1945 GA Conference

I am grateful to Alastair Owens, who will be GA President for 2022-3 as many readers will know, for finding and sharing images of this programme from the 1945 GA Conference which he came across earlier.

As shown here, the 1944 conference had had to be cancelled due to falling bombs...

The 1945 Conference was the first for a while. Thomas Cotterill Warrington was the President: he served from 1942-5 so was the last President to serve more than a year. The Conference was held at the City Literary Institute in Holborn, London.

The conference was held in early January, as they used to be before the move to April.

There are some sessions which sound really fascinating, and I would love to have been there... Tea in the refectory sounds fun too.

There are some familiar names there as well, many of whom have featured on the blog already.

The Conference was opened with a lecture on 'Post-War Europe' by Sir Walter Layton.
He was an economist, and lectured at Trinity College.

The lecture is available here, as it was published in a future issue of 'Geography' later that year:

Layton, Walter. “THE FUTURE OF EUROPE.” Geography, vol. 30, no. 2, 1945, pp. 44–50. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40563426. Accessed 15 May 2021.

This was followed by a lecture on fruit growing from Raymond 'Bush'.

At 2pm a Symposium featured a range of other future GA Presidents: Leonard Sydney Suggate and Leonard Brooks (who would both become President in the 1950s) which was chaired by the legendary James Fairgrieve. 

The first day ended with a session on the Geography of Poland, actively involved in the conflict that had just ended.

Text from Wikipedia:

Equally the 2nd day started with a session which probably referred back to recent military service, with Brigadier Ralph A Bagnold on the sand dune of N E Africa. He had already made a crossing of the Libyan Desert in the 1930s. During the Second World War, he was a soldier in the British Army, in which he founded the behind-the-lines reconnaissance, espionage and raiding unit that was named the "Long Range Desert Group", serving as its first commanding officer in the North Africa Campaign.

After the war Bagnold continued make significant contributions to the understanding of desert terrain such as sand dunes, ripples and sheets. He developed the dimensionless "Bagnold number" and "Bagnold formula" for characterising sand flow, and also proposed a model for "singing sands". In 1971 he received the Wollaston Medal, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London, and in 1981 the David Linton Award of the British Geomorphological Research Group (named after another former GA President). He lived to the age of 94.

The session on the Future of Primary Geography featured Olive Garnett (see her entry) and also Mrs. Katz (who got a mention in my Charney Primary Geography conference presentation as she chaired the Primary committee when it launched. It was chaired by G J Cons, who had been due to be the President in 1961 but sadly died in 1960.

Here is part of the contribution of Olive Garnett.

“GEOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION. Annual Conference Discussions on the Future for Geography.” Geography, vol. 30, no. 2, 1945, pp. 50–62. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40563427. Accessed 15 May 2021.

The session on the Future of Secondary Geography had some interesting participants.

“GEOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION. Annual Conference Discussions on the Future for Geography.” Geography, vol. 30, no. 2, 1945, pp. 50–62. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40563427. Accessed 15 May 2021.

I looked back at 'Geography' to try to find some outcomes from this conference in the journal and found the report of the conference and links to some of the lectures:

Thomas Cotterill Warrington was also asked to be President for another year at the end of the conference in the business meeting.

References

Wikipedia entry on Sir Walter Layton:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Layton,_1st_Baron_Layton

Image Wikimedia

Raymond Bush article:

Bush, Raymond. “FROST AND THE FRUITGROWER.” Geography, vol. 30, no. 3, 1945, pp. 80–86. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40563438. Accessed 14 May 2021.

Brigadier Ralph Bagnold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Bagnold

Image Wikimedia

“GEOGRAPHICAL ASSOCIATION. ANNUAL REPORT FOR 1944.” Geography, vol. 30, no. 1, 1945, pp. 18–19. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40562425. Accessed 15 May 2021.


Thanks to Alastair Owens for the images. Hopefully more documents like this will come to life when I can next get to Solly Street and get into the archive.