BA
(Hons) degree. The requirement was for a GCE O’
Level in a modern European language. I attended evening classes at
the West London College in Notting Hill for a year, before I got that
qualification in French. Since I did not have science subjects at
GCE A’ Level, my
qualification would
not be designated a B.Sc. although the curriculum and the final
examinations were the same for both the BA (Hons.) and the B.Sc.
However, I had to pass an internal mathematics paper before I was
finally declared suitable to read psychology as a full-time student
at the University of London, Goldsmiths College (1968-1971).
It took
a while before I was finally awarded the annual £400 student
grant paid by the state covering the three-year period of my degree
studies. I was attracted to psychology mainly because of the
narrative and literary charm of Freud and Jung’s
writings; although at the time I could not have articulated it as
such. I discovered that reading popular journals in psychology, in
some way, for me, was therapeutic. I was therefore disappointed by
the dull ‘experimental’
and statistical treatment of the subject that the course at
Goldsmiths provided. It was the heyday of behaviorism and what went
inside one’s head, the ‘black box’, was virtually
ignored. The word ‘mind’
was taboo and anything relating to consciousness was dismissed as
being 'metaphysical', a term of opprobrium to almost all
psychologists of the time.
With
the miniscule student grant, I found that I was always short of cash
after paying the weekly rent for my digs. I had to ration my food
intake and visits to the launderette. Soon, I found a uniformed job
as a part-time security guard where I could work the whole of the
weekend at a factory-site eating home-made sandwiches and drinking
coffee from a Thermos flask, earning a mere ‘fiver’ (£5)
for my pains. Unfortunately, this restricted the time available for
serious study at the College Library as well as the London University
Senate House Library, that I left university with just a Lower
Second-Class degree in Psychology. Such a qualification, I soon found
to my dismay, was worthless in the job market at the time.
After a
short period of work as a proof-reader at a publishing house, I
returned to my preferred role as a van driver. I delivered anodized
metal to householders in Edmonton and Tottenham in North London, who
returned the finished (assembled) products through me back to the
factory. While engaged in this job, I had the opportunity to read the
London evening newspapers. In those days in London, there was an
‘Evening News’ in addition to the ‘Evening
Standard’ still much in evidence today. The ‘Evening
News’ carried items designed as IQ tests over a period of a few
weeks and I discovered that I was quite adept at doing most of them
correctly. So, I applied to Mensa for the supervised IQ test, and was
recognized as falling within the top three percent of the population
in terms of general intelligence. I soon found myself a member of
British Mensa.
Mensa
paved the way eventually for me to become a Chartered Psychologist.
Once, I was invited to the Blackheath home of the then British Mensa
President Victor Serebriakoff for lunch. Serebriakoff himself was a
first-generation immigrant. Later, I was one of the participants in a
BBC televised program on Mensa presided over by David Dimbleby in
1973. The Belbins (Eunice and Meredith) directors of the Industrial
Training Research Unit in Cambridge to whom I had applied for a
research assistant job, saw me on the program, called me up, tested
me further, and offered me my first job in applied psychology. This
was to be solely a one-year contract.
Much
later, in the 1980s with a Masters degree in occupational psychology
from Birkbeck College, I could proudly call myself an Occupational
Psychologist with Chartered status. Much of my professional work
since than has been administering psychological tests, assessing and
rehabilitating those disabled and disadvantaged in the world of work,
and helping them back into re-training and/or employment.
In
August 1974, discouraged by what I felt to be an uncharted future, I
left my job and digs at Cambridge, sold my little old Austin Mini for
£100, packed everything else I possessed in a suitcase, and
left with two Cambridge girls in a Vauxhall Estate owned by one of
them on an overland trip to India. (I have written and published a
detailed account of this trip elsewhere).
Before
leaving Cambridge, I had appeared before an interview panel which
selected psychologists for the Educational and Occupational
Assessment Service, a government department in the Ministry of Labour
and Social Services in Lusaka, Zambia. They were keen to have me, but
I politely asked to be allowed to make the decision after I had
completed the overland trip.
After
many adventures, the unlikely trio finally arrived in Bombay in
mid-September, where we split up. I continued my journey by train,
ferry, and taxi to Ceylon to reach my younger brother's house.
There,
as arranged by my parents, I met a beautiful and demure young lady,
nine years my junior, speaking very good English, who was willing to
share my life abroad. We had a colorful, well-attended, traditional
wedding at the bride’s home, not far from the capital.
Colombo,
on 3rd January 1975.
Even if
I had desired it, there as no job I could take up in recession-hit
Ceylon.
I
quickly telephoned the authorities in Zambia, and accepted their job
offer, on condition that they recognized my changed civil status and
issue me with two airplane tickets to Lusaka. They readily agreed. We
flew to Lusaka in mid-January 1975, and I took up work as an
occupational psychologist with the Educational and Occupational
Assessment Service. A Ph D qualified British psychologist was the
Director of the EOAS. The only other psychologist at the EOAS was a
young lady of Polish origin who was disappointed that the newcomer
was not a singleton as she had been informed.
In
Lusaka we were put up at a pleasant enough hotel and spent several
months there in what felt like an extended honeymoon. While I spent
most of my day at work, my newly acquired wife, Sue (shortened,
anglicized name) remained in the hotel room. This irked her somewhat,
but was soon able to secure a job as the personal secretary to an
American heading the World Health Organization branch office in
Lusaka. This guy and his wife, black Americans, soon became our
friends, and when we finally secured a house to rent, were able to
invite them for dinner. They, of course, would invite us in turn.
There was a vibrant expatriate community of varied nationalities in
Lusaka, and quite a few of them became our personal friends.
Then
the inevitable happened, and Sue had to leave her job after eight
months, to have our first baby. He arrived, a few days later than
anticipated, on 21st December 1975. Not long after his first
birthday, Sue was pregnant again, but the climate in Lusaka, with Ian
Smith of Rhodesia bombing us whenever he felt like it, was not all
that salubrious. So, reluctantly, I had to agree to let her go back
to Ceylon, by then re-named Sri Lanka, all by herself, with our son
T, only a few months after his first birthday, so that she could have
the second baby safe in a maternity home in Colombo.
By the
time I completed my 3-year contract in early 1978, our second son D,
on whom I had not set my eyes, was four months old. I was in a hurry
to get back, but the Zambian authorities were practically begging me
to sign another contract. I had by then been promoted to one of the
two Assistant Director positions of the EOAS, and for the last six
months or so, was acting as Director. They wanted to confirm me as
Director. I had to ignore all their pleas and return home.
However,
in April 1978 when I moved to the UK by myself, I was only able to
find work as a clerk with a firm of West End solicitors. I found
temporary accommodation of a one-bedroom flat belonging to my alma
mater, Goldsmiths College during the summer vacation. I was
therefore able to get down my family to Britain by July 1978. But our
situation was far from satisfactory. When the students started
arriving towards the end of September, we were forced to leave our
flat. For the first time ever, we were facing the prospect of
homelessness.
The
Royal Borough of Greenwich council put us up in temporary
accommodation, a ‘dump’ where we were pelted with rotten
eggs and our second- hand car vandalized by yobos. We stuck it out
for about three months, feeding our two toddlers on take-away
Chinese, until we were able to put down a small deposit on a terraced
house in neighboring Plumstead, in southeast London. Even with my
three-year stint as an occupational psychologist in Zambia,
apprenticed, as it were, to well qualified, experienced British
psychologists, I was told that without a postgraduate qualification,
I could not expect to work as a psychologist in Britain. My chances
of returning to a professional work role began to look very slim
indeed. When at last I was able to get my savings across to the UK
from Zambia, I foolishly believed that, with a young family, leasing
a corner shop selling sweets and tobacco would secure my financial
future. This venture proved to be very ill-advised. It was based in
New Cross not far from Goldsmiths College. The shop was broken into
several times and we faced violence from putative customers who
refused to pay for items they grabbed from our shelves. Even
school-boys in gangs began to plague us.
Would
you believe it, a third world scenario in metropolitan London!
My wife
then took up secretarial work with a Bank in the City, and I closed
the shop down to concentrate on gaining the Occupational Psychology
M.Sc. degree from London University Birkbeck College. I could just
about claim four years work experience in applied psychology to
qualify for admission for the 2-year part time course. Just before I
qualified in 1982, I was able to get a temporary job as an
occupational psychologist at the Waddon Employment Rehabilitation
Centre, near Croydon, in Surrey. Although we could sell our house in
Plumstead and move closer to my place of work in Croydon, we had
great difficulty getting rid of the lease of the now empty shop
premises. Finally, I managed to transfer it back to the previous
owner for a pittance.
After a
period of nearly a year, I was confirmed in my job as a basic grade
occupational psychologist with the Manpower Services Commission. I
was to continue working at the Waddon Employment Rehabilitation
Centre for over seven years at the same basic grade while even those
new entrants to the profession whom I had helped to train were being
promoted to senior positions. My manager at the ERC championed my
cause since he saw me as one of the more competent psychologists, he
had come across during his period of service with the Manpower
Services Commission. The MSC by then had undergone many changes and
was renamed the Training Education and Employment Directorate. I was
impelled to take my grievance of not being promoted to an Employment
Tribunal. At the height of the Thatcher era this proved to be
ill-advised, and I lost my case. The concept of ‘institutional
racism’ had not been recognized at the time. I was then
transferred to the Manpower Services Commission Head Office in
Sheffield and served one year commuting between Croydon and Sheffield
spending only weekends at home. In 1989 I found myself designated a
Higher Psychologist, a new designation concocted as a compromise
between the Basic Grade and the Senior Grade. I was then transferred
to work at a residential Employment Rehabilitation Centre in Egham,
Surrey. This involved a daily drive of over 30 miles on the M20
motorway to my place of work.
I
sensed a degree of harassment in the workplace in the form of
occasional missives I received from the Head Office, that I was
impelled to resign in 1990. After a short period in the wilderness
trying to sell insurance and the like, I took up private consultancy
work as expert witness in personal injury litigation, redundancy
counseling, and (ironically enough) running job search workshops. As
the work was intermittent, I wasn't making a living, and although my
wife was now working for the Home Office, we failed to keep up the
mortgage payments regularly. We were taken to court and nearly lost
our home and all that we had worked for.
By
then, I had also acquired a teaching qualification from the
University of Greenwich, which again proved worthless in securing
employment. I was in my late fifties and no prospective employer, I
surmised, would take a second look at me. I had been applying for
literally hundreds of jobs, even simple clerical jobs, with all my
efforts proving negative. However, just in the nick of time, early in
1996, my sixtieth year, I was invited to an interview by the Royal
British Legion Industries at the Royal British Legion Village, in
Aylesford, Kent, another 30-mile drive away from my home. The
position advertised was for an occupational psychologist,
specifically for someone to start from scratch, a vocational
assessment and development centre on the same lines as the state-run
Employment Rehabilitation Centres. By this time the ERCs were being
phased out.
I was
interviewed by the Health Services Manager, a lady who herself was
nearing retirement age. She appeared to be impressed enough to
consign a large sheaf of applications for the position lying on her
table to the dustbin, and to hire me on the spot. I established from
scratch the Royal British Legion Industries vocational assessment and
development facility catering to the employment rehabilitation needs
of ex-service men and women from all over the UK. At last, my work
began to be widely appreciated and I began to contribute articles in
applied psychology to professional journals. I worked at the RBLI
until I reached the state retirement age of 65 in June 2001.
The
culmination of my career achievement was the publication of my book
‘Counselling in Careers Guidance ‘(2001) Open University
Press, a few months before retirement. It was translated into
Japanese in 2004.
With
our two sons grown up and leading independent lives, we (self and
wife) felt able to sell our home and move to Costa Blanca, Spain, in
2005. I have since taken up seriously, what had since my school days
been a hobby, creative writing. I believe it still remains a hobby in
my old age, although I keep receiving ‘Honorable Mentions’
for poems Iregularly submit to competitions. I have also
self-published two volumes of poetry while Xlibris published ‘A
Literary. Smorgasbord, memoir, fiction and poetry’ (2019).
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