Sir, To an emergent postcolonial, illiterate peasant people, Trinity was a mix of the Gough statue and the Nelson Pillar, To simple minds, "it should be blown up". To some, it was our internationally accepted precious heritage and brilliant jewel in the crown of Irish enlightenment, culture and academic distinction.
Fifty years ago, a "republican" Dail deputy proposed that Dublin trams should plough through the front gate of Trinity, trundle across the front square, cross the cricket pitch, and scurry out the back gate "to ease a then nonexistent traffic problem" - Trinity survived.
He was followed by a more dangerous bigot, a man of substance, one of Rome's "annointed", the Archbishop of Dublin. He put a curse on Trinity: it was a mortal sin for followers of Rome, under pain of hell fire, to enter it. Suitably frightened, the majority obeyed and went elsewhere. This was a serious threat, and numbers dwindled, peopled mainly by Northern Protestants, a handful from England, and a few, very few, Catholic sceptics. Numbers I believe, fell to a tiny four to five hundred students. Yet Trinity survived.
On his death twenty or thirty years ago, though centuries late, we had our own "enlightenment". No longer a mortal sin, Trinity filled with members of the Church of Rome, together with the usual few sceptics; student numbers surged to a remarkable ten thousand. Alas, few Northern Protestants. A superb, practical example of Trinity's Governing Board's capacity to adapt and survive a veritable revolution.
Shame, then, on today's parody of Connolly's Labour Party's cheap and crude appeal to a residuum of populist envy and ignorance. In their educational proposals, they now threaten Trinity's centuries old and precious autonomy.
Happily for Trinity and for her sister colleges, in their wisdom the people elected to the Presidency - the highest titular office in the Republic - a respected graduate and Fellow of Trinity College. Otherwise impotent, she enjoys the enormous privilege of saving Trinity's autonomy, simply by indicating her unwillingness to sign the Labour Party's "vandal's charter" into law. Once again, Trinity must survive.
Yours, etc.,
Cloughmore South,
Ballynahown,
Co Galway.