Document: Minutes of the Oxford University Socialist Club Executive Committee, 17 October 1956 - 27 February 1957

This is a transcription by Anna Davin, from a partially filled exercise book, of the minutes of six meetings. They were taken by the secretary, Ken Vaughan, who recorded attendance, agendas, decisions and sometimes discussions. Other members named are: Irfan Habib, David Hall, Luke Hodgkin, Martin Zuberi, Partha Gupta, Stuart Hall, Jane Gardner, Saddiq Al-Mahdi, Alan Hall, Terence De'Ath and Peter Sedgwick.

The minutes provide references to the unfolding crisis alongside mundane doings such as organizing speakers, arranging food for lunchtime meetings or music for socials, and working out relations with the Labour Club or the broadsheet Oxford Left. October's plans for a watchdog Middle East Committee, preferably in co-operation with other groups (‘on a broad basis to include all interested in preserving peace in the Middle East… [and not] bound to any one policy or appraisal of the present situation’), are quickly overtaken by events and abandoned.

The University authorities warn that they will not tolerate demonstrations which – like one organized by Ruskin College on 1 November – could ‘cause a disturbance’ or bring the University ‘into disrepute’. In January Peter Sedgwick announces Universities and Left Review, a new ‘left-wing, non-sectarian’ magazine under the editorship of ‘ex-Balliol’ Raphael Samuel and with Rod Prince, ‘a former Socialist Club E.C. member’, as sales manager. A month later Luke Hodgkin reports that 140 orders for ULR have been taken in Oxford.

There are hints of the great changes that Suez and especially Hungary were bringing on the left. John Saville, a founder of the New Left and one of the editors of The Reasoner, is announced to speak on the future of Marxism in Britain, and a meeting with a speaker from the Soviet Embassy is cancelled.