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Kadir
recalls dancing Nancy, drunk Churchill and Oxford days Ladies and Gentlemen, I recognize some old friends in this gathering. But age has taken its toll on all of us. The shapes of faces have changed, hairlines have receded and waistlines have expanded. I may fail to recognize somebody for a moment but memories will soon come flooding back. I greet you all very warmly and thank you for your presence here today. Mr President, you are not seated tonight on the presidential throne. You do not have that shrill electric bell in your hands, and on this occasion I think you might well say to an old man, "speak on". (applause). Mr President, every President of the Union knows the ups and downs of the office, moments of elation and moments of despair. Let me mention some of my own experiences. One of my guests was a lady called Nancy Spain. She was a writer and a women's rights activist at that time. She came to the Union to debate the motion that the House deplores the decline of the English middle classes. She had smuggled a troupe of musicians into the gallery. It was a publicity stunt. We heard the strumming of guitars, and Nancy Spain started dancing in the aisle of the House joined by one undergraduate. There was pandemonium. Everybody stood up in shock. The Union was quite old fashioned in those days. I had to use the bell. I kept my finger on it until order was restored. But the matter did not end there. A demand was made that she be banned for life from entering the Union. That was done. The second experience concerned, I am very sorry to say, Randolph Churchill. He was my guest to debate a motion on the expulsion of South Africa from the Commonwealth. When he arrived at the Oxford railway station he was obviously in bad shape. (laughter) He was met by my welcoming party and brought to the Union. We dined here, in this very room, and about ten minutes into the dinner the steward whispered to me: "Sir, I cannot serve any more wine to Mr Randolph Churchill". I said "Yes, I noticed that steward, and you do what you think is right". After dinner we trooped into the hall in a procession with which you are familiar. When it was Randolph Churchill's time to speak he got up, he staggered to the despatch box, said: "Mr President" in a scarcely audible voice and collapsed. (laughter) Again there was a storm in the House. I had to use the bell to restore order. The next Thursday a motion was moved that strong action be taken against Randolph Churchill. I said to the House: "Let us not have a debate about this matter. Leave it to me and I will see what I can do." I knew what was going to happen. My Standing Committee said there was absolutely no other option but to ban Randolph Churchill from entering the Union for life. This awesome decision fell on me and I took it. The famous King and Country debate came to mind. That was the debate in the Oxford Union in the summer term of 1933 on the motion that this House will not fight for King and Country at a time when Nazi Germany was on the rise, full of menace. The motion was carried, but people outside the Union did not realize that during a summer term attendance at debates is low, members preferred to go boating, eat strawberries and drink champagne. The debate created a stir. Winston Churchill was furious that the youth of England would pass such a motion. I think he overreacted because we now know that when war broke out many of those very same young people who voted against the motion that night went to war and did not come back. Well, I had all that in mind when I had to take that very difficult decision about Randolph Churchill. The third experience was the debate on France. General de Gaulle had come back to office in 1958 and established the Fifth Republic. You will remember that although France had become virtually ungovernable at that time, here was another problem - they had an elected General, a combination of offices which a democracy finds difficult to handle. The textbooks do not quite deal with that situation. Eisenhower yes, but when Eisenhower became President of the United States after the war he was going to preside over a stable country. France was in a different situation. So I decided, as Sir Jeremy had recalled, that there should be a debate on the situation in France. I went to Paris and early one morning, unannounced, I knocked on the door of Pierre Mendes France, the last Prime Minister of the Fourth Republic. The door opened and the great man himself came out in pyjamas. (laughter) That will give you some idea of the relaxed atmosphere of the fifties. It was a very foolish thing for him to have done. I could have been an assassin, a lunatic. But he was very gracious. He let me in. Speaking English he said "Well, what can I do for you? Who are you?" I said rather grandly that I was the President of the Oxford Union. That meant nothing to him. (laughter) So I had to persuade him of the merits of my mission. I said there was a debate to be held at the debating society of the University of Oxford. I invited him to debate the motion that this House is alarmed by recent events in France. He asked for "time to reflect". At least, I had not been instantly rebuffed. After two days he telephoned me and said "yes, I will come but can I make an oration". I said "Prime Minister, that is one thing that is not allowed in the Oxford Union. Everybody, Prime Ministers, Presidents, if you come here you have to descend into the arena and debate. There is no such thing as an oration". I was on the verge of losing my prize catch for the term, but I said "Messeur le President, please come and debate". He said, "alright but can you do one thing for me. Do not put up a Frenchman against me" (laughter) and I said "of course, that is very reasonable". We had a short negotiation on the phone. He added "can you kindly leave out British politicians also. I said "yes, that is a little more difficult but I will do it". I was under great pressure from a number of British MPs who had heard about the debate and wanted a speech. That was settled. Now I had to find three other speakers. So what did I do? I turned to my friends, Jeremy Lever, ever reliable, who willingly agreed to help me out. I also turned to Keith Kyle, a former Librarian of the Union, who was on the Economist at that time. The undergraduate speech was a huge problem. All the Union heavyweights were after me for that speech because that would be a speech, if it went well, that would certainly assure the person who made it election to an office at the next election. About three days before the debate, at an Oxford reception, in the swirling crowd around me a young man appeared and was introduced as Peter Jay. I did something I would never again have the audacity to do. I said to him "Mr Jay, would you care to make the paper speech at the Mendes France debate", and he said "Mr President, you must be joking because I have never spoken at the Union". I said, "So much the better. Phone me at 9 o'clock tomorrow morning and give me your decision". At 9 o'clock he phoned and said "Mr President with regard to the invitation last night are you sure about it". I said, "Absolutely sure, Mr Jay, and I cannot spend more time on this". He said he would take it. Peter Jay made a very fine speech and he became the President of the Union a year or two later. Finally, among my memories is the debate that Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike could not attend. He was a very distinguished office bearer - Secretary and Treasurer in 1923. He made powerful speeches. The books on the Oxford Union refer to them. But after he went down he did not set foot in the Union again. He never came back. A number of Presidents wrote to him after he became Prime Minister in 1956 inviting him to speak. There was not even a reply. Suddenly, in September 1959, a letter came to the incumbent President saying that he wanted to speak the next Thursday". That was early in October, the first debate for the term. But that debate had already been allotted to Sean Lemass, Prime Minister of Ireland on the famous Irish question which is debated every year. The young American President did not know what to do. I was consulted. I said the best thing would be to phone Sean Lemass and ask him what to do. Predictably, he said "The Prime Minister of Ceylon is coming from thousands of miles away, I am just next door, I will stand down, give him the debate". The subject proposed by Prime Minister Bandaranaike was that "Democracy is unsuitable for developing nations". He did not indicate on which side he was going to speak (laughter) and the poor President, in spite of making numerous frantic inquiries from Colombo, got no clarification. Thus, a unique order paper was printed: "Democracy is unsuitable for developing nations" - two speakers for, two speakers against, and at the bottom of the paper Mr SWRD Bandaranaike, Treasurer from Christ Church will speak. Well everything was set for the debate. It was to be a great day. He was coming back after 30 years. Well, on that fateful Saturday before the debate, he was felled by the bullet of an assassin. The Union has a great tradition Mr President. You will be haunted by it. If you remain in residence after you finish your term the incumbent president is entitled to phone you up, wherever you are and, with hardly any notice, ask you to speak in place of a guest who had not turned up. I was asked to speak in place of Mr Bandaranaike. Looking back on it now, and on reading some of the reviews of the time, and in view of the haunting tragedy that had occurred, and I had been somewhat critical of Mr Bandaranaike in the previous year about certain things he had done, I think perhaps that was the best speech I ever made in my life. I chose to oppose. I was certain that Prime Minister Bandaranaike would have done the same. The motion was resoundingly defeated. I would like to recall his memory this evening. It is he who made Sri Lanka aware of the Oxford Union. Today, his daughter is the twice-elected President of the country. She spoke at the Union a few years ago. I would also like to remember another colleague - Lalith Athulathmudali, who was President one year ahead of me. He went into politics young and built for himself a fine career. He was at the prime of his political career when he too was felled by the bullet of an assassin. Mr President, the Union has done me a very great honour. I am deeply conscious of that. I would like, if I may, to assume that I could share that honour with the people of my country because I am very much a product of my country. I had my schooling there, my first university was there, I went to the Law College there and by the time I came to Oxford as a postgraduate student, well, I was a relatively mature person. Oxford was the icing on the cake but the cake was baked at home. (applause) Mr President, when you go into the big wide world, the moment people know you are a President of the Union you will be called upon to make a speech with two minutes notice on any subject under the sun anywhere in the world at any time, but take the challenge because it is a small price to pay for the honour that your peers have conferred on you by electing you to the presidency of the Union. We Presidents should remember at all times that we have been elected by a constituency which is probably the most intelligent, best educated, most discriminating and critical constituency in the entire democratic English speaking world, and that is quite something. You must remember that you will be measured against that yardstick. You have to accept that. I thank you, Mr President, and I thank the Trustees very warmly, for the honour you have done me. Together with my wife I would like to thank all of you. My wife has shared with me all the rigors of political life and, more importantly, she has loyally and courageously shared with me the great danger of political life in our part of the world. I thank her very much indeed. Thank you Mr President, thank you Ladies and Gentlemen. |
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