Death and life members
What look very like the death-throes of the Oxford Union have been affording many of us onlookers some sharp pleasure. Only students of excessive coarseness or extreme left-wing principles could have dismissed the. long-serving Steward Mr Leslie Crawte in so loutish a fashion as the Standing Committee chose to adopt last week. But although the manners of those who took this action seem objectionable, their commonsense may well prove correct. The 'traditional' Oxbridge Union Society is a Victorian growth which has managed to preserve itself against all reason into the second half of this century. Its debates are throw-backs. The mannered jokes of undergraduate speakers may once have possessed some wit and elegance, but on the two recent occasions when I was fool enough to agree to speak at these Unions I heard scant evidence of elegance or wit (and provided none either). I do not think it would matter much if the Oxford and the Cam-. bridge Unions were to be sold for supermarkets, office blocks, lodgings, or depots for student representative councils to put their officers and committees into.
If the sites are really valuable, why not sell them on the open. market and divide the money among the existing life-members? I speak as one.
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