Professor Laski's filing cabinet

Professor Laski’s filing cabinet

Vera started her working life as secretary to Professor Harold Laski at the London School of Economics.  He was a socialist intellectual and Labour Party figure who became chairman of the Labour NEC.  However, at work he loved throwing stuff away.  The waste paper basket was known as “Professor Laski’s filing cabinet” and Vera often had to fish valuable documents from it.   Laski aside, Vera considered the LSE a "hotbed of reaction".

Later on, Vera became a psychiatric social worker.  At the same time she studied for undergraduate and Masters degrees at the LSE, which is where she met husband Vladimir.

Vera eventually became a lecturer in Sociology at Middlesex Polytechnic.  Her career was hampered by sexism; she suffered at the hands of an all-male group of Stalinist colleagues whom she called “the little Pol Pots” who would exclude her from opportunities.  On the plus side, she often commented on how in the 1960s lecturers had more time to lavish on the students than in more recent times.