Kanishka Narayan, International Relations Society Treasurer

“A stimulus for further endeavour”

I think the decision to award Barack Obama a Nobel peace prize was very much in line with both the founder’s intentions and the past decisions of the awarding committee.  A complete dismissal of the decision as premature fails to take into account the nature of the prize.

Barack Obama has only been in office for ten months. He has quite clearly not achieved, in this short space of time, all that he had promised and has certainly not brought about the kind of concrete transformational change that someone like  Martin Luther King Jr. had when the prize was bestowed upon him in 1964. But the prize has, since its inception, only partly served as recognition of past achievement and has mostly served as a stimulus for further endeavour. This includes a significant transformation in the mere approach to a major problem, when this creates a great deal of hope for more concrete results.

Such a show of solidarity was used with Henry Kissinger, for example, when he won the Nobel peace prize in 1973 for a ceasefire agreement over Vietnam. Intense fighting continued soon afterwards between the South and the North till 1975, and Kissinger’s record was not unblemished, but the committee wanted to recognised the major turnaround in US attitudes towards conciliation. In Obama’s case, the chairman of the awarding committee said that the award was to recognise the significant and positive change that Obama had brought about in international circles, through “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”. The committee are explicit in their aim to enhance and promote Obama’s goals.

Alfred Nobel labelled three main fields in which Nobel peace prize winners must have attained change in the preceding year: “fraternity between nations, reduction in standing armies, holding of peace congresses”. Obama has shown a significant change of approach in all three fields. In the field of diplomacy, Obama has led a US much more open to negotiations (witness his Cairo speech and high-level talks with Iran) and much more respected by nations abroad, transforming perceptions of the US in the minds of those outside it. Regarding disarmament, Obama has moved the US and Russia closer to the ‘reset’ button, advancing the cause of nuclear disarmament like no other president, and in stark contrast to George W Bush. As for institutions, Obama is the one who has called for a “global response to global challenges” and has re-engaged the United Nations, following Bush’s more neglectful approach towards it.

Since the prize is only partly a recognition of achievement and more significantly the affirmation of an individual’s (or group’s) new approach, Obama’s prize is just.

Emily Middleton, Oxford Amnesty President

“The potential to achieve doesn’t merit the prize”

The Nobel prizes are awarded for achievement, right? Wrong. As of last week, they’re awarded for the potential to achieve, combined in Obama’s case with the accomplishment of not being George W Bush. Laudable as that may be, it’s not exactly deserving of one of the most prestigious prizes on the planet.
There’s no doubt that Obama’s commitment to nuclear disarmament and peace in the Middle East is encouraging, as is his executive order to close Guantanamo Bay. Indeed, judges cited Obama’s “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”. But the reality is, Obama’s efforts in the Middle East are currently going nowhere; disarmament is still a long way off and the notorious Cuban prison camp is still open for business.

 Obama himself interpreted the award as a ‘call to action’ – an implicit admission that he hasn’t yet earned the honour. The bottom line is that intentions aren’t enough: just as a brilliant idea for a novel is not deserving of the Nobel prize for literature, Obama’s rhetoric is not enough to warrant the Nobel prize for peace. If it was, at least half of humankind should get a Nobel – after all, most of us would really rather like world peace.
Give it a couple of years, and perhaps tangible progress will have been made on Obama’s key commitments, in which case by all means give him the award. But should we bestow the award upon him after he has been in office for only ten months and has been nominated less than two weeks after being inaugurated?

The most rational explanation is that the Norwegians are losing it. That, or they’re trying to convert the prize into a political catalyst and taking a massive gamble in the process. If Obama ends up making little or no progress on his commitments, or even making things worse, the reputation of the Nobel will be hit and the judges’ prophesying capabilities shown to be seriously flawed.
The golden medal will hang like a millstone around Obama’s neck for the rest of his career. If expectations of the new president weren’t already sky-high, he now has to earn himself the most illustrious peace prize there is, with the whole world watching and waiting.

In the immediate future, the award will give him grief as he struggles to decide whether or not to give a boost to American efforts in Afghanistan by sending more soldiers. Any decision he makes will be heavily criticised in light of his new status as a Nobel laureate: if he sends in more troops, critics will point out the irony of a peace prize winner escalating war; if he fails to send more troops, critics could say he’s not committed to peace in Afghanistan and defeating the Taliban. Either way, he’s in line for an avalanche of condemnation.

What does matriculation mean for Oxford students?

Everyone who wants to work for an Oxford degree has to matriculate, which means about 4,000 undergraduates a year as well as the students who come new to Oxford to start postgraduate courses. Each student has to be matriculated as an individual. Matriculation makes you a member of the University for life. It means you will always be able to use the Bodleian Library and when you graduate you will be a member of Convocation and able to elect the Chancellor and the Professor of Poetry. Even if you did not finish your degree or got suspended you would still be a member. This is not like membership of a club or society. It is a different kind of belonging. ‘Universitas’ is the Latin word for a ‘guild’ or corporation. The University is an independent body with special skills that are ‘knowledge’. The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars still constitute the University when it acts as a legal entity. So you become part of this body along with more than eight hundred years of others who have done so before you.

When did it originate and why?

Matriculation goes back to the medieval requirement that every Regent Master should keep a register. These were the Masters of Arts who taught undergraduates and who formed the main ruling body of the University. The register established who was a real student and deserved the University’s protection in the frequent town-and-gown fights. It also allowed a record to be kept of the student’s progress through the course to the stage where he could be examined for his degree (or ‘her’ degree from 1920). In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, once the colleges began to admit undergraduates, it became a formal university ceremony. In the nineteenth century the word ‘matriculation’ started to be used for the qualification for entry. Until 1960 Oxford set its own examinations, and the statutes still require ‘evidence that each candidate…is qualified for matriculation’.

What do students wear for it?

Students wear a cap, a gown and ‘subfusc’ for matriculation. Subfusc is dark formal clothing with a white shirt and a white bow tie for men and a black bow for women. Oxford students recently voted to keep this traditional gear for examinations when it was suggested that they could be allowed to wear ordinary clothes instead. They liked the sense of occasion it gives.

What is the Latin speech that the Vice-Chancellor reads out during the ceremony?

‘Scitote vos in Matriculam Universitatis hodie relatos esse, et ad observandum omnia Statuta istius Universitatis, quantum ad vos spectent, teneri.’
‘Know that you are today added to the Roll of the University and bound to obey all the statutes of this University so far as they apply to you.’

Are there any student traditions based around matriculation?

There’s been a recent tradition of the Mexican wave, and students generally celebrate by getting drunk or going on a tourist bus tour in full academic dress. There are matriculation dinners in colleges, which have their own traditions. It isn’t an initiation ceremony involving painfully proving you’ve got what it takes, though. You got in. You’ve got what it takes.

Have there been any changes to the matriculation process over the years?

It’s changed since the Middle Ages with the arrival of colleges which began arrangements for just a few Fellows, but slowly began to take responsibility for teaching undergraduates. Nowadays the college admits the student and presents him or her to the University to be put on its historic roll. You become a lifelong member of your college as well as a lifelong member of the University.

Professor Gillian Evans is author of the forthcoming book ‘The University of Oxford: A New History’

The Fabian Society is no ordinary thinktank, it is a piece of political history. They are the oldest such group in Britain, stretching back to 1884, the year after Karl Marx died and two decades before the Labour Party, to which they are now affiliated, was established. That position, between revolutionary socialism on the one hand and working-class representation on the other, neatly describes the position that Fabians have held for the century-and-a-bit since. Fabianism is almost synonymous with social democracy and gradualism; it may also be the factor that best explains the failure of a Marxist party to take root in Britain, unlike most of Europe in the 20th century.

Sunder Katwala clearly takes this history seriously, claiming proudly that from a young age “some of my heroes were Fabians”. Early Fabians included the founders of the London School of Economics, Sydney and Beatrice Webb, as well as members of the intelligentsia like George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells. Katwala admits that his influences were not all from this mould, “I read a lot of Orwell when I was younger…Orwell hated the Fabians”. But this is something else that he insists upon throughout our interview: the importance of “pluralism”. He talks of pluralism within the Fabians, pluralism on the Left, pluralism in national politics. It is clearly founded on a great belief in the constructive value of debate and criticism, because “politics is by its nature collective”.

Katwala says that it was just such an inclusiveness that brought him to left-wing politics and eventually to the Labour Party. He was “political” from the age of fourteen or fifteen and found himself reacting strongly against the Thatcher and Major governments of the eighties and nineties. Just as he holds up the Webbs and Orwell as heroes, he offers Norman Tebbit as a significant figure in his political development, though for very different reasons. Tebbit’s crude ‘cricket test’ of Asian integration awoke a questioning of identity and inclusion, but also a reaction against a party that thought this was significant. “I did support England at cricket” he tells me, “but my Dad didn’t, so I kind of felt the divisiveness of that”. The issue of ‘Britishness’ and what it means is still something that interests him greatly; he resists those on the left who consider such debates a distraction from tackling social inequality and injustice, insisting instead that understanding how people perceive themselves and identify with others is crucial to “build coalitions”. Again, pluralism is an essential precondition to progress in Katwala’s view.

‘If you risk losing then you also want to fight with pride for the causes you believe in’

I was not surprised to learn that Sunder Katwala studied PPE at Oxford. ‘Who didn’t?’ is sometimes a better question where the British political establishment are concerned. It turns out we took very different modules; he admits thinking Philosophy of Mind was a bit of a “mind-fuck”, preferring instead to immerse himself in the history of British politics, where the Fabians, incidentally, loom large. I was more surprised that he had not been a member of the Labour Club during his time in Oxford. To be part of OULC in the early nineties, he explains, you had to be a “miserabilist”. Katwala was more interested in the cut and thrust of Union debating, though not Union politics. The arch-pluralist obviously resented the stand-off between Labour Club and the OUCA-dominated Union, meaning that he sat uncomfortably in the ‘wrong’ camp – plus, he adds, it made the Oxford Union “a bit too tosserish”. Plus ça change…?

Despite eschewing the Oxford Labourites, Sunder Katwala admits to being “gutted” when Neil Kinnock lost in 1992, the first election he ever voted in. What emerged after that was a genuine enthusiasm for the New Labour project, which clearly put winning at the heart of the centre-left strategy. He tries to sound upbeat about New Labour, reminding me that they were “popular” in the mid-nineties, and importantly for him they were “pluralist” as an electoral force. In the dying days of a twelve-year Labour administration, cynicism is the default reaction when people look back at Blair’s rictus grin and Alistair Campbell’s spin. So, what changed? Katwala’s analysis is interesting: “they didn’t change enough” he suggests. When I insist that you don’t change a winning formula he explains that New Labour was a “very of its moment, mid-nineties phenomenon” and it “struggled to deepen and move its analysis on”.

He is not a vicious critic of Brown, however, offering much praise for the “real Gordon” that lurks promisingly behind Brown the media bungler. I can only chuckle when he insists that in Brown “there’s quite a lot of the Jed Bartlett in the West Wing, that kind of politician with conviction”. It is not that I doubt Gordon Brown has these impulses on international development and child poverty, but he has been so abysmal at showing it. I agree with Katwala that “you win or you lose in politics but if you do risk losing then you also want to fight with pride for the causes you believe in”.

I suggest to Katwala that the Fabian Society’s affiliation with the Labour Party limits its independence, but he insists not. He views the role of an organisation like the Fabians as being “up-stream of the government” in debates, to be a campaigning force not an apologist for current policy. As such, they constantly look eighteen-months to two years down the line to what the government will be tackling and in which ways they can shape the debates to achieve the “fairness and equality” which lie at the heart of Fabian thinking. He articulates a vision of the thinktank tackling issues at three levels: principle, policy and politics. Ignore any one of these pillars and you get a deficient programme. In particular, he decries the “tone taken by the likes of the Economist”, which is content to believe it has the answers but doesn’t care whether or not they are politically sellable. Such ‘Cassandras’ in politics are of no use to anyone. Far better to be down-to-earth, principled and forthright: perhaps the Economist could learn a thing or two from Sunder Katwala.

For decades now, the European Union has been the elephant in the room of British politics. The mere mention of it is enough to send a shudder down the spine of most political commentators, and to get otherwise hardened politicians running for cover, muttering about an urgent meeting they had forgotten. After the bitter battles of the 1990s, it is perhaps understandable that many Westminster veterans are still somewhat shell-shocked. No-one enjoyed the in-fighting of the Major years, and no-one would want to repeat it. But is avoiding the issue really the solution? The EU is too big to simply ignore. It generates the majority of our legislation, and controls crucial policy areas such as farming, fisheries, immigration, environment, health and safety, financial services regulation and many more. As well as contributing £16.4 billion this year in direct payments from taxpayers into EU coffers, the impact of EU regulations and policies on the UK economy are estimated by the TaxPayers’ Alliance to cost almost £2,000 a year per person. At any time, anything that cost Britain £118 billion a year would be of huge significance, but in the middle of a recession and a deficit crisis it becomes even more important.

The EU also alters our global standingas a nation. Enthusiasts for the project would argue that it allows little Britain to have a share in a loud voice on the world stage. Sceptics such as myself, would instead point out that it projects a communal diplomatic message around the world that simply does not represent Britain’s opinions or best interests. Either way, with the Lisbon Treaty set to create the posts of EU President and Foreign Minister for the first time, the issue demands serious and close consideration. The failure of the vast majority of our politicians to discuss Europe has harmed the reputation of Westminster democracy. Leaving aside whether it is right or wrong to hand over so many powers to Brussels, the collective silence of the main political parties about the fact that such a handover has taken place is hugely irresponsible.

Growing numbers of people feel that it makes little difference how they vote – and they are right. Think of all the millions who wrote to their MPs urging them to Make Poverty History. Most of them received a reply expressing agreement and promising that their representative in Parliament would work to change our trade policy to help the world’s poor.

Had MPs been honest, though, they would have instructed their constituents to write instead to the EU Trade Commissioner, who is in almost total control of our trade policy. Indeed, it is the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy that requires the protectionist barriers which so harm sub-Saharan Africa. By promising to change something which they do not control, MPs misled their constituents and added another bundle of fuel to the growing bonfire of disillusionment with Parliament. It is crucial that there is an open debate about all aspects of the EU’s work – the cost, the democratic deficit, the erosion of our international standing and much more. While our politicians may be terrified of the subject, the public most certainly are not. Obscure vetoes, dusty treaties and dustier bureaucrats may not excite them, but the real life impact of European policies most certainly does. Some of the most controversial issues on the doorstep – fortnightly bin collections, post office closures, climate change, banking rules – fall within Brussels’ remit. All the opinion polling shows that the people are itching to have their say about Europe. Of course, the majority are sceptical, but people on both sides of the debate must deplore the fact that our national discourse has become so stunted. It is staggering to consider that you now have to be 52 years old to have ever had a vote on the European project. If you ignore an elephant in the room for too long, it will trample on you. The Irish have had a chance to debate it twice – now, in Oxford, we will begin our own debate in earnest.

Ruth Lea will be speaking in favour of the motion This House Believes That There Is Life After Brussels at the Oxford Union on Tuesday 20th October, from 8.30pm.