Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria University College, Wellington N.Z. Vol. 21, No. 1. March 13, 1958

Politics, Economics

Politics, Economics

In the nineteen-thirties (and I give this only as a personal impression) the intellectual life of the student elite at Victoria was focused on problems of politics and economics. We need not consider the other members of the student body —those hordes who at all times worm their way into institutions of higher learning, not knowing what a university is for and with no desire to know. In those days their chief organ was the Haeremai Club, which excelled in doing hakas, improving the dividends of the breweries, and throwing its considerable weight against intelligent discussion of any kind. Other student groups, notably the Free Discussions Club, the Labour Club, the Debating Society, and the Social Service Club, earnestly struggled with the problems of the individual and of society. The shape of the questions they considered was profoundly affected by two influences: the rapid development of military aircraft and of new "scientific" weapons of warfare, and the Great Depression. The suffering and devastation from the First World War had been appalling, but we were threatened with total devastation of cities, and (so many believed) with the "end of civilization as we know it", if another World War should come. The economic depression of the 'thirties had involved the collapse of capitalist distribution on an unprecedented scale, and the spectacle of the deliberate destruction of food while millions of people were struggling for enough to keep alive left no thoughtful person content with the status quo.

There were many shades of political thought among students, but those who wrote and debated and discussed were in the main sternly or vehemently critical of the Government (it was before the day of the Labour Government) and were convinced that Socialism—with or without Pacifism, but mostly with it —would be the salvation of mankind. A smaller but extremely vocal section placed their faith in Communism.

Professor I. D. Campbell, Professor of English and N.Z. Law at V.U.W., is a graduate of Victoria and was prominent in the student movement of the '30's.

An article bearing the initials "I.D.C." was one of those offending articles banned in "Spike" 1937. It attacked the teaching of law in the college.