Sir Clive Sinclair's legacy

Further to my previous post about Sir Clive Sinclair who died this week after a long illness ...

For 14 years from 1985 I edited the monthly Mensa Magazine. Clive was chairman of the society for most of that time, eventually standing down in 1997 at which point I wrote an article for the magazine entitled 'Clive's Legacy'.

I thought you might like to read it.

Intro: When a youthful Clive Sinclair joined Mensa in 1959 the total number of members worldwide was less than a thousand. Twenty years later, when Britain's greatest living inventor was cajoled to stand for election to the British Mensa Committee, membership of British Mensa stood at 1,700. Today, after 17 years as chairman, there are some 37,000 members in the UK, the word 'Mensa’ is now a household name, and Clive has finally decided to take a well-earned break from Mensa management.

ROWDY AGMs, internal bickering, opposing factions – heard it all before? Sir Clive Sinclair has, which is one of the reasons why, 18 years after he was elected to the British Mensa Committee and 17 years since he became chairman, Mensa's most recognised figurehead is finally calling it a day.

Not that he'd admit it. Speak to him and he'll make all the right noises about "time for new leadership and the fresh approach that will bring". Speak to his friends however and they'll tell you otherwise. Clive, like former Mensa secretary Madsen Pirie and Irish Mensa president David Schulman before him, has grown weary of the constant battles that make Mensa officers worthy of a military medal.

They will also confide that, with the loss of Madsen and, more recently, his old friend John McNulty from Mensa's ruling body, Sunday morning committee meetings are no longer much fun. After all, who wants to have lunch with people you've spent the previous four hours with in unarmed combat?

If this comes as a surprise to many members it shouldn't. Mensa's history – as Victor Serebriakoff's 1984 book Mensa so gruesomely revealed – is peppered with tales of bickering and bile. But it could be worse. Although there has been a degree of in-fighting since the controversial departure of Harold Gale, Mensa's long-serving and highly successful executive director, in 1995, a direct comparison between Mensa circa 1980 and now is far from depressing.

The fact is, after 17 years of stable – some would argue dictatorial – leadership, British Mensa now boasts 37,000 members, an annual turnover of £1.4 million and an organisation that offers members a remarkably eclectic range of things to see and do.

In contrast, in 1980 Mensa was looking as sickly as the British economy. Membership had dropped to less than 2,000, turnover was minimal, and services were restricted to local meetings, a few regional gatherings, and a handful of special interest groups. Like the country, Mensa needed something a little different to restore it to good health and in Clive Sinclair Mensa got something, well, a little different.

Born in London in 1940, Sinclair left school at 16 and became a technical journalist. By 1962 he had founded did his own company, Sinclair Radionics, selling radio and amplifier kits, and was already known as a pioneer in consumer electronics.

A decade later Clive launched the world's first pocket calculator which earned numerous design awards and £2.5m in export revenue. By 1976 the company had launched the digital wrist watch and was working on the world's first pocket TV, subsequently launched in January 1977.

In 1979, the year he joined the Mensa committee, Clive established a new company, Sinclair Research, which was to result in even greater fame and fortune. With the launch of the Sinclair ZX80, the first computer to sell for less than £100, the ZX81 and the more advanced ZX Spectrum in 1982, Sinclair became a household name and one of the chief beneficiaries was Mensa itself.

According to Mensa president Victor Serebriakoff, Clive not only bankrolled Mensa at Cambridge, the ambitious annual conference that, for many years, attracted rave reviews, he also funded an experiment that was to transform British Mensa from a fading social club into a society with a substantial, and increasing, membership.

The early omens however were not promising. After years of squabbling and wholesale resignations, the atmosphere at British Mensa Committee meetings in the late Seventies was disheartening. "We had 1700 members but there wasn't a lot of optimism." In America, says Clive, members enjoyed a colourful, professional-looking magazine. "In the UK ours was plain and uninspiring. America offered meetings with huge numbers of members the like of which Britain had never seen."

Determined to change the face of British Mensa, Clive's principal objectives were to increase the number of members and introduce a more up-market type of event. Harold Gale, appointed chief executive in 1976, had already begun the task of recruiting new members but it was Clive's suggestion, backed up by money from his own pocket, that Mensa should pay for advertising rather than rely on occasional free publicity that triggered the extraordinary expansion the society subsequently enjoyed.

By targeting high circulation publications, notably the tabloids, membership was transformed in a remarkably short period. Two thousand members in 1980 became 10,000 by 1983 and 13,000 a year later. Nor did it stop there. Within a decade British Mensa membership had shot up and by the mid Nineties had peaked at 38,000. Like its famous chairman, Mensa too became a household name.

Stability, a high public profile, and money – these, say his most vocal supporters, are the principal assets Clive gave Mensa. Others point to his regular attendance at local meetings and regional gatherings as evidence of a man with a genuine interest in Mensa and its members.

Not everyone however has been enamoured by Clive's stewardship. Long-time critic George Shera remains aghast that "someone who has run his own company still knows next to nothing about company law and Mensa's regulations". Nor, says George, was Clive an ideal figurehead. "The public argument he had with a business rival which produced front page headlines; the ill-fated and frequently ridiculed C5; even Clive's appearance on a TV programmes advocating the use of a pension fund to support the flagging profits of an imaginary company showed him in a less than flattering light."

Other are even more damning. Brian Ford, a leading candidate to succeed Sinclair as chairman, believes "members have resented the Sinclair manner as shallow, [and] socially gauche" while East Midlands chairman Michael Hargreave-Mawson complains that, under Clive, "Mensa has grown in numbers but has failed to develop any common goals."

For the majority of members however Clive's good points far outweigh the bad. (I myself can vouch for the fact that associating Clive's name with a Mensa event invariably doubles the audience.) Indeed, to your average Mensa member, Clive Sinclair remains The Man They Would Most Like To Have Dinner With.

As an ardent admirer of Margaret Thatcher it seems rather appropriate that Sinclair's reign as chairman should have begin within a year of Mrs T becoming prime minister and end shortly after the Conservatives lost their grip on government after 18 years. It would be wrong however to draw too many parallels. Clive, after all, is not being thrown out of office with his tail between his legs. It is entirely his decision to step down and many members are genuinely sorry to see him go.

Regrets? Yes, he's had a few. Frustrated by a lack of progress at international level, he's also disappointed that no-one took up the Mensa at Cambridge baton and organised similar events elsewhere. Not since the Eighties has the membership grown in the way he anticipated. The circumstances surrounding Harold Gale's departure are further cause for discomfort and he is sad that so few members followed his example and took a more active role in the society.

"Members," says Clive, "should take from Mensa whatever they want. However it's a great shame they don't try any meetings because I personally have made a lot of very good friends and enjoyed some excellent weekends."

Above all, he is delighted to have served Mensa for so long despite the arguments and occasional in-fighting. "The fact that not everyone gets on is not necessarily a bad thing. The important thing is that there should be a broad spread of talent. I feel very positive about the future and look forward to seeing how the new committee gets on."

Published in November 1997.

See also: Sir Clive Sinclair, fondly remembered and Sir Clive Sinclair: Tireless inventor ahead of his time (BBC News).