Oxford Union reverses motion

Press, 11 February 1983, Page 6

Oxford Union reverses motion

NZPA London Oxford University's student debating society yesterday reversed a resolution that caused a political controversy 50 years ago and still provokes bitter argument. In 1933, just after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, undergraduates at the Oxford Union carried by 275 votes to 152 a resolution: “That this House will in no circumstances fight for King and Country.” Historians still argue whether the debate influenced Hitler's perception of British willingness to fight in the events leading to the Second World War, which many of the undergraduate debaters joined. Yesterday the Union, an elite academic group, restaged the debate with a British historian, Lord Beloff, who spoke in favour at the 1933 debate, opposing the motion. Lord Beloff said that he wanted to apologise to the memory of his friends killed in the war for the “foolish arrogance” displayed by the supporters of that motion, many of whom were in uniform and fighting six years later. “Those of us'who voted for the original motion have a duty to make atonement and to warn against the kind of foolish arrogance which led us to make statements which were factually and morally untrue,” he said. The original debate got worldwide publicity, and the wartime leader, Sir Winston Churchill, referred to it in his memoirs as an “ever shameful” resolution that had taken “deep root and swayed many calculations" in Germany and elsewhere. Yesterday, the main speaker for the motion, Lord Soper, urged the House to press for unilateral disarmament by Britain. “You should be prepared to make a sacrifice for peace in the way that we have made sacrifices for war,” he said.