Hull University Labour Club (HULC) is a Hull University Union society for University of Hull students who support the Labour Party. It is one of the oldest societies at Hull, first formed as the Hull College Labour Society from 1952–1958, the Hull University Socialist Society from 1958–1967, and the Hull University Labour Club from September 1967.
Influential in the earlier stages of the National Association of Labour Students Organisations (NALSO) in the 1950s, it has also had a role in the National Union of Students, Labour Students and Young Labour movements since their individual formations. Most notable was their large involvement in local and national campaigning in the 1960s and the 2015 general election. Their influence has waned in recent years but is starting to experience a renewal.
Membership levels took a significant decline in the period between 2010 and 2015 but have since started to increase since 2016.
Current membership
After 2010 membership levels had declined significantly, resulting in roughly five active members following the 2015 general election. However, membership has risen dramatically since the 2015/2016 academic year. In March 2023, Adam Coles was re-elected to the position of Co-Chair for his third term. He is the only person in HULC’s history to hold the position more than once, however left the University before he could serve his third term.
Their executive consists of seven positions. In 2018 the club adopted the Co-Chair model. Elections are held in March. Their 2024/25 executive committee are:
Co-Chairs: Millie Wood & Harriet Barker Vice President: James Richardson Campaign Coordinator: James Richardson Women's Officer: Hannah Parrish Social Secretary: Jonah Gregory Westminster Attaché: Oscar Seal Treasurer: Finn Anderson Wellbeing and Inclusion Officer: Ryan Atherton
Past Chairs
2024/25 – Oscar Seal & Sofiya Koç 2023/24 – Jack Stephenson & Daniel Wilton 2022/23 – Adam Coles & Robson Augusta 2021/22 – Adam Coles & Jake Croft 2020/21 – Jack Wilfan & Jack Stafford†††† 2019/20 – Daniel Eales & Maya Booth 2018/19 – Jessica Raspin & Mark Porchske††† 2017/18 – George Aylett 2016/17 – Christopher Knott 2015/16 – Josh Capstick† 2014/15 – Adam Allnutt†† 2013/14 – Frank Longdon 2012/13 – Rosie Corrigan 2011/12 – Jon Chambers 2010/11 – Victoria Winterton 2009/10 – Kaveh Azzarhoosh 2008/09 – Joshua Haringman 2007/08 – Emma Kinloch 2006/07 – Ed Marsh 2005/06 – Helen Gibson 2004/05 – Matthew Patrick 1991/92 – Tom Watson
†Stood down during his tenure, replaced with then-Vice-Chair Christopher Knott.
††Stood down during his tenure to run for President of the Hull University Union, replaced with then-Vice-Chair Josh Capstick.
†††Stood down during his tenure. Jessica Raspin remained as Chair for the continuation of the year.
††††Stood down during his tenure. The post remained vacant throughout the year.
Accolades
2016/17 – All available societies stripes. 2014/15 – Networking Award for Outstanding Inter-society Co-ordination 2014/15 – Societies' Gold Award. 2013/14 – Society of the Month for January 2014 2013/14 – Societies' Gold Award
History
Left-Wing Student Activism at Hull College, 1927–1950 From 1927 – Hull University’s foundation as a tiny College of the University of London, with just 200 students – up until 1950, very little is known about left-wing student politics in Hull. We do know that before it folded 1935 a "Socialist Group" was active in the College, and that the Hull-born working-class gay author Dan Billany (1913-c.1943) was Secretary. Billany, however, never aligned himself to the Labour Party and was a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB), until his expulsion for reasons which the SPGB has never divulged.Valerie Reeves and Valuerie Showan, Dan Billany: Hull's Lost Hero (Hull: Kingston Press, 1999), p. 51 Hull College registrar's files record no Labour Club existing in 1946 and list as the only "Contentious Societies" on campus at this time as: the Catholic Society; the Student Christian Movement (SCM); and the Socialist Society."Sub-Committee on Financial Assistance to Contentious Societies" (1946) in Student Union Committee Files, Hull History Centre (Ref: UC UNCAT, Parcel 439) It is conceivable, although not known for certain, that no society called "the Labour Club" existed in Hull during the 1930s or 1940s. This was before the era of university grants. 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.
It is, however, likely that left-wing students played some role in the protests against Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) when they marched in Hull in 1936 and 1937, the former being the largest BUF rally in Britain outside London during the period. 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. For many on the left, Morrison's action was considered a betrayal of the troops fighting fascism across the world."Release of Sir Oswald Mosley from Internment" (1942–1943) in Hull History Centre (Ref: U DCL/41/3). 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. It allegedly remained in club executive hands, passed on from member-to-member, although no trace of it has been foundColin Livett, "Personal Testimony (1961–1964)" in Tom Stephens (ed.), Reddest of the Red Bricks: Labour Student Activism at Hull University (2013), pp. 11–25. and Kevin McNamara has denied ever having seen such a letter when he was active in the club in the 1950s.
The Hull University College Labour Society, 1952 – c. 1958 The political economy of Britain, and with it the social basis of Britain's universities, changed after 1945. The first working-class beneficiaries of the 1944 education reforms, with a strong loyalty to the Labour Party, started to study at Hull in the 1950s, and this had consequent effects on left-wing student politics in Hull. Two such beneficiaries of the 1944 education reforms, future Labour MPs Roy Hattersley and Kevin McNamara, arrived at Hull in 1950 to discover a Socialist Society, but no Labour Club, in operation on campus. 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. SLF was one of the more successful of these United Front operations and throughout the war, and afterwards, SLF represented all socialist, labour and other student organisations in Britain.Peter Sizer, "Personal Testimony" (1952–1955) in Tom Stephens (ed), 'The Reddest of the Red Bricks': Labour Student Activism at Hull University (2013), pp. 5–8.
In 1946, however, Labour Party-oriented students in Cambridge, Oxford and the LSE created the National Association of Labour Student Organisations (NALSO) as a representative body for all Labour Clubs. As then-confidential NALSO memos to the General Secretary of the Labour Party show, they were keen to combat Marxist influence nationally in the NUS and on campus, and also internationally in the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY). The creation of Labour Clubs as separate and distinct from Socialist Societies was part of this strategy. NALSO's annual report of 1957–58 gave an account of left-wing student politics during this period:
"Until 1947 Labour Party supporters in the Universities had been members of SLF ... which had a long and chequered history but which was then, as now, controlled by the Communist Party and so was hostile to the 1945 Labour Government (despite the clause in its constitution which pledged its support to the Labour Party). The SLF still claims to speak for a 'United Left' – but in fact speaks today only for he Communist students and those who are still naive enough to join Socialist Societies affiliated to SLF and support the Kremlin line that almost without exception they adopt."
The political scene in Hull slotted in neatly with the national picture. Thus, in 1952, the bulk of Socialist Society students – led by Roy Hattersley, Kevin McNamara, Fred Moorhouse and Kath Hart – formed the Hull University College Labour Society (Hull didn't become a University until 1954), affiliated to NALSO, as a break-away unit from the Socialist Society. 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. Hull contributed two NALSO chairmen in the 1950s, Fred Moorhouse (1954–55) and Roy Hattersley (1956–57); only Oxford, with four chairmen, exceeded Hull’s tally in the early stages of NALSO from 1947 to 1959. Cambridge, Glasgow, Manchester, Birckbeck College and Swansea all contributed one chairman, whilst the LSE also contributed two.NALSO Annual Report, 1957–58 in Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Salford (Ref: GS/NALSO.113).
One of the first MPs to address the new Society, in Thwaite Hall, was Denis Healey.Kevin McNamara, "Personal Testimony" (1950–1957) in Tom Stephens (ed.), The Reddest of the Red Bricks: Labour Student Activism in Hull University (2013) Hugh Gaitskell, then Labour Party Treasurer, was also the honorary Vice-President of the Society in 1954–55.Betty Jones (Secretary of Hull University College Labour Society) to Hugh Gaitskell, 22 January 1954 in Hugh Gaitskell's papers, special collections, University College London (Ref: GAITSKELL: A/87). One of the club's key early focuses was on foreign policy, in part because there was broad cross-party consensus on domestic issues, and in part because the club had a sizeable number of Nigerian members, as well as a couple of Cypriots, who accorded a high priority to colonial policy. The club thus hosted many colonial speakers, most notably in 1953, when, jointly with the Socialist Society, it hosted Cheddi Jagan, the deposed Chief Minister of Guyana, in the joint common room of the University Union. 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, then-Hull University Union Secretary Kevin McNamara led a march against Anthony Eden's invasion of the Suez, in which he was nearly kidnapped, as a joke, by members of the Hull University Conservative Association. Hattersley and McNamara were also founding members of Hull's debating society.
The New Left and Student Politics, 1956–
By the mid-1950s, changes in the British left, most notably the formation of the first New Left in Britain, were beginning to have an effect on left-wing student politics in the country. 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. These events made many on the British left, including students, more amenable to the Labour party. Stuart Hall, a leading thinker in the New Left, recalled in 2010 how the political scene changed in Oxford when he was an undergraduate in the mid-1950s: