To mark the publication of Controversy and Crisis – my book of collected essays (published in July by the Academic Studies Press) that cover some of the most sensitive and divisive issues to have confronted British Jewry in recent times – I am, in the interests of historical research, publishing electronically original documents in my possession related to these topics. In 1992 the Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies at University College London (UCL) was engulfed in a series of controversies involving its internal management and its relationship with the University of London, of which UCL was (and is) a part. These events were briefly referred to in the second edition of my monograph Modern British Jewry (Oxford University Press, 1998). I was then Chairman of the Academic Council of the University, as well as Pro Vice-Chancellor for Academic Standards. I thus had a ‘ringside seat’ at the events which unfolded, but it also fell to me to deal in a professional capacity with the