Ian Moore – Family the motivation to do well educationally

 At that time, back in the ‘70’s, the salary for the Military, across the Military was dire, which is why we had so many Married Quarters dotted around the area. Thousands of them, in and around the Gosport, Portsmouth areas, purely and simple for the fact, and this is absolutely as it was back then, a Petty Officer who could be in charge of a team of anything up to 30,40,50 people, a Petty Officer married with 2 children qualified for Income Support.

He couldn’t afford to actually buy his own house. Now, that’s a Petty Officer.

At that time, I was a Marine Engineer and Mechanic, I was the lowest of the low, I was an MEM, and there was no way that I was going to able to either afford my own house or anything like this without having to better myself, and I saw … plus as well as that, I was, as a Stoker, you are basically it’s an old, old word Stoker where you saw them in the old black and white movies, where they would be shovelling coal into the boilers. That’s where the word Stoker actually comes from, so you were stoking the fires, and I was exactly that.

All I was actually doing was Machine Minding. I was looking after bits of machinery. I was starting up, stopping, checking oil levels and things like this. I needed more, and the only way to do more was by improving your education, improving your qualifications.

With each of those new qualifications, comes a promotion and those promotions aka give you more money, so that was the motivation.