Undergraduate Politics
By TOPHER DRIVER (Christ Church, Oxford) AFORTNIGHT ago there appeared an article by Anthony Howard on 'Undergraduate Christianity.' The gist of it was that Christianity in the University is on the make. Old-time religion is having a boom year, and around , us prowl the troops of Midian, praying for a recession. A charming picture, and more accurate than might be expected from a commentator on Evangelical behaviour whose invin- cible ignorance has long been one of the best clubs in his bag.
But his own stamping ground, student politics, also repays study. Unfortunately, it is a subject on which it sometimes becomes difficult to gather damaging evidence. It is like Free- masonry: the initiates are secretive, and the uninitiated are rude. For those aloof young men who tell you primly that they are 'above politics' comprise an alarmingly large fraction of the University. Social successes and social outcasts, actors, philosophers, rugger Blues and Christians : all like to keep their fingers clean. It is understandable but unfortunate. It means that 'ivory tower' political thought, one of the most valuable things this place affords, is almost unknown. For the most part, the officers of the political clubs have in their heads a magnetic tape on which are recorded all the worst ideas of their elders, expounded in pamphlets from headquarters. They have tried to swallow facts, and have failed to get them down; tried to borrow doctrines, and have succeeded horribly.
This disease displays its symptoms in the Union. It is not that the Union is primarily a society which argues about politics. It is more like a permanent pantomime. We, ambitious, deprived children that we are, sit in the stalls, hoping to be invited up on stage. But to the politician it is still the means of grace, the hope of glory. It has an enormous reputation outside Oxford : abroad, it is a legend. Indeed a glance at Standing and Library Committee benches recalls nothing so much as Keynes's description of the 1919 Parliament as 'hard-faced men who looked as if they had done well out of the war.' There they sit on debate nights, scratching each other's backs, biting other's ears, stealing each other's lines.
It must be admitted that at present the Union is becalmed lack, not of wind, but of talent. And the idly flapping sails, t haze, the mediocrity of it all, are most obvious when politic: motions are under debate. The children are on stage, but alas they have nothing clever to say. Yet they do not lack a teaches The 'open' political clubs, all six of them, have much to gi" the rising Union speaker. Their discussion groups provide !Ill with points, their speakers' classes tell him how to put the and when he stands for office, their block vote gets him in. B they are lack-lustre organisations, and do the Union no go() Three years back, the Conservative Association was little more than the Bullingdon in a responsible mood. But now IN' gin-sodden aristocrats have gone : it is no longer brutal, b bourgeois. It would be hard to say that its members ling profited from the change. Conservatives in Oxford used to sa! things which Conservatives in the House, nursing their coil stituencies, left unsaid. NQw they say them no longer. The!' magazine, Oxford Tory, with its bright, corrupt blend of gossi and controversy, is dead. It was garden party politics, but it via fun. Now there is left to it a faithful remnant, which sits in Taylorian on Friday evenings, waiting for speakers wit generally never come.
The size of the Liberal Club keeps the Party's elder states men, its mantelpiece ornaments, very happy—it serves no mile obvious political purpose. It is christian with a small `c.' Join' ing it is a sign that one feels it is time to learn how to become. useful citizen. Not many of its members really like the ides of co-ownership and Clement : all of them loathe the idea of nationalisation and Nye. The Labour Club is a different, more enigmatic animal. Lil:e Christianity; it has its mass demonstrations : if Dr. Grahaal slew his thousands, Mr. Bevan last term lapped and chopP to sortie effect. It numerically very strong, and its meetings are probably rather better attended than comparable Christian ones. But it works under considerable handicaps. It is con' nected, by apron strings and a private line, to Transport House, and this has helped to make it one of the most totalitarian insti tutions in the University. It draws its skirts away in a' marked manner from the Socialist Club. This, Labour Club officers tell you, is a .proscribed organisation. But these fellow travellers retairran embarrassing affection for the triumvirs who proscribed them. In Oxford there is no simple split betv,,cen those who do, and those who do not, love the official leaders of the Labour Party. Nobody loves the official leaders of the Labour Party. Orthodox Labour as Mr. Gaitskell understands it is now one of Oxford's lost causes, and it is time we of the dreaming spires furbished up a belfry to accommodate it, All this has had a considerable influence on Christian activity in undergraduate politics. There is some irony in the fact that, while Christians own to a creed which is once more popular and respectable, the gateway for them into Oxford politics has narrowed to the eye of a needle. So much remains to be done, but Labour is no longer looking for Methodists to do it. It is the ecumenical movement, 'the great new fact of our time,' as Temple called it, which ltas captured the imaginations of Christians here. But they are in danger of becoming ecclesias' tical diplomats : they have damped the fires in their bellies. As a result, the political screen is left to panel-g-ame quarrels and personalities; and those undergraduates who enjoy neither ignore both. To most of them, Mr. Howard is an almost mythical figure, an adolescent Gilbert Harding; genial but unapproachable, the smile on the face of the telly. If he wanted to attack Christians in the University, he should have attacked, not their enthusiasm, but their apathy.
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