A spectre is haunting progressive politics in Oxford: the spectre of apologism. There is a proud and noble Labour tradition which places at its centre a belief in common human dignity and equality of persons. It has been this sincere belief in combatting racism in all of its forms which influenced the thoughts and actions of Labour greats such as Hugh Gaitskell, Harold Wilson and (whether you like it or not) Tony Blair. But it seems that the Labour Club has (to my mind) erred greatly, resulting not least in the resignation of OULC co-chair Alex Chalmers. More importantly, it has strayed from the belief in cooperation which has been a defining feature since the party’s inception in 1900.

I initially attended the meeting so as to ensure that Oxford University Labour Club voted to finance the Oxford Students for Europe campaign, of which I am an active member. However, little did I know that I would be involved in a heated half-hour exchange on the issue of supporting “Israeli Apartheid Week.” This was not, to be clear, a debate on OULC’s stance for the Israel/Palestine conflict. It was not a debate exclusively on standing in solidarity with the plight of the Palestinian people. These discussions and declarations are central to political discourse, and it is important to note that there is nothing wrong with criticising aspects of Israeli domestic policy. What it was a debate on supporting an event which on its website explicitly states how one of its primary aims is to build support for the controversial Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

There are plenty of reasons why support of BDS is problematic to say the least. Firstly and foremostly, for OULC to vote in favour of an event sympathetic to BDS is to show ambivalence to the fact that BDS serves the function of putting into doubt the economic security of large number of Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. These are people who are reliant on the performance of the Israeli economy in order to have a wage to take home. On a more abstract level, BDS represents the height of double standards that sections of political activists are willing to apply blindly to the agents of the Middle East. There was a rather conspicuous absence of any mention of the human-shield using Hamas which forms the political elite within Palestine.

A further complaint made by members of the debate – members who repeatedly expressed criticism of the Israeli state and sympathy for Palestine – was that the term ‘apartheid’ was inappropriate. For a moment consider why this is so. Apartheid is an Afrikaan term using to describe ‘the state of being apart’. It holds a number of very specific connotations which, in my mind, are not transferable to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Firstly, one of the central issues surrounding Apartheid was the lack of suffrage for black South Africans. Contrast this to modern day Israeli democracy, where there is an inclusive electoral system which values the ballots of all citizens are valued. It also provides the kind of undertone which assumes that people who are supportive of the Israeli state are in some way racially prejudiced against the Arab world.

These complaints and reservations were raised in debate by a number of speakers within the debate. A female member raised real concern about the very pertinent risk of demonization often faced by Jewish students today who suffer at the ignorance and misunderstanding of others. It is ironic that for a motion that was meant to be in solidarity with the Palestinian people justified in protecting their civil liberties was to have the potential for an event which in the past has led to anti-Semitic exclusion, abuse and a fear for their own personal safety. She and others raised concerns about the kind of speakers which had been invited to past Israeli Apartheid Week events in Cambridge and in SOAS. The response: it is not appropriate to criticise a movement for the views of some of its constituents. It is when you provided them a platform for their vitriolic views in the first instance.

Nobody really bothered to engage with the concerns that were raised. Indeed, there were whispers of ‘classic’ when she pointed out her Jewish heritage, as if her identity deprived her of any independent intellectual faculty. A former co-chair of the Labour club was accused of ad homenium where none could be found. It was one of the messiest discussions I ever had the displeasure of witnessing. It got so low as to attempt to exclude members of OUCA and OULD from voting. Indeed, one of the greatest laughs of the night came when somebody told me that I was playing a game by being a members of multiple societies. The only thing that I would have to apologise for is my belief in pluralistic and cooperative democracy. These are principles the hard left has forgotten all too often. All they care for is ideological purity.

This is a saddening turn of events indeed. But let it be clear what this article is meant to represent. It is not meant to be a blanket criticism of OULC, an organisation for which I have huge amounts of respect for (and have a number of friends on the executive). Noni, the remaining co-chair, is hyper competent and attempted to manage the debate as best as she could. There are many within the Labour Club that hold the principles of democratic socialism dearly, and will sacrifice countless hours in order to attain a compassionate society free from poverty, strife, and discrimination of all kinds. But the time is now for the moderates within the party to reclaim the club. It is time for those who truly care for the future of the Labour Party to ‘fight, fight and fight again’. Before it is too late….

Just a few years ago, the prospect of a self-described Socialist winning the democratic ticket would have seemed preposterous. It was this view, now largely anachronistic, that prevented Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders and his bid for the White House from being taken seriously. Yet, we were, almost all of us, utterly wrong. His increasingly momentous campaign has certainly shaken the all-time Democratic favoured, Hillary Clinton, especially after her landslide defeat in New Hampshire and the unexpected draw in Iowa. Even before these two debacles, the pressure was mounting, forcing Clinton to reconsider her views and move to the left, especially on the issue of minimum wage and on Wall Street regulation. Despite this, it is all over. Or at least it will soon be. The Nevada caucus showed Clinton’s strength and the cause of her future victory: the Mid-West and Southern states and their coloured minorities. In these two categories, Sanders seems unable to climb mount improbable and revert the situation as he has done in the East Coast, which appears to be by now a ‘Bernite’ stronghold. His lack of campaign funds and Super PAC sponsors, in this case, does not favour him either, especially in appealing to low-information voters in the deep South.

Until now, these factors did not suffice to bring the duel between the two to a premature end, making the race a thrilling but time-wasting head-to-head, but next Tuesday, they will. Coming up on the 1^st of March, ‘Super Tuesday’ will see a line-up of 11 states (plus residents abroad and American Samoa) and, you guessed it, they are disproportionately Southern. Ranging from Texas to the Clinton family’s historical stronghold and home state of Arkansas, the caucuses will be a bloodbath. As if this wasn’t enough, Southern States tend to present a disproportionate number of delegates per state, as Texas has almost ten times Vermont’s. By now, it should be clear where this is going. Sanders’ probable victories in Massachusetts and Vermont will mean nothing when juxtaposed to Clinton’s expected victories virtually everywhere else.

But Super Tuesday’s lacerations will not be limited to the sheer delegate numbers, as the media perception and coverage of the Sanders campaign will revert to its original state of dismissive disregard. Bundled with the lack of Super Delegates, and the widening delegate spread, currently sitting on a solid 502 to 70 in Clinton’s favour, the Sanders phenomena will be promptly dismissed, and the party will rally around Clinton and her name recognition. It is true that the Super Delegates’ support is not yet binding, and their endorsement can be changed at any time, as happened in 2008 when many defected to Obama’s camp. But the polling numbers do not justify such a rearrangement, especially considering Sanders’ alienation from the party leadership, from where the Super Delegates are picked. Again, at the cost of appearing redundant it must be said once more: it’s over, and it is time to clean up and go home.

While Clinton’s defeat is highly unlikely at this point, the Sanders campaign will not evaporate as did Jeb Bush’s. The reason is simple. Sanders does not count on the support of large donors which will de-fund his campaign in case of serious and unexpected political beatings, allowing him to carry on nevertheless,  and making him likely to stick around and give Clinton and her Super PAC donors heart palpitations. But this foreseeable panic will have to do more with Sanders’ extreme stances, by U.S. standards at least, and Hillary Clinton’s unmatched desire to make Bill her First lady. This said, the Sanders phenomena and presidential bid should not be quickly dismissed as a temporary phantasmagoria from which the Democrats were bound to wake up. Along with Trump, he was the political revelation of the race. It did stir up an astonishing enthusiasm in the American left; a body which nobody really thought existed. It did influence other candidates on both sides. It did pose a threat to the, otherwise unchallenged, Clinton; but, as of Tuesday, the use of the past tense will become imperative. 

As a second year French sole student who will have to take both translation and grammar papers in fourth year, you can imagine my feelings of surprise, outrage and frustration when I learnt of the recent changes to the French language, affecting roughly 2400 words, being implemented from the start of the 2016/17 academic year.

First things first, what is actually going to change?

• The deletion in some words of the hyphens.
• Circumflexes to be removed above the letter i and u in certain words.
• The bizarre removal of letters creating jarring new words. For example, the French for Onion: ‘Oignon‘ now becomes ‘Ognon‘, which looks like the name of a villain from Lord of the Rings.

The Académie Française, watchdogs of the French language, initially approved this set of reforms a staggering 26 years ago in 1990, but it is only now that they are being acted upon. It must be noted they are only ‘optional’- a laughable proposition on its own. How can a set of official spellings be optional? I mean it’s optional for me to spell anything wrong, but that doesn’t make it right does it?

Also why create this unnecessary confusion? If the aim is to improve learning, then we should be simplifying the process, not complicating it. Good spelling is about precision, a word is either spelt completely correctly, or it’s wrong. There’s not meant to be any middle ground, so having an optional ‘i’ in ‘oignon‘ is counter-intuitive and frankly bonkers.

The announcements provoked an enormous backlash amongst the French public, who were outraged by what they considered to be an attack on their language, culture and national heritage. On Twitter, the hash tag of #JeSuisCirconflexe was taken up in protest.

The only potentially valid argument in favour of these changes (brace yourselves for its subsequent dismantling), relates to France’s immigration problem, which has arguably never been so pressing. The lack of integration of new settlers into French society results in the creation of ethnic ghettos in the suburbs of major cities such as Paris and the infamous ‘banlieues‘ de Marseille. Since many of these people are coming to France with little or no knowledge of French, then surely making the language as easy as possible to learn will help them settle into mainstream French society and form a link with the culture, as opposed to what happens far too often; individual ethnic groups living together in small, insular communities and having very little interaction with the rest of French society, with many making no effort to learn the language. This is the perfect breeding ground for racial/ethical tension and more worryingly, extremist radicalisation, which is an ever-growing and very real problem being faced in the West.

However, changing a handful of words in an arbitrary manner won’t suddenly encourage people to engage with the rest of society and learn the national language. The problem lies in the social segregation and the atmosphere of tension, which is what the French government should be focusing on, rather than taking away the circumflex.

In response to criticism, the AF claimed the changes reflected an evolving language. This is a fair enough point, us British too aren’t shy of adding new words to our language. It was only last August that ‘ awesomesauce (adjective): extremely good; excellent’ (truly embarrassing) was added to the OED. Of course this is an intentionally bizarre example and I wouldn’t disagree that new words should be officially added to languages to keep them up to date, but changing words that have proudly stood for hundreds of years and have made up the backbone of countless works of literary greatness and cultural significance is an out-right attack, and doing so in the name of simplification is an insult to the French peoples’ intelligence.

All languages have idiosyncrasies, especially English; funny little rules that you only learn by getting wrong, and they’re something to cherish. I savour that little jolt of smug pleasure you feel when you hear someone getting something wrong that you had previously gotten wrong but learnt from it. Take ‘hanged’ for example – you say ‘the nasty villain was hanged’, not ‘he was hung’, it’s ‘hanged.’

Finally, poor spelling abilities could be blamed on the reduced importance placed on reading in our society, where everything is condensed to a 140-character tweet, with little attention paid to the spelling or grammar.

If I were in charge of the Oxford Modern Languages faculty, I would have released a formal statement, announcing that the faculty isn’t acknowledging these changes and is sticking to good old fashioned, traditional French. If it was good enough for Voltaire, it’s damn well good enough for me.

So, if the word ‘onion’ comes up in my finals translation paper, rest assured, I’ll be spelling it ‘oignon.’