John Dolan: ‘Porn’ row, kissing contests... a riot! 100 years of Rag Week

For all his faults - and his political rivals would list many - few would doubt that Micheál Martin is a diplomat par excellence.

You don’t stay leader of a party like Fianna Fáil for 15 years, survive coalitions, and meet the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson without having the soothing touch in a crisis.

The current Taoiseach certainly showed his masterful grá for the diplomatic arts when it came to a now infamous Rag Week incident back when he was a fresh-faced UCC graduate.

The year was 1981 and the annual students’ fund-raising knees-up in Cork included a boat race on the Lee.

However, the usual high-jinks and tomfoolery surrounding the event boiled over into something that was more akin to a riot that December day.

A cohort of students - many surely worse for wear - went on a rampage of pitched battles, hurling eggs, flour and other items in Patrick Street. They even attacked the Lord Mayor, Toddy O’Sullivan. Utter sacrilege!

The city was in uproar at such loutish behaviour, and Rag Week was duly cancelled.

Enter diplomat Micheál Martin. At the time, he was chairman of the UCC Fianna Fáil Cumann, and he penned a letter to the Echo expressing “our unequivocal condemnation of the misbehaviour of a minority of students who attended the annual boat race”.

He added: “We condemn out of hand the disturbance and inconvenience incurred by the decent citizens of Cork city. We further condemn the blatant and direct attack on the Lord Mayor.”

Mr Martin, who had graduated from UCC the previous summer, then changed tack to stress in the letter that such behaviour “was in no way representative of the general student body” and outlined “the great work being done by many voluntary organisations operating within UCC”.

Classic politics. Don’t forget to accentuate the positive. Now Micheál was poised to end his missive with a flourish - a cheeky request no less.

He concluded: “We regret the decision by the college authorities to close the College Bar till next term. This we feel to be a punitive and reactionary decision which will punish people who played no part in the aforesaid events.”

After a lifetime in politics, Micheál could hardly have worded his letter better today. Accept culpability, stress the positives... then ask why the hell the students can’t get a bloody drink.

A vote-winner for sure.

Interestingly, this wasn’t the only time the Taoiseach had a bruising encounter with Cork’s Rag Week.

In 1995, when he was Fianna Fáil’s spokesman for education, he agreed to take part in a stunt whereby three students dressed as ‘paramilitaries’ and ‘kidnapped’ him on the steps of the Crawford Gallery.

All good fun - though considering it was the era when the Troubles were at their height, it also demonstrates how sense and sensibilities have changed down the decades.

Dress someone as a paramilitary today - more than 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement - and I suspect a good few students would demand a safe space.

The changing face of Cork - its students and the general population - can be tracked by exploring the history of Rag Week - the 2026 one took place this week - since its origins a century ago.

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Rag Weeks - a way for college and university students to raise money and let their hair down at the same time - date back to the late 1800s and early 1900s in the UK and Ireland.

Rag stands for ‘Raise and Give’, but there is a theory that the name also comes from the slang British term ‘to rag’ - meaning to tease or torment in a boisterous manner.

It is this side of Rag Week which can occasionally boil over from high spirits into... well, the kind of melee that happened in Cork in 1981.

The earliest reference to a Rag week charity event by students in Cork was in 1925, and by 1927, the Echo photographers were capturing the fun and games.

Rag Week that year was in aid of the North and South Infirmaries and Mercy Hospital, and on a Saturday in March, the city streets wore invaded by groups of students dressed to represent an extraordinary variety of characters. Two carriages were requisitioned, and onlookers were ‘held up’ and obliged to part “good-humouredly” with their money.

For reasons long since lost to the mists of time, some participants dressed as ‘his Excellency the Governor General’, ‘President Cosgrave’, and ‘the Duke and Duchess of York’ .

Rag Week and alcohol have often intermingled and in 1927, students voiced their disapproval of the forthcoming Liquor Bill, which tightened the rules on alcohol sales. The fact this protest occurred opposite the statue of the Apostle of Temperance in Patrick Street may or may not have been a coincidence.

The students also held a mock trial of the City Commissioner for some slight against medical students, and decided he be hanged! Even more sinisterly, some dressed up as ‘Al Capone’s gangsters’ - the mob boss had been jailed a few months earlier - and ‘raided’ every shop and business in the city for funds!

That 1927 Rag Week was greeted with approval by the Examiner. “There were many whose mundane worries were temporarily eclipsed by laughter at the antics devised by clever brains, and for that alone the students deserve thanks.”

In 1932, more than 250 students took to the streets of Cork in fancy dress to raise money, and one stunt involved ‘highwaymen’ extracting half a crown from motorists using city car parks. Of course, city council now does this job without the mask.

Few issues were out of bounds in those carefree days, although by 1940, the students wisely left international politics “severely alone” and confined their skits and japes to home affairs, reported the Examiner.

A highlight that year was a ‘Jack Straw’ figure who “caused many “palavers by creeping up on ladies and suddenly jangling his collection box”. Why he chose ladies is hard to fathom, but such a jape would surely not survive modern censors.

It’s fascinating to view the stuffy old Ireland of the 1950s and ’60s through the lens of Rag Week.

UCD banned the event in the 1950s because of some ‘high-jinks’ or other, and in 1968, a row erupted in Cork over the UCC ‘Rag Mag’ which was being sold on the streets for charity.

At a meeting of Cork Corporation, Alderman Stephen Barrett described its content as “unadulterated filth” and “pornography” and called on the college’s Students’ Council to apologise to the people of Cork for “as filthy a production as I ever had the misfortune to read”. I would love to see what had caused such outrage!

In 1976, a Cork letter writer railed against the decision by the Students’ Union at the University of Galway to donate over half the proceeds of their Rag Week to a local family planning clinic. This was “pandering to the permissive society”, he stormed.

The permissive society was well and truly here by 1995, when Cork’s Rag Week featured a kissing competition in Nancy Spain’s pub in which 50 students had to canoodle with each judge for at least 30 seconds - French kissing being compulsory. Each got marks out of ten for how good a ‘shift’ they put in.

Is the fact that would never happen today a sign we have gone back to the 1950s? Discuss... as they say on college exam papers.

Rag Weeks of this century have placed an accent on fun, often with an outlandish hue. An Iron Stomach competition where students drank a litre of milk through their sock, pizza eating contests, bungee jumps and abseiling down buildings... and zero attacks on the Lord Mayor!