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   Open Forum 6 1974 00525/7040    

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   (Naomi McIntosh) To present anyone
    for an honorary degree is a difficult task   

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   ..to present a Prime Minister 
   is a daunting one. In the first place   

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   ..one can, indeed one must, 
   assume that his biography   

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   ..his political and intellectual 
   achievements are so well known   

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   ..as to make their recapitulation 
   blatantly a work of supererogation.    

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   Thus I am denied all the usual 
   material for this citation.    

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   What then can I say of this man, 
   who at the early age of thirty-one   

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   ..became the youngest Cabinet Minister
    of modern times, and who...     

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   ..ever since has lived in a positiv
   e blaze of publicity, sometimes not...     

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   ..as he has made clear, 
   of his own choosing.    

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   Mr Wilson, before that time, 
   had followed an academic career   

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   ..and had studied and taught
    in a rather older OU.    

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   Indeed since the new OU did not then exist,
    he could be held to have been   

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   ..if not educationally deprived,
    at least educationally constrained.     

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   My Lord Chancellor we did not,
    in the Senate, 
    ask the Prime Minister   

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   ..to accept an honorary degree,
    we asked Harold Wilson to accept it   

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   ..for it was offered last December. 
   It was offered because it was he   

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   ..who gave the concept of a 
   university of the air...     

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   ..later to be translated into 
   The Open University, 
   a political reality.     

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   Harold Wilson is a man already 
   honoured by many academic institutions.     

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   We honour him for the same reasons 
   that they did but as I have tried to show   

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   ..we have another very special reason 
   and it is consequently fitting   

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   ..that we should add to the 
   burden of his distictions.    

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   And so my Lord Chancellor, it is my 
   privilege by the authority of the Senate   

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   ..to present to you for 
   the award of The Open University's 
   highest academic honour   

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   ..the honorary degree of 
   Doctor of the University 
   The Right Honourable Harold Wilson   

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   (Applause) (Lord Gardiner) 
   In the name of the congregation   

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   ..I confer upon you the honorary 
   degree of Doctor of the University.    

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   (Wynne Brindle) After Mr Wilson, 
   who himself is Chancellor of 
   the University of Bradford   

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   had received his scroll from our 
   Chancellor the replying speech     

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   on behalf of the honorary doctors 
   was made by Lord Feather