THE RED FLAG

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 June 1936, Page 13

THE RED FLAG

OXFORD REPUDIATES IT

LONDON, May 13

The sensational resolution adopted last week by the Oxford University Onion, “That this house recognises no flag jbut the Red flag,” has aroused great indignation throughout Britain. It does not, however, reflect either the political tendency of the union itself or the views of a vast majority of the undergraduates. The motion was passed by a few “hot heads” who had succeeded in catching the union unawares.

Noimally, the union has a debate .every Thursday, but to allow more sneakers to air their opinions, the practice has been adopted lately of adjourning the debate until Friday. Such was the case last week. On Friday, when the motion was carried, the attendance was unusually low. The normal attendance at union debates is about 400. On this occasion there were only 124 present. Of those, 67 were professed Communists, and the motion was carried by 10 votes. Oxford is incensed that 67 “publicity seekers” and “cranks,” as they are called, should have been allowed to assume responsibility for expressing the views of the union and, indirt ctly, of the university. Some idea of how misleading the parsing of such a motion may be, can lie drawn from the following statistics: There are, roughly, 4000 male students at Oxford. Of those, 1500 have paid subscriptions to the University Conservative Association, 250 to the Liberals, and 600 to the Labour. The Labour Club includes those mem- 1 hers of the October Chib, the Com- i munist organisation, which has dis-i banded, owing to lack of support. It is said that if a poll were to be taken on the question of affirming the liolicy of the present National Government. over 3000 of the undergraduates would vote in support.