Cherwell can exclusively reveal that during her time at Oxford, Liz Truss was involved in several damaging Student Union (OUSU) controversies, including the alleged mishandling of an LGBTQ+ welfare issue and an attempt to abolish the SU’s Women’s VP position.
After being approached on the SU helpline for an LGB welfare rep [as it was called at the time], Truss reportedly yelled across the room “is there anyone here from the LGB?”, which the distressed caller heard. This instance of carelessness led to a formal investigation. Instead of apologising, she branded this as a personal attack describing it as a “petty device” that targeted her for having different political convictions. The Welfare Officer at the time, Ros Wynne-Jones, clarified that the matter would have been dealt with in the same manner irrespective of Truss’s involvement as it was first and foremost a welfare issue. Yet, it became an issue “squeezed out by the orthodoxy of intolerance”, as Akaash Maharaj, the OUSU president put it, and was thenceforth forgotten.
When Balliol’s 1994 JCR committee proposed the abolition of their college’s Women’s Officer on grounds that it was “unfair and patronising that a single special-interest group should be given restricted representation on the JCR committee”, Liz Truss, the OUSU’s Executive Officer at the time, was vocally supportive of the motion. She claimed in The Oxford Student that the role of Women’s Officer was “patronising and sexist” arguing for “less women in women’s groups and more in the main political arena”. The Vice-President (Women) of the SU called this “very short-sighted and a huge step backwards” especially in macho 1990s Oxford.
A year later, Truss also slammed the position of VP (Women), calling it “completely undemocratic” as it was elected by only the women’s committee. Simultaneously, she questioned whether the OUSU was “representative of student opinion”. Her proclamation was evidently at odds with the general student feeling and the role of women’s officer was reaffirmed by an overwhelming majority. A few years later, Oxford East MP Annalise Dodds, was elected president of the SU. Dodds is currently the Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities – a position simply called ‘Minister of Equalities’ in the government cabinet.
Along with her activities in OUSU, Truss was involved in two different Oxford political societies. She started out as a member of the Oxford Liberal Democrat Society, rose to President and later changed allegiances and became a supporter of the Conservative Party. The OUSU quickly distanced themselves from the issues surrounding Liz Truss’s actions and in the last month, Liberal Democrats did the same. After Truss took up the premiership, Oxford Lib Dems (OULD) had one thing to say: “sorry” (Tweet from 06/09/22).
The Lib Dems are not the only ones feeling the need to apologise on the PM’s behalf. Her old Merton Politics tutor, Marc Stears, opened up earlier this year about observing Truss in her Oxford years. He remembered that “she almost never backed down” and yet, she also had “a capacity to shift, unblinkingly, from one fiercely held belief to another”. Stears worries that this approach leads one to neglect the wisdom of those with more experience and expertise.
The Student Union conflicts involving Truss sparked other significant debates on freedom of speech and political correctness within the OUSU; issues which have only grown since she left Oxford. At the time, a 1994 letter to the editor that argued against the anti-Truss backlash also claimed that ‘inverted prejudice and political intolerance’ must be overcome in order to make the OUSU relevant again. The extent to which personal proclamations that conflict with the official policy of the SU should be allowed became a cause for deliberation. Questions were also raised over whether the source of these remarks should be clarified. The president of the Student Union at the time claimed that suppressing self-criticism would only harm the SU, and that internal debate is fundamentally valuable; the opinion’s level of merit is irrelevant. However, he did accentuate that the organisation’s reputation was “invariably the loser”.
Truss graduated from Oxford with a degree in PPE in 1996. She has described her university-aged self as a “professional controversialist”.
