Cambridge University Labour Club
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The Cambridge University Labour Club (CULC) is a political society set up in the early twentieth century to unite socialist students at Cambridge University with the Labour Party. Its varied past has seen it go through several disaffiliations, including periods in the 1960s and 1970s when it was under the influence of the Militant Tendency and disaffiliated with the national Labour Party. It is currently a part of the Labour Party again, but has disaffiliated from Labour Students.
It runs occasional speaker meetings and dinners each term. From 1992 to 2005 it was able to offer its members exclusive trips to the Houses of Parliament and Downing Street through the office of Anne Campbell, but after she lost the Cambridge seat in 2005, these opportunities vanished.
It has gone through several name changes, having been previously known as the Cambridge University Socialist Club, the Cambridge Organisation of Labour Students, and then simply Cambridge Labour. It adopted its current name at the end of the 1990s. The acronym CULC had historically belonged to the Cambridge University Liberal Club, before they became the Cambridge Student Liberal Democrats in 1988, and the acronym is still shared to this day with the Cambridge University Lacrosse Club.
The Club was most influential from the 1930s to the 1970s, when left-leaning schools of thought in British academia were centred at Cambridge, in areas such as Keynesian economics and the Marxist school of history, resulting in a great many influential Cambridge Fellows and their students being members.
Also active until at least the 1960's was 'SocSoc' or the Cambridge University Socialist Society.
[edit] Current Office-Holders
| Office | Person | College |
|---|---|---|
| Chair | Luke Pearce | King's |
| Deputy Chair | Jane Pothecary | Magdalene |
| Secretary | Adam Williams | Sidney Sussex |
| Treasurer | Gabriel Byng | Gonville and Caius |
| Women's Officer | Clare Harrisson | Trinity |
| Campaigns Officer | Gabriel Huntley | Churchill |
| Publicity Officer | James Kilmartin | Fitzwilliam |
| Membership Development | Will Wearden | King's |
| CLP Liaison Officer | Natasha May | Hughes |
[edit] Alumni
As a society, CULC has produced such notable alumni as:
- Diane Abbott, MP
- Anne Campbell, MP
- Charles Clarke, MP, Secretary of State for the Home Department
- Lord Eatwell, former special advisor to Neil Kinnock
- Charles Falconer, Lord Chancellor
- Andrew Gilligan, journalist
- Lord Harris of Haringey, chair of the Metropolitan Police Authority
- Patricia Hewitt, MP, Secretary of State for Health
- Geoff Hoon, MP, Secretary of State for Defence
- Derry Irvine, Lord Chancellor
- Chris Smith MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
Charles Clarke was also elected President of the Cambridge Students' Union on a Labour party slate.
