Letters Editors
The Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Independent
London
Sirs,
Heavy vehicles on Oxford's lawns
Two years ago I had the honour of appearing in court against Trinity's eminent lawyer-President Michael Beloff QC, who was arguing, under the burden of "seven centuries of mystery" that the heads of the Oxford colleges are "independent contractors" with respect to their university rather than the "servants or agents" of it. In this contention he was supported by the university registrar David Holmes, who swore on affidavit that the colleges are "wholly separate entities from the university".
The case upon which Mr Beloff chiefly relied, Ready Mixed Concrete (South East) versus Minister of Pensions and National Insurance [1968] 2 QB 497, concerned a driver who operated and maintained his own bulk cement truck but painted it, under a contract, in RMC livery. The judgment in my case Malcolm versus the Chancellor Masters and Scholars of the University of Oxford Ch Div 2002 which, naturally, went Oxford's way, means that Mr Beloff's pronouncements (and, come to that, Sir Colin Lucas's) now have no university status whatever, and should thus be dismissed, in the jargon, as "frolics of their own". Outsiders may conclude that, if that is the sort of result achieved by all of Oxford's costly "polishing of outstanding teenage minds", the government should forthwith send in the tanks.
For my part, I take Mr Beloff's remarks to provide the most eloquent argument yet for compulsory, 100 per cent UK student enrolment in university degrees in golf-course management and aromatherapy.
Yours sincerely,
Andrew Malcolm