TCD SU Catering boycott 1980

Snickers Man

Need some old fogies, or perhaps some young fogies with access to student newspaper archives , to help me out here.

Fadó, fadó when I was a fresher in Trinity there was a boycott of the college catering outlets initiated by the SU sabbatical officers of the time, two of whom have since gone on to fame and fortune in public life.

Quivering with righteous indignation they demanded that students boycott the Buttery, The Cumberland, the Dining Hall and other College catering facilities in support of better quality food, longer opening hours and lower prices.

Key to the whole campaign, and the reason for its high media profile at the time, was that the bar facilities had also to be included in the boycott and the revolutionary heroes were politically astute enough to realise that this would case a dramatic fall off in support, so they decided to run their own bar.

The problem was that it is illegal to sell alcohol in premises not licensed for such activity and the JCR, the chosen venue, certainly didn't count. The fig-leaf excuse that the Union tendered "No. We're not actually selling beer; we're giving it out free but charging for hire of the glass (at a fee competitive with the then going rate for a pint in a local pub)" was clearly described by their lawyer at a Union Assembly as "Not something that is ever going to stand up in court"

So can somebody remind me: this case went to the High Court but can anybody remember did any of the Sabbatical Officers actually spend a night or two in jail until their contempt was purged? I think some of them might have done but I don't want to be unfair to anyone.

Especially not a future Minister of State later tasked with placing restrictions on the sale and marketing of alcohol products.

Grimebox

Sounds interesting. I certainly don't know anything about it. Did they succeed? How did they expect to achieve better quality food, longer opening hours in exchange for lower prices? Sounds daft to expect more for less

Kwekubo

This was when the JCR was still located in Regent House, over Front Gate. (Snickers Man, you may be upset to learn that the JCR has since been banished to the far end of College, in a new building beside Pearse Station.)

The boycott was led by the SU president of the time, a fellow by the name of Joe Duffy. He discusses it here in his autobiography.

Snickers Man

Kwekubo wrote: »

This was when the JCR was still located in Regent House, over Front Gate. (Snickers Man, you may be upset to learn that the JCR has since been banished to the far end of College, in a new building beside Pearse Station.)

Sacrilege!!

Kwekubo wrote: »

The boycott was led by the SU president of the time, a fellow by the name of Joe Duffy. He discusses it here in his autobiography.

Thanks for the link. I do remember some of the incidents he mentions. I remember the catering guy coming out and saying he'd told his boss to shove her job. He had an English accent, I recall.

And I remember the beer lorry being stripped of its contents in about 10 seconds flat. The students, mostly from the male-dominated Engineering class, had been promised a "commission" of a barrel for themselves if they managed to get the rest of the contents safely under lock and key in the Student's Union quarters so for all his socialist BS, Mr Duffy understood the workings of a good incentive scheme.

I was at the Union Assembly meeting when the Union's lawyer told the attendees that there was no chance of their getting away with "renting" the glass and giving the beer away free as a mechanism for bypassing the licensing laws. Duffy does mention that they were arrested and glosses over the fact that the "Glass-renting" operation was very short lived indeed. I couldn't remember whether he and his vice president spent a night in jail over that. He seems to suggest they didn't.

Still, it is ironic to say the least that the vice president, Alex White, who was partially responsible for running a speakeasy in the JCR should now be the junior minister tasked with "doing something about" our supposedly chronic drinking problem.

It's a funny old world!

BTW, Duffy's autobiog makes it sound like he led a popular rebellion by the student body as a whole against the stodgy college authorities but most students saw it for what it was: a publicity-seeking quest for notoriety that might prove useful in a later public career. And so it proved.

At the SU elections that year, Duffy's proteges were overwhelmingly defeated and an insipid non confrontational character became president. Alex White did run successfully for president the following year but he was a much quieter figure by then and his term had none of the posing pseudo-militancy of Duffy's year in office.

As I remember it anyway.