Would they fight ... ? Oxford to repeat famous debate

Press, 9 February 1983, Page 23

Would they fight ... ? Oxford to repeat famous debate

By

JUDSON BENNETT,

Features

International

A 12-word statement which is still claimed to have convinced Hitler that the young men and women of Britain would never fight against him in any future war is suddenly back in the news, after half a century.

It was on February 12, 1933, that pacifist undergraduates forced the influential Oxford University Union debating society to pass the motion that “this house will in no circumstances fight for its king and country." It triggered off an astonishing row. and was said to have deeply influenced Hitler. who had come into power shortly before, and was already intent on rearming Germany.

Britain, he declared, was a nation of young cowards" —

despite the fact that four days after the debate, antipacifist students swarmed into the debating chamber, snatched the minute-book, and ripped out the page containing the result of the debate.

Not surprisingly, the Oxford Union is hoping that feelings will not run quite so high when the “King and Country” debate is restaged this week-end with at least two of the original speakers

from the 1933 debate. Lord Hailsham (formerly Quinton Hogg) and Lord Beloff (formerly Max Beloff). This- time, the pacifists will be represented by Methodist minister, Lord Sbper, and Tariq Ali. Speaking for Queen and country will be Lord Beloff, who took the other side in 1933. He comments: “I feel very penitent for holding the wrong views 50 years ago."

Certainly, the result of the original vote, 50 years ago. caused little short of a national outrage. The Mayor of Oxford, Aiderman C. H. Brown, declared: “I believe that if all the great men who have studied in past years in the university were to know what these young men are doing to the noble traditions which they have passed down, then they would call these young men traitors.” The Oxford Union victory had come in the wake of an upsurge of intellectual pacifism in the 19305, but by no means the whole of Oxford

was prepared to accept the outcome of the debate.

A vigorous counter-move-ment among undergraduates was launched by Lord Stanley of Alderley, supported by Winston Churchill’s son, Randolph. The pacifists prepared to do fresh battle. News that there was a bid to overthrow the motion ran quickly through the Oxford colleges.

The Union chamber was packed with more than 1000 students for a fresh debate to expunge the original motion from the record. Events threw some of the Oxford college authorities into a state of panic. Police reinforcements were moved in and tried to make sure that only ticket-holding members of the Union were allowed into the second debate. Such restrictions were a failure. The chamber was crowded with undergraduates from St John's College, one of whose members, K. H. Digby, had proposed the original motion. Catcalls and the eruption of stink bombs greeted Ran-

dolph Churchill when he rose in an attempt to overthrow the original proposal. Despite his efforts, the motion to expunge the original “pacifist" vote from the Union records' was defeated by a decisive 700 votes to 138.

But the anti-pacifist lobby did not give up. Next day, the Union received by post a black box containing more than 200 white feathers and an anonymous note suggesting that they should be distributed to all those who had voted for the motion.

Indignation was further boosted by Aiderman Brown, who said: “Last November, when I was marching to the war memorial, a crowd of young men walked alongside, waving red flags and shouting and displaying nothing but sheer hooliganism and irreverence."

The “Daily Express" pontificated: “That the university where the Prince of Wales and some of the highest nobility of England have studied should so strongly proclaim a view which is regarded as highly Communistic, unpatriotic, and unBritish, has shocked the citizens of Oxford.”

In an attempt to introduce a note of reason, "The

Times" said: “The critics who take an episode of this kind tragically’ can have no real understanding of Oxford, or of the very limited part which the Union plays in its life.

“It may tend to perpetuate a completely false impression of the modern undergraduate. “The Union is by no means representative of the University ... It has always been liable to fall into the hands of a little clique of cranks. The great body of undergraduates lives its life at Oxford without ever concerning itself about the Union's activities."

In a final judgment, which was to prove uncannily accurate when the country went to war six years later. “The Times" proclaimed: “There is not the slightest reason to regard its latest resolution as a symptom of universal decline."

And what is the likely fate of the same resolution in 1983?

The Oxford Union's presi-dent-elect, Sri Lanken Hilali Noordeen. says: “In 1933, they were very naive, idealistic young people. I don’t think the motion will get through again.”