Two of my friends – whom I shall refer to as school-chum and college-chum – were prominent members of the club. College-chum, who came from a genuinely working-class background and was on the right-wing of the Labour Party, was a former president of the club. (He is now a Tory councillor in Kent.) School-chum – whose family had been working-class two generations back, but now lived in a large house in Walton-on-Thames - wanted to be president (actually, he wanted to be prime minister, but we all have to start somewhere). Naturally, being impeccably middle class, he was moving inexorably leftwards, forever on the look-out for fresh victim groups to patronise. But because he was far too impatient to establish himself with the Labour Club's far-left clique, he latched onto right-wing college-chum, who became his mentor and campaign manager – despite the fact they agreed on very little politically.
There was a Tory government in power at the time (well, Toryish – Ted Heath was in charge), but you wouldn’t have known it from the discussions that took place at CULC meetings, which, as far as I remember, mainly concerned the terrible sufferings of gypsies, blacks, homosexuals, miners and council-flat tenants (so no change there, then). Apart from posturing compassionately, the main business of club members seemed to be to destroy the career prospects of fellow members.
School-chum was duly elected president, but the campaign was so vicious and the tactics so questionale that the Guardian wrote an article about it and the Labour Party launched yet another investigation into the club’s activities, which resulted in a change of name to distance itself from the bad old days. I remember school-chum sitting on the dais in the meeting room after his victory had been announced, staring into space as members shouted angrily in his direction and at each other, and it began to dawn on him that he’d actually done his career no good by winning. Because of the mini-scandal surrounding the election, school-chum never became a Labour MP (although his brother – a far duller person – eventually did: there's a moral in there somewhere). Realising he hadn’t exactly booked himself a one-way ticket to future high office, he subsequently tried another avenue, standing for president of the Cambridge Student Union, a far bigger deal.
Tiring of my friend’s vaulting ambition and his cynicism - he had never previously displayed the slightest interest in the union – I actively canvassed on behalf of his main Tory competitor. Partly, this was because he had callously turned his back on college-chum – the very person who had got him elected as Labour club president, and who was, besides, a lovely chap. After deservedly losing the Cambridge Union election, school-chum waited a few months before informing me that I too was no longer his pal. He then abandoned student politics in favour of bagging a spectacularly impressive law degree: he was always going to succeed at something - it just turned out not to be politics.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, after I’d listened to Ms Jowell snarling about Damian McBride, I went online and looked up the Cambridge University Labour Club on Wikipedia – and sure enough, there, on a list of notable alumni, was Damian McBride’s name (alongside Diane Abbott's!). I should have known, really.
In the forty years since I enjoyed my brief brush with those insanely ambitious Labour wannabes, I have been continually amazed by how many socialists who preach compassion, tolerance and forgiveness seem to be almost entirely motivated by hatred and spite, overwhelmingly directed at those who essentially share their political views. I’ve just finished Anthony Beevor’s masterful The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, which reinforces the impression one got from reading Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia that the hatred that the socialists, social democrats, anarchists, Trotskyists and communists on the Republican side felt towards their Nationalist enemies was as nothing compared to the insane animosity they felt towards each other. Not that different from the Cambridge University Labour Club in the early ‘70s – or the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Apart from the sacrifice, the suffering and the killing, of course.
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