Saturday 12th July 2025
Blog Page 82

The BBC: historic failures and future irrelevance

Donovan Lock
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The BBC: historic failures and future irrelevance

The BBC is no stranger to scandal. From its MI5-assisted vetting of political ‘subversives’ to its contentious relationship with the Thatcher government, the broadcaster’s reputation has rarely been without controversy. While this is hardly rare for news outlets, the implications are particularly worrying for the BBC due to just how strong its influence is, with 68% of UK adults consuming some format of BBC journalism. In this context, the BBC’s tarnished history raises concerns about its contemporary dominance and future prospects, especially due to its standing as a public broadcaster with claims of independence and impartiality. Sadly, even these key qualities are constantly neglected.

Since 1927, a series of royal charters have outlined the BBC’s governance, including a guarantee of its editorial independence. However, recent events have provoked much criticism of government ties, such as the financial favours occurring between the BBC chairman and then Prime Minister Boris Johnson, or the suspension of Gary Lineker upon alleged ‘government pressure’. Last year, leaked messages revealed that BBC journalists had received pressure from Downing Street to criticise the Labour Party more harshly, and to avoid using the word ‘lockdown’ to describe 2020 pandemic measures, which they did. Clearly, these actions are highly unfitting for an independent broadcaster intended to serve the public interest.

While it’s easy to condemn the government for interfering with public broadcasting, the BBC is no innocent pawn. There is a key distinction between receiving government instructions and actually implementing them. And yet, the BBC has consistently yielded to partisan instruction, contradicting its claims of editorial independence and jeopardising its public reliability. With the BBC being the most frequently used source of UK election news, this string of journalistic failures sets a dangerous precedent for electoral authenticity.

Concerns over bias show no signs of slowing down. Despite its apparent commitment to impartiality, the BBC has an extensive history of bias allegations, consistently facing both left-wing and right-wing assertions. This generally works to the BBC’s advantage, as the common perception is that these allegations – often equal in number – tend to neutralise one another, serving as a token of the institution’s impartiality. However, this impression of neutrality is a somewhat shallow one, simplifying the matter of institutional bias into an overly dualistic argument.

But an often overlooked aspect of the impartiality debate is the BBC’s disappointing approach to bias accusations. Only 25 complaints of bias were upheld over a recent five-year period, out of approximately over 600,000. Note that the BBC – unlike any other UK broadcaster – has the unique ability to investigate its own complaints, preventing Ofcom from handling matters independently. While there will inevitably be complaints that are unjustifiable, such a staggering statistic makes it hard to imagine that the BBC’s internal watchdog is entirely committed to protecting good journalism, rather than the corporation’s own reputation.

Naturally, many will recall that the BBC has a history of concealing information for the sake of its reputation. In 2011, BBC executives opted to suppress a report into the late broadcaster Jimmy Savile, fearing that the publicising of his many crimes may harm his image, as well as that of the broadcasting giant itself. It was not until a year later that his abhorrent offences were revealed (by ITV), leading to much criticism of the BBC’s accountability.

The ongoing debacle surrounding Huw Edwards has obvious parallels to the Savile scandal, and demonstrates how the BBC has changed its approach in dealing with major controversies. No longer does the institution bury its failures so emphatically: Savile was posthumously honoured with tributes, whereas Edwards was suspended and publicly arrested. Despite the fact that the latter was still paid during his suspension – earning a total of £200,000, all publicly funded – this certainly marks a step, albeit a slow one, towards responsibility.

With more people getting their news from online sources than anywhere else, we can expect the BBC to depend more significantly upon younger audiences in future years, due to it being publically funded. Irrelevance is a common fate for legacy media, and the BBC shall be in an unenviable position if it fails to win the attention of future generations. For consumers aged 18-24, social media is the most commonly used platform for news. In all likelihood, this means that soon the BBC shall be yet another account fighting for prominence in your feed, eager to attract a youthful viewership.

Social media is generally deemed less trustworthy than traditional outlets as a platform for news, and rightfully so. It is therefore our responsibility to rigorously scrutinise the facts we are presented with, and to always, always demand high-quality journalism. The BBC is no exception: whether online or offline, there is never an excuse for the facts to be corrupted by individual biases or institutional failures. As the young audience that the BBC craves, it will be our engagement, or lack thereof, that will dictate the organisation’s future.

The oldest and largest public broadcaster should be an icon to be proud of, not some murky corporation perpetually mired in controversy. To stay afloat in a rapidly-evolving media landscape, more needs to be done to assure this country that the BBC serves the public interest first, and its executives second. For much of its lifespan, the BBC has been an inspiration to public broadcasters worldwide – unless improvements are made soon, it is only a matter of time until this legacy is lost.

7 October: Oxford community holds vigil for peace in the Middle East

Roy Shinar Cohen
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7 October: Oxford community holds vigil for peace in the Middle East

A year after the 7 October attack, around two hundred Oxford residents attended “Vigil for Peace, Remembrance and Unity” yesterday, organised by civic, community, and faith leaders at New Road Baptist Church.

Led by Bishop of Oxford the Right Reverend Dr Steven Croft, Imam Monawar Hussain, and Vice President of Oxford Jewish Congregation Louise Gordon, the vigil brought together a diverse group of religious leaders. Each held a prayer in their faith and spoke of the death and tragedy in Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon.

Attendees, embracing and chatting with each other, wore Jewish, Muslim, Christian and other religious symbols. An assortment of political symbols were also displayed, including yellow ribbons honouring the Israeli hostages and Free Palestine pins.

Bishop Croft said in his speech: “Events in the Middle East placed an immense strain on community relationships across the United Kingdom. We wanted to have an opportunity to come together and declare our intent to build peaceful communities in a diverse city and county, to celebrate the friendships that we have together, to grieve and lament together for all that is happening and the way that affects so many here as well as in those countries.” 

Oxford University Vice-Chancellor Irene Tracey and Oxford Brookes University Vice-Chancellor Alistair Fitt both attended the vigil.

Tracey said in her speech: “There is a lot of kindness in Oxfordshire reflected here tonight. Many in our respected communities are struggling to make sense of the ongoing conflicts and desperately want to do something to help those who are suffering. Let us guide their empathy into action for good. Let us build on that kindness and trust between all of our communities as we encourage respectful conversations and a deepening of our relations.”

Political leaders including Vice Lord-Lieutenant of Oxfordshire Lynda Atkins, Oxford City Councillor Susan Brown, and Oxford East MP Anneliese Dodds were also present.

MP Dodds told Cherwell: “I was very pleased that this vigil could still go ahead, the third such vigil to have taken place in Oxford since the 7th of October. I am very grateful to the Baptist Church for enabling it to happen and, more important than ever, that Oxford communities and people of all faiths and none were able to come together to support each other.”

At the end, attendees held a moment of silence with candles and flashlights. They also sang along to the anti-war song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” with lyrics such as “Where have all the graveyards gone?/ Covered with flowers every one/ When will we ever learn?”

A year ago, Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people and took 251 hostages from Israel, 97 of whom remain unaccounted for. Since then, Israel’s war in Gaza has killed over 41,000 people according to Gaza’s health ministry. In recent weeks, after months of cross-border fighting, violence escalated in Lebanon, where Israeli strikes intended to target Hezbollah members have killed over 2000 people. Hezbollah and Iran have launched missiles at Israel in retaliation.

Serious life lessons from silly Oxford mistakes

David Hays
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Serious life lessons from silly Oxford mistakes

It was my last set of collections before Prelims, and I was writing an essay on dopamine. (You’ll be intimately familiar with this neuromodulator even if you don’t study experimental psychology, provided you’ve consumed and incurred sufficient online ‘brainrot’ over the summer.) In citing the paper which pioneered our understanding of the crowd-favourite chemical, I thought it would be nice to name its now-infamous author in full. So I did, chronicling in my very first sentence the “discovery of the reward signal by Howard Schultz”. There was only one problem: Howard Schultz did not discover how dopamine works. Howard Schultz, rather, is the former CEO who created modern-day Starbucks; clearly, his name had infiltrated my mind that day – perhaps due to my morning beverage. And my tutor, as a friend, close colleague, and former postdoc (for eight years!) of Dr. Wolfram Schultz, knew the difference, believe it or not. The introduction of my collection essay thus contained just one simple – yet stinging – comment: “Please get it right.” Oh, and one more thing: my tutor told Wolfram of the embarrassing mix-up. Ouch.

In three or four years of tutorials, classes, and exams, you will make mistakes. Now, unless in your previous life you were a politician trading on the stock market, I recognise that this concept won’t be new to you. Studying at Oxford, however, you are stereotypically likely to be called out on these mistakes – even the small, seemingly inconsequential ones. Of course, my mix-up of the Schultzes was more funny than anything else, but it’s not uncommon that feedback is far harsher, and sometimes even personal, so it can be easy to take such ‘destructive criticism’ to heart. (This is especially true for those who’ve been accustomed to a steady stream of academic and extracurricular praise for the majority of their formative years.) Thus, I want to share three simple steps I’ve begun to learn from two years of mistakes in Oxford, both big and small.

(1) Acknowledge. If the mistake affects others, apologise too, genuinely and succinctly. Even if you don’t think the mistake is Earth-shattering, acknowledging your error assures your fellow human(s) that you care, and haven’t dismissed what they clearly felt – whether rightly or not – was important enough to point out. (2) Learn. Mistakes are, quite literally, how we learn. In fact, it was Wolfram Schultz’s work which uncovered that our dopamine neurons encode a learning signal based on the difference between expectation and reality, which then helps update our memory and optimise future behaviour. When you make a mistake, use the resulting emotions to help prevent you from repeating said mistake. In the countless essays on the topic of dopamine and reward since my first year, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that I have never again forgotten Wolfram Schultz’s name. (3) Laugh. We’re not on Earth for a very long time – enjoy the ride! Laugh at yourself. Laugh at the situation. About a year after my collection mix-up, I would find myself in contact with Wolfram, and I revealed to him my identity as the undergraduate who mistook him for the mastermind behind Starbucks. Wolfram’s reaction? He too simply laughed: “Yes, I am not Howard Schultz, as far as I remember…”

Laughing also helps you be kind to yourself, a final lesson which will remain invaluable as you overcome mistakes not only in the academic realm at Oxford, but in career and personal pursuits far beyond the ring road. Whether you’re a medical student who’s just been told by their lab instructor they’re “bound for general practice” (a real story I heard last year), you’ve just fumbled your final McKinsey interview, or you’ve dropped the ball with the love of your life, always treat yourself compassionately as you get back on your feet. You’re not alone, and to make one mistake – or even a hundred – doesn’t doom you to eternal failure; to make mistakes is an inevitable fact of the human condition. Even Albert Einstein, whose face populates any image search for ‘genius’, made his lion’s share of mistakes! Take one example: the woman with whom he first visited Oxford, in 1919, was his second wife Elsa, on whom he was not only cheating with his secretary, but who was also his first cousin (born an Einstein) and a mistress from his first marriage. On mistakes, the ‘genius’ had this to say: show me a man who has never made a mistake, and I will show you one who has never tried anything. Happy Michaelmas, friends.

Long vowels or short shrift: Oxford’s shocking accent hierarchy

Angharad Thorp
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Long vowels or short shrift: Oxford’s shocking accent hierarchy

Every sun demands a shadow, and Oxford is not exempt: a darkness lies beneath the University’s glittering magnetism. Engrained classism is found in all corners under the dreaming spires. One manifestation of this is accent prejudice, which awards a Southern drawl the gold medal. 

I encountered this bias immediately in my first term. A disclaimer: despite growing up in Birmingham, I do not have a Brummie accent, something I attribute to having a Welsh mother and a Londoner as a dad. Coming to Oxford was the first time this lack of accent, a notable absence of “bab!” in my vernacular, was complimented: Freshers week had been a series of congratulations, “You don’t sound like you are from there, well done!”. I was once accused of lying: “You must be from London, go on, just admit it!”. 

However, rather than taking offence, I took solace in these remarks. Riddled with imposter syndrome, it was hard not to smile when asked what part of London or Surrey I was from. They think I am one of them, I would excitedly mutter: I belong. This quiet thrill spoke to my anxiety about fitting in, driven by the idea that the “true” Oxford student fitted a narrow, privileged mould.

To the joy of my insecure self, my accent helped me to blend into the sea of majority Southern students. In 2021-2023, 28.7% of admitted undergraduates were from London, and a further 29.5% came from the South East or South West. This geographical dominance helped me fit in, but my experience was also riddled with classist prejudice. For example, after a string of wrong guesses about my background, someone pleaded, “Oh God forbid, don’t tell me you’re from the North?!”. When someone found out I lived in Birmingham, they half-jokingly offered me a place to stay at their family’s country estate during the holidays – because, apparently, “a girl like you shouldn’t live there.” 

What girl had they mistaken me for? All I knew was that my accent had played its part in making me palatable for the most affluent students. Yet sounding the part only works up to a point: accent isn’t enough. When asked, “Where do you summer?”, I was confused, not realising “summer” could be a verb. When asked which school I went to, the expectation was that I would name one of a handful of elite institutions. Accents might change, but backgrounds don’t. A different vowel pronunciation couldn’t suddenly place a silver spoon in my mouth.

Looking back at my insecure fresher self, I feel a sense of shame, even sadness, about how I navigated my first few months in Oxford. Like a magpie attracted to shiny things, I consciously and unconsciously mimicked the accents around me, adopting new pronunciations and vowel sounds. When I returned home, my family would comment that I sounded “posher,”; however, instead of feeling proud, I felt like a traitor, a sell-out. The “compliments” that once reassured me at Oxford now seemed hollow. I realised that I had severed myself from my roots, and destroyed the footsteps which had got me to Oxford in the first place. I hated myself for it. 

The self-hatred also came with a fractured sense of identity. My accent shifted between Southern intonations and full Welsh vowels, leaving me unsure which, if any, was my “true” voice. I could not properly recall how I used to speak and when home friends commented on how much my accent had changed, I often wondered how authentically myself I was. I ultimately was left not knowing who my “true” self was. My sense of identity had been utterly distorted. 

The pivotal moment of change came when my tutor said he could tell I was part Welsh by the “lyrical” and “musical” way I wrote. With excitement, I immediately spoke of my favourite childhood memories by the Welsh coast and explained that my house had never known silence as classical music had always filled its walls. Through my words and how I wrote, he had seen my story. His observation was neither moralistic nor loaded with an expectation I should change myself to conform. In fact, he didn’t want me to. 

I had felt such relief – it was like coming up for air. With time, Oxford began to feel like a space for me, in my entirety, rather than a select manufactured appearance. Paired with the love-filled acceptance of my friends and most peers, who continue to help me feel more authentically myself by the day, I am forever grateful for my tutors’ kindness and genuine care for students of all backgrounds. When I did not feel like enough, they always reminded me that I was. 

However, I recognise that my story is seemingly in the minority, and it is due in part to the fact that my sense of disconnect at Oxford was not from being marginalised or excluded, but rather from the perception of assimilation greater than I felt. For students who have accents which do face social marginalisation, their experiences greatly differ; the pressure to change can often be far stronger, and the consequences of not doing so are more cuttingly felt. 

A Scottish undergraduate spoke to me of how she consciously altered her voice during tutorials and moots, where she would “tone down” the broadness of her accent. She found that when she did, she was treated with more respect, taken more seriously, and viewed as more intelligent. It helped protect her from having the experiences of a Mancunian undergraduate, who shared that a tutor repeatedly claimed to be unable to understand her. She was forced to repeat herself sentence after sentence in tutorials and classes, ostensibly in the name of “clarity.” Listening to her recount this, I could understand every word she said without difficulty. Her accent was perfectly comprehensible: the issue is the tutor’s prejudice. Her experience underscores the bias that exists within academic and professional settings toward Southern English accents, a bias that unfairly equates certain ways of speaking with intellectual worth.

A sense of worth is what this all comes back to: the desire to be treated with dignity and respect, where your right to belong is not measured by your accent or background. Yet the uncomfortable truth is that accents do act as a form of social currency. They can shield people from discrimination and open doors more easily. Amelia Taylor, Regions Officer at Class Act, told Cherwell, “[mocking accents] reinforces the sense of otherness at Oxford that is caused by regional disparities in deprivation and opportunity – so students from less well-represented regional backgrounds may not only have a harder time reaching Oxford, but have to battle with discrimination when they’re here”. 

This reality forces us to ask: how much of yourself do you change to fit in? My decision to embrace self-authenticity and reject the belief that an Oxford student must look, act, or speak a certain way was liberating. But I recognise that others adjust their accent as a form of self-protection. It helps them blend in and access social and academic spaces that, in an unfair world, are more easily available to some than others. It is a cruel system with the weight of a long history behind it, but it is a ladder that can feel easier to climb than to dismantle. I know it is easy to preach authenticity when less is at stake. 

I can only hope that Oxford is full of more love than judgement, with a bigger desire to embrace others rather than hurt them. Words and comments that stayed with me carried weight because of their sharpness, not their frequency, and I want to believe that Oxford’s classism persists more because of the loudness of voices that proclaim it than the number who share those beliefs. This University is for everyone, always. Therefore, in both small and large actions, the accent bias, and all forms of classism and prejudice, must be continually confronted and challenged. 

War crimes, rent climbs, and bad wines: A very short history of protest at Oxford

Subhan Aslam
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War crimes, rent climbs, and bad wines: A very short history of protest at Oxford

It’s Trinity term, and you’re heading back to college after spending a sunny evening unwinding in University Parks. You get halfway down Parks Road and look to your left. In front of the Pitt Rivers lies the Palestine encampment. You look to your right and see fading on the walls of Keble College the message “Hands off Vietnam”. There’s a history of student protest at Oxford and you’re walking through it. Who were these student protestors? What did they protest for? How successful were they?

We start all the way back in February 1355 with perhaps the most pretentious cause for protest possible. At the Swindlestock Tavern, now the Santander at the top of Queen Street, a group of students were enjoying a drink to celebrate St Scholastica Day. Spryngeheuse and Chesterfield are two of these students, and they complained that the wine they were served was unsatisfactory. When the landlord of the tavern refused to serve them anything else, snobby Chesterfield threw a drink in his face and bedlam ensued. The pub brawl turned into mass rioting that lasted for three days with 30 townspeople and 63 students killed. All these deaths because a posh Oxford boy didn’t get his way. Not a great start to the legacy of student activism at this University. 

In 1603, things got more political as Oxford University became a constituency with two Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. This leads us to our next incident of student protest in 1829 with Christ Church’s famous ‘No Peel’ door. The message, hammered into a door at the foot of the steps of the dining hall, was a response to Oxford MP Sir Robert Peel’s sudden support for Catholic Emancipation despite being elected on a platform of opposition to it. The upshot of the graffiti was that Peel lost his seat in a by-election held in February 1829. Oxford students holding their member of parliament to account — a much more principled protest than the drunken disagreement of just a few centuries prior. It’s a shame that the principle they were fighting for was religious oppression, but then again Christ Church does have a history of trying to vote away religious representation. This alternation between political protests and grouchy grievances defines student action at Oxford. Whilst global and political issues may change, the entitled student remains the same. 

‘Free Speech’ is the cause of many protests at Oxford to this day, thanks to the ever problematic Union, but the first of these did not involve those at the self-declared “world’s most prestigious debating society” at all. In March 1926, the Vice-Chancellor of the University pushed two communist undergraduates to sign a paper pledging that they would not propagate their political views. This was met with great outrage not only within Oxford but also nationally. It was the main point of discussion at the Congress of the National Union of Students, at which Mr D. Barber from Cambridge said that “students of this country are not going to countenance any sort of intolerance of that nature”. Oxford is often accused of being rather insular, isolated, and self-interested, but here Oxford students began to find their feet on a wider national platform of student activism. 

Nevertheless, insular, pretentious, out of touch Oxford remained and on the 7th March 1936, Pembroke students refused to eat in the hall for the first time in the college’s 300-year history. You’d be forgiven for assuming that the students took issue with the cost of the meals. However, the then JCR President Mr. Cartmell made it very clear that the problem was not the price, but the quality of dishes served. It seems Oxford students are historically fussy banqueters with very high standards. As a response to the protest, a new menu featuring potage dubarry and filet halibut marguerite was implemented for the following dinner, which satisfied the pompous Pembroke students. Hall saw a record attendance. 

Student Activism in the UK at large ramped up in the 1960s, and Oxford did not stand on the sidelines. In June 1961, there was a protest by Oxford students against the actions of Portugal in Angola. The Portuguese had recently forced the cultivation of cotton as the only commodity crop, and this sparked massive civil unrest and widespread violence. The protestors secured an audience with the parliamentary private secretary to the Minister of State at the Foreign Office who told them they were right, and that Britain could not support the present policies of Portugal in Angola. This success ensured there was revolutionary energy through the decade which ended with some of the largest student demonstrations this country has ever seen. In March 1968, over 15,000 people marched in opposition to the Vietnam War from Oxford Street down towards Grosvenor Square, where 246 protestors were arrested. One of those arrested was then Wadham student and famous children’s author, Michael Rosen, who later wrote a poem for the Isis about the demonstration where he described being arrested and attacked by police. He and his flatmate Donald Macintyre, a Christ Church student, then attended the October protest alongside over 100,000 demonstrators. This decade saw the birth of mass student activism, and Oxford played its part. Indeed, until the 1990s student activism was hopeful and far-reaching. Students with Campaign Atom rallying against the US bombing of Libya in 1986 declared that they “fully expected to be arrested”. There was a real tenacity, drive, and willingness for self-sacrifice that is no longer seen today.

The turn of the century was dominated by protests about living costs and tuition fees as focus pivoted to domestic issues. Things began to escalate in October 1987 when students at Mansfield went on rent strike over rising costs as their daily rate was going up from £2.91 to an eye-watering £3.12. The most significant of the financial demonstrations was that of five students who refused to pay the £1,000 tuition fee in December 1998. The Stop the Fees Campaign organised rallies outside the Bod and over 2,000 students came out in support. Whilst Campaign Atom saw people willing to go to jail, one of the Oxford protestors famously said, “we don’t want to endanger ourselves to the point where we are simply becoming martyrs”. The move to introduce fees ploughed on and there was a growing sense that student campaigns didn’t really achieve much anymore. Even though more than 100 students occupied the Bod in February 2001, they were largely ignored and no policy changes were forthcoming. The failings of the Iraq protests compounded this feeling of powerlessness. Cherwell’s 2005 article entitled ‘A bleak future for student protest’ summed up the mood of the time. The successes of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign seemed a distant reality given the ineffectiveness of recent movements. The potency of campaigning was coming into question and students’ commitment to it was wavering. Student protest at Oxford had lost its intensity and determination. 

When everything seems a little flat and hopeless you can always count on the Union to do what it does best –  invite disgraced bigots to give speeches. And in November 2007 that is exactly what they did. The Holocaust denier David Irving and chairman of the BNP Nick Griffin were the two chosen on this particular occasion. Naturally this sparked huge opposition from students, and alongside protests outside of the Union, many demonstrators made their way inside and orchestrated a sit-in protest from within the chamber. Student protest had some energy again. This was an Oxford-centric protest however, and all it did was create a media frenzy. Whilst it used to be the case that Parliament would listen to student protesters, now it seemed that only tabloids were interested in our thoughts. Take the 2010 austerity protests for example. On 10th November 2010, roughly 50,000 demonstrators marched through Central London in opposition to planned spending cuts to higher education and the increase of the cap on tuition fees. The then president of the OUSU David Barclay was quoted in the BBC article on the protests, but only 400 students from Oxford attended. Oxford University occupies a prominent space within the public debate, especially on student issues. There is a media privilege afforded to the Oxford student. But with such a small number attending the protest, it seems that no-one is willing to make use of it. Has the Oxford Student given up?

November 2017 saw a return to the spoiled, bratty protests that plague Oxford as Christ Church students were outraged that their bop was shut down almost an hour early. A college that once led the drive to oust a Member of Parliament was now throwing a tantrum over their special little party ending early. Was this what Oxford student protest had really come to?  A Cherwell article published the same year urged people not to “indulge in protests” as “[t]hey have become a young adult fad with little, if no, effect”. Decades of having demands ignored by successive governments, as well as University and college administrators, led to such political indolence that bops were the only issue we could muster any anger about.

2020 brought an end to the idleness. There was a climate protest with students occupying the front quad of St John’s for five days. This was an important factor in the University agreeing to divest from fossil fuels and commit to a net-zero investment strategy. Moreover, the Rhodes Must Fall movement reached Oxford as protestors demanded to take down the statue of the imperialist Cecil Rhodes from the front of Oriel College. The story gained massive media coverage as it ticked two boxes. One, it was a story about Oxbridge, which news outlets seem never to get bored of. Two, it was a ‘culture war’ issue, which is a lazy journalist’s bread and butter. There was now vocal unrest within the university with activists using the spotlight afforded to them as Oxford students to campaign for issues and causes that matter. 

Despite Covid-19 and its aftermath, student activism ramped up and in April 2022 a protest took place on Bonn Square against the exclusion of trans people from the ban on conversion therapy. Just a year after this protest was held in support of trans people, the ever out of touch Union decided to invite the transphobic Kathleen Stock to give a talk. As expected, this was hugely unpopular and the University’s LGBTQ+ Society organised a protest to vocalise this discontent. This generated a huge media storm, and everyone seemed to have an opinion on the matter, including the then Prime Minister. Oxford students were protesting loudly, and their slogans were being heard. 

“From the River to the Sea…” is one of these slogans that has become very familiar. The first week of November 2023 saw two demonstrations in support of Palestine. On the 1st November, 1,500 protesters marched through Oxford towards Bonn Square, and on the 4th, there was a large gathering outside the Weston Library. Fast forward six months and the Pitt Rivers encampment is set up. Upon the establishment of the ‘liberated zone’, OA4P released a statement which speaks to the unique position of Oxford student protestors. It acknowledges the hand Oxford played in empire-building and how we continue to benefit from it. As students of this university, we walk through the same corridors as those who led us into Iraq, read in the same libraries as those who implemented economic policies of austerity, and dine in the same halls as those who wrote the Balfour Declaration. That is the history we are writing the next chapter of. The OA4P statement asks, “What is the cost of your silence?”. Refusing to speak out, campaign, and protest is allying yourself with the crop of Oxford students that have made the world we now inherit, and given the last Conservative government’s anti-protest legislation it seems they would like us to stay silent. 

Ordinarily it is wealth that gives you influence over the establishment. Money gives you power, privilege, and status. But Oxford is the Establishment. Whilst it positions itself as a beacon of intellectual progression and freedom, its past mostly displays begrudging acceptance or outright suppression of protest. It’s churned out countless politicians, cabinet ministers, and Prime Ministers. It is the breeding ground for society’s elites. As members of the University, we benefit from this reputation. We as a student body are granted media attention, political capital, and societal respect. We’re given a platform not many get a chance to speak from. A poll conducted by Cherwell last year revealed that nine in ten respondents were open to attending a demonstration in the future. The opportunity for action is there. There are students who want to speak out, and platforms on which they can.

In 60 years time, when someone is walking down Parks Road and they look at the wall of Keble. Will they see the fading message “Hands Off Vietnam” and think, as we do, that was the last time a student protest actually achieved something? Or will there be a new legacy for them to inherit?

On Leadership by Tony Blair, Precipice by Robert Harris, and Oxford crime – Books of the Month

Hassan Akram
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On Leadership by Tony Blair, Precipice by Robert Harris, and Oxford crime – Books of the Month

On Leadership by Tony Blair 

A French novelist, on receiving a letter from a person of title, remarked that the “style was that of a shopping list.” He might have been talking about Sir Tony Blair. Blair may have been one of the most gifted politicians and notorious war criminals of his generation, but unlike, say, Henry Kissinger (an obvious influence here), he can barely write a paragraph which is not staccato and telegrammatic. Here is his first attempt: “No Leader [his capitals] I ever met, who succeeded, did so just by being a leader. They did it by hard work… And by curiosity. By a willingness to learn. By a relentless pursuit of the right answer.”  

In this new textbook of inside tips on the mechanics of being a leader, Blair posits that there are three stages of leadership through which all Leaders must pass. In the first, Leaders know nothing about the art of governing and lap up all the advice they can find. In the second stage, Leaders think they have gained enough experience to know everything when, in fact, they know nothing. In the third, Leaders accept the smallness of their range of experience and once more become willing to listen and learn.  

Certainly, there are insights to be gained from a man who ran the country for ten years and has been on first-name terms with the most powerful people on the planet. Blair’s observations are pithy, intelligent, memorable, and universally applicable to the study of leadership. On the other hand, he is disturbingly enthusiastic about Elon Musk, technocracy, and AI. On the subject of big business his advice is candidly to cut taxes and deregulate. When reflecting on his own legacy, he mentions “understandable disagreement and anger” about the bloody cataclysm of the Iraq War, but is keen to pad out the rest of the page with a list of his achievements in domestic policy. 

Don’t purchase this book – otherwise Blair will receive the royalties, and he makes more than enough from his advice sessions with foreign dictators and his £35 million property empire – but if you can find a copy in a library, it is a unique and valuable read. 

Precipice by Robert Harris 

H.G. Wells’s Mr Brittling Sees It Through – at one time the most popular novel in the world – contains the first great fictional account of Britain in the summer of 1914, when the sunny complacencies of nineteenth-century civilisation were engulfed by total war. Robert Harris’s Precipice contains the latest. A historical novel, it is the true story of then-prime minister H.H. Asquith and his affair with Venetia Stanley, a twenty-six-year-old aristocrat. 

The character of Asquith is compelling if slightly incomplete. He would write to Venetia several times a day, and by regular post would send her some of the most dangerous state secrets. In his letters (which are real) obsessive rhapsodies are melted in with the official secrets of a Whitehall on the cusp of war. Admittedly, Harris’s reliance on these primary documents for Asquith leaves some questions unanswered; the prime minister’s motivations are underdeveloped, because the author is not concerned with explaining so much as with depicting his passion. Venetia is more impressively realised. In her case, there are no letters to draw on (in real life, Asquith destroyed all her epistles), and so there is more effort to unpack her motivations. “I feel it’s almost my patriotic duty to keep him happy,” she says of Asquith. She emerges as a dynamic, burning, tragic heroine – possibly the greatest character of Harris’s corpus.  

Harris never neglects the plot, which is rapid, engrossing, and marvellously constructed. The book is a page-turner with real literary craft behind it, clearly and economically written. Atmosphere and setting are vividly evoked from the very first paragraph onwards: “Late one Thursday morning at the beginning of July 1915, a young woman with dark wet hair strode long-legged from the serpentine in Hyde Park along Oxford Street towards Marylebone. In one hand she carried a cream linen sun hat, in the other a damp bathing costume and a pair of silk stockings rolled up inside a navy-blue towel.” If you only read one historical novel this year, make it this one. 

Lessons in Crime: Academic Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards 

The British Library Crime Classics series, now well past its hundredth book, derives a part of its appeal from the fact that the forgotten writings of an era give a much more vivid insight into it than those which survive for posterity. All the books in the series are immersive in their period charm. Lessons in Crime is an anthology of short, well-plotted, and superbly entertaining mystery stories, mostly from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, all set in the world of academia.  

The best of them are set in Oxford. In “The Missing Undergraduate” an Oxonian policeman investigates the disappearance from St Peter’s of the son of a Tory MP. In the snappily suspenseful “The Gilded Pupil”, an Oxford graduate gets a post as a millionaire’s governess and becomes embroiled in a dangerous kidnapping plot. In “Murder at Pentecost”, a travelling salesman (ill-fatedly named Mr Montague Egg) visits Oxford and is able, by virtue of being the only outsider, to solve the murder of a Master; this story is by Dorothy L. Sayers, who was the daughter of the chaplain of Christ Church, and who would go on to write possibly the best Oxford crime novel, Gaudy Night. An original Sherlock Holmes adventure is included, as well as a story about A.J. Raffles, the once-famous cricketer and gentleman thief, although it is not Raffles’s best outing.  

There are fifteen stories in all, making the book good value for money, and, as ever, there is an engaging and informative introduction by series consultant Martin Edwards.  

Exclusive: Lord Peter Mandelson, Imane Khelif, Humza Yousaf, and Vera Wang to speak at Oxford Union

Ila Banerji
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Exclusive: Lord Peter Mandelson, Imane Khelif, Humza Yousaf, and Vera Wang to speak at Oxford Union

Cherwell can exclusively report that chancellor candidate Lord Peter Mandelson, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, former Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf, and fashion designer Vera Wang are among those to speak at the Oxford Union this term. Noteworthy debate topics include Israel-Palestine, Kashmir independence, rejoining the EU, and abortion rights.

Other speakers include Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek, Trump aide-turned-critic Anthony Scaramucci, streamer Hasan Piker, rapper-actor Jaden Smith, and Citadel CEO Kenneth Griffin.

Lord Peter Mandelson, former Director of Communications for the Labour Party and current hopeful for the role of Oxford University Chancellor, will also be appearing at the Union this term. Mandelson is considered to have been a key player in the branding of Tony Blair’s Labour Party as ‘New Labour’, and is still reported to have an ‘influence’ on Keir Starmer and the current government.

Imane Khelif, an Algerian boxer, won a gold medal at the Paris Olympics this summer amid misinformation surrounding her gender. The International Boxing Association (IBA) previously disqualified her for failing a chromosome test, while the International Olympic Committee ruled her eligible and discredited the IBA. Public figures such as JK Rowling and Elon Musk, who called her gender into question, were recently named in Khelif’s criminal complaint over “aggravated cyber harassment.” 

In addition, Humza Yousaf, the youngest and first ever British-Asian Scottish First Minister will be speaking. Yousaf won the Scottish National Party leadership election in 2023 following Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation. Whilst in power, he made headlines for his outspoken support of Palestine. In 2024, he ended a coalition agreement with the Scottish Greens, leading to a vote of no confidence in him, before which he resigned.

Vera Wang, an influential American fashion designer known for her wedding dresses, is another speaker. Wang started her career working at Vogue and Ralph Lauren before starting her own fashion line. She rose to prominence in the 1990s, going on to make wedding dresses for public figures such as Victoria Beckham. She is also known for her evening wear which has been worn by the likes of Michelle Obama and Sofia Vergara. 

One of the debate topics is “This House Believes Israel is an apartheid State responsible for genocide”, which will see speakers including political scientist Norman Finkelstein, Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd, and Director of UK Lawyers for Israel Natasha Hausdorff. Israeli professor Gerald Steinberg, who was invited, publicly declined the invitation in a letter that accuses the Union of “poisonous hatred”.

On the wording of this motion, the Union stated: “More than 76 years on, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains unresolved. Critics accuse Israel of employing military tactics that target civilians and infrastructure, amounting to ethnic cleansing, while others defend these actions as legitimate self-defence against terrorism. Israeli military operations in Gaza, attacks on Lebanon, and continued settlement expansion have exacerbated tensions.

“The debate over whether Israel’s actions, in light of UN reports and International Court of Justice (ICJ) rulings, amount to apartheid or genocide continues. Recently, the UK’s Labour party banned terms like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ at its conference, raising concerns about free speech and the ability to criticise Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”

Another controversial debate motion is “This House Believes in an independent state of Kashmir”, which will feature speakers including current Defence Minister of Pakistan Khawaja Asif, Labour MP Naz Shah, and former advisor to the Prime Minister of India Prem Shankar Jha. Indian film director Vikek Agnihotri, who was invited, publicly turned down the invitation, calling the topic “offensive”.

Other debates include “This House Would Rejoin the European Union” with former Deputy Prime Minister Lord Heseltine and journalist Rachel Johnson, as well as “This House Regrets the Repeal of Roe v. Wade” with Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju and lawyer Erin Hawley. The Union will be hosting a 60th Anniversary Debate of the visit of Malcom X, with chancellor candidate Margaret-Casely Hayford and Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy. 

On the social side, the Union will be hosting its termly ball – themed The Sands of Time – on 2nd November, a US Election Night Watch Party on 5th November, and President’s Welcome for freshers on 11th October. Union president Ebrahim Osman Mowafy said that access pricing will be offered at all social events.

Osman Mowafy told Cherwell: “This term, we have curated a lineup of debates and speakers that reflect our commitment to free speech and open debate. From global political leaders to renowned cultural icons, this term promises a unique blend of thought-provoking discussions and diverse perspectives.” 

Government planning rise in tuition fees to £10,500

Bryn Mollet and Ila Banerji
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Government planning rise in tuition fees to £10,500

Government officials drafted plans that would see tuition fees rise to £10,500 – or 13.5% – over the next five years, a Whitehall source told The Times, and that maintenance grants would be restored for lower income students to shield them from the impact. These plans are still under discussion, not yet approved by the chancellor. 

The advocacy group Universities UK, of which Oxford University is a member, had called for increasing home students’ tuition fees this September, citing inflation as a major cause for the need for such a rise. Home student fees have been capped at £9,250 since 2017 and have not kept up with inflation. A 2024 Office for Students (OfS) report suggests that the real-term value of income for teaching students has decreased by approximately 25% since 2015-16.

Multiple students told Cherwell that it’s important to know whether the loan repayment scheme, which was altered in 2022, will change, but that is unclear as of now. The government forecasts that 65% of full-time graduates who started in 2023 will repay their student loan in full, and the average debt for students who started their course in 2022 is currently £45,600. The Institute for Fiscal Studies speculates that if tuition fees were to be raised, over 60% of loanees would not even be able to make higher repayments until their 40s. 

An Oxford University student told Cherwell: “A fee increase would be more of a deterrent to working class households.” They added that tuition fee is “essentially a graduate tax” so as long as the loan repayment scheme remains the same, “it doesn’t really matter how much the tuition fee increases, it just means less people will pay it off in full”.

Many institutions rely heavily upon international student fees to cover their operating costs. This comes amid falling numbers of international students coming to the UK for higher education which has exacerbated financial difficulties. The OfS report found 40% of UK universities ran a deficit in the past academic year.

Oxford’s tutorial system makes it one of the most expensive universities to run per student. One tutor has estimated a humanities student costs around £18,000 a year to educate, nearly double the home tuition fee. 

Oxford is less reliant on international fees despite international students making up 47% of the total student body. Only 8.1% of the University’s income was from international fees compared to the nationwide average of 24% in 2021-22. Oxford is also less reliant on tuition fees in general, receiving more from research grants, publishing services, donations, and investment income.

Immigration policy and Brexit have been cited as causes for the decline in international students. New student visa rules put in place early this year means that many international students are now unable to bring family with them to the UK. Brexit halved the amount of EU student applicants in 2021, who can no longer pay home student rates or receive funding. This reflects a broader trend where EU students have halved from 2019 to 2023. 

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said in July that the Labour government had “no plans” to increase university fees, but in a more recent interview she had refused to rule it out. She said she would not “want” to do it, but that the government was “looking at all the options”, and she recognised that the current “value of the fee has eroded”.

Vice President of the National Union of Students, Alex Stanley had previously criticised a similar proposed increase in fees, saying that students should not be made to “foot the bill for the university funding crisis” and that this move would “further punish students who are investing in their future.” 

North Korea and the Global Nuclear Order review – “An excellent account”

Hassan Akram
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North Korea and the Global Nuclear Order review – “An excellent account”

Dr Edward Howell, whose columns in the Spectator and the Telegraph are among the few intelligent and readable things left in those outlets, has produced an excellent account of North Korea and its place in the global nuclear order. Here is a book which the University Press would do well to issue in an affordable edition. It throws light on the foreign policy of a horrific but little-understood regime, and does so with a blend of exposition, theory, and analysis.

At the start of the Second World War, Churchill said that the key to understanding Russia was to understand Russian national interests, and today the same statement may be applied to North Korea. Dr Howell understands this, and in order to explain the nuclear ambitions of the Kim regime in Pyongyang, he begins by outlining the history and self-perception of the Korean peninsula. Three successive dynasties ruled Korea between 57 BC and 1912 AD. It was annexed by Imperial Japan in 1910. There followed a period of enforced Japanification. Cultural artefacts were destroyed, newspapers were censored, and Korean institutions were replaced by Japanese ones.  

Korean nationalism, which was bound to be anti-Japanese for the same reason that later Algerian nationalism was anti-French, took off after the Versailles Conference but never became a serious anticolonial force. After Japanese defeat in 1945, Korea, like Germany, was partitioned between American and Soviet spheres of influence, with US troops entering Seoul in the south and Soviet ones entering Pyongyang in the north. After independence in 1948, a formerly united peninsula remained divided between two nations, each of whom viewed the other as illegitimate. 

For the North Koreans, independence led not to democracy but to a change in masters. The Workers’ Party of Korea, a Stalinist movement led by Kim Il Sung, took power. Kim consolidated his rule and his dynasty by means of an extreme personality cult underpinned by fantasies of racial purity; in doing so, he was imitating Japanese colonial tactics of deifying the royal family in order to command the loyalty of the masses.  

In June 1950, with the backing of Stalin, he invaded the South, triggering the Korean War. (Pyongyang, in typically totalitarian fashion, later rewrote history to deny its act of aggression.) The war, which became a proxy conflict between the US and China, was a stalemate. It left North Korea with a dependence on the fellow Communist states of the USSR, China, and, later, Cuba, and an “elevated threat perception from the United States, South Korea, and wider international society”. This persecution mania, this victim mentality that the whole world is bent on its destruction, continues to define Pyongyang’s view of the world. 

The three tenets of North Korean policy are therefore as follows: anticolonialism inherited from the historical struggle with Japan; ideological expansionism in line with Communist Russia and China; and a “hostile policy” of anti-Americanism as the legacy of the Korean War. 

Kim Il Sung’s ultimate goal was always to reunify Korea and to bring the entire peninsula under his own rule. This fantasy, always improbable, took an initial blow when North Korea lost its economic ascendency over the South in the 1960s. A fatal blow followed in the 1980s and 90s, when an economically liberal China and a terminally ill Soviet Union officially recognised South Korea. The result was to reaffirm Pyongyang’s view of the whole world as being in a US-sponsored plot to undermine it. 

The first nuclear crisis of the 1990s exemplified what would become North Korea’s signature use of “strategic delinquency”. In 1993 Pyongyang violated all norms by threatening to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, before, in 1994, signing a new agreement to halt its nuclear development in exchange for perceived rewards from the US. The episode showed that bad behaviour paid off, and that “strategic delinquency” was the best way for North Korea to achieve its aims. 

Kim Il Sung’s grandson, the incumbent Kim Jong Un, has done more than either of his forefathers to establish a nuclear North Korea. President Trump met Kim in 2018-19 but, despite hoping to frame himself as the American who restrained North Korea, he extracted no real concessions. Kim made vague pledges to adhere to international norms, in return for which he acquired a new diplomatic prestige and hopes of increased American aid. In further meetings, however, like the Hanoi Summit, talks stagnated. Trump failed to satisfy Kim’s demands; he did not withdraw US troops from South Korea; he did not end sanctions on North Korea; and so Rocket Man’s interest in diplomacy fizzled out. In 2020, COVID-19 hit North Korea harder than any sanctions could have done, but still no substantial diplomatic overtures were made. That is how things stand at present. 

The book is well-written in academic Oxbridge prose, although it is clear throughout that Dr Howell is very puritanical in his approach to grammar. Evidently he belongs to that sect of grammarians who hold that to deliberately split an infinitive is a contemptible practice. His views are worth quoting: “To the reader, true to my obsession with correct English grammar, this book does not contain a single split infinitive. Caveat lector, any errata therein are my own responsibility.” (I admit that when I first saw this passage, I had to frown and reread it several times in bafflement, before I remembered that “errata” is the Latin for “mistakes”, as opposed to the synonym for “pornography”.) 

North Korea and the Global Nuclear Order covers its field in great depth. It may have benefitted from more developed comparisons between North Korea and other countries – for example, by contrasting the nuclear effects of the division of Korea to those of similar partitions in India or Palestine, or by comparing the foreign policy of Pyongyang more explicitly to that of Communist China – but these are minor criticisms. In spite of his copious research and vivid understanding of international relations, Dr Howell concludes that North Korea remains a known unknown. At any rate until the Kim regime collapses, we can only see the tip of the missile silo; there must be a great deal of hidden information of which nobody is aware; and the country is “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. 

North Korea and the Global Nuclear Order: When Bad Behaviour Pays by Edward Howell is available now from Oxford University Press 

A Revolution Betrayed by Peter Hitchens review – In Defence of Grammar Schools

Hassan Akram
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A Revolution Betrayed by Peter Hitchens review – In Defence of Grammar Schools

Review – A Revolution Betrayed: How Egalitarians Wrecked the British Education System by Peter Hitchens. ISBN: 9781399400077 

Most people accept that the British education system is broken, and only those with a vested interest deny that it requires drastic and long-term reform. The goal is to have a system which is meritocratic and fair, although the defining principle of the current one is wealth. In this book, Peter Hitchens argues that we once had a meritocratic education system, which for a generation between 1944 and 1965 furthered social mobility and equality of opportunity, but that the revolution was betrayed – dismantled by successive Labour and Conservative governments. 

Under the provisions of the Education Act 1944 (the Butler Act), the 11+ exam sorted primary school children on the basis of ability into grammar schools and non-grammar schools. The non-grammar schools were subdivided into technical schools and secondary moderns. These have been attacked on various grounds, but undeniably they compensated for the lack of state secondary education prior to 1944, and taught technical and practical skills that were essential for the functioning of entire professional sectors. The grammar schools were high-standard, innovative, merit-based institutions which, given time to develop, would far have outstripped the public schools. By giving every child in every locality a chance to work their way into the most suitable school for their abilities, the 1944 system allowed countless pupils to advance and achieve to an extent that would have been impossible a generation earlier. (In the appendix to this book, there is a list of prominent beneficiaries of the system). It was the closest Britain ever came to a meritocracy. “If I were a High Tory…who really believes in privilege and keeping the lower orders down,” one peer declared, “one of the first things I should do would be to get rid of grammar schools.”  

Hitchens’s championing of grammar schools must be given its full context. After all, there is little to recommend them in their twenty-first-century form. The 160 or so such schools scattered round the country today are sparse and few in number, compared to the 1,300 of them before the start of abolition in 1965; they are out of range of vast swathes of the country; and the few which do exist are largely monopolised by middle-class parents who move into the area and block local working-class mobility. The system is only effective on a national scale. 

Of course, many objections have been raised against the grammar schools. Some are specific to the exact system of 1944. These are minor quibbles, on such issues as the age at which exams are taken, and Hitchens emphasises that to support a national meritocracy on grammar-school lines is not to support the exact system established by the Butler Act. It is not even to support the return of technical schools and secondary moderns. Many of the 1944 system’s flaws – such as the occasionally poor quality of the non-grammar schools – could be thought through and fixed if only politicians and experts would apply themselves to the task instead of dismissing the system out of hand.  

An altogether separate category of objection opposes the very idea of a grammar schools. A frequent complaint in this case is that the best school system is one which encourages free mixing and egalitarianism. If this could be put into practice, it would be fantastic. In reality, the comprehensive school system, which was designed on just these grounds, has failed disastrously. The worst comprehensives, such as the one I attended, are underfunded, depressing, chaotic cesspits which provide absolutely no prospect of social or economic advancement, even to the majority of pupils who want to succeed. They are the worst obstacles to social mobility or educational enrichment.

Then there is the complaint that selection by merit is inherently wrong and leads to segregation. The obvious rebuff to this is that, if universities and workplaces select by merit, why shouldn’t schools do the same? The qualm as to segregation may, I think, be solved by a mobile system which, rather than cementing children’s futures on the basis of an 11+ exam, would provide an annual if not a termly opportunity for everyone to work their way from one school type into another. In such a system, good behaviour and enthusiasm for learning should be rewarded just as highly as plain aptitude.  

In any case, whatever one thinks of selection by merit, there is no doubt that our current system of selection by wealth is worse. Private schools are “indefensible fortresses of money privilege.” Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s planned VAT raid on these schools will serve only to strengthen them, by pushing the cost of private education further into the stratosphere of the ultra-rich, and removing the charitable status which incentivises scholarships. Less obviously but just as perniciously as the private schools, catchment areas segregate state schoolchildren on the basis of income. The best comprehensives will generally be found in high-income areas, whereas the worst of them will be concentrated in low-income areas; and a 2017 report in the Independent found that more than 85% of the best-performing state schools took in disproportionately low numbers of disadvantaged pupils.  

Some of the more convincing arguments against the principle of grammar schools are not so easy to counter. It is said that by entering grammar schools some working-class pupils feel that they must abandon their roots; they may feel out of place or be ostracised by their peers; or in the end they may “go native” and become staunch defenders of a hierarchical status quo. A great deal also depends on home circumstances – bookless homes, distrust of education, and money pressures are listed here among others – so that full and perfect equality of opportunity remains elusive. But the grammar school system was not designed to abolish the class system or overhaul the structure of society. Its aim, in which it succeeded better than any British education system before or since, was simply to educate children well, regardless of their background or wealth. 

Allowing for the bizarre digressions about the inadvisability of universal suffrage or the influence of communism in the Labour Party, A Revolution Betrayed is the best thing that Peter Hitchens has written. The “cranky fogeyism” which makes it impossible to take most of his work seriously has, in this case, allowed him to produce a book which few others would been able to write. If the new government wants to leave behind it a positive and multigenerational impact, it must reform the education system; and this book, crisply and stylishly written, short enough to be read in a few hours, is a necessary one for understanding our current trouble and learning from the past to resolve it. 

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