This Blog has now moved to idebate.org/worlddebating - all future posts will be made there!

20 December 1984

Edinburgh WUDC 1984

The 1984 Worlds was hosted by the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Sixty-four teams competed, and the University of Sydney beat Oxford to bring the first place honors to Australia. A number of people went to Glasgow afterwards to film “Mr. Speaker, Sir!” for the BBC. Willie Hamilton was on one side; Nicholas Tolstoi on the other, on a resolution abolishing the monarchy.

This History of the World Debating Championships comes in 3 parts. From 1976 to 1990 it is taken almost word for word from the 1991 Toronto WUDC Tournament booklet. Who wrote it isn't known but it was provided by Randal Horobik. At the start of the section on Worlds in 1981 is an extract from an e-mail by Clark McGinn, Convenor of Debates, GU Union 1980 -81 and 1981 and Convenor of the First World Debating Competition, 1981. The history since 1991 has been compiled initially by Colm Flynn and edited by many contributors to Wikipedia. Unfortunately Wikipedia deleted the history due to copyright concerns so we are back here. Hopefully anyone who contributed to the Wiki article before it was deleted will be happy to see their work preserved here.