The banner
A season of protest
and uprising
Photograph by
Islay McLeod
Arthur Bell
on the persecution
of his father
Robin McMillan
on a remarkable
pilgrimage to Scotland
Founded in 1885, Glasgow University union has long boasted an outstanding reputation as a centre of debating excellence. Many world university debating championships and Observer maces have been won. Men who went on to become major political leaders earned their spurs and the tricks of their trade in Glasgow debating: John Smith, Donald Dewar, Menzies Campbell, Charles Kennedy – the roll call is an impressive one.
In recent weeks, however, the union’s proud tradition has come under fire. Eight debaters from British universities (27 had originally participated) had reached the final of the union’s ‘Ancients’ debate. Among the eight were two women debaters – one from King’s College, Cambridge, the other from the University of Edinburgh. Both were highly experienced and highly successful exponents of the art of debating. But after the event, both complained they had been subjected to a totally unacceptable level of blatantly sexist heckling and booing which they insisted had nothing whatever to do with the normal level of robust and hard-hitting exchanges in parliamentary debating. Their complaints soon reached the national press – including the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail – and inevitably the rights and wrongs of the women’s case soon became a major issue both on and beyond the university campus.
In this context it’s worth remembering the somewhat controversial history of Glasgow University’s student unions. The 1885 union was an all-male affair. However, women students at the old Queen Margaret College established their own union in 1890, and in the early 1900s the Queen Margaret union moved on to the university campus. For not far short of a century, that is, male and female students at Glasgow University attended – if they chose – segregated student unions. It was only late in the 20th century that this disunion in student life began to come under pressure in a changing world. Not that either union was keen to abandon its segregated ways.
The men’s union in particular was deeply reluctant to give up its status and culture as a men’s club – with all that that implied in terms of drinking and sexual attitudes and behaviour. But in the end the tide of history could not be resisted. The Queen Margaret union opened its doors to male students in 1979; the men’s union allowed women to join in 1980.
I think most observers would agree that the male membership of the two unions has remained quite distinct. Men who join QMU tend to be less conformist, more arty, probably leftist in their politics, whereas the majority who join the men’s union are likely to be more sporty, more macho, outdoor guys. The latter sort – admittedly perhaps in extreme form – were clearly in evidence in the objectionable behaviour at the ‘Ancients’ debate.
I want to be fair here. All accounts of the evening in question insist that only a small minority of the audience indulged in the sexist heckling. The two women debaters have been widely supported on the campus. Principal Muscatelli has written to them, apologising on behalf of the university and offering to meet them personally. He has also emailed the student body expressing his concern over what occurred and the damage it could do the university’s reputation.
A student protest march denouncing campus sexism and misogyny in any form was well attended. Condemnation has come in a joint statement from a range of student societies. Even the union’s own management has promised to take action against unacceptable behaviour at debates. Support for the hecklers has been distinctly muted.
However support has come from a perhaps not wholly unsurprising source: the right-wing journalist Gerald Warner, himself a former men’s union member. Writing in the Spectator magazine, Warner saw the whole affair as no more than an example of silly political correctness. The Glasgow debating tradition is a fine and admirably robust one; if women cannot take the heat they should stay out of the kitchen. Objections and complaints simply prove that ‘the health-and-safety, equality-and-diversity, cellophane-coated culture’ is ‘spreading its Stalinist tentacles everywhere’ making genuine debate ‘unacceptable’.
I believe that Warner is quite simply wrong. Despite the existence of entrenched conservatives, the world does change. What may have been acceptable in debating in 1980 is not acceptable now. Sectarian and politically biased singing at Scottish football matches is unacceptable in a post-peace process world. Augusta (and St Andrews) golf clubs cannot go on rejecting women. Gay men and women have the same rights as those who are straight – including, say, the right to debate in the Glasgow University union without being heckled over their sexuality.
Andrew Hook is a former professor of English literature at Glasgow University
SR is having a short break over Easter and will return
on Tuesday 9 April
