3 December 1964

Oxford Union

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EMHAI

On 3 December 1964, Malcolm X addressed the Oxford Union when he partook in the 'Queen and Country' debate. He was invited by Eric Abrahams, a Rhodes Scholar from Jamaica and president of the Oxford Union. The motion for the debate was 'extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue'. Before his visit to Oxford, Malcolm had travelled across Africa and the Middle East, where he encountered Algerian resistance fighters and African nationalists. He also went to Smethwick, where he was invited by Avtar Singh Jouhl of the Indian Workers' Association, where racialised minority residents were regularly confronted with racist violence, and were contending with the election campaign of Conservative MP candidate Peter Griffiths, in what is now dubbed as the most racist election campaign in British history.

Malcolm was experiencing an intellectual and ideological transformation which culminated with his trip to Oxford, months before his assassination. The debate was also moment of national significance, as it was filmed and broadcasted by the BBC.

The Oxford Union has long been a site of intellectual exchange in which student activists have often engaged, by partaking in debates or protesting the presence of controversial figures. The Middle East Society, for example, proposed the motion 'Israel's refusal to the political rights of Palestinians has been obstructive to peace in the Middle East' in a joint event with the Oxford Union Michaelmas 1987. Their speakers included Edward Said. The only other event they hosted that term was a lecture titled 'The Role of Women in Islam', delivered by Cambridge professor Bassim Mussalam.

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Sources and Attribution

See: Stephen Tuck, The Night Malcolm X Spoke at the Oxford Union : A Transatlantic Story of Antiracist Protest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014).

JMOX SOC Box M9, Middle East Society Michaelmas 1987 term card, John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, Oxford.

Aleena Din - Aleena is a historian of gender, class and race in modern Britain. Her DPhil research, which was completed at Balliol College and the Faculty of History in 2022, focuses on the migration, settlement and labour experiences of working-class British-Pakistani women who settled in Middlesbrough and Oldham between 1962 and 2002. Aleena is the co-investigator of the community history project 'A Muslim History of Oxford', in collaboration with the national heritage organisation 'Everyday Muslim'. In addition, she is a postdoctoral research associate for the digital humanities project, 'Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1830 to the Present' at the University of Bristol (2025).

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