As party conference season approaches, Alan Thomson and Huw Richards look at student politicians of past, present and future and examine the impact of mass education on politics

In 1992, a fifth of the 130 politicians entering the House of Commons for the first time had held office in student politics. Labour MPs were far more likely to have been university union presidents, and Conservatives to have held office in party student organisations or as president of the Oxford or Cambridge Union. The route from student into mainstream politics is much changed since the war. Earlier generations in the main parties - Roy Jenkins, Tony Crosland and Ted Heath for example - followed the ancient path laid down by Gladstone and others from Oxford or Cambridge to Westminster. It is a historical quirk that no Cambridge Union president has gone on to be Prime Minister.

That path still exists, but has been supplemented, and to some extent supplanted, by radical movements in the new universities of the 1960s and 1970s and to the new strains of mass education in the 1980s and 1990s.

The octogenarian ex-premier Edward Heath is typical of the early student politicians. In 1937, he was elected president of the Oxford Union on an anti-fascist ticket and was soon to become president of the Federation of University Conservative Associations. Nine years later the Oxford and Cambridge Unions still dominated the student political scene. In 1946, Margaret Thatcher became the third woman president of the Oxford University Conservative Association, and was later to say of her time at university: "There were not a lot of party politics; I naturally joined the university political associations."

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But expansion brought change. While the likes of John Selwyn Gummer and Kenneth Clarke were busy chairing Cambridge University Conservative Association and the Federation of Conservative Students in the early 1960s, other politicians of the future went to different sorts of colleges with different sorts of politics.

New Labour is riddled with student politicians of the 1960s. Jack Straw, president of Leeds Student union in 1967 and National Union of Students president from 1969-71, led a high-profile campaign for higher grants and student enrolment as voters. Among the 1992 intake was Hugh Bayley, elected for York, who as vice-president of the NUS organised the first national rent strikes in 1974.

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North of the border Robin Cook became Labour Club president at Edinburgh University in 1965 and chairman of the Scottish Association of Labour Students 1965-66. Gordon Brown was later to become chairman of Edinburgh's Labour Club in 1971-72 and was elected rector, even exercising his right to chair the university court. Tony Blair showed more interest in theatre and music than in political organisations while at St John's, Oxford.

The Liberal Democrats too have their share of student activists. Charles Kennedy was chairman of the Glasgow University Liberal Democrat Club in 1979 and president of the union in 1980-81.

Former Liberal leader Sir David Steel was president of Edinburgh University Liberals from 1959-60 and president of the students' council from 1960 -61.

With the "massification" of ÖйúAƬ student union officials have had to develop a high degree of business acumen as well as political survival skills. Portsmouth University's student union general manager Peter Cadogan was president of the University of Wales' union at Swansea (1969-70) and in that time led the country's first two-week undergraduate strike, action which won the support of the NUS under Jack Straw.

Mr Cadogan, is now in charge of a union with an annual turnover of some Pounds 3.5 million. "The idea that somehow you were part of a movement that was set on social and political changes has almost disappeared. I saw myself as a representative of the union membership and had little interest in administration."

Presidents and their executives have been forced to apply an increasingly business-like attitude to the running of unions. This is not only because there are physically more people to cater for but also because students are demanding services offering high street-equivalent quality.

But this has not stopped student politicians from entering the fray. Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties all say they are Currently recruiting student politicians by the battalion.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW? THOSE WHO DIDN'T MAKE IT

There still lingers the question "whatever happened to...?" Specifically, the few who, for whatever reasons, shone in student politics only to vanish - at least for the present - from the political map.

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Good examples include Brian Monteith, the chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students during its controversy-dogged heyday in the early 1980s, before the federation was disowned by Tory party chairman Norman Tebbit in 1986. Former Heriot Watt student Mr Monteith is now running a public relations company in Edinburgh.

On the left there is Sue Slipman, who was the first female president of the NUS (1977-78) and a Communist Party member. Ms Slipman later joined the SDP and, having twice failed to win a seat, is now director of the London Training and Enterprise Council.

The most attractive alternative to politics has been the media, claiming a number of NUS high-flyers. Trevor Phillips, the first black president of NUS, has subsequently made a career as a television producer and presenter. Among newscasters Anna Ford was president of the union at Manchester while Alistair Stewart was a leading NUS figure of the early 1970s who never stood for the presidency predicted for him by The THES in late 1973. David Aaronovitch, president in the late 1970s, has worked in press and broadcasting and currently holds a senior post at The Independent..

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ONES FOR THE FUTURE: STUDENT POLITICIANS TO LOOK OUT FOR

CONSERVATIVE

Jonathan Morgan: chairman of the Welsh area Conservative Students (1995-96), prospective parliamentry candidate for Merthyr Tydfil and, at 21, youngest PPC in the country.

John Bercow: Federation of Conservative Students chairman (1986-87), PPC for Buckingham.

Archie Norman: chairman of the eastern region Conservative Students (1975) and likely to win the nomination to fight Tunbridge Wells.

Michael Hall: current chairman of the Conservative Students, who confesses to both political and business ambitions.

LABOUR:

Phil Woolas: NUS president (1984-86) unsuccessful Labour candidate in the Littleborough and Saddleworth by-election in 1995 and head of communications for the General and Municipal Boilermakers Union.

Jim Murphy: National Union of Students immediate past president and prospective parliamentary candidate for Conservative-held Eastwood in Scotland.

Lorna Fitzsimons: NUS president (1992-94), PPC for Rochdale.

Stephen Twigg: NUS president (1990-92), PPC for Enfield, Southgate, Michael Portillo's seat.

Paul Richards: Labour Students chairman (1990-91), PPC for Billericay.

Ghassan Karian: immediate past president of the University of London Union, resigned his post a month early to take up a job as a campaigns coordinator for the Labour Party in London.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS

Jeremy Browne: Nottingham University student union president (1992-93), PPC for Enfield, Southgate.

Justine McGuinness: stood for the NUS presidency in the early 1990s, PPC for Holborn St Pancras.

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Ed Fordham: Nottingham University student union president (1993-94), expects to be nominated to stand in Stoke Central.