Deflated

He was seconded by Mr. Pottinger,

"I think ..." (more prolonged applause) "that the motion was cloudy, tangled; it had no coherence; it had, by admission extravagant phrases; it had no intellectual honesty in patches. The article had too many dirty digs; it was guilty of intellectual snobbery, whereas the amendment, now, would smooth out all these patches in the motion.

And the amendment? Asked Mr. Cohen: "Does this not deliberately contravene the spirit of the original [unclear: motion]. He suggested—without getting the chairmans support—the amendment be ruled out of order.

Mr. Goddard wasn't in favour of lying down for the sake of doing so. The amendment wouldn't smooth things down—it would rub, no, steamroller, out the whole effect of it.

Mr. Held was opposed to it—the motion and the article, we mean—and doubted Mr. Evison's imputation that the Board had prejudged the case; he asserted that he, as well as Mr. Pottinger, found intellectual dishonesty in the motion. He wasn't as flamboyant as Mr. H. Connor in his approach; a whirlwind opening question which he rapidly answered himself was followed by another question on court costs, and a suggestion that an appeal to the Council would be moving into the lion's mouth. We should forget about everything and let it lapse.

Mr. [unclear: Lisslenko] suggested that Mr. Connor was devaluing the pound; this wasn't just a token fine, and in any case, a fine of 1/- would have been far too much. The protest should be as forceful as possible: it was still a question of freedom of expression.

Mr. McDonald thought that the amendment was just a red herring and the real problem was whether we could afford to allow such a precedent. Any student could be "fined, suspended or sent down" at any time for what the Board might consider bad taste.