Friday, December 19, 2008
A life less ordinary…
LAST October, Conor Cruise O’Brien told the Irish Independent: “I hope to die with a pen in my hand, but I am in no rush.” Now the writing is done. Love him or loathe him, the life of Conor Cruise O’Brien is one that had a profound influence on Irish politics - north and south - over the past half century. From his ill-fated UN diplomatic service in the Congo, to becoming a Labour TD and a minister, to his vigorous censorship of Sinn Fein, his journalism and writing, sympathy for Zionism, hatred of Irish republican paramilitarism and Charles Haughey, and even membership of the now-defunct UK Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, his life was as diverse as it was controversial. The Cruiser was also the man who gave us GUBU, short for “grotesque, unusual, bizarre and unprecedented”, and as Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said: “He was never afraid to take up unpopular positions, with the result that few ever agreed with him all the time.” How true. When the power-sharing government here fell apart in 2002, he remarked: “I’m glad to see this bloody thing crash. It’s been a horrible fraud.” And he argued that Unionists could defeat republicanism by taking their place in a united Ireland, leading to his departure from the UKUP. You can read his Wikipedia biography here, and obituaries from the BBC and Irish Times.
Belfast Gonzo @ 01:04 AM
He did not have much of value to say but in the opinion of some(not me) he said it very well.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 08:41 AMHe seemed to be a very conflicted person, which is strange given, so they say, his academic ability.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 08:43 AMAn intellectual giant among pygmies, the Cruiser will be sadly missed.
I await the bitter wee snarky comments from people who weren’t fit to tie the man’s shoelaces, indeed I see from above they have already started.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 09:50 AMRIP.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 10:06 AMThe word thran might have been invented for O’Brien. He was charming and irascible by turns, you never knew which in advance. A hereditary member of the small Dublin metropolitan intellectual elite, he was first and foremost an historian (of Burke and Parnell) and then, like his hero Burke, a man of political ideas even when they challenged prevailing practice. He was a great journalist who was prepared to do his rethinking aloud, often very provocatively.
He’ll be remembered as the man who devised the “two States” theory that so affronted traditional nationalism but which has done so much to shape its contemporary course, although he will still be reviled for it in some quarters. But he first put into words what people like Jack Lynch thought privately, even if they didn’t go the whole way. Garret FitzGerald shared his impatience with southern “partitionism” although his “constitutional crusade” was more conventional in taking account political realities.
In that formative book, O’Brien charts the course of a rethink open to the new experiences and changing circumstances of the early Troubles, including, memorably, being beaten up and then rescued by Apprentice Boys in Derry.
By sheer force of personality, his role as a minister in the 1973-77 coalition contributed much to the first powersharing attempt and although they didn’t always agree, he was valued by Garret FitzGerald for his insights and his direct contacts with the North, then rare among the southern establishment. He often confused then infuriated the SDLP of John Hume.
His scorching attacks on Charlie Haughey were memorable from the Arms trial onwards. His coinage of GUBU was typical of the satirical style that got under the skin of his opponents.
The IRA were his real enemy and he took them on on their own ground, their place in the canon of Irish freedom. Though in many ways a liberal figure he shared the authoritarian view that their front organisation Sinn Fein should be banned from the airwaves because they operated outside the democratic consensus.
His support for Bob McCartney was a perverse coda to his career. It shouldn’t be thought he simply switched to becoming a southern unionist; his ideas for repartitioning won no support.
Internationally, he broadened Irish horizons and remained a stubborn friend of Israel, as recounted in his memorable history “Siege” He once infuriated me by agreeing to make a BBC programme about the validity of the Israeli position in the 1980s and then pulling out at the last minute. That was one re-examination he wasn’t prepared to make.
The early book which brought him fame, “To Katanga and Back” on his UN role which often challenged the post-imperial stance of Britain and the US remains a great read and its relevance remains today.
Conor Cruise O’Brien had an easy relationship with the old imperial power,(though as an indefatigable loner, not always with fellow journalists). He didn’t loathe unionists in principle and he remained always if not always consistently, a very particular Irishman.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 10:08 AMRight,
If you have something to say (positive or negative) about the man (without breaking the rule about public taste, bring it on.
I’m cutting the rest…
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 10:24 AMHF
What do you expect - people shouldnt criticise him? Please let me know what you think of his assertion that the bloody sunday marchers were simply “sinn fein activists operating for the ira”.In my view a highly intelligent individual - brave in some senses (eg his atheism). He also lead a fantastically varied life.
However his introduction of section 31 is a black mark against him. He could happily decide whose viewpoints the listener/viewer would be subjected to.
His prediction of civil war in 1994 seemed a bit wide of the mark.
What were his actual achievements as minister by the way? (genuine question)
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 10:31 AMMick,
I’m cutting the rest…
You are somewhat similar to the Cruiser in a number of ways!
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 10:45 AMI, of course, found the two books which C.C. O’Brien wrote which was most relevant to my research, and for which he is apparently best remembered - States of Ireland, and Parnell and his Party - most unsatisfactory.
The first was a legitimation of the artificial divide that A. V. Dicey created by his last works and efforts - what resulted in the Government of Ireland Act - in the hope of keeping a united Ireland still part of the UK by contrivance.
The second book was a legitimation of all the dirty work that Dicey, The Times, Richard Pigott, the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, Edward Caulfield Houston et al. did to destroy the Irish leader for no valid reason - what destroyed the chance of Ireland getting Home Rule peacefully, and what was recently quoted in a volume of essays about modern Irish history:
“Whether that policy, backed as it was by a great English party, and a great Irish party, and by the combined prestige of Gladstone and Parnell, could have succeeded in bringing all Ulster without serious bloodshed, within the framework of home rule, can obviously never be known. It may be said, however, that no subsequent policy, and no subsequent combination of leaders, offered such good grounds for hope of a united and self-governing Ireland - or of real and well-founded friendship between England and Ireland.” (Quoted from The Making Modern Irish History, p. 221.)
In my biography of Dicey, I have shown that it was successfully being achieved and reported, especially by Dicey himself, without much violence in Ulster until he falsely concluded that Parnell was merely a front for the Clan na Gael, particularly The Invinciles. (Albert Venn Dicey: The Man and his Times, p. 101ff.)
And I have even greater complaints about C.
C.‘s performance as a diplomat and politician if anyone is interested.Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 10:55 AM“And he argued that Unionists could defeat republicanism by taking their place in a united Ireland”
I like that, solves the problem reallyPosted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 10:58 AM``no one who knows anything about Northern Ireland doubts that the `civil rights civilians’ were Sinn Fein activists operating for the IRA’‘.
The Cruiser writing in the Sunday Independent on the Bloody Sunday murder victims.
What a lovely person. And a lovely newspaper too.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 11:11 AMBrian Walker says “His support for Bob McCartney was a perverse coda to his career. It shouldn’t be thought he simply switched to becoming a southern unionist;”
Conor was never a Unionist and certainly no integrationist. He was a deep-died southern (26 county) patriot who was willing to go to the utmost extreme to protect that state from the corrosive and destruction force of the Provisionals and their deceptive ‘republican’ ideology.
He was willing to be utterly unpopular in pursuit of his aim. That is not perverse rather heroic.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 11:11 AMMy Granny Sarah Franklin was his nanny when he was a wee baby!
He was perhaps the first to suspect the shenanigans of cheeky auld Charlie Haughey.
Regarding his role as minister but only the very hard hearted would not have been angered by the blatant indescriminate bombings of civilians by the IRA during the awful period of the Troubles.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 11:12 AMHe was an insane little fascist. The very same one who, until Tim Pat Coogan got wind of them, had plans to make it against the law to play on the radio songs like The Foggy Dew and for teachers to say anything nice about the Easter Rising leaders. You may call him a 26 county patriot, but the thing is that the men who made that state would all have put him up against the wall and shot him. Which would have been just a tragedy.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 11:18 AMGreagoir,
Maybe if he’d changed sides he could have spouted on about how the Enniskillen murder victims were all MI5 activists working for the UVF.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 11:21 AMHe was an insane little fascist.
Amen to that! He played a major part in creating the repressive atmosphere of the mid-1970s in the south. He provided intellectual and political cover for censorship, the ‘heavy gang’ and many human rights abuses. Claiming that he was doing it for some higher motive (‘26 county patriotism’) is wrong - he was simply an arrogant bully who believed that his particular beliefs could, and should, be imposed on the whole southern state, regardless of their corrosive effects.
Almost single-handedly he provoked the major Fianna Fáil landslide in 1977, which put CCO’B out of active politics for evermore.
For many people he represents a black period in modern (southern) Irish history. He’s been dead politically for a generation, this is just his body catching up.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 11:32 AMUnfortunately Horseman he represented a disease of the mind which is very prevalent in the south of the country today. He helped spread that disease among many but certainly wasn’t the original cause of it, merely a symptom. He could never have risen so far without the potential of that disease being carried in so many in the first place. I can’t imagine too many countries on earth in which he’d have been anything more than a smelly old crank handing out leaflets to annoyed pedestrians on the streets late at night.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 11:41 AMOh, thanks, Mick, for taking down the first post of the thread - my not having anything good to say in general about O’Brien. I didn’t notice its disappearance until now.
Think you could at least want to know now why I don’t like his activities as either a diplomat or politician either.
P. s. The next time I notice your doing so, I’m gone
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 11:48 AM“Regarding his role as minister but only the very hard hearted would not have been angered by the blatant indescriminate bombings of civilians by the IRA during the awful period of the Troubles”
OK - I was under the impression he was in a cabinet which was noticeable for its risible aparthy in pursuing the perpetrators of the Dublin 74 indiscriminate bombing.
May I also ask the question as to what his view was on indiscriminate bombing carried out by Zionists in the 30s and 40s ? I thought he supported them but stand to be corrected.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 12:15 PM“P. s. The next time I notice your doing so, I’m gone”
Bye then…..the NI forum on politcs.ie is probably much more up your street anyway in tone and content…..
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 12:16 PMAndy,
He certainly supported the Israelis’ indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Lebanon at any rate. Still though that’s okay as it seems in some circles that the only bombs that ever hurt anyone were bombs made in cowsheds in south Armagh.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 12:23 PMDemocratic,
“Bye then…..the NI forum on politcs.ie is probably much more up your street anyway in tone and content…..”
Charming.
I thought this was supposed to be a thread on a political website about a public political figure.
It’s not as if we are all sitting in the man’s living room sipping tea and throwing sandwiches at his coffin.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 12:28 PM‘he remained always if not always consistently, a very particular Irishman.’
Sounds about right .
He was first and foremost an academic and a diplomat . I often thought that the loss of his Dublin Artane Dail seat in 1977 ‘unhinged ’ him from his political base and thus from the great majority of Irish voters subsequently . This led him to pursuing ‘politics ’ and influence in Ireland North and South via his journalism and his oddball membership of McCartney’s NI Unionists . He was an ‘intellectual ’ in a political culture at a time(1970’s ) when the former attribute was considered suspect - and still is .
He feared the potential rise of a Green Fascist State in the South and an Orange mirror image in the North which would result from a continuation of IRA activity in NI. Wonder what his final thoughts were re SF and the DUP sharing power ?
Whatever his detractors may say about him he at least had the courage of his convictions and spoke his mind . Irish politics could do with a few more politicians with his backbone although perhaps not too many ;)
He at least did not drag the country’s reputation through the courts for ‘financial ’ skullduggery . In that respect his reputation for ‘honesty’ will remain for posterity in an altogether higher league than his more infamous but politically more successful constituency rival .
R.I.P
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 12:32 PMTrowbridge,
Your use of the word “what” instead of “which” is incredibly annoying and, imo, ruins your posts, making them sound illiterate. I for one would love to hear what you have to say about CCOB’s diplomatic career.
As for the man himself, may he rest in peace. I think he played a very important role in alerting people in the south that there were actually people in the north who considered themselves British or at least, not Irish. Desmond Fennell did the same, though it lead him to very different conclusions. It is a great pity that Unionism has not produced such a potent critic of their own “tribe”. They are in very dire need of self criticism. Needless to say, i disagreed with very much of what he did and said.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 12:34 PMGreenflag makes an excellent point. His positions in later life became more difficult to defend the more removed he became from frontline politics. This should not overshadow the fact that he remains arguably the State’s most important political thinker of his generation.
Posted by on Dec 19, 2008 @ 01:02 PM
