Student clubs of all kinds compete each academic year to sign up first-years, and the long-established university debating societies have done better than most here over the decades, or, in the case of “The Hist” – the College Historical Society in Trinity – over two-and-a-half centuries.
In March 1970 Senator Ted Kennedy delivered the society’s bicentenary address on the theme of Edmund Burke. Burke’s values, Kennedy emphasised, were “decency, tolerance, reason, and respect for freedom against all onslaughts”. “Change within Western nations,” he stated, “will not come about through mindless acts of violence and disruption”. “The Hist” had been a centre of “controversy and discussion” for two hundred years, he said, and had heard, among other distinguished debaters, Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet. One member of the audience had other revolutionaries in mind when he interrupted Kennedy to shout “Down with US imperialism” – as he was carried out he declared “Long live Mao Tse-Tung”. Kennedy could have been referring to the devotees of Mao, China’s communist dictator, when he warned that “history is a harsh judge of those so caught up with revolution that they forget reformation”.
Before he gave this address in the Examination Hall, Kennedy avoided a crowd of about 1,000 by entering through a back door, but his car was briefly prevented from leaving by angry protesters, with Maoists, or Internationalists as they called themselves in Trinity, in the thick of it.
Twelve months previously the Internationalists and other left-wing students in Trinity stopped the minister for education, Brian Lenihan, from delivering a speech on funding higher education.
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The meeting was closed when he could not make himself heard above the constant shouting – various accusations were made against him, including being “an imperialist stooge”. Lenihan had to jump from a six-foot-high window ledge in order to get out of the venue.
The college apologised to him and stated that the incident was “all the more distressing” because it involved a denial of freedom of speech.
In the late 1960s, students from Berlin to Berkeley took to the streets to demand radical change. They had the White House in their sights, particularly in relation to America’s war in Vietnam, and, closer to home, the discriminatory unionist government in the North.
Despite its liberal profile, in Trinity women were subject to discrimination: they were excluded from membership of “The Hist”.
Female students protested to secure this right, and a meeting in November 1968 to debate the “concept of a just war” ended, ironically, in less than gentlemanly “uproar” – punches were thrown – during a filibuster to raise the ban on women members.
The following month the society dealt with the issue in another heated debate – blows were exchanged again – and voted by a small majority to admit female students.
UCD ranked higher than Trinity on the question of women debaters. In 1970 the Literary and Historical Society, the “L&H”, elected Mary Finlay as auditor. A student of maths and maths physics, she won the election easily. However, earlier that year in UCD there were stormy scenes at a debate on civil rights when the Unionist MP John Taylor received a rough reception. His requests for the right to speak were answered with repeated heckling and shouting by members of the Republican Club, who were not there, a spokesman said, to “play a debating game”. He did not believe that Taylor should be “allowed free speech” because republicans in the North “were jailed” for expressing their views. Challenged to justify the ban on the republican society in Queen’s University, Taylor argued that it served as a front for the illegal IRA. He made his exit safely, although rotten eggs and flour were thrown at him, thanks to the agricultural science students who had invited him to chair the event.
The tiny Internationalist group branched out from Trinity College, for a short time, and journalist Nell McCafferty later wrote that their Little Red Book became “the rage” among her circle of “leftie” media friends.
However, they encountered violent hostility outside Dublin as they attempted to preach the thoughts of “Chairman Mao”. Their bookshop in Limerick was attacked shortly after Kennedy’s visit, when two shots were fired from a passing car through the window of the red-painted premises.
Some weeks later a mob several hundred strong besieged the “commie” bookshop in Cork, chanting “we want the books, we want the books” – but not to read. At least two Maoists were severely beaten and portraits of Mao burned.
John Hume, who attended Kennedy’s bicentenary address, thought that much of what he had said about tolerance “could well be applied” to the Northern Ireland crisis. Kennedy found that Hume was the first Irish leader to understand that American politicians needed to be persuaded to take an interest in Irish affairs.
During his long career in the US Senate, Kennedy – perhaps with Edmund Burke in mind – proved to be one of Hume’s most influential allies in working toward a negotiated settlement in the North.