In fact, the dizzying rate of our growth - and that of the IT industry generally - slowed markedly at the end of the decade, in an early sign of what the wider economy would experience as the recession of 1990-92. (If you want to spot a recession in advance, keep an eye on the IT industry.) Our figures were on the mend again by 1991, but it did not seem a propitious time to be going to the market, and plans for a float were put on hold.
Instead, Hilary’s ambitions to expand found expression in a series of strategic acquisitions, of which the most significant were AMP Computer Recruitment (in 1990) and Kernel Group (in 1991). These not only increased the company’s size and scope but made it better balanced - allowing us, for example, to provide clients with staffing solutions that would help them run the IT systems we had set up for them. Those two acquisitions would in due course form the raw material for, respectively, FI Recruitment and FI Training.
Meanwhile, I was determined to press on with my plans for shared ownership, and the board saw that my desire to sell at the bottom of the market gave a good opportunity for effecting such a transfer. I persuaded Sir Peter Thompson, who in 1982 had successfully led a management buy-out when he was chief executive of the National Freight Corporation, to take over from Leighton Davies as chairman of FI Group in October 1990. Peter was also chairman of the CBI’s Wider Share Ownership Task Force, and was seen by many as a leading authority on the transfer of company ownership into staff hands.
Peter insisted that, if we wanted to achieve a real change of culture and persuade the workforce to think of the company as their company, it was no good making piecemeal transfers of shares year by year. No matter how many shares I gave away (and by the end of 1990 a third of the workforce held shares), everyone still thought of it as my company. If we wanted them to think of it as their company, we needed to transform the company’s ownership structure in a single dramatic swoop: what he called “Big Bang”.
So: under Peter’s guidance, the board gave the go-ahead for the sale to the workforce, in the autumn of 1991, of “a substantial proportion of the Founder’s shares”. A prospectus was prepared, the necessary legal and financial hoops were jumped through, and we began an internal publicity campaign to stir up enthusiasm. We also amended our articles of association to give double voting rights to shares held by those who currently worked for the company. Finally, just over 1,000 of our staff (319 employees and 690 self-employed associates) were invited to buy shares in the company in September 1991. Shares equivalent to 30 per cent of my remaining holding were offered at £2.70 each, and the minimum subscription was 50 shares for £135. My only stipulation was that the workforce had to be keen enough to invest at least £1m in the shares between them.
Around three-quarters of the employees, and a third of the self-employed contractors, took up the offer. The price was a generous one, capitalising the company modestly at about £6.2m, and those who took up the offer could theoretically have sold at a profit on almost any day thereafter. But most hung on in hope of the big payday that public flotation would bring.
It was not quite the John Lewis-style partnership that I had dreamed about. I continued to have my own private stake in the company. And a significant stake - which might easily grow in future - was held by outside investors whose overwhelming priority was profit. None the less, the sale represented a significant piece of empowerment. From the end of 1991, F International was controlled on major issues by the combined voting power of the staff shareholders and the Shareholders’ Trust, who between them had a 43 per cent interest and (because of double voting) 62 per cent of the voting rights, while a substantial majority of those who worked for the company had a direct financial stake in its future.
Employee participation was no longer just a buzzword. This workforce actually owned the company.
And I didn’t.
There’s something exhilarating about co-ownership when things are going well. This was at the Hemel Hempstead office.
18: A Second Childhood
LOSING CONTROL of the company that had dominated my life for nearly three decades was never going to be easy, even though it had been my choice to let it go. But some of the consequences were immediately welcome. I was, for the first time since 1962, financially independent of the business. Hitherto, my general intention to cede control to a new regime had been frustrated in practice by the fact that any notional assets I had were tied up in FI Group. Now, although I retained a substantial shareholding in the company (just under 36 per cent), my voice and views were no longer of major significance. For better or worse, the company was going to manage without me.
I thus found myself freer than I had been for years. I was still employed by FI, and gave them good value for my salary (which finished up at £100,000 a year). But my enthusiastic pursuit of the company’s interests no longer involved sleepless nights. I was free from responsibility for the running of the business, free from the need to pour large quantities of time and effort into FI-related duties, and even free - thanks to my sale of shares - from short-term financial worry.
I had other, public duties (of which more later) to take up much of the slack. But the biggest benefit for me was that I was free to devote more attention - more emotional energy - to Giles.
The timing could hardly have been better. Caring for Giles “in the community” had been proving even more demanding than I had anticipated.
The initial transition from Borocourt to Redcot had, predictably, been traumatic. A young man who felt threatened and distressed even by minor changes of routine had suddenly to take on board a complete transformation in his lifestyle. He was living in a different place, with different people and, above all, in a different way. From being locked away in an institution which rarely aspired to anything more than damage limitation, he was suddenly at the centre of his world again, cared for by people whose priority was to maximise his quality of life. Anxiety and anger were the perverse but predictable short-term consequences.
The initial challenge was, in effect, to make Giles human again. He was not only profoundly vulnerable but had become profoundly institutionalised. Many of the obvious attractions of Redcot - the freedom, the one-to-one care - must, at first, have terrified him. But Phil Bunce rose to the challenge heroically, calmly containing tantrums, keeping damage to patient, carer and property to a minimum, and, all the time, encouraging Giles to believe in himself. It helped that Phil was physically huge and strong and seemed unperturbed by violent rages that most of us found terrifying. He also had the patience and good humour to communicate to Giles, eventually, the idea that he was loved, valued and respected again. He seemed to see Giles as a friend rather than a problem to be solved.
On the plus side, Giles’s epilepsy was largely under control by now, subject to careful medication. But his behaviour remained highly challenging. An underlying norm of being “difficult” - roaring and refusing to do as he was asked - would be punctuated irregularly by interludes of frightening anger. Then he would thump and bang things, including his head, and, sometimes, lash out at people. We tried to take all this in our stride, but it wasn’t always easy, especially when we remembered that we had, to all intents and purposes, forgone the safety net of the health and social services. One of my most vivid memories of this period is of the weekend ritual of the post-lunch walk. If we timed it right, it could be the highlight of our and Giles’s week: a shared stroll through the countryside which combined fresh air, exercise, togetherness and, usually, a bit of laughter as well. But if we tried to leave a moment too late, or too soon, or failed to guess the precise amount of time that Giles considered appropriate for getting ready, it would all end - and indeed begin - in tears. Giles would not just refuse to come out with us but would rage, roar, lie on the floor and bang his head with frustration and fury. I cannot convey how traumatic this was for all of us, and it was tempting to abandon the idea of walks altogether. But we could not bring ou
rselves to deprive Giles of one of the happier features of his circumscribed life; and, in any case, tantrums could also result if Giles felt that we weren’t going for a walk when we should have been doing so.
For Phil and his fellow-carers, such dilemmas arose every day. I am full of admiration and gratitude for the fact that they didn’t just give up in despair. But it was more stressful than it might sound for me to try to manage all this from a distance - liaising with Phil by telephone while making any necessary arrangements for, for example, visits to the doctor to have self-inflicted injuries seen to, in between doing my work and trying to make sure that the necessary finance was in place. I remember at least one tearful telephone conversation with Giles’s GP, at some point in his first year outside Borocourt, when I confessed that I simply didn’t feel able to deal with the situation any more. The proximity of Borocourt and its specialist staff merely exacerbated my misery: we were, unfortunately, at odds with the very bureaucracies and institutions that had been put in place to help people like Giles.
But things gradually improved. Giles’s moodiness, we realised, stemmed less from a dislike of being at Redcot than from the fact that he had to a large degree forgotten how to feel contented. The key was thus to increase his contentment. This was where Phil’s unconventional gifts came into their own. He fussed less than he should have done about keeping the cottage clean and tidy, or about Giles’s diet or personal hygiene. But he did treat Giles as human being, taking him on long walks and talking to him as an adult and an equal. He took him on bus trips and shopping trips and trips to the pub, and even invited him back to his own run-down bedsit. He gave him jigsaws to do, and art materials to run riot with; and, perhaps most important of all, he never betrayed the least sign of having been upset by any of Giles’s outbursts, tantrums and physical attacks.
Bit by bit, Giles was eased into a new life. The outbursts continued, but grew milder and rarer. He learnt to accept his new routines, and learnt to think of Phil as a friend. Derek and I continued our visiting routine. And Phil built up a roster of other carers to provide 24-hour cover - some of whom were clearly not up to the job but others of whom shared Phil’s determination to inject some human warmth into Giles’s life. Paul Moran - another rather rough diamond, though less so than Phil - fell firmly into the latter category. He was lovely with Giles, taking him off on walks and expeditions (to the local shop, for example) as if they were brothers or best mates. Paul would play a big part in Giles’s life for more than a dozen years.
But for all these positive developments, it was also clear that this ad hoc arrangement was flawed. Giles remained highly volatile, and Redcot remained no more than an old-fashioned, rickety cottage, with two tiny bedrooms, no upstairs toilet and a steep, narrow staircase. It was far from ideal either as a place for three or four people to be in at once or as a place for containing tantrums and seizures.
Within a year, we had taken a deep financial breath and bought another house. It was a bungalow, about a mile from the hospital, on the other side of Kingwood Common. Called The Cuddy, it was bigger and more modern than Redcot (which we sold soon afterwards to help finance the purchase), with a wide, empty garden. We spent quite a lot of money on modernising it further, making it as suitable as possible for an unpredictable, epileptic, autistic young man. By the end, there was scarcely a breakable thing in the house, let alone a sharp corner or a vulnerable electrical outlet. There was also room for both us and a carer to be there comfortably alongside Giles.
Giles and Phil moved in as soon as it was ready, and, although this meant more upheaval for Giles, it was worth it. Slowly but surely, we all settled into a different way of living. Looking back on it now, I tend to remember the next few years as almost idyllic. Yet I know that this is inaccurate.
The true story is preserved in the conscientious case notes that his various carers kept for much of the next decade. Leafing through these today, I can find scarcely a page that does not contain some report of tantrums, rages and destructive behaviour. The following examples, selected at random from a few consecutive pages, give a flavour of the relentless challenge Giles posed to those charged with looking after him:
“4 May: The furniture in Giles’s room has been quite damaged... The door, too, which was re-hung, needs mending following incidents...” “20 July: Whilst having a bath Giles completely lost control and became in danger of significant self-injury... Later in the day Giles... proceeded to his room where he started to throw furniture about; he smashed a small chest of drawers in this incident...” “11 August: Giles was heard to be shouting and roaring. He appeared to have been disturbed by a bad dream or hallucination... He then lost control and began to throw furniture before attempting to attack staff members in the corridor, upon which Giles was restrained using minimum necessary force.” “1 November: Giles had a violent tantrum in the bathroom, he ripped the mirror from the wall and flung the toiletries from the shelves to the floor...” “11 November: Giles roared and head-butted his door... Loud bangs were also heard from his room during the evening/night.” “27 February: Giles hit himself in the genitals whilst on a walk...” “24 April: Giles... acted in a threatening posture towards some children playing in the lane.” “5 May: Giles...appeared highly agitated, having already punched his door. He arrived in the kitchen where he made manic requests for tea, which staff denied; following this he punched Martin [a carer] in the face, and then was immediately restrained using minimum necessary force [i.e., within the bounds of approved social services practice] ...”
I could cite scores, if not hundreds, of such instances but will not do so. No amount of habituation lessens the pain that a mother feels on witnessing, or even being told about, such episodes in her son’s life; and the stabs of sympathetic misery seem scarcely less intense when I read about them now. What agonies lay behind these inscrutable outbursts? I can only wonder - and weep.
I have before me several years’ worth of monthly reports. Each concludes with a monthly “behavioural chart”, listing such behaviour in tabular form. For example (randomly selecting November 1996):
“... Anxious words: 83
Exposing himself: 20
Gesticulating: 14
Grimacing: 2
Head-butting: 1
Hitting himself: 4
Holding fist to chin: 1
Increase in volume: 70
Knocking or tapping on windows: 10
Need to restrain: 1
Punching or hitting things: 16
Self-restraint: 1
Shoulder-barging: -
Shouting and roaring: 22
Throwing objects: 8
Trance-like states: 2 ...”
That gives you an idea of the scale and range of the challenge that Giles’s behaviour posed. But what strikes me about such statistics now is not how depressing they are but, rather, the improvement they show. They remind me how much more manageable his behaviour gradually became (by November 1996 he had been in The Cuddy for eight years), compared with the very blackest days just before he went into Borocourt and immediately after he came out. The incidents remained distressing, but their frequency and gravity had declined.
In the same way, what strikes me about the daily notes is not their tireless instancing of unruly, destructive or dangerous behaviour but the fact that such behaviour begins after a while to be punctuated by other things: “Giles seemed reasonably friendly to visitors...”; “He has shown some interest in art and produced a couple of colourful drawings...”; “Giles has... shown some interest of his own volition in gardening, and now frequently goes outside to pick up laurel leaves, putting them in the bonfire pit.”; “Giles interacted fairly well with staff and visitors throughout November.”; “Giles enjoyed and participated well in his new activity of trampolining.”; “Giles... has participated in cake-making, bread-making and cooking...”; “Giles has been involved i
n choosing some new clothes...”
Giles was a strong man and it was good to see him take a positive part in day-to-day activities.
This is why my memories of this period are - as I mentioned earlier - fond. We were thrilled by such little examples of progress, in the same way that parents of “normal” children are thrilled by their offspring’s more glamorous achievements. But what really mattered about such developments was their significance for Giles himself. Bit by bit, he was discovering stepping-stones that might lead him a little way out of his own closed world. And while no one imagined that they would lead him very far, at least he was finally getting a little bit of stimulation and variety in his life. I can see him there now, engrossed in his painting, still strangely handsome (despite the facial scars that he had accumulated from years of tantrums, accidents and seizures), a holy innocent glowing with the secret beauties of his own private world...
I must not exaggerate. I must not rewrite the past by pretending that these days were happier than they were. Giles’s problems remained profound and intractable; time spent with him was still usually, at some level, heart-breaking. The good moments were good, and often profoundly beautiful, but they were rare. A creative activity such as preparing food might engage him utterly for five to ten minutes, creating an irresistible sense that here was a well-adjusted young man absorbed in a satisfying and fulfilling task; then his attention would wander, and the clouds of confusion and frustration would descend again. Yet these post-Borocourt years were, in one crucial respect, quite different from any previous stage in Giles’s life. For the first time, we felt that we could reasonably hope that things might, as time passed, get better: not much better, perhaps, nor very quickly; but still, to some tiny but perceptible degree, better. And that simple flicker of hope made all the pain, exhaustion and worry significantly easier to bear.
Let IT Go_The Memoirs of Dame Stephanie Shirley Page 22