Foreword to the

Journal of the Literary & Debating Society

 

The Literary and Debating Society has, since its foundation, the right to publish the annual of the University College (formerly Queen’s College). This annual always had a literary content because, as our name suggests, we are something more than a debating society. This is the fulfilment of our literary obligations and I wholeheartedly commend Mr. Healy on his efforts.

 

It has been a pleasure to preside over the Society on a year when we have expanded. A year in which we have been host to both German and Swiss television, a year in which two Lit & Deb debaters won the Observer Mace: Mr. Brian Hughes and Ms. Mary Cosgrove; and five out of twelve speakers in the final of the Irish Times were from the Lit & Deb.

 

The management of the society is a collective effort. To this end, the committee of the Society deserve great credit for their performance in their respective positions. This is a somewhat poignant year in that our Patron, Dr. Ó hEocha, is to retire this April. We wish him a happy and active retirement. Personally I wish to thank sincerely my good friends Aidan Small, Enda Newton and John O’Halloran and all of 3rd Corporate Law for their support and encouragement throughout the year.

 

For me the 149th Session ends with only great memories. There is nothing like the Literary & Debating Society. The Society is unique because everyone is a member, anyone may speak. It is as open and accessible as possible, yet it retains the tradition of its one hundred and forty nine years without constraining the spirit of free speech and joviality which make it a success.

 

Last November a government minister told me it all began for him at the Lit & Deb. That same night Michael D. Higgins (Auditor 1964-65) brought five hundred and fifty people to their feet with the most impassioned speech I have ever heard from the podium. Looking back over the minutes of the Society, I found a tract from the 1860’s, a debate on the progress of the American Civil War. A speaker that night in the old Greek Hall spoke of the effect that victory or defeat for either side would have on the native Indians across the western frontiers of America. That speaker is now dead and forgotten, yet his speech is timeless, it was forty years before its time. In the Hilary session of 1932, there was a motion “that Hitler is a good and just man”; that motion was defeated. The Society has always been a medium for valid debate and discussion. Anyone who would argue otherwise would have their points repelled and their arguments inevitably defeated.

 

I have been given the task of summarising our year in this short foreword. I am at a loss, it is impossible. At the annual Siobhán McKenna debate College dinner in the Upper Aula, a toast was given in honour of the Society. The final toast of the evening went to the “magnificent edifice of the Literary & Debating Society.” All I can do now and all I could do then, was raise my glass and shout a passionate “hear, hear.”

 

J. O. Ryan

Auditor ‘95/’96