Craig Fees (2012) "From the Archives...David Wills's OBE" (unpublished)
[The opening sentence of this paper provided the opening for a very brief note in Number 4, the April 2012 edition of The Planned Environment Therapy Trust eNewsletter, produced as part of the Therapeutic Living With Other People's Children project. I'm not aware that the full piece was ever used anywhere]
In 1973 residential therapeutic child care pioneer David Wills overcame his philosophical objections to the British honours system to accept an O.B.E. in the New Years Honours List of 1974, interpreting it as a recognition for everyone working therapeutically with children. Robert Laslett wrote to David Wills: "I am glad you decided after all to accept yr honour", and went on to explain that it was Portia Holman who was the "prime mover" behind the nomination: "I just gave her a little help. And as Johnny Cross said, we all feel a bit bucked about it because we learned from you and believe in what you taught us, so yr recognition encourages us all."
Laslett's letter is just one in an office file which David Wills put together for correspondence about his OBE. In its turn the file is just one of several hundred in the David Wills Collection, which came to the Trust in 1988, and sparked the creation of the Archive and Study Centre in 1989. Followed by Jonathan Croall's research papers for his biography of A.S. Neill - Neill of Summerhill: The Permanent Rebel -, and by a first tranche of Maxwell Jones's archives, in earnest of more to come, these three initial collections neatly laid out the broad outlines of the Archive and Study Centre's remit: therapeutic community work with children and young people; progressive/alternative/democratic education; and therapeutic community work with adults.
Along with the correspondence file, the David Wills Collection includes the OBE proclamation scroll, signed by the Queen, as well as the OBE medal itself.
Among the letters is one from a former resident of Reynolds House, the aftercare hostel from which David Wills had retired from active residential work several years before, who wrote "I don't know whether I should congratulate you or the 'establishment' for making the award to so richly deserving a recipient."
Lord Aberdare, Simon Rodway, Fred Lennhoff, Richard Balbernie, and George Pettingale were among others sending cards and letters. Many hold rich incidental insights, such as Barbara Rapaport's comment, in mentioning that she was about to visit South Africa, that "My grandfather, in fact, went out [to South Africa] as Minister to Port Elizabeth Synagogue about 100 yrs ago."
Barbara Kahan, awarded the OBE herself in 1990, wrote in her congratulation "If only dear old A.S. Neill could have had an honour before he died, I would have felt two of the important source people who influenced me a lot had been justly treated." A very interesting comment from a very interesting lady, marking a unique moment in therapeutic community history.
