The King and Country debate

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The King and Country debate was a discussion at the Oxford Union debating society on 9 February, 1933 of the resolution: "That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country". It was passed by 275 votes to 153.

The resolution was moved by Mr. K. H. Digby of St John's College and opposed by Mr. K. R. F. Steel-Maitland of Balliol College. The three speakers were Mr. D. H. Graham of Balliol, with Quintin Hogg arguing against it and C. E. M. Joad arguing for it. The teller for the Ayes was Max Beloff and for the Noes Mr. R. G. Thomas.[1]

[edit] Reaction

A Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford at the time, R. B. McCallum, claimed that the "sensation created when this resolution was passed was tremendous. It received world-wide publicity...Throughout England people, especially elderly people, were thoroughly shocked. Englishmen who were in India at the time have told me of the dismay they felt when they heard of it...'What is wrong with the younger generation?' was the general query".[2]

The Daily Express said of it: "There is no question but that the woozy-minded Communists, the practical jokers, and the sexual indeterminates of Oxford have scored a great success in the publicity that has followed this victory...Even the plea of immaturity, or the irresistible passion of the undergraduate for posing, cannot excuse such a contemptible and indecent action as the passing of that resolution". The Manchester Guardian responded differently: "The obvious meaning of this resolution [is] youth's deep disgust with the way in which past wars for 'King and Country' have been made, and in which, they suspect, future wars may be made; disgust at the national hypocrisy which can fling over the timidities and follies of politicians, over base greeds and communal jealousies and jobbery, the cloak of an emotional symbol they did not deserve".[3] An anonymous critic sent the Oxford Union a box containing 275 white feathers, one for each vote for the resolution.[4]

Winston Churchill condemned the motion in a speech on 17 February, 1933 to the Anti-Socialist and Anti-Communist Union as "that abject, squalid, shameless avowal...[it] was a very disquieting and very disgusting symptom. One could almost feel the curl of contempt upon the lips of the manhood of Germany, Italy and France when they read the message sent out by Oxford University in the name of Young England".[5] In March 1933 the "Oxford Pledge", as the resolution came to be called, was adopted by the University of Manchester and the University of Glasgow.[6]

Three weeks after it was passed, Randolph Churchill proposed a resolution at the Oxford Union to delete the "King and Country" motion from the Union's records but this was defeated by 750 votes to 138.[7]

In a speech in the House of Commons on 20 July, 1934, the Liberal MP Robert Bernays described a visit he made to Germany:

"I remember very vividly, a few months after the famous pacifist resolution at the Oxford Union visiting Germany and having a talk with a prominent leader of the young Nazis. He was asking about this pacifist motion and I tried to explain it to him. There was an ugly gleam in his eye when he said, "The fact is that you English are soft". Then I realized that the world enemies of peace might be the pacifists."[8]

When the Second World War broke out in September 1939 the War Office organised a recruiting board at Oxford which invited undergraduates and resident postgraduates under 25 to enlist: 2,632 out of a potential 3,000 volunteered.[9] McCallum recalled at the outbreak of war two students, "men of light and leading in their college and with a good academic record", visited him to say goodbye before leaving to join their units. Both of them had separately said that if they had to vote on the "King and Country" resolution then and there, they would do so. One of them said: "I am not going to fight for King and Country, and you will notice that no one, not Chamberlain, not Halifax, has asked us to".[10]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Jan Morris, The Oxford Book of Oxford (Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 374.
  2. ^ R. B. McCallum, Public Opinion and the Last Peace (Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 177-80.
  3. ^ Morris, pp. 374-75.
  4. ^ Robert Cohen, When the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America's First Mass Student Movement, 1929-41 (Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 79-80.
  5. ^ Cohen, p. 80.
  6. ^ Cohen, p. 80.
  7. ^ Morris, p. 275.
  8. ^ Quinton Hogg, The Left was never Right (Faber and Faber, 1945), p. 50.
  9. ^ Paul Addison, 'Oxford and the Second World War', in Brian Harrison (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford: The Twentieth-century. Volume 8 (Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 167.
  10. ^ McCallum, p. 179.

[edit] Further reading

  • Martin Ceadel, 'The 'King and Country' Debate, 1933: Student Politics, Pacifism and the Dictators', The Historical Journal, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Jun., 1979), pp. 397-422.