Nusight October 1969 nusight_1969-10-01

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Ireland must be one of the least-polled countries inEurope. In recent years only two public opinion pollsdealing with political issues have been carried out andpublished-both on specialised topics. Irish attitudesto the Common Market were polled seven years ago byGallup, and attitudes to the Irish language were the

subject of a poll carried out by Irish Marketing Surveys1966.

In this issue NUSIGHT presents a first instalment of the results of the only comprehensive political opinionpoll ever carried out in this country. This poll wasbased on a sample of over 2,000, large enough to givea reliable insight into the political attitudes not only of the country as a whole, but of people in different areas,different social groups, and different age groups. Thepoll was carried out by Social Surveys (Gallup Polls)earlier this year, and because of its timing it throwsremarkable light on the recent General Election. Bycomparing the attitudes of voters in April with how

they actually voted two months later, it is possible toassess the impact of the General Election campaign onthe election results. This, together with an analysis of Irish political allegiances in terms of social groups andage structure, forms the subject of this first article.

Subsequent articles will deal with other aspects of Irish political attitudes revealed by this poll. They willanswer such questions as ;-

How many people are paid-up members of politicalparties?

How many people have heard of various politicalpersonalities ?

How were the three party leaders viewed by theelectorate last April ?

What did the people know of the party's politicsbefore the election ?

What do people consider the main national and localproblems to be, and which party is seen as bestable to deal with them?

What are peoples'· attitudes to trade unions, therevival of Irish, foreign investment, the CommonMarket?

What social surveys should have priority ?

What party is the second choice of supporters of Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour?

To what media do people look for information about

politics?What papers do the supporters of the different parties

read?

How many supporters of each party are members of trade unions or farm organisations?

How many people own their houses, and how manyrent them from county councils or private land-lords?

NOTICES

The reaction to our September issuewasvery favourable.Weprinted 40,000 copies of the issue and sold out within afew days. Consideration was given to doing a reprint but ittranspired not to be feasible. However, at present we arelooking into the possibilities of publishing a pamphlet onNorthern Ireland with the photographs displayed in the lastissue. Wewill havefurther information onthis inNovember.

In the introduction to the September issue we credited John Dowling, Rosita Sweetman and David Shanks with theinterpretation of the events in Northern Ireland. This wasinaccurate. John Dowling and Rosita Sweetman assistedwith the background research and David Shank's contribu-tions wereconsidered unsuitable for publication. Weapolo-giseto thosemisled or embarrassed by this error.

The unsigned articles which are printed in NUSIGHTare

frequently theworkofmorethan onestaff member andalwaysthe subject of discussion by the entire editorial staff. Weconsider the signing of articles, with anumber of exceptions

to be generally irrelevant and often distracting.We very much regret the delay in the publication of this

issueof NUSIGHT.Wearemakingevery effort to ensurethatfurther publication dates arekept.

The next issueof NUSIGHTwill appear on November 7th.

Our readers will have noticed the price increase from1/- to 2/- this month. We hope that recent improvementsin the quality and size of the magazine will compensateadequately for this increase.



As a follow up to our analysis of thecrisis in Northern Ireland in theSeptember issue of NUSI GHTwe probedthe nature of Paisleyism, its social andeconomic roots and its religious en-

tanglements. We sketch aprofile of theRev. Ian Paisley and we do an enquiryinto the August pogroms in Belfast.Section on the North begins on Page 8.

In his lifetime Ho Chi Minh becamethe symbol of the struggle against allforms of oppression throughout theworld. We trace the history of his life

in the context of Vietnam and we en-deavour to establish his significance.Beginning on page 61.

The August crisis in Northern Irelandprovoked the most serious crisis withinthe Fianna Fail Government since JackLynch became Taoiseach. On page 3we begin an exclusive inside report onthe political battle which shook Fianna

Fail to its foundations.

On page 45 we publish an account of J. B. Keane's talk to the Monday Circle.Edna O'Brien will be the personality inthis feature next month.

Patrick Cosgrave, until recently R. T.E.London correspondent, has become oneof our regular contributors. He willwrite a monthly feature from London. This month he deals with Britain's newmorality, on page 32.



THE TUMULTUOUS EVENTS inNorthern Ireland caused the mostseriouscrisis in the Government since

Jack Lynch becameTaoiseach. Indeedon at least two occasionsthe Govern-mentwasin danger of breakingup andthat it did not do so was due more tothe, fortuitous turn of events thananything else.

On August 1, Dr. Hillery, theMinister for External Affairs,went toLondon for a "secret" meeting withMr. Stewart, the British ForeignSecretary. The purposeof the meetingwastowarnthe BritishGovernmentof the possible consequences of theAugust 12 Apprentice Boys marchwhich Dr. Hillery felt would leadinevitablyto seriousdisturbances. Mr.Stewart expressedsomeirritation withthe Irish Government's meddling in

United Kingdom affairs and he saidthat Stormont and Westminster couldhandle the situation very well betweenthem. Hillery mentioned that Irelandwould take the matter to the UnitedNations if there was any outbreak of violence. Stewart was not impressed.

The sendingof Hillery to London toconfer with Stewart acknowledgedthe

jurisdiction of the British Governmentover Northern Irelandaffairs-this wasin contrastto thestatementsmadelaterin the month by Mr. Lynch's and Dr.Hillery s own speeches at the UnitedNations. It also contrasted rathersharply with the expressedattitudes of Kevin Boland and Neil Blaney onpartition which precluded, if taken totheir logicalconclusion,anyrecognitionof the British Government's jurisdic-tion in the " Six Counties."

"Something must be done-

When the trouble broke out onAugust 12in Derry the Cabinet, whosemembers were dispersed throughoutthe country, hastily assembledon themorning of Wednesday, August 13.It remained in session for the entire

day. The reactionto the eventson theprevious day and night in Derry, inwhichthe R.U.C. used tear-gas ontheBogsidersandtherewere 112casualties,was emotive. There was unanimitythat "the situation could not beallowedto continue" andthat " some-thing must be done," but specificallywhat was not very clear. Early on itwas agreed that the army should bemoved up to the border in force-if suchaterm canbe used in the contextof the Irish army. And during the day



an order was given to the army head-quarterstothat effect. It wasonlylaterin the day that the guise of field-hospitalswasthought of.

Whileno concretedecisionwasmadeto invade Northern Ireland, it wasgenerally assumed that a decision toinvade would be made if the Derrycrisis worsened.

The reasonsfor the decisionto send

up troops to the border werefirstly toassuage republican sentiment in thecountry, and especially within theFianna Fail Party itself and secondly,to let "our people" in the Northknow that the Government of theRepublic was willingto help.

There wasoverwhelmingsupport inthe Cabinet for this decision. Blaneyand Boland, of course, were delightedthat at lastsomethingwasbeingdone-but, less predictably, the move hadthe influential support of CharlesHaughey and also of Brian Lenihanand the Taoiseach. It seems Haugheycalculatedthat unlessthe Governmentacted strongly " irresponsiblegroups"in the Republic, i.e. the I.R A., mightattract substantial public support andtake precipitous independent action. There was also a rather woolly hopethat by escalating the situation, theBritish Government would be forced

to intervene directly, as it eventuallydid.

Others in the Cabinet werelesssure.Dr. Hillery was seriously concernedthat any action of the Republic'sGovernment might only further ex-acerbatethe situation and lead to lossof life, especiallyin Belfast,which wassmoulderingat the time. In this viewDr. Hillery was supported by George

Colley. However, the Cabinet was inno mood to rationalise the possibleconsequenceof its actions-the temperwas hot and impetuous.

It was decided that the Taoiseachshould make an address to the nationon radio and televisionthat night andthe outlineof the speechwasdiscussedand agreed on by the Cabinet.

Lynch's Speech

The Government meeting endedsome time after six o'clock andimmediately an official in the Taoi-

seach's department began a draft of Mr. Lynch's statement based on thenotes of the Cabinet meeting. Thedraft was completed by 7.30 p.m.-a copy was sent to R. T.E. to be typedonto the teleprompter and at 8.0p.m.the Taoiseach recorded his, by now,historic address to the nation.

The speech suffered from the shorttime availablein which to composeitand the rather confused Cabinetdirectivesgiven to the composer.

However, the Cabinet's tentativedecisionto invadecamethrough quiteunequivocally: ". . . it is clear nowthat the present situation cannot beallowedto continue" and ". . . it isclear also that the Irish Government

can no longer stand by and watchinnocent people injured and perhapsworse."

In the first half of the statement thereasonfor concern and involvementinNorthern Ireland affairs would appearto be humanitarian, but later on thisbecomes confused with the partitionissue. The employment of Britishtroops is deemed unacceptable forreasons other that their pacifyingcapabilities. Despite this refusal tocontemplete the use of British troopsto restorelaw and order, however, thestatement then goes on in an extra-

ordinary double-think manner to againrecognisethe jurisdictionof the BritishGovernment over Northern Irelandaffairsby requestingit to apply to theU.N. for theurgentdispatchofapeace-keeping force. The logic of therefusal to accept the intervention of British troops would surely havebeen



to apply directly to the U.N. for apeace-keeping force?

This confusion was the product of the Cabinet'sdivision. Thosewhowereconcerned with the purely humani-tarian question saw that the situationdemanded British intervention-whilethe Republican element couldn't abidewiththe ideaof British troops on Irishsoil.

The excuseto send up the army totheBorderwaspathetic-but it worked.

All in all, the immediate reaction totheTaoiseach'saddresswasoneof over-whelming approval in the Republic.All the newspapers commended it andthe oppositionparties and more parti-cularly the LR.A. were checkmatedbyit. For at least twenty-four hoursLynch was a national hero of Dev-sizeproportions.

On the followingday, Thursday, theCabinet again met in the morning andthe afternoon while the troops con-tinued to mass on the border. "Field

hospitals" wereset up at Fort Dunnee(on Lough Swilly), Rockwell House(Letterkenny), Cavan military Bar-racks, Castleblayney,and Dundalk. Anarmy spokesmandenied that there wasa massivecall-up or mobilisation. Butthe fact was that the Department of Defenceand the Army Head Quarterswere in a tizzy trying to organisesufficient forces and equipment forinvasion.

The Chief of Staff, General SeanMac Eoin, attended the Cabinet meet-ing and further discussion was givento the possibility of invading, but

againno concretedecisionwasreached.It was agreed, however, that if therewas to be an invasion, which wouldhavecertainly occurred in the event of a blood bath in Derry or any of theborder towns, troops would be sentin as soon as possible to Derry,Strabane and Newry. One of theinhibitingfactorsin adecisionto invadewas the run-down state of the armywhich was totally unequipped to dealwith the only possible military con-tingency that could arise, i.e, inter-vention in Northern Ireland.

On that eveningBritish troops weresent into Derry, Dr. Hillery was dis-patchedtoLondontoseeJ imCallaghanand serious violence broke out inBelfastwhere four people were killed.

The Government met again for afull day's sessionon Friday. Tensionran high in the light of the previousnight's violencein Belfast. A decisionwastaken in the morning to call up thearmy reservists. The reason for thisremains totally obscure even to someCabinet ministers; the main onewouldappear to have been to mollify KevinBoland.

Boland storms out to mobiliseOn the intervention of the British

troopsin Derry-and theimminenceof their intervention in Belfast-many of the Cabinet ministers, includingHaughey and Lenihan, who previouslyhad considered seriously the possi-bility of invasion now ruled it out of the question. Blaney and Bolandthought otherwise and pressed for

immediateintervention throughout theNorth, including Belfast. Blaney waseventually convinced of the lunacy of this view-but Boland would not bedeterred. On realising that he wasn'tgoing to get his way he stormed outof the Cabinet meeting, nearly takingthe door off its hinges in his wake.His movements over the next twenty-four hours are difficultto track down.However, he dismissed his ministerialcar and driver and was chaufferedaround by a friend. It appears hedecided to mobilise a private army of his own, for he telephoned a number

of acquaintancesand told them to holdthemselvesin readinessfor an invasionof the North and that he would supplythe guns.

At somestageduring the dayhepaidavisit to the Park-presumably for thepontifical blessingbeforesettingout onhis crusade-and it is perhaps therethat he was dissuaded from his plans.

Hillery annoyedMeanwhile in London, Dr. Hillery

remainedunawareof what washappen-ing until lunchtime when he was tele-phoned by Lynch to be told of the

decisionto call up the army reservists.Hillery who wasto seeChalfont in theafternoon-Callaghan and Stewart be-ing away on holidays-enquired as tothe reason for the decision but couldget no satisfactory reply from Lynch.

The doctor's normally unflappabletemperament was flapped-and thiswas conveyedto Lynch.

By this time Hillery had verynearlyhad enough. He wasperhaps the onlyone in the Cabinet, with the possibleexception of Colley, who saw thedanger of exacerbatingthe situation inthe North by any inflammatory state-

ments from the Irish Government.He had constantly referred at Cabinetmeetings to the 400,000 hostages inNorthern I reland whoselives could beendangered by any aggressive noisesfromthe South. He wasinfuriated bythe decision to call up the armyreservists which he felt would haveprecisely the exacerbating effect hefeared. The thought of resignationcrossed his mind, but on reflection heconcluded that he could serve thehumanitarian cause best by continuingto exert his influence on the Cabinet.

In the afternoon he met Chalfont;the meeting was unproductive andindeed coldly hostile. Afterwards hemet the press and T.V. reporters whogrilled him on the call up of the armyreservists and Lynch's broadcast-both of which he himself disagreedwith. However, he " carried the can "manfully. In the course of a T.V.interview he said that Irish troops

would not intervene unilaterally-thiscomment evoked some criticism froma number of his colleagues on hisreturn.

On Saturday, August 16,Dr. Hilleryflew to the United Nations in New

York to request a special meeting of the Security Council to discuss thesituation in Northern Ireland.

Ireland v, the U.N.Since the late fifties, Ireland has

enjoyed a prestige at the UnitedNations quite underestimated by mostpeople at home. At that time due

mainly to the efforts of Conor CruiseO'Brien and the then Irish AmbassadortotheUnited Nations-Freddie Boland-Ireland virtually led the worldorganisation. It took bold initiatives onpeace-keeping, disarmament and, for abrief spell, on recognition of RedChina. Because of this diplomaticactivity, Ireland wasvitally involvedinthe internal politics of the U.N. andplayed a significant role in the back-roommanoeuvres of both the GeneralAssembly and, for one year, theSecurity Council.

Sincethe retirement of both Freddie

Boland and Conor Cruise O'Brien,Ireland's position at the U.N. hassagged-fewer andfewerinitiativeshavebeen taken and the bold independentpolicies of the Boland-O'Brien erahave largely been abandoned.

However, someof the old reputationstill survives-disproportionate to thecountry's size and current desserts.

It was to this environment that Dr.Hillery went for the first time asMinister for External affairs. He wascompletelyunaccustomed to the ratherpeculiar customs of the U.N. andrelied heavily on his resident ambas-

sador, Cornelius Cremin, who hadreplaced Boland, and the secretary of the Department of External Affairs,Hugh McCann.

The issue which Ireland was pre-senting to the Security Council posedproblems for the Council's members.

The majority were sympathetic toIreland and were concerned that itshould not be humiliated. Also aspractical politicians they appreciatedthe political pressures on Hillery toutilise the services of the U.N. fordomestic political consumption.



The Finnish Ambassador, Mr. MaxIakobson took the initiative andduring the few days prior to theSecurity Council meetinghecanvassedthe other members of the SecurityCouncil to agreeto a formula wherebyIrelandcouldpresentits case,not haveto suffer an adverse vote but, at thesame time, avoid the dangerous pre-cedent of permitting the internal

aff airs of a member state to be theproper subject of a U.N. debate. There was no opposition to thisformula except from the British dele-gate, Lord Caradon, who was eventu-allypersuadedto concedeby amemberof the U.S. delegation. It was onlyafter all these soundings had beentaken by the Finnish ambassador thatthe Irish delegation was informed of theagreementand it wasrelievedto goalong with it.

On the afternoon of August 21, theSecurity Council met and Dr. Hillerywaspermitted to address the meeting.His speech, which had been outlinedby the Government in Dublin withwhom Hillery remained in constanttouch (there were hilarious storiescirculatingamongthe Irish contingentat the U.N. of himon the phone at thesametimetoboth Lynch andHaughey-each offeringcontradictory advice-)was drafted by Cremin and two othermembers of the delegation, PaddyPower and Declan Connolly.

Hillery s Speech

The speech was confused, retlectingthe two prevailing strands of opinion

withinthe Cabinet. On the onehand,Dr. Hillery argued for the inscriptionof the Northern Ireland issue on theSecurity Council agenda as the sixcounties were not validly part of theUnited Kingdom and, on the other,that the issue should be discussed inthesamemanner asapartheid in SouthAf rica is regularly' discussed at theU.N. as a human rights issue. Indeedthroughout the speech the partitionissue and the civil rights question areunhappily intermingled.

Dr. Hillery's own view wasthat thecivil rights issuealsoshouldbestressed

but strongpressurefromtherepublicanelement in the Cabinet and within hisown party demanded the constantstressing of the partition question.Apart from these contradictions thespeech was a very clever one-usingformer statements of the British dele-gationand of Lord Caradonto supportitscase.

Lord Caradonrepliedin arestrainedmanner to Dr. Hilery's speech butrefusedto entertain the ideaof havingtheiteminscribedonthe agenda. The

SOVlCl: delegateMr. Aleksei Zokhanof,supported the Irish caseand then thediscussionwas adjourned unanimouslyonthe suggestionof the Zambiarepre-sentative, Mr. Lishournva Mauka. Itall wentoffasplanned. There wasneverany question of the matter goingto avote and if it had it is difficult to seehow anybodywouldhavevotedfor theinscriptionof theitem. EventheSoviet

Union could not have voted for theIrish case-for in doing so it left theway open for U.N. discussion on theinternal affairs of its own country-whichcouldbeveryembarrassing. TheSovietdelegationspokein favour of theIrish case in the knowledge that anagreementhad beenmadenot to takeavote.

Diplomatic Chaos

While Hillery was at the U.N. andindeed since the crisis first eruptedthere had been feverishly diplomaticactivity in the Irish missions all overthe world. One major problem wasthat all telephone calls to Europe-indeed beyond-had to be routedthrough London whichwasembarrass-ing. Resortwashadtothefirstlanguagebut generallyunsuccessfully. Many of the telegraphic messageswere sent incodeand in those embassieswherethecode-book could be found many am-bassadors' wives were pressed intotediousde-codingoperations.

Cabinet Volte-tace Two days after Dr. Hillery's U.N.

speechthe Government issued a state-ment on the Wilson/Chichester-Clark" Declaration" of the previous Tues-day. The statement was stronglycritical of the inadequacyof the reformplansannounced in the "Declaration".Very clearly the statement was moti-vated by a concernfor civil rights andless pre-occupied with the partitionissue-though it wasmentioned. Thisreflected a change of attitude by theGovernment which had been comingabout sincethe British troops entered

Belfast. Haughey and Lenihan hadabandoned Boland and Blaney on thehawklimb and had to swingaround infavour of doing a deal with Britainwherebycivilrightsin Northern Irelandwould be guaranteed. This was thetheme of the Taoiseach's speech laterin Tralee. By this time the Cabinetcrisiswasover. Bolandwasisolatedonhis own-abandoned in his madnessevenby Blaney-and the split betweenHillery and Lynch had been healed bythe changeof mind.

Lynch weakened Thougn Lynch's position publically

was much enhanced by his famoushard-line speech of August 13-hisposition within the Cabinet is muchweakened. Hewasconf usedandbaffledin the height of the crisisand virtuallyabdicatedleadershipto Haughey. Thelatter's position in the Governmentstrengthens it seemsdaily. Heis by far

the most capableand by now themostrespectedmember of it. The Cabinet'sreliance on him in time of crisis isremarkable in view of many of itsmembers' deep hostility to him a fewyears ago. Even Colley now acknow-ledgeshis leadership.

Hillery has also emerged as quite aforce--and it isnow believedthat weretheleadershipissueto ariseagaininthenear future-he would be in a verystrong position despiteHaughey's cur-rent dominance. Hillery is deceptivelyquiet and manages to hide a pene-trating intellect and deep-rooteddeter-mination.Wecouldre-acquireaforeignpolicywithhiminIveaghHouse.

Lenihan islikelyto becomethe chief " machinator" in the Cabinet. Hisdemotion f rom education has rankledhim and his new job as Minister for

Transport moreover, simply doesn'tadequatelyengagehismanycapabilities.Hewill therefore have a lot of time to"play politics" which won't be toLynch's advantage. The latter wouldbe well advised to promote him to atime-consumingpost e.g, agriculture-whenthenext cabinetre-shuffleoccurs.

Inawaythiscrisisrepresentsthelastdeath-throe of the republican element

withinthe Fianna Fail party. The onlyremaining republicans, Blaney andBoland, wanted to make the ultimate'gesture-perhaps more out of a des-perate assertion of their republicanismthan a convictionthat what they advo-cated was right. The mohaired suitbourgeoiselementwhichLemassintro-duced in the early sixtieshas nowtotalcontrol of the party-but through abrilliant piece of political shadow-boxinghas deceivedthe electorateintobelievingotherwise.

Special Branch in league withR . U . C .

One final observation on the North.Members of the Government are nowassertingthat they were in touch withwhat was happening in the norththrough fif ty special branch menstationedthere. The fact isthat where-as there weref ifty special branch menin the north they were helping theR.U.C. to identify LR.A. men.

Who runs this country anyway!



THE NORTHERN CRISIS STILL SMOULDERS THE SITUATION in the North isnow more gravethan it has ever beenbefore. When trouble broke out inearlier decades it cost many lives butrapidly dwindled in intensity. Formonths now, despiteamassivedeploy-ment of troops, trouble has continuedand even spread. In August troublewas mainly confined to two areas of Belfast: the Falls Road area and theArdoyne area. Sincethen the AntrimRoadandthe Ballymacarrettareashavebecomeincreasinglyinvolved. No weekhas passed without a major incident.

Tear-gas has been used on three separ-ateweekendsagainstProtestant crowds,and many of their leaders, includingPaisley and McKeague, have beengassed. The Sandy Row area is nowthe only Protestant working-class dis-trict which has not seen direct con-frontationbetweenlocalsandthetroops.

The trouble has not only includedsporadic bursts of vandalismand loot-

ing but has involvedthousands of Pro-testants of all ages, whose deep angerand humiliation worsens with eachsuccessiveweekend. This anger whichis directed at British troops ultimatelyinvolvesthe Britishgovernment.

Callaghan tendentiously

distributes blame

Callaghanhas clearly recognised theimmense danger to British prestigeimpliedinthiscontinuedstreet-fighting.At the Labour Party Congresshe madea deliberate attempt to conciliatePro-

testant opinion by trying to distributeblame in a highly tendentious manner.

This points to his awareness that theProtestant right-wing has been im-measurably strengthened by the in-volvementof the British troops.

Belfast cannot be quietened. Thetroops are caught in an extremely del-icate position. When they attemptedto conciliateopinion in Belfast by re-fusingto enforcelawand order tensionwas created by their obvious inabilityto protect the Catholic community.When they decided to baton and tear-gasProtestantcrowdstheyfurther deep-

ened Protestant animosity. Either waythey haveonly managed to worsenthesituation. The only way the troopscould have stopped riotous assemblyand agitation in Protestant areas wouldhave been to occupy all Belfast byforce, thus paving the way for a fullscaleinsurrection. Becausethey couldnot do this they have been forced toallow Catholics to protect themselvesand have consequently appeared part-isan.

Before Callaghan's first visit to the

North, Stormont had agreed to passdiluted reforms based on new gerry-mandered local councilsandonreducedpower in local government. However,the visit had the effectof makingthesereforms appear to be a concessiontoBritain.Callaghan'sestablishmentof theHunt commission appeared to be a

direct threat to the Protestant militia,who have been the bastion of securityfor the Protestant working class andprovided employment and flattery forhundreds of Protestant working-classyouths.

The Stormont Government hasbeentotally alienatedfromthe movementof Protestant reaction. Chichester-Clarkcan no longer make speeches blamingthe I.RA. or speeches attacking thedemand for certain civil rights. Partof the price for his survival has beenthe winningof unanimous cabinet sup-port for highly unpopular measures. The prestigeof the government amongthe rank and fileof the R U.C. must beat anall-timelow.The Governmentcanno longer gain support by forcingmil-itant confrontation with the largelyCatholic civil rights movement. Theabsurd posturing and repression whichhelped make Stormont appear to beaccepting its demands while crushingthe movement has all stopped. Nowthe reality of Stormont's sell-out toCatholic militancy confronts the Pro-testant right-wing.

Labour must pretend

British imperialism dead The basic contradictionin the North

is that Britain is being forced to act ina waywhichmakesthe situation worse.If Britain in previousperiods oftroubleallowedthe Orange militia to terrorisetheCatholicpopulationintosubmission,it cannottoleratethis any longer. TheLabour governmenthasto pretend thatthe era of British Imperialism is deadand the interests of British capital liein a stable, integrated society and notonedominatedby local factory-owners.Britain has accordingly supported theCivil Rights Movement. It cannot

draw back when the unrealised powerof Protestant reaction has revealeditself.

All this means that decisions affect-ingthe future of the North cannowbetaken by the extra-parliamentary Pro-testant street militia. The extremeright has the support of overwhelm-ing numbers in Belfast and the parlia-mentary forcescannot affectthis polar-isation. If there is another pogromthepossibility of a British takeover of Stormont cannot bediscounted.

In the last year Britain has reversedstands it has taken on the North forfifty years. Westminster has createdthe precedent of discussingthe North.It has openly intervened in internalmatters in Northern Ireland even if it has not yet admitted it. BecauseBritain nowdiscountsthe possibility of

a completetakeover doesnot invalidateits feasibility. The stage is rapidlybeingapproached where two crises arebeingreached simultaneously.

Firstly Stormont may reach a pointwhere it will have to openly oppose aa British diktat to preserve any cred-ibility with its supporters. This couldoccur on a number of issues such asthe recompositionof the B Specials orthe continued existence of "FreeDerry" and "Free Belfast." Suchopposition would not be a declarationof U.D.I. but it would have the sameeffect. It would precipitate a consti-tutional crisis.

The secondcrisisis dangerouslynearalready. A point isbeingreachedwhereto stopa further outbreak of Protestantrepression and dissidence in the ranksof the troops, the British military mayhave to place all Belfast under armycontrol. This would havethe effectof

jeopardising police loyalty to the con-stitutional government and of creatinga stateof open rebellion among thous-ands of Protestants. Every week moredrastic measuresare beingtaken by thetroops. The logical end of this escala-tion is military occupation of the city.

Catholic bigotryAnother problem for Britain in its

efforts to contain the situation is the'evidence of galloping bigotry amongCatholics. The kickingof awell-knownPaisleyiteProtestant to death in Derryremoves a strong misconception. Onehope for peacein the past wasthe lackof real provocationof theProtestants bythe Catholic community. The fearwhich the fascistsplayed on in Augustwere fears of a Southern invasionandof adefeatedRU.C. in Derry. But theprovocationof aProtestant beingkilledbyaCatholicmobisveryreal andmakes

it highly problematic that Catholicswill continue to direct their bitternessagainstthe Unionist governmentratherthan the Paisleyitedespoilers.

If the Paisleyiteforcesof the U.V.F.and the local Belfast defence commit-tees unleash their forces they maybring Stormont tumbling down inruins and like Samson destroy them-selvesin theprocess. Somuch dependson whether Paisley and his men knowhow near they are to forcing a totalabolitionof Unionismon Westminster.



"THE PROTESTANT PEOPLE of Ulster are seeingthe wonderful worksof God this very hour-Jesus standsamong us-he has risen us up to fightthe forces of Romanism and all itsallies."

" Hallelujah.""Our cause is righteous and is

washed in the Blood of the Lamb."Shouts of " Glory" interspersed withlowmurmurs of " Praisethe Lord."

"We are here to DEFEND theGospel-not to preach it like Simmsand Gallagher. Wewill defend it withour blood likethe martyrs of old whowould not bowto the forcesof Popery,and the scarlet whore drunk on theBLOOD of the Churches."

Paisleystoodamong his own people

in the Ulster Hall. He had just re-turned fromhis trip toAmericaand hefaced his normal congregation of welldressed,dowdypeopleandyoungthugswith Clyde Valley badges standing intheir midst. His messagewasaroaringmedleyof hatred andself-preening. He

pleasedeverybody."Let us pause now for prayer-rememberingthose who haveleft us inthe last month-J ack Todd murderedby Fenians after talking peace and

Jack Linton shot by a mob of Papistsburning and lootingProtestant homes.As wepausebeforethe majestyof Godwe know in our hearts we have nodefenceexcepttheall-conqueringpowerof God's Grace-Thank God westand

justified and Righteous in the face of

the Lord. He has conqueredthe forcesof the Confessional and he willCONQUER AGAIN."

"NO SURRENDER."Ian Paisley is at the moment the

most influential person in NorthernIreland. For twenty years he has

excitedthe people of the workingclassareas of Belfast with his incrediblemixture of religion and politics. Henow has an audience of far greatersignificanceand size than the congre-gation he held transfigured in theUlster Hall, he leads the people whoneither understand or approve of thetumultuous events of the last year inUlster, and who are likely to be thedominant forcein Northern Ireland inthe near future.

IAN RICHARD KYLE PAISLEYwas born, reputedly in Armagh,in 1927. His father, the Reverend J.Kyle Paisley,wasa Baptistpreacher inBallymena, where he later formed abreakawayTabernacle. Paisleyworked

as an assistant in a bakery shop and issaidto havestarted preachingin 1943,at theageof sixteen. That sameyearheenrolled at the Theological Collegeof the Reformed Prebyterian Church inBelfast, where he completed a three-year course in 1946having passed hisexaminations with credit and havingbeen highly commended as a studentand a preacher of the Gospel. By thistime his brother Harold SpurgeonPaisley,whohadbeenintheR.A.F. and

10

theMerchantNavyduringthewar,hadgivenup apost in the R.U.C. to takeupan evangelicalcareer.

In 1946hewasordainedby hisfatherand beganapastoral careerinthe dock-landsareainBelfast,wherehisoratorical

abilities won him the attention of Unionist M.P.s. He found time tocontinuehis studiesattheBarrieSchoolof Evangelismin South Wales, at thePioneer Theological Seminar in Illinoisandat theBartonCollegeandSeminaryat Monitou Springs, Colorado, wherehereceivedhis M.A.

By 1951Paisleywasconfidentenoughof his ability to rally support fromthedividedPresbyterian Communityto setup his own Free Presbyterian Church

in the Ravenhill area of Belfast. Theoccasionwasthe refusal of the presby-tery of LissaraPresbyterian Church inCounty Down to allowPaisley the useof their Hall for prayer meetings. Theensuing split in this and other pres-

byteries provided Mr. Paisley with hisinitial support.

Consolidated his support

During the fifties he gradually con-solidatedhis support, devotinga lot of his activitiesto attempting to convertCatholics. Someof theseactivitiesledtothe kindof publicitywhichwaslaterto characterisehis career. He formedthe Ulster Protestant Actionmovementin theBelfastaircraft factory,under the



patronage of Rear Admiral Slattery. This movement, which subsequentlyspreadtotheBelfastshipyards,was "anecessary counter to Roman CatholicAction" aimedat convertingmembersof the Catholic working-class.

In August 1956, Paisley marriedEileenEmilyCassells,amember of thePlymouth Brethren, in Belfast. Theservicewasperformedbyhis father andthe best man was Rev. J ohn Wylieof

Ballymoney,who had already becomePaisley'sright-hand man.

Paisley'sfirstmajorburst ofpublicitycamein 1956when it was allegedthatthe proselytising activities of UlsterProtestantActionoversteppedthemark.At ameetingoutsidethe Ulster Hall on

Thursday, December 20, 1956, arecordingwasplayedwhichwasclaimedto be the voice of a fifteen-and-a-half year-old,Maura Lyons, The voicesaidthat at an early ageshe had decidedtobecomea nun, but while"training" foraconventlife shehadmet somefriendswhohadimpressedher. They madeher

feel that hers wasa religionof fear andtheirs was simple and free from fear.After she had told her parents of her

doubts she returned f rom work oneOctober evening to find two priests inher room. Sheescapedfromher houseand met Mr. Paisleythat evening. Thisannouncement was greeted with chor-usesof "Glory" and "Hallelujah" fromthe packed congregationin the UlsterHall.

The Court case which ensued washeld in camera and a writ was

issued forbidding the press to harassthe girl or make any further invest-igations of the case. Paisley's re-

joinder was, "the police say 'you arecommittingan offence' (i.e, in refusingto divulge her whereabouts). Verywell, I am committing an offence. Iwill dotimefor it. I will beproud to dotime for Protestant liberty." Later at aLabour group meeting in Queen'sUniversity on the question of UlsterProtestant Action, Paisley, referring tothe Catholic Church "as a past masterat hidingitsownguiltby accusingthosewho opposed it of every intoleranceof which it was guilty itself," added "if

you want to ask Maura Lyons aboutthat you will find her in a Conventsomewhere."

Third appearance in court

In 1959, after one more abortiveappearance in court this time atDonaghadee in 1957, Paisley becameinvolvedin a court casewith the Rev-erend Donald Soper, a peer and an ex-Moderator of the Methodist Church inEngland. The case arose out of dis-turbances at Ballymenawhere a meet-ing addressed by Soper on August 1

had been interrupted by heckling, anda bible and a rosary being used asmissiles to dislodge Soper from theplatform. Leafletshad also been dis-tributed condemningthe speaker. Thecourt case consisted of attacks byPaisleyandhis supporters on Soper fornot believing in the Virgin Birth, towhich Soper replied by calling them"intellectual rabbits." Paisley, Wylieand the Reverend H. V. McGowan,who were represented by DesmondBoal Q.C., wereeachfinedfivepounds.PaisleyclaimedhewouldhaveaffordedSoperthe right of freespeechif hehadcome" as an infidel, not as a Christianminister."

Paisley's main activities up to thispoint had been mainly directed at



---------------------CURRENT AFFAIRS------------------- __

liberal tendencies in the ProtestantCommunion. This had become apolitical consideration when LordBrookeboroughhad failed to dismissfrom the Unionist party the "radicalelement" represented by Bryan Mc-Guinness and Sir Clarence Graham.In September 1959Paisleywashimself considering standing for election inEast Belfast,claimingthat hehad been

approached by "a few influentialpeople." However, later in the monthhe dropped this considerationand re-verted to his old tack of protestingabout tricolours, cribs, Nativity playsand the idolatrous celebration of suchfestivalsasChristmasandGoodFriday.

These festivities were not in keepingwith" our protestantism." I amproudto saythat my Church is oneof the fewthat hasnoServiceonChristmasDay."

Paisleyoften gainedpublicityat thistime by the bizarrenature of his pro-tests, such as his encounter with Dr.McLeod whowasHeadof themonasticPresbyterian Iona Community andwasparticularly distasteful to Mr. Paisley.

The ex-Moderator of the Church of Scotlandwas addressing a meeting inOctober 1960,whenPaisleyandWyliewho were present charged him with"being out for unity with Rome."Aftertheshowingof afilminwhichtheartistic works of the Iona Com-munity were exhibitedPaisleyclaimedhehad seena statueof theVirginMaryin the exhibition. Bedlambroke outin the audienceand onemember com-mented that "it looked more like anatom bomb with a dove on top," towhich Paisley rejoined that the film

had been shownthe wrongway rounddeliberatelyto confusethe audience.In the course of the 1960's the

activities of the U.P.A. had becomemore definitely political. DesmondBoal wassupportedinageneralelectionin 1960. He was" amanwhoput pro-testantism first-not like those whobecome Protestants and Orangemenwhenthey arelookingfor nomination,"Paisley said at an electionrally in hissupport. Paisleythen added that Boalwould take a harder line on domesticissuesthen Lord Brookeborough.

A walk through bloodIt was at this time that Paisley

developedhisgreatcontrol ofaphorism.At the meetingin support of DesmondBoalhesaid" our Fatherswentthroughblood, surely we can walk throughsnow." Later in QueensUniversityheannounced "this place is full of papishes," At the same meeting re-ferring to the Pope he declared "Ihave hated God's enemies with aperfecthate."

About this time Paisley's activities

12

began to upset the General Assemblyof the Presbyterian Church. Paisleychallenged Dr. Austin Fulton, theModerator, to substantiatein Court hisclaims that things were " going on inNorthern Ireland which point to theexistence of something not unlike afascist movement" and that "withinthe ecclesiasticalspherebraveandbolddemagogueswouldslander and libel in

a fashion that is possible for thembecause there is little fear of legalaction." Paisley took up this fascistchargeandused it to describe RomanCatholicism,the I.R.A. and the WorldCouncil of Churches. In 1961 theEcumenicalmovementbecamethemainpre-occupationof Paisley and his sup-porters. Paisley was particularly dis-turbed that" theArchbishopof Canter-bury had gone to swimin the unholywatersof Rome."

First visit to the VaticanHowever it was not until August

1962 on the occasionof the openingoftheVaticanCouncilthatPaisleymadehismomentousvisittoRome. Claimingthat his real protest was directed atProtestant ministers selling out toPopery on the Reformation, he addedthat the Pope could have as manyCouncils as he wished. However hedid send a telegram to the Pope toinformhim that his " claimsand doc-trinesarecontrarytotheWordof God."

PaisleywasfollowedaroundinRomeby "guards of the Great Inquisitionand by the Pope's Gestapo," and hisdistribution of leaflets and ItalianlanguageBibleswasintercepted by the

Romanpolice. Onhis return toBelfasthewasescortedto a policestationandquestioned, he organised a protestmarchto the Italian Consulateand theBelfast Telegraph, posters were stuckon B.B.C. saying" B.B.C.the Voiceof Popery " and he releaseda colour filmentitled "In the hands of the Pope'sGestapo."

On June 4, 1963,the UnionJack onthe CityHall wasloweredonthe deathof Pope John XXIII. This provokeda protest march by Paisley and hisfollowers. The march wasbanned andPaisleywassubsequentlyarrestedunder

the Special PowersAct. This wasthefirst occasion that this Act was usedagainst a Loyalist parade. WhenPaisley refused to pay a fine of tenpounds, choosing to undergo the twomonths jail sentence instead, the finewas mysteriously paid for him. LaterPaisley claimedthat hehad conclusiveproof that the fine was paid by theGovernment and sent a telegram of gratitudeto Captain O'Neill.

Fromthis period Paisleybecameanincreasingly serious political figure in

Ireland. In the last fiveyearswhilehehas continued to agitate consistentlyabout ecumenism and on religiousissues his public demonstrations onnon-religiousissueshaveassumedmoreand more importance. During thegeneralelectioncampaignof September1964,Paisleydemandedthat atricolourflying from the Republican head-quarters at Divis Street be removed.

Shortly afterwards, James Kilfedder,the Unionistcandidatein West Belfast,sent a telegram to Brian McConnellthe Minister of Home Affairs, whichsaid" Removetricolour in Divis Streetwhich is aimed to provokeand insultloyalists of Belfast." Paisley thenannounceda meetingat the City Hall,to be followedby a march. At exactlythesametimetheR.U.C. usedpickaxesto break downthe door of the Repub-lican headquarters and seize the tri-colour. Next day the tricolour wasreplaced and severe rioting began inDivis Street whenthe R.U.C. returnedto removetheflag. This continued allnight and thirty people had to receiveurgent hospital treatment. On October16thKilfedder waselectedwith a6,000majority and proceeded to thank IanPaisley "without whose help it couldnot havebeen done."

Protest at cross-border meetingsNext year sawthe first of the cross-

border meetings between O'Neill andLemass. Paisleyprotested, carried onan extensivecampaign and called forthe removal of O'Neill fromofficefo,havingbetrayedtheUlster Constitutionby meeting the Prime Minister of the

Republic. Paisley formed the UlsterConstitution Defence Committee "sothat the enemiesof the provincemustsee, by a massiveoutward demonstra-tion, that Ulster Protestants would notsurrender to Rome or the Republic,nor will they toleratethesebetrayalsbypoliticians or clergymen." About thesametimehe formed a personal body-guard which was later to become theUlster Volunteer Force and be dis-owned by Paisley. In 1966 Paisleyreached a peak in prestigeand popul-arity whichhedid notreachagainuntilthe secondhalf of 1969, Through the

firstpart of the year hecampaignedfora ban to be imposedonall demonstra-tions marking the 50thanniversiary of the Easter Rising, which he called a" rebellion" and " a stab in the backfor the Empire." This campaignfailedand Paisley bitterly villified CaptainO'Neill for" shakinghands with menwho were covered in the blood of Britons." He claimed that "overEaster the soil of Ulster wasdesecratedbythe rebels."

(continued on page 77

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-------------------CURRENT AFFAIRS

The Phenomenon of Paisleyism

THE ANSWER to Paisley's rise inpublic favour lies, of course, to a largeextent in his personality. But whileevery fascist movement similar toPaisleyism needs the dynamism andattraction of an intelligent demagogue,its source lies fundamentally in the

political forces which give rise to themovement which the demagogue domi-nates.

Paisleyism started as a purely re-ligious phenomenon. It representedthe reaction of Protestants to newdevelopments in Ulster and in theworld.

In the early 1960s the Vaticanradically altered the intransigent mono-lithic attitude it had consistentlyadopted in the twentieth centurytowards other Christian denomina-tions and the secular world. Thischange was occasioned by a crisis inthe Catholic Church which was re-

vealed in the Vatican Council.In western Europe the number of

practising Catholics had fallen to atiny fraction of Church membershipand in the Third World, a resurgenceof national consciousness created greatstrains for a Church still relying on analien, missionary clergy.

This forced even conservative Bishopsto face the evident contradiction be-tween the absolute claims of Catholic-ism and its increasing lack of absolutepower in the world. The documents of the Vatican Council were generallyaccepted as a genuine attempt by the

Catholic Church to become morerelevant and other Christians realisedit had made the task of all the Churchesa good deal easier.

In the North, it was not seen as suchby many Protestants. Already inOctober, 1962, Mr. Paisley was dis-tributing anti-Papal pamphlets duringthe Council in Rome and in Naples. The Catholic Church remained strongin the North. While it was excludedby the State from spheres such ashousing, business and higher educa-tion it remained in control of Catholiceducation and some allied social ser-vices. It still held a position of social

and cultural controller of most Catholiccommunities, especially in rural areas.

The Church still filled a political gapcreated by the weakness of the Nationa-list opposition. Furthermore thesincerity of the Catholic hierarchy inaccepting the thaw in Christian rela-tions was validly questionable.

Anti - EcumenismIt was at this time that Paisleyism

developed. The Protestantism of a

section of the poorer working class andthe small businessmen of Ulster hadensured the economic dominance of these groups over their respectiveCatholic counterparts. The ecumenicalmovement united the Protestant pettybourgeois and the unskilled working

class. These groups quite erroneouslybelieved that the ecumenical movementwas a sign of the economic integrationof Catholics.

They saw their patronage in con-tracts, leases and rents and, for theworking class, in jobs as gravelythreatened. This was especially trueof militantly Protestant areas in Bel-fast such as the Shankill. Many of itsinhabitants worked in exclusively Pro-testant factories. Its shopkeepersdepended on retaining an exclusive,highly Protestant community to keep aregular fund of customers in the faceof supermarkets which radically under-

cut them. This reaction to ecumenism was

greatly helped by two other factors.Many Protestant clergy openly acceptedthe ecumenical movement. They hadnever been Evangelical Protestantswho believe in the classical KnoxianCalvinism which accepts the doctrineof individual " election" by God andthe consequent damnation of allCatholics. But to the ordinary Pro-testant layman, the difference betweenamoderate Protestant theological stanceand an Evangelical one was difficult tograsp. The ecumenical movement

made the difference evident for thefirst time. Those who acceptedecumenism were selling out on theirflock.

The seriousness of the reaction to theecumenical movement's acceptance bythe Protestant Churches was clearlyshown in 1965. Paisley led a marchon the Presbyterian General Assemblywhich was being held in Belfast. Onthe way, there was a riot as the marchpassed through the Catholic CromacSquare area. At the Assembly buildingthey clashed with the R.U.C. andabused the Governor of NorthernIreland who was attending the Assembly.

The effect of this was such that theminister of Home Affairs, M.McConnell, who had permitted themarch, was sacked in the followingmonth.

Working-class Protestants have alwayskept a sharp watch on their clergy andhave a good deal of control in theirappointment and removal. The clergy-man is their class leader and is thehead of the community, but they know

he is economically dependent on hisflock to live.

Paisleyism, in this aspect, oftenoccurred in nineteenth-century Englandas arevolt against the clergy. This revoltturned to another "elected" clericaldemagogue as a substitute. Paisleyism

has many of the facets of revivalism andis ledby typical products ofthe revivalistfringe of the Churches.

The acceptance of the ecumenicalmovement by the World Council of Churches and by all the main Pro-testant Churches in Ireland, exceptthe Baptists, emphasised even furtherthe difference between the localChurches in poorer areas and thegeneral leadership.

Cross-Border MeetingsAnother factor in the rise of Paisley-

ism was the cross-border meetings of the two premiers. This was occasionedby a need for economic co-operationbetween both states and by a need tomoderate the demands of nationalismin an effort to attract foreign capital.It did not mean that the Unionist

Tegime intended to give economicfavours to Catholics in the North. Itintended no such thing, but it was

seen as such.O'Neill's softness on the South was

linked in Paisleyite thinking to the

Protestant Churches' softness on Pap-ism. An element of nationalism wasadded by the international religioussituation. Ulster was accepted by

Paisleyites to be a last bastion of Pro-testantism in the face of a great, inter-national sell-out which had pervadedeven the Church of England. In 1967Paisley called on " 100,000 Orangemento protest against the RomanisingBishop of Ripon." Paisley has fre-quently attacked the Archbishop of Canterbury in L ondon. In 1966 hetried to gain admission to Rome toprotest at the meeting of Pope Paul andthe Archbishop of Canterbury. Thenhe said "The Archbishop of Canter-bury is a traitor. He has broken theConstitution and the Articles of Faith."

This combined provincial national-ism and fears of an international con-spiracy within Protestantism. Paisley'sideology is suitably smothered incharges of a sell-out on all formerlywon privileges. In this way' Paisleyhas formed a powerful fascist ideology.Even in the religious sphere in itshostility to change and in its desire toretain former special privilege, it ispsychologically suited to the Protestantshopkeepers, businessmen and workers

13

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--------------------CURRENT AFFAIRS--------------------

who did not gain from the economicgrowth of the North in the 1960s.

The Unionists in times of crisis had

extended patronage to Protestant clergy

in order to encourage Protestants to

attack Catholics. Before 1922, Cookeand Hanna had been encouraged by

the Ulster landlords and businessmen

to exacerbate sectarianism. This had

the desired effect of making a united

Ireland impossible. After Home Rule,

they had encouraged clerical dema-gogues to provoke sectarian troubles to

strengthen Unionist control at times of crisis.

Paisley had no such encouragement.

Catholic labour, employing higher

automation and by utilising foreign

subsidiary units. This was especially

true of the vast investment in Northern

Ireland by Courtaulds which affected

or took over many of the older Orange

linen mills. The effects of foreign

capital was to an extent offset byUnionist discriminatory economic

policy. Genuinely attractive areas

such as Derry and Newry which had

cheap labour and little competition onthe labour market were ignored.

But by sending industry to Pro-

testant towns, a huge divergence of interest between Protestant building

only have a good effect on the North.

Martin Wallaceof the Belfast Telegraphannounced "he is not to be taken

seriously as apolitical force." Perhaps

he never was. He did not have the

financial backing of huge landowners

or capitalists. Television was equallyhostile to him. But he had the full

support of significant sections of the

Protestant working class, and embit-

tered manufacturers, farmers, dis-

appointed Unionists, and a clutter of religious psychotics.

He spoke a language which every

Protestant knew. Professor Corkey, a

Unionist Senator and ex-Moderator of

" I was followed around in

Rome by the guards of the

Great Inquisition and the

Pope's Gestapo.'

The North's economy has expanded

rapidly in the last decade. About

5,000 to 8,000 new jobs per year have

been created through the construction

of new factories. A large part of the

annual subsidy has been used to give

high investment grants to foreign

industrial concerns. This means thatfor the employed working class, the

1960s have been successful and the

interest of large capital had nothing to

gain from sectarianism. Thus Union-

ism has toned down on sectarianism.

Two groups, however, were badly

hit by this industrial growth. Older

Ulster factories were financially under-

cut. This was done by using cheap

14

" Harold Wilson is atool of Cardinal Heenan and Car-dinal Heenan is in the pay

of the Pope."

contractors and manufacturers, was

created.

The second badly hit group sufferedfromaby-product of industrial growth.

Higher industrial wages brought in-

flation. This caused a flight from theland in the western counties. British

farm prices have not risen greatly in

the sixties and most Protestant small

farmers have suffered a drop in realincome.

Paisley was not encouraged by the

state. He was jeered at, mocked and

viciously lampooned by an incredulous

press. OnJune 10, 1966,inaneditorial,

the Irish Independent found him so

laughable, that it thought he could have

" I think the blaspheming,cursing, spitting Roman

scum were shown up in

their true light. Immedia-

tely I arrived at the de-

monstration, this crowd of

Roman Republicans from

the South surrounded us."

the Presbyterian Church, in attempting

to attack Paisley, spoke a good deal of

truth. He said, "His loud protesta-

tions of Protestant principles have

attracted a considerable following of thoughtless people." He also spoke

the language of Carson, Craigavon and

Brookeborough. The Unionist statehad indoctrinated, with every means

at itsdisposal, theProtestant population

for fifty years. When it jettisoned

some of its bigotry in an expansionist

era, it was not surprising that people

continued to believe in what Paisley

represented. Gerry Fitt summed this

up when he said, "the biggest crime



that Paisley has committed, the car-dinal sin which he has committed, issaying in public what a lot of Unioniststhink in private. He says it in a ratherhostile, uncouth manner, but there aremany supporters-many, many Union-ists."

Hostile Press made him a

world figure

Paisley also used the hostile press tohis advantage. He quickly became aworld figure, in which Ulstermen wereproud. In countries where religion wasnot at the heart of political antagon-isms his brand of religious racism wasfound to be ludicrous in the extreme.He got enormous publicity for com-paratively insignificant acts, such ashis visit to Geneva to protest at thePapal visit.

He got similar publicity in Ulster.Every time he was lampooned, hegrew in stature. These attacks servedto emphasise the growing gap betweenthe economic interests of a great dealof the middle classes and the rest of the Protestant community. Hitler inhis day spoke of the racial beliefs of the same classes Paisley represents.Almost until he became Chancellor,the chief propaganda weapon usedagainst him was ridicule. Ridicule isthe lifeblood of fascism. Defensivegroups do not like being laughed at.

Paisleyism until well into 1968 wasprimarily an anti-ecumenical move-ment with political overtones. Thepolitical factors effecting change in theNorth were outside Paisley's and hissupporters' understanding. They could

attack when asell-out appeared obvious.His potential political power was shownin September 1964. During an elec-tion campaign he threatened to lead amarch on Divis Street to remove a Tricolour in the Republican Head-quarters. He forced the Governmentto order its removal and started avicious week of rioting in the FallsRoad area and the burning of Catholichouses in the streets connecting DivisStreet and Shankill Road.

But until October 1968 at leastPaisleyism remained an amorphousforce. It lived on propaganda and itsleadership of reaction. The FreePresbyterian Church did not defineitself too closely either. Its member-ship grew from 1,000 in 1961 to 6,000in 1966. But most of its membersremained in other Churches and mostof its congregations were outsiders.

Paisley in his protest activity had noclear strategy. He merely followedreligious and political events in theNorth and put forward a reactionaryline. He never tried to create, as

Hitler did, his own calendar of eventsand ritual. He merely imitated theritual of the Orange Order, and hischief demonstrations of strength wereat protests, rather than at mass-ings of his organised followers.

The Ulster Volunteer Force

About 1964 he formed the UlsterVolunteer Force. This started as a

private bodyguard of armed men whohad to protect him at public meetings.Like most fascist personalities, Paisleyis reputed to be a highly cowardly man. These thugs he recruited got out of hand very quickly. In June of the sameyear, John Scullion was killed bythem. Later in the month, AndrewKelly, Liam Doyle and Peter Wardwere killed on the Shankill Road.Augustus Spence, Hugh McClean and John Williamson were found guilty of these murders. At the end of June,Mr. O'Neill banned the U.V.F. InAugust, the Protestant Telegraph

claimed" Mr. Paisley has never advo-

cated violence, has never been associ-ated with the U.V.F. and has alwaysopposed the hell-soaked liquor trafficwhich constituted the background tothese murders." Before the advent of the C.R.A., the U.V.F. probably didnot grow very much and it is difficultto discover Paisley's role in it.

The same is true of the Ulster Con-stitution Defence Committee whichPaisley publicly controls. Before 1968it had about twelve branches in theNorth which spread across the Pro-vince.

The fundamental problem affecting

the easy growth of the Paisleyitemovement is the lack of highlytalented people involved in it. Ambi-tious people have firmly remained inthe Orange Order and work throughtheir local M.P. Ambitious clergymensimilarly remain in the orthodoxchurches.

Paisleyismdwarfed by Paisley

In this way Paisleyism continues tobe dwarfed by the figure of IanPaisley. This is due to the debilitatingeffect on an extra parliamentary move-ment of the effective patronage which

is still controlled by the Unionistparty. With a relatively vicious powerstruggle taking place in the North atthe moment, no really ambitiousperson could afford to be associatedwith Paisley, even if he flirted with him.Paisley probably approves of hisposition of leading a relatively talent-less movement. Like most demagogues,he likes complete dominion over amovement. People who have for awhile shared some of his publicity like

Major Bunting of the Loyal Citizensof Ulster, and Rev. John Wylie whileMr. Paisley was incarcerated, arerapidly displaced.

With the advent of the C.RA.,Paisleyism was the natural vanguardfor reaction. It was the only properlypublicised and organised fascist force. The Unionist Right were busy avoidingan open confrontation with O'Neillismbefore the North was in full reactionto the C.RA. It saw that West-minster could not allow an openlyreactionary government to come topower. So it concentrated on ensuringconfrontation between the C.R.A. andthe RU.C. and in consolidating itself at a constituency level.

The C.R.A. was an easier target forPaisley than ecumenism. His enemywas the more traditional republicanand Catholic one. He linked this withhis previous stances by claiming thatthe C.RA was a product of O'Neill'spolicies. A campaign could belaunchedwhich did not depend on infrequent

visits from ecumenical ecclesiastics oroccasional political windfalls. A regular,long term agitation led by Paisley wasinitiated with some startling successes,notably in Armagh, at Burntollet andin the general election.

The most influential leader of

Protestant reaction

At the moment Paisley remainseasily the most influential leader of Protestant reaction in the province.

Militant Protestant forces are widelyclaimed by the opposition to be growing

very rapidly. Paisley's personal con-trol over these must be relativelyweak. Most likely they are controlledby local Unionist bosses. Paisleycould hardly control them in ruralareas in the west, where the onlyviable Protestant organisations remainthe Unionist Party and the OrangeOrder.

But while Paisley may not controlevents organisationally, his influencecannot be underestimated. Paisleyismis now definitely the ideology of largesections of the Protestant masses. Hehas grown immeasurably in stature in

the last year. The ridicule and hatredwhich he received from O'Neillism hasmade him popular in the conservativerural areas. He can attract bus loads of people from towns where he has noorganisation to "lobby" Stormont. The Unionist Right wing must look tohim as a man who can greatly help orhinder them in their political ambi-tions. They must also learn to speakthe language which Paisley has drilledinto Northern Protestants for a decade.



Was the August Pogrom Planned?BELFAST has had many organisedpogroms before August 1969 whosemain aim has been to dispossess Cath-olics of their houses and jobs and tointimidate them to a point which willencourage emigration. The politicaladvantages of a successful pogrom are

obvious, one of the main fears of Protestants being the Catholic birth-rate. Of course there are other politicaladvantages for those who rally thepeople from the street comers by organ-ising campaigns of looting, burning andintimidation. These local, small-time,shopkeeper politicians-such a one is

John McKeague, chairman of theShankill Defence Committee and ownerof a pet-shop-gain much popularsupport by distributing among theirminions the houses and jobs wrestedfrom the Catholics.

However the most important advan-tage to be gained from successful pog-

roms in the past has been the strength-ening of the Unionist hegemonyby the regeneration of the feuds

upon which it is based. In previouspogroms there has never been anyquestion of a split within theUnionist camp such as now exists. Theascendancy who have always ruled theparty and who have agreed to concedereforms as the only realistic way of

remaining in power, are viciouslyopposed by two powerful factions. These are the careerists and oppor-tunists, such as Faulkner, on the onehand, and the solid block of right-winganti-reformists, such as Craig, on theother. The so-called moderates havebeen strengthened by the North's re-liance on British subsidy and foreigncapital, which demand at least thesemblances of moderation and harmonyin the province. This demand is furtherreinforced by the presence of a Labourgovernment in Britain which, unlikemany of its Conservative predecessors,cannot be seen to tolerate the bashing

of rebellious Fenians.Whereas the pogroms of 1922, 1935

and 1949 helped and sustained the

Unionist Party and its aristocraticleadership, the recent campaign of terror has, ironically, weakened theparty and precipitated the overthrowof the ascendancy. While the " mod-erates" remain the only faction thatwill satisfy Westminster, popular sup-

port, which now sees them as Lundiesof the lowest order, has swung behindthe right-wing within the party and thefascist rabble-rousers without. Localoverlords have never had it so good.

History of Pogroms

In the nineteenth century Belfastsuffered from the same kind of vicious,sectarian rioting which characterisedmost of the new industrial cities of Great Britain. Since 1886, however,this rioting has become political infunction if not in content, and Belfasthas remained sincethen acity admirablysuited for pogroms. Unionist gerry-mandering has kept the old electoralareas stable so that Belfast does nothave the huge working-class housing



estates that usually surround a city of its size. The few housing estates thatwere built were tagged on to " safe "areas so that they would not upset thepolitical balance. Thus a predom-inantly Catholic housing estate builtin the Ardoyne area was situated rightbeside a traditionally Catholic areawhich includes Hooker Street, HerbertStreet and an extensive part of theCrumlin Road.

In the centre of the city old workingclass areas, which would have beenknocked down ages ago in any othercity, still stand. These contain ghettoesof different denominations situated uri-nervingly near each other and retainvivid memories of earlier sectarian riot-ing. Thus the Shankill Road area runsparallel to the Divis Street/Falls Roadarea and Duncairn Gardens parallelsNew Lodge Road. These hot-beds of enmity are broken only by shops andpublic houses which are often the firsttargets, while peripheral streets suchas Dover Street, Townsend Street and

Percy Street constitute the main battle-grounds for the mob fighting. Suc-cessive generations of pogroms serve tosolidify the already existing sectariandivisions.

August pogroms carefully planned?

The pattern of the August rioting inBelfast points to the possibility thatthere were in fact carefully drawn upplans for a political pogrom. Earlierthis year the city was comparativelypeaceful. During a troubled period inApril, the hand of the U.V.F. was seenby many observers in the destructionof the Kilkeel pipelines which provideBelfast with its water supply. Thesewere destroyed in the heart of militantPaisleyite territory where no Catholicbody, least of all the I.R.A., could havefound cover or have avoided the policeroad blocks which were immediatelyerected. Besides, the I.R.A., which inrecent years has always claimed re-sponsibility for its exploits, denied thatthey were responsible.

The evidence pointed to a co-ordi-nated effort by Protestant extremists.A possible plan might have been toraise tempers in Belfast by creating an

atmosphere of suspicion reminiscentof the border campaign era, and, bydepriving the city of its water supply,to pave the way for the uncontrollableburning of Catholic areas.

If this was the plan it did not work,possibly for two reasons. Firstly theco-ordination between the rural Pais-leyites, who presumably blew up thepipe-lines, and their urban counter-parts may not have been adequate.Secondly, the people of Belfast had not

been riled or terrified by previous in-cidents to a pitch which would allowthem be led on an invasion of Catholicareas.

In the Belfast rioting which brokeout at the beginning of August therewas little evidence of organisation. OnAugust 2nd a rumour spread that theCatholic inhabitants of Unity WalkFlats had stoned a Junior OrangeParade. The mob that instantly des-

cended on the buildings found itself in open confrontation with the RUCwho were attempting to give some pro-tection to the flats. When the occupantscame to the assistance of the police theyfound themselves at the receiving endof a vicious baton charge which pene-trated the courtyards of the flats. Mean-while a large Protestant mob took ad-vantage of the preoccupation of thepolice by setting off along the ShankillRoad on a rampage of looting.

The charge that the whole thing hadbegun by the stoning of an OrangeParade was later denied by the head of

the parade himself. The geographicalposition of Unity Walk Flats, which areperched at the end of the ShankillRoad and are totally defenceless, makesit more likely that trouble began withsome of the callous rumour-mongeringwhich characterises Belfast. The sub-sequent unco-ordinated behaviour of the RUC especially in the Ardoynearea did little to help an already ex-plosive situation.

When a crowd of about a thousandassembled later that night in the pre-dominantly Protestant Disraeli Streetfacing across the Crumlin Road intoHooker Street, the police, despite mas-sive provocation, simply formed ahuman chain in an abortive effort tohold them back. They showed lessrestraint in dealing with the HookerStreet mob whom they attacked vicious-ly with considerable help from DisraeliStreet. The most serious casualty of this attack was an eighteen-year-oldNeil Summers of Dunblayne Avenuewho sustained injuries leading to ampu-tation as result of being mowed downby a land-rover which then backedover him.

Later on that night fighting brokeout in Disraeli Street between Protes-

tants and the RUC. This prompted John McKeague to tell Major Chi-chester-Clark, in " aninformative meet-ing" between the Prime Minister,Major Bunting and the Chairman of theShankill Defence Association, thatalthough he considered the ordinaryRUC to be agreat force the Riot Squadhad "ten black sheep to everyonewhite sheep."

The complete absence of a strictlyco-ordinated fascist plan was revealed

during the day by the reaction of theProtestant leaders to the looting of Protestant shops on the Shankill Road.Major Bunting and Ian Paisley haddisagreed bitterly with John McKeaguewho supported the looting. McKeagueclearly saw that it would consolidate themilitancy of the area, while Paisley andBunting saw that it would hinder thefundamental aims of the Protestantright-wing in the province as a whole.

At 2 a.rn, McKeague showed the ex-tent of his support in the area by per-suading about 900 Protestants out of acrowd of a thousand to go home,shortly before they had stoned andboohed Bunting when he appealed tothem by raising his hands in the air andpleading " in the name of God stop thisand go home."

Split between McKeague

and Paisley

The split between the militant, lum-pen working-class mob element andthe more political Protestant extremistsrepresenting the petty-bourgeoisie em-erged fully two days later when Paisleyissued a statement on behalf of theUlster Constitution Defence Commit-tee and the Ulster Protestant Volun-teers, stating "that the Shankill DefenceAssociation is in no way connected withthem and J ohn McKeague, Chairman,in no way represents either the viewsor politics of the movement." Thisstatement (which establishes a clearconnection between the U.C.D.C. andthe U.P.V. or U.V.F.), shows that the'looting and rioting had been to a largeextent spontaneous. This was not the

case later in the month when priororganisation prevented such a split.

If at this stage the rioting appearedspontaneous there immediately appear-ed signs that organisation for a pogromwas beginning in earnest.

Catholics of Hooker Street had beenvery badly attacked. Few houses wereleft with windows intact. The peoplehad been sufficiently frightened to sendthe children away for the first week inAugust. A public-house at the end of the road and a bookmakers on theCrumlin Road opposite Hooker Streethad been burnt down. The R.U.C.had shown that they were capable of behaving as viciously East of the Bannas West of it. It was in this tenseatmosphere that small time terrorisa-tion against Protestants in HookerStreet began.

Skinny Lizzy burnt out

Most of the early terrorisation wasdrunken bloody-mindedness consistingmainly of throwing stones throughwindows. The Protestants believed that

17



this was escalated by two militantCatholicfamilies,theFaulknersandtheMcGuinnesses, who had only recentlymovedinto the area. At the sametimeawell knownProtestant lady, ElizabethGilmore, locally known as "SkinnyLizzie," wasburnt out of her houseatthe corner of Hooker Street and Chat-ham Street. She had flown a Union Jack from her parlour window since

July 12andhad beenthreatenedbeforethe beginning of August. This hadprompted her to declare to a pressgathering "they will haveto burn meout before I leave. No surrender."

Theyburnther outandshe.surrendered, The Protestants in Hooker Street,

in all seventeen families, moved outbetween the third and the tenth of August. One of these was the Beattyfamily of 35 Hooker Street. Mrs.Beatty, whose husband and daughterareboth sufferingfromthe after-effectsof serious operations, told us that sheand her family had been increasinglyterrorised by the local population.

Stones werethrown through her frontwindow and a person had to be re-strained from throwing a petrol bomb

through her front window, but shereceivedno specificor organisedthreat.Nevertheless, after a number of sleep-less nights, listening to cat-calls andthreateningsoundsfromthestreet Mrs.Beattypetitionedher Protestant friendsto arrange a swop with a Catholicfamily in the Disraeli Street area.

About the sametime a Mr. J. Kellywhom we interviewed and who lived

in 39 Palmer Streer was visited by amob led by J ohn McKeague claimingthat twoLR.A. men wereknowntobehiding in the house. This was an in-accuratedescriptionof Kelly's brotherandaProtestantfriendwho werevisit-inghim at the time. The R.U.C. lateradvised Kelly to do what he was toldbecause" in this areawhat McKeaguesays goes." McKeague visited Kellyin his housea secondtimeandadvisedhim to get out. An easy swop wasarranged with the Beatty family of Hooker Street.

An interestingfactorin this casewasthat the Hooker Street house was a

rented one while the Palmer StreethousewasKelly'sown. Atthemomentthe Kelly's livein a rented house un-

certain as whether or not the landlordintends to sell. Meanwhile Kelly'ssolicitor advises him not to take legalactiontoregainhisownhouseinPalmerStreet until things have cooled down.

The solicitor's caution is founded onthe caseof aman who had been simil-arly driven from Columbia Street andwhosesolicitorshadserveda possessionorder onthe Protestants occupyinghis

house. The family had moved outall right, but that night the house wasdestroyedby fire.

This pattern was repeated, and thetenure of Protestants in dispossessedCatholic houses was ensured by theuseof the petrol bomb. It appearsthatin the vastmajority of casesthe housesthe Catholicsleft weretheir own whilethose vacated by the Protestants wererented.

Another objective of the evictionswas to arrange it so that Catholicstreetswould beattackedwithout dan-ger to Protestants. The R.U.C. fre-quently claimed as in the case of Mr.

Kelly, that they could not help thevictimisedfamilies. Yet on August 6,whenon a singleday up to sixty Cath-



olic families were forced to move,Harold Wolsey, the Commissioner of Police in Belfast, blandly stated that"the police have full knowledge of reports that families are leaving theirhomes because of intimidation. It isabsolute nonsense for people to saythey are frightened."

Rapid organisation by Protestants

The tragic events of the pogrom inBelfast, which followed the victory of the Bogsiders in Derry, showed howwell the Protestant militia had beenorganised in the period between August6and August 15. On this occasion theCatholics once more initiated theviolence. On Thursday 14 in suicidalattempt to divert attention of the R.U.C.from the Bogside they attacked twoBelfast police stations in Catholic areas. They were careful to avoid any dierctprovocation of the Protestant popula-tion. However, Protestant fears had beengreatly exacerbated by the mountingtension throughout the province.

Paisley had played on Protestantfears by harping on the terrorisationof the Protestants in Hooker Street invirtually every speech he made. Fur-thermore the Bogsiders had defeatedthe R.U.C.inamosthumiliating manner.And the Protestant proletariat sawtheir world collapse in the face of aFenian uprising. The amazing treat-ment of the Bogside riot by the Belfast

Telegraph which mirrored Chichester-Clarke's inane rantings about I.R.A.and Communist plots helped the Pro-testant extremist politicians to exploit

these fears.

When the Protestant mobs movedon this occasion they knew what theywere doing. They did not attack Pro-testant shops. They attacked not inlarge spontaneous mobs but system-atically on several fronts at the sametime. In one night Protestants marchedon the Clonard area in Springfield, onthe Hooker Street area off the CrumlinRoad and along about twelve fronts inthe streets connecting the ShankillRoad and Divis Street. On HookerStreet they burned out about fifteenhouses. On more mixed streets theydid not burn houses but drove Cath-olicsto the end of the street and fought

with them. Only Catholic houses wereattacked. Leaders of the mobs carriedmaps denoting the religion of eachhouseholder, which were probablyobtained from the electoral lists of Belfast Councillors. John McQuadeM.P. and at least four Councillors ledthe advance while, the U.V.F. undoubt-edly co-ordinated it.

Two other significant factors can becited to distinguish this pogrom fromthe spontaneous rioting earlier in the

month. During the course of the pog-rom the R.U.C. were nowhere to beseen despite the fact that there werean estimated 1,000 policemen in thecity. On the night of the killings a fewpolicemen who accidentally came intocontact with mobs quickly took them-selves off. That the R.U.C. have waysof knowing what the Protestant right-wing is up to on occasions such as thishas been well established by investiga-tions into their role in the infamousBurntollet affair.

On the night of August 15th thetroops moved into Divis Street and theFalls Road Some people fought withthem on Boundary Road while otherscontinued the sniping which had beengoing on all day from houses aroundClonard Monastery. In the chaoticfighting which took place in these areasthe main weapons were petrol-bombsand shotguns. One soldier was shotin the face. While this fighting showedfew signs of planning or order a mobthat converged on the unprotected

Crumlin Road were quite systematic intheir burning of Catholic shops andhouses. Two people were killed.

The mobilisation of the Specials theprevious day meant that weapons couldbe carried openly. However, the crowdswere organised by non-uniformedpeople, presumably U.V.F. leaders. These issued instructions to all includ-ing the Specials, who were placed atthe head of the crowd to provide somekind of visible leadership.

After the first night it was clear thatclashes with the troops were beingcarefully avoided. Instead two new

strategies were adopted. The first wasa firm consolidation of material gainsmade in the previous days. All streetswhich had been cleared of Catholicswere filled up with homeless Pro-testant families. The confrontationwith the troops which resulted in theuse of tear-gas on an angry Protestantcrowd, was sparked off when a Catholicfamily tried to reclaim their furniturefrom an occupied house. The secondstrategy was the erection of barricadesto ensure that the new borders and there-allocation of houses would not beupset by troop intervention. These" symbolic" barricades were also, of

course, a challenge to the Governmentand an effort to maintain a high level of tension in Protestant areas.

J ob Victimisation

Job victimisation was not as wide-spread as in previous pogroms. Theshipyards were not affected after themanagement had called a meeting of all workers and informed them that apogrom would mean the end of Britishsubsidy and the probable closure of the

yards. However, two large concerns,a brewery and a clothing factory, ex-pelled all their Catholic employees enmasse. There were numerous otherinstances of intimidation among Britishcontrolled factories. Instructions weregiven to Protestant managers to condoneintimidation rather than allow a break-down in production.

Victimisation took many differentforms. Catholic factory girls who hadto pass through Sandy Row on theirway to work were jeered and threatened. They were given an escort of B Specialswho simply added to the jeering andthreatening. This not surprisinglyresulted in the girls absenting them-selves from work. In other placeshostile crowds assembled outside fac-tory gates. In one instance they gavea hundred Catholic employees a choicebetween getting out or being thrownout. So while unemployment has in-creased in Catholic areas it has de-creased in Protestant areas.

An invidious instance of intimidation

was the use of Radio Orange or RadioUlster, run, it is claimed, by the Spencefamily of the Shankill Area, a memberof which was involved in the U.V.F.murder of Peter Ward in 1966. Thenames and addresses of certain shopstewards were broadcast and Pro-testants were warned not to heed themsince they had opposed victimisation.It does seem that very many Protestantshop stewards behaved in a highlycourageous manner despite threats ontheir families and houses.

Pet Shop Burnt

A pet shop owner on the ShankillRoad area who employed a Catholicmanager was instructed by RadioOrange to sack him. His failure to doresulted in his shop being burnt tothe ground and the roasting alive of 4,000 budgerigars and £600 worth of man-eating piranha fish. Only a croc-odile survived the conflagration.

Rather than attack British troops theProtestant extremists attempted tospread the disturbances to other, lesswell protected areas. John McKeaguehimself paid a visit to the Short StrandRoad, near the Paisleyite Ballymacarretarea. in the hope of stirring up some

action on the other side of the Lagan.Despite the militancy of the neighbour-ing Newtownards Road McKeague wasnot very successful. In DuncairnGardens the disseminators of disordermet with some success, though theyhad to wait till they were asked.

Evidence of the source of the troublein Duncairn was revealed late in Sept-ember as a result of a dispute betweena Catholic householder and a Pro-testant householder in the area. The

19



original argument, which was of littleimportance as regards content, cul-minated in a threat that experiencedarsonists from the Shankill Road wouldbe brought in to burn the Catholichouse. The next night the Catholichouse in question was attacked by amobof "outsiders" and burned to theground while the buck was being passedfrom the Public Protection Authority

to the R.U.C. and from the R.U.C. tothe British Army.

Since there is very little ideologicaldifference between one working-classarea and the next it would appear thattrouble spots are those that have anorganised leadership in the form of theU.C.D.C. and the U.P.V. Whereas theShankill Road and Sandy Row are wellorganised other areas have less efficient,indigenous leadership and have con-sequently succumbed to the comfortsprovided by high employment and theWelfare State.

" EnglishTeague-lovers out"

The presence of troops is certainly asource of annoyance to the troublemakers. In Sandy Row this annoyanceverges on hatred. Here the troopswho collaborated with the Orangemilitia for fifty years, are seen as turn-coats who are ousting the R.U.C. andthreatening the Protestant right to econ-omic privilege. The slogans in thisarea read" English and Teagues keepout" and "English Teague-LoversOut."

These slogans are significant sincethe people as well as their leaders knowthat the English connection can arti-

ficially impose a spurious liberalism,even if the province is in a state of wholesale fascist reaction. As a resultcoalition between the constitutionalright-wing MPs and the leaders of thestreet militia is now an imminent possi-bility.

As a consequence a Unilateral Dec-laration of Independence is still verymuch a live issue. Militant oppositionto O'Neillism is veering towards apointof view which sees U.D.I. as the onlyway of preserving" Protestant Ulster." The term "Loyalist" does not figureas strongly in the Paisleyite jargon asit used to.

The increased enlistment and train-ing of the U.V.F. makes little senseexcept in the context of U.D.I. Since

they were banned as a result of theMalvern Street murder in 1966 andchanged their name from the UlsterVolunteed Force to the Ulster Pro-testant Volunteers, they have neverinvolved such numbers as they do now. Through the Ulster Constitution De-fence Committee they are controlled byPaisley, who undoubtedly commands

20

more popular support than any of theofficial politicians or clergy.

Nor can there be much doubt thatthe Ulster Special Constabulary, mostof whom are members of the U.V.F.are providing the weapons and know-how for training new recruits. It isknown that there are 67,000 guns goingthe rounds in the province, since thereare that many licences issued to in-

dividual "sportsmen" and membersof gun-clubs. The number of unlicen-sed guns in circulation is anybody'sguess. Rumours that arms were comingin from the Continent through Belfastdocks have not been verified. How-ever, given the widespread support forthe U.V.F. which exists both among

dockers and within the police force, itwould be difficult for Chichester-Clarke's government to prevent or evencontrol such traffic.

If any attempt is to be made to checkthe activities of the U.V.F. the govern-ment is going to have to rely on usingthe troops. Ironically the loyalty of theforces, especially the B Specials, whichwere originally designed to protect the

mills and factories of the aristocracyagainst I.R.A. attack, is shifting to theright-wing middle-class leaders whoprotested most loudly when the armsof the Specials were being centralised.As the demands from Westminster con-tinue the leadership finds itself moreand more isolated.



The Divided Opposition THE CHARACTER of the oppositionhas changed very much since theGeneral Election. Prior to then theNationalists controlled the predomin-antly Catholicrural areasandinBelfastLabour was the main opposition

party. But now the position is verymuch different.

The Labour Party

The Labour Party survived on theperilous support of the PaisleyiteandCatholicworkers. Before1965Labourhad held four seats. All four MPs hadbeen Methodist lay preachers. Inthe 1965 election the Labour Partyhad lost two seatsto moderateUnion-ists. In 1969 they were furtherdebilitated. In Woodvale,which hadbeen a Labour seat, the extremePaisleyitemilitantJohnMcQuadedram-aticallyincreasedhis lead over Labourto 6,791 from 3,351. In ShankillLabour, which had run the PaisleyiteDesmondBoalveryclosein 1965,cameonly third. Their proportion of thevotewashalved.

The Labour Party lost almost allsupport from the Protestant workingclass with the increasing success of Unionist fascism in Belfast. ButLabour lost, not only the poor Pro-testant workers' vote, it lost theincreasingly prosperous Protestant,skilledworkers' votealso. In Victoria,the Unionist O'Neillite M.P., Roy

Bradford, increased his majority overLabour from 423 to a huge 6,227,despite the participation of MajorBunting as a Protestant Unionistcandidate. Labour had, in fact, hopedto gain a seat from the Unionists inVictoria, but the Protestant vote (andasectionof theCatholicvote)polarisedbetween Liberal-Conservatism andFascism.

The only Protestant Labour candi-date to hold his seat was Simpson inthe predominantly Catholic Old Parkconstituency. The other Labourvictory was over Republican Labour.Paddy Devlin, a prominent CatholicC.R.A. man, beat the reluctant, agingHarry Diamond in a closeand bittercontest.

Labour lost the Protestant votewhich it had been desperately tryingto hold.

In the electioncampaign they hadgoneout of their way to overstresstheprivilegeoftheconnectionwithBritain.British standards and British rightshadbeentheir slogan.They consciously

22

aimed at holding the Protestant voterather than gaining any Catholicvotes. The party executivewas con-servativeand mainly Protestant. Theyallowed almost any compromisewithUnionismrather than risk exposethe

party's flank to Constitutional argu-ment. This had been particularlyevident in Belfast Corporation whereLabour is fairly strong. Councillorsare allowed almost completefreedomfrom the party whip. A notoriousexampleof this wasthe famousdisputeover the opening of playgrounds onthe Sabbath. Two Labour Councillorsvoted in favour of their continuedclosure and were not disciplined bythe party.

In this way the only non-Catholicopposition party was gravely shaken.

The M.P.s who survived were bothestranged from the party executive.Simpson reluctantly accepted that hisvote was a pro-civil rights one andDevlin had used the party ticketmerely to ensure his election in astrong working-classarea. The depthoftheestrangementoftheLabourM.P.sfrom the executive was shown dur-ingtheAugustpogromwhentheLabourparty'svaccilatingattitudeon what hadhappenedsogravelyembarrassedPaddyDevlin with his constituents that hethreatened resignation.

The Nationalists

The Nationalists were not wipedout. They retained six seats, one of which wasnot contested. In the otherconstituenciesthey nearly lost a seatto People's Democracy and in otherslostaconsiderableportionof their votetothem. Butfromthe inceptionof theC.R.A. as a radical anti-Unionist,street organisationthey werealwaysinserious danger on two counts. Thefirst was that the clear lack of talentand leadership in the moribund,clericalist,petty bourgeois party wouldbeexposed. This happened when theonly significanturban votewestof the

Bann rejected the Nationalists. TheDerry Nationalists lost Gormley andMcAteer. Only Austin Currie re-mained with enoughtalent to lead theparty and he was unacceptableto theparty executive.

The seconddanger lay in the directchallengeto the Nationalists from theC.R.A. Before the election thedecisionsof the National Executiveof the Nationalist Party had had greatsignificance. This was shown by the

effect of their withdrawal from Stor-mont as official opposition and theimportancefor the C.R.A. of Nationa-list support for their demands. WhenHume and Cooper were elected, theNationalist Party did not cease to

function as a machine, but it lostnearly all its influence. Local C.RA.sbecame compromise amalgamationsof the Nationalist party, the People'sDemocracy, Republicans and somerepresentativesof Labour. TheNation-alist Party Executive has met only afewtimessinceFebruary andthe chief NationalistM.P., Austin Currie, oper-ates almost totally on a local basis inDungannon.

The New M.P.s

The new M.P.s had nothing verymuch in common. Hume, Cooper,

Devlin and Kennedy owed their elec-tion to the successof the C.RA. Theyhad not beenterribly influential figuresbeforethey receivedpublicity fromtheconfrontations with the governmentwhich took place at every turn of theC.RA. Hume and Cooper had de-fectedfromthe Labour Party andwonon an open C.RA. ticket. Theyreceived the backing of the DerryCitizens Defence Committee, whilethe official Labour Party candidateEamonn McCann was outflanked.

People such as Simpson or Carronrecognised the dominance of theC.R A. but had no wish or capability

to do anything except acquiesce indecisionstakenjointlybyall oppositionM.P.s.

Currie had engaged fitfully in asquattingcampaignprior to October 5.He had pushed the Nationalist partytowards support for the C.RA. andhad a powerful organisation in theheart of the most gerrymandered areaof the North. He felt he had anaturalright to lead any new party whichmight be formed. Gerry Fitt was, of course, an old hand. He had a groupof Belfast Councillors under his con-trol, a seat in Westminster and had led

the first march in Derry when he hadbeen batoned. He could not be leftout of the picture. Neither couldPaddy Devlinwhowasoneof the mostable of the opposition. He was, of course, comparativelynewto Stormontand some of the opposition unfairlyconsidered him to be a careerist,Paddy O'Hanlon had been brieflyassociated with P.D. He did not,however, showmoreradical tendenciesthan any of the others.



The group was united on the basisof certain demands and little else.Austin Currie was always vociferousin calling for a united party, but itwas probably never a likelihood.

SincetheGeneral Electionthe maintask of the opposition has been tofilibuster the Public Order Bill. Thiscampaign has shown the immenselycomplexposition the opposition M.P.sarein. Their allegianceis primarilyto

their local C.R.A. Thus they haveused Stormont merely as a platformand have frequently walked out andhave broken parliamentary procedurein almostevery conceivablemanner. Aclear exampleof this ambivalencewasin the second week in August. Theopposition successfully demanded therecall of Stormont, but when it met,they walkedout immediatelyin protestat the mobilisationof the B Specials.

Before August, the struggle forcontrol of the local defence Com-mitteeswaspretty intense. The M.P.s

had influencethrough exposureon themass media. But people such asPaddy Doherty or SeanKeenan wouldhavehad at least as much influenceaseither Hume of Cooper. Local De-fence Committees became the chief organisationin the North in the lasttwo months. They are controlledbyRepublicans in Derry and Belfast.Republicansdid not playa public rolein the C.R.A., but now their strong

local contacts mean that they are verymuch in power. Most oppositionM.P.s acquiescein this. Gerry Fitt,for instance, liaises between theauthorities and the Dock residents.During the pogrom, a clear splitemerged between the P.D., the Re-publicans and the parliamentaryopposition.

Sinn Fein and The Peoples Democracy

SinnFein hadalwaysbeenextremelyhostile to P.D. The ideologistsof the

Wolfe Tone Society disagreed funda-mentally with P.D.'s line. They sawthe C.R A. as a means of destroyingsectarianism by attracting Protestantmoderate and middle class support.P.D. hoped to effectthe same changeby radicalising the Catholic workingclass. Perhaps they wereboth wrong,but the dispute became more funda-mental and bitter in August.

At first in Free Belfast, P.D. had a

gooddeal of influence They composedthe first newssheets for the beseigedareas They werealso in semi-controlof the content on Radio Free Belfast.

Then the Commissarsfromthe Southarrivedandbeganto attackP.D. whichhad been calling for the abolition of Stormont. P.D. reasonedthat withtheimposition of direct rule from West-minster the whole Unionist machinewould collapsewhen the easyflow of patronage dried up. Sinn Feinwasn't pleased. They denounced thisline as Left Wing Adventurism and



instead called for the implementation

of Article 75 of the Westminster Act

and for the formation of a progressive

bourgeois coalition government. The

P.D. line was much more attractive

and comprehensible to the people of

Belfast, but Sinn Fein which hadbetter organisation and a group dis-

ciplined to obey orders, won out.

The priest in politics The priest reappeared in politics in

Belfast. The priest provided a visible

leader for a community which was

often highly confused and nervous.

The clergy wanted the barricades down

as quickly as possible. The un-

announced visit of Dr. Philbin splitthe people even further. He was

abused and was visibly affected by thehostility shown to him by a few

people. This dispute over the role of the priest split local defence com-

mittees down the centre. By all

accounts the decision to acquiesce in

the fait accompli after Dr. Philbin'svisit was a deeply disputed one.

In other areas outside big urban

centres the Catholic organisation has

gone to ground. They are given noopportunity to meet and the Catholic

population concentrate on avoiding a

situation similar to Belfast in August.

C.R.A.-Redundant?

The C.R.A. executive faces anenormous dilemma. It was held

together by street demonstrations.Apart from that it had little cohesion.

It cannot now hold meetings or

protest marches. These have been

banned until Christmas. The split

between the Republicans and the P.D.is reflected on the C.R.A The

Executive knows that if it did defy a

ban on a march, people who took part

would be killed. They know, further-

more, that any such march in Derry

will definitely be opposed by guns

from now on. So to a large extent theC.R.A. is redundant.

P.D. are emerging from the last twomonths in better shape than the rest

of the opposition. They have cut

themselves off from their student base just before the beginning of term in

Queens. P.D. is now run by an

executive committee. This was self-elected a few weeks ago, but willeventually be elected by the con-

stitutionalised branches which P.D. is

setting up all over the North. P.D.

may also capitalise on the disillusion-

ment felt by many Catholics in theI.R.A. This is felt particularly in

areas like Ardoyne where the peoplefeel they were deserted by the I.R.A.

and felt by some republicans them-

selves in Divis Street who resentedSoutherners giving orders when they

were fighting for their lives.

Unprepared to facefascist mobilisation

In general, the position of the

opposition is gloomy. On the one

hand they are hopelessly ill-prepared

in the faceof what Currie, Cooper and

O'Hanlon claim is large-scale fascist

mobilisation. On the other hand, they

are completely helpless in their old

role. Reforms now appear to be a

matter of negotiation between Stor-

mont and Westminster and not be-

tween the organised people and Stor-

mont. The role of defending the

Catholic population and safeguardingits interest has been forceably seized

by the British army. Any remaining

status Citizens Defence Committees

have is due only to the indulgence of the army.

Opposition-overcome by events

In the last year the opposition hasbeen as hopelessly divided as the

Unionists. But the Unionists have the

full force of the State to bide them

over. They have the backing of a

large middle class and an indulgentBritish government. The opposition

has been overcome by the momentum

of events which they set in motion.

They have neither the resources or

organisation. The opposition repre-sents divergent class and economic

interests and its attempt to unite them

by attacking the Unionist State in the

last year has finally eliminated any

hope of a non-sectarian movement inthe North in the near future.



THE CIVIL SERVANT has tradi-tionally been a butt for humorists. Itwas easy to satirise the seeminglyobsessive caution and avoidance of personal responsibility which the popu-lar mind attributed to the civil servant,whose prime skills were represented asbeing a perverse pleasure in preventingmembers of the public from gettingsatisfaction and manipulation of files tokeep the buck moving-together, of course, with an insatiable thirst for tea.

The late Myles na gCopaleen im-rnortalised one stereotype of the bi-cycle-clipped civil servant, who, throughsome unfortunate mischance in earlylife, had, to the disadvantage both of the public and himself, wandered fromcertain humble agricultural pursuitswhich were his true vocation.

In recent years talk about the civilservice has become more than a joke. There has been an increasing convic-tion both inside and outside Govern-ment that the traditional civil serviceorganisation is for one reason oranother not capable of carrying out the

many complex tasks for which moderngovernment - is responsible. Oneimportant indicator of this has been thelarge number of semi-state bodies andagencies set up by the Governmentoutside the framework of the civilservice to do jobs which Governmentfelt the civil service itself could not do. There are now over eighty of theseranging from C.LE. and the E.S.B.employing between them some 30,000to the Dublin Rheumatism Clinic

Association (15) or the Dental Board(1). This profusion of new bodiesseemed to be growing in some areasinto a duplicate civil service whoserelation to the civil service proper andto the Oireachtas is obscure and tomany people unsatisfactory.

The Government, too, is showingsome concern about this situation. Ina famous speech Sean Lemass statedhis desire to see all GovernmentDepartments transformed into develop-ment corporations. This had littlepractical impact at the time-it is easyto see from the Devlin Report why. Then in 1966 the Government ap-pointed a committee under Mr. LiamSt. J ohn Devlin, "having regard to thegrowing responsibilities of govern-ment, to examine and report on theorganisation of the Departments of State at the higher levels, includingthe appropriate distribution of func-tions as between both Departmentsthemselves, and Departments and otherbodies." This decision followedshortly after the appointment of the

Fulton Commission in Britain to dothe same job. The Devlin Committeehas now published its report.

A hangover from" colonial ••

period

The Report gives a fascinating in-sight into the reasons why the presentcivil servant structure is not deliver-ing the results which modern govern-ment requires and sketches out a com-

prehensive and radical scheme for itsreconstruction. The greatness of thisReport is its absolute fearlessness inexposing astonishing weaknesses inexisting arrangements and recommend-ing radical solutions for them-itsultimate weakness as a practical pro-gramme may be an under-estimate of the fiercedefence of the status quo likelyto be mounted by what has beendescribed as the country's stringentprofessional vested interest.

In analysing the problem, the Reportshows that in 1922 the new Govern-ment hammered together in a fairlyrough and ready way a medley of official organisations which had grownup in Dublin over a long period of " colonial " rule. Except for the largelyabortive Brennan Commission in the1930s, no attempt has since been madeto take an overall view of the kind of public service structure most suitablefor Irish conditions. In recent yearsthis makeshift has gradually beenbogging down.

Among the prime reasons for this,

the Commission identifies the tradi-tional concept of the Minister as"Corporation sole," that is, as theindividual personally responsible in lawfor every act, however trivial, performedby a civil servant of his Department. Today the-·sheer size of a GovernmentDepartment makes it absolutely impos-sible for a Minister even to know aboutmuch that is done in his name. How-ever, because of his personal responsi-bility, the whole way in which the

27



Department works is organised aroundelaborate safeguards to ensure thatnothing is done which may embarrasshim. One consequence is that evenhighly-paid senior officials often havelittle or no opportunity to use their owndiscretion or common sense in theirwork. They are surrounded by rigidrules. Every detail of what they domust be kept carefully recorded in thefile so that, if anyone should query theiraction subsequently, it can be shownthat they have acted completely withinthe rules. Over a period of years manyor most civil servants become moreconcerned with keeping within the rulesthan with any positive initiative. In-deed it is often argued that the key topersonal success for a civil servant iskeeping out of trouble and that meansavoiding difficult or controversial work.

The Devlin Report tends to supportthis, since it shows that seniority is amajor factor in promotion-you aremore likely to lose a promotion forhaving done something wrong than to

win one for brilliance.

Chaotic organisation

The Report analyses the weaknessesof the present civil service structureand operation under four main head-ings: organisation; personnel policy;planning and finance. On organisation,the Committee remarks that their firstimpression was that there is not onecivil service, but sixteen; that eachDepartment has its own service. Itconcludes that executive practice over

the whole public service needs to berationalised immediately. Civil servantsthemselves are classified into about athousand different grades. The posi-tion is so confused that the Committeeadmits to difficulty in determiningexactly what constitutes a grade. Thereis a further complication in that variousgroups of grades are regarded as"classes." This is to some extent acarry-over from the old concept of social class dating to the time wheneducational opportunity was related tosocial class. On the consequence of this, the Report says "the long hier-archical ladders that exist in all civilservice organisations are a furtherimpediment to the efficient discharge of business." Every officer must workunder an officer immediately abovehim in the grading hierarchy. Thismeans that where, for example, thework calls for one very senior man anda number of juniors, the senior mancannot have the juniors without havingthe appropriate number of in-betweenpeople as well.

28

Personnelstandards falling

Comments on personnel policy areequally revealing. Apparently it isbecoming harder and harder to recruitfirst-class people for the higher civilservice, so that the top posts have tobe filled by promotions from lowergrades. This means that top positionswill increasingly be held by people who

have plodded their way upwardsthrough a stultifying atmosphere cal-culated to knock all initiative andoriginality out of any but the mostexceptional person-and those whoenter the lower ranks initially are un-likely to be that. At a time wheneducational standards in the com-munity generally are rising, those in thehigher civil service are falling. TheCommittee actually suggests a bias insome Departments against highereducation. New recruitment policies,the Committee says, are necessary.Incidentally, it remarks that "the useof the civil service alone as a means of

promoting the Irish language divertsthe service from its other tasks. Arealistic language policy should benation-wide in its application and if the civil service alone is required tomake a knowledge of Irish a require-ment on recruitment, it will be re-stricted in competition with otheremployers."

Once recruited, pay increases andpromotion follow for the civil servantfairly automatically, the speed of thelatter depending more on what vacan-cies are available above him than onhis own merit. The Committee issceptical about arrangements for assess-ing personnel and performance anddoubts whether the best people avail-able are always promoted. Nor is thereany proper system of manpower plan-ning-foreseeing where particular kindsof people are going to be needed andproviding for it well in advance. Mostastonishing of all perhaps is the state-ment that when vacancies are beingfilled in Departments "there is noattempt to link qualifications to require-ments and we found no evidence thatin assigning new entrants, departmentstry to fit aptitudes and qualifications to

the job . . . For the average officer. personnel development is a

matter of chance." The silly require-ment that women should retire fromthe service on marriage is also con-demned.

Economic planning-impossible

At a time when economic planninghas for some years been official

Government policy, it is remarkable tobe told that although "a number of Departments are conscious of the needfor planning . . . they are neitheradequately equipped, nor are theyorganised on any common basis forthis purpose. It is hardly an exaggera-tion to say that this Report makes itclear that no national economic plancould succeed without a drastic over-

haul of the public service. It is nocredit to anybody that although thefirst national plan was launched morethan ten years ago, weare still blunder-ing along without the organisationmachinery essential for such planningto be successful. Anyone who wantsto know why the Second Programmecollapsed and the Third is in jeopardywill find the answer here.

Control of details-neglect of overall efficiency

The Report's comments on financial

control and management practices inthe public service are devastating."The system . . . was originallydesigned for the exercise of control byParliament over expenditure by theKing. It has not been adapted toprovide an accounting service for amodern state." The whole systemseems designed for rigid control of details-salaries, travelling, telephonesand telegrams-while being uninter-ested in overall efficiency. As long asthe sum of money spent for a particularitem corresponds exactly with theamount authorised, then it is nobody'sbusiness to enquire any further. To

put all the emphasis on controllingdetail while not being concerned withgeneral efficiency is an outstanding caseof penny wise and pound foolish.Frequently this detailed control costsfar more than it saves and meanwhileabsolutely wrong attitudes to theproper use of public funds are imposedright through the service. It is signi-ficant in this connection that theReport says there is no overall plan forthe development of automatic dataprocessing in the service. The intelli-gent application of these techniquesthroughout the service would un-

doubtedly eliminate the need for agreat deal of obsolete control of detailwhile providing safeguards againstgenuine misappropriation or dishonesty.Again, the Report says that the manage-ment accounting techniques developedin the business world have been givenlittle place in the public service wherethe- main direction of the presentsystem of Government accounting istowards accounting to the Oireachtasin detail for each item of expenditure



out of voted monies. This is anotherway of saying that as long as the file

is kept right, nobody need bother aboutultimate efficiency or results.In other comments on public service,

organisation and management, theCommittee talks about poor com-munications within the public serviceand with the public. Much of thetraditional secrecy, it says, is un-necessary. Many civil servants have towork very hard and for longer thanofficial hours, but much of this over-work is unnecessary and due to badorganisation.

New policy-making body-

AireachtWhat is the answer? As already

mentioned, the Report identifies as theprime cause of the problem thedoctrine of" ministerial responsibility"and, in effect, it proposes to abolishthis for a large part of the work of thepublic service. It suggests that thework of each Department be clearlydivided into two functions-policy-making and overall supervision on theone hand and execution on the other.Policy-making responsibility would begiven to the Minister and a group of top officials, to be known asan Aireacht,

from the Irish word Aire-Minister. The Secretary of each Departmentwould have reporting directly to himfour staff groups concerned respectivelywith finance, planning, organisation andpersonnel. Also in the Aireacht wouldbe Assistant Secretaries, each respons-ible for a particular functional area andhaving under them Executive Officesor Executive Agencies headed byDirectors. These Executive Officeswould have much the same kind of

freedom as is now enjoyed by thesemi-state bodies. In -this way, much

of the time-consuming detail whichnow occupies top officials would bedealt with at lower levels. The Com-mittee describes this solution as com-bining the best features of the tradi-tional civil service and the semi-statebodies. An important point here isthat the existing semi-state bodieswould come under more effective con--trol of their respective Departments inregard to policy and overall perform-ance. One of the weaknesses of thepresent semi-state body system is that,once these bodies are launched, De-partments seem to have very limitedcontrol over their policies and Parlia-

ment been even less. To alter thedoctrine of ministerial responsibility inthis way, changes in the present lawwould, of course, be necessary. Itshould be noted that while the officialsin the Aireacht would maintain thetraditional civil service anonymity, thosein the executive officeswould not. Theywould deal with the public in their ownright under their own names in thesame way as officials of semi-statebodies now do.

In its sketch of the Aireacht, theCommittee does not, I feel, emphasiseenough the need for Ministers to have

considerable personal discretion inselecting their top policy advisers. Inthis we have perhaps something tolearn from the American system.While invariably the basic element inthe Aireacht will be top civil servants,the system ought to be flexible enoughto allow a Minister to draw into it, ona more or less temporary basis, outsideadvisers and experts whom he feelshave a particular contribution to make.Ideally too, the Aireacht should dissolve

automatically when a new Minister isappointed so as to leave him free to

select his own advisers. DepartmentalSecretaries might retire automaticallywith their Minister (without loss of pay and remaining eligible for re-appointment).

At levels other than the Aireacht,too, one cannot help feeling that muchmore flexible arrangements need to beintroduced for bringing people intothe public service at various levelsfrom other occupations-and at thesame time making it easier for publicservants to spend part of their careersin outside employment. This wouldgive the public service a badly-needed

leavening of people with practicalexperience of what goes on on theother side of the fence. Devlin doessuggest changes in the pension systemto make it easier for civil servants togo out, but doesn't give much attentionto how to bring others in.

Oireachtas Committees

While the public service relationshipto the Oireachtas was outside the Com-mittee's terms of reference, it is veryrelevant to this discussion. The casefor Oireachtas Committees on varioustopics is very strong, since it has nowbecome impossible for Parliament todeal effectively with much of itsbusiness in the traditional general-typediscussions. If this reform takes place,then the relationship between theOireachtas Committee and the appropri-ate Aireacht should be very close, with,for example, officials of the Aireachtbeing available to the Oireachtas Com-mittee to discuss policy areas withwhich they were concerned. It is

29'



extremely important that as the Devlinrecommendations are implemented, aparallel development of Oireachtasinstitutions also takes place, so thatpublic representatives continue to par-ticipate effectively in policy develop-ment. While the Report very rightlycondemns some of the present forms of parliamentary control as being obsoleteand ineffective, these must be replacedby an effective relationship betweenParliament and the public service if the democratic principle is to beprotected.

New Public Service Department

How does the Devlin Committeesuggest that the serious organisationand management defects of the publicservice be cured? The key proposalis the setting up of a new PublicService Department with its ownsecretary reporting directly to theMinister for Finance. This newDepartment would be responsible forintroducing modern management sys-

tems throughout the public service.It would build up a group of manage-ment specialists and work through theassistant secretary for organisation ineach departmental Aireacht. It wouldorganise proper training for civilservants (said to be virtually non-existent at present). It would generallyhave responsibility f or implementingthe Devlin Committee's recommenda-tions.

The Report says the present systemof financial control should be scrappedover a period and instead the publicservice should go over to a " planning,

programming, budgeting" system. Theconcept calls for the change f rom thesystem of appropriations by items of expenditure to appropriations by pro-grammes, with a sophisticated evalua-tion of alternatives by cost effectivenessand cost utility measurement tech-niques. In other words, budgets f orapparently desirable pro jects or pro-grammes would be prepared by Govern-ment departments. These would go tothe Department of Finance whichwould be responsible for nationalplanning and would assess each depart-ment's proposals in the light of overallnational objectives. Once a depart-mental programme had been approvedand the appropriate budget allocated toit the Department concerned woulditself be responsible for detailed con-trol. The Department of Finance wouldno longer be responsible for checkingthe "housekeeping" accounts, butwould be concerned with how wellprogress was being made towards thestated goals and the overall efficiencyof the Department's performance. In

30

each departmental Aireacht a planninggroup working with the Secretarywould be developing future plans. Onthe personnel side, the Committeerecommends major simplification of grades and classes and the basis of merit alone-such posts to be open toproperly qualified officials in any partof the public service, not just those inthe same Department. Here again Ithink at least some of these posts

should be open to people from outsidethe service. It is clear that the buildingup of a really strong Public ServiceDepartment would be essential if thesenew systems are to be implemented.

An important suggestion regardingthe semi-state bodies and state com-panies is that in future the commercialones should operate on a normalcommercial basis/ i.e., make a profit.Where the Government expects thesebodies to fulfil loss-making "social"functions, the cost of these socialservices should be charged separatelyto the Government and presumably(although the report does not say this)voted as a subsidy by the Oireachtas.

This would be a valuable advance onthe present position when nobodyknows in many cases exactly what thelosses of state companies are being in-curred on and whether or not theexpenditure is worth while. If eachloss-making item had to be justified tothe Oireachtas, it would impose avaluable discipline and many wastefulactivities would be eliminated.

Local Government and

decentralisation

I have not so far said anything aboutLocal Government. Strictly speaking,this is outside the Committee's termsof reference. They say, however, thatthey had to consider the relationshipbetween Government departments andlocal bodies. What they recommend,in brief, is that local bodies shouldenjoy much greater autonomy withintheir delegated area of responsibility. This would relieve them of a great dealof detailed and irritating interf erenceand control from the central govern-ment and restore the opportunity forlocal initiative which has been veryseriously eroded in recent times. The

Committee's Report also implies sup-port f or progressive regionalisation of public services. It slyly condemns theproposed moving of Government de-partments to Athlone and Castlebar inthis summary of its attitude to decen-tralisation which makes admirable sense." There are three recognised methodsof decentralisation.

1. The dispersal of centralised unitsof government as in the proposed

transfers of Departments of Landand Education.

2. De-concentration, which involvesa delegation of executive f unctionsto a number of departmentalcentres throughout the country asin the recent suggestion by theMinister for Agriculture thatthere should be a mini-Depart-ment in each county.

3. Devolution which involves atrans-f er of departmental functions toregional or local bodies.

The first of these does not involvethe decentralisation of authority totake decisions. The other two do. Foreffective decentralisation, the naturalsequences is in the first instance thedecentralisation of decision-makingfollowed by the relocation of people." The point is strongly made that thetop advisers in a department must bein the capital near Parliament and theirminister. If onthe other hand, responsi-bility for routine decisions and execu-tive work is delegated to lower levelsin the public service, as the Reportrecommends, then there would benumerous opportunities for establish-ing local branches of Departments invarious parts of the country. TheReport looks to the ultimate co-ordination of all public services inregions with presumably a unifiedadministrative centre for each region.In a signed addendum to the ReportMr. T. J . Barrington, Director of theInstitute of Public Administration, dis-cusses a number of valuable ideas forde-concentration and decentralisation.

Haughey's problem now

This is an exciting Report, of f undamental importance for ournational f uture. The question now iswhat will be done with it. The Com-mittee itself calculates that it wouldtake at leave f ive years to implementits proposals-starting now. It couldvery likely take ten or more. Willanybody be prepared to take on thistremendous challenge? All eyes arenow on the Minister for Finance. Itis under him that the new PublicService Department would be formed.

It is, perhaps, a fortunate coincidencethat the present holder of the of f ice,Mr. Haughey, is widely recognised ashaving the personal qualities-theexceptional ability and deep deter-mination-which would be essentialf or the task Devlin outlines. Mr.Haughey now has an opportunity of akind that even outstanding politiciansrarely get: to associate his name withthe construction of a new Irish publicservice which could serve as a model,



not only to Europe, but to the world. The smallness of the Irish com-munity makes such a task feasible here,where it would be unmanageable inlarger societies. By devoting himself to this project for the next five yearsMr. Haughey would be taking themost effective steps possible to pro-mote national development becauseone of the facts which comes throughagain and again from Devlin is thatwithout effective organisation and man-agement in the public service a greatdeal of Government policy andplanning must be abortive.

One must not under-estimate thevery real difficulties which Mr. Haugheywould face. One of these is alreadyapparent in the cagey, lukewarm

response of the Government to theReport's publication. Fianna Fail have just had a convincing win at the pollswhich can legitimately be taken by theGovernment as an endorsement of thestatus quo in this, as in many otherfields. Ministers who have been work-ing for years with particular depart-ments in a particular way will be slowto embark on a radical programme of this kind which might upset their civilservants and would certainly interferewith traditional forms of politicalpatronage and influence, e.g, thePost Office. Furthermore, the system

of appeals to independent tribunals forcitizens feeling aggrieved by depart-mental decisions may be seen by someMinisters as involving important loss of control. Despite this absurdity of thedoctrine of "ministerial responsi-bility" in modern conditions, someMinisters like being a "corporationsole" and wouldn't relish the thoughtof having their area of direct responsi-bility reduced to the Aireacht enclave.

Some people in fact would argue for

a very much more radical approach topublic accountability than Devlin pro-poses - something similar to the

Swedish system where every citizenhas free access to any public service fileor an Institute of Criticism existingpurely to correct defects in the publicservice from the citizens' point of view. Caution is necessary in trans-ferring such ideas to Ireland, wherethey could have an opposite effect tothat desired. One of the criticisms of the present system which Devlinstresses is the obsession with detailedaccountability-keeping the file fullyprepared against any conceivable query.Our present need is to moderate thisso as to encourage more initiative andpersonal responsibility. To expose the

public servant to even greater detailedaccountability in the future would nothelp. I feel that if the system of administrative tribunals headed by aCommissioner for Administrative Jus-tice is implemented, it will go a longway to safeguarding the citizen'srights.

Opposition to Report

Another major problem in implemen-tation will be to preserve the unity of the Devlin Committee's conception.Already Government departments and

semi-state bodies are getting ready tofight detailed recommendations aboutthemselves which they don't like.Obviously, the Government's first stephas been to call for memoranda fromeach department on the Report. Thisis the traditional start to the smotheringprocess. If the result of such activitywere a kind of half-implementation of Devlin, then our last state might beworse than our first. Again, if Mr.Haughey does wholeheartedly take up

the challenge, who will he find asSecretary for the new Department of the Public Service? Most senior civil

servants have been so moulded bytraditional attitudes and tactics as to beoverwhelmed by 15 Government de-partments and an assortment of stateagencies arguing vigorously to preservea particular part of the status quo whichthey believe important to them. Anappointment from outside the publicservice altogether may be necessary.Perhaps what is needed is a pre-stigious manager, possibly from abroad.

In this article I have deliberatelyavoided discussing the detailed recom-mendations made in the Report foreach Department. Certain of these Idid not agree with. However, these

detailed recommendations must be re-garded as "for examples." If thefundamental recommendations areaccepted, then there will be no problemin adjusting these details in line withwhat are very clearly stated principles.What must be avoided at all costs isthe obscuring of the basic recom-mendations by argument about peri-pheral details. This is a classic way of gutting uncomfortable proposals. TheDevlin Committee firmly rejects resortto easier short-term palliatives which,it says, will provide no long-termsolution. "The structures and systems

we propose are part of an interlockingand unitary concept and, unless thewhole concept is put into effect throughcarefully programmed stages, the re-sults we envisage will not be obtained."

The decision which the Governmentfaces is whether to accept that state-ment and implement the Report ormuddle on, putting off the evil hour inthe hope that what has done them wellenough for more than thirty years canbe made to do for a few years yet.



BRITAIN'S· NEW MORALITY

I WAS AT a dinner party the othernight with some friends of mine whohad been eager Labour Party campaignworkers in the 1964 election and whohad sweated for months to usher in thenew dawn of the technological revolu-tion then promised by Harold Wilson.Naturally, I twitted them with thepresent chaos of the Labour govern-ment and the widely accepted certaintyof a Conservative administration afterthe next election. None of them weremuch disposed to argue the matter for,even if they could see the prospect of

economic recovery in time to give thePrime Minister another term, theycould not themselves muster up anyparticular conviction that a new Wilsongovernment would be more idealistic,more centrally concerned with thepriorities of social justice which havehistorically animated the Labour move-ment, than the old one. Not that any of my friends were likely to vote Tory. Itseemed, indeed, that we had a typicalgroup of serious, intelligent Labourabstainers of the kind who are currentlygiving Transport House officials night-mares; until one of the companysuddenly said: "I can't get very

worked up about another Labourgovernment, but I'm convinced of thevital necessity for another Labourparliament and I'll work and vote forthat."

Unique expansion in the freedomof the individual

He went on to justify this thesis.Always a free country (he said), Britainhad seen, since 1964, a unique expan-sion in the freedom of the individual toconduct his own life ashe wished and toorder and govern the morality of his

conduct according to prejudices andinclinations of his own, rather thansociety's, choosing. In comparison withthat, it meant little that increased taxa-tion, an economic squeeze and thegrowth of bureaucracy had limited theindividual's economic power, for sucheconomic limitations as there had beenwere not yet significant. The standardof living in Britain, though not rising,had not fallen; house mortgages,though difficult to obtain, were not

32

beyond reach, and there was even evi-dence that the pressures of the marketwere about to causea slump in propertyvalues which would make buying one'sown home a much easier business.

Put roughly, one might say that, forthe private consumer, the economicsituation is at a standstill. On the otherhand, in vital areas of private life, and inlarge questions of morality, politics hasbeen moving with speed and revolu-tionary effectiveness. During the life of the present Labour government, capitalpunishment has been abolished for a

trial period of five years and, as long asthere is a Labour majority in parlia-ment, that abolition will stand. It isnow possible for homosexuals to makelove without fear of a law, nowabolished, that had hitherto been ad-ministered in a patchy, arbitrary andoften cruel fashion. Pregnant womenwho, for a variety of reasons, do notwant to have their babies-as that theymay have been victims of rape, or maysuffer grievous mental or physical stressby giving birth-may obtain abortionsunder an efficient, medically reliablesystem which has very largely replacedthe old scheme of things in whichdangerous back-street abortions wereorder of the day for the poor, while therich flew to Swiss clinics. Divorce willsoon be easier: as aresult of impendinglegislation it will be possible to obtain adivorce either because both partiesagree that their marriage has brokendown or because divorce is requested byone partner after a separation of fiveyears, whereas before, adultery or acomplex combination of cruelty anddesertion were the only grounds forbreaking up a marriage.

The Lord Chamberlain, who, hither-to, could prevent the performance of

plays which he found undesirable incommercial theatres, or at least requiresubstantial alterations in their scripts,has had his powers taken away fromhim. Though soft drugs-like cannabisand marijuana-are not yet legal inBritain, there is a powerful lobby of intellectuals and men of culture de-termined to make them so. The ArtsCouncil has recommended that theremaining legislation against obscenityin literature should be dispensed with.

Censorship of the cinema, which worksby a system of grading films for certainaudience age groups, has been madenonsensical by the inconsistent licens-ing policies of different local authorities,which bodies in Britain control whatappears in the local cinema.

Intense Public Debate

These and many other changes in thesocial and cultural map of Britain havetaken place in the last fiveyears. Takenin sum they have two features. Firstly,each one of these issues has taken placeagainst the background of an intensepublic debate about the nature of con-temporary mortality, about what oughtto be allowed and about how muchfreedom the individual has or ought tohave to indulge his tastes and prejudices. Thus we have had Mr. DavidSteel doing battle for more liberalabortion laws against Mr. St. JohnStevas, the guardian, in this, as in otherrespects, of the traditional morality.And we have had Mr. Kenneth Alsop(one among many notable advocates)fighting out in relation to its influence

on readers the issue of pornographyagainst the conservative tenets of MissPamela Hansford Johnson (again, oneamong many notable advocates).

But, from the point of view of politics,the second feature of the way in whichthe moral map of Britain is beingchanged is even more interesting. Mostof the features of what the Guardian

first called the permissive society (whichprompted one reader to write and askhow she could join) have been createdby parliamentary legislation. Not, of course, legislation initiated by the gov-ernment, but legislation brought into

being by means of the Private Member'sBill.

The Westminster parliament, to adegree unequalled in any countryenjoying representative institutions,allows its members to initiate and carrythrough to the statute book an immensequantity of legislation on which theleadership of both parties takes a

Role of Private Members



neutral attitude. There is a curious andunwritten convention by which thespheres of government and privatemembers are delimited. No Britishgovernment would allow a privatemember to bring forward with anychance of success legislation which inany way impeded its own policies orprogramme of government. Thus it hashappened that while the governmentcontrols what happens in the greatspheres of economics, education and thesocial services, the private memberscontrol what happens in legislationregarding morality and the conduct of of the individual's private life.

In many ways, on the face of it, thisseems highly desirable. It means thatthe authoritarian hand of the State,the government (and even the Opposi-tion) is not much felt in those spheres of legislative activity relating to privatelife and that, conversely, in thesematters the weight of the opinion of theindividual, the private member of parliament, is felt most strongly. But

this is to give a very superficial descrip-tion of what happens. Several qualify-ing observations ought, indeed, to bemade on the spate of liberalising (orpermissive, depending on your pointof view) legislation which we have seensince 1964. First, it ought to be saidthat relatively few members attend theHouse when private members' businessis being discussed. Thus the newlegislation cannot be said to commandthe support of a majority of the wholeHouse. Secondly, while the govern-ment stands or falls at each generalelection by the electorate's verdict on

its total direction of policy, privatemembers initiating new legislationrarely have to concern themselves over-much with the wishes of the majority of the people in respect of the actions theyfavour. The new legislation, therefore,is brought into being without a popularmandate, with, at most, the tacit con-sent of the government, and by a selectand energetic body of M.P .s,

Only possible with Labourmajority

-I am not concerned for the momentwith whether the new legislation isdesirable or undesirable (though I my-self would have opposed all of it withthe exception of the new Divorce Bill) ;I am only anxious to show how it cameto life. There can, moreover, be nodoubt that such legislation can onlycome to pass when there is a Labourmajority in Parliament, for it is in theLabour party that you find the liberalmoralists. A Tory majority wouldsilently and without bothering to arguetoo much about it, vote down almost all

aspects of the permissive society. Therecan be no doubt either that the prin-cipal general feature of Private Mem-bers' legislation since 1964 has been toincrease the freedom of the individualat the expense of the ordained coher-ence of society. That, indeed, is itsprincipal justification.

The effect of the new legislation onthe character of British society is de-batable, but generally agreed to besignificant. It has, however, anotherfeature to which I am anxious to draw

attention, which has been under-esti-mated by its proponents. It is pre-dominantly legislation in the interestsof the intellectual middle class. Itsadvocates have. been those members of parliament most generally and fre-quently associated with the progressivewing of the Labour Party and itssupporters are very largely to be foundamong the high university intake of Labour members in 1966. What I wantto suggest is that these progressivemembers of the Labour Party acquiescein the arrangement by which the gov-ernment decides what can be done inlarge, important areas of social policy,like housing and the Welfare' State,

which affect the lives of millions, inreturn for complete independence todecide what is in the interests of hundreds of thousands of the intel-lectual middle class.

For, make no mistake about it, pro-gressive legislation goes forward on thebasis of an alliance between its pro-ponents and the government on a muchmore practical level than the conventionthat private members legislate for thesphere of private morality. The DivorceBill, the Abortion Bill and other re-

forming legislation could not have beenpassed unless the government gave upsome of its own parliamentary time fordebate. And Mr. Roy Jenkins, bothwhen he was Home Secretary and sincehe has become Chancellor of theExchequer, has given broad sustenanceto the efforts of the reformers engagedin the brick by brick construction of thepermissive society, the influence of which, he has said publicly, will be bothcivilising and humane.

Damage to Labour Movement

Mr. Jenkins may well be right. Onthe other hand, I believe it is demons-

33



trable that the success of reforminglegislation in the sphere of privatemorality has damaged the Labourmovement even more than the govern-ment's performance in handling thenational economy. Let me try toillustrate this. The government haveintroduced into parliament a new billdealing with children and youngoffenders. One of the features of thatbill is that home background will betaken into account in deciding whethera child under the ageof sixteen, who isdelinquent, will have to appear beforea court or not. Self evidently, middle-

class children will rarely appear incourt; self evidently, the children of the working class, and particularly of the poor, will appear before the courtswith increasing regularity. In otherwords, class is an advantage to a childaccused of crime. In opposition it hasfallen to the Tories-supposedly them-selves the party of class-to point outthis danger to the bill, and to oppose itfor this among other reasons. Thoughsome Labour backbenchers have joinedin that protest, the best and most giftedof the younger backbenchers have beentoo busy doing other things, like re-forming the laws on abortion, homo-sexuality and divorce.

Again, I would like to point out that Iam making no judgement on the meritsof progressive legislation: I am simplysaying that its priorities are not thepriorities of the Labour movement.Indeed, one could go further and saythat progressive legislation is downrightunpopular with the working classLabour voter. When Mr. Ray Gunterresigned from the Wilson government,

34

he made clear his belief that it had beentaken over by university intellectuals,that it had become alienated from " mykind of people." Since he has becomeHome Secretary Mr. Callaghan hasrecognised this danger of alienating aLabour parliament from its grass roots.A former parliamentary adviser to thePolice Federation (the policeman'strade union), he has opposed liberalising

drug legislation and all further advancesdown the road to the permissive societyagainst the Cabinet advocacy of two of the most intellectually distinguishedmembers of the Labour party, Mr.

Jenkins and Mr. Crossman, the Minis-ter of Social Security. He has becomeconvinced that, to save its lif e, theLabour government must renew itsalliance with the working classes and theeconomically underprivileged and for-swear its attachment to what heprivately describes as merry-go-roundsfor the intellectual middle-classes.

Tories will preclude progressive

Legislation

In all this there is a very seriousdebate about the nature of society, thedirection in which it ought to move andthe proper place for parliament in de-ciding on that direction. If presentopinion poll trends held fair, and the Tory party was returned with amassivemajority at the next election, there

would, of course, be an end to thedebate, for such a Tory majority wouldforeclose on all progressive legislationin the field of morals. What is at issuehere, however, is not the vagaries andchances of democratic policies, but the

basis and substance on which peopletake their stand about what is importantto them.

Both British political parties arecurious amalgams of opposites. Theamalgam in the Labour party hastraditionally consisted of an alliancebetween high-powered intellectualswith a social conscience and the under-privileged working class. As time has

gone by, as the high-powered intel-lectuals have become more high-powered, and as the Wilson governmenthas discovered that, given the achieve-ment of the Atlee government in sociallegislation, they cannot do significantlybetter for the poor and the under-privileged than a sympathetic Torygovernment, the best minds of theLabour party have turned to othercauses, notably their own intellectualand cultural causes. Not that all thesecauses are concerned with culture astraditionally understood: but they areall supported with philosophic argu-ments-like the freedom of the indi-

vidual to run his own life-which areincomprehensible to the working classeswho have traditionally put their trust inLabour. In the present political climate,both the Liberal and Conservativepartices recognise that the problem of the homeless is one concerned essen-tially with all those families who do nothave adequate accommodation. Onlythe Labour government defines "home-less" as meaning those actually withouta rented or owned roof over their heads.

Yet no protest has come from theLabour back benches: that is the crisisof morale the Labour party has to f ace.

Ideal Government-Moderate Torywith strong Labour Opposition

It is not a crisis they face alone, f orthe whole country faces it with them.Mr. Crossman, in one of his highlyobjective moments (before he became aMinister), said that the ideal system of government for Britain was a moderate

Tory government, with asmall majorityand a powerf ul Labour Opposition.Only thus, he argued, could the prior-ities of stable and economically success-f ul rule be combined with pressure forsocial reform and increasingly adequatesocial services. Nowadays the brightesthopes of the Labour Party-like myf riends at the dinner party-give theirbest energies over to minority legislationand abandon their hopes f or influencingthe government on social issues of majority and national importance. Itimposes a tremendous burden on theliberals of the Conservative party, andan even greater burden on the Liberals,which neither may be worthy of. It isnothing less than the abdication by ageneration of its responsibilities.



THE ARAB-ISRAEL CONFLICTAFTER THE FALL of the Jewishstate of Palestine in the year 70, up tothe fateful year of 1948 only two

Jewish states were ever formed. Onewas in the Y emen in the sixth centuryand the other was on the Lower Volgaand lasted for three centuries until 1000.

During the Middle Ages Jews hadformed tight, closely knit communities.But in the nineteenth century themovement towards cultural assimila-tion became much greater. Then in1879atragic event took place. Bismarck

for completely pragmatic reasons foundit necessary to launch a campaign of anti-Semitism. This cynical use of pogroms by rulers was to continue inAustria, France and Russia. Thus in acentury in which bourgeois nationalismdeveloped all over Europe rulers exor-cised many of the class hatreds andtensions by forcing a new politicalidentity on international Jewry.

A Jewish reaction to anti-Semitismwasthe nationalist and socialist ideologyof the Bund, the Jewish Socialist Partyof the Russian Empire, founded in1897. Another reaction was that of

Theodor Herzl. He wrote A J ewishState in 1896. In this he formulatedthe theory of a homeland which wouldbe a refuge for the migratory Jew.Palestine was the obvious centre forthis new homeland. This was still.part of the rapidly disintegrating'Ottoman Empire.

Small J ewish coloniesSmall Jewish colonies still existed in

Palestine where in 1880 there were

24,000 Jews. This number was togrow with the increase of anti-Semitism, particularly in TsaristRussia. Most Jews emigrated west-wards to the U.S.A. often staying fora period in Western Europe to pay fortheir passage. But some went toPalestine. By 1914 Jews comprised85,000 out of an indigenous populationof 739,000.

Then in the same year the huge,shaky, bureaucratically inept OttomanEmpire entered the World War on the

side of Germany. A new stage hadopened.

The Empire collapsed. Many ArabStates demanded independence. But inMay, 1919, the Colonial Allied powerscharacteristically ignoring the claims

of the indigenous population announceda different decision. They decided tobestow "mandates," which was ahypocritical formula for a colonialterritorial extension, on the victoriouscapitalist powers. Syria and Lebanonwere taken by the French, and Iraqand Palestine by the British.

The colonising powers, facing con-

stant smouldering revolt, used thepolicy of divide and rule. They gavespecial privilege to a racial minoritywhich would thus be loyal. Thiscreated a state which had an efficientbureaucracy and which remained loyalto the colonial power without openlyinfringing on the mandate status of the country. Britain thus encouraged

Jewish emigration to Palestine. Be-tween 1919 and 1931 another 117,000

Jews entered Palestine.

Hitler's pogromsHitler's organised pogroms un-

leashed further waves which theBritish encouraged under the guise of an anti-fascist policy. Between 1932and 1938 217,000 Jews entered Pales-tine. By 1939 Jews numbered 429,605out of a population of about 1,500,000or about 28 per cent.

The Arab reaction to this was ex-tremely hostile. They saw a privilegedclass being deliberately created byBritain. Jews controlled nearly all of

Palestine capital; were autonomousand self-governing and had a powerfulpurely Jewish Histradruth or TradeUnion Congress which fulfilled thefunctions of insurance, banking andsocial security for the Jews. ThisHistradruth was the source of thepeculiarly capitalist Labour Party inIsrael. The Arabs used strikes,demonstrations and terrorism in anattempt to save their territory. TheBritish used an army of 10,000 tocrush these revolts and organised aforce which was to finally hurt theBritish themselves. This was the

Haganah, a vicious brutal, secret Jewish army.In 1945 when all the world's atten-

tion was being transfixed by the hor-rors discovered during the allied armies'liberation of the concentration campsin Germany, war broke out again inPalestine.

The Jewish racialists in Palestinenow had powerful allies. They hadthe sympathy of a quiescent, guiltyEuropean people, the organised in-

35



fluence of many Jewish capitalists inthe U.S.A. and their own well-equippedarmy.

In 1947 Britain pulled out andhanded the problem they had cynicallycreated to the United Nations. TheU.N. decreed the partition of the stateinto aJewish and Arab sector. Guerrillawarfare raged in Palestine. The Jewsaccepted their allotment of territoryand immediately used it as a base for

expansion into the Arab sector.A J ewish state

The Zionists had achieved theirdesires. They had a J ewish state.Numerical superiority was achieved bydriving out 580,000 Arabs who stillremain in refugee camps. Before 1967they numbered 922,000 due to theirhigh birth rate. Jews were encouragedto " return to I srael." Arabs to qualifyfor citizenship had to swear an Oathof Loyalty to the State of Israel.Between 1948 and 1951, 687,000 new

Jewish immigrants arrived mainly fromEastern Europe. 330,000 of these were

Asian and African Jews. These wereto create an intense racial and ideo-logical crisis in Israel which in someways is an explanation of the 1967war. By 1956 there were 1,667,500

Jews and only 200,000 Arabs inPalestine.

The Arabs refused to recognise thisEuropean diktat or to recognise theeasy assimilation of migrants fleeingthe social problems created by Europe'seconomic crises which had spawnedfascism. This colonial amputation hadbeen imposed on them.

Israel's attack on Arab nationalconsciousness was paralleled by the

rise of Arab socialism. In 1952 Nasseroverthrew the monarchy in Egypt. InSyria the Ba'ath Socialist Party achievedpower in 1956. Regimes which weretotally dependent on the pro-IsraeliWest to prop themselves up such as

Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf Statesand the Yemen, were less anti-Zionist.In Egypt, Syria and Iraq the move toanti-Zionism was concomitant witha form of socialism.

The Arab masses of the anti-colonialstates saw the overthrow of Zionismand of European colonialism as asimilar struggle. Left-wing military

regimes survived by bartering theirneutrality between the Soviet Unionand the pro-Israel U.S.A. Thus in.many Arab States desire for land re-form, afree market for natural resourcesand anti-Zionism were all linked.

Trouble f or the militarists The 1960's saw significant changes.

Israel began to become less strident inits Zionism. Racial tensions in thecountry between Western middle-class

36

Jews and illiterate numerically equalnon-European Jews softened its mono-lithic seige-cornmunity mentality. Non-European Jews were less imbued withmilitarist Zionist notions and soughtonly a stable existence. In 1965 theelections saw a crushing defeat for theRafi. This Party was associated withthe Zionist fathers of Israel, BenGurion and Peres. and with the sinisterDayan. It won only 10seats out of 120.

Premier Eshkol won 49 seats (includ-ing 4 Arab deputies). Eshkol used thisvictory to replace the hardline ZionistGolda Meir with Abba Eban who wasviolently against Ben Gurion's " adven-turist " foreign policy of vicious armedraids on Arab States. Thus Israel wasdeveloping a normal wealthy burgeoisieand racial problems. Emigration hadalmost stopped. In 1966it had becomea mere 15,000. Emigration, the primesource of manpower for the militaristsand of social disruption leading toextreme Zionism, had ceased to be asignificant factor.

The Arab States were changing also. They were becoming wealthier. TheArabs had never been militarily capableof conquering Israel. Israel had a wellequipped army using U.S. weapons.It had a skilled technology. But theArab States remained hostile toZionism. They had a much larger,more articulate educated class than -hitherto. This class was created bythe revolutions in the fifties and sawthe destruction of Israel as essentialfor the overthrow of imperialism.

This meant that Arab states remainedstrident in their criticism of Israel andin their criticism of the Arab feudal

puppet regimes dependent on WesternImperialism. It meant also that wellarmed articulate socialist guerrillamovements developed in the ArabStates.

All this was especially true of Syria. This country had a revolutionaryBa'ath regime. It had nationalised allthe means of production, opened rela-tions with China, and continuouslycriticised backsliding, socialist prag-matists such as Nasser. It was fromSyria that the AI -Fath group operated.

This group made constant attackson Israel. These were courageouslysupported by Syria. This gave themilitarist group in Israel what theysaw as their last chance to stop Israelbecoming a normal bourgeoisdemocracy.

In January, 1967, Peres said that"the Syrians were the only ones whohave not felt any real blow from theIsraelis. Perhaps the time has nowcome to teach them a good lesson."

It is in this context that the tragediesof the last three years _ must be seen.

Eshkol was constantly threatened fromthe right for weakness and finally out-flanked by the militarists.

Israel strikes again This group, using Nasser's seizure

of the Straits of Tiran which was apurely symbolic gesture with noeconomic significance, attacked theArab States. In this they utilisedWestern incomprehension of Nasser's

bombastic threats to falsify what wasessentially merely territorial aggrandise-ment.

Jordan suffered worst from this war.Reactionary and revolutionary ArabStates have thus drawn together. AllArab States, even the formerly warring Yemen and Egypt, now stand united.In Israel the militarists stand supreme.Golda Meir and Peres rule. AndMoshe Dayan, an open advocate of war, has come close to seizing powerand only remains in the cabinet toensure its constant shift to the Rightand his constantly growing control of

the armed forces.Arab terrorist groups have mush-roomed and operate all over the world.Al-Fath even operates from the territoryof the reactionary King Hussein of

Jordan. The militarists in Israelcannot relinquish any of their territorialgains because they thrive on wartension. Jerusalem has become atemple to Zionist military victory.

President Nixon continues to supplyarms to the Israeli forces which remaincapable of crushing any Arab army.

At the same time the Arabs cannotback down. The million refugees fromZionism have become nearly two mil-

lion. Clearly until Zionist militarismis checked the Arab social revolutionwill remain subordinate to the needsof defence. And national unity willtriumph over the need for class struggle. Thus Syria and Iraq have to fight.And Egypt, Algeria and Morocco havebeen forced to face a similar position. The reactionary Arab states now feara further expansion of Israel with half of Jordan under Israel control.

It is difficult to see how this problemcan be solved except militarily, so longas the U.S.A. acquiesces in armingIsrael and the USSR refuses to supply

similar arms to the Arabs. The danger of a coup by MosheDayan remains the most ominiousportent for the future. He has alreadyreceived a petition signed by 250,000calling for him to be Premier. He hasthe backing of 20 Deputies in theKnesset and the complete allegianceof the armed forces. If he comes topower the Middle East will be plungedinto what might be the beginning of a World War.

-------------------CURRENT AFFAIRS--------------- _



THE CHURCHES DURING THE CRISIS

IT IS A MARK of the irrelevance of much of the modern Irish Church that

whenever a crisis in the North eruptsthe Churches cease to be of paramountsignificance. In between crises theleaders of the Churches receive a greatdeal of publicity for their ef forts topatch up wounds created by their an-cestors. Such was certainly true whenrepresentatives of the four mainChurches visited the Bogside andFountain Street in Derry. Theirreception was friendly on all sides andliberal newspapers hailed the visit asone of enormous significance. Only amonth later the North was plunged intoa frenzy of fascist repression and fear.

The main factor to bear in mind in anexamination of the Churches' publicstance in the North is that their leadersknow that they cannot momentouslyinfluence events.

Furthermore all the Churches areexpected to adopt a liberal position onthe problem of sectarian hatred. NoChurch leader could really suggestnowadays that hatred was Christian. The significant policies are thereforeseen in what the leaders do not do and

in their attitudes to the subordinateclergy who have more local influence.

The main churches in the North aretheCatholic and Presbyterian. The latterhas two of the most significant classesin its fold: the petty bourgeoisie on theone hand and the Paisleyite workingclass on the other.

While the Presbyterian Church istechnically democratic it is in effectcontrolled by an alliance of the clergyand the petty bourgeois group, whichcomprises small shopkeepers, smallfactory owners and the lesser profes-sionals. These are, of course, the back-bone of the local Protestant com-munities and while they do not controlthe Orange Order, they are certainlyconsidered locally as the citizens of greatest stature.

Their theology is polemical ratherthan protestant. Because they fear thattheir complex web of privilege andcontract is threatened by the Catholics,they tend to align themselves eitherwith the anti-reformist right-wing of the Unionist party or with the moremilitant Paisleyite movement. Thoughonly a minority join the latter, they do,

in effect, constitute the organisational

backbone of Paisleyism.

The working-class Presbyterians, in-cluding those who constitute the mili-tant wing of Paisleyism, are inhabitantsof the Shankill Road area. This area isonly about thirty per cent Church of Ireland. More significantly the Presby-terian clergy are indigenous to the areawhile most Church of Ireland ministersare not. As a result even the Church of Ireland laity in the Shankill Road lookto the Presbyterians for their ideologicalleadership.

The Presbyterian Church clearlyrepresents the most reactionary ele-ments in the North: adeclining middleclass throughout the province and a

traditionally anti-Catholic unskilledworking-class in Belfast. In EastBelfast the majority of Protestants whoorganise joint vigilante committees areChurch of Ireland and skilled. ThePresbyterian Church is more importantin areas that are totally Protestant suchas the Shankill. In areas such asArdoyne, religion plays aless importantrole among Protestants.

There has been a marked trend to-



wards reaction at the PresbyterianAssemblies in the last f ew years. Thisyear an Evangelical Protestant f romBangor who has little time for theEcumenical movement, Dr. John Car-son, was elected Moderator. TheGeneral Assembly was held in theR.D.S. in Dublin this year. Amongother things it passed a unanimous voteof confidence in the R.U.C., the Stor-mont government, and by analogy the

Ulster Constitution. The lone dissent-ing voice of Rev. Terence McCaugheyfrom Dublin, received a lukewarm re-ception. Needless to say there wasmuch private doubt expressed at theattendance of President De Valera, andthe playing of the National Anthem of the Republic. There was a good dealof annoyance also at the treatment thesouthern press gave their bigoted pre-varications and the prominence thepress accorded to Terence McCaughey.

At the end of the Assembly, Dr.Withers, the outgoing Moderator, madean incredible speech claiming thetroubles of the North were caused by

individual failure rather than anyspecific grievance. Last year Dr.Withers had steered a perilous coursebetween his Paisleyites and his fewO'Neillites. During the GeneralElection he went on holiday to SouthAfrica. But Dr. Carson in his politics,background, and theology inclines tothe reaction which Withers had triedto avoid.

In August Dr. Carson attended thefuneral of the dead Protestant who waskilled during the riots before the troopsarrived. There is evidence that thisman was shot in the head when attack-

ing Catholics leaving their burninghomes. His mere attendance along withMr. Paisley and his cohorts had an un-fortunate significance. This was mademore pointed by the non-attendance of catholic churchmen at other funerals.

His funeral oration was even moretactless. He warned the people presentnot to seek revenge. This could havebeen expected of any cleric, even Mr.Paisley. But he continued to justifyturning the other cheek by quoting" vengeance is mine saith the Lord andwoe unto them who arrogate myauthority! " This passage has ahistoryof unfortunate theological implications

and is beloved by clerical demagogues.Furthermore it implied that venge-

ance was needed, thereby implyingguilt on the Catholic side.

When the Catholic hierarchy issued astatement on the events in the FallsRoad, Dr. Carson outflanked the PrimeMinister by stating then "this exacer-bates tension which prevails about theprovince." His statement, furthermore,seemed to make claims about, the

36

political role ;f the Catholic hierarchy. The statement, he claimed, " conf irmsthe fears and suspicions of the Protest-ant people." The statement of f ivePresbysterian ministers in the Shankillwas much more moderate. It merelyclaimed that the hierarchy had madethings more dif ficult.

The emergency meeting of the Pres-byterian General Assembly confirmedthat Dr. Carson was speaking f rom a

firm base of reactionary Presbyteriansupport. On August 26th reverting totraditional evangelical explanations forall the world's evils he said the Northerntroubles sprang from "shameful mis-understandings, evil rumours, anddrunkenness." This evidently con-tributed little to an understanding inthe North. The statement totally ig-nored political problems or theirsolution.

The attitude of the rank and f ile of Presbyterian clergy was not madeapparent till well into the present dis-turbances.

Rev. J. Hill took a very brave stand

in debunking Mr. Paisley when hedenied that an armed guard for childrenattending a school near the Falls Roadwas necessary. But the Presbyterianclergy who were in aposition to restrainthe mobs in the Shankill and SandyRow were conspicuous by their absenceuntil early September when a line of clergy twice stopped a clash betweenthe people of Shankill and the Britishtroops.

Since the majority of the clergy comefrom the most reactionary petty bour-geois background, they tend to supportwith some misgivings the policies of the

Paisleyites although they resent himstealing their flocks and incorporatingthem in his Free Presbyterian Church. The professors of the PresbyterianSeminary Assemblies College, findthat students entering it in the last f iveyears have tended increasingly towardsaright wing position.

The Church of Ireland plays a differ-ent role. Its laity generally come f romthe landowning class, who control theUnionist Party and f rom the East of theBann middle-classes. This latter groupconstituted the main support forO'Neillism, while the landowners sup-port their own, namely O'Neill andChichester Clark. Most of the clergyare trained in the South and come frompretty comfortable backgrounds. Al-though the Church of Ireland is morenumerous in the North there are agreater number of artificially subsidisedparishes and consequently a greaternumber of clergymen south of theborder.

Thus the Church of Ireland has sup-ported O'Neill and his cohorts since the

beginning of the crisis. As a Church ithas always supported the ruling govern-ment North and South. Because of itsclerical membership it has little in-f luence with the Protestant forces of raction. All the year the Church leadershave called for peace. Their success hasnot been evident.

Canon Kerr at the Apprentice Boys'march in Derry on August 12th, madea moderate speech calling for " a com-

petition in doing good based on thebible story of the two debtors." Duringthe riots in Derry two Derry clergymencalled f or peace saying that "perfectlove casteth out fear." On August 22ndthe Church of Ireland Gazette criticisedthe pacif ism of the Church of Ireland.On the same day the Dean of Cork,F. K . Johnston, said he was ashamed tobe termed a Protestant because of themassacre in Belf ast.

During August the new Primate, Dr.Simms, made various calls for peace.On one occasion he admitted "manypeople were unaware of the wrongsexisting in the community." In general,the perf ormance of Dr. Simms wascautious and although he was morestrenuous than his predecessor in hiscall for peace, he had little eff ect.

The Catholic Church probably actedin the most courageous and responsiblemanner. This is not because of anygreater political depth. Cardinal Con-way still finds Eddie McAteer themost congenial politician in the North.All the hierarchy of the North apartf rom Rev. Anthony MacFeely (electedin 1965) whose residence is in Letter-kenny, were appointed during a periodwhen the Catholic hierarchy really did

control the Nationalist Party to a largedegree. Dr. Neil Farren was appointedto Derry in 1939. Dr. William Philbin,appointed to Belfast in 1953. Dr.Eugene O'Doherty to Newry in 1944,Dr. Austin Quinn to Cavan in 1950,William Cardinal Conway to Armaghin 1958, and Dr. Eugene O'Callaghanto Monaghan in 1943.

Thus they are an old hierarchy withextensive contacts with the old A.O.H.and Nationalist alliance which ruled theCatholic areas outside Belfast. Duringthe year the hierarchy confined itself toissuing statements questioning the truthof official versions of controversialevents, appeals for peace and reiteratedold charges of underprivilege. EugeneO'Callaghan was probably most con-sistent and emphatic in his demandsfor civil rights. This was surprisingsince only a small part of his Diocese isin Tyrone, the bulk of it being in theRepublic.

Dr. Farren was the most insistent inhis eff orts ef forts for peace, facilitated,of course, by an amenable Protestant



community in Derry. But he didauthorise night-long vigils for peace inSt. Columb's and St. Eugene's Cathed-rals on November 16th and he led andorganised the joint tour of Derry byChurch leaders in July.

The hierarchy did not publiclysupport the C.R.A. for a number of reasons. Firstly the hierarchy had a fewcontacts with the new C.R.A. leadersand had an ill-concealed distaste for

People's Democracy. Secondly theyseem to have decided at their bi-annualSynod in Maynooth last October torefrain from giving ammunition topeople who would stir up Protestantfears of an episcopal overlordship of theC.R.A.

The hierarchy's relations with theUnionist party have remained prettyfrigid over the year since the big dis-putes over a higher state subsidy andnew governing boards for Catholicschools and the Mater Hospital inBelfast. Earlier in the decade, withincreasing state expenditure on Catholic

social services, they had become fairlywarm but these big disputes had alreadyconsiderably worsened relations before

the advent of the C.R.A.It does seem, however, that Cardinal

Conway's statement during the Febru-ary elections was a concession toO'Neillite Unionists. By stating thatCatholics could vote according to theirconsciences he merely repeated a tenetof the Vatican Council. But Unionistcircles at the time were delighted andrightly believed that many middle-classCatholics would interpret the statementas permission to vote Unionist.

During the tragic events of Augustthe hierarchy reacted with restraint andhonesty. Dr. Philbin visited the be-sieged Falls Road area when it was stillquite dangerous and he was instru-mental in having troops drafted intoArdoyne, which lay at the mercy of theSpecials. The statement of the wholeNorthern hierarchy which clearly laidthe blame at the feet of organisedProtestant extremism in Belfast, andattacked the defence of these forces bythe Unionist mass media may havebeen provocative. But nobody coulddeny that it must have had a beneficialeffect on world opinion and must have

been a necessary booster to Catholicmorale in Belfast which was besiegedon the one hand by Protestant mobsand on the other by the Unionist press.Very wisely too the hierarchy from theSouth confined themselves to callingfor interdenominational relief.

The prime Catholic episcopal virtueis probably that of pastoral care, how-ever misguided, for its people. When-ever sectarian riots have hit the Norththe hierarchy have reacted admirably.

Indeed during the massacres of 1935the Catholic hierarchy were the onlysignificant organised body to attemptto bring Unionist oppression to theattention of the world. Similarly in1922 when the Irish government wasrelatively silent on sectarian disposses-sion of Catholics in the North theCatholic hierarchy was loud in protest.

However, the rank conservatism of the hierarchy comes to the fore during

spells of peace. By the beginning of September, Dr. Philbin was" Welcom-ing the proposals of Mr. Callaghan"

and Cardinal Conway "was hopefulfor the future." They issued thesestatements when Catholic families weredaily being evicted frommixed streets inBelfast and in the same week in whichthe British troops refused to stop in-timidation at work.

Throughout the year the hierarchyhave placed far too much trust in grudg-ing reform proposals doled out by theUnionists. They have shown them-selves to be interested more in peacethan in justice. The hierarchy sup-

ported the month's truce called afterO'Neill's famous television speech lastDecember. The hierarchy also de-manded a period of grace for theambiguous Chichester-Clark when hecame to power.

Dr. Philbin's evident collusion withthe British military in removing thebarricades is probably the worstexample of a hierarchical desire forpeace at all costs. General Freelandhad been told to get the barricades

down by the fickle Mr. Callaghan onSeptember 16th. On the same day thepeople of Falls Road and Divis Streetvoted to keep their barricades. Then onthe next day Dr. Philbin with a phalanxof the more conservative local clergypressurised the people to take themdown when their menfolk were at work.

The record of the Catholic hierarchybears comparison with any other power-ful interest group in the North. Its

record has been one primarily of politi-cally shrewd, honest conservatism.

The only other significant Church in

the North is the Methodist Church. This Church represents neither theworking class nor the wealthy middle-class. It has a minority influence inmost areas in the North. On the Shan-kill Road there are two Methodistchurches. But nowhere does it have agreat deal' of influence. Its AnnualAssembly in 1968 in Cork showed amarked degree of reaction. And as aChurch it was hardly in a position togreatly effect the Protestant communityin the North. During the August crisis

its governing body made no publicstatement. It did finally make a state-ment asking for peace when aMethodistchurch was burnt down on the CrurnlinRoad. A statement by its leading clergy-men is not recorded.

The Protestant Churches are in aweak position in the North. They haveallowed their laity to remain theologic-ally naive and Evangelical and Paisley-ite in their attitudes. Biblical niceties

tonext 'page-col. 3

39



BOOK REVIEW

MORALS, LAW and AUTHORITY,sources an attitudes in theChurch. Edited J. P. Mackey,Gill and Macmillan, Dublin.1969. Pp, xiv +154. Price 18/-.

THIS VOLUME -IS not a book. It israther a collection of articles by sevenIrish theological and philosophicalacademics. There is a considerabledifference between the two forms of publishing. No one in his right mindwould attempt, in the course of asingle sustained argument such as abook proper requires, to cover any-thing like the ground this collectioncovers in the course of a mere 150pages. Dealing with topics as remotefromone another as " Pagan Philosophyand Christian Ethics" and "TheChurch's Message" the collection un-doubtedly achieves the aim of breadth ;whether it also hits its self-proclaimedtarget of analysis in depth is analtogether different matter.

Presumably Father Mackey collectedthese articles in order to make a con-tribution to the renewal of that mostdegenerate of all theological studies,moral theology. No part of Catholictheology ever suffered the ravages of an inept scholasticism to quite theextent that moral theology has in thepast few centuries. And nothing hasshown this more clearly than the prettygenerally immature and unsophisticatedlevel of sophistry which characterisedargument on both sides of the con-traception debate. The aim of renewalhere is, then, undoubtedly worthy and

if only for the reason that any dis-passionate contribution is likely tobring some advance, this book must bewelcomed.

But does it succeed in anything as awhole, as a book in its own right? Itis difficult to give any general assess-ment of so variegated an assortment of articles, other than that, like thecurate's egg, it is good in parts. It isalso, I feel, very bad in parts. But,being a collection, we have no need tolose the baby with the bath water, andsome contributions, notably those of Watson, Mackey and McDonagh makeit worth having.

Father Watson, writing on "PaganPhilosophy and Christian Ethics" isan author with that rare ability tosummarise a great deal of accuratescholarship in a simple manner whichis nonetheless satisfying to the scholars.He is thus able to argue both vigorouslyand in detail a complex thesis about theways in which Catholic moral theologywas in its origins deeply influenced bypagan philosophy.

<40

Father Mackey points out, from adifferent point of view, an importantcorollary. We are far too glib, he main-tains, in hyphenating the "faith andmorals" bit of the infallibility and"authoritative teaching" formulae.

The authority with which the Churchteaches in moral matters is considerablymore relative than that of its teaching inmatters of faith, for the simple reason,as Father Watson has shown, that

human reason and experience entermore fully into the understanding of Christian morality than it does intodogmatic formulae of the more specu-lative kind..

Thus the combined force of thesetwo arguments requires us to ack-nowledge that some of the so-callednorms which we might otherwisehave thought specifically Christian, arenot so at all but are e.g, rather Stoic orneo-Platonist in origin. And then theybegin to look, after all, as not soessential to Christ's message and ex-ample as we thought. This is good

" renewal" research: it requires usto go back and examine the sources of religious beliefs with a new, less con-ditioned eye. Which is, is it not, whatrenewal is about ?

So much for abstract absolutismat the level of the Church's formulation

of moral teaching. Father McDonagh,however, draws another corollary whichfollows from the same point with evenmore direct bearing on everydayChristian living. If the Church's teach-ing on morals must lean heavily onsecular experience, then so must theconscience of the everyday Christianin his interpretation of that teaching.One cannot then argue (in the cus-tomary, though quite circular fashion)that an "informed conscience" isone which simply and exclusively in-forms itself from authoritative teaching. This is perhaps the only really fruitfuland positive. point to have emergedfrom the contraception debate, for itplaces heavy emphasis on authenticmaturity of Christian life as the chief source of moral teaching, rather thanon abstract legal or philosophicalformulae.

At this point we might have ex-pected a philosopher to help things onwith an attempt to give some positiveaccount of the philosophical recon-structions of human moral experience.But P. J . McGrath's contribution on" Natural Law and Moral Argument"is both purely negative and, in my view,frankly inferior.

He has a popular, if shifting targetin traditional natural law theory. Butit is not, in the first place, altogetherclear just whose natural law theory he

is attacking. Sometimes it is Aquinas'and then only interpreted in the worstscholastic manual tradition; some-times it is the manuals themselves, andsometimes again arguments in Humani

Generis. But all of these are argumentsin quite different traditions and spiritsand McGrath just lumps them togetherwithout discrimination. Add to thatthe fact that he never gives them a fairrun anyway; that he blandly accuses

them all of committing a notoriouslycontroversial fallacy known as the"naturalistic fallacy"-to which hisown unargued, merely stated, alter-native theory, is at least as plausiblyopen-and I think you have a prettysub-standard contribution.

I judge this contribution thusharshly, both because I think itdeserves it and because it is a matterof some importance. For it is a factthat theology, while increasingly recog-nising the debt it owes to literary,political and artistic attempts to recon-struct human experience is simul-

taneously finding the philosophicalreconstructions too narrow, academicand arid to be of much help. And yet,if there is to be any kind of systematic

renewal of moral theology, rather thansimply "renewed insights" of thatpiecemeal and partial character whichare nowadays so in vogue, a renewal of moral philosophy is very much a need.P. J . McGrath's contribution is not, Ithink, a contribution in that sense,whereas most of the others are. It is apity to have them so badly let down bya contribution which their own thesesrequired to be good.

DENYS TURNER

THE CHURCHES

DURING THE CRISIS

continued

cannot effect generations of clericaldifference to lay religion. Thus all laityare potential victims of Paisley's re-

ligious views even if they are notattracted to his fascist politics. Futher-more with a well organised U.V.F. onlya very brave clergyman could operateindependently in riot areas. Similarlythe younger Catholic clergy do not playa leading role in the C.R.A. In ruraltowns such as Dungiven the influenceof the priest is more marked. But theera of clerical hegemony in Catholicpolitical circles ended with the adventof the C.R.A.



Fred Cogley writes on

THIS SEASON'S RUGBY PROSPECTS'

IN TERMS OF achievement, I re-land's recent Rugby history has beennone too happy insofar as victory inthe Triple Crown series has eludedthe Irish sincethe balmy daysof 1948and 1949. However, in terms of per-formances, the Irish have done con-siderably better in recent years thanever before: six consecutive inter-nationals werewon andno other Irishside had managed to build such animpressivelyconsistent record.

Nonetheless,the distinctionbetween" achievement" and "performance"shouldbenoted. I haveno doubt thatplayers and supporters would gladly

exchange the six-in-a-row sequencefor the importantthree-in-a-rowwhichwould havebrought the Triple Crownback to Ireland. But eachnew seasonbrings new hope and the 1969-70·season, which has just opened, couldproveto bethe most successfulIrelandhas enjoyedfor over 20 yearsin terms.of achievement and performance.

Undoubtedly, there'is enoughtalentavailable in the country to build awinning team and there are hopefulsignsthat among the younger playersa deep pool of reservetalent is fillingup. The Irish will never be in theposition of having too wide a choicebut when a crop of good playersemergesthe lack of strength-in-depthworks to Ireland's advantage. Theplayersarekepttogether andavaluableunity of purpose of spirit can evolve.In other countries, where the choiceis muchwider, it is considerablymoredifficultto keep much the same teamintact. The temptation to chop andchange, seeking continual improve-ment, tends to upset teambalancebutwith so much worthwhile talent attheir disposal the selectorsin the othercountries cannot but help experiment-ing. It may be true that they will

seldomcomeup with a bad teambut,while the Irish can have their leanyears they can also produce brilliantcombinations.

It may bepresumptuous at such anearly stageof a new seasonto attemptto forecast I reland's fortunes, par-ticularlywhenno oneis awareof whatthe opposition may produce, but Iexpect that Ireland will do extremelywell and I feel that the Triple Crown

and the International Championshipcanbewonby the Irish.

Apart from the general state of Irish Rugby, which is healthy, onehas only to scan through the keypositionsto seethat thereis a sufficientnumber of established players avail-able to ensure that the pattern of thelast few seasonsis maintained. Theteam-spirit which has been generatedin thoseyearsandthe wealthof reservetalent which has developed shouldmake for improvement. And it is

possible that in the InterprovincialChampionship, which will dominatethe pre-Christmas activity, some newcandidates for places on the Nationalteamwill emerge.

Kiernan to pass Kyle?

At present, we can only deal withplayers we know who are likely tofigure in Ireland's team but still thesigns are encouraging. At full-back,

Tommy Kiernan is the man in pos-session and if he plays in the fivematches against South Africa, France,England, Scotland and Wales he willbecome Ireland's most-capped player,passingthe record number of caps of 46 held by the great Jack Kyle. This

should be incentive enough forKiernan to makea determined bid to

hold his place; for it would be asuitable climax to a career, which hasalready seen him captain the Britishand Irish Lions. Just to ice the cakefor Kiernan, he would appreciate thehonour even more if he were to gethis 47thcapin aTriple Crown:victoryover Walesat LansdowneRoad !'

However, if Kiernan does get hisfivemore caps they win be earned onmerit because he will have to prove,first of all, that he is a more accom-plishedfull-backthanBarryO'Driscoll,oneof the foremostchallengersfor theposition. In additiontheyoungDublin

University player, McKibben, has agreatdeal of promiseanda goodseasonin the interprovincialscould bring himinto the reckoning.

There were some doubts expressedabout the ability of the Irish three-quarter line, followingthe dismal per-

"formanceoat,Ca~iffibut-I-feel that withGibson and Bresnihan in- the- centrethe foundations are there for a goodline. Harry Rea and John Moroneycould also be useful utility men andthere are a number of very promisingwingers who might be among thoseconsidered - Alan Duggan, Jim

Tydings, Tom Grace (U.C.D), and Terry Young (St. Mary's), to name I

but four. The manner inwhichBarryMcGann

took over the out-half role last seasonindicatesthat he will remain for sometime but with Gibson able to switchfromthe centre there is no real cause'

FRED COGLEY worked withthe Irish Times and EveningHerald beforebecomingthe IrishSports Correspondent of theSunday Telegraph. He has been

R.T.E.'s television commentatoron Rugby since 1962 andtravelled with the Irish team ontheir historic tour of Australiain 1967.

Later this year will see thepublicationof Fred Cogley's IrishRugby Yearbook 1968-69,a com-prehensivebook designed to fillthe gapin Irish Rugbyliterature.



for concern here and the position withregard to the serum-half berth isequally encouraging. Roger Youngcould be very seriously challenged byBrendan Sherry, now back to peak

fitness, and Munster's Liam Hall mayalso come into contention; whileColin Grimshaw, John Moloney andVinnie Becker will be other candidatesof real potential.

Man in the serum

But the best backs in the world canbe of little value if they do not get theball and therefore it is essential for ateam with lofty ambitions to have agood set of forwards. Happily, Irelandappear to be reasonably served upfront although, in some cases, there isreason to worry about the shortage of reserves of class. For example, KenKennedy is expected to remain ashooker but apart from Paddy Madiganthere does not seemto bemany promis-ing hookers in a position to take over.However, we must assume and hopethat Kennedy will be available through-out the campaign and if so Ireland canbe assured of regular possession fromthe set serums.

There are plenty of fine prop for-wards in the picture but it will be

.01 2

interesting to see whether Syd Millarand Phil O'Callaghan can hold outRay McLoughlin, the former Irishcaptain, who is likely to make a bid toregain his place. Ollie Waldron isanother who could get back intofavour and the impressive captain of last season's Leinster Cup winners,Sean Lynch (St. Mary's) might alsocome into the reckoning.

In the second row Bill McBride

and Mick Molloy look certain to re-main but it is rather disconcerting thatthere are so few players pressing thesetwo for their places. Indeed, if eitherof the two men in possession loseform,Ireland will have difficulty in finding asuitable replacement.

Strength in the line-out

However, Bill McBride, who hashad to plough such a lone furrow inthe line-out for Ireland may have some

of the burden lifted from his shoulders. The arrival of Ken Goodall did muchto ease McBride's responsibility, forthe tall Goodall proved himself to be just as effective in winning posessionat the tail of the line-out as he was ingeneral play. He must surely becomeone of the greatest No. 8 forwards thegame has known and I believe thatIreland can build a truly great backrow around him this season. MickHipwell could well move to wing-

forward and this would add evenmore strength to Ireland's line-outplay and there are ahost of good wing-forwards from which the selectors canchoose.

It is possible that the mighty NoelMurphy will be prevailed upon torescind his decision to retire frominternational football and he could join men like Jim Davidson, TommyDoyle, Mick Doyle, Denis Hickie,

Terry Moore and others in a tussle fora place in the back row. Whateverway the selectors move, however, itwill be difficult for them not to settlefor a very formidable set of forwardsand with a pack of such potential, thebacks should get plenty of possessionto achieve those championship and Triple Crown victories which haveeluded Ireland for so long.

Towards the Crown

The famous and powerful SouthAfrican touring team, who play Ulsterin Ravenhill on November 29, will

return to Ireland in the New Year andhaving played Munster in Limerickon January 3, they will open Ireland'sInternational campaign at LansdowneRoad on January 10. Ireland will thentravel to Paris to meet France on January 24 and on February 14 Irelandwill play England at Twickenham.Scotland will visit Lansdowne Road fortheir match with Ireland on February28 and the climax of the season will bereached on March 14 when the Irishtake on Wales at Lansdowne Road. Onthe off-chance that this will be a TripleCrown game, might I suggest that now

is the time to book your ticket!



RACING: A NEW TRA INER ON THE CURRA GH

" I've always wanted tobea trainer. I've

been dissuaded for long enough. But now

I'm going ahead. If you want to be

successful it's a very hard life. There is a

lot of hard work; much more so than

people realise. There's no security. You

have to live from day to day and year

toyear ••• "

-Richard McCormick.

THE SPORT OF KINGS is a Mc-Cormick family tradition. The late

R. J . (" Dick ") McCormick was awell-known and long-established Irishtrainer, whose own father, Mark, wasregarded in his day as being one of themost brilliant huntsmen in the country.Dick McCormick learned his trainingart during a twenty-year spell with thelegendary "Atty " Persse at Stockbridgeand, later, with Steve Donoghue atEpsom. The latter--one of racing'sall-time greats-rode the winners of sixEnglish and four Irish Derbys. McCor-mick was one of the few men everallowed to ride The Tetrarch at work-outs-a signal achievement, for thathorse was apparently the nearest thingto abullet ever seen on aracecourse andone which Donoghue called" the fastestI ever rode."

As atrainer, operating from Summer-hill House on the Curragh, McCormickhad a highly successful career, winningmost of the major flat races in Ireland(including acouple of Phoenix "1500"s)and a number of Classics. He was aspecialist with fillies and proved expertat preparing them for the racecourse.

" Don't call me Dick ... "

On his death in 1963, his sixteen-year-old son Richard became theworld's youngest racehorse trainer, leftin charge of a 22-horse stable that in-cluded two horses owned by the (then)Minister for Justice, Mr. Charles J.Haughey. Within twelve days of taking

out his licence, the young trainer hadsaddled two winners. A few months(and several winners) later he gave uptraining to study for a veterinary degreeat U.C.D. Last year, complete withdegree, he left for a year's practical ex-perience in the U.S.A. He returned in June, immediately applied for a licence,and set about preparing his Curraghstables for the 1970flat racing season.

Born in Meath and educated at New-bridge College and U.C.D., RichardMcCormick (" Don't call me Dick: Ican't stand it ") is, at 23, an articulateand committed young man with definite

aims and ideas. His university veterin-ary degree and his American stay haveafforded him valuable know-how andexperience in many aspects of racing.Both should stand to him in the future.

Racing across the Atlantic

In America he worked at the New York race tracks of Belmont and Aque-duct, and at Hialeah in Florida with Dr.William O. Reed, one of America's topveterinary surgeons. (Reed recentlyimported Pampered King, sire of two

big U.S. stakes winners-Czar Alex-ander and Ludham-to America fromKildare's Milerstown Stud.) He alsoworked with the Tartan Farm Corpora-tion, a breeding farm in Ocala, Florida. The experience gained he regards asinvaluable, but it was not easy: "Iwas working twenty hours a day, losing

a lot of weight and getting littlemoney ... "

How did he find the racing industryin the U.S.A.? "It's very business-like. People in America race horses forone of two reasons: either to winmoney or to lose it by writing it off.Consequently there is a tremendouspressure on trainers to run horses. That's why their horses run so fre-quently. There, they can live out of horses-perhaps just out of two orthree. They are often accused of running them too often and breakingthem down."

Betting five million

" Racing executives in the States doeverything to make the average punterimportant. They even insist on afixednumber of work-outs for horses so thatup-to-date information is brought tothe notice of the punters via the formsheets. Betting, of course, is very bigover there. On a Saturday at Aqueduct,50,000 people will bet five milliondollars (£40 a head)."

"Americans are now favouring grass



tracks. I would like to see dirt tracksintroduced here in a small way. We'vebeen racing here for three hundredyears. There, it is comparatively new.Consequently, there aren't so manydiehards around and they will acceptnew ideas. In afew years time if I havea horse good enough, I'd like to takehim out to the U.S.A. for six weeks orso and race him a couple of times insome of their big stakes races as our

Irish horses are more than comparableto their grass horses. The tendencyused to be to go to England. Now it isFrance. I think, soon it will be the

U.S.A."McCormick believes that the average

Irish racegoer experiences a lot of dis-comfort because facilities at some racemeetings are not all that they should be.He is in favour of centralised racing:concentrating racing at a few of thebigger and better courses with a pro-gramme arranged to suit particulartypes of horses. He believes that morecould bedoneto increase public interestin racing and to entice racegoers butthat, under the circumstances, theRacing Board "are doing a fantastic

job."

A boost from the Tote

The issue on which he feels moststrongly is that of tote monopoly. Hesees its absence as the root problem inthe Irish racing industry. "A totemonopoly would definitely benefit Irishracing by increasing the stake moneyand giving an all-round boost to owners,trainers, stable lads, etc. In the Statesowners don't even have to pay an entryfee for certain races-the stake money

comes from the gate and the tote,""A tote monopoly would also

straighten the game out by makingbetting coups more difficult to bring off and by discouraging "springers",thereby enhancing the chances of theaverage punter. If money is beingploughed back into racing because of atote monopoly then certain trainerswould be discouraged from compulsivegambling. A tote monopoly doesn'tdiscourage betting but it does mean thattrainers don't have to bet to livebecausethe stake money would be higher. Thebig punters can still bet against thepool."

McCormick feels that Irish racinghas made enormous progress in recentyears. "The sport has been cleaned upconsiderably by patrol cameras, effi-cient stewards and dope testing. Thisis a very good thing, for the racingpublic are after a square deal and theydeserve one," He considers that Irishtrainers-particularly Vincent O'Brien,Paddy Prendergast and the McGrathfamily - have done a tremendous

44

amount to advertise Irish bloodstockin the last ten years. He would like tosee positive steps taken to assist thedevelopment of Irish jockeys (such asAustralia's apprentice schools) for, ashe accurately points out, most of ourtop native jockeys have, in fact, hadforeign experience. (In his opinion, thebest jockey currently riding in theseislands is Ron Hutchinson.)

A filly for Mr. HaugheyOver the winter, McCormick will betraining about a dozen horses at hisSummerhill House stables in prepara-tion for next year. Following on hisreturn to Ireland he had discussionswith his owners who include Mr.

Haughey, bloodstock expert BertieKerr, and English owner Mr. C. A. B.St. George (whose Lorenzaccio hasachieved success in England). Heattended Goff's autumn sales at Balls-bridge last month and made two pur-

chases: for Mr. Haughey (whose racingcolours areblack and blue) he secured ayearling filly by Sea Hawke II out of Novitiate for 2,200 guineas; he alsopaid 1,750 guineas for a Tesco Boyyearling colt out of The Chaser. (Thecolt is a half-brother to Sinn Fein; itsdam was trained-with great success-by the late "Dick" McCormick forMr. Haughey.) His buying certainlyappears astute, for one of the highestprices paid at Goff's was the 13,500

guineas advanced by English trainerStaff Ingham for a Tesco Boy colt outof The Veil (the dam of Novitiate).

McCormick cherishes no illusionsabout the amount of hard work and thenumber of problems that will face himin the course of his chosen profession.He is up and about each morning at anhour when most citizens' alarm clockshave still plenty in hand. The challenge,however, appeals to this quiet, deter-

mined young man and he can shrug off the thought of the sport's inherent in-security: "I've got a degree behindme now as well as afarm and land," Onthe subject of marriage hepauses, grins,and professes that his immediate con-cern is for four-legged fillies ; he avows

he has" enough problems now withoutmarrying them! "

ExpertOpinionIf Vincent O'Brien is half as good a

judge of a young trainer as he is of a

thoroughbred then Richard McCormickis assured of a bright future. Talkingto NUSIGHT last week, the world-famous Baldoyle maestro said: "Ihave no doubt that Richard gainedvaluable experience from his fatherwhom I knew very well and admiredgreatly as a capable and most efficienttrainer. He is sure to do well. And hisexperience in the United States isbound to prove of great value to him inhis training career,"



J. :8. :K E A N E

talks to the Monday Circle

Edited by DORINE ROHAN

JOHN B. KEANE was born in Lis-towel, Co. Kerry, in 1928 and educatedat St. Michael's College. At twenty-onehe was the editor of his own newspaper,which lasted for one issue. During hisvaried career he has been chemist'sassistant in England, afurnace operator,assistant fowl buyer, street sweeper,labourer and barman. When he hadsaved a few hundred pounds, John B.Keane camehome to his native Listoweland bought apublic-house. His writingup to that time had consisted of short

stories, poems and a few articles. "Heturned to the theatre and here hisnatural sense of characterisation,coupled with his gifts as a storyteller,created the atmosphere for so manyyears lost to Irish letters." He wroteSive in ten days. It swept the country,and since then Keane's talents as aplaywright have entertained, informedand been appreciated in many cornersof the globe.

One does not have to be in thepresence of John B. Keane for long to

realisethat here is a shrewd, perceptiveman. He is strikingly honest-some-times literally so! As he says himself," I admire aman who will stand up andfight for what he believes in. If youstand up and fight they can't beat you.

You might be knocked down but youcan always come again!" John B.Keane believes in a lot of things. Hebelieves in John B. Keane, not throughany arrogance or false pride, but witha self-respect and faith in his own judgment which is likeable and admir-

45



able. He believes in Ireland and theIrish people with a love-hate curiosityand affection which goad him unceas-ingly to question and comment withhumour and candour, sometimes" toonear the bone" for those who do nothave his honesty. He is a controversialfigure; his plays have received ravenotices and condemnation but theynever fail to fill the seats of Irish

theatres. But John has learnt to dis-criminate where his critics are con-cerned, and knows what to take asconstructive, and what to eschew asnarrowmindedness, and" sour grapes"carping. In his autobiography he says,"Nobody ever accepts a writer. Heaccepts himself. To be a writer, arecognised writer, you have to dreamabout it from the ageof reason onwards.

You have to hold this thing into your-self and you have to listen to tauntsand jibes far removed from clinical anddetached criticism. You have to beconscious of jealousies and the criticismthat arises from them but you have tohave the consciousness to realise thatyou are not without jealousy yourself . You have to listen to, and read, thingsabout yourself far removed from the

truth and you must say nothing whatso-ever about it. You'll be called anythingfrom communist to anti-clerical and if you dare to deny it you'll succeed onlyin hanging yourself."

A visitor to this country recentlyremarked, " One thing the Irish love isafailure. They are suspicious of successand in many cases resent it, especiallyin their fellow countrymen. It's a

question of 'If at first you don'tsucceed you'll probably have morefriends' ."

John B. Keane is asuccess and he hasmany friends. If you meet him and helikes you, he will show it, just as youwon't be left in doubt if he dislikes you!Among his best-known plays are Sive,Sharon's Grave, The Year of theHiker,Many Young Men of Twenty, TheManfromClare, and more recently TheRainat the End of Summer and his record-breaking Big Maggie. His Letters of aSuccessful T.D.-a hilarious corres-pondence between a T.D. and hisfamily-is a best seller. Here in thisextract from the Monday Circle dis-cussion with him, John B. Keane talksabout himself and his views on many

subjects.

J . B. KEANE on-

Letters of a Successful T.O. Yes, but Tull McAdoo does not

emerge as a bad character. He is nobetter or worse an I rishman than any-one here to night for example! He is anegative T.D. and epitomises most of the Irish T.D.s of today. There is alotof rubbish talked about patriotismtoday . ., I think patriotism is thegreatest killer of idealism that was everborn. "Letters" is a satire about the jobbery that goes on in Irish politics.I think every country should have aMinister of Culture and the Arts to

protect the rights of the writer andartist who wish to express their views

and the views of others."

Catholicism

The Catholic Church in Ireland isadjusting itself. It has (because of thedetachment of its senior priests andprelates) lost much of its power. Thatit should lose control of people is goodbecause the Church should not control.It should guide, assist, instruct, etc. Itsefforts to control have placed it in aprecarious position. And whateverabout the clergy, the people will rescue

the Church.

Change of Environment

No, I don't need any change. I wasoffered a post in the University of California where I would write thetitle of a play on the blackboard and sitdown with the students and work fromthere. But I turned down the offer. Idon't want to leave Ireland. I love theplace. Just this evening driving intoCork I was marvelling at the trees alongthe way. Irish trees which you will findnowhere else-tall stately trees, nodding

46

at you, intelligent friendly trees. Theymade me happy. I think I am goingdeeper into my own people and deeperinto myself. There is always somethingnew to discover, something new tocomment on. I suppose you could sayI am maturing. When you are a youngman you say daring things with only acertain element of truth. When youare older you make the comments withmore thought and experience. In play-writing you have to think and consider

more deeply than ever.

Success

I don't think I have written a goodplay yet. The Year of the Hiker isprobably the best, because it has themost charity, but that's not a greatdramatic reason to give for a play. Idon't consider myself as a success. TheIrish critics regard me as a fellow whocan write aplay but who has not writtenone yet. I am coming to terms withmyself and trying to tie in my owncrooked obsessions and dreams withmy life, my family and my develop-ment. I may never do what I want todo. That is the great tragedy, but Ikeep hammering away all the time.

I am not a bitter man as people whoknow me and love me will tell you.Ninety-nine per cent of what I havewritten is comedy. Will you not allowme one per cent of kick? I hate injustice. I get angry at injustice. Suchas a fellow running down a fellow whoisn't there to defend himself. Or abunch of thugs in a dance hall attackinga couple or a fellow on his own. Andthen if they are caught they are fined £1in court, by some cowardly judge. It's adisgrace. Or a fellow with a bald tyre

on his car who is a potential killer andhe is fined 10/- if he is caught.

Why do you write?I love people and I have to write. I

cannot bear to see unhappiness inothers. It makes me unhappy. I haveto become involved. I believe in people.I love them and hate them because Iknow what they are. At times I hate thiscountry for its hypocrisy and its dreamsof the Irish language and the G.A.A.and wewill rake up a thousand years of muck to produce one ideology which isnot worth a damn. And everybody here

knows this and you don't give a damneither!

I believe that all responsible peopleshould be actively involved in politics.I am a member of the Fine Gael partyand regularly appear on public plat-forms on behalf of Fine Gael candi-dates. I would have gone forward as aDail candidate in the last GeneralElection had it not been for the factthat an old friend was going forward.Someone asked just now whom Iadmire in Ireland today. I admire Pat Taaffe, and Noel Murphy. I admire the Taoiseach, although I am not amemberof his party. I admire Gay Byrnebecause everybody gets an even breakon that programme of his.

On being a Publican he says:

I wouldn't advise anyone to becomeapublican, and I really mean this. Yourhome isn't your own. It is a publicplace where any kind of scoundrel canenter and spend his time. A man canbore you to death if he wants to andyou have to hear his confession too, if he feels like telling it. You have to



listen to "best friends" cutting eachother to pieces when one or the otheris absent. You have to listen to everysort of gossip or go out of business. Youhave to listen to every dirty story thatgoes the rounds. This is okay the firsttime you hear it, but when you hear itfor the hundredth time and you have tolaugh as much as the first time it's a bitirritating, but if you don't you'll findyourself losing a customer. In the

summer you get every type calling. There was one occasion when twoEnglish reporters called in for a drinkto break their journey. They spent anhour over one drink, but they missednothing that went on around them.After a while a tinker woman, who waswell and truly scattered, came in with ababy in her arms and she was lookingfor a drink. I refused her and she gotannoyed. The two lads said nothingbut they were so interested I was won-dering what they were up to. Thetinker woman left having conclusivelyproved my illegitimacy and after a

while the two press lads left. Laterthat night the 'phone rang and it was acertain newspaper who asked, "Tellme, is it true that you, who wrote Sive,refuse to serve tinkers in your bar anymore?" "Nonsense!" I replied, " Iserved two of your reporters here thismorning! "

Rural Theatre

Michael MacLiammoir said that thetheatre is an evil place for those who donot belong. Any place is an evil placefor those who do not belong. I do notbelong to the theatre, at least to themetropolitan theatre which claims tra-dition with portfolio. Anybody canbelong to the rural theatre. It is not anevil place and nobody should try to tellus that the rural theatre is not trulyinternational. Shakespeare was acountry boy and so was Yeats. So was

T. C. Murray and so was Lorca, Butwemust keep the rural theatre free fromtoo much metropolitan influence andlet it develop its own character. Inmany aspects it's still a sprawlingadolescent but not for long because thetheatre is experiencing the pangs of rebirth in rural Ireland. It is taking a

strange shape but the stranger thebetter, and the more independent of outside influence the better. Gone arethe days when a bit of fishing gut hadto be tied to the legs of an actor toremind him that it was his turn to saysomething, or to stop him from sayingtoo much!

Gone are the days too, when for-gotten plays had to be unearthed forlast-minute productions. New playsby country boys are springing up like

mushrooms. Maybe some of them arecrude and clumsy but it must be re-membered that you cannot build a newnative drama in a generation. Therising generation should bring theharvest of plays which the theatre needsto give it life and vitality and exuber-ance, to give it hilarity and lunacy andbustle because these are the things thatarising generation has in abundance.

Anonymous letter writers

I get about thirty of these a year. Ihave often asked myself what promptspeople to write anonymous letters-why people should deliberately set outto hurt people who have done them noharm. A while ago I got a letter fromone who calls herself" Good Catholic

Mother." How does she know she's a

good Catholic mother? Someone elsewill decide that for her at an unex-pected date. Anyway good Catholicmothers, or good any kind of mothersdo not write anonymous letters. Of course the alleged " Catholic mother"may be nothing more than a small jealous little man! They used to upsetus but now when I open a letter I lookfor a signature. If there is no signatureit goes straight into the fire.

Favourite Poem

You have asked me to recite one of my poems. Here is "Church Street"

-the street where I was born inListowel.

I love the flags that pave the walk,I love the mud between

The funny figures drawn in chalk;I love to hear the soundOf drays upon their round,Of horses and their clocklike walk ;I love to watch the corner people

gawk

And hear what underlies their idletalk.

I love to hear the music of the rain ;I love to hear the soundOf yellow waters flushing in the main;I love the breaks betweenWhen little boys begin

To sail their paper galleons in thedrain.

Grey clouds sail west and silver tipsremain ;

The street, thank God, is bright andclean again.

A golden, mellow peace for ever clingsAlong the little street ;

There are so very many lasting thingsBeyond the wall, of strifeIn our beleaguered life ;

There are so many lovely songs tosing

Of God and His eternal love thatrings

Of simple people and of simplethings.

Communism?

A menace with no room for love,charity or free thought or speech.

Irish Women?

I love them!

The Moon Landing?

A good thing since there is no lifethere for men to corrupt.

Marriage?

Name a better way to raise a family.

Civilisation?

There is no such place.

Christmas?

I'm all for it.

Death?

I never discuss subjects which are toocommon.

Bernadette Devlin?

A likeable sparrow. I hope nobodyhurts her.

J ohn B. Keane?

I like him-not always, but I likehim.



FOUR LIVES·

FOUR POLITICAL POEMS

by THOMAS TESSIER

1. PEACE, BROTHER!

Like all the rest,We wore slogans on our sleevesAnd argued military trustAcross dinner-table leaves.

Outside that game now, you warn:

Two fingers raise in hope, or scorn.So they put you to the test, To see how much one man will resist.

2. ON THE NEW PEACEPROPOSALS MARCH, 1969

Outside, in a vacantLot, bulldozers fightWith the frozen earth.Everywhere, it seems,

March will not give in To our hovering April.

One year gone and stillNo closer to peace Tha.i a fool's ferecastMight figure us to be.I stir, drawn from oneWindow to another,Self-conscious, aware

That all Spring pacing

Is awkward and almostBeyond any repair.

My days may all hang

Heavily like this-I am allowed that grace.No doubt one of theseDays would seem a yearIn South Vietnam.

That is my grace too. The fact that I don'tUnderstand how To accommodate itIs one month's spell,One season's vacancy.

3. LETTER FROM A DRAFT-RESISTER

Today breeze-swept rainswashed Spring through my bones.Letters opened the day,as they can:

I was gratefulto learn of your late reprieve.

Still, it seemed that thiswas like so manyother breathing days-one more pausefull of transparentcalm-which you cannot control.

I, the paralytic,the helpless friend,must watch this ancientSpringcarry you in descent,in the vortex of its rage.

Summer spends heat,Autumn's embers fall-no other seasonis at warwith itself like Spring,

and you will wear its mark,

Now, as you threadchoice

so painstakingly,you. uncoverall that's lost betweensituation and the self.

4. ANIMAL DROPPINGS FROM THE MEKONG DELTA

His old lady was a problem at first,But theyShot her with sedativesLike a wild elephant,

For nearly 48 hours.Later, they bought her off With the usual 89.00 worth of Medals and laudatory double-talk.

No other military operationIs carried out with such precision.

He was like a plague, noisy,Depressingly naive and gullible.At some point, a virgin still,He wandered into choiceAnd so chose to enlist.

Within eighteen months he wasRipped apart without grace.

His pieces were clumsilyShovelled together and shipped back.

in his summer's town The air is thick as paste, The streets rippleLike sheets of flypaper.

Later, in its time,Everything will freeze.



A DICTIONARY definition of the

noun "project" tells us it is a

" scheme" or a "design." Spelt

with a capital' P,' it becomes the name

adopted by agroup of young Dublinersto describe what is certainly a com-

prehensive scheme and oneof ambitious

and praiseworthy design. Project has

had its ups and downs, its successesand disappointments, but now, three

years after its inception, it remains

one of the most stimulating and

dynamic artistic forces in Irish lifetoday. Its terms of reference cover theentire spectrum of the arts and its

targets incorporate an imaginative andwide-ranging series of activities. In

the long term, Project is not so muchI a programme but, very definitely, a

I way of life.

In 1966, Colm O'Briain, now a pro-

ducer with RTE, asked Jim Fitz-

Gerald to do a theatre production at

Dublin's Gate Theatre. " Fitz "

agreed and, in the course of rehearsals

for three one-act plays (The Tiger,Double Double and The Lover), the

two discussed the potential use that

could be made of atheatre on Sundays.

Realising that a number of uses couldbe made, the idea was thrashed out

further and plans were made. Project

67 became the first step in the direction

of an arts centre-the ultimate horizon.

In November 1966, amulti-arts seasonopened at the Gate. It included plays

and play readings, jazz concerts, clas-sical music concerts, teach-ins (on

censorship and on the theatre), an art

exhibition and an experiment in theatrefor children.

Plans and difficulties

The various interested parties

divided up events between them-

painting, music, sculpture, seminars,

children's theatre-and started mak-

ing contacts and arrangements. In

February of the following year, two

rooms were offered to Project 67 by Tuck &Co. (Ireland) Ltd. above their

premises in Lower Abbey Street. It

was decided to form acooperative non-

profit gallery for art exhibitions andreconstruction and renovating work

proceeded apace. Simultaneously, the

theatre side of Project 67 was planning

another full season at the Gate for

June, July and August. A number of

productions were selected and tentativecasts were arranged. Difficulties arose,

however, in the shape of a misunder-

standing about the Gate lease and in

the end it was only possible to obtain

the theatre for four weeks, with theresult that the entire nature of what

was already planned had to bechanged.It was decided to do a classic pro-

duction which would (it was hoped)

set the group up financially for the

season later in the year. The Beaux'

49



Strategem, directed by FitzGerald,

was staged at the Gate. The pro-duction hit financial rock-bottom and

shook the entire foundations of the

outfit. At the same time, the Gallery

was almost nearing completion. Were

it not f or this fact, and the group's

commitment to the Gallery, Project

might have submerged forever. ButinJuly, 1967, the lateDonogh O'Malley

officially opened the Gallery and a

series of exhibitions were mounted. The policy was to mix one-man ex-hibitions with group shows and the

emphasis was on graphic works.

Exhibitions by members of the gallery

were sent to Dundalk, Ballydehob,

and New York and an exhibition of graphics by Dutch artists was brought

f rom Holland with the assistance of the Prins Bernhard Foundation.

N ADYP comes into being

One of Project's plans for the longer

season did not dissolve with the failureto obtain the Gate three-month lease.

This was the formation of study groups

to discuss the need for drama in educa-

tion and theatre for young people.

From these study groups, whichmet during the run of The Beaux'Strategem, emerged the National

Association of Drama f or Y oung

People. NADYP formally passed its

constitution at its inaugural meeting

in September, 1967. Its aim is tof acilitate the development of theatre

for children and young people, to

encourage them to find expressionthrough drama and to appreciate

drama as an art form. The organisa-

tion has over 200 members, mostly

prof essionals (teachers, actors and

directors), with a number of active

amateur enthusiasts.

NADYP is a member of ASSITEJ(Association Internationale de Theatre

pour l'Enfance et la jeunesse) and

BCT A (British Children's TheatreAssociation); it also enjoys consultative

status with the Department of Educa-tion. It has taken special account of

the new Primary School Curriculum'ssuggestion to use "dramatic activity

based on the child's experience, with

simple dramatic presentation or miming

of incidents f rom legends and classic

tales." A wide range of courses,

seminars and lectures have been

arranged f or members.

Some of the events organised by

the Association during 1968/69 in-cluded "Drama for Children in the

Primary School," a practical demon-

stration with children by Aidan Rogers,

Lecturer in Speech and Drama at St.

Patrick's Training College, held in

Carlow and Castleblayney; "Designfor the Young Person's Theatre,"

a lecture by Lynn Avery, f ormerly of

the Royal Court Theatre Company,

which was held at Project Gallery;

"Approaching the Scripted Play with

Young People," a lecture by Colm

O'Briain; " Theatre in Education

Workshop," a three day course for

teachers of primary, secondary andretarded children by Stuart Bennett,

Colin White and Gordon Wiseman

(members of the Theatre in EducationCompany, Coventry) which was held

in V.C.D.; "Creative Movement,"

a five-week course on Wednesday

evenings by Mona Wren, Vice-Principalof St. Raphael's College of Physical

Education, Sion Hill, and held in the

College; "Drama Summer Courses

for Children " held in Artane,

Kilmacud, Sheriff Street and Bruns-

wick Street, Dublin, by twelve

teachers; and " The Shoestring

Theatre for Children," a company of drama teachers from England who

performed three plays, The ReluctantDragon, The Howler and The Frog atyouth clubs and schools in Castle-

blayney, Dundalk, Navan, Palmers-

town and Tallaght, and in Dublin at

Cabra, Dominick St., Donnybrook,Drumcondra and Pearse Street.

Outside the Pale

As can be seen, the instructors and

contributors are not drawn solely from

Ireland but include persons of estab-

lished reputation and accomplishment

f rom abroad. (Also, it is clear,

NADYP's range is not confined to an

area within the Pale.) Members of

the Association can also avail of a

library service and information on

films of related interest is also pro-

vided. Once every school term a

newsletter is published and circulated

to all members which keeps them in

touch with the Association's eventsand progress. The newsletter reports

on developments in the field of drama

as a teaching method and carries inter-views with prominent people, articles,

reviews of recent publications, progressreports and other inf ormation.

The Project Gallery had, meanwhile,

been continuing with exhibitions,

lectures for NADYP, and poetry

readings. Last April, Tuck & Co.

sold their premises and the new owner

recommended Project to the Y.M.C.A.

for a lease in their basement premiseswhich had been f ormerly held by him.

On June 9th aone-year lease to use thepremises as an "arts gallery" was

issued. Members spent the summerconverting the premises (as our photo

shows) and readying it for an Autumnopening. On 3rd September, the

Minister for Finance, Mr. Haughey,

officially opened the new premises and

Project's inaugural exhibition (of paint-ings and sculpture by almost thirtyartists.) It is envisaged that the gallery

will also be a bookshop, a letterpress,

the venue for poetry readings, jazz,

classical and folk music concerts,

courses and performances connectedwith NAD YP and, early next year,

experimental theatre productionsworking largely on the theories and

techniques of J erzy Grotowski, the

Polish producer.



The group maturesPast difficulties and exigencies ex-

perienced by Project have, in fact,

paid dividends in strengthening its

commitment towards its aims. ColmO'Briain, whose brainchild it is, claims(with justification) that the years of

trying to keep the gallery going-of actually holding it together-have re-sulted in the maturing of the group

as a group: "Our organisationalmistakes now are far less than they

used to be. And we all have a clearer

picture of what we're at."

Pro ject has experimented with severalforms of organisation. Now it has ten

directors with no secretary or chair-

man. A weekly report is presented toameeting of the directors. The gallery,

at present, has about fif ty members.Almost all are painters or sculptors.

Membership is now being f ormalisedwith the introduction of a £3 fee be-cause the group is in the process of

being incorporated and licensed by theDepartment of Industry and Com-

merce as a charity. This is considerednecessary not as a structural change

but as a procedure for identif ying thegroup.

A deal of thought has gone into

Project: there is a distinct motivatingphilosophy behind it as well as a force.It is best described by O'Briain, its

articulate andenergetic dynamo :" Theguideline and most of the effort now

lies in expanding the range of projects. This falls on the artists who, as soon as

the group is more diversified, willhand over to the professionals in their

respective fields. They will be re-sponsible for their own finances, events

and organisation."We called it Project 67 originally

because right from the beginning in

1966 we were looking ahead. Wethought it would become what we

wanted it to be in '67 but it didn't.

But we are still Project towards anarts centre. When there is an artscentre that in itself will be the end of

the project - we will have arrived at

what we set out to achieve. After thatother horizons will be necessary.

Brahms before soccer"Ideally, an arts centre is a place

with facilities f or the performance of all the arts, facilities f or all the artiststo work (music rooms, foundries f or

sculpture, studios f or painters, andrehearsal rooms) and leisure f acilitiesfor all the community so that if you

want to play the piano, mess withclay, have a cup of coffee, you get itin the community arts centre. Leisure

facilities should also include sports-

you should have showers, soccer fieldsand dressingrooms. And on your way

to the dressingroom you should hearBrahm's second symphony."

"Joan Littlewood's dream of thefun-palace includes candy-floss and

slot machines, but we feel these are

already adequately provided for."( This comment was approved of emphatically by Project's Information

Officer, Lee Gallagher, who remarkedenigmatically, "It's not what thebutler saw but what the butler can do

that we are concerned with.")

O'Briain feels that one of Pro ject'smain aims is to take away the mystique,

to bridge the gap between the artistand the community. "Artists are

professionals," he says, "so whatthey're doing is a committed piece of

work: their audience is not a con-sumer audience - it's a leisure

audience. "" The arts, unf ortunately, are in-

extricably tied up with money. No

matter how articulate you are, you arestill depending on the old spondulicks. The traditional support for all the arts

has been fromthe upper-middle classes.Pro ject is trying to find a solution to

reaching not only the upper-middleclasses but also those areas that havebeen traditionally culturally deprived."

Bambis and plastic f lowers" What wewould like to seehappen-

ing would be, f or instance in the case

of the woman who lives off the trading

cheque, that instead of spending thelast two pounds of her cheque ontrivia (bambis and plastic flowers etc.)

it would be within her range to putaside some of the cheque towards

buying a painting, getting theatre orconcert tickets, or towards books. This

is a difficult thing to do: not only areyou fighting educational opportunities

that different sections of the com-munity enjoy, but also their financial

and economic liabilities and limitations.Some sort of success would have been

achieved if this ever became possible."Whether it will in an Irish context

is impossible to forecast but if not it

will not be f or lack of eff ort andimagination. A return to our dictionary,

this time f or a definition of the verb"to project," suggests, among others,

" to cause to jut f orward." This doesappear particularly apt in the case of

Pro ject-over the last three years,substantial hard work, energy andinitiative have indeed caused it to jut

forward as something in the nature of a beacon. Permanency is anotoriously

rare f eature of organisations concernedin promoting the arts Dublin has

witnessed too many pocket theatresand literary magazines disappear intoanostalgic Celtic twilight to aver other-wise. Project may, should and, one

hopes, will prove an exception.



EVERY YEAR the Cork Film Festivalis praised or condemned on the basis of

the feature films screened. It is some-

times forgotten that the main objective

of the Festival is to further an interest

in the short film as an art form. Thisyear the general standard of the sixty-

one short entries was very high indeed

but, as usual, the features were the

talking point and tended to overshadow

the real purpose. Too much publicity

is given to so-called "controversial"

features and not enough to the main

objective in which Cork succeeds so

admirably.

In the General Interest Section theSt. Finbarr Statuette Award went to

the U.S.A. for Why Man Creates, abitingly funny satire on man's attemptto find himself in a world of material

progress. Combining cartoon and live

action, it made excellent use of the

medium and proved to beavery popularwinner. Directed and scripted by Saul

Bass, creator of the now famous creditsequence in The Man With The Golden

Arm, it is worthy of awide showing andI hope some enterprising distributor

will give Irish audiences an opportunity

of seeing it.

The Shepherd (U.S.A.), about a

shepherd searching for a job in New York, won the award in the Animated

and Cartoon Section but personally I

did not think it good enough, as it

depended to a great extent on a closing

one-line gag to make its point. TheHungarian entry, The Kidnapping of the

Sun and Moon, made much better use

of the creative possibilities of thecartoon medium, but its serious theme

of the possible destruction of mankind

would certainly not have made it a

popular choice.

Subject matter andtechnique The Films on Art category is often

confusing because it can be quite diffi-

cult to differentiate between the subjectmatter and the actual film treatment.

This year there was no problem because

Test of Violence (U.K.) brilliantly de-tailed the paintings of Spanish artist

Juan Genoves and managed to marry

the subject matter with the film'stechnique so that the result was a

cohesive whole, one depending on theother. This brilliant piece of cinema

was so easily ahead of its competitors

that there was no doubt about it cap-

turing the award. It too is deservingof a very wide showing. The boring

travelogues we see in most Dublin

cinemas have earned the short film the

poor reputation that it certainly does

not deserve. Cinema managers should

52

credit Irish audiences with a little more

intelligence.

The Jury decided not to present an

award in the Short Fiction category asno single film reached the required

standard. They did, however, award acertificate of merit to the Israeli entry,

The Other Side. The U.K. entry, Oneof the Missing, admirably conveyed an

atmosphere of tension and dread during

an incident in the American Civil War

and makes me believe that its youngdirector, Anthony Scott, will find no

difficulty in making his way into the

field of feature films.

Controversy and Condemnation The " controversial" Ardmore

feature I Can't, I Can't, which opened

the Festival, received far more attentionthan it deserved. A glossy, commercial

production, it had pretensions to social

drama but rarely rose above the

woman's magazine level at any time.

Had this film been made in Britain orAmerica, I doubt if it would have

received much critical comment, good

or bad. However, the fact that the filmwas made in Ireland, and deals with

contraception and extra-marital sex,

made it worthy of a few newspaper

headlines and condemnation by at least

one notable figure. The fuss will prob-ably be in vain because the film, at least

in its present form, is unlikely to bescreened publicly in this country and

will probably receive scant attention

abroad. Incidently, I didn't noticeany-

one walk out during its showing and no

one was aware of any controversy until

we read the newspapers during theweek.

Three Into Two Won't Go, with a

script by Edna O'Brien, was a veryentertaining version of the eternal

triangle but with far more punch than

usual. Director Peter Hall seemed

happy to allow the cast dominate thefilm and Rod Steiger turned in a

stunning performance as a salesman

whose marriage flounders because of

his involvement with a teenage hitch-hiker. It's a pity this one is also un-

likely to be seen on Irish screens. The

characters are approached with sym-pathy and understanding and the treat-

ment is by no means sensational.

Christian Soldiers

I had great hopes for The Royal Huntof the Sun but it proved somewhat of a

disappointment. Based on the play by

Peter Schaffer the film betrays itstheatrical origins with long stretches of

dialogue interspersed with short pass-ages of minor spectacle. Basically, the

story concerns the confrontation be-

tween a conquering Spanish general

and a vanquished Inca king, and it

questions the validity of imposing theChristian ideal on a civilisation that has

built itself on the belief that the sun is

God. It has a few excellent moments,especially the slow motion massacre

sequence, but it all succeeded muchbetter on the stage. Robert Shaw gives

an interesting performance as General

Pizarro and manages to convey the

emotions of a man torn between his

training as a soldier and his pity as ahuman being. But Christopher Plum-

mer as King Atahuallpa steals the

show. Near naked, and attempting amusical voice that sounds something

like Neddy of the Goon Show, thisincredible performance must be seen to

be believed. It alone is worth anyone's

money. That apart, however, it is apitydirector Irving Lerner didn't use his

camera to better effect. It could have

been agreat film.

One of the best FestivalsFor me, the best feature of the week

was Wajda's Hunting Flies, a Polishversion of the American Mom cult.

Its hero is dominated by his mother andwife, who plague him with day-to-day

routine requests which drive him into

the arms of an attractive young univer-

sity student. However, it is not long

before she also begins to spur him intosimilar tasks and he decides that return-

ing to his wife is the better part of valour. This was a surprisingly slick

production with first-class colour photo-

graphy and asnappy music score. There

is also a marvellous send-up of tele-vision programmes. (Every time the

hero walks through the living room his

aged father sits gazing at the screen andthe same programme about fish canning

is being transmitted.) I sincerely hopethis one gets a Dublin screening.

One pleasant surprise was an Ameri-can film called Greetings. This was

missed by most people because it was

shown on Saturday afternoon and hadnot the benefit of advance publicity. It

could hardly be called undergound butit was certainly sub-surface. Made on a

shoestring in New York, it was a mix-ture of Andy Worhol and At Last the1948 Show. Brilliantly vulgar, it satis-

fied everything from Vietnam to stag

movies and really deserved alater show-

ing.I would agree with Festival Director

Dermot Breen that this was one of the

best Festivals in recent years but I dowish the serious aspect of the short

entries received better publicity. Maybe

next year?



THAR T AR dha bhliain deag <> shina bhunaiodh an Darner, Amharclann

na Gaeilge. Is achrannach an saol a bhi

aici 0 shin; thuas seal, thios seal, ach

ainneoin san uile ta si fos ann, bee,mar a deirtear, agus ag chur fuithi ag

112Faiehe Stiabhna !Halla beag in ioslach an Unitarian

Church ata inti; suiochain do thart ar

chead duine. Ta curna ainnis go leorar an halla agus nil na suiochain ro-

chornpordach. Is beag teas ata san

air. Ni dheanann an pobal freastal aran air, is annamh bionn an teach nios

mo na leath Ian. "Poll dorcha, tais,

suarach," a thug cara liom ar an ait le

deanai, "Masla don Ghaeilge," deirfear eile. Admhodh duine ar bith de

lucht an Darner go bhfuil firinne, a

bheag no a mhor, sa mheid sin. Cad'na thaobh, mar sin, go leantar leis, no

cen chineal duine ata saDarner?

B6rd Stiurtha

Bord Stiurtha de chuigear, Bainis-teoir agus Runai a reachtaileann anDarner. Ta cur arnach fairsing ag

'chuile duine acu ar an Amharclann.

Dramadoiri beirt acu go bhfuil roinnt

mhaith dramai scriofa acu, Ieiritheoiragus aisteoir duine eile agus aisteoiri

go bhfuil baint acu leis an ait 0

bhunaiodh e ag Gael Linn, an chuideile. Tagaid 6 aicmi eagsula den

phobal; on lucht proifisiunta agus onlucht ealaine. Taid aontaithe i gcuspoiramhain, amharclann Ghaeilge den

chead scoth a chur ar fail do phobal nacathrach seo. I measc na n-aisteoiri, ti

muinteoiri scoile, Stat Seirbhisigh,cailini oifige agus fiu eolai no dho;ceimithe Ollscoile a bhfurmhor. Labh-

ras le roinnt diobh faoi aidhmeanna

agus polasai na haite.Seamas Pairceir, Cathaoirleach Bhord

Stiurtha an Darner, Leiritheoir, Aisteoiragus leirmheastoir.

As beocht folaithe 1 measc naphobail chun drarnai i nGaeilge a

scriobh, a saolaiodh an Darner. Freisin

maireann beocht ealaionta ait ambionn

fonn ar dhaoine bheith agaisteoireacht,ag leiriu agus ag glacadh pairt indramai Gaeilge.

6 thus, ni he ar fad go raibh an

Darner agiarraidh drarnaiocht Ghaeilgea bhru ar an bpobal i mBaile Atha

Cliath, ach go rabhthas ag iarraidhfreastal ar an riachtanas a bhi ann don

obair seo; agus sruth cumhachta afhaisceadh as an bhfuinneamh ealaionta

a bhi i measc ar muintire.

Raison D'etre an Darner

Agus chun aon "ro-chraifeacht" a

luafai le raiteas mar seo a scaipeadh,

machnaim laithreach orthu siud a Maireann an Darner, ainneoin droch

chuir dramai den scoth ar fail don choras teasa, soilseagusanmichompord.Darner, daoine mar, Breandan 6 Maireann se ar phlana na healaine a

Beachain, Eoghan 6 Tuairisc, Diar- eascrann as an scribhneoireacht agus

maid 6Suilleabhain, Sean 6 Tuama, as fiuntas na dtaispeantas.Mairead Ni Ghrada, Criostoir 6 Is mor an bac e an "structtir

Floinn, Padraig 6 Giollagain, agus fisiciuil " ar an gcineal fior-amhar-

freisin ar na haisteoiri agus na leirith- clainne is gaachruthu agus achaomh-eoiri agus ar an lucht staitse a ghluais nu, ach nuair ata an rneid sin curtha

leo 0 "nead" an Darner isteach san dhiorn agam, agus ni ag moladh na agAmharclann Ghairrniuil, isteach i Radio leath-scealu na hainnise ataim, dear-Eireann agus Telefis Eireann agus a faidh me go bhfuil sui1againn cruth,

bhfuil a gcion fein a dheanarnh acu curnaagus aisieanna nios fearr achur ar

chun saol culturtha an phobail a fail don lucht feachana agus do narathu, rinneadar siud ar fad a gcion haisteoiri. Cuirfear feabhas ar chursai

freisin ar son an Darner. Is cuid lelinn an tseasuir ata rornhainn amach.de chlann an ti iad. Agus ta a Ian acu Micheal 6Ruairc, Bainisteoir agusagobair, nar rneasc i gconai, "An droch Aisteoir.

chaoi" agus gach a ngabhann leis, a "De reir chosulachta, nil moranluaitear go minie leis an Darner, ta se suime ag pobal na cathrach seo san

mar bheadh na dathacha; is mo de amharclann mar ata si. Caithfimid

chomhartha beochta na a mhalairt e suim an phobail amharclainne i gcoit-agus nior choir go gcuirfeadh se dul inne-ni hamhain lucht na Gaeilge-

arnu ar aon duine faoi raison d' etre an a mhealladh. Chun esin a dheanarnhDarner. caithfimid achur inalui orthu gobhfuil

53



dramaiocht na Gaeilge ina cuid fiortha-

bhachtach de dhramaiocht na tire.

Thuig a Ian daoine e sin don chead

uair nuair a mhol Harold Hobson An

Triail, ach bhi An Giall agus cuid

mhaith dramai fonta eile againn roimhesin, agus ta scribhneoiri ag scriobh

dramai tabhachtacha sa Gaeilge faoi

lathair, Se an t-aon ghearan ata agam

futhu nach bhf uil nios mo diobh ann.

Sin fadhb an-mhor. Nil dothain

scribhneoiri againn f aoi lathair le clariornlan de bhundramai achur le cheile

gach bliain. Nil aon locht agam f einar aistriuchain, ach ba mhaith liom da

bhfeadf aimis nios mo bundramai a

f hail. Maidir leis na haistriuchain,

Mach, cuimhnigh nach mbeadh seans

ag pobal Bhaile Atha Cliath saothar

daoine ar nos Salacrou, Fabbri, Andres,Pagnol, etc. a fheiceal murach an

Darner. I mbliana beidh ar a laghadceithre bundrarnai againn sa Darner."

Amharclann Lan-Ghairrniuil

Ghaeilge

Noel 6 Briain, Leiritheoir agusAisteoir:

"Taim brean de dhaoine bheith ag

caitheamh anuas ar gach rud sa tir gan

tracht ar an Darner. Is doigh gur cine

" knockers" sinn agus gur ga duinn a

leitheid a bheith ar siul againn, ach

tugaim faoi ndeara go mbionn an

clamhsan is laidre ar siul ag an gcinealGhaeilgeoir nach mbogann moran taobhamuigh de Thigh Neill. Ta gach ceart

acu bheith ag casaoid ach amhainteacht agus na dramai d'fheiscint,

Deintear drarnai san Darner ata ar ard

chaighdean agus feictear domgo bhfuil

muid ag chur le saol ealaionta agusculturtha na tire. Feicim mar aidhm

romhainn arnach an la beannaithe singo mbeidh Amharclann lan-ghairrniuil

Ghaeilge ann a dheanfaidh freastal ar

phobal mor na hEireann, ach ni

Amharclann go lucht eisteachta, Ta

semar dhualgas ar aon duine adeireann

go bhfuil suim ar bith aige i gcultuir

na tire seo, agus 0 bheith ag learnh nanuachtan tana milte acu ann, ta semar

dhualgas orthu seotacaiocht athabhairt

duinn. Is cuma ce acu fior-Ghaeil-geoiri iad no a mhalairt, ta san fior."

" Chomh fada agus a bhaineann se

liomsa thaithn na leirithe a deineadhsan Darner ar mo chuid drarnai,

Bhiodar an-eifeachtach. Is doigh liom

go rabhadar ar na leirithe ab f hearr a

dheineadh ar mo shaothar dramaiochta.Biodh is go ndeintear sar-leirithe ann

go minie, bionn an caighdean mi-chothrom. An fath ata leis seo na go

bhfuil tromlach na n-aisteoiri ann ag

ple leis an aisteoireacht go pairt-

aimsireach. Chaithfear complacht

gairrniuil go mbeidh seasamhacht ag

54

baint leis a bhunu. Ansan beidhmuinin ag na haisteoiri as an ait agus

beidh tarraingt an phobail uirthi

fosta.'

-Criostoir 6 Floinn, Drarnadoir

gur dheineadh leiriu ar dha dhrarna dachuid san Darner, Aggiornamento agus

Cota Ban Chriost,

Nil na hudair ann!

Padraig 6Siochru ; Iriseoir, drama-doir, aistritheoir. Iar-Stiurthoir Taibh-dhearc na Gaillimhe.

Mar bhall de bhord Stiurtha an

Darner, taim lanchinnte dhe gurb i an

f hadhb is mo ata againn na dothain

dramai f onta nua-scriofa a sholathar,

Nil na hudair ann! Nil siad ag

scriobh! Nil f urrnhor den mbeaganata ar fail maith go leor! Da bhri sin

bionn orainn dul i muinin na n-ais-triuchan go rialta. Lochaitear sin

cuma cad a dheinimid, agus lancheart

ag an bpobal agus duine ar bith eilesin a Iochtu,

Dar liom go measann dramadoiri gogcaithfidh siad drama "neamhchoit-

ianta" a chumadh, e bheith "eaIa-

ionta " Eorpach, Brechtach, Pinterach.

Nil aon duine a ra nach feidir drama

maith den deanamh sin a scriobh, agus

na beadh eilearnh air. Ach ca bhfuil

na dramai grinn no an fior go mairid

beo. An measann daoine gur peaca e

no " neamh-leiseachas " rud sothuigtheeadrorn aerach a scriobh. Feach mar

d'eirigh le Aggiornamento le Criostoir6 Floinn agus dramai Eoghan Vi

Thuairisc, mar shampla.

Ta fadhb eile, fadhb abhionn ag aon

bhord Stiurtha, Cuirtear drama nua

ag triall orthu. Leitear e. Nil seoiriunach mar ta. ." bheadh se

ceart go leor ach ta an t-uafas athraithe

le deanamh air . . . bunsmaoineamh

go maith ach! Athscriobh iomlan

etc." Ce dheanfaidh e? An tUdar fein?

An tUdar i gcomhairle le duine eile?An tUdar i gcomhairle le leiritheoir a

mbeadh fonn air e leiriu, Freisin, nifeidir, agus ni ceart do bhord Stiurtha

drama nach dtaitnionn leis, a bhru ar

Ieiritheoir, Bionn droch thoradh ar a

leitheid de "dheachtoireacht." Is

cuimhin liom Ria Mooney a ra, trath

go raibh mar leiritheoir sa Mhainistir,

nach raibh ach an t-aon script arnhainriamh a cuireadh isteach chun nahAmharclainn an trath ud, narbh

eigin cur leis na baint uaidh. Scriptle Joseph Tomelty.

Is rno na riamh de chomh-iarracht e

drama a ullrnhu don lucht feachana, debharr teienici nua leiritheoireachta,

oilteacht na leiritheoiri agus tionchurna scannan agus na telefise.

Sean reiteach is fearr ar an bhfadhbna an t-udar a dhul i gcomhairle leis

an Ieiritheoir agus le " saineolai" eile,

mas ga san, agus ar an mbealach sinnithe a chur ina gceart do na hais-

teoiri agus ansin bailiu leis agus anchuid eile fhagail faoin leiritheoir,

Mar fhocal scoir, measaim go bhfuilgeargha, aird a thabhairt ar an eileamh

ata ag an bpobal ar dhrama sothuigthe

(ni ga "e chur ar phlata ") a bhfuil

greann eigin ann. Tar eis an tsaoil ta

cearta ag an bpobal (pe hiad fein) . . .

cearta sibhialta Amharclainne! . . .agus gan pobal tairnid gan dramaiocht,

Agus nach fior e go bhf uil se niosdeacra drama grinn maith a chumadh

no an bhf uil? Dushlan I

£3,000

Tugann an Chomhairle Naisiunta

Dramaiochta deontas i gcabhair £3,000

in aghaidh na bliana don Darner.Labhras le Donnchadh 6Suilleabhain,

Runai na Comhairle-"Si an aidhm a bhi againn nuair

bhunaiomar an Chomhairle Naisiunta

Dramaiochta, deich mbliana 0 shin, na

Gluaiseacht Amharclainne na Gaeilgea chaornhnu agus a fhorbairt, tri na

haiseanna agus an deis a chur ar faildo scribhneoiri agus do lucht nadrarnaiochta a gcuid saothair ealaine a

chur i lathair an phobail. Cuid den

iarracht sin 'sea an Club Drarnaiochta.

"Is de bharr chomhoibriu idir

Bhord Stiurtha an Darner agus Bord

Stiurtha na Mainistreach a hiarradh aran gComhairle an Club nua Dram-

aiochta seo do reachtail, Feachtascomhaontaithe ata ann chun scoth an

dramaiochta a chur ar fail don phobal

ar chostas feasunta, Ta ionadaithe on

Darner, on Pheacog agus on Mhainistir

pairteach san obair seo .i, chun comh-

ordu agus lar riaradh a chur ar a gcuid

oibre agus leirithe fonta a chur ar faildo phobal amharclainne na cathrach.

Tairiscint an Chlub

" Seo ata a thairiscint ag an gClub;dha shuiochan ag; ceithre drarnai san

Darner; tri dramai sa Pheacog ; leirithe

de chuid na Feile Naisiunta saPheacog ;

leirithe de chuid na Feile Naisiunta sa

Pheacog agus mar Bhonus i mbliana-dha shuiochan ag leiriu na Nollag sa

Mhainistir, Seadhna coirithe ag anAth. Padraig6hEachthighearn, B.Mus.

Seolfar Ardan iris na Comhairle saor

trid an bpost chuig gach ball. An

costas in iomlan £3 3. O. Sin 3/6 an

suiochan (suiochan dubalta), Ar anmbealach seo ta suil againn saol na

hAmharclainne; a bheou agus an pobal

rannphairteach linn san iarracht, Ta

gach eolas faoin gClub ar fail on

Stiurthoir Dramaiochta, 6 Sraid Fhear-chair, Baile Atha Cliath, 2."

SEAN A. 0 BRIAIN



Sir-Having just read NUSIGHT'S

September issue and its long featureon the North, I feel that I must write

to you, firstly, to congratulate you onthe excellent use of so many first-class

photographs and on your ambitious

attempt to givein depth coverage totheconfused situation here. Moreover, it

is true that you give the People'sDemocracy far fairer coverage than

many other papers. However, regret-tably, the feature is marred by an in-

credible number of stupid factualerrors. I shall confine myself mainly

to sections VII and VIII, but within

theseshort sections far too many shoddymistakes occur. Ignoring the simplespellingmistakes, I bring your attention

to:-

1. The PD was formed after a

student sitdown in Linenhall Street, Bel-

fast, not Guildhall Square, Derry-tobe 70 miles out augurs ill for further

accuracy.

2. In listing PD "leaders" youmention a " Fergus K eogh "-a myth-

ical person. Your reporter presumablymeans Fergus Woods who stood against

the nationalist MP Keogh. Moreover,

Rory McShane has played little or nopart in the development of the PD.

3. RSSF stands for the Revolution-ary Socialist Student Federation-not

" radical," as you state; f urthermore, it

has not existed at QUB since December1968.

4. The activists' proposal for theStormont march was only narrowly

defeated-not overwhelmingly, as youclaim.

5. The PD proposed, organised and

held the " Long March " to Derry on January Ist to 4th. At no time did theCRA have anything to do with it.

6. Omagh has never had aPD, con-trary to what you state.

7. A PD branch was formed by thepeople of Lurgan because the local

CRA was the most spineless and in-

active in the country-by no stretch of the imagination could they ever have

been described as "militant," as your

reporter does.

8. You state that McCann and

Toman were elected to the NICRA in January. This is totally incorrect; only

Farrell and Boyle of the PD were

elected.

9. You mention that two of the PDcandidates in the election got }of the

votes-you omit the fact that Woodswon on the first count and was only

" beaten" by 200 votes af ter 500 spoilt

votes had been added to K eogh's tally.

10. Farrell and Toman at no time

during last month's 'troubles' "fled

the province"; they were working inFree Belfast and Free Derry.

11. Your picture on page 41 capt-ioned "Captain Long" is in point of

fact of the Governor Lord Gray of

Naunton.

12. When precising the Burntolletbook your reporter couldn't even get

placenames right. It's Knockloughrim,not Knockloughlin, and the first days

lunch stop was at Templepatrick, not

Dunadry. The alleged slogan chantedby the Bunting babes was of course

" One teague, no vote," not of course" one vote."

13. Finally, and incredibly, in Sec-tion V on the October 5th march your

" reporter" recounts how "withoutwarning the police baton charged the

crowd and drove them down WIL-

LIAM S TREET. The water canonswere then put into operation. The

marchers were driven back towards the

Bogside.' This is just plain rubbish. The police assault took place in DUKESTREE T over a mile away across the

river, and 1t miles f rom the Bogside,As a result Duke Street became world

famous-but not apparently to your

correspondent. This is not just slip-

shod, it's deplorable.

I notice that September issue has no

letters. This I f eel is a pity. If you

wish to maintain your hitherto estab-lished reputation I suggest you printthis letter-it was a pity to ruin afine

feature with somany errors, which only

play into the hands of the Unionists.It should not be allowed to happen

again.

REV. A. BERKES,

Sir-Congratulations on your Sept-ember issue. It must surely be the best

bob's worth to come our way for quite

a long time. Your coverage on theNorth was excellent.

The Orange Order must be respon-

sible for much of the trouble up there.It isamazing that in ahighly industrial-

ised place like the north there is no

strong Labour Party-the Orange Ordersaw to this with their marches-they

got out their bloody drums often on,to engender hatred f or the Catholics

and in so doing made the Protestant

workers f orget about a Labour Party.

The behaviour of the Orange Order

down the years gives aperf ect example

of abully at work. During the presentcentury they bullied England into

accepting them and bullied Ireland

from having them, and soan unnatural

boundary was set up in a small country

to accommodate them. They have got

control of this terrain for nearly 50years during which they bullied their

opponents out of houses and jobs.

( Their opponents could be classed asthose people under their jurisdiction

who had a diff erent religious belief to

themselves.)

So far, they have got away with all

their bullying As everybody knows, a

bully to be brought to his senses must

get a helluva hiding, after which, of

course, he is no longer a bully. Thequestion is who is to give them their

medicine-the British troops would

redeem some past wrongs if they dishedit out.

FINBAR SLATTERY,

" Bramley,"

Orchard Close,

Killarney.

Sir-I felt I must say that it was wellworth while waiting six weeks for the

current issue of your magazine.

Your coverage of the situation in the

North of Ireland in scope and depth,together with the first-class pictures

excellently reproduced, were unique insuch exercises undertaken by Irish

journals.

One criticism-I feel it is unfortu-nate that your new cover format should

be so noticeably and unsuitably deri-vative.

MAR Y HIGGINS (MRS.)

Greenhills,

Mather Road 5,

Mount Merrion,

Co. Dublin.



Sir-Many congratulations and sin-

cere best wishes on the publication of

NUSIGHT,which thrilled me very much.

I hope that it enjoys popular appeal and

is well received. It is well presented

and should proveagreat help in forming

public opinion in this country.

The riots of the North, of course, are

still news everywhere. About themI want to say two things. Firstly,publication of these things are useful

and helpful and indeed they might

awaken public opinion south of the

border to doing something beyond

dishing up mere words, when some-

thing practical should be done in the

desperate situation in which we are

plunged in the North at this time. But

some things should not be published

and among these things I think wemustinclude the private squabbles of mem-

bers of parliament. These people talk

and talk and talk and rarely offer a

constructive proposal on the troubled

waters. Instead they trouble the watersmore by their invective and the poor

people who must listen are caught up

in this barrage of words. No doubt theM.P.s may have helped on the struggle

for freedom and, no doubt, talking is

their bread and butter, but too many

words havebeen spoken. No action hascome. No reforms. Little change inthe administrative intolerance of the

ruling wealthy. Secondly, there must

be another way to Irish freedom. This

must be anon-violent civil rights cam-

paign, coupled with a deeper insertion

into education in university and polit-

ical life as a genuine weapon for theIrishman to gain a foothold in his

native province.

Thanking you for this new magazine

and wishing it my blessing.

JAMES J. McGEE, C.C.,

Parochial House,

Rouskey,

Omagh,

Co. Tyrone.

Sigmund Freud

Sir-Congratulations on your cover-

age of the North in the September

issue of NUSIGHT.

The article on Sigmund Freud was

also well done but was marred by anunintelligent and childish first sentence

in Part V (The Contemporary Scene).

The percentage of people who need the

services of an analyst is as high or

56

higher in many countries (including

Ireland) as it is in the U.S.A.

NUSIGHTis on its way to becominga rather good news-magazine-s-don't

let it be spoiled by this sort of nonsense.

PATRICK McVEIGH.

Dublin Road,

Swinford,Co. Mayo.

Mick O'Connell

Sir-I got my first copy of NUSIGHTtoday and was delighted with it. Just

one disappointment-the section onsport dealing with Mick O'Connell.

While glad toseeGaelic games featured,

I hope you will have their players and

matches treated in depth. We get

quite enough superficial sentimentality

in our daily G.A.A. columns. Gaelicgames deserve to be taken seriously.

Every best wish.

JOE LENNON.

" Thanter Hill,"Rinn Mhic Gormain,

Co. naMi.

Sir-I have never written a letter of

this kind before, but after reading your

September issue of NUSIGHT I feel Imust write to congratulate the writer

of the sports pages. I have read almostevery book and paper on G.A.A. and

never have I read anything so inter-

esting as your paper about Mick

O'Connell. I have read everything

there is to be read about this great

sportsman, but this was the onlywriter that described the' real Mick

O'Connell. I had the pleasure of meet-ing this great, unique man this summer

on his beloved Valentia. I would like

to thank this writer for the best article

I have ever read about this great

sportsman.

To finish I would like to say what a

wonderful magazine NUSIGHT is. Ihave never read it before. I saw it

advertised on T.V. last week; the bit

about Mick O'Connell made me buy

it. Now all my friends are buying it.I certainly won't miss it; it's good value

too,

MARGARET HOLMES,

Lacken,Duncormack,

Co. Wexford.



On September 4 the death of HoChi Minh, President oftheDemocraticRepublic of Vietnam, was announcedin Hanoi. Cu Bac(thereveredUncle)Ho was one of the elder statesmen of

thetwentiethcentury, aman whocon-tributed significantlyto the course of modem history and, by his actionsmore than his words, to the develop-mentof revolutionarysocialistideology.As a patriot (one of his many aliaseswasNguyenAi Quoc,meaningNguyenthePatriot) hewasgreatlylovedby theVietnamesepeopletowhomhebecame,by virtue of his remarkable combina-tionof restraint andpersistence, acon-tinual source of inspiration. To the

feuding theorists of the Communistworld, Ho wasanegnimaticfigurewhosteadfastly refused to throw in his lotwitheither PekingorMoscowandwhowasconsequentlyabletohold ontothe

support of each.SincetheGenevaConferenceof 1954Ho Chi Minh's relationship with theWesternworldhadbecomelessandlessdirect. To most Westerners he was asort of backstage figure, an old manwhoseindefatigableenergywaslargelyresponsible for perpetuating the inter-minable war in Vietnam. To others,including Third World revolutionariesand, morerecently, radical students inEurope and the United States, he was

a symbolic figure who represented anexternal version of their struggleagainst a political and social orderwhich, from within, they could dolittle to change.

The real significance of Ho ChiMinh lay in the fact that he waseverythingthat peoplethought of him.He was first and foremost a patriot, aman totally dedicated to the Vietna-mesepeople, and this wasthe basis of his thought and his actions. At anearly age he became convinced thatrevolutionary socialismwas the onlyideology genuinely sympathetic topeople oppressed by colonialismandimperialism. In an agebedevilledwith

61



ideological splits and splinterings, Hoadopted aflexibility which allowed himco-ordinate the energies of divergent

groups. Essentially he was a believerin the patriotic revolution before the

social revolution and so found himself

in some considerable agreement withboth Stalin and Mao, while hispolitical experience in many countries

made him sympathetic enough to the

internationalist movement to feel noideological qualms about enlisting the

support of even the Trotskyists.

International SymbolIt is appropriate that Ho should have

become, despite his nationalism, aninternational symbol. He was a widely

travelled man, versed in many lan-

guages and familiar with many different

cultures. Everywhere hewent heseemedto gravitate towards the underprivi-

leged, whether they were minoritygroups or deprived masses. It isstrangely coincidental that he was very

deeply moved by the conditions of theAmerican negroes with whom he oncelived, sharing the shame they felt atbeing coloured. It was their con-

dition combined with the American

involvement in Vietnam which brought

about the first major questioning of Western, anti-communist mythology

since the beginning of the Cold War.Ho's wide experience of humanity

prevented him developing the kind of racialist outlook that characterises somany ardent nationalists. His political

and social philosophy confirmed whatexperience taught him, namely that thepatriotic struggle was aimed at a

system which oppressed the masses in

the home countries as well as those inthe colonies. He also came to under-

stand that the whole military-industrial

machinery which perpetuates colonial-ismand imperialism can become quite

divorced from the people and govern-ments of the home countries. "Thetrouble is," he told an interviewer in

1965, "that Johnson is not in chargeof the situation. It is the military menin the Pentagon who are now dictating

American policy."

Ho's OriginNGUYEN VAN THAN, or Nguyen-

Who-Will-Be-Victorious, later to be

known as Ho Chi Minh, was born on

62

May 19, 1890, into a poor peasantfamily in north-central Vietnam. His

father, a self-educated ardent nationa-

list, was dismissed from a post in theimperial administration for his refusal

to learn French and for his involvement

in rebellious secret societies. TheNguyen clan are everywhere in Viet-nam and, unlike other great families,

have never lost contact with the

peasants and rural workers who con-stitute four-fifths of the people of Vietnam.

The total population of Vietnam is

about 31millions, of whom16t millionslive north of the 16th parallel and 14!million south of the parallel. Of these,

26 million are ethnically homogeneous

Vietnamese (the French called them

Annamese) speaking a common lan-guage with the usual dialectic varia-tions. The other 5 million are made up

of the aboriginal "Montagnards" of the Central Highlands, clans andsettlers, some of them highly cultured,

others forming a kind of slum or

jungle proletariat.In pre-Christian centuries the Viet-

namese fought the Siamese Empirewhich extended into Tonkin, the

northern province of Vietnam. Later

they fought for centuries against theChinese and enjoyed long periods of independence until Tonkin was in-

corporated into the Chinese Empire in1406. By the mid-nineteenth centurythe " Emperor" of Annam, the Central

province whose capital is at Hue, hadestablished his rule over most of thecountry.

The French Then came the French, playing their

part in the general drive of the Western

imperialist powers to divide up Asiaand Africa between them, under the

usual pretext that peaceful traders and

missionaries had been persecuted bythe natives. They overran Vietnam,

Laos, and Cambodia, converting whatthey called "Indo-China" into aseries of colonies and protectorates.

By 1892 Cochin-China (the Frenchname for South Vietnam) was given

the status of colony; Annam was madea protectorate, still under the rule of

its own king or emperor; and Tonkin

was made a protectorate directlyadministered by resident French

governors.By the year 1910, when Japan

occupied Korea, the movement of revolt against capitalism and imperi-alismwas beginning to spread from the

West to the imperial possessions inAsia and Africa. That same yearNguyen Van Than f inished his courses

in a strongly nationalistic Lycee schoolin Hue. He saw sporadic revolts

often ruthlessly suppressed and re-

solved to devote his life to achievingthe independence of Vietnam.

In January 1911, at the age of 21, the

future leader took work in the kitchensof aFrench steamship and left Vietnamon a journey which was to bring him

through the French empire in NorthAfrica, France itself, England, NorthAmerica, Russia, China, Siam (or

Thailand) and Hong Kong. During

his stays in these countries, Nguyenearned a meagre living by such work

as shovelling snow or touching up

photographs, devoted most of hisenergy to study and writing, learned

the language of the people and becameinvolved in the organisation of political

parties and revolutionary cells.

Through his many activities, in-cluding lecturing and the distribution

of leaflets, Nguyen tried to focus theattention of the French people on theatrocities that were being committed

in Vietnam. He quickly became known

to many Vietnamese workers in France

who adopted him as their champion.In 1920 he joined the French

Socialist Party believing in the need for

great co-operation between militantsocialists in the imperialist home

countries and the patriotic peasants andintellectuals in the colonies.

From Socialism to Communism The split between the social re-

formists who favoured the recon-stitution of the Second International,

and the Russians and their supportersin the rest of Europe, who decided tofound a new revolutionary Third

International, was inevitably reflected

at the 1920 French Socialist PartyCongress at Tours. To his own, as

well as everyone else's surprise, Nguyenfound himself making an impassioned

speech in support of the revolutionary Third International.

As well as being a founder-memberof the French Communist Party, he

founded the Inter-Colonial Union, a

body of nationalists from colonialterritories, and edited their weekly

publication. This was a polemical

newsletter called Le Paria (The Out-sider) through which he hoped to keep

interest alive in the conditions of all

the French colonies. As well as aplaylet called the Bamboo Dragon,which he wrote to ridicule the Emperor

Khai of Annam on a ceremoniousvisit to Marseilles, Nguyen wrote apamphlet about this time which he

called Le Proces de La ColonisationFrancais.

A woman victim of one of theAmerican bombing raids on Nth.Vietnam.



He attended the Comintern Congressat Moscow in 1922and, except for two

short visits to France, remained there

until 1925, studying at the Toilers of the East University. He was active inthe establishment of the South East

Asian Department in the FourthCongress of the Communist Inter-national. He subscribed to Pravda,

wrote two pamphlets - China andChinese Youth and The Black Race-and showed the first signs of his life-

long determination to avoid doctrinal

disputes in favour of action andempiricism.

Return to Far EastIn the year 1925 he accompanied

the Borodin mission to China, ostens-

ibly working as a translator in the

Soviet consulate at Canton. There he

formed the Revolutionary Youth

League which brought young Vietna-mesenationalists to Whampoa MilitaryAcademy for training under Soviet

instruction. This league, more com-monly known as Thanh Nien, providedthe basis for the organisation of

revolutionary cells throughout SouthEast Asia. While Nguyen Van Thanhlectured on Marxism and made contact

with the Chinese Communist Party,Pham Van Dong undertook the danger-ous job of initiating cells in Vietnam.

After the split between Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Communists in

1927Nguyen returned to Moscow. In

1928 he turned up in Thailand andtravelled among Vietnamese exilesorganising political groups and pub-lishing newspapers that were smuggled

over the border into Vietnam. By 1928the working-class population of Viet-

nam had increased enormously due toFrench development of mining, cotton

and weaving mills, and rubber planta-tions. In that year serious strikes took

place in most of the major cities, in-cluding Saigon, Haiphong and Hanoi.

As a result of these developments, Thanh Nien cells argued as to whether

or not the time had come for theestablishment of a Communist Party.

The Indo-Chinese Communist PartyNguyen VanThanh's position at this

time is difficult to assess. However, itis doubtful that he was in favour of

going over to a strictly Leninist phase

just yet, and it has been suggested thatthe decision to form a Marxist-

Leninist party was taken behind hisback. While he was still in Thailand,

the party was formed at a congress of Thanh Nien in Hong Kong.

The result of this untimely action

was irnmediate fragmentation. An

Indo-Chinese Communist Party for Tonkin was set up by the Thanh Nien

in Hanoi; the Thanh Nien in CochinChina established the CommunistParty of Annam; and the League of

Indo-Chinese Communists was set up

by a rival revolutionary group.In January 1930, Nguyen summoned

two delegates from each of the twoex-Thanh Nien splinter groups to

Hong Kong. At a meeting which took

place in a soccer stadium while amatch was in progress, he provided

both groups with aprogramme accept-

able to each and instructed them to join the third splinter group and take

it over. The party, whose name Nguyen had

changed from the Vietnamese Com-munist Party to the more international

sounding Indo-Chinese Communist

Party, transferred its headquarters

from Hong Kong to Haiphong andlater to Saigon. In a ten-point mani-

festo issued bythe Central Committee,Nguyen clarified the major priority-freedom from colonialism before social

revolution.

ImprisonmentA futile and ill-planned nationalist

uprising took place in Annam in 1930

and brought about brutal reaction onthe part of the French authorities.Despite Nguyen's warnings, another

rebellion was staged later that year innorthern Annam in which Soviets,

knicknamed " Xo-Viets" to give them

a nationalist ring, were established. They were also suppressed, and Pham

Van Dong and Ton Duc Thang (nowHo's successor as President of theDemocratic Republic of Vietnam),were both imprisoned. Ho was now

on the black list of Surete, the

French secret police, andwas sentenced

to death in absentia.He was arrested by the British

authorities and charged with being aSoviet agent seeking to overthrow the

Hong Kong government. A sentence

of expulsion wasrepealed by the HouseofLords and Hothen went toSingapore.

Here, however, he was arrested, sent

back to Hong Kong and once moreimprisoned. The French failed to have

him extradited and his British lawyer,

convinced that the British and Frenchpolice were acting in collusion and thathis client's life was in danger, smuggled

him out of prison and awaytoaChinesefriend's villa, where he stayed as amandarin for a short while.

Renewed ExileAfter spending some time working

among Vietnamese exiles in Shanghai,

Ho went to Moscow for the SeventhCongress of the Communist Inter-

national in 1935 which came outstrongly in favour of the line proposed

by Ho and Dirnitrov: namely thecreation of broad popular fronts in thestruggles against colonialism and im-

perialism. These could involve any

Democratic Nationalist groups which,in the case of Vietnam, included even

French residents. At this Congress theICP (Indo-Chinese Communist Party)

was formally recognised.

From 1934 to 1938 Ho studied inRussia, lecturing (sometimes in verseto facilitate memorisation) in the Lenin

Institute under the name of Livov. Hesubscribed many articles to indigenous

Vietnamese publications under thepsuedonym Line, carefully avoidingideological disputes. During this timehe suffered greatly from tuberculosis.

In 1936, Leon Blum's Communist-backed Popular Front government in

France announced an amnesty in

Vietnam and many of Ho's colleagues

were released from prison. The ICPwas now allowed operate legally on

Indo-Chinese soil.This alliancebetweenthe Popular Front and the Com-munists lasted in France and in

Indo-China till 1938.

The J apaneseMeanwhile Japan from her base in

Korea had invaded Manchuria and was

starting on her Great Asian War



which was to last 14years. Neither the

League of Nations nor the Western

Powers did anything to stop her till

she bombed Pearl Harbour in 1941.With no opposition other than the

Chinese she swept right through

eastern China to South East Asiawhich she overran with the co-

operation of Thailand, the French

readily accepting her demands.

In 1938Ho had gone to China where

the Japanese threat had reconciledChiang and the Communists. In

Mao's Yemen he found himself in-

structing Chiang Kai-shek's troops in

guerrilla tactics. In South China in

1940 Ho rejoined his colleague Pham

Van Dong, and was introduced to a

young man who had been searching

everywhere for the leader, carrying a

photograph with which he hoped to

identify him. His name was Vo

Nguyen Giap.After sporadic Vietnamese uprisings

in 1940 and 1941 Ho slipped back into

Vietnam and set up headquarters in a

caveat Pac Bo, near the Chinese border.

Here in May 1941the eighth plenum of the Central .Committee of the Indo-

Chinese Communist Party was held and

a broad popular front known as theViet Minh was established, involving

other left-wing and nationalist groups.

Giap, who wasappointed as organiserof the military side of the Viet Minh,

made a close study of the strategy of

Mao Tse Tung. Later that year he

was able to mobilise guerrilla propa-

ganda units throughout Vietnam.

Imprisonment againHo saw the moment for revolt

drawing near. The French were dis-

credited for having sold out and the

Japanese, who were fighting on many

fronts, were over-extended. Using thename of Ho Chi Minh to convince

Chiang's police that he was a Chinese

journalist stationed in Vietnam and the

name by which he is now generally

referred to, he set off to gain the

support of Chiang and Mao for theViet Minh. His disguise and his

forged papers did not help him as he

quickly fell into the hands of Chiang's

police and was thrown in prison.

He was extremely badly treated in

prison and his health deteriorated. The main things that kept him alive

were his writing (most of his poetry

was written during this time) and his

companionship with theother prisoners.

The latter helped to sustain his faithin humanity through conditions that



Releaseand war against J apsMeanwhile Chiang himself promoted

the formation of a nationalist front to

offset the Viet Minh by creating a

"government in exile." The Viet

Minh were to be excluded, but Ho's

involvement was considered necessary,since he was the only figure with any

support among the people of Vietnam.

It was presumably on this basis thatHo secured his release after a year in

" government" at a conference in

Liuchow in March 1944.Ho then returned to the caveat Pac

Bo and succeeded in dissuading Giap

f rom an insurrection. In March 1945,the Japanese staged a coup and com-pletely overthrew French rule in

Vietnam. Ho advocated a campaign

against the Japanese based on stealth. The activities of the propaganda units

were stepped up and the American

OSS, who had negotiated Ho's releasewith Chiang, contacted the Viet Minh,

who were now the only resistance to

the Japs in Vietnam. Ho visited theOfficeof Strategic Services in Kunming

and arrangements were made for the

delivery of arms to the resistancefighters.

To offset De Gaulle's expressed

intention of recolonisation of Indo-China, Ho sent a manifesto of the Viet

Minh's aims to General Sainteny, who

was later to become France's main

negotiator with Ho Chi Minh. TheFrench Popular Front government,

however, announced a plan in 1945 to

keep Vietnam divided. On August 5

of that year Hiroshima was bombed

and ten days later Tokyo was askingfor an armistice. The Viet Minh

acted swiftly.

Democratic Republic of VietnamOn August 16, 1945, two days after

the Japanese surrender, Ho Chi Minh

called upon the people to rise up and

take power in the name of an indepen-

dent Vietnam. They answered the

call under the leadership of the VietMinh in almost every city, town andvillage from the far North to the deep

South.

Within seventeen days the Demo-

cratic Republic of Vietnam had beenproclaimed with Ho Chi Minh as its

president, the Emperor Bao Dai hadabdicated, recognised the Republic and

transferred his powers to the President,and Ho Chi Minh had broadcast apro-clamation to the world inviting all the

United Nations to recognise Vietnam

as an independent state entitled to

equal sovereignty with all other statesin accordance with the San Francisco

Charter.

On September 2, 1945, the day HoChi Minh had proclaimed the Demo-

cratic Republic of Vietnam an advance

party of Ghurka troops was landed in

Saigon. French forces also arrived inBritish ships and under the custody of

a British general they entered Saigon

shooting the Viet Minh out of the City

Hall and other public buildings.

Japanese prisoners were released, re-armed and employed alongside the

British troops to suppress the "dis-

orders" which broke out following the

re-entry of the French later that month.

The French general, Leclerc, sweptruthlessly through the cities and towns

of the South, ousting the political

representatives of the Democratic Re-

public of Vietnam and the Buddhist

sects.Meanwhile Sainteny had arrived in

Hanoi and informed Giap of anarrangement whereby the French were

to re-occupy the southern provinces

while Chiang would take over Tonkin.

Small forces of Chinese proceeded togarrison the main towns of the north,

including Hanoi, Haiphong and Hue.

In the midst of all this turmoil, whichwas further aggravated by a f ierce

famine necessitating harsh measures

on the part of the Viet Minh, Ho tried

to negotiate with Sainteny.



Negotiation or War

The reinstating of the French was

complicated by Chiang's presence andhis tacit recognition of Ho Chi Minh.

Therefore, the French High Com-missioner in Saigon, Admiral d'Argen-

lieu, started negotiations with Chiangand made an agreement with the

Chinese whereby French concessionsin Chinese towns, such as Shanghai

and Canton, would be abandoned inexchange for the sphere of influence inNorthern Indo-China (including Tou-

kin) which China had secured at theCairo Summit in 1943.

Tortuous negotiations then began

between Ho and Sainteny. TheFrench were anxious to secure an

Indo-Chinese Federation and establisha French Union or Commonwealth

composed of all the protectorates andcoloniesin Indo-China, but they wanted

the status of Cochin-China to bedecided on the basis of a local referen-

dum. Ho Chi Minh, who saw thepopularity of the Viet Minh increasing

daily, wanted an independent andunited Vietnam. As tension increased

between the French and the Chinese

forces, both of whom seemed out of the control of their respective govern-

ments, Ho tried to moderate between

the varied components of the Viet

Minh coalition. He saw the deter-mination of the French to restore their

lost prestige, and he saw that if warbroke out between the French and the

Chinese before some kind of anagreement was reached between Franceand the Viet Minh, the final settlement

would be made over the heads of his

government.

Settlement and Swindle

Eventually, onMarch 6,1946, duringa serious clash between French and

Chinese forces in Haiphong, Ho Chi

Minh and General Sainteny, on behalf

of a new French popular-front govern-ment which had taken over after De

Gaulle's resignation in January, signedan agreement whereby Vietnam wasrecognised as a free state within the

French Union and the Indo-Chinese

Federation, though the status of

Cochin-China was to be decided byreferendum. On this last point there

would be further" frank and friendly"discussions.

While he was on board a plane toParis in June 1, 1946, to take part in

these" f rank and friendly" discussions,

he learned by radio that the Republicof Cochin-China had been proclaimedin Saigon on Admiral D' Argenlieu's

instructions, as " a free state having itsown government, its own parliament,

its own army and its own finances,

forming part of the Indochinese Federa-

tion and the French Union." D'Argen-

lieu, who had taken advantage of theChinese withdrawal to move his own'

troops northwards towards Hanoi and

Haiphong and who had defied thepolicy of his government in refusing toreadmit the political representatives of

the Viet Minh to Saigon and othersouthern cities, had now set up a pro-

French middle-class government in

Saigon, thus hoping to sever Cochin-China from the rest of Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh spent three months in

Fontainbleau trying to persuade the

French government to honour its agree-

ment. However, it was not the firstor last time that imperial forces operat-

ing in Vietnam were out of the control

of the home government and Ho

achieved little more than platitudinous

assurances.

The War with the French

Within days of Ho's return to

Vietnam, French troops had occupiednorthern towns and on October 15,

1946, attempted to take over the

Haiphong Customs Building. Ho'ssecond war of liberation began.

Under American pressure the Frenchagreed to concede independence within

the French Union to the whole of

Vietnam. Bao Dai was to be invited

to return to Vietnam as Emperor of anew" National Union Front" govern-

ment, revoking his abdication anddenouncing his agreement with Ho

Chi Minh. Consequently on June 14,1949, Bao Dai proclaimed himself

Emperor, but added, to the alarm of

both the French and the Americans,that he would offer the choice of a

monarchy or arepublic in areferendum.On October 1, 1949, the Chinese

People's Republic was proclaimed in

Peking and on J anuary 19, 1950, Mao Tse Tung recognised the Democratic

Republic of Vietnam as an independent

state. Within weeks the USSR andthe other Communist countries had

followed suit. John Foster Dulles of the US State Department retaliated

with express support for" The State of

Vietnam." This was a bizarre revivalof the concept of state authority in the

absence of de facto authority, whichhad not been in use, ironically enough,

since the American War of Indepen-

dence and the French Revolution. Ithad been dug up by the Americans to

avoid having to recognise the new

Chinese government. In Vietnam ittook no account of the fact that the

DRV was still, in spite of massiveFrench and British interference, ex-ercising political authority over three-

quarters of the territory and more

than half of the population of Vietnam.

The effect of this new concept of

state authority on the US which was

backing the defeated Chiang, moving

the Seventh Fleet along the Chinacoast and becoming freely involved in

Korea, alarmed the French. Theytried to ignore American advice, while

accepting American aid. Finally they

offered Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam

independence within the French Union,establishing pro-French rule in Cam-

bodia and in the parts of Laos not in

the control of the left-wing PathetLao forces. They tried to persuade Bao

Dai to abdicate his powers to apolitical regime in Saigon, but the

Emperor once more proved stubborn.

French Def eatOn the military front the French

had set in motion their Navarre plan. The strategy was to build up large

bodies of troops and massive stocks of war material on the coastal areas and

f rom these strongholds to launchenormous drives into the rural heart-

lands in which the Viet Minh hadtaken ref uge. Simultaneously they

were to seal off the f rontier with China

by moving in f rom northern Laos.



j

General Giap's strategy was toallow the enemy concentrate their

forces in a junction of mountain roadsbetween China, Laos and Vietnam,

and there to surround them and sealthem off from reinforcements. The

name of the key junction was Dien

Bien Phu. On May 8, 1954, while VietMinh forces throughout the countrykept the French pinned down in their

bases, General de Castries surrenderedto General Giap. By the opening of the Geneva Conference on Indo-

China on May 4, 1954, the balance of military power throughout the north

and centre and in the rural areas of

the south was decisively in favour of Ho Chi Minh.

Throughout the eight years of the

war with the French, Ho made re-peated appeals to the French people.However, communications with the

guerrilla leaders had to come throughthe High Commissioner in Vietnam,and d'Argenlieu frequently intercepted

dispatches and even envoys fromFrance to Ho Chi Minh.

Geneva and AfterAfter the failure of Ho's negotiations

with the French in 1946, it was surpris-ing that he was able to hold on to the

leadership of the party and the support

of the people. It was even more sur-

prising that he had the power to bringthe party once to the conference table

at Geneva in 1954. The ICP, whichhe had dissolved in 1945, had beenreconstituted in 1951 to replace the

broad popular-front of the Viet Minhand was now called the Vietnamese

Workers' Party. The name itself showed at least a concession to thehardliners, who had never been toosympathetic to either the Viet Minh'spopular front policy or the compromis-

ing agreements with the French.

Besides, the victory of Mao Tse Tungand the open support of CommunistChina created a strong pro-Chinese

wing, the most significant of whomwas Truong Chinh, the main theorist of

the new Vietnamese Workers' Party.Nevertheless, Ho personified the

struggle against both the Japanese andthe French and his hand is clearlyvisible in the DRV's acceptance of thefinal settlement at Geneva in the

person of Pham Van Dong. In every

respect the settlement was unfavour-able to the DRV. Western Intelligence

sources were agreed in assessing thatHo Chi Minh's popularity would have

won him a four-to-one majority in anyfree electoral contest with America's

Ngo Dinh Diem. The proposedmilitary boundary bore no relation to

this popular support, as the 17thparallel, where it was to be set, was

merely a geographic mid-point.Nor did it bear any relation to the

military advantage gained at Dien

Bien Phu, The DRV would be com-pelled to withdraw 100,000 troops and

guerrillas, most of whom were souther-

ners, to the north, while the few

Vietnamese supporting Diem of the

French would have to make no with-drawal at all. On the question of

nationwide elections to be held withintwo years, Ho had absolutely no

guarantee that either Diem or theAmericans would feel bound by anagreement on which they refused to

vote. It seems that once more Hoover-estimated the amount of pressure

he was capable of bringing to bear,this time on the Americans throughthe French and the other signatories of

the agreement.After the Geneva Conference Viet-

nam kept a vacillating friendship withboth great communist powers, Russia

and China. After 1960with an increas-ingly large war on its hands, Russia, the

greater military power, was dominant.But in the last year China has begun to

recover from the Cultural Revolutionand relations with and aid to North

Vietnam have been extended.Ho Chi Minh remained dominant in

internal affairs. After the failure of

Truong Chinh's agrarian collectivisa-tion programme in 1956Ho took overhis duties and indicted him for serious

and collective errors. In the following

year the pro-Chinese faction attemptedto seizepower while Ho was in Eastern

Europe. On his return this effort wascrushed. Relations with China became

weaker with the failure of the GreatLeap Forward in China in 1960.

In the early 1960s Ho campaignedstrongly to stopanopen breach betweenRussia and China. At this time he re-

fused to acquiese in the Soviet witch-hunt aimed at throwing the Albanian

party out of the World Congress just

as he refused to allow the same thing tohappen in China eight years later.

Between 1962 and 1964 the pro-

Chinese group benefited from theworsening relations of the two powers

and Ho's star grew dim. By 1965 hewas fully returned to power. By this

time alarge scale war with the U.S. was

in progress and good relations withboth powers was logistically essentialas was national unity in the face of

enormous U.S. attacks. Ho's policy of national struggle overcame the clear

need for class struggle. Vietnam only

managed to pursue such afrighteningly

debilitating war by forging a newnational unity of the classes.Ho's significance in this phase cannot

be under-estimated. He symbolised,ledandideologised thenational struggle.He led the propaganda of the war which

was to persuade much western opinionthat the war was national as well ascommunist. This had the effect of creating a crisis in the cold war men-

tality among the professional classes in

the U.S.



DETECTIVE SERGEANT "Lugs"Brannigan is probably the most famous

policeman in Ireland today. He isadmired by most young Gardai as an

example of what they, minus his

features, would want to be. I remembera young Guard telling me that he had

. just heard that Brannigan had put six

people in St. Vincent's Hospital anhour

earlier. The young garda seemed tothink this an exemplary achievement.

The force admires himfor his fearsomereputation in Dublin and his image as

a good, fearless cop.He is known as " Lugs" throughout

the city because of his ears. They arelarge and unwieldy. For years he was

a heavyweight international boxer and

after that an international referee. Buthitting people in the ring was only a

pastime; his joy for thirty years hasbeen that of leader of what is popularly

known as the Riot Squad. They are

called "Red Cars" officially and canbe called to any part of the city where

there is trouble. The red cars aetual1y

consist of onecar and onevan. The vancarries two members of the Riot Squad

and a few British-trained Alsatians to

pacify difficult members of the public.

The car carries Lugs and two or three

other members of the squad. Everynight of the week they tour the city

seekingto quell troublemakers.

Surprise to meet

For one who is so feared and hatedby very many people, he is quite a

surprise to meet. He is a quiet, gentle

and childlike sort of person. He has aquite normal suburban house out past

Dolphin's Bam.

The house has a well-kept back

garden where two pet Alsatians play. These may, of course, be retired riot

squad dogs.

Lugs' career began back in the 1930swhen he "had a choice of taking the

boat to America or joining the force."

There was a lot of unemployment inthose days and widespread juvenilecrime. Brannigan proved himself in

1938 when he dealt with a gang called"The Animals." "The Animals"

was a gang centred in the slums in the

centre of the city. "The gang were

mixed up in a bookie crowd," he in-

formed me. They used to attack book-

makers who were not too popular with'other bookmakers.

Transfixed by a fishknife

Brannigan dealt with them at ameet-

ing at Baldoyle racecourse. He searched

"Lugs "-" quiet, gentle and

and questioned twelve well-known

members of the gang asthey entered the

course. However, he must have madean unfortunate oversight because three

hours later a bookie was found trans-fixed by a fishknife. "Luckily it hitnothing vital," continued Brannigan.

This knife was used to gut fish and it

must have been quite an oversight tomiss it sinceit was afoot and ahalf long

and serrated on both sides. But with adifferent sort of efficiency Brannigan

arrested seven of the gang at the course

and four of them that night. "The last

one got away," he remembered wist-fully. Within a month all eleven were

despatched to Mountjoy and "TheAnimals" wereput paid tofor the time

being. This success persuaded the author-

ities to formalise a riot squad andBrannigan was made its head. He

remains at the helmtoday. The fifties were the toughest time

for Brannigan. Ten gangs flourished

in the city. Nightly they used to attack

childlike sort of person tt

each other with knives, knuckledusters,

belts, sharpened toecaps and chains. They attacked Brannigan, of course,whenever heappeared. Policewerenotvery popular in Dublin at the time.

Some members of the force had boilingwater poured on them when passingthe flatsin Corporation Place. The riot

squad got it hardest.

The Animals Juvenile crime was rife in the city.

There were no jobs at all for school-

leavers. Wages were lowand drink was

the only entertainment available forthe denizens of the new housing estatesand slums in the city. " The Animals"

were once again the biggest and best

gang in the city. They used to attackthe police regularly. The Riot Squad,in their view, wereasking for it anyway.

They were never the most intelligent

part of the force. Two of the least brightof them really got it hard from "TheAnimals". One night, to their delight,

they saw a single unguarded "Animal"

69



walking home. They chased him and

saw him running into an empty build-ing. Thinking they had him, they

eagerly followed him in, whereupon

they were attacked by about fifty" Animals" with knives, lighted cig-

arettes and fists. Fortunately enough

they survived.Brannigan did not escape either. He

keeps a selection of their armoury in

his bedroom. All of these he used asevidence in Court when youths were

charged with personal assault on him-

self. He never wears ashirt at home, so

it was a simple matter for him to show

some of the effects of these weapons.

Opening his jacket he proudly dis-

played his chest. It has round welt

marks where studded belts hit him.

Stitches where knuckledusters tore

some skin off and various different

coloured areas which healed less wellthan the rest. Far from being self-

conscious of this, he is rather proud of

it. "I gave what I got," he informed

me.

Stigmata on legs

He is, however, even more proud of his legs. These got more abuse sincethe most usual retaliation of drunken

youths on his arrival was to kick him

on the legs. Sometimes they kicked

him with ordinary shoes, sometimes

they kicked him with sawn-off toecaps.Anyway he pulled up his trouser legs

and showed his wounds. He regardsthese in the same manner as stigmata.

His legs areamass of scar tissue. There

are lumps on them, some of which areblack and others which are bright

white. This scarred terrain extends to

the kneecap. Above that he left to theimagination.

During this period Brannigan not

only left his mark on some of the mostrespectable fathers in Dublin today, but

endeared himself to the District Courts.

With so much juvenile crime, life was

difficult for the District Justices. All

they wanted to do was despatch, asquickly as possible, the culprits which

turned up daily before them. Brannigan

helped them enormously. He was a

witty, quick, efficient witness. If hedecided to bring a young lad to Court

the force of his evidence left the latter

little chance of acquittal.Not that Brannigan was inhumane.

Even on stabbing charges he could get

people off. "If aladhad decent parents

I did my best for him," he said. This

pleased the Justices no end. They hadlittle sympathy with the sociological

type of justice which saw that perhapsfellows with indecent parents or un-

employed parents were more entitled toleniency. Brannigan remains the

darling of the District Court. When he

70

appears everybody listens eagerly for a

really good story. Such acaseappeared

last month when Brannigan "took

the bull by the horns and attacked thedog" when hehad a dog set on him in

Ballyfermot. The dog naturally took off

and was chased by Brannigan along

with its master.

Reluctant Fare payers

Things are quieter now. " There

are a few bowsiesin every area but the

worst places are Corporation Place andSt. Teresa's Gardens," he claims. But

mostly he has more mundane jobs now.

One of these is following the last bus

fromBray on Saturday nights. Another

is following the 78 bus from Bally-

fermot, On these routes he regularly

deals with great efficiency with pas-

sengers who won't pay their fares Hespends a lot of time in Bray becauseduring the summer tourists fight out-

side pubs nearly every night. He also

follows the Sands Showband. "They

attract a bad crowd, real bowsies.

Although the lads themselves are verydecent lads." When they play he makes

forays through the packed dance-hall toforcibly remove drunks.

Things are not that safe nowadays

for him. Pointing to his upper lip with

his characteristic crooked smile, he in-

formed me that it was dead. Two yearsago a drunk stabbed it with aknife.

Paralysed

A short whileagohegotatremendous

blow on the forehead. That explains

the large brown birthmark here. In

fact it is not a birthmark but a freckle.

When it was hit it started spreading

like a cancerous haematoma and nowcovers most of his forehead. Shortlyafter that mishap he ran into more

trouble. While passing a drunk he had

just pacified in Kevin Street Garda

Station he got a vicious blow on the

sideof his face. The drunk waspacifiedagain, but Brannigan lay stunned onthe

floor. He was paralysed over the whole

of the left side of his face. He could not

talk or move it at all. Slowly it thawedout, but left some muscular weakness.

For that incident he was awarded

damages in Court, which he was not

paid.

Altogether it has been a hard life forBrannigan, but as he says, "I love

police work." He is proud of the law

and order he has brought to the city.

He is no coward and the pacification

programme for each new industrial

estate in Dublin has been led by him.

However, the law and order he hasbrought Dublin has left him problems. This isthe Law itself. Youths nowaday

knows more about the laws of arrest and

Justices feel less inclined to intern a

delinquent unless there is plenty of

evidence.Brannigan's main worry is the small

penalty which can be imposed for

breach of the peace. The maximum

fineis£2. However,the Criminal Justice

Bill will solve this problem. In themeantime Brannigan finds it very help-

ful if he is assaulted. His presence very

often is sufficient to effect this. If he is

not assaulted he falls back on methodswhich have become part of Dublin'smythology.

Brannigan arrests, preferable

It is easyto condemn such behaviour.But some things do need to be borne in

mind before any such judgement ispassed. "Brannigan isnot unique. Our

.borstal system is particularly primitive

and vicious. Neither are our police as a

whole so good and when it comes to a

position where blows are exchanged,Brannigan is agood deal safer than the

ordinary raw Guard." The hapless

marchers and bystanders who wereattacked by the police outside the

British Embassy recently will testify tothis. While Brannigan's statement " I

never hurt " may be an overstatement,

he has never killed anyone which in

thirty years of combat, is a remarkable

record. The ordinary policeman is not

as expert as Brannigan nor as careful inhis aims.

When Brannigan retires in two years

he will takearest he does not want.

SOME ADVICE FORSERGEANT BRANNIGAN

Manner of Arrest.-A Garda in

making an arrest should actuallytouch the offender's body, orotherwise restrain his liberty.

Therefore, if a Garda merely

touches the party to be arrestedthrough the broken pane of awindow, saying, "you are my

prisoner," it is agood arrest. Bare

words do not constitute an arrest,so that merely requiring the per-

son to go before a Justice is notan arrest, but if the Garda says,

"I arrest you", and does nottouch the person addressed, but

the latter acquiesces and goeswith him, this will be a good

arrest, though it would be other-wise if instead of submitting he

had escaped. If a Garda comesinto a room where the person to

be arrested is, tells him that hearrests him and locks the door,

this is a good arrest, for he is in

the custody of the Garda.- The Garda Siochana Guide

(Fourth Edition, 1966).

--------------------- FEA TU RES ---------------------



AS WE go to press the 1969 Festivalhas not yet reached the half-way mark,

and so any evaluation or even any

prophecy would be at best purely

speculative, a judgment with but half the evidence heard. Yet some pro-

ductions have a definite interest intheir own right and may provide a

foundation on which to build a sub-

sequent, more complete assessment.

The Festival, it can be argued, is morethan the sum of its parts, but every

part contributes to the Festival as a

whole. Accordingly, let us look at threeproductions considering each as anisolated item subject to critical evalua-

tion as such, and then, tentatively, we

will consider it in relation to something

larger, but as yet incomplete. The

plays we have chosen-and be it notedthis is an arbitrary, personal choice-

are The Immortal Husband by JamesMerrill at the Gate, The Assassin by

John Boyd at the Gaiety, and SWift

by Eugene McCabe at the Abbey.



"The Immortal Husband"

by J ames Merrill (The Gate)

Everything wehaveseen of American

drama in Dublin over the last ten years

leads us to expect something con-

sciously, aggressively revolutionary likethe Antigone or the Frankenstein of the

Living Theatre of America, something

violent and .strange like The IndianWants the Bronx or Keep Tightly

Closed in a Cool, Dry Place, somethingstridently searing like Virginia Woolf or

something smoothly sophisticated like The Odd Couple or Two for the See-saw.

We had no reason to look for anything

as gossamer-like as Ring Round the

Moon or The Second Kiss, yet that is

what The Immortal Husband, presentedby the Artists' Theatre of America is-

a play that can only be described as a

poetic drama.

Fact, however, before comment; thispiece, says the programme note, is

based on a legend that the Goddess

Aurora gives ayoung man immortal life

without giving him what he reallywants-immortal youth. Those who

demand that the Theatre shall provide

slices of life, or be committed to aphilosophy, or serve as apiece of social

engineering will fling up their hands in

holy horror and ask what this mytho-

logical mush-mush has to do with any-thing, let alone why it should be pre-

sented at the Dublin Theatre Festival.

The answer is deceptively simple-thething happens to beintensely theatrical.

To begin with, it is a delight to the

eye and to the ear, to go on with ithas a quality of excitement such as

MacLiammoir and Edwards could

evoke in the golden age of the Gate,

but which has evaporated in these later,

graver times. Back, however, to fact;

the play is in three acts, the first set in

England in 1854, the second in Russia

fifty years later, the last in Southamp-ton, U.S.A., in 1968. An immortal

Aurora, ageless, beautiful, amoral, falls

in love with a youth called Tithonus,

aname which he will keep in all places

at all times. When we meet him first

he is the young Romantic rebelling

against order, middle-age, everything

except youth. In opposition to him is The Other, Older Woman, here a staid

companion embodying level-headedcool-judging acceptance. When wesee

Tithonus for the last time 104 years

later, he is bed-ridden, but in fullpossession of his faculties, sharp

enough to realise that Aurora is aboutto leave him for a new young man, a

fresh Tithonus, and that his best friend

will now be the same Older, Other

Woman, once negative, dressed in

black, agoverness, but now transformed

to a cool figure in white, a nurse. She

72

cannot take away his immortality, but

she can make his later days more

tolerable. Young love, middle-aged

love, old love, idealism, doubt, accept-

ance, our human seasons, these are all

inherent in the mortal predicament. The play catches them with exquisiteprecision, tenderly, flippantly on occa-

sion, compassionately always, andshows Man immersed in Time, his lovechanging its nature with his seasons.

It is all fantasy, of course, but poets'fantasies have the distressing trick of

proving the very stuff of reality. The

characters, however, aredefiniteenough,

Tithonus self-centred, in lovewith love

or with himself perhaps, Aurora,

lonely in her immortality, failing to be

human and for one terrible instant

regretting it, The Other, Older Womantranquil because she has rejected

ecstasy and has accepted life and death

as conditions of being mortal. The

play, humorous, elegant, lyrical, be-

longs entirely to the stage and not tothe pulpit, the printed page, or any

other medium. What it has to say maybe done indirectly but its impact is

immediate. As a Festival offering this

production has three great virtues-

it reminds us that there is more to life

than conventional realism, that there ismore to America than mere stridency,

and it has the indefinable but unmis-takeable spirit of Festival, the verybreath of Harlequin and' Columbine.

"The Assassin" by J ohn Boyd

(The Gaiety)

In sharp contrast comes John Boyd's The Assassin, no fantasy with ethereal

Goddesses and eternal youth but a

report on blood and violence in Belfast

where fanatical evangelists enter politics

and gentle idealists can suddenly turn

into cold-blooded murderers. We areshown the electoral triumph of acertain Reverend Colonel Luther A.

Lamb and how he is struck down in

the very moment of victory, a picture

of the present and a portent for the

future. Mr. Boyd uses several com-

paratively modern devices, a series of

short isolated scenes instead of a con-tinuously developed argument in three

acts, a number of flash-backs in place

of a continuous time sequence. Hebrings in one of the oldest theatrical

devices, the Chorus, using it just as

the Greek dramatists did to comment

upon and to point up the action whilenot directly influencing it, but his is a

twentieth century Chorus, a single

Television commentator instead of thetraditional dozen or so citizens orwidows or vestal virgins. He further-

more seeks to involve his audience

actively by having his crowds shout

from the stalls and the circle, and by

showering the patrons with leaflets.

Those looking for an immediate com-

mitted Theatre concerned with thepolitics of here and now should have

been pleased with the piece, yet eventhe strongest supporters of political

plays and the champions of documen-

tary drama seem to feel not quite

satisfied. The reason for this, like the

reason for the success of The Immortal

Husband, is deceptively simple. Tobegin with, The Assassin is not of itself

theatrical, and to go on with, the

drama presented by Mr. Boyd on thestage is far less exciting than the drama

provided by the Bogsiders, the BSpecials, Major Bunting and the Rev.

Paisley in the streets. A theatrical

experience involves concentration of

fact, but here we have a dilution of it. The piece is an analysis, painstaking,sensitive enough if rather limited, of

the factors which have led to the

situation across the Border. The

pieces are assembled, combined, and

the result shown to be inevitable, muchas one might assemble the pieces of a

motor car, combine them and showhowthe completed machine must function.

But no demonstration, not even of the

Internal Combustion Engine, cantrans-mit the urgency inherent in authentic

drama. What happens in the theatre

involves author, actors, and audience-

detachment means death, and here, wefelt, Mr. Boyd is detached. He is

nearer to his Chorus than to any of his characters and it is surely noaccident that he himself should be a

Radio and Television producer. The

Assassin would probably be veryeffective in the cinema; in the theatre

it lacks all the immediate impact to be

found, for example, in Sam Thomp-

son's Cemented with Love. There area number of scenes in the lives of the

Reverend Colonel and of his execu-

tioner, but these are "stills," not

stages in development, illustrations,

not actions. All the time we are con-scious of the author as technician so

that we remain unmoved or at bestfeel a little subdued at the spectacle on

a stage in front of us of happeningswhich in real life are distant enoughfor us to ignore.

Mr. Boyd's analysis of the tragedyof Ulster is not very profound-he is

content to leave it as a matter of child-

hood background and religious pre- judice while he ignores the social and

economic implications and only occa-sionally does he attempt any direct

confrontation of ideas. When thishappens, as in the scene where a wise

but utterly unglamorous Rector ques-

tions Lamb's evangelical fireworks with

a group of parishioners who have just



been having bayonet instruction from

the Reverend Colonel, the play be-

comes more alive, but having stumbledon this dramatic confrontation, Mr.

Boyd tiptoes silently away from it.

The play has the same consciouslydefined, immensely competent relation

to the T.V. medium and the T.V.

audience which one dislikes so much

in the work of Mr. Hugh Leonard. There is something just too clever

about the scene between Stevie, theassassin, and his girl-friend Bernie,

something too glib in the sybolism of

her gift to him of a scarf which he isinclined to reject, even as he stresses

his independence and consequent re-

jection of marriage. This is not above

the heads of the average T.V. cus-

tomers; if they miss it, no matter, if they

spot it, they feel pleased-but this is

not honest Theatre.

All of which having been said,should The Assassin have been put onat all, and is it a proper play for a

Festival? To both questions the

answer is an unequivocal "yes." Itmay not be a good play, but it serves

to show what the Theatre can do; it

attempts to handle a serious issueseriously and in a way which will set

the audience thinking. One of the

great defences of the Dublin Theatre

Festival is that it lures into the theatre

people who might never come during

the rest of the year; such patrons willfind in The Assassin a fine demonstra-

tion that the Theatre is not ahighbrow

pleasure far removed from lif e, butthat it must come close to the passions

and concerns of ordinary people.

" Swift" Eugene McCabe

(The Abbey)

And lastly Eugene McCabe's Swift

at the Abbey. Of the three pieces we

are considering, this is the most

difficult to tie down, to state what the

author is trying to do. We see thedying Swift alone, conscious of his

own precarious mental balance, aware

of where his life has failed, of howclose at times he has come to his own

despised Yahoos. We are made to

share his frustrated tormented feelingswith him, his inability to do anything

constructive f or any of the people heloved so passionately, his cosmic anger

against mankind which recoils uponhimself . The play is not an analysis

like The Assassin; it is direct experi-

ence. It grows on us, gaining strength

and urgency as we plumb for ourselves

the depths of darkness in the Dean. The production has many irritating

features ; often Michael MacLiammoir

loses his words in his distinctive style

of speech, always Angela Newman

74

remains her unmistakeable self, thewilling suspension of disbelief is made

about as hard for us aspossible becauseour Dublin actors seem to know only

one way to play. Yet in the end the

play hits us; those who could speak

uncharitably at the end of Act 2 of the

combined ages of the players enacting

Swift and his mistress, came out afterthe final curtain speaking of Hamletand the Book of Job. Here is the

Theatre once again making a direct

lyrical impact, tightening our aware-

ness, rousing our compassion whether

welikeit or not. Yet by most standards

Swift should have failed, for thedramatist's purpose was by no means

obvious. Was he seeking to explainSwift, to investigate human relation-

ships, or to show the ultimate, in-evitable, human isolation? There was

an uncertainty in construction which

inevitably transmitted itself to the

audience but which in the end madeprecious little difference. Hilton

Edwards has always maintained that

Irish actors have an innate quality,usually undisciplined and unknown

to themselves which in its direct

application has all the virtues of Primitive Art. Other Irish actors, hebelieves, if truly dedicated and sus-

ceptible to discipline can be trained

into the finest professional performers in

the world. But there isahinterland, the

realm of semi-professional companies

and West End comedy for example, inwhich we wallow lamentably. Pos-sibly something of this applies toSwift. It has a direct fundamental

power and succeeds precisely becauseof this basic sincerity, precisely because

it is not a well-made play conf orming

to the sound traditions of historicaldrama. If Mr. Boyd is too much thedetached technician, Mr. McCabe is

the agonised creative Primitive achiev-ing by instinct far more than dis-

cipline and technique could havebrought him. So in its weaknesses,

and in its strengths, Swift emerges aspeculiarly and distinctively Irish and

so a proper Festival offering.

What conclusion then can we draw

from this preliminary and limitedexamination? We have seen three

plays diff ering completely in matter

and manner, yet each providing at

least one pointer to what is a goodplay, and which in con junction, seenas three parts of one larger entity, gain

from their setting inside the frame-work of the Festival. Every evening

has set us thinking about the ideas in

the individual plays and about the

Festival as a whole; on this evidence

alone we can say that this year's

Festival has already proved its

vitality.



WE IRISH frequently strike our

visitors as an introspective lot, highly

sensitive as to what others think of us,

especially when we are on exhibition,as at the Theatre Festival. Towards

the end of the Festival's first week

NUSIGHThad the chance to discuss itwith three eminent visiting critics,'

Eric Shorter of the Daily Telegraph,Wolf Kauffman, who writes a column

syndicated in about a dozen major

American papers, and B. A. Young

from the Financial Times. It was

too early in the Festival for much

discussion of individual plays, or forthe construction of orders of merit. So,

the conversation ranged rather widely.How often had these gentlemen

come to Dublin for the Festival?

Shorter wasn't sure if this was hisninth or tenth campaign. Kauffmanclaimed all but one of the Festivals,

and Young admitted himself the new

boy of only five years' standing.

Why did they keep coming, weasked. Partly, as Kauffman said, be-cause this was the only festival of itskind in the world, the only one devoted

exclusively to drama, and partly be-

cause this was Dublin. The two ideas seemed to inter-

react, to produce a third incentive;there was always the hope that here in

Dublin at our festival some major

dramatic event might happen, andthat there might be some moment of

lI'eat excitement.Somewhat to our surprise they were

manimous that by and large over the

jears they have not been disappointed.

Kauffman's approach to the theatreand the festival was almost lyrical.

" Those of us who make our living inthis strange and dubious profession-

called critics-we are called assassins,

we're called all sorts of things, butactually we spend up to twenty hours

a day being excited by the prospect of

going to see another play, because we

always hope that it is going to besomething very wonderful. Unfor-

tunately, I frequently go away dis-

illusioned. But there is that thing

which builds up, five o'clock, six

o'clock, seven-at eight I'm going to

see a new show and that's the one that

I shall remember, and I'll be able to

say good things about it, for not onlytonight in my copy-but this is the

thing that is wonderful for me-herein Dublin, during this two weeks

76

every year I have this very concen-

trated feeling that I'm going. . ."All of them insisted on two things.

The astonishing amount of theatre in

Dublin compared with any city of comparable size in the world, and the

value of the festival as a concentrationpoint. Kauffman stressed the first:

" There are four theatres in Dublin-regular full time theatres-that's about

twice as many as you have in most

other cities of the world, with the

exception of London, Paris and New

York. Most cities the size of Dublin

have one theatre, if that, and they'rehappy."

Shorter dealt with the second idea:

"I don't know whether we're lookingfor new plays. It's the activity which

is important, isn't it? I don't think it(the Festival) does much for tourists.

The main idea is that it brings a lot

of dramatists or would-be dramatists,

actors and producers together, working

intensely for a fortnight, and we comeand look at it. But that's because we'reconnoisseurs of the theatre,"

Young supported this: "I don't

think it would matter if you didn't have

anything outstanding eachyear. You've

got so much encouragement to nativewriters to write, that their plays will

be mounted in favourable circum-

stances. This is an extremely usefuland important thing, which you haven't

got in London at all,"

Yet this year's festival had inspired

some misgivings that too much wasbeing attempted. Young f elt the most

strongly on this. " You have 18 pro-ductions this year, which to my way of

thinking is far too much. Now we

don't get 18 good new plays in the 35

theatres in London in a season, oranything like it. If we've had 12good

new plays this year, that's an optimistic

count." He wasn't happy about thethree-day programme at the Gate and

the Abbey. "I don't know if it meansthat you couldn't fill the theatre for six

days, but what it does mean is there

is so much opening. It seems to me

you're not going to have enough timefor preparation and rehearsal to get a

really tip-top production."

One comparison led eventually to

another and inevitably the talk turned

to Edinburgh. Young had a very

interesting point to make here: "It's

very interesting to compare the two

(Dublin and Edinburgh) because the

Edinburgh Festival this year con-sisted entirely of touring productions,"

This, as Kauffman admitted, was one

of the reasons why he hadn't been to

Edinburgh for five years. "Whatever

is good there I'll eventually get to see,

just by sitting still. Whereas here I'dmiss it,"

He went on to say that while as an

American he was happy and proud tosee an American company playing at

the Gate, this wasn't what he had come

to Ireland to see. Young also seemed

anxious to see work by Irish writersand Shorter pointed out: "A badDublin play doesn't seemas intolerable

as a bad London comedy. Mainly

because it belongs to where it came

from. It's got some connection or

roots in Dublin or Ireland and there'sa certain interest in tracing them,"

While Dublin audiences should, of

course, be given the opportunity to see

overseas productions, as well as in-

digenous products, Young, in parti-cular, felt that the two kinds of work

should be kept separate. The critics all seemed to feel that

Irish playwrights are at their best

when young, and as Young pointedout, it seemed a pity that at present

there was no avant garde theatre

flourishing in Dublin.Inevitably the talk turned to the

Abbey. Characteristically, perhaps,Kauffman claimed to have sensed areal

revival there this year, singling out TheDandy Dolly and Swift for special

mention.

Shorter, however, could not agree:

"I haven't been hopefully to the

Abbey for 10 years. The standards of

the Abbey seem to me to be as low asthey've ever been. . ..... "

All in all the feeling seemed to bethat so far this year's festival had not

produced anything remarkably exciting,

though there was praise for Roc

Brynner's Opium, and James Douglas's

A Tale after School. As Young said:

"It was an absolutely typical shortstory-it could have been written by

James Joyce, although I dare say hewould have written it in a morepolished way."

We were left with the impressionthat while all three critics regarded the

Festival as something unique and tre-mendously worth while, this was for

reasons which would strike very few

native Dubliners.

It was not as a tourist attraction, as

a place to see lavish imported pro-

ductions or even as somewhere towatch the accepted Irish classics;

instead the festival seems to justify

itself in their eyes as providing a

platform on which the occasional pieceof inspiration might alight. And,

above all, as a concentrated period of living theatrical activity.



AfterEasterPaisleytravelledtoRomeagainto protest against the visit of theArchbishopofCanterburytoPopePaul.He was not allowed enter Rome andwassentbacktoLondonAirportwherehe was kept in custody for 24 hours.

Onhisreturn toBelfastheclaimedthatthe British were sympathetic to hiscause and that "Rome had burntCranmer, but had embraced Ramsey.Ramseyhad sold out on the Reforma-tion, the Articles of Faith, and theBritishConstitution."

In June he announced his intentiontomarchfor thefourth timein succes-sion on the General Assembly of thePresbyterian Church to protest itsRomeward trend. On June 6th hemarched to the General Assembly bywayof Cromac Square. The marchersledbyPaisleywereattackedonreachingCromac Square, but they quickly pas-sedthroughthearealeavingtheRU.C.andthelocal residentsfightingbitterly.

The riot at Cromac Square lasted fora few hours and caused considerabledamageto cars, shops, and to the localPost Office.

WhenhereachedtheGeneralAssem-bly the RU.C. had to restrain hisfollowersfromattackingGovernor andLady Erskine. Earlier Paisley hadbitterly attacked the Governor "forinterfering in internal matters" whenhehad suggestedthat the naming of anew bridge after Craigavon was pro-vocative. Paisley was charged with

unlawful assembly and, on refusingtobe bound over to keep the peacefortwo years, he was sent to prison forthreemonths.

Riots outside jailShortly after he was interned in

CrumlinRoadjail 2,000ofhisfollowersgathered outside. At midnight on theinstigation of certain people, two of whomwerecharged in due courseforinciting a riot, a street battle betweenthe RU.C. and the crowd took place.A very severe riot ensued. Publichouses were looted, police armoured

wagons were set on fire and Catholichouses in the Shankill areahad petrolbombs thrown at them. After thatCrurnlin Road jail had to be contin-uouslyguardedby rowsof police.

New overseas contacts The followingtwo years weremuch

lessadventurous. Paisleybuilt up con-tacts with militant Ulster Protestantemigrantsin Glasgow,Liverpool, Lon-don and Australia. This helped himverymuchfinancially.

In January 1967Paisleycalledapro-test march against the RomanisingBishop of Ripon. By this time theGovernment and the churches knewhowpowerful Mr. Paisleywasand thevisit was called off. This pattern of near confrontation continued. Ecu-menical meetingsatwhichFather Des-mond Wilsonwasto havespokenwerealsocalledoff due to Paisley'sthreats.

In 1968Paisley pursued a vigorouscampaign for the Protestant party inthe Liverpool municipal elections. Heflewto Westminster Abbey to protestwhenCardinal Heenanpreachedthere.When picketing within the cloister of the Abbey he was warned by policethat hewouldbearrested if hedid notmoveoff. Paisleycrossedtheroadandattracted considerable publicity whenan individual hit himwithrotten eggs.

At the end of November PaisleyoccupiedthecentreofArmaghinordertoobstruct theCivil Rightsmarchnextday. This marked the beginningof aresurgenceof Paisleyisminthe politicsofNorthern Ireland. B.B.C.'sPanoramateamhad their equipment wreckedandan I. T.V. cameraman was severelybeaten. At the beginning of JanuaryPaisley's followers successfully har-assed the People's Democracy marchto Derry. The previous night Paisleyhad held a meeting in the Derry CityHall, A threatening crowdsurroundedthe meeting placeand Paisley and hisfollowershadhadtofighttheir wayout.Paisley commented " I think the blas-pheming, cursing,spittingRomanscumwere shown up in their true light.Immediately I arrived at the demons-

tration this crowd of Roman Republi-cans from the south surrounded us.

They threwrotten eggsandtomatoes."At the same time Paisley was sen-

tenced to three months in jail for un-lawful assembly in Armagh. Beforesentence was pronounced he stormedoutofcourtknockingdownapolicemanin the processand in the courseof hisarrest he sustained a cut in the hand.However, he was released almost im-mediately after his arrest under ageneral amnesty.

Near election victory

He immediatelyplunged into a vig-orouselectioncampaignagainstLundyO'Neill. The result of this raisedPaisley's prestige even higher thanbefore. He almost defeated CaptainO'Neill and many believedthat if theelection campaign had been slightlylongerhewouldhavewon.

The tragic events of Summer leavePaisley as the most respected personamong a considerable section of theProtestant population. It has been alongdifficultjourneytopoliticalsuccess.

Sincehe began to preach amixture of political reaction and fundamentalisttheology over twenty years ago he hasconstantly attacked liberal Unionistsand churchmen whether it waspopulartodosoor not. Nowheis reapingthefruits of all his endeavour and sois theNorth.



LAST APRI L a public opinion poll was carried out in this country, surveying political attitudes on the eve of theelection. The poll was undertaken by Social Surveys (Gallup Poll), based on a sample of over 2,000 respondentsthroughout the country. Within the usual limits of sampling error this poll gives a reliable and unique insight intoIrish political attitudes. The range of information provided is immense and in this article only some aspects of theresults can be considered.

The main conclusions of the survey dealt with in this article are-

• In April 1969, the Labour Party commanded 21% of the vote. Between then and the General Election in Juneits vote dropped to 1T~%.

• The whole swing away from Labour during the campaign, occurred outside Dublin, where its vote slumped byalmost a quarter. Fianna Fail was the main beneficiary.

• No less than 12% of Dublin Fianna Fail voters in the 1965 Election and 10% of Dublin Fine Gael voters haddecided to vote Labour before the campaign began, and they were not deflected from this during the election.

• In the rest of the country there was a larger than normal swing away from Labour, which seems to have lost 7%of its voters to Fianna Fail and 8!% to Fine Gael during this four-year period.

• Fine Gael's share of the vote is very much higher (30-40%) for the over 55agegroups, than for younger groups.

• Fianna Fail's share of the Dublin vote is low in the 25-34 age group (only 32%) and high in the 55-64 age groups(51% ).

• Outside of Dublin Fianna Fail's share of the vote is much the same over the range 25-54, but is significantlyhigher (60%) above age 55. In Dublin almost half of those under 35 intended to vote Labour-twice as high aproportion as in the case of over 55.

• Outside Dublin the ratio of intending Labour voters was almost three times as high in the younger as in the olderage groups.

• Fianna Fail has the most uniform pattern of class support-ranging from 42% of the upper middle-class to 65%of the small farmers with under 30 acres.

• Fine Gael averages as very much a middle-class party with 43% of the upper middle-class support and 53!% of the larger farmers' support. It is weakest of all amongst unskilled and semi-skilled workers and pensioners, whereit has the support ofless than one-fifth. Labour has one-third of the manual workers' vote compared with 15%of the upper middle-class and 20% of the lower middle-class. Only 6% of small farmers and 2% of farmers withmore than 30acres intended to vote Labour.

• Only 19% of Fianna Fail voters own 30 acres or more-whereas 39% of Fine Gael supporters are in this category.Almost 40% of L abour supporters are council tenants-but only 18% of Fianna Fail supporters and 14% of Fine Gael supporters are in this position.

• Over half of Labour voters are trade unionists-whereas less than a quarter of Fianna Fail voters and less thanone-sixth of Fine Gael voters hold union cards.



In viewof thesurpriseresult of theJune General Election, it isof particular interest totry toseewhat light this survey can

throwupon this electionresult. How didthe actual resultsof this electioncomparewithwhat wasindicated by this poll, and

just what shifts inopinionwereresponsiblefor any changein political allegiancesduring this periodof the electioncampaign?

Considerablelightisthrownonthis matter bythedatasummarisedinTable2. If thisinformationonintended switchesin votingisusedinconjunctionwiththe 1965actual votingpattern, makingdueallowancefor thedeaths of 1965voters duringthefollow-

ingfour years, and for the stated voting intentions of those who had not voted in 1965, aclear picture of voting intentions in

April 1969emerges. This canthenusefullybecompared withtheactual votingintheJuneelection.

A comparison of the votingrecord of the respondents with the actual 1965General Electionresults showsthat while the

samplewasf ully representative of the different parts of the country and of thedifferent agegroups, it contained tooIowa pro-

portionof peoplewhovotedFineGael in 1965. Thus whereasintheGeneral Electionof that year over34% of voters gavetheir

firstpref erenceto aFine Gael candidate, only281% of thesample had votedFine Gael inthat election. Moreover, this under-

representationof FineGael votersappliesbothtothesurveyresultsforDublin andtothosefor therest ofthe country-although

inDublin it isLabour voters whoare correspondingly over-represented whereas in rural areasthe over-representation affects

Fianna Fail voters.

This bias in the sampleshould be borne in mind in interpreting the poll findings with regard to the electorate's voting

intentions lastApril, which areset out in Table 1.

The poll alsorevealedhowthosewhohadvotedfor eachpartyin 1965wouldvoteif therewereaGeneral Electionnext day.

Table2showstheextent towhichasignificantminority ofsupporters ofeachpartywereprepared toshift their allegiance.



I - Changes in Party Supportbetween 1965 and 1969 Elections

Table 3 suggests that over two-thirds of the progress which Labour

had made in securing public supportbetween April 1965 and April 1969,principally at the expense of Fianna

Fail, was lost during the election cam-

paign. Thus whereas the Labour party

might have secured 21% of the vote in

April 1969-an increase of well over aquarter by comparison with four years

earlier-it actually increased its share

from 16% to only 17t%. It would also

appear that while Fianna Fail was the

principal beneficiary of this last-minute

swing away from Labour, Fine Gael

also benefited substantially.

Last minute swingsOf particular interest is the different

pattern of last-minute swings in Dub-

lin and in the rest of the country as in-

dicated by this table. The whole of the

swing away from Labour seems to have

occurred outside Dublin. In Dublin

Fianna Fail continued to lose ground

during the campaign-a fact which

helped to mislead Dublin-based ob-

servers and commentators into thinking

that they would be defeated nationally.

It would seem, however, that most of the continuing swing away from Fianna

Fail in Dublin during the campaign

went to Fine Gael, which seems to have

recovered from Fianna Fail more than

half the ground it had lost to Labour in

the capital during the previous four

years.

By contrast, outside Dublin Labour

support appears to have slumped byalmost a quarter during the campaign,

the great bulk of this swing benefiting

Fianna Fail, although Fine Gael may

also have marginally improved its

position which outside Dublin had

remained unchanged over the previous

four years.

Changes in allegiance-due toswings in established voters ornew generation ?

The upper part of the table also tells

us agood deal about the extent to which

changes in political allegiances between

April 1965 and April 1969 were due to

actual swings of support amongst estab-

lished voters, as distinct from the

emergence of a new generation with a

different voting pattern. It should be

said that a small swing in the political

allegiances of supporters of all parties is

normal between elections. The survey

figures suggest that in both Dublin and

in the rest ofIreland at least 10% of the

supporters of each party swung away

from it, in roughly equal numbers to

each of the other two parties, with two

exceptions, both of which affect Labour.

In Dublin the swing from both

Fianna Fail and Fine Gael to Labour

between April 1965 and April 1969 was

at least twice as large as the "normal"

figure of 5%, and as has been statedearlier this additional support seems to

have remained with Labour in Dublin

during the campaign. It would seemthat no less than 12% of Dublin Fianna

Fail voters in the 1965 Election, and

10% of the Dublin Fine Gael voters,

had decided to vote Labour before the

campaign began, and they were not

deflected from this during the election.

On the other hand in the rest of the

country there was a larger than normal

swing away from Labour-which seems

to have lost 7% of its voters to Fianna

Fail and 8~% to Fine Gael during thisfour-year period.

Increase in Labour vote-why?

The somewhat higher percentageswing away from than towards Labour

outside Dublin between the 1965

Election and the survey did not, how-

ever, prevent it from gaining ground

substantially in terms of votes, for two

reasons. First of all the relatively small

size of the total Labour vote meant

that even somewhat bigger percentageswings away from that party cost it

much lessthan it gained from somewhat

smaller percentage swings in its favour

at the expense of the larger parties,

which between them had five times as

many votes as Labour. Secondly out-

side Dublin as well as in the capital,

Labour secured adisproportionate share



of the support of those who hadnot votedin 1965,about half of whomdid not havea voteat that time, prin-cipallybecauseof their age. Labour'sadvantagein respect of this group of new voters was enjoyed largely atFianna Fail's expenseoutside DublinandatFineGael'sexpenseinthecity.

II-Age and Party Allegiance

The survey figuresfor voting inten-tionsby age, set out in Table 4, areof great importancefor the future of thethree parties. The figures for theyoungestagegroup, 21-24, are, how-ever,opentosomedoubt,becauseofthesmall size of this group, and conse-quently of the sampleupon whichtheresults are based. The voting pattern

shownfor this agegroup is, moreover,somewhatout of linewith the generaltrend, as it shows Fianna Fail with aone-third bigger share of the votes of this group than of the next agegroup,25-34, and showsFine Gael with only12%ofthevotesofthisyoungergroup.A differenceofonlyninerespondentsasbetween Fianna Fail and Fine Gaelwould have been sufficient to have"normalised" this pattern, so it seemswisenotto attachtoomuchimportancetothesefigures.

Consistent Picture

For the rest, however, the pictureisinternallyconsistent-and verystriking.Both in Dublin and elsewhere FineGael's shareof the voteis very muchhigher (30-40%), for the over-55 agegroups, than for younger groups.FiannaFail's shareof the Dublin voteis low in the 25-34 age group (only32%), and high in the 55-64 group,(51%). OutsideDublin Fianna Fail'sshareofthevoteismuchthesameoverthe range 25-54, but is significantlyhigher above age 55. Indeed it hasalmost 60% of the votesof this higheragegroup outsideDublin.

Labour on the other hand enjoysafarhigher shareof thevotesof youngerpeople both in Dublin and in thecountry,althoughat all agelevelstheirsupport is much higher in the capitalthan elsewhere. In Dublin almosthalf theunder 35'sintendedtovoteLabourat this election-twice as high a pro-portionasinthecaseoftheover55's-while outside Dublin the ratio of intending Labour voters was almostthreetimesashighintheyoungerasinthe older agegroups.

III-Class and Party AllegianceAs might have been expected the

survey shows a distinct correlationbetween social classand political alle-giance. As will be seenfromTable 5Fianna Fail has the most uniformpattern of classsupport-ranging from42% of theupper middleclassto65%of the smaller farmers with under 30acres. It isalsorelativelystrongin thelowermiddle classgroup.

FineGael sharesalmostequallywithFianna Fail the support of the uppermiddle class, but is strongest amongstfarmers with over 30 acres, well over

half of whom intended to vote FineGael inthis election. It isweakestof allamongst unskilled and semi-skilledworkers and pensioners, where it hasthe support of less than one-fifth.Labour's support, not surprisinglycomesprincipallyfrommanual workers,but its votes are drawn from a widerclassrangethan manywould, perhaps,suspect. Its one-third of the manualworkers' vote compares with 15% of theupper middleclassand 20% of thelower middle class. It is weakest

amongst farmers, who clearly fail toidentify at all with the Labour party.Only 6% of small farmers and 2% of farmers with more than 30 acres in-tendedtovoteLabour.

Thus the picture that emergesfromthesesectionsof the surveyis oneof aLabour party challengingfromasmalland largelyurban base, supported by arelatively high proportion of youngpeople, especiallyin Dublin, but losingthe election campaign outside Dublinwhere one-fifth of its support waserodedduringthecampaign.

Fianna Fail most broadly basedParty

Fianna Fail, the most broadly-basedparty, lost ground heavily in Dublinboth before and during the campaign,but during the election campaignregained enough of its lost supportoutsidethe capital to secureamajorityof seats, even though with a reducednational vote. Its considerabledepend-enceonan elderly voteespeciallyout-side Dublin suggests that it may not



findit easytomaintain this positioninfuture.

The differences in class supportbetween the parties are naturally re-flected in the average standards of livingoftheir supporters. Thus where-as 25% of Fine Gael supporters havetelephones, only 17% of Fianna Failsupporters and 15% of Labour sup-porters enjoy this service. Laboursupporters ontheother hand arebetterequippedwithtelevisionsetsthan sup-portersoftheother twopartiesbecausesomanyofthemliveincitiesandtowns.Only 17% of Labour supporters arewithout television-whereas 24% of Fine Gael supporters and 28% of Fianna Fail supporters areinthis situ-ation. So far as cars are concerned,59% of Fine Gael supporters, 46% of Fianna Fail supporters and 37% of Labour supporters are members of householdswith cars.

Land-owners

A majority of the supporters of eachofthetwomainparties aremembersof householdsowningland-62% of FineGael supporters, and 52% of FiannaFail supporters. Only 21% of Laboursupporters areinthis category, and thegreatmajorityofthemownlessthan anacre.

There is a very sharp differencebetween the size of holdings of FineGael andFiannaFail supporters. Only19% of Fianna Fail supporters own

84

30acresormore-whereas 39%of FineGael supporters are in this category

House-ownership There is little difference between

supporters of the two parties so far ashouseownership is concerned. Aboutthree-quarters ofthesupporters of bothpartiesownhouses,or arebuyingthemthrough amortgage, whereasonly half of Labour supporters arein this posi-tion. Bycontrastalmost40%ofLaboursupporters are council tenants, butonly 18% of Fianna Fail supportersand 14% of Fine Gael supporters areinthisposition.

Labour supporters alsohaveadiffer-ent educational pattern. Over half completed their education by age 14,andonly13%remainedatschooltill 17.On the other hand less than half of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail supportersleft school at or before14,and 21% of Fianna Fail supporters and 28% of FineGael supporters remaineduntil 17

or later.

Full-time EmployeesAgain while only a quarter of Fine

Gael and Fianna Fail supporters arefull-time employees, a half of Laboursupporters areinthisposition.

Finally theparties differmarkedlyintheir sharesoftradeunionmembership.

Just 27% of all votersholdtradeunioncards-although theproportionbelong-ing to families whose head holds a

trade union card would, of course, bevery much higher. But this ratio isalmost twice as high in the case of Labour voters, over half of whomare

trade unionists, whereas less than aquarter of Fianna Fail voters and lessthan one-sixthofFineGael votersholdunion cards. Of trade unionists whostatedtheir votingintentionsduringthissurvey, 42t% intended to voteFiannaFail, 40t% Labour andonly 17%FineGael. In Dublin moretrade unionistsintended to vote Labour than FiannaFail, but outside Dublin only 38% of tradeunionistsintended tovoteLabouras against 45% for Fianna Fail, and17%forFineGael.

Conclusion

These "profiles" of Fianna Fail,Fine Gael and Labour votersgiveus auseful pictureofthesourcesfromwhicheachof these three parties draw theirsupport.

They suggest that whatever setbackLabour mayhavesufferedintherecentGeneral Election, it will increasinglybe aforceto reckon with in the yearsahead. It emergesfromthis surveyasaparty challenging from a small base,but supported by arelativelyhigh pro-portion of young people, especiallyinDublin. It lost the electioncampaignoutsideDublin, wherealmostaquarterofthesupportithadbuiltupwaseroded

during the campaign. On the otherhand, Fianna Fail, the most broadly-basedparty, lostgroundinDublin bothbeforethe campaign, (to Labour), andduring it, (to Fine Gael), but regainedenough support outside the capital tosecurefor it a majority of seats, eventhoughwithareducedoverall vote. Itsconsiderable dependence upon anelderly vote, especially in Dublin,suggeststhat it may not find it easytomaintain this positionin future.

Out sideDublin FineGael drawsitssupport almost equally from all agegroups, and has the support particu-

larly of farmerswith over 30acres. InDublin it is dependent to a significantdegreeonolder voters, and onsupportfromtheupper middleclass, and lackssupport amongst manual workers.Nevertheless during the election cam-paignit strengthened itspositioninthecapital at the expense of Fianna Fail,thus gaining enough votes to regainover half of the ground it had lost toLabour in Dublin during the previous

four years.

Nusight October 1969 nusight_1969-10-01

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