But Debatisse did not hesitate to present himself at the time requested

But Debatisse did not hesitate to present himself at the time requested. For more than an hour, as Debatisse recounted in his book Le Projet Paysan (1983), the General explained that everything was lost; the internal and external enemies of France had joined forces and that there was nothing he could do. On 27 May 1968, the agricultural trade union leader Michel Debatisse was in the depths of the French countryside when he received an urgent message from the Elysee Palace. He regarded this account (published in the Durham University Journal) as a genuine footnote, however small, to the study of history.Ernest Marsdon Bettenson, university administrator: born Bolton, Lancashire 29 March 1911; Assistant Registrar, Durham University 1947-52, Registrar 1952-61; Registrar and Secretary, King’s College, Durham 1961-63; Registrar, Newcastle University 1963-76 (Emeritus); married 1946 Jean Smith; died Newcastle upon Tyne 3 May 1997.. In 1987 he published The University of Newcastle upon Tyne After 1970 – a Selective View, covering the years 1970-86.An achievement of which Bettenson was especially proud was the production, also in 1987, of “1937: The Great Divide”, an account of the events leading up to the reconstitution of Durham University and the formation of King’s College in 1937.

In retirement he cultivated his garden with some success, remained an active rambler and environmentalist, and kept in close touch with the university, working on its archives and making his historical services readily available. Bettenson’s amusing, affectionate and discerning contribution to Remembering Henry (the published reminiscences of Henry Miller, 1977) is a wonderful example of Bettensonian writing and bears repeated reading.He enjoyed writing his “historical introduction” The University of Newcastle upon Tyne. 1834-1971, published in 1971, and delivering in that year the two excellent lectures to mark the centenary of the founding of the College of Physical Science at Newcastle.In his official life Bettenson was unrepentantly a mixture of contradictions, all solemnity on some occasions and impish informality on others. Much of what he said was reinforced with quotations, literary allusions and illustrative stories or parallels from history. The Bible was an essential tool for staff in the Registrar’s Office.Bettenson retired in 1976 and the following year the university conferred on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law for which he had refused his name to go forward while in office. He held there was no substitute for reasonable men, defined by him as people who shared or understood his point of view.During the Vice-Chancellorship of Dr Henry Miller, in 1968-76, the university was entertained by the cheerful clash between two different temperaments in a relationship based on mutual disapproval, respect and affection.

He considered that only a habit of omnivorous reading prevented him from becoming excessively narrow in his interests.Colleagues remember him as an accessible person, and while Bettenson had a higher regard for some of his colleagues than for others he was impartial in his official capacity. Although he disapproved of many developments in university administration he tried to work each scheme as it came forward and, in his own words, to clothe it in dignified grammatical language. He spent long hours in his office, he lunched in the Senior Common Room, he talked shop incessantly and though he never took papers home he was really never off duty. With the Vice-Chancellors being almost wholly absorbed by their divisional duties, the Registrar tended to be the only visible sign of the university’s separate existence, exercising, as Bettenson himself saw it, responsibility without power.He was appointed Registrar and Secretary of King’s College in 1961 and Registrar of the newly constituted University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1963. He combined application to the job with a gift for expressing himself in a way that enlivened business.

In the 1961-63 period, therefore, he was engaged in the three simultaneous activities of closing down the federal University of Durham, keeping the existing processes of King’s College going, and arranging the new machinery for Newcastle University. He enjoyed the task of obtaining the necessary legislation and was proud of his part in the preparation of the university’s statutes, which have withstood the test of time and continue to serve the university well.Bettenson became something of an institution at Newcastle. He showed skill in summarising the decisions of committees and it became accepted that his interventions as an interested onlooker were worth attention.Bettenson was appointed Registrar of the federal university in 1952, by which time cracks were appearing in the constitutional fabric as the two divisions expanded. The analogy is not exact, but he thought he had a duty to advise and caution and intepreted it liberally. He was soon a feature of the university landscape at Newcastle and, to a lesser extent, at Durham.