Ealing’s origins are obscure, but it is thought that the first permanent settlement here was Saxon, when Ealing was part of the Bishop of London’s manor of Fulham. For many centuries, Ealing was a small agricultural community centred around St. Mary’s Church. In the eighteenth century, stage coaches passed along what is now the Uxbridge Road, collecting and depositing passengers at the inns there. Merchants and gentry used Ealing as a country retreat. Ealing’s foremost resident in the late eighteenth century was Princess Amelia, aunt of George III, who held her own court at Gunnersbury House in the summer. Ealing’s royal connection also was Castehill Lodge, the residence of the wife of the Prince of Wales later George IV and later home to his brother’s mistress. Other well heeled residents were Sir John Soane the architect, who redesigned Pitshanger Manor as an occasional dwelling, and Spencer Perceval, Prime Minister 1809-1812, who lived near Ealing Common.

The nineteenth century was a period of great change in Ealing. Firstly the old administrative tie between Ealing and Brentford was broken in 1863. Better transport links, such as a regular horse bus service along the Uxbridge Road and the railways, made it possible for people to work in London while enjoying the rural charms of Ealing. Public amenities were designed under the watchful eye of the council’s energetic surveyor Charles Jones.

By the turn of the twentieth century Ealing was known as ‘the Queen of the Suburbs’, a self contained country town near London allegedly enjoying the best of both worlds. It was thought of as a middle class paradise. In 1901 Ealing became the first part of Middlesex to become incorporated. Yet change was in the air. In the same year, after a fierce struggle, the London United Tramways Company finally won the right to run trams through Ealing. This had the effect of changing Ealing’s social composition. Less affluent people began to live in the borough, especially in West and South Ealing.

Another ‘first’ for Ealing was the creation of a suburb run on co-operative principles; Brentham, England’s first Garden Suburb. Although much of this was to be lost in as the twentieth century progressed, some of the same atmosphere prevails.

Ealing was best known for its film studios which first appeared in 1904, but it was under Michael Balcon in the immediate post war era that they became internationally renowned. Films such as The Lavender Hill Mob and Passport to Pimlico, with stars such as Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, were made here.

In recent years, many office blocks have been built along the Uxbridge Road in central Ealing. Ealing Broadway was redeveloped in the 1970s and 1980s, as the housing behind the Broadway was demolished to make way for a new shopping centre which was opened in 1985.

The Ealing Gazette recently (09/05/03) reported the death of Evelyn Carter, the only principal of the College of Education, set up in 1966 by the University of London Institute of Education in the Borough of Ealing, for mature men and women wishing to transfer to teaching. Students followed courses leading to certificates or Bachelor of Education degrees. Many obtained posts in Ealing on qualifying.

The college soon became widely acclaimed as outstanding in the wider educational world. But in 1980 all colleges of education for mature students were closed by the Government when the need for mature students was no longer felt to be a priority. The educational benefit of the college however continued, after its closure, well beyond the Borough's school population and has reached national and even international significance.

Its distinctive identity began with its choice of name celebrating Thomas Huxley, "Darwin's Bulldog" with his pugnacious search for truth, as someone of worldwide distinction as well as historically associated with Ealing. The beautiful wall plaque, raised by public subscription and presented to the Borough in 1902, is now placed near the former college entrance in the Woodlands building. Its memorable advice to students, "Try to learn something about everything and everything about something", was seen as something we should strive to emulate. Its former students still comment with gratitude on the depth of the creative insight and knowledge which their college courses enabled them to develop and equipped them as teachers in the service of enhancing all children's life-chances. Such 'excellence for all' regardless of cultural and social backgrounds has since become the government's top priority for education.

After qualifying many of these students were employed in Ealing and other LEA schools, obtained senior and management positions and have gone on from their college degree to study for M.A.s, M.Phil.s and Doctorates. One is herself now running a course for mature students; and one is an internationally acclaimed head of a London children's hospital school which has achieved 'beacon' distinction.

Another distinctive feature of the college was its pilot work in linking initial training with in-service work with practising teachers in their schools - a feature then unheard of for teacher training establishments but now again a government priority. Members of the college staff were and still are active in in-service education, especially promoting teachers' insight into emotional and social factors in children's learning and failure to learn. The development of such teaching skills, pioneered in Ealing and now emphasised as crucial in government guidelines on continuing professional development, led to nationally acclaimed publications*. Some of these have been translated into other languages.

Ealing cannot remain oblivious of what it had allowed to blossom in the Borough in those short 14 years of its college's existence.

cf. Hanko G. Special Needs in Ordinary Classrooms: From Staff Support to Staff Development (3rd edition 1995): David Fulton
*later incorporated in Hanko G. Increasing Confidence through Collaborative Problem- solving (1999): David Fulton publishers.

Giving an answer 'no', to the question of the subtitle regarding compatibility, has involved an enormous amount of scholarship. There are 36 contributors to this collection of essays. So inevitably a host of other possible questions have been addressed too. The main question though - and its answer - are not made fully explicit.

The time dimension of mankind's fitful progression from the primitive (religious belief) to the modern (science) appears to need more emphasis. Appropriately though the really important stuff does come in the 6th and 7th final sections, where we can appreciate how human religious thought has been preconditioned by the structure of the human brain. When we allow for this ongoing, supreme distortion - of fact into fiction - we realise what an unnecessary mess we are in. And the first 5 sections appear to revel in it.

The space dimensions also need emphasis however. Religion is undoubtedly an aspect of regional culture while science, a recent phenomenon, belongs instead to global culture.

It seems obvious, to many of us if not to everybody, that knowledge-inside-our-heads is something distinct from knowledge in the contents of a library. So much so that we should perhaps always use different names for the two things.

Starting from this fact we can recognise that the concept of God may well exist, along with our personal priorities (concerns) and emotions, inside the heads of many of us. But God as an entity is unable to comfortably exist alongside the tables, cats and galaxies of the real world. And it is 'fiction/fact' that is often used to describe the distinction.

In order not to be talking at cross purposes when thinking about brain-knowledge the term 'alpha thinking' was suggested by me, being derived from the 'Alpha' applied by them to knowledge imparted by evangelical churches in their courses recently started in this country. Ealing Humanists were urged by Derek Hill to sit in on these courses in case it could lead to an extension of our membership in a fashion similar to the expansion now worldwide of the Alpha groups. Materialist knowledge forming the 'essential humanism' of Arthur Atkinson then became 'beta thinking' in contrast to this.

Two further changes in nomenclature - via 'inward thinking' versus 'outward thinking' - have ended us up with 'subjective' versus 'objective' and a subtle change of meaning. It is the past use of these terms by at least one philosopher that was brought to the attention of participants at the Coffee Morning of June 14th. The book illustrated on our cover was offered on loan by Maggie Adams. It deserves more study though from me than I have been able to give so far.