In February 2023, protestors descended on Oxford’s High Street opposed to the seemingly mundane idea of ‘low-traffic neighbourhoods.’ As one placard read in reference to the World Economic Forum: ‘The “15 minute” W.E.F. ghettos are not about climate, it’s tyranical [sic] control.’ Infiltrated by far-right agitators spurred by illusive conspiracies, the protests were a curious sight to behold in the city of dreaming spires.
While this incident occurred wholly outside of the university with which the city is most associated, this has not always been the case. Beyond the dismal 1974 candidature for the seat of Oxford by Ian Anderson, a student and member of the National Front, controversies stemming from the presence of the far right have often centred around the Oxford Union debating society, questions of free speech, and the quandaries of platforming far-right views. Indeed, the notorious fascist Oswald Mosley was invited on several occasions during the 1950s and early 1960s. Likewise, Colin Jordan, a leading adherent of ‘Universal Nazism,’ was invited in 1966, although the event was later cancelled.
This trend of soliciting far-right bigots has remained something of a mainstay. In 1999, a debate was cancelled on police recommendation, one that was to feature the founding chairman of the neo-fascist British National Party (BNP), John Tyndall. In another abortive effort, the Union invited the highly divisive pseudo-historian and Holocaust-denier David Irving in 2001. After opposition amassed, the organisers opted not to proceed. On other occasions, the Union—while still beset by protest—had comparatively more success. A 2007 debate was held on free speech featuring Nick Griffin, then-chairman of the BNP, alongside the less-than-illustrious return of Irving. Among such an esteemed cast of questionable characters, recent invitees have also included French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, founding figure of the English Defence League Tommy Robinson, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, and the chairwoman of Alternative for Germany, Alice Weidel (although she eventually cancelled her attendance).
Notwithstanding the sheer number of ill-guided invitations, the Union is but one part, albeit important, in a more protracted history. As observed by the historian Evan Smith, this student society has been ‘less concerned with legitimising fascism than with indulging in controversialism and fetishising the performativity of debating.’ Intriguingly, if one searches further into the recesses of history, it is apparent that the university has also housed bona fide fascist agitators. During the interwar period, an unsettling and bizarre history of far-right activism unfolded within the university.
During the 1932 Oxford Summer School, the acclaimed public intellectual and science fiction author H.G. Wells implored his audience of Young Liberals to cultivate a so-called ‘Liberal Fascism.’ A clique of self-professed fascist students would emerge, but they would certainly not be of a liberal variety. 1933 witnessed the founding of the Oxford University Fascist Association (OUFA), an affiliate of the British Union of Fascists (BUF), the leader of whom, the infamous Mosley, addressed its inaugural meeting and subsequent annual dinners as guest of honour. Later renamed the Oxford University National Socialist Club, its membership comprised students from, among others, Magdalen, Lincoln, St Peter’s, Hertford, Queen’s, and New College.
Aspects of this past have been adroitly reconstructed in two studies. The first is David Renton’s brief but comprehensive Red Shirts and Black, a 1996 publication since out of print. The second, No Platform—authored by the aforementioned Evan Smith—amounts to an impressively expansive treatment covering the history of anti-racist campaigns across British universities. From these accounts, alongside extant archival fragments and other episodic titbits unearthed by historians, a picture emerges of fascist influence among the student body.
Undoubtedly the most memorable act perpetrated by fascist students was their vandalising of the Oxford Union’s minutes book in the aftermath of its infamous 1933 ‘King and Country Debate.’ ‘This House will under no circumstances fight for its King and country,’ read the motion. The culprits from Worcester and St John’s colleges were members of that quintessential Oxford cult—namely their respective college rowing clubs—some of whom, the historian Martin Ceadel adds, also happened to be ‘professed fascists.’ The BUF’s flagship periodical, Blackshirt, was eager to applaud such hooligans: ‘only the Fascists were virile enough to take direct action… the Fascists marched into the Union and removed the offending minutes from the book.’
Beyond such antics, the OUFA—headquartered in George Street—held debates with other societies and organised a plethora of guest lectures. Edward Whinfield, a BUF member later interned during the war, addressed an audience in 1937 about the ills of democracy. Among other speakers was Commandant Mary Allen, a high-profile suffragette-turned-fascist sympathiser; BUF Woman Propaganda Officer Anne Brock-Griggs; famed aircraft manufacturer Alliott Verdon Roe; and Francis Yeats-Brown, a right-wing publicist and author of the acclaimed Lives of a Bengal Lancer. Aside from the rank-and-file of the British far right, the OUFA also hosted its luminaries. The 1934 Hilary term card notably featured the chief BUF theoretician, Alexander Raven Thomson, and the avid anti-Semite William Joyce (more recognisable by his treasonous alter ego, ‘Lord Haw-Haw’).
The association networked with other fellow travellers, both foreign and domestic. Beyond its vertical link with the BUF, the group appears to have been affiliated with likeminded compatriots through the so-called Federation of British University Fascist Associations. The Secretary of the latter, Derek Stuckey, had been a law student at Oriel College and vice-president of the Oxford group. Whether it was a local German representative of the Nazi Party; a member of the Falange, Spain’s leading fascist movement; or an Italian journalist with the fascist magazine L’Italia Nostra, the OUFA also managed to attract several foreign emissaries. On one occasion, it even hosted a (reportedly) popular screening of Camicia nera, a state-sanctioned Italian film glorifying the decennial of fascist rule.
As Europe again lurched towards war, the fate of the group was inevitably caught in the thralls of broader developments, ultimately imploding after 1939. Nevertheless, a diehard clique of antisemitic students continued the spirit of their interwar counterparts by forming the ‘Corporate Club’ in the mid-1940s. As reported by Lionel Rose, an anti-fascist campaigner linked to the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen, Mosley continued to demonstrate ‘some personal interest in these [type of] Clubs, particularly at Oxford.’
Notwithstanding the peculiar episodes described, I would be remiss not to caution against overemphasising Mosley’s influence within the university. After all, the interwar Oxbridge student is perhaps more appropriately depicted as one who swills port and sherry. He, as was all-too-often the case, brandishes neither castor oil nor truncheon (although as Renton confirms, the BUF did manage to recruit some undergraduate women from Lady Margaret Hall, then a women’s college). Oxford represented a stronghold of the political establishment or, given the infamous King and Country debate, a haven for bleating pacificists. In either case, the image invoked is not a place amenable to extremism. Many may be chided as Hooray Henries, but most were not supportive of fascism. Indeed, Oxford was not the most hospitable of locales for those dabbling in such politics.
While student opposition did not constitute the majority of anti-fascist activity—the latter typically organised by local workers and students at Ruskin College, an Oxford-based Labour school—affiliates of the university served a modest role. This was particularly the case among certain students from working-class backgrounds and the student-led October Club. In fact, especially after 1936, the BUF was unable to penetrate the university nor sustain anything approximating widespread influence within the city. The ‘Battle of Carfax’ in May 1936 proved to be a turning point, an event that witnessed particular violence following a BUF rally at Carfax Assembly Rooms.
To offer a demonstrative anecdote of the popular mood, Basil Murray—former New College student and son of well-known International Relations scholar Gilbert Murray—was fined by the courts for disorderly conduct and incitement thereto after his alleged protests precipitated a struggle with BUF ‘stewards.’ For Isaiah Berlin, then a fellow at All Souls College, ‘the whole trial sent cold shivers down one’s spine.’ Against the backdrop of fascist thuggery and a perception of police bias, the case was, he privately opined, a profound ‘miscarriage of justice.’ From this same demonstration emerged another unusual episode, during which the future MP Frank Pakenham, then resident at Christ Church College, entered what the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper described as a ‘berserk fury’ after having been assaulted by a chain-wielding blackshirt. The image called to mind is a far cry from the tweed-clad caricature of the Oxford don. It was the riotous chaos and the overzealous use of force by Mosley’s gangsters that ultimately destroyed whatever semblance of influence the BUF may have had in Oxford beyond the OUFA.
While the fascist presence within the university should therefore not be exaggerated, it is worthwhile to consider whether this micro-history holds any contemporary insights. Above all, the case of Oxford vividly highlights the Janus-faced relationship between the far right and the oft-derided ‘intellectualism’ of the academy. In his much-cited essay, Umberto Eco identified a scepticism towards the ‘intellectual world’ as germane to what he called ‘Ur-Fascism.’ Unsurprisingly, this derision extended to the Oxford academic. Deploying language imbued with a hefty dose of toxic masculinity, Mosley lambasted Oxford’s ‘young intellectuals’ as ‘mincing sissies who would not fight for King George, but they are longing to fight for King Carol—a boy after their own heart.’ BUF publications even singled out Whiggish histories popularised at Oxbridge. Rather than glorifying such Victorian narratives of unceasing liberal progress, the BUF conjured a mythologised image of a proto-fascist Tudor England, a supposed forerunner to the fascist corporate state.
Yet the BUF’s relationship with the Ivory Tower was complex. Juxtaposed against such scorn, its leaders also sought to attract individuals from the universities of London, Birmingham, and Oxford, a point exemplified by the founding of the OUFA. To quote one Lady Downe during an OUFA event: ‘It is not the East-enders, the cotton workers and the miners we want in our movement, it is the other sort, the intelligent people who mistrust us.’ The Oxford Mail aptly captured the fascist conundrum when it retorted that Lady Downe’s remark ‘seems, at all events, to give a very good definition of an intelligent person—one who mistrusts Fascism.’
Jests aside, this duality is a feature identifiable in many contemporary far-right movements. Universities may offer a recruitment reservoir, albeit one difficult to penetrate. Perhaps more importantly, though, universities serve as a platform to amplify and afford a façade of respectability to otherwise repellent views. The history of the BNP is demonstrative. Under Griffin’s leadership during the 2000s, the party sought to professionalise its image, not least by partaking in speeches at such reputable universities as Cambridge, Oxford, and St Andrews. More recently, one may point towards the presence on college campuses of the since defunct American identitarian group Identity Evropa, or the controversial presentations given by the white supremacist Richard Spencer.
While the record is occasionally mixed, the Oxford student body has often exhibited a strong opposition to the far right, whether by denying platform to harmful vitriol or—as was the case in late 2021—posing serious questions about the university’s acceptance of a sizable philanthropic donation from the Alexander Mosley Charitable Trust, the latter established by Max Mosley, a figure actively involved in his father’s neo-fascist Union Movement during the 1960s. In an age of conspiracy theories and far-right populism, this spirit of moral indignation ought to continue animating student protest against a renewed cast of bigoted foes. This should not somehow be interpreted as a call for students to ‘punch a Nazi,’ to quote the popular meme. Rather, an informed understanding of the Janus-faced relationship between far-right actors and academe may help to guide those who oppose extremist views and dissuade the ‘useful idiots’ who platform far-right voices. As New Right actors increasingly espouse the mantra of ‘metapolitics,’ a sort of ‘Gramscianism of the Right,’ it is not difficult to recognise the dangers involved in platforming such views via, for example, the Oxford Union.