Hull University Labour Club

Poor, working-class students like Billany (who himself only managed to come to Hull College through a much-coveted scholarship) were the exception on campus, and so didn't provide a significant pool from which to draw Club members.

[citation needed] In 1943, there was much trade union and student protest across the country against the British Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison's decision to release Oswald Mosley from prison.

[3] One former club member, active in the early-1960s, has spoken of a letter from Herbert Morrison, dated from 1942, justifying his policy to Hull students.

This Socialist Society was affiliated to the Student Labour Federation (SLF), an offshoot of the ILP's United Front organisations of the 1930s, which sought to bring together various shades of political opinion under a single anti-fascist umbrella.

It quickly outgrew the Socialist Society and became the dominant force on campus, playing a key role both in the Hull College Students' Union and NALSO, with Hattersley, Moorhouse and McNamara taking executive positions in both bodies.

Jagan had been dismissed by the Churchill government and army earlier in the year, under American pressure, due to fears of his Marxist sympathies.

In 1956, Khrushchev's Secret Speech denouncing Stalinism was acquired by the United States and leaked to the world, and – almost simultaneous to the Franco-British invasion of Suez – the Soviets suppressed a democratic socialist revolt in Hungary.

Both events spurred on a process of revisionism in the British Communist Party, with many British leftists – notably in Hull, John Saville and Tony Topham, economics lecturer and lecturer on adult education at Hull University, respectively – were expelled from the Communist party during this period for criticising Soviet orthodoxy.

This transition appears to have taken place at some point between 1958–1960, as an article in Hull University's student newspaper, Torchlight, reveals a Labour Society was still in existence as late as 19 March 1958.

The Society also operated a decentralised, facilitative structure instead of a top-down, insular executive – something of a key ideal of the New Left, and especially of the student movements that followed in the late-1950s.

Various factors – the strong city Labour Party; the influence of left-wing lecturers such as John Saville, Tony Topham, Axel Stern and Janet Blackman; and Hull University's links with Ruskin College, an institution for the education of (generally left-wing) working class adults at Oxford, which provided many students to fill SocSoc's ranks, such as future MPs John Prescott and Harry Barnes, and Bob Heath, SocSoc chair from 1962 to 1965 – gave Hull University a reputation in the press and amongst staff and students as the "reddest of the red bricks."

Many left-wing prospective students minded to attend an institution which offered them opportunities for political activism, as well as the chance to pursue academia, were attracted to Hull University to study.

In 1962, SocSoc members led a march to the Hull City Hall calling for peace in the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In 1963, a small number of SocSoc members, amongst some others, were – at the clandestine instigation of John Saville – also involved in what was dubbed the "Battle of Lister Street" by students.

Lister Street, owned by private sector landlords, was the site of some of Hull's worst slum housing, and in protest at the conditions in 1963, tenants had refused to pay the rents.

In addition, they assisted the local Labour party, and David Whitely in the then rather influential Hull and East Riding Cooperative Society, to impose a ban.

In 1978, HULC candidates Pete McCabe and David Hanson attained both the presidency and vice-presidency of HUU for the first time in the club’s history.

HULC activities in the turbulent 1980s are a mystery, but it appears that during much of this period the club fell under the influence of the radical left: in 1984, a National Organisation of Labour Students (NOLS) Conference at Hull was called off due to militant violence and unrest.

When the future MP Tom Watson and Rebecca Gray started their degrees at Hull in 1991, HULC was regarded as an insular irrelevance on campus and had experienced a bitter dispute over its nomination for the candidate of HUU president in the previous year.

Within just a year, however, Watson and Gray, amongst others, turned HULC into a more significant, professional organisation attracting, at its height, some 230–250 members to its fold, a number perhaps surpassing any other Labour Club of any similarly-sized university at its time.

Its influence and campaigning ability is reflected in the large numbers of presidents and sabbatical officers within Hull University Union that have emerged from it, including Ed Marsh, Helen Gibson, Aidan Mersh and Victoria Winterton.

Here we list a few issues brought to the attention of the Hull University Labour Club executive committee: The problematic selection of NUS candidates, The cost of Labour Students events, The separation of the Student movement from the Youth movement, The undemocratic elections of the national executive committee, General cronyism, Exclusion of periphery groups (such as Hull) and General inaction and mismanagement.

It played a crucial role in campaigning for Kingston upon Hull North MP Diana Johnson in both 2010 and 2015, increasing her majority most recently by over 12,000 votes.

Other Labour-related Hull alumni include local politicians Bryn Davies, a former member of the Greater London Council and leader of the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), Frances Morrell, who also led the ILEA and was a close friend of Tony Benn, and Doug Taylor, leader of Enfield Council and HULC Chair from 1979 until 1980.

A young Kevin McNamara, then Secretary of Hull University students' union, leading a protest of Hull students in Hull city centre against the Franco-British invasion of Suez in 1956. The University Conservative Association made an attempt to kidnap Kevin during the protest.
New Left thinker John Saville, reader in economics at the University of Hull, was a particular inspiration for many SocSoc students. He played a role in bringing many left-wing working-class Ruskin College graduates to Hull University, and was also helpful in arranging for his acquaintances in the New Left to come and speak to the Club.
Ruskin College, Oxford, was an institution for adult education for working-class students without any formal qualifications. Many left-wing working-class students came to Hull to take on bachelor's degrees after two years' study at Ruskin, and played quite prominent roles in SocSoc. Two Ruskin students, John Prescott and Harry Barnes, went on to become MPs, and many more took on positions in trade unions and institutions of adult education.
The Hull Daily Mail gave front-page coverage to the Lister Street tenants' rent strike in 1963. The Socialist Society – at the instigation of John Saville (pictured) – assisted tenants in the rent strike, and Sociology student and SocSoc member Robert Moore (also pictured) conducted a survey of rent levels in the area.
Hull students marching for peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis in Victoria Square on 24 October 1962. Organised by SocSoc, over 10% of Hull's student population, or approximately 200 students, participated in the protest.
"When the Russians land at Dover, what defence for you and me? Colonel Sloman's Essex Rifles or the Light Horse at LSE?" – Philip Larkin, then Librarian of the University of Hull, on the student protests of 1968.
The Hull Sailor's Orphan's Home, Cottingham Road, Hull, set up to house the fatherless children of men lost at sea. Fishing was an especially demanding and dangerous job in the 1960s, with over two dozen sailors lost at sea in 1968 alone. These conditions, and the Wilson government's unwillingness to countanance better pay and conditions for Hull's seamen, were one of the things which spurred John Prescott to publish "Not Wanted on Voyage" highlighting the difficult work of Hull's trawlermen.