Laureation address: Joyce McMillan
Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters
Laureation by Professor Zinnie Harris, School of English
Tuesday 25 June 2019
Vice-Chancellor, it is my privilege to present for the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, Joyce McMillan.
Joyce McMillan is well known to those of us who work in the theatre, as someone integral to the success of the arts in this country. She is our leading theatre critic, writing mainly for the Scotsman, but having held positions on several other major newspapers. In an average year she attends and writes reviews for in excess of 250 theatre shows. It would be hard to find a playwright, director or theatre company in Scotland that has not been championed or encouraged by Joyce at some stage in their career. Theatre, she says, is the touchstone of her life, the place where she can see new ways of thinking developing, new ideas taking shape, and where we all encounter a kind of truth.
Joyce is also a principled and intelligent spokesperson and commentator on politics and social justice. She writes a weekly political column for the Scotsman and regularly appears on news channels and on Radio 3, Radio 4, the World Service and television.
What is less well known about Joyce is her commitment to social democracy and human rights, and her work as a volunteer both nationally and internationally. She says this came from an encounter with the emerging market forces of neo-liberalism in the early 1970s, which alarmed her, and drove her to dedicate herself to the defence of the social democratic settlement and values that had transformed the lives of millions in the decades after the Second World War.
Joyce was born in Paisley in 1952, and was educated at Kilbarchan Primary School, then Paisley Grammar School where she was awarded the Dux medal in 1970. After school she came here to St Andrews, studying English Language and Literature and graduating, 45 years ago almost to the day, with a first-class degree. She then moved to Edinburgh studying for a diploma in secondary teaching, before turning to writing.
As a young journalist she joined the National Union of Journalists and has been an office-bearer since 1982. She was a member of the National Executive, and Chair of its Freelance Industrial Council, and was appointed a Member of Honour in 2018. She is rightly proud of the achievement of the NUJ during this time, in the organisation of freelance and casual workers, and in the defence of their rights.
Alongside this, Joyce expanded her interest in human rights and democracy internationally. She joined the Helsinki Citizens Assembly in 1992, an organisation created to give a citizens’ dimension to the new post-war European politics, quickly becoming a member of the Executive Committee. She worked here entirely voluntarily, going to meetings across Europe seven or eight times a year, meeting civic leaders from all over the continent, discussing peace and conflict resolution, human rights issues, democracy, and those constitutional arrangements most likely to promote peace. She says it was a hugely exciting time, a coalition of citizens with a common purpose to promote peace and security for the people of a Europe newly united after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Having developed her ideas in this way, it is no surprise that she brought this expertise and knowledge back to her home country of Scotland. In 1994, she was asked to chair the Scottish Constitutional Commission, addressing the so-called ‘wicked issues’ facing the then proposed Scottish Parliament, and, with the other Commission members, produced a report on how to solve proportional representation, gender balance and address the so-called ‘West Lothian question’. Some of this report, notably the part on the electoral system of the Scottish Parliament, was written into the Scotland Act of 1998, and went on to be adopted in the eventual parliament.
More recently her interest has turned to environmental issues. She is the Honorary President of Scottish Environment LINK, a collection of all the environmental agencies and organisations in Scotland, which is committed to pushing the environment up the political agenda.
She has written three books, including a thirty-year anthology of her reviews, Theatre in Scotland: A Field of Dreams, published in 2016.
She remains a hugely passionate and dedicated champion of both the arts and social democracy in Scotland and across the world. It is lovely to welcome her back to St Andrews, as one of our own graduates from the School of English, and to congratulate her on her many achievements since she was last with us.
Vice-Chancellor, in recognition of her major contribution to theatre, journalism, and social democracy, I invite you to confer the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, on Joyce McMillan.
Joyce McMillan's response
Thank you. I've been asked to say just a few words of thanks, so I will do that. But first of all, I just want to congratulate all of the graduates who are graduating today. It's been a real joy to see this wonderful parade of youth and talent and, I hope, of idealism in coming up to receive your awards. So I'd like to give you all one more round of applause. And also there's a few I noticed who are not so young in years, but I hope are still young in inquiring spirit and in ideals.
Of course, this is an occasion for thanks, and I find it hard to put into words the sense of gratitude that I have for all that this university gave me back in the 1970s when I was a student here and for the great honour that the Principal and the University are doing me today. I want to thank the University and the Principal for that honour, and I want to thank Zinnie for her wonderful laureation address. Thank you, Zinnie.
I also want, just at this moment, to thank two people who are sadly not here, and that's my parents who are no longer with us: Robert McMillan and Jane Webster. I want to thank them and I also want to thank the generation to which they belonged. They were with me 45 years ago when I graduated from this university. It was a proud day for them, and it was also the fulfilment of what to them was a lifetime of hope after the Second World War, in which they served in the Armed Forces when they were young, barely into their 20s, that they could build a better world full of opportunity and of justice, in which people, regardless of their origin, could be accorded the respect and opportunity and life chances, and that they were able to benefit from and to make the very best of. They strove to build that world up after the war. They voted to build it. And, from the point of view of my generation, they succeeded in building it. And I was one of those people, from a relatively humble background, who benefited from the huge changes in our society in the 30 years after 1945 - coming to this wonderful university and taking advantage of all that it could offer me.
It is a sadness to me and to many who belong to my generation that I do not think that we are passing such an inspiring legacy onto those of you who are young now. Too many of us have perhaps been seduced by voices that told us that we could have all this without pain and without commitment to the communal life that supports us all. Many of us were intensely idealistic when we were young, but some of us lost those ideals as we grew older. And as we've grown older, our whole world has begun to face problems that we could not have imagined in our youth. Problems that have to do with the planet itself, with its overstretched resources, and with the huge damage that we, humanity, in our ingenuity and our arrogance, have managed to work out the ways of doing to this place which is our home.
So we leave you a legacy which is a very mixed one. It's full of opportunities, but it's also full of dangers and immense challenges of a kind that no previous generation could have imagined. So today, in thanking the University for all that it gave me, for this special day for me and my guests, who I also thank for being here, I also wish you well in dealing with the world that we have left you - in all its positive aspects and all its mighty problems. Go well, and thank you all.