Welcome back to Oxford!

This is a very exciting time to Join Oxford University Labour Club (OULC). As the only progressive party left in British politics, the re-election of local MP Andrew Smith and a majority Labour council in Oxford- as well as a new leader in former Co-Chair Ed Miliband. Oxford University Labour Club was founded in 1919 to provide a voice for Labour Party values and for socialism at Oxford University. It is the largest University Labour club in the country and its alumni include Ed Miliband, Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Roy Jenkins, Peter Mandelson and our own Oxford East MP Andrew Smith.

With the Liberal Democrats abdicating the progressive ground, the Labour Party remains the only centre-left party in mainstream politics. Over 30,000 people have joined the Labour Party since the election, around one third of those had voted Lib Dem. Whether one of those newcomers, a party veteran or someone who hasn’t considered getting involved in politics before, we hope you can get involved and help to make this country Labour again!

OULC is a vibrant and busy club, and hopefully everyone of a progressive mindset can find something that will interest them. The main events that will be held will be campaigning sessions, speaker events, policy forums and social events. Enclosed is a termcard with most of these events in but to receive more information and reminders about all our events please join the Facebook group (OULC) and follow us on twitter at @OxUniLabour

We hope to see you at as many events as possible

Lincoln Hill
Chair, Trinity 2011
Download a membership form here!

David Miliband has answered questions from OULC members as the club begins the process of endorsing a new Leader. To be a part of the leadership debate, after which which OULC will endorse one of the leadership candidates, come to Balliol College on Thursday 10th June from 7.30pm.

David Miliband speaks to OULC Members.

Yes We Did.

OULC has lived up to its reputation as one of the best student campaigning organisations in the country with the re-election of Andrew Smith as MP for Oxford East- with a historic 4.1% swing to Labour.

This is one of the best results for Labour in the country- so huge thank you to everyone for all your hard word. It paid off.

The Results:

Ed Argar (Con) 9,727

Roger Crawford (EPA) 73

Sushila Dhall (Green) 1,238

Julia Gasper (UKIP) 1,202

Steve Goddard (Lib Dem) 17,357

David O’Sullivan (Socialist) 116

Andrew Smith (Lab) 21,938

Turnout: 64 per cent

ANDREW SMITH DULEY RE-ELECTED MP FOR OXFORD EAST.

BREAKING:>>>>>>>Oxford win back overall control of Oxford City Council.

A brilliant night for the Labour party in Oxford.

Ed Miliband spoke about Climate Change and the upcoming Election to Treasurer, Kat Shields, and Social Secretary, Jack Evans- following a meeting and campaigning session in Oxford East Clp.

Click here to hear: Ed Miliband in conversation with OULC

There is important work to carry forward in our mission of social justice at home and abroad. Labour has invested in health, education and in rebuilding the fabric of our society. Labour pioneered the way on civil partnerships, the social chapter, the minimum wage and the first ever Climate Change Act, as well as massively increasing overseas aid and debt relief. We reversed the Tory legacy of benefit and opportunity for a privileged few which saw them hold down child benefit and cut overseas aid. We have made important steps in combating poverty and bringing forward progressive social change.

I am proud to represent Oxford East, where we have two excellent universities and all the benefits these bring. I value the contribution which students make in our community.

I have campaigned on the things which matter to students in Oxford, both on issues of national policy and on local improvements. I worked with students to improve security on the streets, and led calls in Parliament for proper licensing of landlords to improve accommodation standards. I have stood up for overseas students, making extensive representations to help improve the visa regime for foreign students and researchers.

Thanks to Labour policies for opportunity and investment in higher education, there 300,000 more students benefiting from university education than in 1997. I believe that everyone who has the ability should have the opportunity to go to university. I am concerned that students don’t have to get deeper into debt, which is why I signed the NUS pledge to vote against any increase in student fees in the next Parliament.

Labour has taken active steps in helping young people since our election to government. As well as the big expansion of university places and post-graduate students, we brought in education maintenance allowances, trebled the number of apprenticeships, and have given job and training guarantees to young people threatened with unemployment by the global recession. Labour also set up the Office for Graduate Opportunities (OGO) to help young people forward into careers.

I am heartened by the commitment and concern I find amongst students for the future of our planet. I am committed to effective measures to combat climate change and to investing in a sustainable future. I am personally pledged to 10:10. I have pressed for huge investment in renewables, energy conservation and sustainable transport and am proud that Labour has brought in the first ever Climate Change Act. Oxford’s Labour City Council has an excellent record on sustainable practice, and has pledged to reduce its carbon footprint by 10% of its 2006 level.

I believe meeting our international responsibilities is crucial too, like achieving the UN target on the share of GDP for overseas development assistance. I have spoken out on the need to make world financial institutions play their part in combating poverty and making sure the world’s poor do not pay the price of climate change.

I want to see Labour’s drive for fairness extended at home – building on the important steps we have taken on NHS investment, nursery education, Sure Start children’s centres, improving maternity and paternity support, increasing child benefit and bringing in tax credits as well as the Educational Maintenance Allowance and the Child Trust Fund

I have been active in support of Labour measures for social progress, abolishing the homophobic section 28, open and fair recruitment to the armed forces, and bringing in civil partnerships.

I have also voted against the government where I have felt it was the right thing to do, for example in support of the Gurkhas, and to vote against a Heathrow third Runway and Trident.

I am proud of the government’s record on alleviating poverty at home, and of the achievements made while I was Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. During this time, the overall number of people living in poverty fell, as well as the number of children and pensioners in poverty, and the numbers of unemployed. Tackling poverty in our country is crucial to our success as a society.

It’s important to remember the Winter Fuel Allowance, the free bus travel scheme, the Pension Credit, and the Child Trust Funds simply didn’t exist under the Conservatives, who have even refused to protect Sure Start centres from cuts. The Liberal Democrats would cut child tax credits, and have now pledged to put the Conservatives in power if there is a hung Parliament.

Labour is the only party which will really tackle poverty and extend opportunity. I am proud to represent Oxford East – and unlike my Conservative and Liberal Democrat opponents, I live in the constituency. I want to continue working for and with students in Oxford East and I hope you will support me in this vital General Election campaign for the future of our country, our community and our values of social justice.

Andrew Smith MP

We go campaigning every Sunday during term time, and collect vital information from as many voters, in as many different parts of Oxford, as possible. This lets us do two things: firstly, in the weeks before a general election, we know exactly which houses to target and with what information, be it on Labour’s record on the environment, housing or Andrew Smith’s performance as a local MP; yet perhaps more importantly, it lets us all keep in touch with the real world. Cooped-up in Univ, Magdalen or Christ Church, it becomes easy to imagine that all of Oxford is dreaming spires, Pimm’s and punting; through campaigning we go to all parts of Oxford and actually discover the very real problems that people have in their day-to-day lives.

This term, in anticipation of a general election next year, we are focusing on areas such as Cowley, Blackbird Leys and Headington. We meet in Sofi 2, the café by Carfax Tower, at 10am every Sunday, have some breakfast, and then go campaigning until about lunch time. While we’re out campaigning, we don’t try to get into debates with people (although this can be entertaining). Instead, we try and find out what their concerns and issues are, locally and nationally, and see if Andrew Smith, or the local councillors, can do anything about it.

If nothing else, campaigning can be really good fun. You meet dozens of similarly-minded people, for breakfast or lunch and then go campaigning. There’s nothing quite as entertaining as sharing stories about your most bizarre moment with your fellow campaigners; just this morning I was told by a lady that she always votes for whichever party is in government because she “doesn’t like change”.

I remember before the first time I went campaigning, I thought it would be terrifying. In fact, it really isn’t, and you can always ask to be teamed up with someone from the exec if you want to be. It can actually be really enjoyable, and is massively important for making sure that Labour stays connected and competitive in Oxford. I hope to see you out some time!

In a long career, Michael Foot, who has died aged 96, served the Labour party as its leader in opposition from 1980 to 1983, as deputy leader, and as a cabinet minister under Harold Wilson and James Callaghan. He graced the Commons as an independent-minded backbencher, and was widely acclaimed as one of the most principled British politicians of his era. A distinguished journalist and author, he devoted his life not only to the rights and traditions of parliament, but to freedom in all its aspects.

During Wilson’s first government (1964-70), Foot had been a fierce backbench critic on issues ranging from wage restraint to Vietnam and Rhodesia. However, when Labour lost power to Edward Heath’s Conservative government, Foot accepted a place on the opposition front bench and carried the burden of the fight against British entry into the European Economic Community. With Labour back in office again from February 1974 and submitting renegotiated terms to a European referendum in 1975, he campaigned for a no vote. Uniquely, cabinet ministers were allowed to campaign on opposite sides. Foot was then secretary of state for employment, and won an unexpected reputation for administrative ability. When he left the department, a civil servant paid him a memorable, backhanded compliment: “You posed a quite exceptional challenge to my powers of obstruction.”

In two years, Foot restored trade union rights lost in the Tory industrial relations act of 1971, legitimised the closed shop against furious opposition from Fleet Street, created the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) and the Health and Safety Executive, and played a major role in forging the “social contract” between the government and the unions. In 1976, however, Wilson retired suddenly, Callaghan defeated Foot in the leadership contest and Foot became – though not formally – deputy prime minister, with the posts of lord president of the council and leader of the Commons.

His experience from 1976 to 1979 was in general unhappy, as was that of the government. Byelection defeats cost Labour its majority and its life was prolonged only by deals with the Liberals and other minor parties, which Foot negotiated skilfully but which alienated his erstwhile comrades on the left. Economic problems persisted, unemployment rose and the social contract broke down. Devolution for Scotland and Wales, a project for which Foot worked devotedly, foundered in referendums. After a wave of strikes, remembered as “the winter of discontent”, the Tories regained power in 1979 under Margaret Thatcher.

Callaghan retired in 1980. In the last leadership election confined to MPs – the party was preparing to switch to an electoral college – Foot narrowly defeated Denis Healey. Many friends and admirers thought him ill-advised to seek the leadership, which indeed brought him no laurels. But the ultimate judgment may well be that he performed the vital service of holding his party together when it was dangerously polarised between Healey and Tony Benn.

He had little chance of further successes. Rejecting his pleas, 25 Labour MPs joined the new Social Democratic party. Also rejecting Foot’s pleas, Benn stood against Healey for the deputy leadership, plunging the party into a damaging struggle. As the first Labour leader lacking majority support in the national executive committee, which was dominated by Benn’s allies, Foot was deprived of authority. The activities of the Militant Tendency caused constant trouble. Then, in 1982, Thatcher’s triumph in the Falklands war ensured her political supremacy.

For Foot, the election campaign of 1983 was a disaster. He was hobbled by visible disagreements in Labour’s ranks, outflanked by the SDP-Liberal alliance, brutally attacked and ridiculed by the press, and disadvantaged by his age (he was almost 70) and his difficulty in adapting to modern television techniques. At 28%, Labour’s share of the poll was the lowest since the 1920s. Foot immediately gave up his party leadership, to be succeeded by Neil Kinnock.

Michael Mackintosh Foot – Mackintosh was his Scottish mother’s maiden name – was the fifth of seven children of the phenomenal Isaac Foot, a solicitor by profession, collector of 50,000 valuable books, lord mayor of Plymouth, Liberal MP for two short spells and an ardent Methodist and temperance campaigner. Michael was born at the family home, 1 Lipson Terrace, Plymouth. As the house overlooks Freedom Fields, the site of a civil war battle in which the defenders of the parliamentary cause defeated a royalist attack, it was a fitting birthplace for a man committed to liberty.

He was educated at Leighton Park, in Reading, Berkshire, a fee-paying but heterodox school founded by Quakers, and at Wadham College, Oxford, where he took a second-class degree in classics, breakfasted with such visitors as David Lloyd George and Bertrand Russell, and was in 1933 elected president of the union. Four Foot brothers were presidents of either the Oxford or the Cambridge Union.

Taking up an uncongenial job with a shipping firm in Liverpool, Foot rebelled against the family liberalism and joined the Labour party. When a general election was called in 1935, he walked into Labour’s headquarters, asked for a list of constituencies that needed candidates, and was adopted the next day for Monmouth. Politics was simpler in those days. He scored a decent vote against an unbeatable sitting Tory.

Settling in London and aiming at a career in journalism, he was given a try-out at the New Statesman, but Kingsley Martin, the editor, decided that he was less than brilliant. He joined the staff of Tribune, founded in 1937 by Stafford Cripps as a mouthpiece for his leftwing ideas. Association with Tribune and with Cripps’s Socialist League brought Foot two friendships – with Aneurin Bevan, MP for Ebbw Vale, regarded by the younger man with fervent admiration, and with another Tribune writer, Barbara Betts, later and better known after she married as Barbara Castle.

In 1938 Cripps arbitrarily sacked Tribune’s editor, William Mellor, and offered Foot the job. It was a tempting opportunity for a 25-year-old, but Foot declined to succeed an editor who had been treated unfairly. Bevan opened the way to another opportunity by mentioning him to Lord Beaverbook as “a young knight-errant” and advising: “Have a look at him.” Beaverbrook gave Foot a quick memory test – his recall of anything from byelection figures to Wordsworth sonnets was exceptional – and then work as a feature writer on the London Evening Standard.

Then and later, Foot’s affection for Beaverbrook embarrassed socialists who saw the proprietor of Express newspapers as the embodiment of reaction and evil. At various times, Beaverbrook paid Foot an inflated salary, sent unexpected cheques, invited him for holidays at his villa on the French Riviera, lent him a cottage on his estate in Surrey, and rescued Tribune when a libel suit threatened it with extinction.

Foot was on the Beaverbrook payroll when war came. From the Commons press gallery, he listened to the debate that drove Neville Chamberlain from Downing Street. With Winston Churchill in power, Beaverbrook switched from his support for appeasement to defiance of the Nazi threat, voiced in eloquent Standard leaders written by Foot.

Those leaders were as erudite as they were eloquent, quoting within two months from Pericles, Cato, the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton, Edward Gibbon, Louis Saint-Just, Walt Whitman, Giuseppe Mazzini and Joseph Conrad (the “always facing it” passage in Typhoon, deployed again by Foot in a party conference speech in 1975).

But it was also time to denounce the politicians who had landed Britain in this peril. Foot and two other Beaverbrook journalists, concealed by the pseudonym “Cato”, wrote a 40,000-word book, Guilty Men, over a weekend in 1940. They also sold it from a stall in Farringdon Road, central London, when bookshops refused to stock it. The ultimate sale was an astonishing 200,000.

In 1942, Foot became acting editor of the Standard but left it two years later, realising that he and Beaverbrook would be antagonists in postwar politics, and began a column in the Daily Herald. In 1945, upsetting expert forecasts as thoroughly as the Labour party did at national level, he became MP for the Devonport division of Plymouth. The campaign occasioned his first meeting with Jill Craigie, the documentary film-maker, who was making a film about the rebuilding of heavily bombed Plymouth. They were married four years later.

Foot returned to Tribune as editor (1948-52, and again 1955-60) and was soon strongly critical, in its columns and in Commons speeches, of Ernest Bevin’s foreign policy. With Richard Crossman and Ian Mikardo, he had produced the 1947 pamphlet Keep Left and started the Keep Left group of backbenchers. But, after holding Devonport in contests with Randolph Churchill in 1950 and 1951, he lost it in 1955 to Joan Vickers. When the result was announced, he said to Jill: “Now I can write that book.”

The book in question – Foot’s fifth, but his first non-topical work – was The Pen and the Sword, a study of an episode in the life of Jonathan Swift. Foot always straddled the literary and political worlds, and in this period away from Westminster, he thought seriously of concentrating on the former. That year, 1957, he was drawn into passionate controversy over nuclear disarmament. Bevan’s repudiation of unilateralism at the party conference that year made Foot its outstanding champion. He was a founder of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and a regular Aldermaston marcher.

Bevan died in 1960, after urging Foot to return to the Commons and telling him: “Perhaps you needn’t look further than Ebbw Vale.” Foot was selected for the byelection there and won it, at the height of the battle beween CND and Hugh Gaitskell, the party leader, on a unilateralist platform. After taking his seat, he was deprived of the whip for voting against the defence estimates, but it was restored when Gaitskell died in 1963 and Wilson became leader.

After stepping down as party leader, Foot stayed in the Commons until 1992. Although some of his Ebbw Vale constituents had blamed him for the closure of their steelworks in 1975 (when, unfortunately, he was secretary of state for employment), he had been a greatly loved as well as an assiduous constituency MP. He kept, and continued to visit, an old cottage in Tredegar where he had held his surgeries for 31 years.

Foot was happy in his marriage to a beautiful and gifted woman (though they regretted the lack of children), in a wealth of friendships, and in an extraordinary range of interests. As a writer, he had three major works to his credit: The Pen and the Sword, his two-volume biography of Bevan (1962 and 1973), and The Politics of Paradise (1988), an impressively scholarly book on Byron. In this sphere, he never retired. He spent three years delving into the life of HG Wells, whom he had read enthusiastically in his youth and met in the 1940s. The result was The History of Mr Wells (1995). A book on the nuclear arms race – Dr Strangelove, I Presume – warning of conflict between India and Pakistan, appeared in 1999. His last book was The Uncollected Michael Foot (2003).

As a young man, Foot was plagued by asthma and eczema. He almost lost his life in a car accident in 1963, which left him with his characteristic, lopsided walk. In 1976, after an attack of shingles, he lost the sight of one eye. Yet he was essentially, as Jill liked to say, “as tough as old boots”. She died in 1999.

Neil Kinnock writes: Michael was a supreme parliamentary democrat who used his great gifts as an inspiring speaker and writer to urge peace, security, prosperity and opportunity for humanity and punishment for bigots and bullies of every kind.

His bravery and generosity were unsurpassed. He used both to ensure that the Labour party survived as a political force when self-indulgent factionalism could have doomed it to irrelevance.

He was a resolute humanist with profound faith in the ability of “free men and women using free institutions” to secure irreversible advances in standards of living and liberty for every country and community.

He was a friend to all who strove against want and injustice, an inveterate enemy of exploitation and greed. He was ferocious and funny, principled but never precious, courteous but never deferential, provocative but never vindictive, creative but never abstract. “Describe the challenges by all means,” he said, “but don’t confuse analysis with action. The one must lead to the other if it is to be useful to people.”

His passions stretched from his adored wife to Plymouth Argyle, through poets and polemicists of every romantic and rousing kind, and from Mozart to the bouncy melodies of the 1930s – although he was a lousy dancer and a truly appalling singer.

Michael gave love and earned love as few politicians do in any age. He was wonderful company, a marvellous comrade, a magnificent man, a great socialist and libertarian. The only tribute that he would want, the only memorial that would do him justice, is enduring application of his values in the cause of progress.

Let us give him that.

• Michael Mackintosh Foot, politician, journalist and author, born 23 July 1913; died 3 March 2010

• Mervyn Jones died on 23 February 2010