Ruth Kelly, The Secretary of State for Education and Skills, has refused to intervene in the dispute over the closure of Plater College, the Oxford Catholic adult-education college, whose Trustees and Governing Body are being sued by a group of some 600 present and former students and staff at the college.

According to human rights lawyer, John Rhys-Burgess, who represents The Plater College Foundation, the group formed to fight the closure plan, two known members of Opus Dei, have attempted to pressurise the Foundation into withdrawing their High Court proceedings, which began at the end of May.

One of them actually claimed that he was trying to buy the college assets with a view to saving the college but that the legal action against the college trustees was putting his backers off and tried to persuade the Foundation to halt the proceedings. "It was such a patently ruse to attempt to interfere with our legal, it was utterly pathetic. Following this incident, another Opus Dei member angrily cancelled his membership of the Foundation."

Mr. Rhys-Burgess has discovered that under 1992 legislation, Kelly's department was supposed to approve the constitution of the college but never did.

According to Dr. Kim Howells, the DFES had delegated their authority to supervise the college's constitutional arrangements to the Charity Commission. But on contacting the Charity Commission, Mr. Rhys-Burgess discovered that the Commission had done nothing until some 10 years after Plater College's designation as an FE college eligible to receive public funding, when during the course of a routine visit in 2003, it was discovered that the college's 1977 Instrument of Government was inconsistent with its 1925 Trust Deed. The college is thought to have received at least £20 million in public funding since being designated by the DFES.

The college's assets were valued in 2003 by FPD Savills at £5.5 million and are now to be sold with the proceeds of sale likely to be given to the Catholic Education Service. This is even though the Roman Catholic Church never owned the college's land and buildings and were merely its trustees.

Both the Charity Commission and the DFES are understood to be embarrassed about their negligent oversight of the college. Both are understood to be anxious to see the college closed down.

But Mr. Rhys-Burgess is not so sure whether this is solely about ministerial embarrassment..

"I suppose I could be accused of paranoia, but Ruth Kelly is a member of Opus Dei and therefore automatically to be regarded as an enemy of the college." said Mr. Rhys-Burgess.

"It is quite conceivable that she has been got at. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor and other senior Roman Catholic clergy such as the archbishops of Birmingham, Liverpool and Cardiff and Canon Tom Farrell, are among the trustees of the college that are being sued for breach of trust. After all, this is precisely the kind of sleaze that one surely expects from a New Labour cabinet minister.

These people have a very long reach and are utterly ruthless. They have even used my student records to try and discredit me, I have had to sue them personally, for libel and breach of confidence.

The clerk to the governing body of the college was such an idiot that in the letter disclosing my student file to the CES lawyer he actually acknowledged that he was acting in breach of the Data Protection Act and added that the letter should be destroyed. Incredibly, the CES lawyer then tried to use this letter to discredit me in an application before te High Court on June 6. Considering that I am understood to have had the highest academic record of any student that had ever attended Plater, this was an especially stupid, not to say vile and despicable thing for these people to do, even by their standards..

Interestingly, the prime minister's wife, Cherie Blair was president of Plater College's recent fund raising efforts and hosted an event for the college at Downing Street last year. The cost of this event appears to have been one of the reasons that led to the college's closure.

Plater has its origins as the Catholic Workers' College and its radical traditions do not sit easily with the authoritarian dispostion of the new Papacy.

Of course, this could be fanciful. It's more likely that the Catholic Church just want to trouser the £5.5 million or so from selling off the college's prime Oxford site. The spirit of Machiavelli and the Borgias is very much alive and well within the Catholic hierarchy. What contemptible hypocrites!"