Braying is a defining Oxford practice. Oxonians feel they have a right to bray, and above all a right for others to hear them. Everywhere- on trains, buses, aeroplanes, the street- the high nasal tones of a striped-scarfed and scuffed-brogued poshboy can be heard to emanate with a constant grating defiance of the basic laws of human decency. We are not content with showing off our aitches to the plebs. And so we constructed, in the Oxford Union, a great and powerful organisation in which we could belt our Tory opinions constantly amongst fellow fans of a solid vowel and a meaty laugh. Excellent. The Union is the perfect way to show off our immeasurable intellectual superiority.
The purpose, then, is sound. But the corruption of the Oxford Union is so monolithic that the noble aim is wasted. Instead of bowing to our genius and wit, the men on the street have come to laugh at us. It’s all the hacks’ fault. A hack is a Union philanderer, one who looks to gain ‘office’ through means foul and occasionally fair. Why shouldn’t he, you might well say? A chap has a right to positions of power and influence. After all, the argument goes, denying someone Union office now is only delaying their inevitable ascent to supremacy in the Real World. Not at all. The hack seeks ‘power’ for its own sake. Hacking in the political parties is a nobler art. The Union only debates. But each political society has its own distinct character. OUCA is the Union for virgins. Labour is a sermon-reading school. The Liberals are a man in a pub.
But the comparison with student political clubs is a good one, execrable dens of vice and irrelevance these preposterous organs might be. Gaining a position in politics is good because you can actually do something with it. You are not aiming for pure self-advancement. You are aiming to improve society as a whole. The reason hacking is so bad is because it is utterly pointless. Being president of the Oxford Union is the dullest job on earth, for there is nothing to do with it. The Union has no power over peoples’ lives, being basically a social club. All the thousands of hours put in- all the backstabbing, trickery and sheer boredom of committees and paperwork- achieves nothing more than the enhancement of a Curriculum Vitae and the destruction of an Oxford degree. Henry Kissinger, who was otherwise a cock, once remarked with acid brilliance that ‘student politics is so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small’. So for those denizens of Union goss, oh ye of little brain, I’ve got a message for you. Calm. The fuck. Down. It’s only a student debating society for God’s sake.
Worse is the impact on debating itself. Of course many hacks are superb debaters. But gone are the days when the Union was a debaters’ forum. Now it exists solely to provide offices for ambitious people to hold, like a parish council or a rural branch of the W. I. They grow vegetables and make nude calendars; hacks attend committees and bore one another to death. I know which one I’d prefer. Debating has gone out of the soul of the institution. So impressed was the Duke of Devonshire with the young Gladstone’s Union debates that he offered him a rotten borough on the spot. Now a Commons seat would be awarded for pint-buying ability and, for the Seccies, the ability to move around chairs.
What I am saying is that the Union must be radically overhauled. At the moment it’s just a pole for the grease to go on. The best option would be to abolish major elected officers and run everything by a committee of nine or so members. No one could serve more than one term on the committee, and major decisions would have to go through online referendum of all members. There. A nice bit of constitutions never did anyone any harm. If we can’t run things sensibly we may as well have done with the bloody thing.
Oh, and vote Kinky.
