The Forties

The drop in student numbers removed a lot of the intensity in college affairs. Enthusiasms were switched to helping the country. A left wing, popular in ratio to Russia's war-time popularity, gained influence. Its blatancy gradually lost its friends. Its militancy brought it enemies. An Indonesian protest procession in 1947, and the "Gotwald telegram" incident of 1948 discredited it, and the Socialist Club, in the eyes of many.

The clubs had their ups and downs, with the emphasis on Culture, as a means of preserving civilised values in a barbaric world.

After the war the University expanded to its present bursting point, with "temporary tinhuts" scattered over clay-patch and reclaimed rubbish dump.