UCL Conservative Society

Through the research we have been carrying out into the history of the Society, for the Alumni Club, I have found another great gem!

Back in 1959 the then Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, visited and spoke to the UCL Conservative Society. A film reel produced by the UCL Film Society has a recording of his visit:

“A University produced newsreel showing, the new Union opening by Rank stars Yvonne Mitchell and John Gregson; Harold Macmillan as Prime Minister speaking at the University College London Conservative Society; Aneurin Bevan speaking at the Socialist Society; and rowing and sailing inter faculty competitions.”

This was found during a search on the BFI website. I am currently trying to find out if a copy of the reel still exists, and more importantly if we can have it put online. This research is just getting better and better!

UPDATE: Click here to listen to a speech by Lord Stockton (Macmilllan) to the TRG in 1985.

Last night the UCL Conservative Society Alumni Club held it first ever Alumni dinner. A “champagne” reception followed by a huge dinner in the Old Refectory. A great turnout was seen with 44 guests and even a few alumni!

Guest of honour was John Whittingdale OBE MP (President of the Society in 1981/2) who spoke on both his past experiences of UCL Conservatives and of being the Political Secretary to Margaret Thatcher.

All in all a very good night with a great turnout and good speeches – thanks to Tim Barnes and Paul Barton for sponsoring the event. A full review to come out in the next issue of The Caerulean.

With changing the website to this design and format we have also “outsourced” all our photos to Flickr. Flickr is an online photo storage system, which allows easy uploading, easy viewing and means you don’t have to store all the photos on the server.

Click on the link “more photos” on the sidebar to be taken to the page with all the photos. On this we are trying to collate images from previous years and we currently have around 900 photos on the site!

When you go to the page you will see the most recently uploaded photos on the front. Use the “sets” option at the top to find a particular event (the most recent will be on the Flickr sidebar) and the “tags” option to view photos from a particular speaker or function. Any problems let me know.

As mentioned in an earlier post we have relaunched the Alumni Club, (well sort of!) which includes the Alumni black tie dinner happening at the beginning of March. Part of this process is to try and collect information on the Society and its past.

A main part of this process is to collect and collate photos. Linking from the new Alumni Club website we now have a Flickr photo gallery. We currently have on it photos from the last two years (and photos from term 1).

Have a look; see what we have done in the past! There are currently around 900 photos on it! If you have any photos of anytime please do send them to us. Either email them to conservative.society@ucl.ac.uk or via the link on the “photos” page on the new website. Click here to visit the Alumni Club site.

“The Alumni Club was established to assist and advise UCL Conservative Society. It is designed to help former members keep in touch and meets for a dinner annually.”

We have recently relaunched the Club with a brand new website (click “Alumni Club” on the main website) to help former members keep in touch. We are currently updating the information and will have it fully working by the end of January.

It was always planned that we would have an annual dinner and this year we are! Called the Alumni Dinner it will be open to all current and ex members of the Society. It will be a black tie dinner to be held in the Old Refectory at the beginning of March. We are receiving sponsorship from various sources and plan to make it a great night!

Guest of honour will be John Whittingdale OBE MP who studied Political Economy at UCL from 1979-82 and was President of our Society in his last year. We also hope to have our Patron Margot James attend.

More info to follow on the dinner…

In the meantime have a look at the new Alumni Club website. Term 2 event schedule coming in the next few days!