From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Until 1952, the University Committees and Society's Committee would not approve overtly-political groups in College. The argument was the Hist and Phil were adequate forums for debate. Because of the Catholic hierarchy's ban[1] on Catholics attending TCD, until the end of the 1960s the student body was heavily weighted with students from the Great Britain and Northern Ireland: this meant there was little involvement in local political parties.

The name of the Dublin University Fabian Society was finally accepted, after the College authorities vetoed more explicit alternatives (such as the Promethean Society and the Spartacus Society), and the Fabians were allocated a committee and meeting room on the first floor of number 4, Trinity College. The Society owed little more than a name to its London antecedent[2], instead providing an umbrella for a wide range of leftist views.

The Society became more overtly activist in the early 1960s, when it was dominated by a group which included Bob Mitchell (an affiliate of Noel Browne), Sean Edwards (Marxist son of Frank Edwards[3], the Secretary of the Irish-Soviet Friendship Society) and John Darley (a member of the British Labour Party and British Parliamentary candidate). These shared little in ideology, except espousing socialist alternatives to the Irish orthodoxy, affiliation with CND and opposed to Irish membership of the European Common Market. In 1965, Bob Mitchell (working with Michael O'Leary[4])was largely instrumental in setting-up a Universities Branch of the Irish Labour Party. Mitchell also made overtures to the Queen's University, Belfast, Labour Group to form an Irish Association of Labour Student Organisations, which would be an innovation in cross-border politics. Despite a foundation meeting in Dublin, little transpired, and the QUB contingent were soon involved in People's Democracy.

Early membership also included Sean Edwards (member of the Irish Workers Party and son of Frank Edwards), John Darley (who, as John Whysall was twice a candidate for the Labour Party in British General Elections), Rayner Lysaght (who publishes under the name of D.R.O'Conor Lysaght) and Paul Gillespie (later foreign editor of The Irish Times).