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Cambridge University Conservative Association

The Cambridge University Conservative Association (CUCA) is a long-established political society going back to the 1920s, founded as a Conservative branch for students at Cambridge University in England. It is looked upon by the Conservative Party as a stomping-ground for future Conservative politicians. It is currently the largest student party political group in Cambridge with a membership greater than CULC (Labour Club) and CSLD (Liberal Democrats) combined.

History and Activities

CUCA holds regular speaker meetings with Conservative politicians and thinkers, as well as campaigning for the Conservatives in elections and holding policy discussions. It also focuses on the social agenda for Conservative sympathisers in Cambridge, hosting assorted social events and parties, such as the termly Chairman's Dinner. High turnouts at events, especially the popular Port Parties and Chairmans' Dinners, point to an interested and active society membership.

The Association has long been intimately connected with the Cambridge Union debating society, with a heavy overlap of simultaneous officeholders in the two societies, one recent Chairman even holding the post at the same time as that of Union President, sparking frequent charges of endemic and undesirable involvement between the two. CUCA counters that many Union activists are not CUCA members and that CUCA is the only society to encourage activists to get involved in the Union as a political forum.

CUCA is reputed to have reached the apex of its influence in the 1960s, with the so-called 'Cambridge Mafia' of activists, mainly at Peterhouse, many of whom went on to cabinet careers in the Thatcher and Major governments.

Office Holders, Michaelmas Term 2008

Office	Office Holder	College

Chairman	Hugo Hadlow	St John's
Vice-Chairman	James Arthur Sharpe	Fitzwilliam
Junior Treasurer	Shamir Shah	Downing
Campaigns Officer	Henry Walton	Magdalene
Secretary	Caroline Cummins	Newnham
Registrar	Gavin Rice	Queens'
Committee	Victoria Watson	Jesus
Committee	James Shaw	King's
Committee	Bethany Williams	Lucy Cavendish
Committee	Hugh Burling	St John's

Alumni

As a long-standing and well-connected society, CUCA has produced such notable alumni as:

John Biffen, CUCA Chairman Lent 1953, Conservative MP
Leon Brittan, CUCA Chairman Lent 1960, cabinet minister and EU commissioner
Antony Buck, CUCA Chairman Lent 1952, Conservative MP
Rab Butler, Chancellor, Home Secretary, and Foreign Secretary
Kenneth Clarke, CUCA Chairman Michaelmas 1961, Chancellor, Home Secretary, and thrice leadership contender
Tam Dalyell, CUCA Chairman Michaelmas 1954, former Labour MP and Father of the House
Hugh Dykes, CUCA Chairman Lent 1962, Conservative MP who later defected to the Liberal Democrats, now a Lib Dem peer
Timothy Eggar, CUCA Chairman Michaelmas 1972, Conservative MP
Howard Flight, CUCA Chairman Michaelmas 1968, former Conservative MP
Norman Fowler, CUCA Chairman Michaelmas 1960, Social Services Secretary
John Selwyn Gummer, CUCA Chairman Easter 1961, Environment Secretary during the BSE crisis
Greg Hands, CUCA Chairman Lent 1988, Conservative MP
Geoffrey Howe, CUCA Chairman Lent 1951, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary
Michael Howard, Leader of the Conservative Party
Douglas Hurd, CUCA Chairman Michaelmas 1951, Foreign Secretary
Bernard Jenkin, Conservative defence spokesman
Norman Lamont, CUCA Chairman Easter 1963, Chancellor during 'Black Wednesday'
Ian Lang, Scottish Secretary
David Lidington, CUCA Chairman Michaelmas 1978, Conservative MP
Peter Lloyd, CUCA Chairman Michaelmas 1959, Conservative MP
Selwyn Lloyd, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Speaker.
David Mellor, CUCA Chairman Easter 1970, Heritage Secretary
Miles Millar, CUCA Chairman Easter 1989, Television Producer Smallville
Andrew Mitchell, Conservative MP for Sutton Coldfield
Archie Norman, CUCA Chairman Michaelmas 1974, Conservative MP
John Nott, Defence Secretary
Michael Portillo, Defence Secretary and commentator
Andrew Roberts, CUCA Chairman Michaelmas 1984, historian
Norman St.John-Stevas, Conservative MP
Graham Stuart, CUCA Chairman Easter 1985, Conservative MP
Peter Temple-Morris, CUCA Chairman Lent 1961, Conservative MP who later defected to Labour, now a Labour peer
Peter Viggers, CUCA Chairman Easter 1960, Conservative MP
Willie Whitelaw, Home Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister

Recent CUCA chairmen

James Wallis (Gonville and Caius, Michaelmas 2007)
Roland V. Stewart (Gonville and Caius, Lent 2008)
Michael Morley (Trinity, Easter 2008)

CUCA Controversies

It has not been without controversy over the years, with Conservative leader-to-be Michael Howard resigning in protest at Kenneth Clarke's decision to invite former British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley to speak to the association for the second year running in 1961; a more recent visit by Enoch Powell in the 1990s provoked similar resignations.

The society has, in the past, occasionally hit the headlines of local papers over electoral disputes and allegations of malpractice. In early 1998, Varsity published a story alleging that "weeks of bitter in-fighting culminated in allegations of election-rigging and a move to censure the society's most senior members." However, Varsity noted that the motions of censure themselves had no reasons formally attached to them by their proposers and that some of those who had signed had no inkling why they were supporting them other than on the word of one of the factions involved. Indeed, it has been claimed that the article is factually inaccurate in one respect, as the motions did not fail because of a technicality, but were actually withdrawn by their proposers - without a word of explanation - and without ever having been discussed or voted on in a meeting.

Indeed, 'Varsity' articles on CUCA elections have themselves come under fire. Following a 1999 article, 'Conservatives in corruption crisis', the paper was forced to print a front-page 'Rectification'. The original article included allegations of vote buying against the then-chairman. Both journalists writing the original article were prominent Cambridge University Liberal Democrats members, as was the accuser in the article.

In 1992 The Economist wrote that "competition to rise to the top of CUCA is good preparation for a political career in the Conservative Party, for several reasons. Ideology counts for nothing. What matters is knowing how to make friends and when to stab them in the back. If you cut your political teeth at CUCA, you are liable to end up sporting a sharp set of fangs." In 2005 The Daily Telegraph described the society as "secretive, conspiratorial, overcomplicated, probably calculated to benefit some chum or other, so clever that it is stupid."

Today CUCA is thriving and maintaining a substantial three-figure membership. Indeed currently the process of vote buying appears to have subsided with membership increases broadly stable across the term, thanks to changes in the constitution of the Society.