From today’s point of view it’s difficult to appreciate just how over-politicized the seventies were. Everything, and I mean everything, was political. I began my political career as a candidate in student elections, which in 1969 had been openly party-political for the first time. I chose to stand as a Conservative. Where I came from we had a two-party system, and everyone I knew voted either for the Conservatives or for the Centre Party. I imagined the Conservatives would be the choice of the thinking person whom socialism didn’t attract, in the way it didn’t attract me. It rapidly became clear to me that Conservative policy in these elections consisted entirely of opposition to socialism and had no other content. A positive alternative seemed to be lacking: the party’s policies seemed entirely negative, with no constructive element. This wasn’t enough for me. After the first year I moved to the Centre Party group, where there seemed to be people who could think.
Just as I grew impatient with politics so I began to tire of a wholly technical education. I had no cause for complaint with my studies, but differential equations alone didn’t open up the world as much as I wanted. I hankered after a broader education, with a greater focus on social issues. I had studied economics in Wales and I wanted to continue that study at the university level. I had friends in the political science department at Helsinki University, so I applied and was accepted there in 1971. This time I didn’t have to sit the entrance exams since to my surprise I was accepted on the basis of my results from Atlantic College.
The economics department was in central Helsinki. I enjoyed it immensely – the atmosphere was agreeable and the discussions and teaching provided a new angle of entry to social issues. The department had some smart people, and I received excellent guidance from them on what I should study. Study was not very sociable, however – I didn’t attend a single series of lectures, and just a few seminars. For the most part I had my nose in the books for the examined courses, making up for lost time as fast as I could.
ONE FEBRUARY EVENING IN 1970 changed all my plans once more. I was with my friends at a student dance, and so was a young woman with her friends from the Helsinki School of Economics.
I was queuing to buy a beer when my eyes fell on a beautiful, blonde, and clever-looking girl. She seemed to be looking to see who was in the queue. I learned later that this was just a little way she had that didn’t really mean anything. Anyway, when I’d bought my beer I asked her to dance. I used my powers of attraction to the full, and later we left together to continue the evening with our friends back at the residence hall. There I asked for her telephone number, which she wrote on a slip of paper.
“Are you sure this number is right?” I asked again at the end of the evening.
“I wouldn’t give you a number if it wasn’t the right one,” she replied. There was decisiveness in her voice, and perhaps a touch of invitation too. I rang her as soon as I could. I thought she might have found me too talkative and eager. My stalking brought a result, however, and I soon met her again.
The girl in question was Liisa Metsola, who had qualified as a nurse and was already working, while I was still studying. We were soon spending a lot of time together. We went to the cinema, to the theatre, to concerts, and to student parties. In other words, we did what young couples do. Liisa came from a family with roots in eastern Finland and Karelia. The eastern Finns are much better at showing and acting on their emotions than we western Finns. Liisa thinks things through for herself in a straightforward way, and isn’t afraid to disagree with me.
The first summer we were a couple we had to spend apart, since I had to go back once more to Vaasa. There I had to undertake a placement in an engineering workshop as part of my degree. A place had been arranged in the factory where my father worked, where I did maintenance work and some plumbing jobs. The atmosphere was very different from what I was used to at Atlantic College and the University of Technology, but I got on fine with my workmates. We talked men’s talk – of work, of women, of football. (Vaasa FC was then playing in the top division, as I’m proud to say it does today.) My time in that factory taught me some crucial lessons for my future career about the internal dynamics of a workplace and the difference between good and bad line management. I can’t exaggerate the importance of one’s early work experiences.
Liisa and I were engaged on the May Day holiday in 1971. I approached her father and told him of my intention to marry his daughter. He replied positively to my polite request, although she and I disagreed with him on practically everything else. We argued about politics so furiously that at times it felt like a family feud. He had been an evacuee from Karelia when the Soviet Union had invaded Finland in 1939–40, and his family home had been razed to the ground. His hatred for the Russians wasn’t a political stance but something much deeper. He was out of sympathy with the central aim of the Finnish government, which was to achieve friendly relations with the Russians through an active foreign policy. Our arguments were repeated in many Finnish families where memories of the war years were still fresh.
We were married on 25 March 1972 at a little chapel in Otaniemi. The building was surrounded by forest, though it was just a few hundred yards from where I lived on campus. There were about forty guests: a large classroom’s worth of relatives, fellow students, and friends. The unique feature of the chapel was its altarpiece. There wasn’t one: its place was taken by the Finnish forest landscape, seen through a huge window taking up the entire wall. So it seemed as if the wedding were taking place in a wintry forest. We held our reception in the student restaurant where we had first met. Ostrobothnian weddings are meant to be wild and boisterous, but ours was calm and civilized, with many warm and well-made speeches. The occasion was made in our image.
At the beginning of the 1970s we weren’t worried about the future. We were moving so fast that not everybody could keep up. My parents thought we shouldn’t have married because I hadn’t yet graduated from university nor had I taken my bride to meet my mother. Our marriage was a quick student affair – we didn’t have a sound financial base or any clear plans. But I had already moved on from my family and wanted to live my own life.
Liisa and I celebrated our engagement on May Day in 1971.
Liisa soon noticed she’d married a man whose diary quickly filled up. One day she brought out her own diary. She announced that she didn’t intend simply to adapt to whatever plans her new husband happened to make – she had her priorities, and I would have to learn to adapt. “Let’s see when we can find a time that suits us both,” she said brightly. Her attitude has not changed in forty years, which has helped keep us together. I’ve tried to be as flexible as I can in my own arrangements, though with varying success.
We were both ambitious people. We were also both self-sufficient: I was the oldest child in my family and used to looking after myself; Liisa was her family’s youngest, but her mother had had a serious illness, which had compelled the children to take care of themselves. Although our personalities were different we understood each other instinctively. It was easy to build a marriage on this basis. (Well, honestly speaking, I can’t say it was always easy, but it was possible because we understood each other.)
We moved to a rented two-bedroom apartment about ten miles west of Helsinki. By that time the brown decade must have been approaching its end, because the walls of our new home were plain white. Ever since then we have wanted to live in houses where the walls are either white or off-white.
There was no Ikea in those days, and our furniture was hand-me-downs from our families or bought secondhand. The area around our home was growing rapidly: new houses, new schools, new shops.
With our modest income we couldn’t imagine moving to the center of Helsinki. Many young couples began their married lives as we did, in rapidly-built apartment