Frances Martin talked to Olivia Herlihy about her experiences of international communications during her career as a social worker. Frances has lived and worked in many countries and has seen an exponential growth in the range and quality of communications technologies.

Here is Olivia's summary of the interview:

Changes in Methods of International Communication

Contributor: Miss Frances Martin

Interviewer: Miss Olivia Herlihy

Date of recording: 1^st July 1999

Location of Interview: Archers Court, Salisbury.

Biographical Data

After her service in the Air Force during World War II, Frances spent the rest of her life as a social worker and a great deal of her life was spent abroad. Frances worked on behalf of refugees throughout the world, meaning that she travelled to all continents and over one hundred countries. For ten years she was based in Geneva, and she also spent three years in Malaya and later, time in west Africa. The last time Frances was working was about fourteen years ago. Frances continues to be extremely interested in every part of the world because she’s been all over the world and wants to keep up with what’s happening.

How Frances’ Methods of Communication Changed.

Frances recalled that when she was first over seas, during war service, letters used to take a very long time, but when she moved to the far east, they would take only a week, as they started going by air mail. Frances has never used telephones or sent telegrams for long distance as she believes they are very expensive, but she knew that it would be possible at the time for her to send a cable which would get through very quickly. Over the years it became possible for her to use very fast methods of communication such as e-mail. Today Frances only uses the telephone for very short periods of time but used it more often when she had been working. Similarly, she doesn’t use e-mail today either and only ever used it for work.

A country that Frances has noticed to advance in technology with communication most was India. It is an enormous country and nowadays, every single village can obtain news and be in contact with the rest of the world, which was not possible in the past..

How the Changes Affected Frances.

Frances found the advances in methods of communication made a big difference to her work, particularly because you could transfer funds electronically very quickly, whereas before that banks were very slow.

Frances recalled an incident, when she was working in Malaya and was asked to change jobs and she needed to get a quick answer from London and that took quite a long time. Frances explained that communication grew, not only between big cities but even the smallest of villages and she believes that it helped people to feel involved and feel that someone was listening to their problems: "You come to realise that their are people in other countries wanting to help." She thinks that there is much more co-operation between other countries today, whereas in the old days British people seemed to have the attitude that Britain was the only country in the world. Today, she believes that because of international communication, people know more about other cultures and countries.

Frances remembers, when she was travelling in Latin America, she was going to visit a contact and then suddenly got a cable to say that the person she was going to meet had died and that she would have to find a new contact. If the message had got to her quicker then she could have been able to make arrangements quicker. Speed of communication certainly helps in working situations as long as it’s accurate. She has not, however found accuracy to change a great deal, as there has always been the human element and humans can easily make mistakes.

Methods of Obtaining News

Frances explained how changes in methods of obtaining news affected ones understanding of what was going on in the world. She thought that radio in particular made a big difference to her life. You could hear about events over the radio very quickly, and was far better than waiting for someone to trek to the nearest village to get a radio call through.

Frances recalled that when she was in eastern Europe, there was little communication with the west and people were discouraged from listening to foreign broadcasts. Today this has changed and people can listen to whatever they want. She remembers there was a lot of wheeler dealing going on through big businesses which she believes is no longer possible to do in secret, as they have to go through public channels.

Today, Frances watches television and listens to the radio but says that her primary source of obtaining information is from the written word: "…it is considered to be truer and not so selective." For most of her life Frances never had a television and so never relied on it; she has always viewed television more as a medium for entertainment.

Linking up with radio became much cheaper and eventually every household would have a radio, whereas before there was only one speaker in the public square and everyone had to go there to listen to it. Today there are far more channels and without strict censorship, you could broadcast anything. Frances recalled that it was the beginning of the sixties when things started to change and people began to get their own radios. Frances believes it is very important that everyone has a radio to understand some of the political matters.

Today Frances picks up French or German newspapers whenever she can and gets a lot of international news because she thinks it’s very important to read news from different perspectives and gain views from different countries. Frances told me that the availability of foreign newspapers was quite good, when she was travelling and she could get hold of them easily, as you can do today.

Methods of Travelling

The speed of travel has changed a great deal. The development of air travel made an enormous difference on Frances’ work. At first she had to travel everywhere by sea; she spent six weeks on a boat to Singapore, whereas today it would only take hours on a plane.

Frances found that over the years, the time that a plane spent in the air shortened and shortened. Originally, she told me that to visit Kenya for example, the plane would have to stop and refuel several times. She said that she would have to get off the plane in the middle of the night at airports so that the plane could refuel and therefore journeys took two or three days. It made a big difference when air travel became quicker.

When Frances first went to Moscow, it took eight days by road which meant that she got a good understanding of each place that she visited along the way. The last time she visited Moscow it took three hours on the plane, which is a disadvantage in that you don’t see any in-between stages. Another down side to the advance in methods of travel, Frances believes, is that all developments in travel have been used for military purposes and she believes this is wrong.

Report by Olivia Herlihy

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