Whilst his talk for the chamber later on is quite clearly a performance, while I am sat with Sir Ian McKellen in the Morris Room of the Oxford Union he is quieter, and his answers have long drawn out pauses as he carefully considers how to reply. He seems more relaxed, maybe even a little tired. In his capacity as an advocate of LGBT concerns and the equal rights movement, he spent the morning talking at The Cherwell School about “what it was like growing up gay as a kid, and teaching them to be kind to each other”, as well as the implications of the new law which indicates state schools cannot discriminate on the basis of sexuality. McKellen starts by talking about Stonewall, the LGBT rights charity he helped to found, “Stonewall helps schools to train the teachers and so on, and I’m part of that process. They’re well on their way to eradicating homophobic bullying and helping staff and students who are coming out to do that if they want. I’m just generally waving the rainbow flag.”

It’s a role which has defined his life almost as much as his illustrious acting career, which has lasted over 50 years. Since coming out in 1988 on a BBC Radio 3 programme hosted by “homophobe” — as McKellen terms him — Peregrine Worsthorne, McKellen has worked tirelessly as an activist for LGBT rights. This started with the establishment of Stonewall to tackle the then under consideration Section 28, which would have stopped local authorities “promoting homosexuality” as “a kind of pretended family relationship”. In the chamber, McKellen expresses amazement at what has been achieved since then, describing the legalisation of gay marriage as an unexpected bonus.

I ask McKellen if he sees himself as an advocate or an educator, but he responds in a remarkably unassuming manner. “I think I just bear witness. Because I’m in the public eye, ever since I came out, some time ago now, I’ve been asked questions. It seems at times that I’m running an agenda and running a movement, but I’ve never done that. But I supported the idea of Stonewall, which was to get rid of all those laws which were in the land which discriminated against people who identified themselves as gay. That’s taken some time, but it’s been achieved. So I was always proselytising on that side of things.” He lets out a dry laugh.

“Now I just want to deal with the bigger problem which is that after years of treating gay people badly, it’s sort of embedded in the culture and you have to root it out. Schools are a good place to start. No one’s born prejudiced. They learn the behaviour. Schools seem to want to provide a safe environment so that kids can develop themselves and, indeed, study. I just help that along. But I am in no sense the leader.”

Since coming to university, I’ve known several people who have decide to come out to their friends and families, almost always with a positive response. There’s no doubt that Oxford has become a more liberal and open minded place than it was even ten ago. But when McKellen was at Cambridge, homosexuality was illegal, so, as he points out, “You didn’t start advertising the fact that you were gay. You probably didn’t even define yourself as gay.” I ask McKellen why he thinks more and more young people are choosing to come out at university, and how universities need to adapt as a result. “I think it would be very unhealthy for a person who identified themselves in any shape or form as gay, bisexual, asexual, transgender, etc., to have gone through university unable to say that. That would suggest that there was something really wrong with the environment here, and there shouldn’t be.

“I think that everyone from the university authorities and Vice Chancellor down, through all the individual colleges, should make it clear that you are an individual and you are yourself, and you can express yourself without any possible repercussions from anybody. I think that if there are any gay dons in Oxford they should be out. It’s part of their responsibility to set the tone of what this place is. So that means that all the people who the college employs, and people who are their students, should be able to follow that lead and be open and honest themselves.

“And I think that should be true of schools, too, and it increasingly is, so a lot of people, like the Oxford LGBTQ society that I’ve just met, were all out before they came to Oxford. They arrived in Oxford determined to help other people who maybe weren’t as lucky. If you couldn’t come out during your time at Oxford, it should be a pretty sad state of affairs I should think.”
With the photos of awkward politicians wearing ‘This is What a Feminist Looks Like’ t-shirts to viral videos by FCKH8 selling shirts with big, bold slogans, I’m interested in McKellen’s view of this merger of fashion and commercialism with equal rights movements. “I’ve worn the t-shirt ‘Some People Are Gay. Get Over It.’ with great pleasure. It was designed by a group of young people who Stonewall stuck in a room and said, ‘You’re not coming out until you’ve come up with a good slogan.’ It’s punchy and to the point and been translated into every language in the world.”

It should be pointed out of course that the t-shirt McKellen is referring to is, unlike FCKH8’s ‘Some Chicks Marry Chicks, Get Over It’ tee, not-for-profit. “On the whole I don’t wear slogans on my body. I’m not tattooed. Oh, actually I am!” He interrupts himself, pointing to his shoulder where he has the number ‘9’ inked to signify his involvement in the The Lord Of The Rings. Every member of ‘the Fellowship’ has the same tattoo. He continues, “But I think life’s a bit too complicated to be reduced to a few words on a t-shirt. But I might wear a t-shirt on occasion, like on a gay pride march.”

Of course, it is McKellen’s acting career which has earned him his fame, awards and knighthood. Although his career defining role is undoubtedly Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series, he is just as well known for being a Shakespearean hero and master of the art of stage acting. He demonstrates this for us in his talk with a rendition of a speech from the Elizabethan play Sir Thomas More. But the profession of acting is changing. Dame Judi Dench and Dame Helen Mirren have both expressed concern in recent years that acting has become an elitist institution hampered by the expensive cost of drama schools. “I think it’s a bit more complicated than that, but I think they absolutely have a point,” he says when I ask if he agrees.

“That’s why the National Youth Theatre puts together students who’ve been through the programme, and they’re now doing a three month season in the West End. They’re being paid for doing it. That seems to me as good a way into the business of acting as any drama school. Drama schools are self supporting, they have to make their money, and they probably make it by having too many students. They probably know that those students don’t have a chance of getting a job at the end of it. I don’t know how you deal with it. I didn’t go to drama school so I don’t know much about drama schools. You don’t have to have go to drama school to become an actor.

“But they do have a point that when it comes to higher education for Drama students, you’re going to have to have some money. There are scholarships of course. There probably should be more. But I would doubt that the answer and solution is that everyone who wants to be an actor should be able to go to drama school for free, because that would be very misleading. They’re not going to get work. Too many people want to be actors.”

He pulls a slightly pained expression, saying, “It’s dreadful.” And institutional elitism? “Are there too many posh actors around the place? Well that’s because there are too many posh stories being told. You can blame Downton Abbey for that.”

With the growth of TV and the reduction in the number of theatres, some actors have expressed concern that the profession is being undermined by young performers going straight to the screen before learning the trade on the stage. McKellen laughs at this notion. “Well where are they meant to act on stage? There aren’t that many jobs!

“When I started out we had a closed shop in our union. You could not act unless you were a member of the union. The union said, ‘You can have a provisional membership, and when you have that provisional membership you may not act in film, act on television or act in the West End of London.’ In other words, you had to work in a regional theatre, or theatre in education. Every town of a decent size in this country had its own theatre with its own actors who stayed together for a year. And that’s because the young actors weren’t allowed to work anywhere else.

“Mrs Thatcher broke the union, you no longer have to be a member of the union, so the young actors say, ‘Why the hell should I go and work in Oxford when I might get a job in television?’ And then the funds to the Arts Council are being reduced and all those theatres that existed when I was a kid have gone, so where are the young actors meant to go? They queue up to be in film. It’s complicated.

“But if you want to encourage actors to learn how to act, as many of us did, in regional companies, then you’ve got to provide the regional companies, and you’ve got to re-establish the union. Otherwise, nothing is going to happen. It’s discouraging, isn’t it,” he says, leaning in with a lowered brow.

My time with McKellen is brought to a close as he heads to dinner before his talk. Having seen the line-up of speakers for the term, he adds, “Ask Stephen Fry. He’ll answer these questions much better than I can.” It seems somewhat apt as the final note of our conversation. It summarises McKellen’s modesty as an actor, activist and highly intelligent human being.

I meet Harry Leslie Smith in an empty Sheldonian Theatre, where later on he is to give a talk on austerity in conversation with journalist Owen Jones. While Jones is well known as an impressively fiery speaker, Leslie Smith is softly-spoken, unassuming, a little out of place in the grandeur of the Sheldonian. But when he does speak, his words – carefully chosen, passionate – are every bit as forceful and compelling as Jones’. Over the last couple of years, the 91-year-old war veteran and ex-carpet salesman from Barnsley has risen to prominence as the Left’s most unlikely saviour.

He has written impassioned articles about the shrinking of the welfare state, the rise of UKIP and on the appropriation of remembrance. He recently stated in a piece for the Guardian that in 2014 he would “wear the poppy for the last time” because “my despair is for those who live in this present world”.

He reduced MPs to tears with his speech to the Labour conference on the fight to save the NHS. There is something of the Biblical prophet about Leslie Smith, who is able to draw on experiences of deprivation that subsequent generations can only imagine, to stop us from hurtling towards our social demise. His activism and writing is always informed by the memory of his childhood, which he describes to me as “a time of unspeakable misery for the working classes, a time that I remember all too well”.

Now, with his new book Harry’s Last Stand, Leslie Smith calls on the general public to speak up about the issues they believe in. The war veteran embraces the power of social media, asking Twitter followers to imitate him with the snappy hashtag ‘#istandupfor’.

I ask Leslie Smith how he came to take up political writing at this time in his life. He gently corrects me, telling me that though he’s only recently drawn the notice of the public, he has spent his whole life writing. This certainly comes across in his articles, which often have a poetic and lyrical force. Perhaps his best known piece is entitled as an “eulogy” to the NHS. “With writing” he says, “it seems as though I started early on in life, actually. In the early 1940s, when I was in the Royal Air Force, I kept a diary meticulously, of daily events and people I met, that sort of thing. I also wrote poems and short stories, items which were picked up by little local newspapers. But until now, that’s as close as I got to publication.”

As a boy, Leslie Smith didn’t have much in the way of formal education, but after the war he was able to go back to school. “I didn’t get the chance to go to college or university. But in the fifties my wife and I both went to night school. I took writing and several other literary pursuits. And that was the beginning of my education.”

He tells me that a few years ago he nearly packed it all in for the well-earned ease of retirement. “I was in my eighties. I was in Portugal, looking at houses and thinking I might go and spend the rest of my life in the sun there.” What changed? What made Leslie Smith swap the Algarve for touring the country on damp winter’s nights like tonight? “It was the 2008 banking crisis. I was angry. I was furious. Because no one in power, no banker, no politician, ever paid the price for causing so much suffering. The British taxpayer had to foot the bill and bail out the banks. And I felt that I must do something. So I started researching everything I could find about our governments and our politicians. Everything leading up to various financial collapses.”

Leslie Smith is scathing about the Coalition’s program of privatization and cuts. The subject to which Leslie Smith returns again and again in his writing is the bleakness of a world without a welfare state, a world where his sister, aged ten, died of tuberculosis in a local workhouse infirmary. I ask what, if any, parallels he can see between that time and David Cameron’s vision for Britain in the 21st century.

“Cameron’s vision for Britain […] is cloaked in the language of progress, but I fear that Britain is regressing back to a time which I remember with pain and suffering. It’s just about time that Cameron and his ilk were kicked off their thrones. It’s distressing to see his disdain for two groups of people in our society: the young and the poor. The young people today are suffering more than anyone, I think. They have accumulated mountains of debt, they aren’t supported by the state, they’re forced to go into unsteady, low-paid jobs. And there’s a chance that they are going to be the lost generation, just as my generation were.”

Leslie Smith clearly passionately feels that the Conservatives must not win the general election in May. But are Labour the force to take them on? Do they offer a sufficient alternative? Harry is a life-long Labour voter. For him, Labour will always be the party that built the National Health Service and the welfare state, the party of Attlee and Bevan.

And yet, he is not uncritical of the party; in fact, he has been very explicit in his criticism of Blair and New Labour. We discuss the current surge in support for the Greens, but Harry is doubtful about how this will translate into electoral success.

A little resignedly, he tells me, “For me, unfortunately, Labour is the only viable alternative at this present time. I wish I could say I had three choices on the ballot paper — but I don’t. I’d like to see someone in the mainstream parties who shared my thoughts about what life should be like, about the duty of the state to provide a comfortable existence to everyone in Britain. But it seems, at the moment, that’s too much to ask for.”

Many people share Leslie Smith’s disappointment in the lack of political diversity among the mainstream parties. Our conversation turns to how this translates into apathy and disengagement; a vicious cycle, which allows the political elite to continue without challenge. I expect Leslie Smith to tell me that a vote for Labour is better than no vote at all, but his answer takes me by surprise.

“What many people don’t realize is that spoiled ballots are still counted — I’ve thoroughly investigated this. I’d like to see that all those people who don’t vote through apathy, because they don’t feel that they want to support any of the options on the ballot paper, they should go and spoil a ballot. Because spoiled ballots will be counted. And if enough spoiled ballots turn up then maybe the government would realize that they don’t have a monopoly on power, that the people are angry.”

Whether it takes the form of voting, or more subversive action which would call attention to widespread dissatisfaction with mainstream politics, Leslie Smith has clearly devoted his retirement years to agitating and inspiring people to be active, to participate however they see fit.
A rather serious interview ends on a more hopeful note. Leslie Smith’s real optimism is reserved not for party-politics, not for Labour’s chances in the next year’s elections, but for the potential of the generation which is just coming of age.

He talks highly of the people he’s met on his travels, “When I look around England, at all these young people at the universities, I feel that there must be hundreds and hundreds of brilliant, compassionate people who could run the country so bloody well!

“There’s a lot of energy, but they have yet to achieve the momentum they need. At times, it seems that real change is never up about the issues to come. But it will.”

YES

William Tilston

Before launching into the ideals behind poppy-wearing, let’s first consider the material good that the Poppy Appeal achieves: this year it has already raised £40 million. This money is spent on the rehabilitation of injured servicemen and women, the care of aged veterans, the comfort of the bereaved and the re-settlement of younger veterans in daily life. The poppy is therefore the cornerstone of a charitable campaign, and so perhaps this role automatically justifies its presence on our chest each November.

In 2012, 32 per cent of men got firsts at finals, whilst only 26 per cent of women did. 31 per cent of white students achieved firsts at finals, but that figure was only 25 per cent for students who identified as Black or of a minority ethnicity (BME). If we want to address the difference in examination results between men and women, and between white students and BME students, we need change in our courses. At present, the dominance of white Western men in our curricula, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, combined with a lack of female teaching staff, conveys the implicit message that unless you are a white, Western man, academia is not your place. This needs to change.  

By fundamentally changing curricula, the values of the University would be readdressed. If it is made clear to students that the voices of women of people of colour are worth listening to, worthy of the attention granted by study, then University examinations would become an entirely different scene. At present, students who are not white Western men spend the three hours of an examination paper being subliminally, if not explicitly, reminded of the structural inequalities which constantly leave them in a less privileged position, deemed unworthy of scholarly focus.

Following research showing that women perform worse in tests when outnumbered in examination rooms by men, some institutions have taken action to ensure better positive representation of women. Hertford have celebrated forty years of women at the college by replacing all of the portraits in their hall with those of women, and there has been talk of doing something similar in Examination Schools. We need to take this further, and change the very substance of our courses, so that people are learning and thinking about men and women from all backgrounds every day of their course.

We are often led to believe that change at Oxford is not possible.  This is a convenient get-out clause which enables those comfortable within the present system to preserve the perpetuation of their privilege. It is also untrue. Alongside the campaign for Cultural and Racial Awareness and Equality (CRAE), I have been meeting with various academics and the University in my role as Undergraduate Rep for the Humanities Division to discuss diversity within curricula. These meeting have been met with a positive reception. A paper is currently being written to present to the heads of undergraduate study in all Humanities divisions, whilst pilot programmes to implement some of the suggested changes are in the pipeline. Yet, the battle has not yet been won: this positive beginning now needs to be turned into real change in terms of the content of both our courses and reading lists.

Alongside CRAE, I am part of a committee working with the Pro-Vice Chancellor for Education, Prof. Sally Mapstone, to put on a symposium on improving diversity in curricula, which will take place in 2015. Senior members of the University are behind this project, but because historically grassroots change has been more effective than instructions given from an administrative level, we need the right student representatives to make sure that this will not just be a token gesture, and that change will go forward.

Curricular reform will mean different things in different subjects. In some areas, there may be more obvious female and non-white subjects of study, whilst in others, initial approaches might involve actively encouraging feminist and post-colonial critiques of certain issues, or even having under-represented scholars on reading lists, thus showing that their perspectives are valued. Women and people of colour do not only write about issues specifically relating to them, but, contrary to what our reading lists may suggest, have contributed to scholarship in many diverse fields. If you want to explore these underrepresented works further, I would advise having a look at the Alternative Reading Project for some concrete examples.

To enable diversity in higher education in the future, with lecturers and tutors from a range of backgrounds, we need to lobby the University to start providing specific support for the least represented groups. Women studying STEM subjects are now being supported by the Athena SWAN project, but this is not enough.  Because men, and white men in particular, are achieving more firsts at finals, they are currently in a better position to receive the funding which will enable postgraduate study. To counter that, we must encourage the University to provide support for women and students of colour applying for further study, and make specific funding opportunities available. The University have recently agreed to fill certain quotas of associate and full professorships with women, as part of their renewed commitment to gender equality. Now is the perfect time for students to present solutions, and show that they are passionate about this kind of change. We need the right student representatives to harness this opportunity.

This may seem like a tall order, but we have a big problem on our hands, and very little else has been suggested to actually change the situation. I’m running to be OUSU’s Vice President for Access and Academic Affairs because we can’t afford to avoid this problem any longer.

To read the rest of Eden’s manifesto go to http://ousu.org/elections/manifesto/59/.

In the interests of fairness, all of the candidates for VP Access and Academic Affairs were offered the chance to write for Cherwell.