Sir – Your article Past Times (March 17) about the failure of Oxford University to give an Honorary degree to Mrs Thatcher prompts me to put the matter in context.

The proposal was brought forward by Council, but defeated in Congregation in 1985, but it was not the first time it had been discussed in Council.

Some time previously it had been decided, but never minuted, that Oxford should not honour a ‘politician’ while in office. To discover why that conclusion had been reached, we have to go back further in time to the early 1970s when a proposal that the then Head of Pakistan, Ali Bhutto should be so honoured was defeated in Congregation. That was because of his record in office, and he subsequently met an untimely demise.

It was then felt that an appropriate way forward for Oxford would be to honour its graduates whose career had been in politics only after they had demitted office. Information to that effect was transmitted to Downing Street, but it was not heeded, hence the public vote.

This time it was against a background of quite savage cuts in the Government grants to universities generally over the period 1981-5.

I am sure that if she had waited until 1992, there would not have been opposition.

Oxford’s next opportunity for paroxysm could relate to a more recent graduate, Tony Blair.

But the point that I really want to make relates to university governance, and that now only Oxford and Cambridge have structures that allow the conferment of Honorary degrees to be debated publicly. In all other universities such decisions are made behind closed doors.

Raoul Franklin, Oxford