Around 150 teams competed at Trinity College Dublin. The final was competed by 3 Australian teams –- Australian National University (who broke 1st), Sydney A (who broke 2nd) and Sydney B (who broke 11th). The fourth team was Glasgow (Robin Marshall and Gordon Peterson), who won the final and the championships.
The competition was not a total disappointment for Australia as the top speaker award was shared by James Hooke (NSW) (who would later win Princeton World's) and Richard Douglas (ANU). The winning Glasgow team was not actually included in the initial break as the tab system failed early on and manual calculations were used which later turned out to be flawed.
Following complaints by other colleges (not Glasgow) Edinburgh were dropped from 32nd position and Glasgow were added in and had to be woken from their beds to debate in the octo-finals. Rt. Hon. David Lange was the Head International Adjudicator, Ex Prime Minister of New Zealand, and of 1985 Oxford Union Debate famed moot on legality of Nuclear Arms.
Champions:
Glasgow A (32)
Finalists:
ANU A (1)
Sydney A (2)
Sydney B (11)
Semi-Finalists:
UNSW A (3)
Dalhousie A (21)
UCD L&H (23)
Middle Temple (10)
Quarter-Finalists:
Princeton A (4)
Hart House B (9)
Columbia A (12)
Strathclyde A (18)
UCD Law (19)
Aberyswyth A (23)
UNSW B (25)
UC Toronto A (27)
Octo-Finalists:
Middle Temple A (5)
Auckland A (6)
Cambridge A (7)
Oxford B (8)
Wesleyan A (13)
Aberdeen (14)
Cambridge B (15)
Adelaide A (16)
Hart House A (17)
Vassar A (20)
Oxford A (22)
Monash B (24)
Singapore A (26)
Macquarie B (28)
McGill B (30)
Inner Temple A (31)
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.
