Remembering the Oxford Union . . . and Brendan Behan
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Oxford Union, the debating society at Oxford University. I was President of the Union when I was a student, back in 1969. I’ll be going back there later this month to take part in a celebratory debate. I loved my time at the Union and made some unlikely friendships. Chris Hitchens (who I always picture in a combat jacket with a hard drinkers’ bloodshot eyes) was one. So was Tariq Ali who was a bit older than us and viewed as a proper revolutionary. I remember Tariq and I had tea together at the Union shortly after he had joined the International Marxist Group in 1968 and I thought, ‘He can’t be that bad – he’s ordered tea and anchovy toast.’
How I loved tea and anchovy toast as they served it in the Oxford Union! I loved the Union’s High Victorian buildings, the oak panelling, the leather sofas, the high-ceilinged rooms, especially the galleried library, with its murals by Rossetti, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. One night when I was Secretary I was charged with looking after one of the Union’s more challenging guests: Dominic Behan, Irish song-writer and Republican, younger brother of the more-famous-Brendan and son (so he told me) of one of the leading IRA men responsible for killing any number of British soldiers during the Irish ‘war of independence’. When I met Dominic he was already wild with drink and impossible to control. He ranted, he rambled, he lurched around the President’s office, alternately breaking into song and demanding more drink. He asked me to show him where the lavatories were. I said I’d take him down to them. He stumbled down the stairs and – on the landing – proceeded to undo his flies and produce his member for me to admire. ‘I’m bursting!’ he declared and then turning towards the wall he walked quite sedately down the corridor peeing profusely against the wall as he went.
‘Don’t!’ I bleated, ‘That’s William Morris wallpaper! It’s original!’
‘Fuck William Morris!’ he cried, warming to his task and spraying the precious wall with ever greater gusto.
‘He was a Socialist like you!’ I called out desperately.
‘Fuck Socialism!’ he declared, turning to me triumphantly and shaking the final drips in my direction.
Today, 9 February 2023, marks the centenary of the birth of the great Irish playwright, Brendan Behan. I loved his plays when I first saw them as a boy and bought copies of The Hostage and The Quare Fellow in the early 1960s. I’ve still got them. Behan’s story was brilliantly told in a reading of a new show I saw last night at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith in London. He was so mordantly funny:
“I only drink on two occasions—when I'm thirsty and when I'm not.”
“Ah, bless you, Sister, may all your sons be bishops.”
“It's a queer world, God knows, but the best we have to be going on with.”
“An author's first duty is to let down his country.”
“There is no such thing as bad publicity...except your own obituary”