IN LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS
When reviewing the minutes of the society you can observe various epochs or stages, reflecting the moods and opinions of the time, as any vibrant debating society should do. The minutes from before the Second World War seem too pious and self-obsessed, from the fifties they seem staid and dull. The sixties and seventies have a certain radical socialism about them, not really surpassing considering those in charge at the time: Michael D. Higgins, Pat Rabbitte, Eamon Gilmore, etc.
Throughout the eighties and nineties the society seemed to detach itself from student politics as it (student politics) descended into farce. The more intense (and indeed irritating) of the maverick student politicians of those days linked the decline in student politics to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Personally I could never fathom how great ideological differences between East and West could have anything to do with our college on the Corrib. Especially when the one visible thing that the SU did during my time in college was to paint the top and bottom of every flight of stairs white which, apparently, was for the benefit of blind people.
So by the time I started in UCG it was discernible that the Lit ‘n’ Deb had disengaged itself from the unhappy embrace of the SU and its sterling work on behalf of the visually impaired. Relations between the two bodies in my time were characterised by tension, confrontation and outright hilarity, all at the expense of the SU. Much of the tension was manufactured by the Lit ‘n’ Deb committee, but all in the public interest and a necessary Catharsis for the student body politic.
Of course it would be wrong to characterise the period as downright cynical, as the only function of the society to trash the SU at any given moment. There were brilliant speakers, funny speakers. It was realised that there should be more concentration on debating than intensive student politics. Provincial school debates were set up, linked with Trinity, UCC and UCD, making the first Secondary School Championship. More teams were entered into international debates, more people attended every Thursday, night. John Sweeney, auditor of the 148th session, set-up the World Record Speaker Debate, that ran for 28 days. More of our teams won outside the college. There were Mace and Irish Times successes. There were really great debates (and more importantly hecklers) in the Kirwan every Thursday night. Justin Walsh, a brilliant contributor and elder statesman of the society, was once accused of being a Neanderthal. After giving a particularly intriguing speech someone shouted, “you’re living in the trees, Mr Walsh” to which he retorted “if you’re an example of what’s on the forest floor, then raise me up to the highest branches.” Billy Horan announced himself, in accordance with Lit ‘n’ Deb tradition on Gib’s night, by name and faculty. “Billy Horan, First Arts” was answered by the heckle “was your mother whorin’ before she was married.”
On one night we had Swiss and German television in the Kirwan for a particularly divisive divorce debate. Michael D. Higgins was set on Nora Bennis, it was rumoured she was in therapy for months afterwards but it made for great TV (having never seen the recorded T.V footage or even a tape of the debate I’m not really sure, I just love using that phrase).
Every Thursday night we commemorated a
different auditor in a debate after PMT. From week to week the deeds of our
former Auditors were made more and more heroic, reflecting the motion. So the
Dimbelby-Bodkin debates were classified as colonial war heroes to the surprise
of their surviving ancestry. But the function of all this was to encourage
formal debating in the Main Business Debates. To an extent it worked, more
So if the thirties were pious, the fifties staid, the seventies radical, since the early nineties debating was concentrated on and developed, superfluous and old dogma thrown out: adopting and extending the metaphor, perhaps we reflected in the Lit ‘n’ Deb the embryonic Celtic Club, perceiving and reforming, guaranteeing a prosperous future for those after us to boldly go……. or maybe one shouldn’t believe one’s own propaganda.
Jarlath
Ryan
Auditor of the 149th session