Oxford Divided
BY ROBERT BLAKE* NOT since the heyday of the disputes provoked by the Tractarian Movement 120 years ago have passions raged more furiously in Oxford than they do today. But the subject of all this commotion—appropriately enough in our more mundane and sceptical era—belongs to this world rather than the next. The great question which con- vulses town and gown alike is whether or not Oxford City's development plan is to include the construction of motor roads through, Christ Church Meadows and the University Parks. As is by now well known, the City Council at the end of June took a provisional decision by narrow majorities in favour of such roads. Its final decision will appear early in November, and will then go to the Minister of Housing and Local Govern- ment, Mr. Duncan Sandys.
Both city and university are divided on this issue. That there should be division in the city is not surprising. That there should be anything other than unanimous opposition to so vandalistic a scheme from. the university is much less easy to understand. The key to this problem lies in the personality of the Vice-Chancellor, Mr. A. 1-1:- Smith, the seventy-two-year- old Warden of New College. Mr. Smith has long believed that the correct answer to Oxford's traffic problem is to block Magdalen Bridge to motor traffic and build alternative roads, presumably—though the Warden's utterances lack clarity on this point—through the meadows and, the parks. The High Street would then, he argues, become a peaceful precinct, and the calm serenity of a vanished era would be restored. The Dean of Christ Church, with that brisk Canadian common sense for which he is renowned, has described this notion as `utterly, silly' and a 'phantasy out of touch with practical possi- bilities.' The Warden of Merton has referred to the Vice- Chancellor as riding 'his hobbyhorse round the remedimvalised Oxford of his dreams.'
To be fair to the Vice-Chancellor—and there are moments when this requires much moral effort—he does not support the City Council's present plans, for these of course include no provisions for blocking Magdalen Bridge. Indeed, if the city is unanimous on anything, it is unanimous in opposing any such proposal. Unfortunately the Vice-Chancellor, thanks to his influence in the Hebdomadal Council (the governing body of the university), contrived to persuade the majority of that somnolent assembly to approve a letter to the city council urging that the High Street should cease to be a main traffic thoroughfare, and calling for plans to block Magdalen Bridge. The effect of this letter, sent just before the city council meeting, was doubly unfortunate, first because it maddened the city councillors, many of whom depend upon shopkeepers and tradesmen in the High Street for electoral support, and secondly because it gave the entirely false impression that the university might agree to roads through the parks and meadows provided that it got as a quid pro .quo the Vice-Chancellor's retnediwyalised High Street.
But what' has inflamed university opinion is not so much the Vice-Chancellor's own eccentric view, as the manner in which he has fathered it upon an astonished university. Since the Hebdomadal Council had consulted colleges and had seen their replies in detail, and since those replies, which Council prudently resolved not to publish, indicated a very strong— indeed overwhelming—opposition to any road through the meadows quite irrespective of plans to restrict traffic in the
• Senior Censor of Christ Church.
High Street, it remains incredible that so misleading a letter should ever have been approved.
Yet those who censure the Hebdomadal Council should not be oblivious of its difficulties. The Vice-Chancellor's worst enemies would concede his charm and his persuasiveness. Indeed if they flee his presence it is through fear that they may find themselves mesmerised by his eloquence—and his eloquence is seldom brief—into agreeing with some policy of which in reality they profoundly disapprove. After all, did he not almost persuade his severe Wykehamist-minded colleagues at New College into spending a vast sum of money upon re- Gothicising the shapely eighteenth-century windows of the college' library? Is it surprising that he should have come very near to persuading Hebdomadal Council into advocating the re-Gothicising of Oxford?
Up to a point the general body of the university was slow in realising how totally unrepresentative of its opinion the majority on Hebdomadal Council had become. The long vaca- tion was partly responsible for this delay, but gradually it began to dawn upon the plain man that curious manoeuvres were afoot. For example the question of roads was transferred from the committee which was originally dealing with it on the ground that some of its members happened to be city councillors too. They also, it was observed, happened to be irreconcilable opponents of the Vice-Chancellor's views. The new committee to which this important matter was transferred was almost—though not quite—purged of dissentients.
Finally, a fortnight ago university indignation reached boil- ing point when it was confidently announced in the press, on the authority of a high official in the university, that at the forthcoming meetings with the city council's planning com- mittee, presided over by Mr. Sandys himself, Hebdomadal Council would state that university opinion was now in favour of a road through the meadows. This was too much, and two senior members of the university independently decided to follow this example of indiscretion and give to the presS the hitherto unpublished details of the original college replies; replies which would clearly disprove any such suggestion.
It was, therefore, in a somewhat stormy atmosphere that Hebdomadal Council met on the afternoon of Monday, October 10, in order to decide what official views they would put forward to Mr. Sandys and the city councillors four days later. No one knows even now what these were, for, true to their policy of secrecy, Hebdomadal Council decided to give . no indication to the university of the views which they were ascribing to it. Council also debated at much length whether to continue its policy of suppressing the college's replies, and decided to do so. But events had moved too fast, and on emerg- ing from their meeting members were able to read in their evening paper—for the first time in some cases, so it is averred —the document for whose suppression they had just been voting. A 'spokesman' of the council afterwards described their discussions as 'calm, dispassionate, and useful.' However correct the last adjective may be, any observer who saw the members debouch from the Clarendon Building that evening. caps awry, voices raised, and fists, if not actually being shaken, threatening, must feel sceptical about the first two.
Whatever the vacillations of Hebdomadal Council—and it must be remembered that a vigorous minority on that body has always fought hard for common sense—opinion in the uni- versity is rapidly hardening against hny road of any sort which goes through the meadows or the parks. Christ Church is naturally the leading college in this struggle, and as befits an institution so closely bound to the Church, its views were expressed on Sunday in Cathedral when in grave and corn- minatory tones one of its leading members read the specially chosen lesson, Micah ii, verses Ito 5.
It is impossible at the moment to predict what the outcome of the struggle will be. On Thursday and Friday of last week Mr. Duncan Sandys presided over the meetings which the city council's planning committee held with representatives of the principal interested parties, the Oxford Chamber of Trade, the Oxford Trades Council, the Oxford Preservation Trust, Christ Church, and the university. The discussions were strictly confidential, and their effect will not be known until October 31 when the planning committee will put forward its final recommendations for discussion. The city's last word will come about a week later. It is by no means impossible that the city councillors will in the ead decide upon relief roads which lie outside the area which provokes such furious controversy. Even if they do not, the Minister, who is an Oxonian and a civilised man. may well use his powers to amend the plan put forward to him. It may be many months before the final answer is known.
Meanwhile it is permissible to make two general observa- tions. In the first place the whole traffic problem has been greatly exaggerated. Oxford is not, in fact, conspicuously worse in this respect than many other provincial towns. Secondly, it seems the height of folly not to wait and see what the effect will be of implementing proposals, agreed by almost everyone, for completing the city's outer by-passes, developing a shopping centre at Cowley, and constructing certain intermediate relief roads. Christ Church Meadows and the university parks are both in differing ways beautiful un- spoiled open spaces close to the heart of the City. Citizens, visitors, undergraduates and dons alike enjoy their amenities. To destroy these for ever in the uncertain hope of solving Oxford's traffic problem would be an act which future genera- tions would find it impossible to understand, still more impos- sible to forgive.
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