While much of the formal and informal student life in the T.C.D. of the Fifties was modelled on Oxford and Cambridge, Trinity has never had a “Union” as the one single source of undergraduate prestige for students with an interest in debating the politics. There was, and still is, the choice between the College Historical Society, claimed to be the world’s oldest university debating society because of its foundation by Edmund Burke in 1747, and the University Philosophical Society, a debating and paper reading society with little to do with philosophy.

Both societies shared the central hall on the ground floor of the Graduates’ Memorial Building off the “Phil” Conversation Room. The Hist had its Conversation Room on the first floor. (Any reader who has seen Michael Caine and Julie Walters in the film “Educating Rita” will recognise the GMB ground floor as providing the large room in which Rita meets her tutor.)

I chose to join the Hist, going to the Conversation Room every day to read the newspapers and looking in on the occasional Wednesday evening to watch the public debate and to learn about the Society’s Private Business sessions which were restricted to members and followed the conclusion of the debate.

The organisation of the debates was very much on the lines of the Westminster House of Commons, with speakers addressing the audience from a ballot box at the head of a large table, across which Committee members, wearing gowns and dinner jackets with black ties, confronted each other.

The Chairman for the debate faced the ballot box from across another table raised slightly higher by a low dais. There would be a different Chairman for each debate, normally an invited personality of some renown, and while he – the Hist was then a “Gentlemen Only” society – would announce the name of the proposer and seconder and other speakers for and against the motion, the real responsibility for order lay with the Auditor, the chief officer of the Hist, elected annually with the other Officers and Committee, who always sat to the Chairman’s left.

By tradition, the Auditor and the other officers – a Treasurer, a Record Secretary, a Correspondence Secretary and a Librarian – all wore a white tie and tails under their undergraduate gowns.

While the public debates were often noisy and lively as the speakers contended with a degree of heckling from the floor of the House, my interest usually focussed on the quality and style of the concluding remarks on topics of political or intellectual interest by the invited Chairmen. When these Chairmen were drawn from College staff my favourite speakers were David Greene and Owen Sheehy Skeffington. Of outsiders I remember best Noel Hartnett, a senior Counsel at the Irish bar. All three have been dead for many years and because of their strong personalities are not necessarily remembered with universal affection. David Greene was probably the most likeable. He was the affable Professor of Irish who was a big man with a bushy golden beard stained by his habitual snuff-taking. He had a great booming voice often breaking – justifiably – into chuckles at the wit and insight of what he had to say.

Owen Sheehy Skeffington was the physical opposite of Greene, pale, thin, apparently fragile and looking as if sheltering behind his spectacles. In debate, however, he was terrifyingly tough and had a style of argument that could cut and wound effortlessly. He was a University Senator and spoke out fearlessly as a liberal and atheist on issues which were often taboo in a conservative and largely Catholic country. In attacking the Fianna Fáil party, and its famous leader Éamon de Valera, his tongue often assumed tones of detestation, which seemed to some to be too strong to be taken seriously. Even to me as a Freshman, Noel Hartnett’s debating style, really a cross between that of Greene and Skeffington, often generated expressions that were extreme enough to vitiate his credibility. Nevertheless, when he was good, he was very, very good. I loved the weight of voice and apparent sincerity of argument that would capture his audiences, pushing them from time to time into corners of quiet self-doubt before a carefully constructed rallying cry drew them applauding to accept or reject the motion before the House as he had advocated.

The Hist’s Private Business meetings were entirely in the hands of the undergraduate members and successive generations sought to bring their own touches to the Laws of the Society.

These Laws were a remarkable set of procedural standing orders governing membership and debate, defining the duties and responsibilities of the Officers and Committee, and regulating how motions should be proposed and seconded, with the mechanics of amendment and voting. There were also measures designed to provide disciplinary motions and to assess performance. These ranged from fines to the annual Officers’ Conduct Report prepared by a Sub-Committee chaired by the Senior Member of Committee.

In Private Business, ballot papers were distributed in which members could mark the contributions of members who had spoken on the public debate order paper. At the end of each year Officers and orators would be rated and awarded honours ranging from the “Marked Thanks of the Society” to Honorary Membership. Gold and silver medals for debate were obviously particularly valued and there was also a Maiden Speaker’s prize to encourage participation.

That the Hist’s structure worked was a tribute to the Officers, most of whom would have given a lot of time to the Society over two to three years. Honour courses in Trinity were of four years – Junior Freshman, Senior Freshman, Junior Sophister, Senior Sophister – with medicine taking several more years. I saw that a number of the Officers were College Scholars or well known in their faculties as among the best and the more interesting students. Scholars wore distinctive gowns and had “Sch.” after their names on the order paper. My knowledge of College characters came from the weekly publications “TCD Miscellany” and “Trinity News”, which often looked at the undergraduate population with the eyes of a gossip columnist.

On the one hand I wanted to be noticed and felt I could make my mark as a debater, on the other hand I felt that many of the views I held could easily appear naive, and I certainly had little experience to match that brought to the ballot box by many maiden speakers.

I remember particularly the small dark quixotic figure who dramatically launched his contribution to the debate “That this House accepts the nationalization of the Suez Canal” by the electrifying opening, “As I waded up the beach with my men under the smoke of Port Said …”

Of course the hall clapped and applauded. Here was a second year student who, because he had been in the Officer Training Corps of his public school, was a Commissioned Officer during his National Service and had led men ashore in the world’s most recent classic waterborne invasion. When I met Peter Hinchcliffe subsequently, I was surprised to find that he seemed to take his golf handicap much more seriously than his National Service exploits or anything likely to lie ahead of him in his College or professional career.

I took the plunge, making my maiden speech well down the order paper on the relatively non-controversial topic “That Religion is for the Dreamer”. I began to look forward to Wednesday evenings. Instead of going home for tea, I would stay in College and go on Commons, that is to say the formal College dinner in the Dining Hall, where grace was said in Latin before and after meals and everyone wore gowns and the staff paraded from the adjoining Common Room to the High Table. The chat on Commons was often excellent and the long tables created opportunities to meet a lot of people, particularly students from other faculties living in rooms on the campus.

After Commons I would sit through a debate and then, in Private Business, try my hand at raising “Points of Order” and “Points of Fact”. Like many Hist men before and since, I found this experience of formality and procedure invaluable in subsequent professional and organisational contexts. I learnt the importance of a well-written minute and saw how touches of wit extract the sting from rivalries that might so easily become enmities.

Read more: 1959 – A Trinity Scholar