I BEGAN my career as an Army Cadet at the Military College in the Curragh Camp. I was the shortest member of the 66th Cadet Class – at 170cm in height – and possibly one of the grumpiest.
My incarceration in the Military College combined with intense physical training, weapons training and combat PT did nothing for my temperament.
One of my training officers observed during a performance appraisal that I was “aggressive”. The word had a certain ring to it in my mind – particularly as an aspiring Army officer – until he qualified the term “aggressive”, elaborating that I was in every sense “the very embodiment of a Jack Russell snapping at a bag of sausages”.
It was perhaps this set of terrier-like qualities that propelled my entry into The Irish TimesDebate Competition in the winter of 1989. For me, participation in the competition meant occasional escape – with my team-mate Comdt Tadhg Murray – from the medieval privations of the Cadet School to such exotic locations as UCD's LH, Trinity's College Historical Society and the King's Inns. As a military man, a threat-assessment of these venues indicated certain recurring features. In debating terms, they were no-holds-barred bear pits in which insults were gratuitously traded. One law student – now a very prominent legal eagle – informed me at the time that the debate series was "not just about winning, but about the total humiliation of the opposition".
Other battlefield hazards included vast quantities of very cheap wine which had to be rapidly consumed before a mass exodus to pubs such as the Stag’s Head or the Lincoln Inn. Eventually, on Friday, February 16th, 1990, I reached the final of the competition and debated in favour of the motion “That this house would be European first and Irish second”. My contributions were of dubious intellectual merit but were highly colourful, to say the least. One of the judges observed very loudly, “That speech was full of crudity, cheap and vulgar innuendo”.
And so it was. But, I was awarded the distinction of “Best Individual Speaker” and was off to tour America, come hell or high water. The team winners were Don O’Sullivan and Brendan Lenihan of UCC’s Philosophical Society.
The trip to the US was a blur. Don, Brendan and I debated as a three-man team, performing 15 times in different universities and colleges throughout Colorado and Wyoming over a frantic three-week period. Despite Dublin-Cork rivalries, we became firm friends.
Facilitated by Prof Gary Holbrook of Metro State University, Denver, the debate tour was the trip of a lifetime and incorporated some interesting cultural exchanges in the American mid-West.
To begin with, I was given permission by the US State Department to wear Irish Army uniform throughout the trip. Proudly wearing my Óglaigh na hÉireann uniform at one venue, I found myself introduced by our enthusiastic American host as “Tom Clonan – a prominent member of the Provisional IRA”. My UCC companions enjoyed this immensely. They also enjoyed our appointment as judges of the “Irish Festival Queen” beauty contest at the St Patrick’s Day parade in down-town Denver.
This politically incorrect contest was won that year by a young Irish-American woman whose father – originally from the old sod – warned us on the reviewing stand of “an awful death” if she didn’t win.
She won by immediate and unanimous decision – but nothing to do with his dire warnings, of course.
In 1990, I was asked by the Military College to write an account of the debate series for our class magazine. It was my first attempt at writing and recently I uncovered a copy of the piece. Then, as now, Ireland was in the grip of a deep recession. This fact is reflected at one point in the article where I wrote, “That night we stayed in a big hotel in New York and I washed my army socks in the sink: I was ready for America. The next day we flew to St Louis, Missouri, and from there to Denver. I was now sick and tired of being asked which state Ireland was in. It’s in a right state” – was my constant reply.
Despite the passage of time and the blurring of memory, two striking features of the Ir ish Timesdebate series remain with me to this day.
One was the particular kindness of Christina Murphy of The Irish Timeswho organised the tour and who derived such obvious pleasure from our youthful enthusiasm and devil-may-care confidence and optimism. I remember with particular fondness the delight she expressed on the night of the debate final at the prospect of my liberation – for one whole month – from the rigorous confines of the Curragh Camp. She told me "not to worry" about getting permission from the Army to go to the US; that she "knew people" and that she'd "spring me out". And so she did.
Sadly, Christina passed away a few short years later. The Christina Murphy Individual Speaker award is now named in her memory.
The other abiding feature of The Irish Timesdebate series is the manner in which it fosters critical thinking and freedom of expression among young people in particular – a tradition which remains very much in evidence today. As stated at the competition's 50th anniversary dinner held recently at the King's Inns – the debate series is one of those things that make The Irish Times"more than just a newspaper".