Sir – Both Christopher Gray (Gray Matter, April 11) and Chris Koenig (The History Man, April 18) seem to think the only reasons why Oxford University’s Congregation, by a large majority, voted down the Hebdomadal Council’s proposed honorary DCL to Margaret Thatcher in 1985 stemmed from personal animus and intellectual and social snobbishness. Not so.

Nor indeed were those who voted against the proposal preoccupied with “their own self-interest”, nor narrowly with the university sector; their concern was for all levels of education and the damage that had been inflicted first by the likes of education secretaries, Mark Carlisle and, most notably, Keith Joseph and later exacerbated by Kenneth Baker and his successors, Labour and Conservative.

As for Lord Annan’s views, as quoted by Mr Koenig, Noel Annan was by 1985 out of touch with younger academics, many state-educated, many with children being state-educated, who were conscious that the teaching and research bases built up over the previous 40 years were being swept away by the corrosive crudities of marketisation, monetisation, and jagged (asymmetric) competition.

Today this continues apace, which is why in June 2011, Oxford’s Congregation carried a vote of no confidence in David Willetts, Coalition Minister for Universities and Science. As for David Cameron, no one imagines a proposal for an honorary degree from Oxford will ever come his way; and nor should it. These are not trivial matters of personal dislike but vital matters for the future of education in Oxford and beyond. Weak and impotent protests perhaps, yet protests for all that.

Bruce Ross-Smith, Headington