From Burke to the Little Red Book

The day was March 3rd, 1970, and Senator Edward Kennedy was giving the bicentenary address to the Historical Society in TCD's magnificent Examination Hall. "I wish to suggest to you that the two greatest dangers to peace and the future existence of mankind in this age are the continuation of human oppression, whether conscious or unconscious, and the toleration of weapons that can destroy our earth," he told the assembled audience.

Suddenly, a shout went up from the back of the hall. "Down with Ted Kennedy - agent of American imperialism!" called a voice, filled with a fervour that could only come from long readings from the Little Red Book and too much time spent chained to railings in the cold.

It appeared that a supporter of the Maoists had hidden inside the pipe organ in the balcony and had chosen this moment to emerge from hiding. Sadly, any further efforts to berate the senator as a capitalist running dog were quashed by a number of heavily-built sportsmen, who were acting as security for the occasion. The unfortunate Maoist, now slightly the worse for wear but still determined to keep up the fight for a people's republic in College Green, was hauled in front of the waiting junior dean, Brendan Kennelly.

"There goes one of the great debaters now," noted the Senator, immediately causing the Maoist to resume his struggles and bring upon himself the renewed attentions of the sportsmen. The Maoist was duly ejected from the premises - though Kennedy invited him to come back the following night if he wanted to - and the debate continued. Those were innocent times, those halcyon Seventies days of Maoists and US oppressors, and people had to make their own entertainment.

(The Hist was nothing if not evenhanded. Peter Charleton, auditor in 1977-78, remembers the visit of the Soviet Ambassador, during which the envoy and the accompanying students were pelted with eggs and flour by pro-Chinese protesters shouting "Down with Soviet Social Imperialism!")

The above anecdotes are among a wealth of oddities in a new anthology about TCD's Historical Society, published recently by the Lilliput Press. The Hist can trace its origins to the "Club" founded by Edmund Burke and some of his fellow students on April 21st, 1747, in a house on South Great George's Street, Dublin. Burke was never absent from the Club's meetings and, in his capacity as President and Censor, appears to have exerted a considerable influence on his peers.

"For my good services I am threatened with expulsion by Burke, who is a terrible fellow, and is very active (at getting me punished) in the Club, though I have hitherto shown myself a good member," wrote an aggrieved William Dennis, one of the founder members, in 1747. "I'm now accused of a design of destroying the Club when, alas!, no one has a greater desire to preserve it."

This was the golden age of Irish oratory, exemplified by Burke, Henry Grattan and Hassey Burgh. These men laid the foundations for a tradition of university debating which led to the founding of the Hist itself and continues to this day. In 1770, the Historical Society met for the first time in the university's Common Room. Its birth was not an untroubled one: in December 1770, a reward of five guineas was posted "for the discovery of the persons concerned in breaking and abusing the tables and benches belonging to this Society".

The Hist proved an extraordinary breeding ground. Douglas Hyde and Edward Carson earned their spurs there, as did Robert Emmet and Theobald Wolfe Tone, and its auditors included Isaac Butt and Thomas Davis. It also provided a platform for Bram Stoker, Sheridan Le Fanu and the poet Thomas Moore.

In 1916, during the Easter Rising, members of the Hist were among the armed garrison which defended the college against anticipated incursions by the rebels. T C K Moore, who was records secretary of the Hist at the time, wrote: "Trinity has never passed a more anxious moment than on that fateful first night of the rebellion, when the houses held by the enemy loomed ominously over the low building, where a handful of students watched and waited for a attack; while the tramp of rebel feet and the sounds of rebel challenges came clearly through the darkness; while the outposts of the enemy rattled the gates of the College. They were not attacked: perhaps it was the vigilance of the defenders, perhaps the Sinn Fein leaders were ignorant of the small numbers of the garrison."

Moore hoped the rebels were dissuaded from attacking the college by a shared love of Trinity and a pride in the college which transcended political boundaries. The board of the college later awarded the Hist £5 in compensation for chairs removed during the military occupation of the college.

THE HIST may have often harboured radical thinkers, but it remained a uniquely male bastion for over two centuries. In 1964-65, a proposal to admit women was defeated. In 1968, a campaign of interrupting meetings was commenced by supporters of female membership. When Conor Cruise O'Brien chaired an Inter-University Debate, his daughter, Kate, and a number of other women entered the debate chamber disguised as men, then duly revealed their identities, causing the meeting to dissolve into chaos. Shortly afterwards, women were admitted to membership for the first time. In 1977, Mary Harney became the first female auditor.

Colourful characters populate the pages of this anthology. The Yeats scholar, A Norman Jeffares, auditor in 1943-44, recalls Lord Dunsany, a large man fond of hunting big game, terrorising the other guests at a Hist sherry party by waving his stick at them. Alec Reid, adjudicator at the Bicentenary Medal Debate, invited his fellow judges to deliver their verdict from the balcony of the Graduates Memorial Building, unaware of the fact that the balcony can only support two people.

Kerida Naidoo, auditor in 199091, notes that during a particularly controversial visit by the First Secretary of the South African Embassy in London, the treasurer swelled the Hist's coffers by selling membership to protesters who wished to enter the debate chamber.

The Hist is one of the world's great debating societies. The words of one of its first chairmen, William Preston, on the benefits accruing to those who take part in debates, have relevance today: "They will be freed from that faulty diffidence, that painful embarrassment, and bashful timidity, that too often attend sensibility, and throw a shade on genius; that keep modest men in obscurity, and make the wise man appear in the company of fools as the fool ought to appear in the company of wise men."

The Hist and Edmund Burke's Club: An Anthology of the College Historical Society of Trinity College Dublin, from its origins in Edmund Burke's Club 17471997 by Declan Budd and Ross Hinds (Lilliput Press, £30).