Adrian Hilton: The decline and fall of the Oxford Union

Adrian Hilton is a conservative academic, theologian and educationalist. 

‘If you want to run for the Union – and it’s not a bad thing to do – make your reputation outside first’, Charles Ryder was advised in Brideshead Revisited as he was about to go up to Oxford.

It wasn’t bad guidance from his cousin Jasper, but the reputational sphere was restricted to improving oratorical technique at the Canning or Chatham clubs, with the exhortation of discipline to ‘begin by speaking on the paper’. For the disimpassioned, it was rather prosaic guidance.

For those more inclined to the Sebastian Flyte school of reputation-making, you could walk up and down Catte Steet in dove-grey flannels and a crêpe-de-chine scarf supping Cointreau with an old bear named Aloysius. Or editing the Isis while dreaming of a rowing blue and sauntering nightly around the Bodleian dressed like something out of Gilbert & Sullivan. Or joining the O.U.D.S and giving such a mesmerising Hamlet or Faustus that the high-table toasts would hail you as the heir to Gielgud. But for a certain type of student, the presidency of the Oxford Union is the zenith of realisation; the chamber where love dies and the political bonds of callow reputation are forged by bluster and zest. Here are planted the seeds of life’s harvest while they learn the art of secular ritual and taste the ecstasy of oratorical victory. By shaking hands with the great and the good, you were almost anointed to become one – a bishop, captain or cabinet minister, at least, if not one day prime minister.

And many have indeed joined the ranks of the elite, right from the society’s inception. The first to become an MP was Digby Wrangham who was president in 1826 and entered Parliament just five years later in 1831. Others so destined include Thomas Acland, William Ewart Gladstone, Herbert Henry Asquith, George Curzon, and Quintin Hogg. More recent years have yielded Michael Foot, Edward Heath, Anthony Crosland, Tony Benn, Michael Heseltine, William Hague, and, of course, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. The undisputed and disputable heirs to two centuries of intellectual enlightenment and political tiffs.

The first Jewish president was elected in 1910 (Leonard Stein); the first Asian in 1934 (Dosabhai Framji Karaka); the first black president in 1942 (James Cameron Tudor), and it didn’t take long after women were permitted to become full members in 1963 for the first female president to be elected (Geraldine Jones in 1968). And feminine stares of disdain proved just as deadly as any man’s guile: they presided with the same clear eyes and toiling lungs.

As each university intake became progressively diverse, reflecting the increasing pluralism in society, so junior officers became more ethnically and racially diverse. Over the past year alone, the society has had its first Arab president (Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy), two Pakistani presidents (Israr Kahn and Moosa Harraj), and, mirroring the rise of Kemi Badenoch to lead the Conservative Party, its first black female president (Nigerian, Anita Okunde). Recently ousted president-elect George Abaraonye was also of Nigerian descent, and the newly elected president-elect, Arwa Elrayess, is a Palestinian Arab. She is presently promoting a myth claiming to be the ‘first Palestinian’ ever elected president, which is only true if she ignores the Palestinian Jew (Gershon Hirsch) elected in 1941.

The thing about racial/ethnic/cultural diversity is that the term-card of each president tends to reflect something of their social concerns and political priorities, if not sectarianism. They know it all, and they like to keep people small. Thus, when an Arab president inclines to the proposition ‘This house believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide’, and vacates the chair in order to speak himself in favour of the motion, it follows that the environment becomes distinctly hostile to those who argue against, if not a scene of desolation for Jews more generally. They seem to have become the undesirables.

There are geo-political contextual variables for such debates, of course. But some of the speakers in this one were deemed not only to have sailed close to the lauding of Hamas as worthy of emulation, but to have crossed the line with their glorification of terrorism and incitement to racial hatred. One of the speakers, Susan Abulhawa, is currently suing the society on the grounds that the standing committee was advised to edit the video of her speech to conform to the statutory requirements relating to the promotion of terrorism and racial/religious hatred; a censorship which she considers not only an infringement of copyright and breach of contract, but defamatory and discriminatory.

Over the past decade, an erstwhile liberal debating society has become more overtly hostile to members who hold certain political-philosophical views. When Jews hear a speaker addressing Zionists, saying: “You don’t know how to live in the world without dominating others. You have crossed all lines and nurtured the most vile of human impulses,” the animosity, if not hatred, oppresses souls. You could have a philosophical debate about the meaning of ‘Zionism’ in this context, but the vehemence of enmity precludes it. There is a kind of ‘cleansing’ going on, if not an ‘occupation’ being instituted, which often manifests itself with threats and intimidation of both invited speakers and those who dare to speak on the floor. Recent debates have not only been distinctly anti-Israel, anti-American and anti-capitalist in flavour, but increasingly focused on multiculturalism, pro-Islam, the Global South, international courts, the Ottoman Empire, Kashmir, the Arab Spring, Khamenei’s Iran, Modi’s India, and so on. It has become a foreign ground, unrecognisable from even a decade ago.

This focus is exacerbated by the post-graduate international intakes of some colleges and associated institutions. The Saïd Business School, for example, is proudly diverse and global, and (uniquely) currently offers free life membership of the Oxford Union to all their Masters and DPhil students. That is at least 550 memberships (and around £120,000, discounted in a ‘bulk membership’ deal) every year, as against the dozen or so undergraduates who might join from each of the colleges. This institutional ‘entryism’ has a distorting effect not only on the election of officers and motions for debate, but also on the culture of the society. The financial dependence also inclines to the tolerance of domineering postgrads. It is also worth noting that Saïd’s bloc-funding accounts for around 30 per cent of annual OUS membership income, making it difficult to sustain the assertion that the university and society are completely separate.

This is a deal that perhaps the Saïd Business School should urgently reconsider.

Following the Israel debate presided over by Mowafy, numerous complaints were raised and formal investigations initiated by those who faced his reproaches. In a damning report, he was found to have harassed, bullied and victimised people; caused significant offence and distress; abused the rules of debate; exposed the society to serious legal jeopardy; risked criminal liability for standing committee members; disparaged and fostered hostility against the society’s legal counsel by referring to him as a ‘Zionist’; was persistently obstructive, hostile and disruptive in meetings, and otherwise engaged in conduct liable to bring the society into disrepute. So serious has been his chronic campaign of disruption, manipulation and intimidation that the OUS corporately deemed it necessary to recommend the most severe disciplinary sanction: permanent expulsion from membership. His presidency was authority without dignity. The alarming thing is that the subsequent election of two others who agreed with him to the Standing Committee resulted in the withdrawal of the complaint before it could be heard by the Senior Disciplinary Committee.

As if that weren’t enough, Anita Okunde hosted a Hamas-lauding speaker and whipped up a tribal chant of ‘Free Palestine’. She, too, received a motion of no confidence in her leadership for bullying and dictatorial behaviour, which she casually brushed off with her sex: “Sadly, this is not the first time I or others have faced misogyny, threats, or discriminatory behaviour during my time at the Union,” she said.

Other pro-Palestine meetings have ended with chants of ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, with all its genocidal connotations. Anyone who expresses concern about this is isolated and harassed. If you get on the wrong side of some, they take it out of you in debilitating procedural ways. At the time of writing, there are active disciplinary cases against the president, librarian, treasurer, secretary, ex-treasurer, librarian-elect, deputy returning officer, and three members of the standing committee. These have been brought by a president-elect, two ex-presidents, the ex-librarian, ex-treasurer, and three other members of the standing committee. There are also corporate complaints against a member of the standing committee for disseminating inciteful pamphlets; against another for intimidation and blackmail; and another for ‘weaponising’ the society’s noticeboard and unauthorised recording of proceedings. Ferrets in a sack would have more dignity than this internecine litany of retaliatory disorder.

It is important, however, not to aquatint the Oxford Union of centuries past in some arcadian Brideshead of mild, elegant, gentlemen-scholars, where life kept pace with punting in the autumn mists and opinions were articulated with a mild sacerdotal authority. The society has been riven with division, beset with infighting and endured existential schisms since the 19th century. Indeed, the foundation of the United Debating Society in 1823 lasted only until 1825, when the only solution to irreconcilable differences was dissolution and re-foundation as the Oxford Union Society, with the malcontents expelled. And again in 1833, the exasperation of established Conservatives with the insurgent Liberal standing committee led to the Tory ‘Ramblers’ splitting off and forming a separate society, which in turn led to their expulsion en masse for setting up a rival society to God’s, as immortalised in the poem Uniomachia (‘Battle at the Union’). In 1847, the OUS set up its (extant) trust deed after a faction tried to sell off assets to aid victims of the Irish potato famine (and to this day, there remains a prohibition on OUS funds being donated to charity).

If the present political rot runs deep, the financial corrosion runs deeper. The society is currently facing bankruptcy as its junior officers do what all ‘here-today, gone tomorrow’ (aspiring) politicians do: carry on regardless, because tomorrow will somehow take care of itself. It is forecast to make almost a £400,000 loss in the year 2025/26, and has less than £800,000 in reserve. Today’s presidents can spend £5,000 on Bollinger, £1,800 on peacocks, and £750 on an ice sculpture, leaving tomorrow’s presidents to worry about austerity. But the problem is not so much the riotous exuberance of OUS young bloods as the dereliction of duty of the grown-ups in the Oxford Literary and Debating Union Trust (OLDUT), which owns the Grade II* listed buildings and is the charitable arm of the society (or, rather, the OUS is OLDUT’s legal delegate for its fiduciary obligations). It was established in 1975 following another bankruptcy scare. There was a fear that in order to pay its debts, the society would sell off some of its buildings to the university or a private developer. A group of former officers raised enough money to bail out the OUS and buy the buildings in the name of a charitable organisation with the stated aim of ‘The Advancement of Education with the University of Oxford by the provision of debates and the maintenance of Library and Reading Room facilities’. OLDUT therefore provides the OUS with access to its ‘non-commercial rooms’ (libraries and debating chamber) for free, and allows access to its ‘commercial rooms’ (bar, snooker room, and a couple of others) for a nominal fee. Incredibly, even the bar is currently operating at a loss.

OLDUT has a vested interest in the governance, functioning and flourishing of the OUS because it is only able to meet its charitable educational objectives by supporting it. The OUS is an unincorporated association: it has no legal personality and is owned equally by its 140,000+ global members but led by Oxonians in statu pupillari. This symbiosis initially had substantial buy-in from significant ex-presidents, including Sir Jeremy Lever and Michael (Lord) Heseltine, who remains patron of the charity. In 2019, following another scandal where a blind black student was violently ejected from the chamber, which led to a national outpouring of condemnation of the society for brutality and racism, another body was set up to oversee the decisions of the bursar. He supervises all elements of the running of the society; students being deemed too inexperienced, unreliable, and impermanent to hold the full-time staff to account. This body, called the Audit Committee, has seen numerous resignations recently, most notably that of its founding chair, Miles Young, Warden of New College.

Over the past five years there have been three bursars and two acting bursars. OLDUT paid a five-figure sum for a headhunting firm to find suitable candidates for the bursar vacancy in 2021 and again in 2023, both of whom resigned after less than two years citing the society as ‘ungovernable’. Five trustees have also resigned over the past two years, and there is currently no bursar at all. The past five years have also seen three senior librarians and three senior treasurers, most attributing their departures to a hostile working environment and a culture of utter thanklessness.

The scale and rate of turnover of those who are supposed to keep the society running has been profoundly destabilising. They are like the permanent civil service to the ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ student officers, and without them it is hard to see anything but a path of chaos and increasing irrelevance. At the turn of the millennium, some 40-50 per cent of undergraduates were members; today it is just 10-15 per cent. This decay has a sympathetic background in the degradation of the Union buildings, with leaking roofs, unstable chimney stacks, precarious load-bearing joists, and plaster crumbling from ceilings. The repairs and renovations, which are urgent, have an estimated cost of £4-5million. It’s not impossible the buildings might need to close altogether for health and safety reasons.

And ‘health and safety’ is but one of the governance tensions – or accountability obfuscations – in urgent need of reform. All the statutory regulatory requirements are presently in the hands of bright but inexperienced students who circulate every eight weeks, giving zero continuity and scant need of responsibility. The priorities, specialisms and competencies of one cohort will not be the same as those of the next. It is therefore possible, if not highly probable, that the students, while being responsible as tenants for the care and upkeep of the building, may know nothing at all about the necessary standards and expectations. Any why should they bother acquiring the knowledge if they won’t be there in eight weeks? Yet ultimate liability for safety resides with the adults of OLDUT.

It is the same with employment issues, where students have a veto on hiring and firing. They are also in charge of data protection, financial accounting, licensing compliance, ensuring conformity to equality and discrimination legislation, and the appointment of society trustees. In practice these are overseen by the bursar, but he is accountable to the student standing committee (who can fire him). Essentially, the students can be ignorant, indolent, reckless or all three, but it is the trustees of OLDUT who will be fined or go to prison, and their reluctance to intervene is bordering on apathy and negligence. Without liability insurance, it is small wonder some are showing signs of severe stress or simply resigning.

With successive scandals, lawsuits, looming bankruptcy, terrorism investigations and breaches of charity law, the society has become a byword of iniquity from Christ Church to Somerville: students possessed with vaulting ambition, their lives governed by moral-political imperatives garlanded with the conceit of personal infallibility. They seem to dream more of their future entry in Debrett’s than care for the stewardship of ‘the most prestigious debating society in the world’.

If losses continue to mount, the Oxford Union may not have long left as a ‘going concern’, but if it does go bankrupt all would not be lost. Indeed, history would simply repeat itself, with OLDUT nominating a new body to take over the debating society and library functions in exactly the same way that OUS rose in 1825 from the ashes of the United Debating Society. That assumes, of course, that the toxic fallout from OUS self-destruction doesn’t bring OLDUT to the edge of bankruptcy by crippling its fundraising capacity and impeding urgent building renovations.

If this Jacobean tragedy is to end, the incestuous strife and internecine inquisitions need to cease.

There is an urgent need for reform of the governance structure, and here there is an ember of sanity just about glowing in the form of the Concerned Alumni of the Oxford Union. That body has the knowledge, expertise and dedication to wrest the society from those agents of destruction who view it as an institutional relic ripe for repurposing to their political ends. George Abaraonye takes the view that “some institutions are too broken, too oppressive to be reformed. Like cancers of our society, they must and they should be taken down by any means necessary”. His infiltration might have failed, but others are intent on blasting the foundations if the superstructure doesn’t crumble first. Blind to their own malignancy, those who are hostile to the history and traditions of the society and its foundational charitable objects cannot possibly lead it. The task of OLDUT is to intervene when such radicals emerge whose concern with debate and freedom of speech ceases when their agenda is challenged or their creed derided. At the very least, students who aspire to governance must begin to take on statutory responsibilities in order that the laws of trusteeship can hold them personally to account. If, then, they seek to repurpose the prestige of the society by subverting its integrity and fund-raising capacity, they would be accountable not only to internal disciplinary bodies, but to the courts, with all the judicial gravity, legal liability, and potentially life-long consequences that would entail.

If these reforms are much delayed, it will be 1825 all over again.