Patricia Batty Shaw

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive. This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it's the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection. It was archived without the music, so although the Castaways choices are introduced, they're not part of this recording. Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website.

Speaker 10:26

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy eight.

Speaker 10:30

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:34

Our castaway this week is the Chairman of the National Federation of Women's Institutes, misses Patricia Batty Shaw.

Presenter0:41

Are you especially fond of music?

Patricia Batty Shaw0:44

Not especially. I didn't realise until I was beginning to look at these records that music really did mean very much in my life, but I realized, looking back, that um most things that have happened to me in some way have got some sort of musical connection.

Presenter1:00

Have you any musical skill? Do you play an instrument?

Patricia Batty Shaw1:02

I used to be able to play carols and nursery rhymes on the piano, but my daughter's now so much better than me that I've given up.

Presenter1:09

Did you have any plan in choosing your records? Are you looking back?

Patricia Batty Shaw1:13

Mainly looking back. Um very

Patricia Batty Shaw1:17

Largely they are records that remind me of family events. I've always been very lucky in having a very happy family life.

Patricia Batty Shaw1:26

And um we've done so many things together as a family that I think these are basically what they would remind me o of.

Presenter1:34

Where do we start? What's the first disc?

Patricia Batty Shaw1:36

Well, thinking of family, the first one that I'd like to hear is a sentimental mother.

Patricia Batty Shaw1:43

is Thank Heaven for Little Girls from Gigi, sung by Maurice Chevalier.

Presenter1:48

and you have one little girl.

Patricia Batty Shaw1:50

I have one little girl, and she's got those appealing eyes that um are sung about in the record.

Presenter1:57

But she's not so little nut.

Patricia Batty Shaw1:59

Afraid not, no, rather grown up, no.

Presenter2:04

Maurice Chevalier and the sound track of Gigi.

Presenter2:07

When you were a schoolgirl, what did you want to be?

Patricia Batty Shaw2:10

I would like to have been clever enough to have been a doctor, because my father was a doctor. Sadly I was not very good at maths and Latin, and so decided towards the end of my school life that I would like to try and be a social worker.

Patricia Batty Shaw2:26

In those days they were called Lady Arminer's. They are now medical social workers. Lady Arminer always sounded rather grand, and I always remember the time when I was at Guy's Hospital when a kind patient brought me a present and said, Here you are, this Lady Arminer is a box of chocolates for you, and here is a cigar for Lord Arminer, which was really rather sweet offer.

Presenter2:48

Surely rather sweet offer. That's very nice. It was in fact um at the hospital that uh you met your husband.

Patricia Batty Shaw2:57

At Guy's Hospital is.

Presenter2:58

You have previously been to the University of Southampton to to read social studies.

Patricia Batty Shaw3:04

Yes, I was at um the University of Southampton, where I did a social science certificate for two years, and then in those days you went for another year to do your practical work.

Patricia Batty Shaw3:15

This I did under the Institute of Armanders, and indeed went to Saint Thomas's Hospital and to Oxford and to Liverpool to do my practical training.

Presenter3:24

How long were we, Lady Amanham?

Patricia Batty Shaw3:27

Well, after all that effort, I was only a lady armoner for one year because I happened to meet my husband during that time.

Presenter3:33

Yeah, exactly, yes.

Presenter3:36

And where did you go after that?

Patricia Batty Shaw3:39

For a brief period of time we lived in Kent, and then we moved up to Norfolk.

Presenter3:44

You did start, I I know, by having a house in the cathedral close, in Norwich.

Patricia Batty Shaw3:51

Yes, indeed we did. A lovely old house, with the kitchen right down at the bottom, the dining room up the next flight of stairs, the drawing room up the next, and the bedroom and bathroom up the next.

Presenter4:02

Very handy to run.

Patricia Batty Shaw4:03

Very easy. Compensated by the fact that you looked out and saw the beautiful spire of Norwich Cathedral when you were doing the washing up.

Presenter4:10

And now where do you live?

Patricia Batty Shaw4:11

I now live in a little village about eight miles west of Norwich, called Barford.

Presenter4:16

And it's a seventeenth century house, have you?

Patricia Batty Shaw4:19

Yes, perhaps even a little earlier than that. It's Wattle and Daub and Beams, and when we first moved in

Patricia Batty Shaw4:25

It was all black paint and green paint, and we spent many happy months, if not years, scraping the beams so that they were in their natural state, and they look very nice now, I think.

Presenter4:35

It's very rewarding to bring a house back to life like that.

Patricia Batty Shaw4:39

Oh, it is. Uh it's one of the things, our hobbies, that we've enjoyed together over the years. Very hard work, but very rewarding, as you say, when you finally finish. Trouble is, of course, you never do finally finish.

Presenter4:53

What's your second record?

Patricia Batty Shaw4:54

Well, my second record is a reminder of my uh university days at Southampton. Every year we had what was called a rag week, where the money raised by various different means went to different charities and one of the uh things that I enjoyed very much was taking part in an old time music hall, which always happened at the end of Southampton Pier. I don't know if it's still there now, but it was great fun no work was done for for a week before or a week after and to remind me of those days, and the companionship and friendship that I had amongst my fellow students then, I would very much like to hear Get Out and Get Under.

Presenter5:38

Get Out and Get Under, sung by Gerald Kirby.

Presenter5:42

Now, you do a lot of social work in East Anglia. You're a Justice of the Peace, and you're a member of the Council of the University of East Anglia, and also on a working party.

Presenter5:53

for that most fascinating of subjects, the local history.

Patricia Batty Shaw5:56

Yes. Lord Blake's uh committee appointed by the National Council of Social Service to investigate the pattern and working of local history and those interested in it throughout the country.

Patricia Batty Shaw6:09

We um are still taking evidence and making deliberations, so that I can't really say very much at the moment.

Patricia Batty Shaw6:17

But it has been, and I am sure is going to be, a very fascinating experience.

Patricia Batty Shaw6:22

hoping to finish by the end of this year.

Presenter6:25

When did the Women's Institute come into your life?

Patricia Batty Shaw6:29

It came into my life when I moved out to live in Barford and Ramplingham, my home village, in about nineteen fifty nine.

Patricia Batty Shaw6:37

And um

Patricia Batty Shaw6:39

I was busily scraping the beams in my new home when some one asked if I'd go down and join the Institute.

Patricia Batty Shaw6:47

and as I knew no one in the village I thought this would be a very good way of meeting people and making friends.

Presenter6:53

Well, I gather when you joined the Barford and Ramplingham Institute they were having rather a rough time. In fact, they were talking of closing.

Patricia Batty Shaw7:00

Yes, they were. It was very sad. I thought now at last I'm in to make friends, and I go down and find that they were all going to close, and you know what it's like when you open your mouth and say something. I said, Oh, dear, what a pity Can't we try a little longer? and um promptly found myself made their new en sec.

Patricia Batty Shaw7:19

Which was great fun, hard work, and we've been flourishing on and off ever since.

Presenter7:19

Yeah.

Presenter7:25

How many branches does the Women's Institute have?

Patricia Batty Shaw7:28

Throughout England and Wales and the Channel Islands and in the Isle of Man we have about nine thousand three hundred odd institutes.

Presenter7:37

It's a lot, isn't it?

Patricia Batty Shaw7:38

It is, and they are spread all over the country.

Presenter7:41

Pretty well every town and village, I suppose.

Patricia Batty Shaw7:44

Not quite, but nearly every area is covered. I think we now I would only give an approximate figure, because of course they go up and down but we have about four hundred thousand members altogether, or just a little over, possibly.

Presenter7:55

Or just a little bit

Presenter7:56

Yeah.

Presenter7:57

quick mathematics an average of about

Presenter8:00

were roughly fifty members a branch.

Patricia Batty Shaw8:03

Yes, I'm sure your mathematics is much better than mine. But um s of course the branches vary in sizes. You will find some with only twenty five members and some with a hundred and fifty, depending on the size of the community in which they are working.

Presenter8:17

Basic question, what does it cost to join?

Patricia Batty Shaw8:20

The subscription for nineteen seventy eight, nineteen seventy nine is going to be one pound seventy five.

Presenter8:27

Right, some more quick mathematics. That only works out at about uh

Presenter8:31

Three or four pence a week, you can't grumble at that.

Patricia Batty Shaw8:33

No, I don't think you can.

Presenter8:35

Record number three.

Patricia Batty Shaw8:37

Well, on my desert island

Patricia Batty Shaw8:40

I think that I would be thinking sometimes of the holidays that I had spent with my family, and perhaps rather wistfully thinking of the cooler climes in the Northern Hemisphere. I presume my desert island is going to be a lovely sandy one and rather um full of sun. Of course. Uh so I think I'd like to be reminded of Pingle's Cave, because we had the most wonderful holiday many years ago now,

Patricia Batty Shaw9:08

up the west coast to Scotland.

Patricia Batty Shaw9:10

And um it was a beautiful day with a lovely cool wind, and we went in a little boat and looked at Fingal's Cave, and I'd like this music to remind me of that day.

Presenter9:26

The opening of Mendelssohn's Fingels Cave, Sir Malcolm Sartre conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Now one's first impression when when thinking of women's institutes is a meeting in the village hall to discuss jam making or something. Is it indeed a a country women's organisation?

Patricia Batty Shaw9:44

Oh, very definitely. We have got um a difficulty in the sense that country and urban areas the the edges have become very blurred. But basically, definitely, still a country women's organisation.

Presenter9:58

And there's a lot more to it, of course, than than jam making. There there is now a a Women's Institute College of Home Economics and that sort of thing.

Patricia Batty Shaw10:08

We've had our college just outside Oxford, called Denman College, named after our first National Chairman, for now thirty years. We're celebrating its thirtieth birthday this year.

Patricia Batty Shaw10:19

And um to celebrate it, we are indeed building on a new part for home economics instruction. But of course that isn't the only thing that we do at Denman, nor is it the only thing that we do in our own institutes or in the counties. At Denman College you can have a course on Jane Austen or car maintenance, as well as any of the cooking and and craft courses that you would expect to have. And just as you will find the same thing happens in institutes, you will have all sorts of different uh lectures and and courses uh as well as the traditional ones that you always think about when you think of the WI. When did the WI start?

Patricia Batty Shaw11:00

In nineteen seventeen eighteen.

Presenter11:02

Whose idea was it?

Patricia Batty Shaw11:03

The idea originally came over from Canada.

Patricia Batty Shaw11:06

There was a Mrs Hoodless there, who sadly lost her baby, and indeed another child, because she didn't understand about proper nutrition and care of children.

Patricia Batty Shaw11:16

And she got a group of women together, and together they learnt how to look after their families.

Patricia Batty Shaw11:22

Now this idea spread over from Canada to England in the year that I have mentioned, and basically it is, of course, just the same now. We are there to learn how, to look after our families, and to improve conditions in rural life.

Presenter11:40

It has a a rather middle-aged image. Are are there age limits?

Patricia Batty Shaw11:45

There's no age limit. Each institute decides on their own what the lower age limit should be. Sometimes it's sixteen, perhaps it might be seventeen.

Patricia Batty Shaw11:54

But of course we do vary in age. One of the great things I think when you talk about the WI is its variety, not only in the things it does, but in the people who are members.

Patricia Batty Shaw12:06

And um the variety of ages and backgrounds and interests, I think, is perhaps where our strength does lie.

Presenter12:13

A lot of music and drama traditionally.

Presenter12:16

And festivals at the end of it?

Patricia Batty Shaw12:18

Sometimes the next national event, as we call it, will be in nineteen eighty, which will be drama and speech and music.

Presenter12:29

And now there's a publishing scheme, I gather.

Patricia Batty Shaw12:33

We've always published our own leaflets, but now we are just branching out slightly and have established a two-way system, one internal publications and the other our own WI Books Limited, where we are in partnership with a publisher and a consultant to produce beautiful books written very largely by members that will be on sale to the public.

Presenter13:01

I suppose above all, the WI is is a big pressure group for all problems with particular interest for women.

Patricia Batty Shaw13:10

Yes.

Patricia Batty Shaw13:11

I think in our last history of Jam in Jerusalem we were called one of the largest or third largest trades union. I don't really like that very much,'cause we're not. But there are a lot of us who perhaps don't belong to a trades union or a professional uh group of any sort, and we still like to feel that our voice is heard in some way, and this of course we can do through the WI, whether it be at our own local council meetings in the county or our great big national annual general meeting at the Albert Hall, as we have in June.

Presenter13:43

I think record number four now.

Patricia Batty Shaw13:45

One of the best holidays that we used to have uh was a skiing holiday in Austria.

Patricia Batty Shaw13:52

And I would very much like to be reminded of some of those very happy, unsophisticated evenings that we had after a busy day skiing, very exhausted, and I'd like to hear some Austrian folk music, particularly the um Nappen dance, which is, you know, the one where you hit your bottom and your leather hosen very hard and make a lovely noise.

Presenter14:19

a great slapping of thighs and the Tyralian knappen tance.

Presenter14:24

What's the structure of the Women's Institute? Headquarters, of course, in London, inevitably.

Patricia Batty Shaw14:29

Yes, yes.

Presenter14:30

And then what? Local branches and then county federations and then national executive on top.

Patricia Batty Shaw14:36

That's right, yes. Three-tier structure really.

Presenter14:37

Three tails.

Presenter14:38

Yes, all sort of democratic coming up from the rank and file.

Patricia Batty Shaw14:42

We're very democratic, and do everything by secret ballot, which I think is terribly important. Perhaps sometimes it's a bit cumbersome, but it is important that this should be done.

Presenter14:51

So you started as an ordinary member of a village group, were very quickly co-opted into being on sick.

Presenter14:57

And then what was what was your next step?

Patricia Batty Shaw15:00

Well, at that time I'd got a small daughter, and was rather tied to the family, so most of my early days were d devoted to the local institute, which I loved very much. You know, I am still an ordinary member. You don't change just because you go and do other things, and I don't know really what ordinary is. But um then after a few years looking after the family, I got co opted on to the county and did work within the county area.

Patricia Batty Shaw15:29

And then finally, nationally, where I got elected and have um done various jobs on the National Executive over the last, I think, it is nine years.

Presenter15:38

And in June last year you were elected chairman. None of that nonsense about chairperson, I'm happy to note it.

Patricia Batty Shaw15:44

No, no, indeed not. We've always been a chairman, and the chairman we shall remain.

Presenter15:48

So now you're in your second year as chairman. Yes.

Presenter15:51

In London is there a a paid office staff to back you up?

Patricia Batty Shaw15:55

There is in Victoria

Patricia Batty Shaw15:58

They are there to carry out the policy that is decided by the members.

Presenter16:03

Now the whole thing began in Canada, you see. How international is the W I?

Patricia Batty Shaw16:11

International work has always been written into our Constitution, because we do think that even though we are working within our own local communities, it is very important for us to be aware of what is going on outside our own country.

Presenter16:26

So there are women's institutes all over the place in other countries.

Patricia Batty Shaw16:29

There are indeed, apart from Canada, Rhodesia, and America or Australia,

Patricia Batty Shaw16:35

Most of the European countries have the equivalent. They might not be called women's institutes, but they do the same job. And we all band together or are associated together through an international organization called the Associated Country Women of the World. Now they have about eight million members from about um roughly seventy six different countries.

Presenter16:56

That is a formidable pressure group, isn't it?

Patricia Batty Shaw16:58

It is indeed.

Presenter17:00

On on WI business, you've traveled quite a great deal.

Patricia Batty Shaw17:03

I have been fortunate. I have represented the WI at the various conferences for the Associated Country Women of the World.

Patricia Batty Shaw17:11

Very hard work, but very interesting, and very stimulating to meet women from other countries. It's interesting really, because although we don't all speak the same language, as women, when we meet together, I think we find that we have got the same problems and concerns for the future welfare of our families and homes and our country.

Presenter17:31

We've got to record number five.

Patricia Batty Shaw17:33

When my daughter was about seven we went and we were very lucky to be able to go to the Salzburg Festival, and this was the most moving and wonderful experience for us all.

Patricia Batty Shaw17:45

And one of the greatest things that I shall always remember is sitting in Mozart's house, in the very room where he himself had given a concert, and listening to the piano sonata, No. eleven.

Presenter18:06

The beginning of Mozart's Piano Sonata No. eleven, Kirkel three three one.

Presenter18:12

and it was played by Konrad Hansen on a Mozart piano.

Presenter18:17

The the event which always gets considerable press coverage is the big annual conference, which you did mention briefly, at the Albert Hall. Always that same press picture of ladies eating their lunches on the steps of the Albert Memorial. Yes. Now the Albert Hall doesn't hold um

Presenter18:33

nine thousand people, I don't think. So you can't have someone from every branch.

Patricia Batty Shaw18:38

No, we don't. Sadly. We have to have what we call a linking system. In other words, uh two institutes get together, and alternate years one goes from one institute, and then the next year another goes from another.

Presenter18:49

You have a tremendous amount of business to get through in your one day a year. The chairman has to be pretty ruthless, I gather.

Patricia Batty Shaw18:56

It takes a lot of preparation, I might tell you, and we have a very carefully worked out timed agenda, which we try to keep to. It isn't always very easy.

Presenter19:06

So to the minute. Somebody's got three minutes to make a point, and if she hasn't finished, then she's more more or less suppressed.

Patricia Batty Shaw19:09

I left you

Patricia Batty Shaw19:13

Well, not quite, just sort of it it indicated to her that it is time she stopped. She would put it like that.

Presenter19:18

Should we put it?

Presenter19:21

Record number six.

Patricia Batty Shaw19:22

We are very lucky in at Norfolk to have a lot of musical festivals, and indeed we have a lot of musical festivals in the whole of East Anglia.

Patricia Batty Shaw19:31

And I shall always remember the first time I heard and saw Britain's Noise Flood in Orford Church. The wonderful way in which the children sang and moved and joined in will always be in my memory.

Presenter19:53

The opening of Benjamin Britton's Noise Flood, recorded actually in Orford Church, Suffolk.

Presenter20:01

Now having absorbed all the knowledge of practical housekeeping that you must have absorbed in nineteen years or whatever it is with the Women's Institute, you should make a very efficient castaway.

Patricia Batty Shaw20:13

Well, not only am I very efficient as a WI member, but of course I was a girl guide.

Presenter20:19

Uh

Patricia Batty Shaw20:19

Uh

Presenter20:19

What Uh

Patricia Batty Shaw20:19

Uh

Presenter20:19

Wonderful. Oh, the whole thing's made. Would your handicrafts extend to building a hut, do you think?

Patricia Batty Shaw20:19

Yes, but

Patricia Batty Shaw20:25

I'd have a jolly good go.

Presenter20:26

And you can cultivate your gardener? Yes, indeed. Cooking, of course, you know about. Um no, and you're a very well organized lady. There's a story that when you went away to Australia for three weeks on Institute business, you made family meals for the whole period ready cooked and in the freezer, so that they just had to take em out and warm em up.

Patricia Batty Shaw20:48

Indeed, I do. You know, that's not very difficult. A lot of women have to do that, particularly women who go out to work regularly.

Presenter20:55

Three weeks.

Patricia Batty Shaw20:57

Well, of course the wretched thing was that when I came home they hadn't eaten half of them because kind friends invited them out to so many meals. I think there's one there still now.

Presenter21:07

Would you try to escape?

Patricia Batty Shaw21:10

Oh, never I I could not bear the thought of having to trust myself in the boat that I'd made myself, and I'd rather keep my feet very firmly on the ground and trust that my family would miss me after a little while and come and look for me.

Presenter21:24

Let's have another equipment.

Patricia Batty Shaw21:26

Just for pure pleasure, because I like it.

Patricia Batty Shaw21:29

I would like to have with me the Italian concerto, Bach.

Presenter21:41

The opening of Bach's Concerto in the Italian style in F major, played by Alicia de la Rocha.

Presenter21:49

Um well now we come to your last regard. Are we having Jerusalem?

Patricia Batty Shaw21:54

Well, you know, somehow the WI has been so much part of my life for so long that I don't think I need to have any practical reminder about it. We're not going to have Jerusalem.

Presenter22:05

Incidentally, why was that chosen as the WY anthem? It it does seem a little remote.

Patricia Batty Shaw22:11

Many years ago, when the movement first started, they wanted to have some form of song that you could sing together at the beginning of a meeting, and um a competition was held.

Patricia Batty Shaw22:21

And really there were so many peculiar uh songs sent in, the final straw being when Lady Denman opened an envelope and read in front of her, We Are an Ernest Band of Women that um she decided that it would be very much better to have a a well known song, and they selected Jerusalem, because it is very rousing, you know, when you hear it sung well.

Presenter22:46

Ridiculous.

Patricia Batty Shaw22:46

particularly at the Alward Hall.

Presenter22:48

Brightwell will take it as sung on this occasion and come to your last record. What is it?

Patricia Batty Shaw22:54

When we have the conferences in different parts of the world, we always have what I find the most moothing thing at the end of a conference called the interfaith service.

Patricia Batty Shaw23:06

Here we have a mixture of Christians, Moslems, Buddhists, Jews, and we always sing to the tune of Finlandia by Sibelius, the most moving final hymn.

Patricia Batty Shaw23:19

and I would like to have this with me on my desert island, to give me pleasure because the music is so lovely.

Patricia Batty Shaw23:26

and to remind me of my many friends throughout the world that I have made by being a WI member.

Presenter23:33

We haven't the vocal version, but here is the orchestral tune that you were talking about.

Presenter23:44

Finlandia by Sir Belius, played by the Halley Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbie Raleigh.

Presenter23:50

If you could take just one of your eight records, which would you choose?

Patricia Batty Shaw23:54

The last one.

Presenter23:55

Finlandia.

Patricia Batty Shaw23:56

Yeah.

Presenter23:56

And you're allowed to take one luxury to the island, will you?

Patricia Batty Shaw23:59

Well, being a practical lady, I'd like to take, if I may, a selection of my herbs from the garden. They'd give me something to do, they'd put some taste into my food, they'd help me if I was ill, and they'd give me a lovely scent at night.

Presenter24:15

That's a very sensible choice. And one book apart from that small list of the Bible, Shakespeare, and big encyclopedias.

Patricia Batty Shaw24:23

Kenneth Clark's civilization. It would remind me of all the lovely places I had visited over the years.

Presenter24:29

Right. And thank you, Mrs. Batty Shaw, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Patricia Batty Shaw24:34

Thank you. I very much enjoyed it.

Presenter24:36

Goodbye, everyone.