Sunday, March 02, 2008
“The Price of Peace”
The first part of a three-part series by BBC journalist John Ware, “The Price of Price”, has just aired on Radio 4 - it’ll be repeated on Thursday at 8pm, should be available online, and is well worth listening to [it’s currently listed as Choice of the Day - direct link to RealPlayer file here]. “Dealing with Gerry” follows a similar analysis to Mary Alice Clancy’s Phd thesis noted previously in identifying the effectiveness of the stick wielded by US envoy Mitchell Reiss - and the part played by now-presidential candidate John McCain - in moving Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams, and The Process™, forward after 9 years of prevarication as well as covering other ground as Ware’s article indicates. Next week’s part 2 focuses on Ian Paisley Snr and the DUP.
Pete Baker @ 02:01 PM
New Yorker @ 11:18 PM:
At this distance any speculation on O’Higgins’s personality has to derive from what he is recorded as saying and what he did.
That means, in one direction, we have to take on trust what he said in suppressing the 1924 Army mutiny: “neither he nor the institutions of the state would ever again take their stride from a soldier’s boot.”
On the other hand, he acted and spoke as the Cumann na nGaedheal strong-man, and exploited his power. It is too uncomfortably short a stretch from defending O’Higgins to exculpating Eoin O’Duffy. Tom Garvin’s assessment (page 205 of my previous reference) is:
Cosgrave, O’Higgins and Mulcahy were unusual [among Irish leaders] in being unconditional democrats, and they killed people for the nascent Irish democracy that they saw as menaced by the anti-Treatyites.
By January 1923, O’Higgins was arguing for executions in every county as a means of civil discipline: if we are into rhetorical questions, how far is that from state terrorism?
Posted by on Mar 06, 2008 @ 05:57 AMLike Malcolm says, he was highly authoritarian, and respsonsible for the murders of numerous republicans. Garvin may wish to see this as defending a nascent democracy. Others, such as John Regan, view it differently. There seems little to suggest that O’Higgins would have meekly accepted FF’s victory in 1932, and given the direction other authoritarian conservatives were taking in the 1930s, including many of his closest political allies, it is not implausible to suggest he would have done the same.
Posted by on Mar 06, 2008 @ 09:06 AM‘it is not implausible to suggest he would have done the same. ‘
It’s not . But hat is plausuble is that had the Irish Free State Government not defeated the IRA irregulars in the Civil War - Britain’s army would have returned and that would have been an end to the Irish independence experiment . With Irish Republicans and Free Staters killing each other up and down the country - it’s not implausible that a majority of Irish people would have ‘welcomed’ back British imposed ‘security’.
The fact that O’Higgins was no longer around did not help assuage the feelings of many FF newly elected TD’s in 1932 -many of whom had concealed guns on their persons in the Dail just in case Cosgrove proved unwilling at the last minute to hand over ‘power’ democratically to De Valera .
By handing over power peacefully Cosgrove secured Irish democracy at least in the Free State .
Posted by on Mar 06, 2008 @ 01:46 PMGaribaldy
If we are to play John Regan’s game of speculation based on psychologizing, I would speculate that O’Higgins valued the people’s welfare more than ideology due to his religious beliefs on the common good.
For balance to Regan’s positions, John P. McCarthy’s “Kevin O’Higgins: Builder Of The Irish State” published last year should be consulted.
Posted by on Mar 06, 2008 @ 07:49 PMI’ve glanced at the new book, but haven’t read it.
I don’t agree with a lot of what Regan says, but I don’t think his counter-revolution thesis is dependent on psychology. As far as I am concerned the idea that the Free Staters were democrats facing republican anti-democrats is laughable. Bill Kissane’s work is a useful corrective to the propaganda of other historians).
O’Higgins’ religious beliefs may well have proven part of the problem in the 1930s if he perceived any threat to the position of the church. Look at the mad propaganda of Horgan and others linked to O’Higgins’ circles.
Posted by on Mar 06, 2008 @ 09:19 PMGaribaldy
I meant O’Higgins religious beliefs in the common good, as from Thomistic philosophy and theology that he would have gotten in his education.
McCarthy’s book is well worth a read. He goes into creation of the Civic Guards, upgrading the armed forces, continuity of the civil departments, reform of the judiciary, etc. Things that must be done in the transformation from revolution to a functioning democratic society. That is not an easy task, as Malcolm cited above, only two countries were able to do it in most of the 20th century. So, that period of Irish history is important as a lesson on how to do it successfully for other countries at that stage of development.
Posted by on Mar 07, 2008 @ 05:12 AMGreenflag on Mar 06, 2008 @ 01:46 PM:
One last thought, from:
… many FF newly elected TD’s in 1932 -many of whom had concealed guns on their persons in the Dail.
This is a canard that has been in circulation so long it’s become folk-legend. I’d like it to be substantiated.
The only basis for it seems to be the unsupported statement of James Dillon, from Manning’s biography, that FF:
...were swaggering around the place with revolvers bulging out of their pockets.
This may well be extrapolating from the disgraceful 1932 last-minute Cumann na nGaedheal press campaign that:
the gunmen and the communists are voting for Fianna Fáil today.
If truth be told, too many politicians of that period had read a few too many Ned Buntline cowboy romances, and too little of anything else: the best example thereof being Dan Breen’s rollicking fable, My Fight for Irish Freedom.
Posted by on Mar 07, 2008 @ 05:39 AM
