David Strachan, No.1

A debating team from the College has won its way through to the next round of the national schools' debating contest, the English-Speaking Union's famous 'Mace' Competition. The team, David Strachan (House No 1) and Feodor Kassatkin (House No 9), had to oppose a motion advocating that extremist political parties should be banned.

Feodor Kassatkin opened the opposition by challenging the proposition's definition of 'extremist' and arguing that, in any case, the term was too woolly. There followed a very solid speech in which Feodor was not at all feezed by his opponents' belligerent points of information.

When it was David Strachan's turn to speak, he gave a masterly rebuttal of the proposition argument by arguing that political extremists who resorted to violence could and should be dealt with by the law; there was no need to undermine democracy by banning parties which gave them a focus for their views. It was, he urged, impossible to prevent people from thinking as they wished to think, and to attempt to do so would only encourage such people to resort to violence in order to express themselves.

The judges singled out David for special praise among the speakers. It was the clarity and persuasiveness of his point-making which had captured their notice. He had also performed a feat similar to that performed by John Kirby in the Eyres-Monsell Debate held at Malvern in November. Before speaking in his own debate, David had volunteered to take the part of a team that had failed to turn up so that another debate - on the privatisation of universities - could proceed as planned. Without any time for preparation, David spoke almost as fluently, articulately and apparently knowledgeably as he did in his prepared debate. Mr Chappell, I/c debating, afterwards told Mr Weaver, David's housemaster, that there was clearly a great future as a politician awaiting David should he wish to claim it!

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