CRISIS IN NTH.

IRELAND
AUGUST HAS been the most crucial month in Irish history for nearly fifty years. The crisis which erupted in Northern Ireland was the product of 300 years of history and again saw Irish blood being spilt by Irishmen. It re-opened the old, deep wounds of sectarianism in the North-re-introduced partition as a real, live issue in politics in the Republic-re-opened the Irish question in British political life and plunged our near forgotten island into the world's headlines. It will take some time for the full significance of the month's events to be fully assimulated and appreciated -but some tentative analysis of the crisis and its implications can be attempted at this stage-and we have done this. Beginning on page 25 we feature the most ambitious coverage of a news event undertaken by " Nusight " to date. We sketch the history behind the conflict and in some detail" the year of Civil Rights" since October of last year. We trace the origins of the Civil Rights Association and The People's Democracy and our onthe-spot reporters Declan Burke-Kennedy and John Feeney recount the hectic and tragic events of" The Siege of the Bogside" and "The Massacre of the Falls Road." John Dowling and Rosita Sweetman join David Shanks in trying to interpret the significance of the tumultous events and possible future developments. Patrick Cosgrave, who until recently, was R.T.E. reporter in London contributes his interpretation of the Northern crisis in British politics. Our photographic coverage of recent events in Northern Ireland is, we believe, unique in any Irish publication of this kind. We carry pictures of some of the world's leading photographers, including Giles Carons and Denis Freppel, both of Paris and a number by Colman Doyle of the Irish Press.

Despite the glowing pre-election prognosticationsit seems that we are to have another Autumn Budget. This possibility and the general state of the economy is discussed on page 5.

At the age of 32, Mick O'Connell, the great Kerry midfielder is achievingnew heights of fame. A portrait of this unique sportsman begins on page 11.

Sigmund Freud has been, along with Marx and Darwin, one of the chief moulders of contemporary thought. Thirty years after the great psychoanalyst's death, Richard Stevens, a lecturer in psychologyin T.C.D. writes about the man and reassesseshis theories in an in depth analysisbeginning on page 67.

Peadar O'Donnell, the Irish writer and revolutionary, talks to the Monday Club about his life, work and ideals. Dorine Rohan's transcript of these talks begins on page 77.

NOTICES
Price Increase-The announced increase in the price of" Nusight" to l/6d. for the September issue has not occurred-as our readers will have gladly noticed. However the reprieve is short-lived, for from the October issue onwards" Nusight " will cost 2/-. This increase corresponds to the increase in size and improvement in quality of the magazine. Cost in Britain The September issue of " Nusight" will cost l/6d. in Britain. From October onwards it will cost 2/6d. October Publication Date The publication date of the October issue will be Friday, October 3rd.
This month we offer a special prize of 10 for first allcorrect solution opened to our Crossword. See page 76.

IRELAND'S ENOCH POWELL

IRELAND HAS thrown up at last its own version of Enoch Powell-in the person of Oliver J. Flanagan, T.D. As usual, the replica is a pale tawdry imitation of the real thing. Speaking at the General Council of Committees of Agriculture on August pth, Mr. Flanagan said, "too much of our land has fallen into German hands We have no room in this country for Nazis and we are not going to entertain them here I am not half as much opposed to an Englishman having a holiday here as a German and the sooner we take steps to end this the better. The Land Commission should repossess the lands at present held by Germans and give it to Irishmen who are capable and prepared to work it ... The teachings of Fintan Lalor still hold true today-' The land of Ireland for the people of Ireland to have and to hold from God down who gaveit.' This is as true today as it was then." After the meeting Mr. Flanagan was quoted as saying, " No Germans should get land in Ireland." He objected to 'Germanson two grounds, he said: one, becausethey were Nazis and, secondly, because they were alien. Asked about the use of the word "Nazi" and whether he considered all Germans as Nazis, Mr. Flanagan said, "yes." He went on to say that "the Land Commission and the Government had the responsibility to see that this land (i.e, land now held by Germans) was in the hands of Irishmen. The smallholder is the backbone of the country and these Germans are depriving small holders of the opportunity of developing agriculture in this country." (Evening Press, August 6th). Mr. Flanagan has promised to take up this issue again when the Dail reassembles. Foreign acquisition of Irish property has been the subject of some concern in recent years-and properly so. It is intolerable that we should again have people with no stake or interest in our country direct our affairs from afar. As Mr. Flanagan rightly says, "the land of Ireland for the people of Ireland" is still an abiding principle. However, there are quite a few foreigners, including Germans, in Ireand who have decided to make this country their home, and who have purchased land and diligently worked itto the added betterment of all. No element of foreign exploitation enters into it in their cases. Therefore a blanket condemnation of acquisition of land by Germans is just a narrowminded parochial ignorance. However, it goes beyond this when we learn that the condemnation extends only to Germans and specificallyexcludes English people. Then ignorance is compounded with bigotry bordering on racism. The" all Germans are Nazis" remark infuses the issue with a touch of hysterical hatred-which all adds up to a good old-fashioned fascist speech. The reference to the small-holders is too hypocritical to be ignored. If the deputy's concern had been to increase the holdings of these farmers then his remarks would have been more appropriately directed at the very many British absentee landlords and the everincreasing numbers of native ranchers. But of course both these types are quite influential in and around Laois-Offaly and there's that top-of-the-poll position to be maintained. In the past eighteen months O. J. Flanagan has caught public attention on three occasions: in April of last year he announced on " The Late Late Show"

that he favoured political jobbery; in Spring of this year he refused to take his party's whip on the question of salary deductions ; and now, again, on the anti-Nazi trail. The Fine Gael party made no official statement on Mr. Flanagan's T.V. remarks on political jobbery-though Garret FitzGerald and James Dillon broke the deafening silence as individuals. On the question of the pay deduction, the party meekly raised the whip for the purposes. And now the Party, in a statement on Mr. Flanagan's Nazi speech, blandly states that" there is no point in attacking people who

O'Kennedy, have moved to higher things (or is it lower ?). Ben 0'Quigley-formerly Fine Gael leader in the Senate and now tragically dead-is a big loss. So too, is Jack McQuillan, who didn't run this time and the former Cathaoirleach Ciaran O'Buachalla will also be missed. Among those who won't be missed will be Eamonn Rooney and Donal 0'Conallain. The election of John Horgan and Mary Bourke on the Universities' Panels is an indication of the growing political awareness and influence of the younger graduates. Horgan's political philosophy has progressed decidedly "leftwards" in the last four years-while he has succeeded in maintaining his establishment base especially in hierarchical circles. Mary Bourke is a young T.C.D. graduate, well steeped in the Bar Library traditions. While at college she was perhaps the most outstanding orator-male or female-but of a conservative disposition. However, the fact that she can express herself coherently-will add immeasurably to the standard of Senate debate. The Taoiseach's appointments were disappointing. With the possible exception of T.C.D. man Neville Keery

these high-brows to toe the party line when the crunch is on ? The Labour Party did disappointingly in this election-winning far fewer seats than the Labour vote potential entitled it to. Mrs. Eileen Desmond was the only candidate to bring out the full labour vote and it was rather pathetic to watch Jimmy Dunne, recent Chairman of the I.C.T.U.being dragged up from his measly 12 votes-by Fianna Fail and Fine Gael transfers. These results bode ill for the Labour Party-for it seems that the Fianna Fail smear campaign has succeeded in

have come in legally," and then blissfully side-steps the issue by attacking the I.R.A. arsonists. It would seem that Fine Gael simply disagree with Mr. Flanagan on the tactics of his speech and not at all on any of the principles involved. It must be pointed out however, that the party's conscience -Garret FitzGerald-was in France and the others of like mind left too timid in his absence. The Government just about held its majority in the Senate-thanks entirely to the eleven nominations of the Taoiseach. Out of a total of 60 senate seats Fianna Fail now command 32, Fine Gael 17, Labour 5; and 6 seats go to the "non-aligned" university representatives. Since the 1967 Local Government election, in which Fine Gael did remarkably well-at the expense mainly of Fianna Fail-it had been obvious that the next senate elections would be very close. It was just a matter of who would be disposing of the Taoiseach's nominations and Jack Lynch answered that unequivocably on June 18th. As usual it is a rather unremarkable Senate. The two virtuosos of the last session, Garret FitzGerald and Michael

-the personnel involved were of rather mediocre calibre-to say the least. Constituency considerations (such as the appointment of J. J. Brennan from Monaghan, and the defeated Dail and Senate candidate Ferrell McElgunn, of Leitrim) secured to outweigh those of merit. But then can one really trust

disaffecting even Labour county councillors. It seems to further emphasise the urban/rural split within the party. Though the Fine Gael contingent in the Senate has lost the irrepressible Garret Fitzgerald to the Dail, it is compensated by the acquisition of Michael O'Higgins who was Shadow Minister for Justice until he lost his Wicklow seat in the General Election, and who will probably be appointed leader of his party in the Senate. For an academic, John Kelly did extremely well in the election. His success has met with somewhat mixed feelings within the party however, as the young tigers are somewhat distrustful of him for his apparent connivance in the Maurice O'Connell affair of last May. Alexis Fitzgerald is, of course, of the Costello clan-being son-in-law of the former Taoiseach. He was Mr. Costello's closest confidant and advisor during the Inter-Party Government days and is no stranger to the corridors of power (or more aptly in Fine Gael environs-the corners of impotence). Alexis joins the growing band of Fine Gael dissenters-he is an anti-Sweetmanite of old-though he has a gentlemanly respect for Cosgrave .

A REAL CRISIS THIS TIME?

THE PUBLICATION of the next quarterly report on the economy by the Economic and Social Research Institute -expected within the next few weeksis awaited with more than the usual amour.t of interest. Psychologically, the report will mark the end of the Summer doldrums in economic affairs caused, as in most other aspects of political life, by the anti-climax of the June election and the disappearance of Ministers, Civil Servants, and economic commentators to their various holiday hideaways. More importantly however, the ESRI's forecast is awaited for indications as to whether the economy really is heading towards a crisis and whether as a consequence some of the promises and predictions freely traded before and during the election are going to hold true or not. What constitutes an economic " crisis" is, of course, a debatable matter. Opposition parties apply rather liberal criteria and tend to classify as critical circumstances which merit only minor adjustments of budgets, credit ceilings and the other instruments of economic policy. Governments, understandably, attempt the reverse; to dismiss as minor and temporary mammoth failures in their judgement and understanding of economic conditions. What makes the present situation so confusing is that this usually predictable pattern of reactions has not occurred-at least not exactly. For while the Opposition parties have indeed issued the customary jeremiads the government has, in the recent past, agreed that there could be a crisis brewing, then denied it and wound up in the end apparently with two definitions of what a " crisis" is. the balance of economic crisis. payments, with an

March Crisis
The conviction that the economy was heading for serious economic difficulty, could not have been reinforced by the result of the maintenance strike in February which resulted in a large increase in wages paid to the striking unions. Actually, this situation was serious by any calculation and in a series of meetings with the leaders of both sides of industry, Mr. Haughey, now recovered from his car accident, warned of the harshness of the measures that were required in any case, but which would be made more brutal still if the maintenance men's award was to spread generally through the economy. "To frame a budget to meet this situation (before the strike) was clearly going to be a formidable task anyway. There would have to be increases in taxation with small, if any, increases in benefits for those who would normally be expecting them ... Now (after the strike) this situation must be looked at again. The maintenance dispute made the situation worse." Surprise, surprise, when Mr Haughey finally introduced his budget

November Crisis
The confusion began last November. With serious but hardly critical inflation making itself felt in rising prices and a deficit in the balance of payments, Mr. Lynch, deputising for the injured Mr. Haughey, introduced an Autumn " mini" budget. Instead of the moderately restraining measures widely thought to be sufficient to deal with the situation, Mr. Lynch unleashed massive increases in taxes and charges sufficient to raise 18! million in a full year. Since this was larger by 15! million than the amounts exacted in the regular budget of the preceding April, the general public could have been excused if they associated the then prevailing conditions of price increases of 6% per annum and a deficit of 20 million in

in May there was no sign of the grim measures promised two months before. Where previously he had held out little hope for increasing welfare benefits he was now able to announce that the prospect of a crisis had receded and that the government had "decided, therefore, to make substantial improvements in the main benefits payable under the Social Welfare code ... " Mr. Lynch's definition of what constituted a serious situation had also been altered. Whereas in November the Taoiseach had warned against a balance of payments deficit " considerably in excess of 30 million .. ,. by May his Minister for Finance was able to dismiss airily the prospect of a deficit of 55 million as no very great threat. "This ( 55 million deficit) is still large but must be viewed against our strong reserves position, the voluntary capital inflow and the prospect of substantial increases in output, savings and investment." Obviously the attitudes which prevailed between November and March on the one hand, and those which emerged suddenly in May cannot both be correct. Either a deficit in the balance of payments of 55 million is 'or is not serious and thus either Mr. Lynch or Mr. Haughey are misjudging the economy. Of course it is possible to find an explanation for the two different positions on political rather than economic grounds. As a Special Correspondent of the Irish Times darkly noted of the Autumn budget "this budget may not alone be unduly severe from an ecnomic viewpoint but this severity may have been influenced not so much by an economic viewpoint, .however misguided, as by a political judgement." In short, it can be argued that Mr. Lynch inflicted a severe budget in November in order to build up reserves from which to dispense goodies in the following year when the general election would not be far off.

55 million figure might suggest a serious situation, however, if the deficit promised to become much larger in the following year. In other words the size of the deficit is not the only important consideration; its direction (up or down) and the rate of change, are also important factors.

What is a Crisis Anyway?

But while this may reconcile the differing positions taken by the government between November and May it does nothing to indicate what the government genuinely regards as an economic crisis. Put otherwise, and in slightly more scientific terms, we still don't know, from what the government's recent words and deeds, in what circumstances it would be prepared to impose severe economic measures such as a wages freeze, import surcharges, or heavy tax increases. As a matter of fact, Mr. Haughey probably was nearer the truth than Mr. Lynch. A balance of payments deficit of 55 million in 1969 might not be too disastrous given reserves of close on 300 million. The

The situation with respect to prices, the other measure of inflation, is less relaxed. The rate of inflation associated with present government policies implies not only a payment deficit of 55 million but also, according to Terence Baker who writes the ESRI's reports, an increase in prices of 6'5%. Unfortunately prices, unlike deficits, do not have" reserves." So far as can be seen prices are about as high in Ireland as they are in England, our main competitor. Moreover, an increase in one year of 6'5% is far higher than that expected this year in England and indeed in almost all other European countries. In fact the projected increase in prices this year is the largest annual increase recorded by the Consumer Price Index since it was introduced in 1953 ! And unlike this year's deficit, it must be remembered, the 6'5% price increase cannot be reversed.

Sincere?
These considerations alone-all of them fairly obvious since before the May budget-may be sufficient to prompt the government to introduce an Autumn budget although government ministers have denied, in response to opposition charges of cynicism, that any post-election budgets would be necessary. But even if Mr. Haughey and his colleagues were sincere at the time in believing that the pre-election budget was suited to the economic situation and would not have to be

cancelled by budgets later in the year when the election was over, several developments since then seem likely to prove this judgement inaccurate. To begin with the balance of payments seems destined to rack up a greater deficit than either the Department of Finance or the ESRI projected last May. In the first quarter of the year the deficit in merchandise trade widened to 53'3 million-an increase of about 30% on the deficit in the corresponding period last year. Unpublished preliminary figures for the second quarter show that the trade deficit in the second quarter is up to 60 million which is an increase of 50% on the second quarter of 1968. The trade deficit seems, therefore, not only to be much wider than last year's but to be widening as the year goes on although the maintenance strike may account for some of the increase in the deficit in the second quarter. Still, making allowances for this it would seem that the visible trade deficit may be somewhere around 40% larger than it was last year. That is to say, the 1969 trade deficit could be about 220 million ! " Invisible" receipts from tourism, emigrants remittances and so on, have to be deducted from this to get the overall deficit on the balance of payments. On this score too post-budget data is not encouraging. Net receipts from tourism, the largest single item in the " invisible" accounts, is unlikely to show very much increase. Although the number of tourists appears to be larger than last year their spending will not be much above 100 million compared with 93 million last year. Given a normal increase in Irish tourists going abroad this extra 7 million could be wiped out giving us no increase in the net receipts from tourism. It's anybody's guess what sort of returns might be derived from the other invisible items but it's hard to see how they could record an increase of more than 10 million. This would mean total net invisible receipts of 147 million for this year. Set against the deficit on merchandise trade this rough approximation suggests an overall deficit on current account of roughly 73 million.

Wage Freeze?
This nasty outcome could be softened a bit by government action. For one thing the government could intervene in all forthcoming wage negotiations (a number of important agreements come up for negotiation late this year and early next year) and push hard for minimal income increases. Of course the government is involved in this already. Last March, Mr. Haughey got

to page eight

CONSEQUENCES
THE RECENT French devaluation differs to the sterling devaluation in 1967 in one important respect. It was a surprise! Whereas the English government appeared to be the only ones by the Autumn of 1967 who hadn't realised the inevitability of a cut in international value of the pound, the French cabinet were the only people who knew the franc was going to go the same way in the Summer of 1969. It had in fact been widely assumed that since M. Pompidou had inherited the mantle of de Gaulle he would, as de Gaulle threatened to do, defend the parity of the franc until the last. Which is not to say that devaluation would not have occurred but only that the franc like the pound a few years ago would have had to endure a succession of speculative attacks defended with increasing inadequacy by the familiar mixture of trade restrictions, internal deflation, and external borrowings. By short circuiting all of this M. Pompidou has saved France, and the much battered international monetary system, some needless stress and strain and turned what would have been a certain defeat into a minor triumph.

OF FRENCH
devaluation adding on another 3 % its clear that the unions will be gunning for quite a hefty wage hike. With the elections now out of the way they will also, presumably, have fewer inhibitions about pulling their punches.

DEVALUATION
somewhat slower growth, the security of sterling looks fairly small for the next few months.

The D Mark
Besides making things tougher for the pound the French devaluation has struck at the international monetary system in another way. It had been widely hoped that the habit of international money meetings which had sprung up to deal with the recurrent monetary crises of the past few years, could be used as forum within which to negotiate changes in currency parities.

Effects Abroad
The direct effect of the devaluation on the external trade of other economies will not be very noticeable. Nevertheless in the present fairly jittery state of the world monetary system the devaluation will surely affect the speculators' estimates of the strength of existing parities. Thus the Belgian

Deflation of Economy
But whether Pompidou can turn his well-timed stroke into a major piece of economic engineering and build upon the devaluation the firm foundations for rapid internal growth and the replenishment of the external reserves, is quite another matter. The major problem is that the economy is now operating fairly close to its capacity. This means that the required growth of exports cannot be attained by putting to work idle labour and underutilised factories. Instead, domestic spending has to be reduced and output shifted from the home to export markets. Precisely because this latter course does involve sacrifices it is much more difficult to accomplish. Although the details of the government's deflationary programme have not been published-this will come later this month-it is clear that they will involve cuts in government expenditure, increases in taxation and a stern attitude to incomes. This last is going to be the real test. Encouraged by their success in the revolution of May 1968, the French unions have, since early this year been looking for further increases to compensate for increased prices. During the year prices have continued to rise rapidly and with

franc suffered a severe reaction despite the fact that the Belgian payments situation is quite strong. More ominously however, the devaluation of the Franc has pushed the pound once more into the position of the World's Number One Weak Currency. In this familair but uneviable position the pound will be the target for continuous speculative attacks unless, of course, it succeeds in moving into very substantial surplus. Of that, as the most recent British figures show, there is no immediate prospect, and with the world economy as a whole, and especially that of the United States, forecasted to enter a period of

In this manner a certain degree of order and rationality might be introduced into a system which, for all its sophistication, still tends to be operated according to the most capricious ideas of national prestige. In the present context it had been hoped that an international conference sometime this Autumn might persuade the French to trade a devaluation for a German revaluation. Only in this way it was thought could both countries be persuaded to accept what they had previously claimed to be beyond debate and at the same time relieve the international system of two of its worst sources of instability. The French
7

-------------------CURRENT

AFFAIRS -------------------

decision to go it alone, while better than no decision at all, does still leave the problem of the D Mark unsolved. Indeed, it may push it further from solution as there is some tendency for German politicians to argue that the French devaluation now obviates the need for any action on their part with respect to the Mark. Thus does one instance of autarky breed another.

A REAL CRISIS THIS TIME?

continued from page six
the union leaders to agree not to follow the example of the maintenance men and initiate a wage round. Unfortunately, while union leaders are unlikely to be able or willing to ask for what the maintenance unions got they will hardly confine themselves to anything less than a 10% increase in wages. Already, 50,000 building workers have been awarded increases of more than that. The second area in which the government can act to stem the inflationary tide is monetary policy. Since Mr. Haughey's budget last March the Central Bank has adopted a severely restrictive stance in requiring the Associated Banks to limit their credit increases this year to a total of 75 million to 80 million. Since the government is to get 50 million of this only 25 million to 30 million is available for the private sector. This is about half of last year's increase in credit to businesses and individuals and if the banks can stick to it they could deflate the economy enough to lop a few millions of the prospective deficit. deficit at a high level and with large incomes increases in prospect for this year, it seems unlikely in the extreme that the Central Bank will be able to hold the Associated Banks to anything near an increase in private credit of 25 million to 30 million.

Blow to E.E.C.
Nor is it only in monetary affairs that the French taste for independent action is likely to set an example. The ramifications of the devaluation on the EEC are profound indeed and may exert an influence for several years over the development of the community. \The reason is that the devaluation lowers French farm prices relative to those of the EEC and thus upsets the complex and delicate structure of the Common Agricultural Policy. Because farm prices are now cheaper than those in other EEC countries the EEC Commission should have been obliged to intervene and buy French agricultural goods until their prices had risen to their old levels in terms of the other EEC currencies. This would have involved an increase in the already large transfers of EEC agricultural funds to France. Because this would also mean a substantial boost to French domestic prices the French government, for once in harmony with the EEC, did not care for the application of the CAP in this either. On the other hand to lower all other common market food prices would be politically unacceptable. Inevitably the CAP itself became the casualty. For the next two years France will tax its exports of food and subsidise its imports so as to keep their prices on the foreign markets in line with those abroad meanwhile allowing food prices in France to rise slowly until they reach their pre-devaluation parity with other EEC countries. The significance of all of this is that one of the EEC's most determined supporters' of the CAP has demanded to be released from its rigours and France's complaint that the CAP was a serious objection to UK entry now looks a good deal less powerful. When negotiations on British entry recommence the British can reasonably ask for a similar "changeover" period. Likewise in the future when any other EEC member encounters serious difficulties it too, may demand exemption from this or that feature of the organisation's rules. The EEC may thus be set on a path towards a much looser form of unity than had been envisaged in the past.

Autumn Budget
The third and last group of actions by which the government can influence the economy is, of course, through its own budget, And with incomes policies and monetary policies incapable of themselves of dealing with the current inflation, the burden on the govern-, ment's spending and taxing policy this year is unusually heavy. Unfortunately the scope for cutting government spending is practically zero. Every year brings its crop of government projects for which no provision was made in the regular budget. Because the last budget did reduce the increase in non-social welfare spending to the bare minimum this year's lot could be a good deal heavier than usual. Rapidly rising prices and incomes will give an added impetus to the growth of government spending in the near future. Another Autumn Budget is thus going to be required to reduce the present rate of inflation. Conceivably it may incorporate temporary increases in import duties which will delay some imports for a few months and yield some revenue to the government. Certainly however, the government will be raising taxes-presumably on the old stand-bys, petrol, spirits, beer and tobacco. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility, however, that the government will reach for increases in other taxes and charges. But an Autumn Budget would by no means get the economy out of the wood. Next year's budget will also have to be restrictive and throughout the next calendar year incomes and credit will have to be carefully controlled. Even then the balance of payments will hardly be in surplus until sometime in 1971 although it may be close to balancing by the end of 1970. Providing firm action is taken in the near future, and adhered to throughout a large part, if not all, of 1970, then it should be possible to reduce the rate of increases in prices and balance our external payments without drastically reducing economic growth or seriously disrupting Irish industry. In the longer run, however, the government will have to learn to resist the temptation to steer their economic policy by the light of political necessities.

Credit Restriction?
But how likely is the Central Bank to succeed in keeping credit growth to the prescribed 75-80 million? As the Bank itself candidly concedes in its annual report the last two guide-lines it issued for the years ending March 1968 and April 1969, were substantially exceeded by the Associated Banks. The Bank's report also shows that in May, the first month of the April to April year over which the guidelines are to apply, credit has grown by 9-9 million which is a good deal more than one-twelfth of 80 million. Moreover the Report shows that this was a net increase in total credit. In May government credit declined by 5-6 million so that private credit must have expanded by 14-5 million In other words, in one month half of the targeted increase in credit for the year to the private sector has been taken up ! Although the liquidity of the banks (the relationship between their liabilities to customers and their external reserves plus deposits with the Central Bank) is now very low and declining, these figures show that the credit demands of the private sector is very intense, In an inflationary economy credit demands rise rapidly as businesses and individuals try to accelerate purchases in anticipation of price increases and try to build up stocks of goods and cash to accommodate surging demand and to anticipate further credit stringencies. With the government current budget in

LONDON
SQUAITER
TALKS
TONY MAHONY is head of the campaign for clearing hostels and Islums.This co-ordinatesand publicises all the squatting campaigns taking place in Britain. At present there are five in London and many others in the North, notably in Manchester. For a national organiser of the most militant and successful left-wing campaigns in Britain, Tony has an unusual background. He was educated in a Jesuit school in London and proceeded to study for the priesthood for a few years. For a reason which he claims is incomprehensible to him he had chosen to be a Carmelite monk in Aylesford Priory in Kent. But before ordination he began to see the grave, radical defects in British capitalist society and, on his departure, he becameassociatedwith Slant, the Catholic Marxist group in Britain. He is still associated with this group, but in the last two years he has become dissatisfied with their arid intellectualism and smug satisfactionwith intellectual, rather than material revolt. Since he joined the squatters campaign he has shaken the Council establishments in London. His skilful organisation of the squat in Redbridge reached the front page of British newspapers and gained the support of such an unlikely ally as the London Times. In this campaign the squatters used British law to its full extent by utilising a Charter of 1831to delay evictionsand subsequentlyto preclude police support of evictions. Eventually Redbridge Council lost its temper and sent in the notorious security organisationof Barry Quartermain which The Sunday Times Insight team showed to include exfascists and criminals. In one of the evictions the father of a large family had his jaw broken by one of Quartermain's thugs who had previously served a sentence for assault and battery. This was too much for the liberal press and the Council had to relent in the face of severe newspaper criticism. This campaignand its victory over the Council was the prelude to a rapid spread of similar campaigns. Last month Mahony visited the Dublin Housing Action Committee to compare notes. He has other interests in Ireland apart from squatting. His parents were Irish and his education kept him in close contact. His answers to Nusight questions show the fertile, creative mind that can come from a Catholic, Irish and radical Marxist fusion.

Q. What is a squatting campaign? T. M.: I can only speak of the three campaigns I have personal knowledge of which are at the moment taking place in London. Each is the product of different local conditions and political pressures. Basically it is an attempt through direct action by homeless people to achieve their right to a decent roof over their heads. In England the groups are local and autonomous which means there is no central strategy or single ideology. Q. Your campaign in London is obviously successful. How has it affected the radical movements in Britain? T. M.: To answer your question it is necessary to examine your statement that the campaign has been a success. There have been failures, you see, as well as successes. I'm going to be unpopular by giving my views on why

success and failure, but I think they are pertinent. Wherever a group of radicals have worked hard for a long time in the area where they live, bringing the local issues to the notice of the people, proving that their concern is for local people, then any direct action campaign is usually a success. However when the infallible indeologists (and we have plenty of them) come into an area without any of this long hard work at grass roots level, there is usually no support from the people and failure is the inevitable result. It is worth quoting Mao Tse Tung here-not because he is particulary profound or original, but because he sums up a political truth. " To link oneself with the masses, one must act in accordance with the needs and wishes of the masses. All work done for the masses must start from their needs and not from the desire of any individual." It is in this context
9

that the effect on the radical movements must be judged. Too much vulgar Marxism is going around the organised groups. Often their theory has no relevance, either to present conditions, or to England itself. The squatters movement is often seen as nothing more than an insignificant reformist movement. They say it is not a workers' struggle. But the point is that a squatters' campaign goes right to the heart of the matter of property relations. It demands that human values come first. By taking over empty property a squatter dismisses the ethic of capitalism and a whole de-mystifying process is achieved in one act I think, over the last month or so, the organised Left is beginning to see this. And, of course, squatters are working-class families, and we are

beginning to make connections the trade union movement.

with

Q. What is the nature of housing which has meant that your campaign has created quite a crisis for the ruling class and has affected the radical left so deeply? T M.: Capitalism created the modern city. As the power of the state over peoples lives grew, so increasing responsibility had to be shouldered. Housing the working class was one responsibility. But it is an intrusion into the single aim of making profit. It uses resources that could, according to capitalism, be so much better employed elsewhere. So housing has never been adequate. This view of working people's lives permeates everywhere: the factory, health services, education, the lot. In modern capitalism work is a most mystified activity. Accepting one has to work, the factory or office as it is now organised seems inevitable. And, of course, the clean canteens, clubs, bonuses have taken the edge off alienation. But the right to a home, a good house, directly conflicts with the system. It is the exposed nerve of our society. Housing, I think, at this particular time, shows capitalism to be the inhuman system it is. I do feel that increasingly the Left will come to understand this, and the housing issue will playa major part in developing urban guerilla warfare.

instant international revolution. What we claim is that we are playing a small but significant role in the struggle of all people who suffer under the increasing barbarism of capitalism. I agree with Marcuse that unless the home issues of Western countries are agitated on, unless we are restless and show the ruling class that they cannot just blow up the Third World without any reflex action at home, then all is lost. The struggle for a better society must be waged on many fronts. I can't go to Vietnam, Latin America or Africa; nor could I take on the struggle of black power. Housing affects me and all our people; the development of the struggle affects the confidence of the ruling class at home and abroad. It shows ordinary people that they have power and they can act and win. That is how housing is an international issue and part or the revolutionary struggle of all the oppressed. Q. What do you think of Dublin Housing Action Committee and the Left in Ireland? T. M.: It is not my place to analyse the Dublin Housing Action Committee or the Irish left movement. Though I would like to make a brief comment: Dublin Housing Action Committee is a truly working class movement and fights for the needs of the working class. In this it stands head and shoulders above many so-called working class organisations. The issue it is fighting for is vital to the development of working class consciousness and, thereby, Ireland's future. As for the left generally, if it develops the writings and actions of such men as Connolly and Larkin, I am sure it cannot falter. Ireland has produced classic works of socialist theory and men equal to the needs and demands of revolution. I do not see that the nationalist issue is a stumbling-block either, rather it is part of the development of the struggle for freedom.

Q. What are you doing in Dublin?

T. M.: The pubs apart, I want to exchange information with the Dublin Housing Action Committee. We can learn from one another and, I think, fight together. It is British capitalism that is going to destroy your city unless something is done, it is squatters who may save it. There is a connection here. We fight a common enemy, and in England it is immigrant Irish families who are leading the struggle. The Flemings are examples of this. I am the son of Irish parents who had to leave Ireland because there was no work and no houses for them, so I have a special interest in seeing the struggle in this country victorious It is also important to forge links in order to reunite the workers' struggle in both countries which has been divided by the ruling class playing on ethnic and religious prejudices. Q. Can housing really be an international issue? T. M.: Housing is not the international issue: it is part of it. In this sense, the answer is yes. What I do not want you to think is that we believe we have found the magic formula for

Q. What future do you see for Ireland, and will this interact with Britain?
T. M.: This is a difficult question for me to answer. Let me say only that I agree with Marx and Engels that the destinies of our two countries are woven together. It is my hope and what I fight for, that one day our two countries will be united in friendship and equality. When the socialist revolution occurs in Ireland, the English ruling class will have received a mortal blow and, if things continue to develop in the whole of Ireland as they seem to be doing, it may be sooner than many anticipate.

MICKO THE GREAT

A DUBLIN sports journalist suggested recently that prose is no longer suitable to describe Kerry's Mick O'Connell-that only an epic poem could properly do him justice. There is a deal of truth in this. At the age of thirty-two, the Valentia islander is still the monarch of all he surveys. His consummate artistry and style-whether it is in going up against opponents for the high ball or in the accuracy of his shooting and passing-combine to make him the undisputed maestro of the midfield. For a dozen years he has been the Kingdom's tower of strength and Gaelic football's player supreme.
If on the pitch he is the complete footballer, off it he is something of an enigma. Laconic in the extreme, he is a modest, unassuming and withdrawn man. He has always sidestepped the ballyhoo that attaches to stardom and his distaste for the trappings and publicity that accompany success is well known. He scoffsat words like" idol," " personality" and "genius." And yet he remains the best-known sportsman playing under any code in Ireland today. On the eve of the last month's semifinal between Kerry and Mayo the Kerry team contingent checked into a hotel on Dublin's north side, half a mile from Croke Park. Mick O'Connell was not with them. With only two exceptions (O'Connell and Mick O'Dwyer), the team had travelled up by train, leavingTralee at fiveo'clock. O'Connell drove up with a friend, Ned FitzGerald, arriving shortly after the others. A bit of a longer, he has always preferred it that way. After checking in at the hotel desk and briefly visiting his room, O'Connell reappeared, dressed in a dark suit and sandals. He relaxed in a lobby armchair and asked for a glass of milk. "How many miles have we travelled since taking up the game?" he asked veteran colleague Mick O'Dwyer. "Something like 197,000," replied O'Dwyer after a moment's reflection. " Yes," O'Connell agreed, " we've gone through two dozen cars and that's without putting a dint in anyone of them." The rest of the Kerry squad were either sitting around in subdued but not noticeably tense groups, or having a snack, or simply heading for an early bed. Collective training had ended for the team after their final stint at Tralee on the Wednesday night. But not individual training as far as Mick O'Connell was concerned: a man totally dedicated to the sport and to maintaining peak physical fitness, he had stopped on the way up for what he casually referred to as "a bit of a gallop in the hills with Ned here " Maybe it was the benefit of his long playing experience (he was captain of the victorious Kerry team in the 1959 final and has played in four All-Ireland finalsin the sixties)or perhaps it was the natural confidenceof all Kerrymen, but he did not appear in any way tense at the prospect of the next day's game or the thought of Croke Park with its

attendant crowds and pageantry: "Arrah, I'm not a bit tensed up. Sure we take it in our stride. Although some of the lads do get a bit taut just before the game. You might have to tie a fellow's laces for him, for instance." His blunt, philosophical approach to the game comes through at all times. On fitness: "Physically I'm fine for the game. That's not the hard part." On winning: "There's too much winat-all-costs attitude around." On tension: "Mentally there can be a lot of strain. Things outside the game can

we'll be on our way. I'm going to bed before midnight. I'm reserving all my energies for Loftus." (P. J. Loftus, his Mayo opposite number). At this point he excused himself and disappeared upstairs. A small knot of Kerry players remained to sit around chatting. We asked them about Mick O'Connell: "It's a help to know he's on the field even if he's nowhere near the ball," said Eamon O'Donoghue. "Yes," agreed his brother Paud, the full-back, "It's a help just knowing he's there." Johnny Culloty, the Kerry

was the most well-known player on the Kerry team. Ninety-nine people plumped immediately for Mick O'Connell. The single dissenting vote was that of a Kerryman who expressed a preference for Pat Griffin). At the team's hotel the next morning, the general picture was much the same : quiet little groups of players standing around in groups with well-wishers and friends; Johnny Culloty passing an autograph book around; the "Say, are you guys athletes or something? " from a transatlantic tourist who re-

worry you." On Gaelic football: "This is an amateur sport but it's expensive enough to play. We have to pay for our gear and out boots. And there are the worries. But I suppose we have our memories." On the last dozen years: "There were disappointments and there were satisfactions and they cancel each other out. I put a share in and I got a share out. I don't regret it." On the next morning: "Usually we get up at seven. But tomorrow we'll have a bit of a sleep-on, a fair breakfast, then later maybe a light snack and then
12

captain, declared: "If you ask anyone in any county outside of Kerry to name the Kerry football team, the first name they'll say is that of Mick O'Connell." With a wry grin, Culloty (who has been playing on the side for a year longer than O'Connell) added: " Perhaps he'd be the only fellow that they'd mention." (NUSIGHT took up Culloty's suggestion: on the day of the match we conducted a snap poll outside Croke Park. We asked fifty supporters from Mayo and the same from Kerry who

ceived a modest nod of acquiescence ; and Pat Griffin declaring that he wasn't a bit tense but he wanted a bowl of oxtail soup. O'Connell was not much in evidence. Having attended Mass in a nearby Drumcondra church with other team members, he returned to the hotel for a brief rest. Also in the lobby was John" Kerry " O'Donnell, the supremo of the New York G.A.A. and" assistant trainer" of the Kerry team, a man whose respect for O'Connell is boundless: "Kerry wouldn't be the same without him. An

indication of his popularity was brought home to me in the Munster Final: when each player came out he got a hand from the crowd, but when Mick came out he got an ovation. He's the number one man anywhere Gaelic football is played, and anyone who plays the game as cleanly as he does and advocates cleanness as he does is deservedly so. He's a very big draw in New York. Last year at Gaelic Park (in New York) in 90 degrees of heat he was injured in the first five minutes of the first game. He played for the second half of the second game and won it for Kerry, dominating the play."

straight back," he replied. "We have two hundred and seventy miles to do and we'd like to get it over with." When we wished him luck in the game, he responded: "I don't believe in luck. You must make your own luck." The next time we saw him was as he trotted on to the pitch with the men from the Kingdom and took part in the ritual parade. During the national anthem he stood bolt upright facing the flag, a few feet from P. J. Loftus, the man he was to mark. Then the game began, and the rest is history. Anyone who saw it live, or on television, or even read the newspaper accounts will know

Kerrymen tend to become eloquent to the point of lyricism when they speak of Mick O'Connell. John" Kerry" O'Donnell is no exception: "He's the perfect example of he who exalteth himself shall be humbled and he who humbleth himself shall be exalted. Mick O'Connell is the type of son that every Kerry mother and father would like to have." Later, as the phalanxes of Mayo and Kerry supporters were moving through Dublin towards Croke Park, the Kerry team was preparing to leave its hotel. Mick O'Connell's granite face effectively hid any emotions he may have been feeling. We asked him what he would do after the game . .. "I'll head

that O'Connell played a " blinder" and made his usual contribution to the Kerry victory. Since captain Johnny Culloty was in goal, O'Connell strode through the midfield like some latter-day Ghengis Khan, keeping a tight rein on the game with urgent semaphoric signalling to his colleagues. His passes were spot on target and his fielding was brilliant. The trajectory of one sizzling shot was low that it skimmed the bar for a point before removing the cap of a startled St. John's Ambulance man, who had been standing some yards behind the goal. As usual, O'Connell was superb in the air, outlofting the outstretched

hands of the Mayomen as he plucked the ball from the clouds. Elegant, immaculate and serene are adjectives not normally applied to a footballer. But during the semi-final, surely one of the tensest games ever seen at the G.A.A. mecca, he was all of these. His superiority in the midfield was outstanding and, despite a few minor lapses (he missed two chances of points in the first half and a free in the second) O'Connell was indubitably the man of the match. The game itself was an hour of tense, exciting drama. The fact that on their showing Kerry should have been halfdozen points ahead of a courageous but outplayed Mayo team was irrelevant. When Mayo's Des Griffith scythed his way through the Kerry defence and rocketed a shot past Culloty into the net from ten yards out the game was thrown wide open: with four minutes still in the game, Mayo were a point behind. A battle royal ensued and O'Connell was in the thick of it. As the cliff-hanging tension increased unbearably, he must have been a source of mighty inspiration to the beleaguered Kerrymen, as he urged, gesticulated and willed them to hold on. Then, with a minute to go, referee Kelly awarded a free to Mayo. From an angle, the unfortunate O'Dowd sent it wide and then it was all over. Throngs of Kerry supporters raced on to the field, jubilantly surrounding their heroes. As the team left the pitch, Mick O'Connell strode grimly towards the dressingroom. Autograph hunters were greeted with a scowl. When we congratulated him the response was a curt nod and a "yeah, all right. All right." He seemed disturbed by the closeness of the one point margin. Later, as enigmatic as ever, he muttered "'twas okay," a comment utterly in keeping with the man and set off for the Kingdom. At thirty-two, Mick O'Connell may be in the afternoon of his long playing career but as Dr. Jim Brosnan, Chairman of the Kerry G.A.A., put it to us after the game: "He's outstandinghe wins more games for Kerry than any other player. He's out on his own. And he should be playing for Kerry for a good while to come." Mick O'Connell is a sort of a John Wayne in green and gold. Perhaps somewhere in Ireland there may be a bard who will try his hand at that epic poem. But the last person to worry about it will be the Ulysses of Kerry himself. It is refreshing to come across someone as unspoiled by success as Mick O'Connell and so unaffected by praise. But then Mick O'Connell needs praise like he needs a torn ligament.
13

THE SAGA OF SHAMROCK ROVERS

ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL in the Republic has never known the same financial rewards, glamour, or the magnetic appeal enjoyed by the game in such countries as Britain, Spain and Italy. But if one team, through the years, has come close to achieving even a small measure of that appeal it is unquestionably Shamrock Rovers. Their successes have been consistent and considerable; their support is drawn from a wider spectrum than is represented by the partisan regulars who trek up to Glenmalure Park on
Photos-Irish Press

Sunday afternoons. A number of the club's season-ticket holders live nowhere near Dublin-three Wexford men were recently allocated tickets. It is fair to say that Shamrock Rovers (perhaps the name helps ?) have always seemed something more than merely a local Dublin side. The Rovers' ball started rolling back in 1899 when the club was formed by a group of soccer enthusiasts in Ringsend. The move to their present headquarters at Glenmalure Park in Milltown came in 1928. A glance at their record over the last seventy years reveals a list of impressive achievementsthat no other League of Ireland side can equal. They have come out on top of the League on ten occasions and have been runners-up nine times. They
I~

have won the Dublin City Cup nine times and captured the Top Four Competition three times since it was started in 1956. Their record in the Shield is also impressive: they have won it eighteen times in forty seven years and been runners-up on eight occasions. But it is by way of the F.A.L Cup that the club has most emphatically underlined its name in the record books. Since the competition began in 1922 they have notched up a total of twenty wins and have been beaten finalists five times. Between 1929 and 1933 Rovers created an Irish record by winning the Cup for five consecutive years. Their opponents would be quite justified in believing that Rovers hold a lien on that particular trophy, for when the men in the green and white hoops beat Cork Celtic by a three-goal margin in the replayed Cup Final at Dalymount Park in April of this year they also beat their own long-standing record and set up an incredible new one in its place: six Cup Final victories on the trot. To date, the complete record of Shamrock Rovers in the F.A.I. Cup (which includes twenty - five final appearances) is: total matches played 189; won 112; drawn 45; lost 32 ; goals for 388; goals against 201. Obviously one of the most interesting topics of discussion this year will be whether they can extend their own record to seven. If they do win what is becoming a traditional yearly pilgrimage then the F.A.I. may have to consider setting up a separate competition which their rivals can fight for. Nor are Shamrock Rovers strangers to the international soccer scene. They have displayed their green and white hoops in a sufficientnumber of foreign countries to make them Ireland's ambassadors plenipotentiary in this sphere. They have played in England, Spain, Denmark, the U.S.A., Germany, Austria, France, Luxembourg and Bulgaria. During their most recent American trip in 1967 they clocked up 30,000 tniles playing from east to west coasts. Rovers acquitted themselves reasonably well in the States, considering that they were a team of parttime professionals. They played in Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles and Washington. They lost four games by a one-goal margin, had only one bad defeat (by Cagliari of Italy), drew with Wolverhampton Wanderers and caused two major upsets by beating Brazilian champions Bangu 3-1, and then defeating Aberdeen (who had

gone eleven games without defeat) by two goals to one. Miss Margaret Cunningham, a Rovers Director and one of the seven children of Chairman Joseph Cunningham, Sr., who handles the club's foreign correspondence, is able to confirm that Shamrock Rovers do indeed enjoy a considerable international reputation: "I can hardly get through all the letters asking for badges and photos that I get from Europe, especially from Czechoslovakia, England and Poland. They know all about the team, the positions of the players and so 0,'1 " Their first European engagement this year will be on Wednesday, 17th September, at Dalymount Park. This is the first leg of their first-round European Cup-Winners Cup tussle

with German team, Gelsenkirchen, from near Dusseldorf. The return game will be played in Germany on the first of next month. Will Rovers win a seventh consecutive F.A.L Cup? And how will they fare in Europe, in the League and in other competitions? Shamrock Rovers' past is sufficiently impressive to stand by itself: the club's future is more open. Their lion's share of the soccer limelight has been partially eclipsed in recent years by the strong showing of other teams such as Dundalk and Waterford, the latter in particular. But it would be surprising indeed if they failed to figure in the honours this season. The club will certainly tniss excaptain and Irish international Johnny Fullam (transferred to Bohetnians for 2,000) whose services to the team

contributed to many a victory over the past eight years. But Ben Hannigan, the inside forward who came to Rovers from Dundalk last March, should provide a healthy dose of inspiration during the current season by way of his tireless grafting abilities and happy rapport with centre-forward Mick Leech. The latter, of course, possesses a panache all of his own. And the charisma of this goal-poaching brewer from Cabra (last season's leading scorer) can be compared to that of another Irishman to whom he bears a physical resemblance: Georgie Best of Manchester United. Leech

is in his fifth season with Shamrock Rovers, whose" B" team he graced in earlier days. Now, at twenty-one, he is the prime target for the autograph hunters and is the chief focus of adulation at Glenmalure Park. He has already acheived the status of " idol" in the tradition of other Rovers greats such as Gerry Mackey, Liam Tuohy (now managing Dundalk), Ronnie Nolan, Tommy Hamilton, Paddy Ambrose and Liam Whelan. Other players who should figure prominently during the season include: stalwart international winger Frank O'Neill, who holds the Irish

record for a home-based player of fourteen full international caps; Mick Smyth, the 28-years-old goalkeeper ; Mick Kearin, who formerly played for Bohemians and is an amateur international; veteran left-back Pat Courtney, who has been with the team for many years and is also an amateur international; Eric Barber, fresh from a sojourn in the States; and amateur international and ex-Home Farm boy Damien Richardson who has been playing very well since the season started. " We have at least as good a team, if not a better team than last year," says 76-year-old Rovers Chairman, Joseph Cunningham, Sr. " I think we should have a very good season. The League will be the one that we want. But it would be nice to win the Cup for the seventh time." So, in the year of their seventieth birthday, Shamrock Rovers go marching on. Their progress will be followed by fans in more places than Dublin. They are many soccer fans' favourite side-and just about everybody else's favourite enemy. And that in itself is a tribute.

FR. EAMONN CASEY

BY HENRY KELLY THE BISHOP-ELECT of Kerry, Father Eamonn Casey, now just finishing his work at the Catholic Housing Aid Society in London, hasn't given his notice of elevation to the bishopric" much thought." Until the day I finally hoist my sail and get out of her and arrive in Kerry I won't be able to sit down and even think about it for myself." He speaks between leaps and bounds-to the door, to the telephone, to the top of the stairs to shout down a request or, occasionally, a very polite command. I don't want to rule but I have to. There must be men, I know there are, in my diocese with far better brains than me and I'm not saying that in any false modesty. I'm going to have to rule but there isn't any need for the expression of dignity
16

BISHOP-ELECT OF KERRY for my officeor submission to rule to be expressed in structures that will shut people off from each other." Father Casey will be a people's Bishop. Ifhe has any say in the matter. Bishops are only the fullness of the priesthood and I couldn't fulfil my role as a priest and accordingly as a Bishop if I wasn't among my people." Around him in his officein North West London, a staff work not quite as long hours as himself in efforts to house and help families of whatever size. The staff, men and women speak of Father Casey, Director of C.H.A.S., with something close to adulation. He can do no wrong for them. "He's just a fantastic man. His energy alone but he's never in bad humour he always rushes he went to 300 meetings alone last year and that's not counting special ones that we haven't

any record of he treats everyone the

SaIl1e "

No Change We travel, cramped in a car back to central London. Will he not find being a Bishop shuts him off from the people he has worked among for ten years in Britain or more important from people entirely God, I don't know what you think Bishops are or what they're meant to do but I'm going to be the same in Killarney and the towns of Kerry as I've been here for ten years. Look, you cannot limit your horizon to the hills of Kerry. People say to me that I'm going to a remote part of Ireland and I say there is no such thing as a remote part of anywhere. I'm as vital to Peru and Vietnam and so are you as any of my pals who are out there at the moment."

But he admits his "record" is unique and may continue to be so among Irish hierarchy. "I suppose if you mean, could it happen again that a man who spent ten years working among the housing crisis in this huge city and country could become an Irish Bishop, then its unique in the sense that it probably won't turn out that way." His record is unique in other ways, too. He does not come from the allegedly superior intellectual background of some of his colleagues in high office. He was born in Kerry in 1927"isn't forty-two a ridiculous age for anyone to be a Bishop? "-took the usual philosophy degree at Maynooth on his way to ordination in 1951. For the first four years of his priesthood he worked in Limerick, at pastoral duties and teaching. From 1955 to 1960 he worked at St. John's Cathedral in Limerick city and then in the autumn of 1960 the legend that is Father Eamonn Casey was born with his transfer to be chaplain to the Irish community in Slough in Buckinghamshire in Britain.

Housing
Here he began his first housing efforts. A donor gave him 1,000 which he placed in a bank locally. He found in Slough a few "thoroughly respectable couples" who, with their first baby had been evicted from their flat. He went to the bank which had his 1,000 and exploited both the money and the system. "Most of the couples had some money saved and on the strength of our 1,000 they got loans of between 50 and 250. With this they could make down payments on mortgages, In the first year we got loans totalling 4,865." In the three years that followed the Slough effort more basic capital was deposited and more and more money borrowed from the bank. There wasn't a single case of default in repayments. There was no middle-man. There was no messing. Father Casey was on the way. From there on the story is one of increased organisation, more centres, new groupings, diversification in the housing drive. Names that are familiar like Shelter enter into the story and so too, does Father Casey's confirmation and praise of " Cathy Come Home," the television drama of a couple forced to live, eventually, in the open for lack of accommodation.

important. "I've never taken the label socialist, or capitalist or anything else. No, I suppose I'm not a capitalist. Look I don't give a hoot what systems you have when a need arises. Then you discover that no matter who invented it or how it gets along its only eightyfive per cent workable. All right? The charity of God is needed to fill the other fifteen per cent. Do you understand that? I always believed in using the existing structures-if only because you have to in a pluralistic society--. Of course you have to bend them and use them and mess them about to suit your need. When I started to try and do something for the people in Slough I had to use the banks. I'd no money so I'd no bloomin' choice." Father Casey, who will be consecrated in November in Killarney, will be sorry to leave London. "I'll miss the challenge of this society though I'm quite sure there's a challenge in Kerry and in Ireland. But then that's what I meant about the world and our horizons. As christians we have to be the conscience of the world. Weare the ones who must be sensitive to needs and attend them. And it doesn't matter tuppence whether its under a capitalist or a socialist system."

Unique Bishop?
This priest is destined, it seems, for a bishop's career unique almost in the entire history of the Irish church. He is young, vital, engaged in working among people and working for them. His priorities are for co-operation, charity, enthusiasm, energy-all of which he has himself in plenty. And, as evidenced from his life to date, he is not a man over-concerned with structures, "I keep the commandments because I want God to come and dwell in me-not as an end in themselves. Again we are back to the point I mentioned to you earlier-you cannot maintain structures that tend to shut people off from others." And he is sure too, where the priorities are. "The thing I would prefer to hear about, instead of the moral decline or the permissive society is what people really think about life. What do you think it means? What do you want to do with it. What do you feel about it. Anyway, for everyone I can count laying stress on the moral degradation I can name a hundred opposite cases of people of all ages, particularly young, who maintain standards and ideals in their lives that are of the highest order." His christianity is basic; almost, one feels, naive for the pluralistic society he has faced. "The two great commandrnents as Christ Himself said, are

" Not a Capitalist"

But for the Irish, the Catholic population of Kerry and the whole country, this man is better than any of his inventions. And maybe more

love the Lord thy God and thy neighbour as thyself. Aren't they perfect? Isn't this part of the whole essence? " He has welcomed the ecumenical movement, springing from his admiration for John XXIII and the support he got from a man like Cardinal Heenan for his social work. "I don't think that we can change everything and everyone but there are huge areas of agreement. I went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land once, an ecumenical one. There were 350 people and only twenty-five Catholics. It was a wonderful experience. Isn't it sad the way the countryside now is plunged in war." And this grief for the people of a foreign land is the same as that which he describes motivated his first efforts in housing reform. His city was in "another country," but Father Casey's words are relevant in Ireland today: "Housing is such a public and socially visible thing that, although I hope my work among Limerick people while I was their curate was no less strong and filled with no less community awareness, I was much better known working first in Slough and then in London. What appalled me most was to see the number of people who were denied normal family living. I never had to worry about that and I'd bet you didn't either, but there were and still are scores, thousands, who, through no fault of their own are not able to live even decently." This is the last simple sentiment from the bishop-elect as we began to take our leave. If he gets relaxation, generally he works about fourteen hours a day or more and the day we spoke he had been up since 6.30 a.m.-" I say Mass in a little private oratory, once in the morning, someimes in the evening; people come occasionally-if they want to stay that's their affair-he will take a few minutes to read a detective novel or a light book. "I like thrillers, I must say. But I also love the live theatre and a good serious film. But you know I also love musicals and light ones that take you right out of yourself and everything. " ~So we parted company. Leaving the car which has taken us to London city centre after a couple of hours talk in his office which is simple if not sparse and dominated by a huge photograph of a rotten staircase at the end of which a black child sits, miserable and alone. I press him for an idea of what he thinks confronts him in Kerry, in Ireland. " Look, don't ask me. I don't really know. There was a challenge here in a pluralistic society and there's one in Kerry and in Ireland." And then, as if in after-thought, he calls back: "ASk me what it is in, six months and I'll tell you."

DEFEAT FOR THE CURIA?

ON OCTOBER 11th, the second consultative assembly of the world's bishops meets in Rome. Once again the Synod will assemble under the presidency of Cardinal Conway, who will attempt to steer it safely through the troubled waters of episcopal discontent as he did so effectively last time. On that occasion the Curia had be useful reforms were declared. These concerned the Canon of the Mass and reforms in the laws relating to marriage. Temporarily, the forces of change were held in peace with the arch-conservative elements in the Church. This time, the arrangements made by the Curia have not, in fact, changed. Eucharist) stood in contrast to his progressive statements in such an excellent encyclical as Populorum Progressio, Since then, the Curia has done its worst. It has used its complete control of information and access to the Pope to enlist him almost completely on its side. Pope Paul is, by all accounts, a man of indecision and the Curia has ensured that the dilemma of the Church with such a leader, in a time of great change, has been to their benefit. Humanae Vitae was the opening barrage. It shook the world while the Curia shook with consuming glee. At this vital juncture in world history, when the Church was finally facing the contradictions in the Vatican Council documents concerning the role of the Pope and Collegiality in the Church, the Pope came out unswervingly on the side of the Curia Since then there has been no detente, and the Curia has attempted the most absurd tricks of all. It attempted to try Dr. Schillebeeck for heresy. Then it attacked the Dutch Cathecism and condemned hierarchies in South America that wavered in any way from American allegiance.

No Conclusions
In its preparations for this Synod, the Curia has shown that its fangs are bared. According to the respected American National Catholic Reporter which measures its accusations carefully, the Curia have lined up what sounds like a meeting of Stalin's parliament in the 1930's. The agenda will ask the bishops of the world to reaffirm (with no mental reservations) the doctrines which suit the Curia: Papal infallibility ; birth control; and the Primacy of the Holy See. The agenda does not even offer concessions. Once again it is to be in secret despite flagrant violation of this rule by members of the hierarchy last time. No time is to be allowed for discussion on procedure or on the future of such Synods. The Curia plan is ingeniously simple: they will force the bishops to accept conservative definitions of the role of Italian authority in the Church; they then hope to end the Synod and only with reluctance call such meetings in future.

.
arranged the agenda before the bishops arrived. They had also arranged it so that the whole conference was held in secret The press was fobbed off with communiques issued daily in classic curial language. These merely served the purpose of obscuring rather than elucidating what had happened. The Synod was given conciliatory subjects to discuss ; subjects on which the whole of the Church had previously agreed. What appeared to Once again they have arranged the agenda and attempted to fix the representation at the Synod This time, however, opposition to their machinations will be bitter.

Curia doing its Worst

Now all events stand in the shadow of Humanae Vitae. Before the last Synod the Pope's conservative theological tendencies (exemplified in such matters as his encyclical on the

Issue of Papal opportune

Infallibility

not

They hope to do this by press urising the liberal bishops. No bishop is prepared to deny Papal infallibility or set against the central papal administration the doctrine of independent local

churches. Some day this problem will have to be faced, but the time is not now opportune. What the liberal bishops want to discuss is Canon Law. This is the area where the aberrations of centralised authority can be abolished. It is clear also that the liberal bishops are prepared to take a stand on this matter. Cardinal Suenens in his controversial interview in The Tablet criticised the arbitrary use of redundant Canon Law to extend the Curia's control. His open stance has created a focus for organising dissent. Another public sign of this new coalition was the public statement of Father Karl Rahner, S.J., where he supported the criticisms made in the Cardinal's article. Therefore a nucleus of semiorganised bishops will attend the Synod with the support of the leading theologian in the world and with the tacit support of practically all others. Attack on Cardinal The near-crisis nature of this confrontation can be seen in the reaction of the Curia-controlled newspaper Osseruatore Romano which on two occasionsattacked Cardinal Suenens for his public statements. This represented a complete break with precedent as it has not previously been necessary to number a Prince of the Church among the ranks of organisers of dissent. Whether the Curia is prepared to retreat may frame much of Church history in the future. If they do not there will be a revolt. It increasingly appears they will not back down on anything and are determined to smash difficult local hierarchies. Cardinal Suenens openly foresaw this when he claimed that the episcopacy must immediately demand autonomy from Rome in internal matters, and that it must no longer accept that Papal infallibility includes administrative control of local affairs. The extent of Papal dominion, in his view, had been grossly overstressed in the Ultra Montane period of church history and should be re-examined. Hierarchies ignored Humanae Vitae Every year the centralist forces see their power going and they must be scared by the way they see history annihilating their clique. The crunch came with Humanae Vitae. Whole hierarchies ignored it or disagreed with it. Clearly the faithful were not very impressed and carried on regardless. The Curia knows that if it does not take a stand now the Church will rapidly decentralise. On the other hand, the liberal bishops desperately
II

need to oppose the Curia. The whole birth control dispute, and the absurd plotting of the Congregation of Faith (Holy Office) to extirpate heresy, has opened a credibility gap in most of the sophisticated Catholic countries. But what is worse for the liberals are the extreme impediments put in the way of urgent local reform. Thus the other demand to be made by the liberal coalition, according to the National Catholic Reporter is that two urgent topics, apart from Canon Law, be discussed. Celibacy These are birth control and clerical celibacy. This will be bitterly opposed by the Curia which has got the Pope to condemn such changes and, they consequently then consider the matter closed. But, for the bishops of most countries it is vital that at least the subject of celibacybe openly discussed. Cardinal Suenens, at the preparatory conference for the Synod in Switzerland, denounced a complete ban on clerical celibacy to cheers from journalists and priests in the gallery. If the Curia remains incalcitrant on this subject there will at least be complete unanimity. All the Third World bishops know that if there is not an immediate change in the law the manpower shortage in the clergy will have disastrous effects. The problem is acute in Northern Europe and the U.S.A. is also beginning to feel the same scarcity. All bishops will vote under pressure of overwhelming support for such a change among their clergy. Counting the votes In this the Curia cannot win. In other matters it looks as though the hierarchies will act similarly even if more reluctantly. If one judges according to the attitude of national hierarchies on the watershed issue of birth control the voting on agenda will probably be as follows: In Europe the pro-Papal hierarchies will be Eastern European countries, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Scotland and Ireland. The rest will all be against and the really determined reformers will be Belgium, Austria, Holland, Scandinavia and possibly Yugoslavia. South America will be for the reformers in everything except birth control where the issue is made more complex by the activities of the U.S. in respect of aid. Most Asian bishops will take a conservative line on everything except birth control where they are almost unanimous in condemnation of Humanae Vitae. African

hierarchies will include some proPapal bishops, particularly in Central Africa, while the hierarchies of Zambia, Tanzania, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, Morocco and Syria will take a strongly pro-reform line. The hierarchies of North America will include a sprinkling of both camps with a majority in favour of immediate change. Can Reformers mould discontent? The line-up does not look too gocd for the Curia. If it tries to push its luck there may be a revolution in authority within the Church. This might constitute more local church autonomy and a new set of relations between the Pope and the episcopate. But, as can be seen from the attitudes of the bishops the strong point of the

Curia is its organisation. It operates from a set base. Furthermore, it can implement a coherent diplomatic plan. The world hierarchies are united only by a feeling of general discontent. It remains to be proved whether the reformers can mould their discontent into a political entity. This is doubtful, but if they succeed the Church can never be the same again. It is probable that " neutral" bishops, such as the Irish reprerepresentatives, Cardinal Conway and Bishop Daly, together with Cardinal Heenan, Cardinal Doepfner of Germany and some of the U.S.A. representatives will succeed in forcing a detente for at least another couple of years.

THE RELUCTANT PRIMATE-DR.

What is probably a unique event in the annals of ecclesiastical diplomacy took place last month. Last month, without wanting to, George Otto Simms became the head of a Church. Perhaps only Pope John equalled this. Dr. Simms could, in charity, be called a modest, gentle, scholarly and timid man. He embodies the essence of Anglican spirituality. This spirit, like Dr. Simms, is fostered in a cloistered, academic atmosphere and thus is knowledgable, wise and lacking in social courage. Dr. McCann was not meant to retire for at least two years as Primate of the Church of Ireland. He had previously manifestly enjoyed the privilege attached to his position. But retire he did with scant notice to his fellow bishops. Somebody had to get the job and Dr. Simms got it. He did not want it. He neither canvassed for, nor showed the least enthusiasm for the post. When he was elected he made a quite genuine speech claiming he was not competent for such a task and that he was happy where he was. Dublin offered a quite life mainly devoted to simple tasks such as the dispensation of sacraments and the pursuit of various worthy charities. The Dublin political situation was not so complex and the politicians were not so worried about the public statements of the hierarchy. Nor did they mind when none were forthcoming at all from Dr. Simms. However the bishops had little or no choice. The other five bishops up North were nearing retirement and were not very skilled in the field of theology. There were only two other candidates of sorts. One was Dr. McAdoo, Bishop of Ossory, who will probably have the compensation of being transferred to Dublin He was theologically unacceptable for the North as he had taken part in the AnglicanCatholic Unity Conference in Italy in 1968. He was not only High Church but had a high church manner. The other bishop who would have liked to have been a candidate was Dr Armstrong. Unfortunately he had been raised to the office of bishop only a few months earlier and was not yet primed for the supreme position However he remains an ambitious gentleman and will be awaiting another opportunity. Dr. Simms has had a successful theological academic career. He gained an Honours B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. This was eclipsed only by the great success he has achieved as an Irish scholar. In 1952 Dr. Simms was given an
20

SIMMS

honorary degree by Trinity College for his work on the Book of Kells. Since then he has done outstanding work on the Book of Durrow. In theology he has won a first class Divinity Testimonium and a first class Theological Exhibitioner. He has also won the Erlington Theological Prizeman and the Biblical Greek Prizeman. He won a great quantity of Medal Awards while in Trinity and was Scholar there in 1930. His church career was successful and rapidly so. Ordained in 1936, he became a Curate-Assistant in the almost AngloCatholic Church of St. Bartholomew's which certainly does not endear him to some of the clergy in the North. For a period he lectured in Trinity in Divinity and was also a chaplain in the same College. In 1952 he became Dean of Cork and in the same year he was elected Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross. Four years later he was promoted to Dublin. His life thus far has not been fraught with immense difficulty. Nor has it been over-exposed to pastoral experience. This shows very clearly in the man. He will never commit himself to any point of view in public. He absolutely refuses to engage in disputation whether on theology or on politics, and his clergy can rarely point to a specific bone of contention. InDublin his interest in Irish has been a help. He has developed a strong

friendship with President de Valera. He has inclined towards a right of centre Fianna Fail political stance which has worked out pretty well since he was enthroned in 1956. He will be greeted in the North with a good deal of suspicion. A leading Church of Ireland clergyman estimates that about seventy per cent of the Northern clergy approve of him but that the number of laity who feel likewise is small indeed. Furthermore he believes that if Dr. Simms' penchant for high church liturgy re-appears he will rapidly become highly unpopular. The church where Dr. Simms held his first curacy, St. Bartholomew's was successfully sued before the last war, for putting a cross on the altar. It was only in the last decade that the ridiculously severe regulations forbidding all liturgy tainted with vestments, ceremonial, blessings or anything else Roman was alleviated. Liturgically Dr. McCann was as low as one could go. In the North all the trappings of prelacy which endear themselves to Dr. Simms will not merely cause disapproval but reaction. Immediately on arrival he will encounter new pressures. These will include very strong pressure to join the Orange Order. The allies of ChichesterClarke will want to ensure that he is safely wrapped up. Whether he succumbs will depend on whether his open lack of public courage is a cover for lack of conviction or whether it is a personality trait. If it is a symptom of lack of conviction it will not be long before he will be sucked into the vortex of the floundering Unionist wreck. Members of the Civil Rights movement will look to him with little hope, the socialists of People's Democracy and Derry Labour party with none. Dr. Simms is certainly no socialist but his political inclinations, in private at least, are in sympathy both with the movement for justice in the North and the nationalist view of Irish history. At the moment Dr. Simms looks with little desire to his future in Armagh. His unanimous election has given him a string Lase for a dynamic reign. He disavows any intention of collaboration with Unionism of a reactionary sort, but, paradoxically, sees no contradiction in approving of the present policies of the Unionist government. If he proves an honest Primate he will have to endure the disapproval of nearly everybody in the Church of Ireland and one speculates whether he is capable of such an enormous transition in his way of life in his fifty-ninth year.

THEATRE FESTIVAL "THIS IS our first year to offer package tours from the British Isles for the Dublin Theatre Festival. So far the response has been very good," said a spokesman from Frames' Tours of London. They had, he said, had bookings mainly from people in the theatre world. Only a small percentage of those coming over were from the general public. Martin Snyder, a New York Travel Agent, has arranged his largest block booking so far for this year's Festival. He has chartered a plane to fly seventy theatre lovers into Dublin. Also arriving will be fifty Americans travelling under the banner of the Authors' Guild Incorporated Travel. Nonetheless, if the Festival, which runs from September 29th to October 11th, is to keep its head above water, it will need very many more incoming visitors and better support than last year from Dubliners, and indeed from the provinces, if its 5,274 theatre seats are to be filled nightly. Talking about the provinces, a C.LE. press man said that they had not been approached by any organisation to lay on late night buses to bring people up to Dublin. However, if they were asked they would do so. Each year, despite Bord Failte's guarantee, which they refuse to reveal, on the grounds that other festivals might feel slighted if they did not receive as much, one wonders if there will be a Festival next year, and somehow, thanks to the efforts of The Lord Killanin, Brendan Smith, Harold Murray, Dickie Condron and many other dedicated people, there is, somehow. This year, running through the list of presentations, there does seem to be a bright spark or two that may be a real hit and even exportable. The Abbey, our National Theatre, is offering us a not very exciting mixed bag. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of the first week they are presenting The Well of the Saints by J. M. Synge, and The Dandy Dolls by George Fitzmaurice as a double bill. The Well of the Saints is fairly well known, and of The Dandy Dolls Gabriel Fallon says: " It was done before at the old Abbey by Austin Clarke and Roibeard a Farachain when they had their own Lyric Theatre. Of the early Abbey playrights George Fitzmaurice comes, in his writings, the nearest to Synge." On Thursday, Friday and Saturday of that week we can see Micheal Mac Liammoir in Swift by Eugene McCabe, a play which opened originally in August and received faint praise from the critics. The author, Eugene MeCabe says of them, " I wasn't exactly

jumping with joy. Their criticism was so negative. I do think they could have been more constructive." The second week of the Abbey is given over to 0' Casey's Juno and the Paycock. This will be its first presentation in the new theatre. Vincent Dowling is returning from the United States to direct it, and the Americans will probably love it. The Gate Theatre is splitting up its first week in a similar fashion to the Abbey. Two plays will be presented by

the Artists Theatre of America. They are bringing over sixteen actors and actresses and producer Herbert Machiz, Monday through Wednesday we can see The Immortal Husband by James Merill, who won the 1967 American National Book Award for Poetry. The handout says that "Time is the tone of The Immortal Husband, its essence and arc; torment abiance, armory and apparatus: saraband and menace of watches .. " We'll have to wait for the first night to find out what its all about. Jane Bowles' In the Summerhouse, which goes on Thursday, Friday and Saturday of the first week is about, quoting again, " . her strong characters are nervous domineering women given to ruthless but inaccurate self analysis . in the end they collapse, undone by their failure to take 'the terrible strength of the weak' into account." Who? Men? The second week at the Gate will be the World Premiere of King Herod Explains, by Conor Cruise O'Brien. The text of the play was published in the Irish Times late last year. According to Dr. O'Brien the play is set out of time. "The idea is that King Herod gives a Press Conference to try and rehabilitate his image and personality, and during the Conference he is interrogated and interrupted by his audience. Really, it is a dramatisation about power

politics. Hilton Edwards is playing Herod." As part of a double bill with King Herod Explains we can also see The Liar by Micheal MacLiammoir, a lyrical comedy, starring Paddy Bedford. The play takes place on board the Mail Boat from Dublin. Combining Dr. MacLiammoir's wit and always polished writing with Patrick Bedford's steady growth as an actor this may well be interesting. A play which may be one of the most controversial of the Festival and a possible winner is that which goes on for the first week at the Gaiety Theatre. It is the World Premiere of The Assassin by John Boyd. Mr. Boyd, who was born in 1912and spent his childhood in the East End of Belfast is now a B.B.C. producer there and has already written many plays and documentary programmes for radio. The Assassin is set in Northern Ireland and Mr. Boyd says: "It could be considered a contemporary play and has some bearing on what has been happening up here." He has, he says, written several versions of the play. "Why? Because I foresaw what was coming." He stresses, however, that it is not a documentary but is an imaginative play related to the social unrest in Northern Ireland. The second play at the Gaiety is devoted to Mr. George Bernard Shaw's On The Rocks, about which nobody, not even Gabriel Fallon, knows anything. Or, perhaps one should say NUSIGHT couldn't find anyone who did. At the Olympia Theatre the first week of the Festival is given over to The Mullingar Recruits, an adaptation by Dominic Roche of George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer. The Irish-born restoration writer's comedy is being played in an Irish setting for the first time. Playing the part of Sergeant Kite and making his debot as an actor is balladeer Luke Kelly, of the Dubliners. This could be good rollickingromp with Luke singing "Johnnie I Hardly Knew You," "The Saxon Shilling" and " The Kerry Recruit." The strong contingent of Luke Kelly fans are going to be a big factor in filling the Olympia seats. The second week at the Gaiety is surely a First Class prizewinner. Phyllis Ryan of Gemini Productions is presenting Hugh Leonard's adaptation of The Barracks by John McGahern. Taking McGahern's most moving story, combine it with Hugh Leonard's skill, add a dash of Phyllis Ryan's efficiency and book now! Of the play Miss Ryan says: "Hugh Leonard's adaption is absolutely splendid, but, of course, one can never predict how a play will go.
21

But having Tomas MacAnna directing it is really exciting. Look at his direction of Borstal Boy-critics all over the world acclaimed him as a director." At the Eblana Theatre are the three prize winning plays of the O. Z. Whitehead one-act awards. First week: Part of the Main by Grace Butt, which gained the top award, and is described as a study in modern social morality, and A Tale After School by James

Douglas of Bray, Co. Wicklow, who shared second place. Of his play the author says: "This play is the closest to me that I have ever done. I have used episodes in which I and other people I knew figure. I am quite sure some people will find it obscene and filthy, because it deals with sex, our Irish brand if you like, in a very honest and open way. It is about men who are remembering their boyhood and sexual experiences. I have no control over production or casting, but the play will go on exactly as it is written. If anyone tries to change one word it won't go on at all." Anyone who has read James Douglas's sensitive short stories about boyhood must look forward to his play. The second week at the Eblana continues Part of the Main which won Mr. Whitehead's first prize because he felt it was very finished and mature work, and gives a first showing to the joint second prize winning play The Crying Room by Patrick Gilligan, a native of Craughwell, Co. Galway, who writes both in Irish and English, and whose play considers the problems of children in the present day. At the pleasant little Player/Wills Theatre for the first week of the F esti val we are offered the World Premiere of Opium, a stage adaptation for one actor, by Roc Brynner (son of you know who) from Jean Cocteau's OpiumJournal of a Cure. The play deals with the addiction of a man to opium over a

period of ten years and his entry into hospital for a withdrawal cure. During the play the artistic world in France during the 1920's is unveiled. The movement is carried forward by Picasso, Stravinsky and Jean Cocteau himself. Roc Brynner is 22 and having studied philosophy at Yale and T.C.D., Dublin now lives in Paris. Depending on its relevance to the drugs problem of today's world this may be one to watch. For the second week at Player/Wills there is a one man show-Maurice Good in a premiere (World) John Synge Comes Next. Maurice Good is a Dubliner, toured Ireland in classical repertoire and became one of Dublin's leading young actors. He is now living in London and has played leading roles with the Old Vic and the Oxford Play House. Synge, although a contemporary of Yeats is to most of us a much less vivid figure than W.E., in fact, hardly known at all. Those many admirers of Synge's work will now have an opportunity to learn something of the man himself. For the full two weeks of the Festival at St. Patrick's Cathedral we can hear about Mr. Handel's Visit to Dublin by Maurice Davin Power and presented by Nora Lever. Those who saw her Murder in a Cathedral will certainly want to see this. Maurice Davin Power says that Miss Lever suggested the theme to him-and he thought the subject completely right for the setting. "After all, you can't have comedy or music hall there, can you? There is, of course, also the organ, already installed, and they will be using a string quartet and a choir. Dr. Davin Power says that, contrary to public opinion, Handel spent only eight months in Ireland, from November 1741 to August 1742, and unfortunately his visit was not well documented. His main source was a book published over a hundred years ago with the same title as the play. Nora Dever is putting on two Thursday matinees, at special rates for schoolchildren. May we suggest now, at the beginning of term, that schools should start block booking at once? From 30th September to 8th October An Damer is putting on An tUdar i nGleic (The Author in a Predicament) by Labhras MacBradaigh, now deceased. His untimely death in his early thirties saddened many Dubliners. He taught at Scoil Colmcille, Marlboro' Street and won the Oireachtas literary award with An tUdar. At Castletown House from 29th September to 4th October there will be at 9 p.m, each evening a solo performance by Max Adrian of Gilbert and Sullivan. Born in Dublin, Max Adrian has become famous for his one man show G.B.S. He has just returned

from his second world tour with Bernard Shaw. Desmond Guinness says happily, "I haven't seen him myself. But I believe he's splendid." Probably at the Peacock, and probably for three nights of the first week and as a late night show for the second week of the Festival, a revue entitled "A History of Ireland" is billed. Written jointly by Fergus Linehan and Tomas MacAnna, and presented

in conjunction with Phyllis Ryan, it will have a cast of five or six including Rosaleen Lenihan. While, says Fergus Linehan, no history of Ireland can be funny at all time, they will be using a lot of ballads and comedy. The settings are to be very simple so that the show can move on elsewhere later on. Keeping the best wine until last, for one theatregoer anyway-we offer you Marie Kean in The Dublin Woman, a one woman show based on the writings of O'Casey, Stephens, Beckett, Shaw, Swift, Joyce and Behan, with linking script by Dominic O'Riordan. This mouth-watering presentation of our best writers by one of our very best actresses takes place at the Shelbourne Rooms from Sunday, 5th October to Wednesday, 8th October inclusive. Marie Kean whose first important trip abroad was in the Dublin Festival production of James Joyce's The Voices of Shem which earned her rave notices both in London and Paris, repeated her triumph when she appeared in Beckett's Happy Days. The London Times wrote "One could hardly ask for a better performance," and Harold Hobson in The Sunday Times found her" touching beyond measure." Dubliners who saw the show cannot but agree with both critics. This is one show that will without doubt be" Sorry, no seats left" long before the Festival opens. Get in there quick

22

FILMS
MACKENNA'S GOLD Starring Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif Directed by J. Lee Thompson
FROM THE team that fired "The Guns of Navarone," says the film company in its handout. But" Navarone " was a big bold, suspenseful, violent war picture based on a bestselling novel by Alistair MacLean, which just couldn't miss, and this film is by comparison, with screen-play by Carl Foreman, based on the novel by Will Henry, a bit of a shot in the dark. I do not mean to condemn "Mackenna's Gold" out of hand, but I do wish I could praise it as the big Western it sets out to be. Commercial success is undoubtedly assured: ladies over thirty will flock to see the noble and beautiful Gregory Peck, while their younger friends and daughters or what have you will scratch each other's eyes out all for the love of pretty gleamingteeth and wicked Omar Sharif. Mackenna (Gregory Peck) has known of the legend of the Canon del Oro, the Valley of Gold, all his life and has wasted many a long year looking for it. Prairie Dog (a restrained, but moving performance from Eduardo Ciannelli) is an Indian so old that one senses he might have been present at the birth of Gabby Hayes, and he alone carries the secret of the location of the gold. On his death, Mackenna learns his secret, memorises the map, and burns it. Just as Colorado (Omar Sharif) and his gang appear on the scene. With Colorado and his gang are a strange crew of hangers-on. Adams (Edward G. Robinson) once saw the Valley of Gold, but the Apaches, anxious to guard their secret, once having revealed it to a stranger, put out his eyes. Edward G. is obviously appearing as a make-weight-as a guest star in a " cameo" role. Others like him are the Editor (Lee J. Cobb), the Preacher (Raymond Massey), the Storekeeper (Burgess Meredith), an Englishman (Anthony Quayle), Ben Baker (Eli Wallach) and one of Colorado's gang, Sanchez (Keenan Wynn). It is 1872 somewhere in Arizona or New Mexico and gold fever has gripped everybody in this strange party. They are held together by fear, of the Apaches and of each other, and by ignorance. Mackenna is the only one who can find the elusive Canon and he must be kept alive, despite Colorado s ruthless and sadistic ambitions for his eventual death. Another prisoner in danger from Colorado is Inga (Camilla Sparv), daughter of the town judge, murdered

by him. When it seems she has been saved by the appearance of a Cavalry detachment, Sergeant Tibbs (Telly Savalas) calmly shoots down his two companions and takes Inga back to rejoin the gold-crazed party. It will, perhaps, be revealing too much to say how the Cafion del Oro is eventually reached and who is left alive to tell the tale at the end. Suffice to say it's predictable and wholesome, and, if you were hoping for a "real" Western, sickening. The second unit location photography is nothing short of splendidit really cuts a man down to sizewhile the studio work is ordinary by comparison. J. Lee Thompson's direction certainly injects some pace into this rather long picture. Good performances are from Telly Savalas, Edward G. Robinson, Omar Sharif and Julie Newmar as Hesh-ke, the savage Indian beauty spurned by Mackenna. Quincy Jones' score is well up to standard and the music is available on the RCA " Mackenna's Gold" Soundtrack Album, number SF 8017. Jose Feliciano is heard singing the stirring "Old Turkey Buzzard" over the titles at the beginning, and this is available as a single on RCA 1827,

with an orchestral version, also a single, on RCA 1850. An entertaining picture that sadly falls just a little short of the mark.

THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN THE WORLD Starring Gregory Peck, Anne Heywood Directed by

J. Lee Thompson

An ordinary run-of-the-mill thriller -East v. West, cast of thousands of little yellow men, etc. Dr. Hathaway (Gregory Peck) learns that the Chinese have developed an enzyme which erases the effects of climate, enabling crops to be grown almost anywhere. He is required to bring that enzyme out of China. So that his every movement can be logged, Hathaway has a tiny transmitter fitted in his skull, but what he doesn't know is that this can be detonated by remote control, so as to blow him to shithereens ... He makes it back with the secretjust-but fairly predictably all the way.

PAUL MAITLAND

Robert P. Chalker, Executive Director, United States Chamber of Commerce in Ireland and Joint Managing Director Irish Helicopters Ltd., was born in Alabama, son of a Methodist clergyman, has been in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1939. He touched down as Counselor of Embassy

at American Embassy, Dublin in January 1964 and served under three Ambassadors here: Matthew H. McCloskey, Raymond R. Guest, Leo J. Sheridan. He was Charge d'Affaires 1964-65, 1968 and at other times intermittently until the end of 1968 when he resigned having served for thirty years in the Diplomatic Service. Robert Chalker is married with two children Janet Wood (17) who is a student at Alexandra College, Dublin,

The Dolmen Press published recently a beautiful and new edition of Riders to the Sea by J. M. Synge. This play was Synge's first performed piece and this edition, which is printed from a text which precedes the first production, reveals in graphic fashion, the playwright's approach to the visual as well as the verbal impact of his play. Liam Miller, who IS the Dolmen Press was born and educated in Ireland. He studied architecture in Dublin before deciding to establish The Dolmen Press in 1951. His policy is to publish the work of Irish writers from their own country and work of Irish interest by other writers. He has published over 150 titles including work by Padric Colum, Austin Clarke, Denis Devlin, Thomas Kinsella, John Montague and Richard Murphy. Liam Millar also works in the theatre as a producer and designer. He is a director of the Lantern Theatre in Dublin, a small experimental theatre which has produced Joyce, Beckett, O'Casey and Yeats. Attend one of the Lantern Theatre's plays and you'll surely find yourself sitting in front of, behind, or side by side someone of literary interest in Ireland. An enterprising Irish firm Musgrave Brooke Bond Tea, in conjunction with T.W.A. are holding a contest which is being run over a six month period, offering 68 flights to the U.S., Rome and Britain. In addition to the flights there are 150 free phone calls to be won to friends or relatives in any part of the world. Congratulating the first winners at a reception at the Inter-Continental Hotel, Dublin, Mr. Hugh Musgrave congratulated the winners and paid a special tribute to Mr. Liam Boyd, General Manager, T.W.A. for his co-operation. The firm of Musgrave Brooke Bond is nearly one hundred years old. Today's Chairman is Mr. Jack Musgrave with Mr. Hugh as Managing Director. But the firm itself was founded in 1876 by their mutual grandfathers, Tom and Stuart. That the firm is going to remain in the family is assured for another generation at least. Hugh's son, Stuart (21) entered the business last month. They are a sporting family, enjoying sailing, hunting, golf and shooting. Patrick Collins, rated one of the four best present-day Irish painters and who has some of his painting on permanent display at the David Hendriks, Gallery in Dublin, has just

gone abroad for a stint of isolated painting. Meeting him for the first time one might take him for a fisherman who ties his own flies, a good man at the oars of a currach, or even a fisherman who still believes in forking his own hay. Nobody would suspect on first

acquaintance - that that his paintings would have such a muted delicacy of colour and form. Asked what compels him to paint he says: "Essentially to find rules or some sort of consistency in life ; primarily I do this of my own necessity and the result is painting. Do I find a consistency in life? Yes, I can find it, not always, but it is a perpetual

and Jeffrey (16) a student at Uppingham School, Rutland, England. His recreations are golf, riding, reading; music (as a listener) and theatre.
2-4

search. in any stitutes that life

There is an element of truth good painting and this cona fabric or reason, something can be based upon."

THE NORTH-I.

THREE CENTURIES OF EXPLOITATION

GLADSTONE REFERRED to Ireland in his private papers as " Ireland, Ireland island in the West, that coming storm." For the English, Ireland has been the source of intermittent gales for five centuries and now again Britain is watching the massing of clouds and the rumbling of thunder. Ireland has been the primary source of political discontent and trouble since the reign of Henry VII. It has been the area where the imperialism and exploitation of the growing power of Great Britain has been at its most marked and most savage. Northern Ireland proves this in microcosmic form. It shows the folly of British imperialism and its arbitrary power. Tim Pat Coogan called the history of the North " that of a sorrow agreed upon." The history of Northern political life is not divorced from the rest of Ireland. But it contains and has institutionalised the bitterness and sorrow of Ireland's love-hate relationship with Great Britain. David Quinn has described of late, the beginning of this long road. In the sixteenth century Ireland was made up primarily of communal land. Its people were semi-migratory and pastoral. It was an archaic society based on the Brehon Laws and deep, complex, and sacred family ties. The Elizabethans who came to Ireland for religious and exploitativereasons were fascinated and disgusted with the laziness and bucolic habits of the Irish. Ireland preserved what is technically called the Atlantic Seaboard Society. Ulster was the most gaelicised of the country. Its great families were to form the centre of resistance to the initial assaults of British Imperialism. Ulster provided a military base for a national resistance and its families the ethnic and cultural leadership of Gaelic Ireland. From 1595the whole issue of British power in Ireland revolved around the fight of the Ulster Earls. The fight was led by the great Earls, O'Neill of Tyrone and O'Donnell of Donegal and their flight in 1607marked the end of initial resistance. The Tudors, during the sixteenth century, went to Ireland for two reasons: they wished to stop it acting as a recruiting centre for claimants to the British throne such as Lambert Simnel, and they saw in Ireland enormous wealth which could be reaped.

Plantation: New World Style Their policy, continued by the Stuarts, was twofold. Firstly, all over the country they forced landholders to become dependent on the British throne. Then they set about gradually displacing them and confiscating their territory. In the North a different policy was implemented. The New World had been discoveredand with it a new form of conquest was developedplantations. Ulster bore the full brunt of this new policy, much more so than the tiny plantation in Virginia, U.S.A. Scottish presbyterian small-farmers occupied the land and English merchants took over the towns. This policy never worked properly. Many Scottish yeomen returned home and the charter given to the citizens of Bristol to develop Derry was revoked due to its poor implementation. Thus Ulster developed a characteristic and ominous social position. The towns formed a centre of protestantism in a province which remained overwhelmingly catholic. The dominant farmers were presbyterian. They had the best land and the best titles to their land. Yet in no area did they erase the native Irish and there were poorer and smaller catholic farmers and agricultural labourers living in bitter competition with the protestants for existence all over the province. The presbyterian farmers were scattered in most of the province and formed a barely dominant, close-knit cultural group with strong contact with Scotland. During the seventeenth century this social difference in the North was the underlying basis for the events which created the greater part of the Unionist mythology three centuries later. The Stuarts and the Hanovers fought for the throne in Ireland and the support they got mirrored the social privilege of Northern Ireland. During the famous siege of Derry the citizens of the city were fighting for their very social privilege in alliancewith William of Orange. The massacre of protestants in 1641, which has been grossly exaggerated, was in fact a fight between rich and poor peasants, when the weak constitutional position of Charles II started a minor land war in the North. In the South the small farmers were totally subdued by a few huge landowners. They became labourers on small plots of land dependent on the whims of British protestant landed gentry, established by the vast dispossession of the old Irish aristocracy by Cromwell and continued in the early days of the Penal Laws. Thus, by the beginning of the eighteenth century the system of landholding in Ulster differed from the rest of the country.

The eighteenth century was a bitter time for Ireland. "Overpopulation and poverty," Arthur Young described as the main features of Irish life. In Ulster the two peasantries lived and emigrated together. Huge numbers of protestants went to the Calvinist communities set up in North America. For a period, according to Beckett, the number of protestants emigrating was as high as fifty thousand a year. Often catholics were too poor to be able to emigrate. Thus the ratio of catholic to protestant became higher. Agricultural prices were low throughout the century. Catholics and protestants fought each other for the land. Big landlords encouraged this and the poorer catholics were a constant threat to the strict traditions of tenure built up among the presbyterians. Both sides formed secret societies to protect their land from the rapacity of the landlords and the greed of the other side. The presbyterian "Heart of Oak" and catholic " Defenders" often fought viciously and bitterly at fairs and evictions. The United Irishmen This century did produce the last non-sectarian republican movement to emanate from Ulster: the United Irishmen. This group was inspired by the great bourgeois revolution in France in 1789. Its membership was drawn from the towns. Its intellectual sources, however, were foreign to the catholic and protestant peasantry. Wolfe Tone is an example of a typical United Irishman. His beliefs were drawn from the Enlightenment and in his famous pamphlet "A Plea from a Northern Whig," he could plead for toleration for catholics but at the same time could gleefully predict the death of the Papacy. Tone also was an intellectual follower of the brilliant intellectual Paine who to most Irish was a notorious atheist. He himself showed strong inclinations, like many of his society, to Deism, or rational belief in a deity. Thus Ulster, while producing a highly radical movement which was at its strongest in almost totally protestant towns such as Belfast, remained bitterly divided. The United Irishmen had no base, intellectual or otherwise, in the peasantry. It idealised the peasantry and hated the feudal economic overlordship of Ireland of the aristocracy, but the patterns of sectarianism remained. The Orange Order Indeed at this very time, when the non-sectarian claims of the Irish middle classes were being widely disseminated in pamphlets and at public meetings, a society that has disfigured Irish life for
27

nearly two centuries was formed: the Orange Order. In 1795, after a bitter faction fight between protestants and the Defenders at a fair in Armagh, the Order was created. Unlike other secret societies this Order was dominated immediately by the aristocracy. In 1795 the threat of invasion from France was grave and the catholic peasantry were in arms all over the country. Thus a unique organisation aligning different and hostile classes was formed on a sectarian basis. Catholic attacks on presbyterian small farmers were growing enormously and the latter aligned with the aristocracy which feared for its very existence under a revolutionary Bonapartist regime. This powerful organisation was to be a continuing force for conservatism in the following centuries. In the year the Order was founded there was a small landing of French soldiers in Bantry Bay. If the whole of the fleet which arrived had landed it would have been a formidable challenge to Britain. Ireland entered the nineteenth century with an embryonic state in Ulster. It became progressively more divorced from the political life of the rest of Ireland. Irish catholic politics was to utilise in the 1820's the only available middle-class national organisation in the country-the Catholic Church.

Ulster by comparison was wealthy. Its peasantry could sell improvements in their land. This privilege (Tenant Right) was granted to the whole of Ireland only in 1870 by Gladstone's first Land Act. The land was less congested and emigration dropped. Furthermore industry survived. The linen industry grew and kept seasonal agricultural wages high. Ulster at this period had developed the two crucial features of its present political consciousness. It had a religious division within itself and both parties in this division were consciously outside Irish political movements and were consciously more privileged. None of the quasi-insurrectionary movements based on peasant destitution (Young Irelanders, Fenians and the Irish Republican Brotherhood) were strong in Ulster. The Nationalist Party of Parnell attracted the catholics, but only sporadically, and the tone of catholic politics in Ulster was definitely constitutional and conservative.

Home Rule
In 1884 Gladstone attempted for the first time to give Ireland a measure of Home Rule. This brought the issue of a separate state for Northern Ireland into the open on a parliamentary level. Leading industrialists in the North were afraid of the effect of giving economic power to a predominantly rural, catholic middle class. The working class was afraid of a sharp drop in wages and the big landlords who led the Orange Order were rightly convinced that under Home Rule their estates would be compulsorily broken up and occupied by small farmers. The Orange Order brought all these groups into the streets for giant loyalty rallies. Randolph Churchill led this campaign. The British Conservative Party from the time of Disraeli had too main policies: the first was imperialism and the second was pragmatism. Ulster was a perfect Tory issue for the Tories rightly saw that the opposition to Home Rule among the working classes of Great Britain would be enormous. They also foresaw that it would split the Liberals which it did rapidly with the defection of Joseph Chamberlain and his followers. The success of Churchill's famous jingle "Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right" created the Unionist Party, the political wing of the Orange Order. The Liberal Party, in coalition with the Nationalists, tried to implement Home Rule in 1884, 1892, 1906 and 1912. It failed because the Liberals were not prepared to risk their parliamentary majority on this issue or challenge the House of Lords on a

O'Connell- the Church - Politics

Daniel O'Connell brought the priest into politics. O'Connell was at best a conservative whig. At no stage did he, as a big landlord, have any capacity for tackling the land tenure problems of Ireland. Thus he skilfully mixed mass politics with conservative solutions. His method of doing this was to push specifically catholic issues such as Emancipation. This finally alienated the presbyterians of the North. The South had huge problems: if a peasant improved his land he had his rent raised ; he could be evicted at will; and the tremendous growth in population forced constant subdivision of land into tiny lots which often meant that half an acre had to support a whole family. The people lived on the border of famine. Major famines occurred in' 1817, 1821, 1826 and 1846. Industry in the South was utterly destroyed by free trade. The thriving industries of glass, wool and leather all suffered a rapid death. Finally, the Great Famine eliminated any possibility of a unity between peasant radicalism and the constitutional British connection. The dithering cabinet of Russell and the Famine Queen became symbols of the inert, callous, exploitation of the absentee landlords.
28

matter which was not close to the hearts of the electors. In 1918 a situation of uncontrollable gravity had come about after the Great War. The old Nationalist Party had been annihilated by the electors. Both catholics and protestants were armed to the teeth, the latter with the connivance of the Tories. Sinn Fein economic policy was even more repugnant than its predecessor's to the Northern industrialists. Nobody wanted partition. On both sides the idea had not even been mooted, and effort was concentrated on entrenchment of old positions. Ulster elected 27 Unionists in 1918 and the political void became even greater as the Unionists sat in Westminster while the 69 Sinn Fein members abstained. By 1919 it was evident that the old Home Rule Act of 1914 was out of date. A new Bill passed slowly through parliament while full scale guerrilla activity commenced in Ireland. This Bill, the product of Lloyd George, provided for the setting up of two parliaments in Ireland on the present basis. Typically shrewd, Lloyd George knew that powerful vested interests in the North would like this solution, even though they could not initiate it. He also knew that the Unionist leaders were well aware the fight to stop Home Rule was being lost in the battlefield of the South and that world sympathy was behind the Irish struggle. The popularity of this scheme in the North can be seen in the results of elections under the Government of Ireland Act of 1921. Forty Unionists were returned and only twelve Nationalists and Republicans. It is surprising that in the Irish parliamentary debates of this time the issue of partition was not very important. Critics of the Treaty were more concerned with the Crown, the Oath and the Empire. And speeches that referred to the Six Counties were not concerned with their loss so much as with the potential military role of the North should Britain decide to reimpose its rule. Thus Ulster was separated painlessly. Partition had enormous support in the North and the South allowed it to happen without much protest. It was indeed the culmination of a pattern of economic and religious behaviour of three hundred years and the deep wound it imposed on the Irish consciousness was only to come to the fore in a later decade. The dominant mentality of political Unionism which is at once British and separatist, confident and reactionary, was created during this time.

THE NORTH-II.

THE ORANGE STATE

ONCE UNIONISM had secured constitutional power and finally survived the threat of the Boundary Commission it rapidly extended its power over the Protestant population of the Six Counties. It utilised all its resources to crush all other organisations with any power and any manifestation of discontent among the Protestant working classes. It did this primarily by institutionalising sectarianism. In 1922 during extremely vicious sectarian riots in Belfast when the thousands of armed Protestants in Belfast killed Catholics with impunity the Unionists mobilised some of the old Ulster Volunteer Force and created an armed RU.C. and a Special Constabulary. During these riots 232 people were killed, 172 of them Catholics, over 1,000 wounded and millions of pounds worth of damage done to property. These forces were to be "a defence against our enemies" according to Craigavon, and not a normal police force. They were to ensure that sectarianism would be perpetuated by their arbitrary and discriminatory use of authority. This process of armed consolidation of Unionism was fully supported by Britain until the Second World War. The Conservatives ruled throughout the period apart from two brief, paltry attempts at government by Ramsay MacDonald. The party at this time was openly partisan towards the most vicious and repressive elements in the Orange state. Imperial opinion at this time when Britain ruled a huge Empire was not in the least favourable to Ireland, particularly during the Economic War. Thus in 1922, 1931, 1933 and and in 1935 British troops were used to put down outbreaks of sectarian rioting acting under the strategic direction of the R.U.C. The Special Powers Act was passed in 1922 as a temporary measure. It was made permanent in 1933 and strengthened from time to time. The Act was invoked regularly whenever trouble of any sort gave the Unionist government a pretext to invoke it. This Act when enforced by the RU.C. ensured that any Catholic opposition to Stormont that was not fully constitutional was speedily crushed with a maximum of efficiency and a minimum of normal legality. Sectarianism was created and perpetuated by an enormous repressive state militia with the tolerant approval
30

of the governments in power in Westminster. Unionism also had to eliminate right wing and liberal movements in the Protestant ranks. In 1925 a parliamentary secretary lost his seat to a Protestant group called the "Unbought Tenants," which combined rural radicalism with Protestant extremism. Then, in 1929 a conservative right wing group called " Optionists " ran against the Unionists in the General Election. The Optionists demanded local control of education and stronger temperance laws. The Unionist answer was to abolish Proportional Representation in the same year. This effectively put a stop to the development of Protestant splinter groups. The Progressive Unionists, for instance, who ran in the election of 1938 were totalls defeated. The other Unionist tactic was the extension of the Orange order. Many new lodges were created and Orangism became a social and religious power which reinforced Unionist ideology. People who did not co-operate with Unionist Party suffered social ostracism or personal violence and this was put into effect by the Orange Order. The Unionist Party became a huge self-confident stable monolith. Lord Craigavon was Prime Minister from 1921 until 1940. His successor, J. M. Andrews had been a cabinet minister for twenty years. And his successor, Viscount Brookeborough was Prime Minister until 1963. This unchallenged hegemony was helped by powerful allies. The main opposition party was the Nationalist Party from 1921. Their quota of seats varied from twelve to four depending on the strength of the poorly organised Republicans. The Party was strong only in rural areas and was to a large extent dominated by the A.O.H. and the Catholic Church, thus lending plausibility to Unionist allegations of Roman domination.

Economic Depression
The Six Counties suffered severely from the world wide depression in the 1930s. The linen industry and shipbuilding industries were worst hit. Unemployment was 27% in 1927 and rose to a peak of 31 % in 1933. Unemployment, however, was high all the time. Free trade destroyed many industries. And Unionist economic policy was dominated by the landowners and it did not encourage development of new industries. In this vital area the Unionist machine could have been destroyed by the rise of working class militancy. This was avoided by the destruction of the

Trade Union movement in the 1920s. In 1924 it was made illegal for trade unions to finance any political organisation. Westminster legislation on trade unions was not adopted by Stormont. Protestants and Catholics were encouraged to join different trade unions. And the formation of indigenous trade unions was opposed. Sectarianism, in fact, was always most bitter in the working class areas of Belfast. The failure of the trade union movement can be seen most clearly if one remembers that workers in the shipbuilding industry in Belfast lived beside each other yet only resorted to a form of fratricide when they became redundant. Unionism, thus, was covered on all flanks. Even when economic conditions degenerated the very sectarian base of Unionism split the working class further instead of uniting it. This was ensured by Unionist discriminatory ecnomic policy. Workers west of the Bann were deliberately kept poorer than those east of the Bann. In the 1930s the relative income gap was over 130 per person. In 1933 when unemployment was 28% for the whole work force in the North, it was over 40% among Catholics. Catholics were laid off first and redundancy in Catholic areas was placidly acquiesed to by the Government-though usually disputed and frequently ameliorated in Protestant areas. The Six County economy developed enormously during the Second World War. Lord Craigavon's attempt to introduce conscription in the North was rebuffed by Westminster but thousands of Protestant unemployed were taken into the armed forces. Emergency wartime industries were set up all over the Six Counties and the precarious industry of ship-building worked at full strength. The war period saw a further strengthening of Unionism. The neutrality of the South was despised by Protestants of the North. The destructive activities 'of the LRA. in Britain were despised to an even greater extent. Large scale migratory labour from the South to the boom conditions of the North created almost racial tensions. It was a period when the underlying economic fears which characterised Unionism were satisfied for a time by a British war, while the South languished economically.

Welfare

State

After the war the North entered a period of economic depression. Neverthe less an important new factor was introduced in these years. This was the welfare state. It was resisted initially

(Continued on Page 33.)

by Unionism but once it was accepted it had a very significant effect on the North. Catholic emigration dropped rapidly. Wholesale permanent unemployment was made possible without fierce, sporadic outbreaks of sectarian rioting. The welfare state also became the central plank in Unionist propaganda about the link with Britain, aimed mainly at the exploited, deliberately unemployed Catholic working class. Thus the outward manifestations of bitter sectarian hatred disappeared in the North. Paralleling with this was a change in the economic policies of both states. They both became dependent for expansion on the attraction of foreign capital. Older industry (shipbuilding and clothes in the North and minor textiles in the South) found the competition of foreign products too great. Yet at the same time both states had a high unemployment rate and an untapped source of female labour. Thus they developed similar and often cooperative economic programmes. This had a great effect on the South and a slightly more indirect effect on the North. In the 1960s the South has managed to stabilise its emigration. It has also managed to lessen the breakdown of small farms. The stabilisation of the Southern economy even if it did not greatly raise the standard of living, changed the South's relations with Britain. Political energy was primarily devoted to attracting British capital and political debate swung from constitutional matters to normal economic issues. The border campaign which had continued from 1956 to 1962 collapsed with the rise in employment. The LR.A.'s source of recruitment which was mainly unemployed, urban youth started working in factories. This had a great effect in the North. The B Specials were demobilised. The constant threat to the border disappeared and the imaginary menace of a Southern invasion dwindled. Thus one had two states with the beginnings of an expansionist capitalist, rather than a rural economy. The North's economy expanded less quickly but it kept the golden link with the welfare state. The logic of this economic rapprochement was seen in February 1965. This was the first meeting of the two prime ministers, Captain O'Neill and Mr. Lemass. The depth of this entente among ordinary people could never have been very deep. This was certainly true in the North. Unemployment and petty bureaucratic repression remained endemic.

But there were three vital changes in Northern politics as a result of these economic and diplomatic mutations. First was O'Neillism. This was a new Unionism led by the middle-class and supported by Britain, capital and television. It had no base in the suspicious, local Unionist constituency Councils or the Orange Order and sought to establish itself by fully utilising the mass media. Unionism of this sort wished to create a normal democratic state where well-off Catholics and Protestants would vote Unionist. O'Neillism did not see the necessity in a wealthy society for the militarist trappings of a fascist state. The reaction to this among the Catholic and Protestant middle-classes was favourable. In the last election very many Catholics voted for the O'Neillite candidates in the Belfast area. But it cut very little ice in the frigid oligarchies run by Orange cliques in the North and it had little effect on Catholic and Protestant workers since the logic of its belief (wealth) was not very apparent to them.

Paisleyism
Paisleyism developed in reaction to this new Unionism. It disliked the government's friendly relations with the South. It disliked the ecumenism of O'Neill's general appeal to the middle classes. It used the traditional Orange methods in order to protest. It set up its own marches, services and demonstrations modelled on the Orange State. Paisleyism's demands were for the re-institution of traditional Unionist virtues of intransigence towards the South and repression of the Catholics in the North. Paisley was supported by the petty bourgeois and working class youth. They united in opposition to a government which had not bettered their lot and was attempting to give the Catholics further economic integration. Both these groups feared the economic integration of Catholics for very good reasons. Both of them survived through exploitation of Catholics. The young Protestant working class was employed precisely because the Catholic equivalent was unemployed. The small shopkeepers and factory owners who formed the backbone of Paisleyism were similarly worried. They survived by keeping wages low due to high Catholic unemployment and by getting preferential building grants, rates deductions and government contracts from Unionist Councils. Economic integration would mean their ultimate extinction by foreign factories and by their Catholic counterparts west of the Bann, where Protestants often controlled trade (not-

ably in Dungannon, where Paisleyism is strongest). The significance of Paisleyism cannot be underrated. It meant that militant Protestantism for the first time was mainly channelled against a Unionist government rather than against the South or Catholicism. The fairly brutal baton charges on anti-O'Neill, Paisleyite demonstrations in 1966 and 1967 and the constant attacks on Paisley in the Unionist press was the first break-up of the Unionist class alignment in fifty years. It meant also, for the first time, that the voice of militant extremist protestantism could not be easily manipulated by the Unionist party. And it ensured the vicious combination of a fascist, anti-reformist Unionism and anti-Civil Rights alliance of the last year. The development of Paisleyite ideas in the B Specials and the R.U.C. must have been a factor in the lack of government control over their behaviour in the last year. In the Unionist camp one had reaction and reformism. In the Catholic camp there were no less significant changes. Hitherto the only alternative to the Nationalist Party had been sporadic support for the LR.A. (apart from Labour pockets in Belfast). This had stopped Catholics in politics becoming engaged in ordinary economic matters. The evidence of any change in this alignment came slowly. But the immediate support for the C.R.A. campaign proved there had been a change. Firstly, the possibility of pushing O'Neillite Unionism to concede reforms must have appeared considerably less remote than the vague hope of wringing anything from Brookeborough. Furthermore, the attitude of Lemass was radically different from de Valera. In previous decades the southern government had encouraged separatist feelings among Catholics in the North. The apostate Fianna Fail party from 1965 1968 encouraged no such feelings. The change in Sinn Fein in the South from total insistence on the border issue to socialism created a situation where Catholic politicians could emphasise, without a dissenting voice, demands based on economic oppression. When the C.R.A. took to the streets, its demands were such that Stormont could not apply the Special Powers Act and Westminster had to take notice. The forces that shook the North were waiting, too. The conflict between O'Neillism, Paisleyism, Catholic moderates and radical socialists had been coming to a head during the whole decade. The speed at which it did so was the only thing which could not have been foreseen.

THE NORTH-III.

THE

REALITIES

OF

15% of the seats. The Post Office is a service controlled from London through a Regional Administration. The following Table shows the position for white collar workers :

DISCRIMINATION
ARE CATHOLICS really discriminated against in the North. If so, who carries out the policy, and how? What is the evidence to support the often repeated Catholic accusation that they get a raw deal in housing, jobs and political representation? Intra-communal discrimination is manifest in disparities of income; inequality of employment opportunities; different unemployment and emigration rates; allociation of housing and the share out of political representation. For most people discrimination is most immediate in the case of jobs and housing. The figures for employment of Catholics in the Government and Public sectors show that the 35% Catholic minority may have a fair chance of a job in the lower paid grades and particularly the unskilled jobs. In the white collar grades recruitment of Catholics is less than their percentage of the population and Catholics are less likely to be promoted as fast or as far as their Protestant colleagues. Disparities of income: The fact that the percentage of Catholics steadily dwindles the further up the promotional ladder, is merely evidence that the Catholic can expect a lower maximum salary that his Protestant colleagues. In County Fermanagh, the County Council has 166 employees of which 156 are Protestants.

400 new Unionist votes and 90 antiUnionist. Stormont elections on the other hand are held on the basis of universal adult sufferage, but by means of the Gerrymander technique, the Unionists can expect to pick up a disproportionate number of the seats in Catholic dominated areas. In Fermanagh, Tyrone and parts of Derry and Armagh, several Unionist M.P's owe their seats to the manner in which the boundaries are drawn.

In the case of Local Authorities the information, where made available or discoverable, indicates more blatant discrimination. Local councils have extensive powers of patronage and where Unionist controlled councils operate in Catholic areas the local authority employment is generally overwhelmingly Protestant. In the case of Tyrone County Council, Unionist-controlled with a largely Catholic population, the County Hall has staff of 100 but only 4 are Catholics. At the Education Offices 2 of the 70 staff are Catholics. The Rural Council offices also employ 2 Catholics, this time with a total staff of 35. There are 22 posts in the Tyrone whose appointments must be approved by the Minister for Development. One is filled by a Catholic. How do Unionists, who are in a minority in certain areas, manage to obtain political control in those areas ? The answer is three-fold: 1 : Deprivation in Housing; no house no vote. 2: Ghetto Housing; all antiUnionist votes in the same place. 3: Gerrymander of constituency boundaries; when all else fails.

It takes more votes to elect an antiUnionist M.P. than it does a Unionist. This is why the C.R. spokesmen are insistant on, not only one man one vote in all elections, but votes of equal value. e.g : : In Derry it takes 2,500 votes to elect anti-Unionist but only 850 to elect a Unionist. The predominantly Catholic areas of the North are the three Western counties, Derry, Tyrone and Fermanagh. These counties are mainly agricultural, they have little industry except for a small pocket in Derry city and emigration is highest from these counties. But in the North the emigration rate among Catholics is such that in spite of having twice the birth rate, and 5% of the schoolchildren the overall percentage of Catholics has remained static. The so-called West of the Bann policy which is supposed to provide employment for those forced from the land, has, to say the least, never succeeded. The question is whether it is intended to succeed. The Wilson report of 1965, adopted by the Government, advocated the development of 9 industrial centres but only one of these was West of the Bann. Unemployment is greatest West of the Bann and in Catholic areas in the East.

Example:
In the Government service the Professional and Technical grades, Catholics accounted for 6% of the staff; at Administrative levels 7% and on Public Boards Catholics took Dungannon, Co. Tyrone is 50% Catholic. The post-war allocation of houses to New as opposed to rehoused, Catholic and Protestant families was 45 houses for Catholics and 207 for Protestants. This meant approximately

The West of the Bann policy is manifest in other ways. Derry had an institute of Higher Education, Magee University College. When the plans for a new University in Ulster were announced the commonly held assumption was that Magee would be developed from its existing two year course leading to a final two years in T.C.D. Instead the opposite has taken place; the student intake has been cut and the new University has opened its gates in Coleraine-on the East bank of the Bann. The development of the hinterland West of the Bann has not been aided by the closure of the inland railway route from Belfast to Derry. This route passed through anti-Unionist areas. The remaining rail connection went north from Belfast through the Unionist strongholds of Ballymena, Ballymoney and Coleraine. "Fenian" towns such as Dungannon, Omagh and Strabane were left without their railways. Unemployment is highest in Catholic areas, emigration, as a consequence, is highest from these areas. The restriction of the local franchise up to the present time, the ghetto policy, and the gerrymander are merely the mopping up operations after the "papist doves" have flown. What evidence there is tends to indicate that discrimination is much worse in the private sector than in the public areas.

THE NORTH-IV.

THE ORIGINS OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION

WHILE THE Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association has constituted one of the main factors in the civil rights movement it would be inaccurate to say it is synonymous with it. The movement begins in effect in October of last year with the famous Derry march. At this point the civil rights ideal reached a sufficient number of people and moved them sufficiently towards direct action to earn the title of movement. The Association, however, has a much longer and lesser known history. The idea of an association of civil rights for Northern Ireland was first considered as far back as 1962. On September 30th of that year the Connolly Association in London held a meeting in St. Pancras Town Hall. The main topic was that of discrimination in Northern Ireland but the meeting was inconclusive and the matter was left suspended in mid-air. It was more than two years before the matter was taken up again by an official body. The Belfast Trades Council, representing most of the

unions in Northern Ireland, had steadfastly refused to involve itself in this issue. Resolutions criticising discrimination had been proposed by emigrant members only to be overwhelmingly opposed or simply withdrawn from the agenda. However, under the presidency of Ted Murrow, the Belfast Trades Council held a convention of civil rights. Memoranda covering the whole spectrum of civil rights as outlined by the National Council of Civil Liberties in Britain were sent to Stormont and Westminster. Particular mention was made of the Special Powers Act. As a result of this convention an informal relationship was established between the Belfast Trades Council and the Connolly Association in London. On March 13, 1965, the N.C.C.L. organised a council on civil rights in Northern Ireland. A report on the Northern Ireland franchise was drawn up and sent to various prominent people in the hope of awaking interest in the civil rights question. The report strengthened existing links between the N.C.C.L. and the Northern Ireland trade union movement. By August, 1966, the N.C.C.L. was considering setting up a Northern Ireland civil rights association as a branch. It would appear that the prospect of a British based civil rights movement in Northern Ireland did not appeal to the Republican movement. A joint meeting of the Belfast and Dublin Wolfe Tone Societies was held in Maghera that same month and a lecture-seminar on the subject of civil rights was planned for the following November. On that occasion the chair was held by the liberal free-lance journalist John D. Stewart and the main speakers were Dr. Kadar Asmal of the Anti-Apartheid movement and Mr. Ciaran McNally, a Dublin solicitor and supporter of the Republican movement. The audience ranged from Nationalists to members of the Northern Ireland Communist Party and from these a voluntary ad-hoc committee was formed to look into the whole question of a civil rights association and to draw up a constitution. This ad-hoc committee called a meeting in February, 1967, at which the constitution was accepted (unanimously) and the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was formed. It was agreed that the leadership should not involve prominent public figures since the association was not to be identified with any of its component political groupings. A new committee was elected with representatives of Sinn Fein, The National35

ists, The Northern Ireland Labour Party, The Republican Labour Party, The National Democrats, The Northern Ireland Communist Party and The Campaign for Social Justice in Northern Ireland. A Unionist member, Robin Cole, was also elected to the committee. The Chairman was Noel Harris, who along with Betty Sinclair represented the trade union movement. Tom McCluskey, a Dungannon doctor responsible for the Campaign for Social Justice, was elected vice-chairman. Representatives from N.C.C.L. were present, but only as observors. The constitution put forward by the ad-hoc committee was basically that of the N.C.C.L. with a few minor alterations to suit the context of Northern Ireland. One major difference, however, was that the N.I.C.RA. was to be a more democratic organisation than the N.C.C.I. The difficulty of holding together totally diverse shades of opinion on the basis of a short term programme was fully realised. For the first year of its life the association was characterised by extreme caution. Its activities were confined to issuing letters of protest in cases of wrongful arrest and ill-treatment of itinerants. Many of its members, inexperienced in the ways of public life in Northern Ireland, were alarmed to find themselves the victims of police intimidation. It was nearly eighteen months before the association felt itself sufficiently confident to take action. In the summer of 1968 the government imposed a ban on all clubs carrying the title title "Republican." Members of N.I.C.RA. showed their disapproval by attending banned meetings and to their surprise found that they did not meet with police interference. This was taken as an indication that the non-political front was working and the authorities were baffled as to how to deal with the new coalition. Under pressure from the Republicans, the movement felt sufficiently self-confident to hold a march from Coalisland to Dungannon at the end of August. It was their first major bid for non-sectarian support. The march was a success. There was an awareness among some Opposition politicians of the need to take direct action to meet the demands of their electorate. Austin Currie (Nat. M.P. E. Tyrone) was pushed reluctantly into leading a squatting protest in a Derry housing estate-the success of the operation led to his making contacts with the Republicans and a turnabout in his reaction to direct action politics.
36

THE NORTH-V.

THE OCTOBER 5th MARCH

Following the success of the Dungannon Coalisland march-N.I.C.R.A. in conjunction with the Derry Housing Action Committee, the Derry Labour Party, the Connolly Association and the Republican Club decided to hold a " parade" in Derry on October 5th. The combination of a large antiUnionist population with the most blatant discrimination, gerrymander and unemployment made Derry the obvious choice for a Civil Rights march. The march was planned to publicise the objectives of the civil rights movement in relation to jobs, housing, and gerrymander. Shortly after the announcement of the march it became known that the Apprentice Boys had also given notice of a march through Derry also on the afternoon of August 5th. Mr. William Craig, the Minister for Home Affairs, served a restriction order on the civil rights march prohibiting it from entering Loyalist areas through which the Apprentice Boys were to march. The circumstances surrounding the " ban" on the march are suspicious. Usually notice of an Apprentice Boys parade is given to the police in Derry by one of the local officials of the organisation. However, the notice for October 5th March was given in Belfast by Dr. Abernathy, Governor of the Apprentice Boys of Derry, and also a prominent member of the Orange Order. There was some consternation among the local Apprentice Boys club as they were told that the parade was a prelude to an initiation ceremony for new recruits to the club. Normally the new recruits would march from the railway station up to the Club during the morning, arriving in time for lunch. The initiation ceremony would then take place during the afternoon.

ban and setting off to join the march in Derry, with three other British M.P.'s. The afternoon of the 5th, almost 3,000 marchers set out. Everything went peacefully until they arrived at the "Loyalist" areas banned by Mr. Craig, where the RU.C. blocked the road, armed with batons and shields and backed up by water canon. The civil righters who were unarmed, continued marching towards the police (who were under orders from Craig to break up the march and enforce the ban at any cost). The marchers appealed to be let through the police lines and continue on their route. Without warning the police baton-charged the crowd and drove them down William Street, the water cannons were then put into operation. The marchers were driven back by degrees towards the Bogside area, where they re-assembled. By this time they had collected stones to protect themselves against the police, the fighting continued for some hours and the RU.C. finally invaded the Bogside. Intermittent stone throwing and baton charges continued all night and through the following day. The official casualties totals issued by Altnagevlin Hospital were ninety-six, among these Gerry Fitt and Eddie McAteer.

Committee set up
The following week an ad hoc committee was set up in Derry to press for civil rights there. From this emerged the Derry Citizens' Action Committee, which has directed all civil rights activity in Derry since then. At first the D.C.A.C. included Unionists as well as Nationalists, Republican and Labour representation, but shortly after its formation its Unionist member, Major Campbell Austin, resigned in refusal to condone, "civil disobedience." The loss of Major Austin deprived the D.C.A.C. of the opportunity to pursue civil rights for Derry on a clearly non-sectarian front. A Protestant factory manager, Ivan Cooper, was elected Chairman and John Hume, M.A., Vice-Chairman. The impact of the October 5th march was considerable. Because of excellent T.V. coverage of the demonstration and specifically of the unprovoked police brutality-thousands throughout the North re-awakened to the reality of their police state and millions in the U.K. and elsewhere were given their first glimpse inside Britain's political slum. The significance of October 5th was that N.I.C.RA. was no longer a cautious pressure group, but was now a mass movement for reform.

Decision to go ahead
The organisers of the civil rights march decided to go ahead with their plans and defy Mr. Craig's ban. Students from the various socialist clubs in Queen's University, Belfast, expressed solidarity and support and some of the groups came to Derry to join the marchers. The Republican Labour M.P., Gerry Fitt, who was attending the British Labour Party's annual conference in Blackpool, drew British attention to the march by publicly denouncing Craig's

THE NORTH-VI.

THE CRISIS ERUPTS

Over the followingweeks several civil rights demonstrations took place throughout the North with an increasing number of demonstrators. On November 16th, 15,000 people took part in a civil rights march organised by the Derry Citizens' Action Committee. It had been served with a Restriction Order by the police-the ban was broken by a token force of four D.C.A.C. members who vaulted the police barricades. Otherwise the march passed off peacefully. It rapidly became clear to the Unionist monolith that its stranglehold on power was being challenged by quite a different political phenomena to that which it had grown to know. The civil rights movement provoked the more extreme Unionist factionthe Paisleyites-into a more violent and outspoien militancy. The die-hard Protestants had long come to regard the Catholic minority as subdued and quiescent. The N.I.C.R.A. marches through loyalistareas and perhaps, more particularly, the overwhelming support which the civil rights movement was winning from the mass media, especially television infused the militant Protestants with a terror that their hegemony on jobs, houses and votes might be overthrown. The Paisleyites took to the streets in defianceof the civil rights marchers and became a dangerous third element in the frequent police-civil righters confrontations. Paisley moves On November 25th, a Paisleyite mob took over the centre of Dungannon and intimidated people there. On November 30th, Paisley and his lieutenant, Major Ronald Bunting led a loyalist mob of 15,000strong into Armagh and took over the city centre. Their object was to prevent 6,000 civil rights demonstrators from parading through the city as planned. There were bloody clashes between the police, armed Paisleyites and civil rights marchers. Both Paisley and Bunting were summoned and later jailed for their part in that day's events. Secondly the polarization on the streets between the civil rights movement and Paisleyism produced a division between the Cabinet at Stormont. As later revealed by O'Neill there was considerable opposition within the Cabinet to Craig's ban on the October 5th march in Derry, though the Gov-

ernment, a few days after the march, announced its support for the ban and praise for the RU.C. Craig contentep himself with rabid denouncements of N.I.C.R.A. for being either a plot to overthrow the Stormont government or a Communist front. O'Neill's reaction was to concede some reforms, of a limited nature. Wilson Intervenes Pressure from Westminster was mounting in favour of immediate reform. At a meeting between Mr. Wilson and Capt. O'Neill accompanied by William Craig and Brian Faulkner, the British Prime Minister expressed his increasing embarrassment with the Special Powers Act which was in contravention of the Human Rights Convention of the European Commission of Human Rights to which Britain was a signatory. Local government franchise, housing, a parliamentary commissioner for Northern Ireland and the situation in Derry were also discussed at this meeting. Mr. Wilson made it clear that any extremest usurpation of O'Neill's government would be resisted by Whitehall. Ten days later, in the House of Commons, Mr. Wilson demurred that he thought political reforms in Northern Ireland had been " a bit too moderate so far." In mid-November the Stormont Government announced its first batch of reforms. Priority was to be given to Derry with a plan for 1,200 new jobs and 960 new houses by 1981. Reaction in civil rights circles was lukewarm, but from Unionist backbenchers it was sharp. John Taylor said the Government had no mandate for basic reforms and that a General Election must be held in order to secure it. On November 21st, Mr. Wilson sent Capt. O'Neill a letter outlining the reforms which the London Government thought essential. On the following day the Stormont Government announced its reforms. They included the abolition of company vote in local elections, the appointment of an Ombudsman at some future date, reorganisation of local government by 1971 and recommendations to local authorities to reform their housing allocation procedures. There was no mention of one man one vote, or of the abolition of the Special Powers Act. The reaction in the civil rights movement was" too little, too late." Two days later the Government announced the setting up of a Special Commission to administer Derry in replacement of the sitting gerrymandered Derry Corporation and County Council.

Craig Revolts The split within the Unionist Party was exacerbated by the announcemsm of these further reforms. On November 28th, Mr. Craig made his infamous hard-line speech: "We must face reality, where you have a Roman Catholic majority you have a lower standard of democracy." On the 5th December, O'Neill made a gallant defence of Craig, who, he said, was operating "under considerable strain." However, on the following day Craig repeated the genesis of his earlier speech and his continued association with O'Neill was obviously coming to an end. Before his departure, however, Craig had the happy task of calling up eighty B Specials and announcing an increase in RU.C. strength from 3,000 to 4,000 members, which was necessary to cope with the escalating violence on the streets. Under increasing pressure from both factions within his party, and also from Westminster and the civilrights demonstrators, Captain O'Neill went on television on December Bth .to deliver his famous Churchillian plea for calm and moderation. He warned that if the people of the North" did not face up to our problems Westminster Parliament might well decide to act over our heads." He promised that the reforms which he had announced were genuine and farreaching and displayed a letter from the Conservative Leader, Ted Heath, affirming the Tory party's firm commitment to reform. The immediate response to Mr. O'Neill's speech was overwhelmingly favourable and the N.I.C.RA. and D.C.A.C. announced a moritorium on marches and demonstrations for a month. However, William Craig quickly replied to O'Neill's speech by declaring that Northern Ireland would resist any attempts at British intervention and the following day, December 11th, Mr. Craig was dismissed from office and Capt. Long was appointed Minister for Home Affairs. On December 12th, Capt. O'Neill faced his own Parliamentary Party and won a resounding vote of confidence, 28 votes in his favour, 4 abstentions and none against. It then appeared that not alone was the Premier's crisis within the Unionist Party resolved but that Northern Ireland was to undergo a period of peaceful transformation. The Northern Ireland crisis, it seemed, had ended. Only a militant group of students, known as the People's Democracy, thought otherwise. But they didn't seem at the time either, significand or powerful enought to make any difference. We all knew differently a month later.

THE PEOPLE'S DEMOCRACY

ON OCTOBER THE 9THstudents of Queen's University Belfast staged a sit down outside the Guildhall in Derry to protest against the police brutality of October the 5th. This was in effect the beginning of the Peoples' Democracy as a loosly-knit movement. The Government showed immediate concern by sending two senior Civil Servants to a mass meeting of the students. It was evident that the Government was not happy about the nonsectarian stance of the students. Perhaps they also feared, with a certain amount of justification, the famed unpredictability of the students and their radical tendencies. Many leaders of the P.D., including such people as Michael Farrell, Cyral Toman, Rory McShane and Fergus Keogh had been earlier connected with the Irish Workers' Group. In the early 1960s they had consistently advocated a working class communist stance. On its demise it had been superseded in Balfast by another group which had attracted about thirty Catholic and Protestant workers in the fight against capitalism. Former members of these groups easily dominated the earlier meetings of the Peoples' Democracy due to the evident superiority of their socialist position and their skill in handling difficult procedural and tactical problems that constantly cropped up. They gradually gained strength by attracting other socialist organisations to their side. These included the Republican Club, the Radical Students' Socialist Federation, the Labour Party and the Socialist Society. They also made it clear that the meetings should not be strictly confined to the University. P.D. had two immediate reverberations in Ulster. It provided a platform for radical Marxists and gave direction to a student protest which, as a broad-based, liberal, " spontaneous" one would probably have petered out in a few weeks. However, its strong left tendencies cost it the kind of mass support which a more moderate movement could have had. Hitherto a nationalist inclined group had dominated college politics. They had formed a successful New Ireland Society which provided a useful platform for the P.D. at the beginning of term. The events of last year when very many universities went rapidly towards radical socialism were used to push recalcitrant Northern students away from sectarianism. The lackof organisation,however, arising from the P.D.'s obsessive fear of bureaucracy has meant that virtually anybody can issue statements or undertake action in its name. There has never been a constitution, a committee, an official spokesman or anything smacking of institution. Meetings are called by anybody and attended by anybody. At about 10 o'clock they are usually filled with the efflux from the nearby University bar. The value of such a " structure " to the leaders can be seen for example in their manipulation of the assembly when dealing with questions such as the march to Stormont along the militantly Protestant Newtownards Road. The activistsproposed this march during a large P.D. meeting and their proposal was overwhelmingly rejected. At a later meeting attended by less people the proposal was also rejected. Finally at a third, even smaller meeting, called to reconsider the proposal and mainly attended by those in favour of the march the proposal was accepted. This way the movement has been kept active and radical. The voice of the half-hearted being easily put aside. P.D. has maintained constant pressure on the CivilRights Association to adopt a more radical active programme. When the Civil Rights Association drew back for fear of the political consequencesof certain actions, P.D. did not. When the sheer danger of trespassing on Paisleyite territory appalled the C.RA., the P.D. went ahead. They took over the Belfast to Derry March which the C.R.A. had called off because of O'Neill's November reform promises. The compromising behaviour of the police all along the route, but particularly during the Burntollet attack left little doubt as to the position of the Government. The courage of the marchers epitomised in the person of Michael Farrell and their viewpoint as expressed by Eamonn McCann won the P.D. wide admiration and support. From that on the P.D. had to be taken seriously. Taking advantage of its popularity, it set up a wide network of local groups which in effect fulfil the role of opposition to the local Civil Rights Association branches. These have been formed wherever the C.RA. is least strong. For example, in Armagh and Omagh P.D. branches have enough strength to assume control of the C.RA. In places such as Lurgan, however, where there is a militant C.RA. relations with the Peoples Democracy have been co-operative. P.D. at this juncture has enormous potential and at the same time enormous organisational difficulties. If it de-centralises its decisionmaking processes, it can become a radical party based largely on the Catholic workingclasswhich utilises the radicalism and tactical mobility of the students. If it does not, it will probably disintegrate into a series of local organisationsdivorced from the student body. Its success in the February elections seriously shook the Conservativesin the Civil Rights Movement. Two P.D. candidates polled one third of the votes when they ran against Nationalists. Elsewhere P.D. candidates won all the Catholic vote, showing that Catholics were no longer afraid of the red spectre. After the elections, the conflict between P.D. and C.RA. came to a head. At the January AGM Farrell, McCann, Toman and Kevin Boyle had been elected to the executive. Frank Gogarty and Vincent McDowell, who had been elected Chairman and Vice-Chairman, were known to be "soft on the P.D." The last straw for the anti-P.D. element was a proposal that the C.RA. should jointly sponsor with the P.D. a march to Stormont through the Newtownards Road planned for March. Indignant at the implied recognition of status,

afraid of the provocation involved and generally fed-up at being foisted with P.D. ideas, a section of the executive strongly opposed the C.RA.'s involvement. Gogarty's casting vote swung the matter in favour of the march and five members resigned from the executive. These included ex-chairman Betty Sinclair,leader of the Northern Ireland Communist Party, and Secretary John McInerny. In Omagh a further eight members resigned. The walk-out had been intended as a protest against the strength of the P.D. but because of the leadership of Gogarty and McDowell the relationship between the P.D. and the C.RA. was not affected. These two because of their radical republicanism have been able to play ball between the most divergent elements in the association. Meanwhile the argument continues, but in hushed tones. Betty Sinclair stoutly maintaines that the P.D. has pushed the Protestants far too hard and precipated sectaranism. This is broadly the line taken by Sinn Fein supporters. Moderates such as Hume and Cooper believe that many outbreaks of violence were encouraged, or at any rate, not opposed by people such as Eamonn McCann. P.D. with a great deal of justification maintaines that the C.RA. and the V.V.F. are more to blame. They critise the C.RA. for taking the movement off the streets, thus leaving demonstrations in July and August with no basis other than a sectarian one. They also attack the C.RA. for allowing Paisley a free hand in Belfast. They claim that the cowardly removal of radical politics from the platform opened the flood gates. But now apres le deluge, how will the two major components of the Civil Rights movement stand in relation to each other? While McCann and Bernadette manned the barricades, Hume and Cooper found themselves in the strange no-man's land between the militants and the RV.C. While the C.RA. are proposing a campaign of civil disobedience, defiance of the ban on demonstrations and the setting up of Citizens' Defence Associations, Farrell and Toman have, temporarily at least, fled the province in despair.

ON JANUARY 1, 1969 a group of about forty people, mostly students from Queen s University, assembled outside Belfast City Hall. Two banners served to identify them ; one contained the words "Civil Rights," the other" People's Democracy." On the opposite side of the road a group of about seventy "Loyal Citizens of Ulster" had assembled under the direction of Major Ronald Bunting. Their declared intention was to "harass and harry" the seventy-five mile, four-day walk from Belfast to Derry. Police who had been given the task of protecting this fully legitimate march stood by while members of Bunting's group tried to capture the Civil Rights banner. As the march set off, the " Loyal Citizens" took the lead waving a Union Jack and an Ulster flag. They slowed the pace of the march shouting abuse and obscenities, such as "Fenian bastards" and "One teague, one vote."

Antrim
Once outside Belfast, the marchers were left alone. After lunch at Dunadry they continued towards Antrim. As they approached the railway bridge outside Antrim a lambeg drum could be heard. The marchers who by now had been joined by about thirty sympathisers, were halted by police blocking the road. Behind the block, a: large crowd had gathered, headed by Bunting who was confabbing with the police. A prominent P.D. leader, Michael Farrell, was told by County Inspector Cramsie that the march could not go through Antrim because of local disapproval. He agreed, however, to escort the marchers through two by two. Farrell and Erskine Holmes were chosen to go first. Holmes later described what happened: "As soon
<40

as we were in the centre of the hostile crowd, police vanished." Farrell and Holmes were maltreated and pushed back. After further consultation with Bunting, Cramsie withdrew the offer of protection. Later Bunting claimed, implying that the Police Inspector had lost control: "I advised him on the tactics he should use." Bunting then addressed a sermon on the evil of the Church of Rome, recited a poem about the religion of love and retired. A lorry came from between the ranks of the police and tried to ram the marchers, a number of whom were attacked by the police in the ensuing scuffle. The lorry driver revealed later that he had been acting under police instruction. As darkness fell, the hostile forces increased and Cramsie threatened repeatedly to withdraw his men and go home leaving the crowd, which outnumbered the students by five or six persons to one, to do " whatever they think best." Eventually Nathaniel Minford, M.P. instructed Cramsie to conduct the marchers to their proposed destination in police tenders, as had been earlier requested by P.D. leaders. On arrival at Whitehall Community Hall by a circuitous route, a debate was held as regards the wisdom of proceeding towards Randalstown the next day in the light of a police tip off to Farrell that the Randalstown bridge had been obstructed. Minford arrived at the hall in an attempt to prevent the march through Randalstown by threat, but the marchers were determined.

the police refused to make any attempt to remove the obstruction. In the end the marchers had to be transported by car to Toome. A police convoy which led the motorcade proceeded at a suspiciously slow rate and further delayed the progress by taking a wrong turning. When the marchers were eventually set down on the outskirts of Toome, they found that Bunting's supporters had reached the town before them, due to the delaying tactics of the police.

Toome
However, a friendly reception in Toome restored confidence, to the extent that a Republican banner was unfurled by a section of the marchers. This was immediately taken by the Unionists as clear evidence that the Civil Rights movement was merely a front for the LR.A. This impression was further " substantiated" when an over-enthusiastic Civil Rights supporter. threw a flower pot at Bunting's car on his arrival in the town. After lunch in Toome the marchers set off for Maghera only to be stopped again by the police after half an hour's walking. Due to the likelihood of trouble in the "loyalist" Knockloughlin, the police, aided by the then Minister of Agriculture, Major Chichester-Clark, were ordering a reroute of the march through Bellaghy. Two miles on the new route brought the marchers face to face with yet another police cordon, behind which was ranged a substantial force of men, with Bunting, predictably enough, to the fore. Once again the police refused to disperse the "loyalists," maintaining rigidly that the only solution would be for the P.D. to abandon the march. Farrell, after an address pointing out the legality of the protest, was told that if the marchers stood aside, County

Randalstown
After a turbulant night, during which the police invaded the hall, claiming that a bomb had been planted, the marchers set off towards Randalstown. The bridge was blocked by a crowd which once again included Bunting and

Inspector Kerr would come forward in a jeep. The marchers duly stood aside, but instead of a jeep, three tenders full of police were driven into their midst. In an attempt to resist this subterfuge, Farrell and other leaders were assaulted by the police. As local support for the marchers increased, the police became visibly worried. For the first time they decided to remove the obstruction and this they were able to do without any difficulty. As soon as the word was given, Bunting and his supporters moved aside to let the march proceed. However, as the marchers passed a cross-road not much further on, they were showered with nails, nuts and bolts.

scheduled to meet the Minister for Home Affairs that morning to point out to Captain Long their "revelations" as regards the march's subversive and republican nature. The marchers were hospitably received in Dungiven and after lunch, before proceeding to the village of Feeney, they were addressed by Farrell who outlined the main demands of the march: one family, one house; one man, one job; one man, one vote; and repeal of repressive laws.

Maghera
Meanwhile, preparations were being made for their reception at Maghera. Crowds lined the streets with clubs made from broken furniture. Some of these still contained nails. The local Orange Hall was deployed as a base for the operation where "sticks and cudgels" (according to the supervisor of the Hall) could be obtained. After a friendly reception in Gulladuff, the marchers debated the wisdom of going on to Maghera, since, due to the delays, darkness had fallen and word had reached them of the preparations in progress. Eventually it was decided that they should go by car, circumventing Maghera, to Brackaghreilly Hall, where they were to spend the night. En route, the cars were assaulted and a number of them badly damaged. However the bulk of the reception committee, frustrated by this circumvention, released their fury on the town of Maghera itself, especially on Walsh's Hotel, where journalists were staying. Meanwhile Chichester-Clark telephoned the Minister for Home Affairs in an attempt to have the march through Maghera prohibited. The next morning the marchers set out by car from Brackaghreilly, intending to return to Gulladuff and recover their march from that point. Before they had gone far, however, they were halted by District Inspector Hood and his men and told that, in accordance, with the Public Order Act, the march was not being allowed through Maghera. It was decided not to defy the prohibition and to proceed towards Dungiven. The route through Glenshane Pass was comparatively peaceful, with only a few minor scuffles when car loads from Maghera tried to interrupt the march. For once the marchers encountered no real obstruction. Bunting and Paisley were both

In a T.V. appearance that evening Capt. Long gave virtual benediction to the behaviour of the obstructionists by claiming that Paisley's supporters had been wholly non-violent in the face of the present, dreadful provocation, and that he had assurances from both Paisley and Bunting that they would not in any way encourage violence during the rest of the march. A mile outside Dungiven the march encountered yet another police cordon. District Inspector Harrison explained that because of the presence of a hostile crowd further along the road the marchers had to be diverted. However, questioning revealed that this claim was dubious, since Harrison could give neither the location, nor the numerical strength of the opposition. The doubts of the leaders were confirmed when a car, driven by a known civil rights supporter, drew up on the other side of the police cordon and the driver assured all present that there was no obstruction between them and Feeney. Feeney
The marchers then, by agreement, linked arms and proceeded on their way, brushing the police aside. The route to Feeney proved to be clear and they were well received by the villagers. Between this and the next village of Claudy a stone was thrown which

injured a girl marcher, but there were no other incidents. After a friendly reception in Claudy the marchers settled down for the night. There were disturbances in the village later when a Protestant attack on the hall in which the marchers were sleeping was forestalled by local Catholics who payed heavily in the consequent damage to their houses and shops. Meanwhile Paisley held a prayer meeting in the Guildhall in Derry, to which the press were refused entry. A consensus of hearings from people present indicates that after the usual rabble-rousing performance, Paisley handed over to Bunting, who planned an assembly for the following day at the Brackfield area, surrounding Burntollet, and advocated that "loyalists" who wished to play a manly role should equip themselves with whatever " protective measures" they felt would be suitable for the occasion. Meanwhile members of the Derry Citizens' Action Committee tried to restrain the emotions of a Catholic crowd assembled outside the Guildhall. Despite speeches by Cooper and McCann, an attempt was made to set the Guildhall alight. When that failed, the arsonists settled for Bunting's car which proved more inflammable. Later a crowd of about a hundred Paisleyites charged from the building armed with broken furniture and attacked the Civil Rghts supporters with the aid of the police.

Claudy
Shortly after midnight a bus pulled up some miles outside Claudy and crates of empty bottles were unloaded by locals and stacked in a field beside the road. Later, over a period of hours, several truck loads of newly quarried stones, packed in eight-stone sacks were brought to the same area and distributed along the edge of a high field, marking the road along which the marchers would pass. At about 9.00 on the morning of January 4th the marchers assembled for last day of the march. After an address by McCann pointing out the need for restraint and understanding, and underlining the radical nature of the protest, they set off towards Derry which was now only nine or ten miles away. The first part of the route seemed ominously peaceful. The predominantly Protestant area of Killaloo, the home of Ivan Cooper, M.P., seemed totally

(Continued on page 44)

Pages 42 and 43-Bogside youths charge the R.U.C.

deserted. A cordon of police halted the march at a road junction beside Cumber Presbyterian Church. It was explained by District Inspector Harrison that there would be a delay pending "police investigation" of a possible attack further along the route. He spoke of numbers in the region of forty or fifty (a figure which turned out to be an underestimation to the tune of about 250). Strangely enough the police officer never intimated that the situation warranted a rerouting for which there were ample possibilities as well as precedents.

Burntollet
County Inspector Kerr returned from his "investigation" and confirmed the numbers quoted by Harrison. Both officers were confident, but would not" guarantee," that if the marchers kept close to the bank on the right-hand side of the road, there would be no danger, For the first time in the course of the march, policemen took the lead. They were about forty in number, wore steel helmets and heavy overcoats and carried riot shields. The marchers, who now numbered some 500, were also preceded by a group of boys with a Union Jack on the end of a pole. Police tenders were at the head and tail of the march. Soon it became clear that the flag wavers in front were more than a show of defiance. By their rowdy singing and flag waving they were giving warning of the advance of the procession. A man in a field, later identified like many others present, as being a B Special in plain clothes, conveyed the signals to a crowd out of the marchers' sight. A girl of about fourteen suddenly sprang on to the road ahead of the march screaming" Paisley! Paisley! Paisley!" and within seconds the bombardment had begun.

other side of the hedge. A side road, known as Scribtree Lane, provided nominal cover for Bunting and a large contingent of plain clothes B Specials. Some were locals, others had been brought from as far away as thirty miles. Once the police "protection" in front had passed on, with uncharacteristic rapidity, the marchers were left completely to the mercy of Bunting's assembly. Clubs were used as well as stones and bottles, and women were attacked as viciously as men. Yet the marchers refused to return the violence. They continued to try to find cover in the fields or along the road. They begged the police, who were standing about, or still sitting inside their tenders, to prevent massacre by intervening. The reply was often "Go home, you Fenian whore," or simple a two-finger sign. One girl, who approached a policeman for help was horrified to find him batoning a defenceless marcher.

The Faughan River

While many were already being ferried to Altnagelvin Hospital in ambulances, others were struggling hysterically to get out of fields where they were now confined. Ten girls were driven into the river Faughan and batoned and pelted with stones from both sides. An Irish News report describes another attack on young girls: " They were scattered, screaming, into the fields near the road. Some of those near the river were grabbed and thrown over the bridge to fall eight feet into icy knee-deep water. Many were then unable to leave the river because of men stoning them on each

side, and they had to wade for about half a mile before reaching comparative safety." The Sunday News quoted Sorley McNelis's account: " I managed to get across all right but then I looked back and saw a young woman (she must have been about twenty) lying face down in the stream. She must have been unconscious and the water covered her mouth and nose. She was drowning. I went back to pull her out, but before I got there some men with clubs starting hitting at her legs. "There were long spikes through the clubs and I could see the blood spurt out of holes in her legs. I managed to grab her arms and pull her out and then I dragged her about half-a-mile along a path before I came across some other men who helped to ger her on to a wooden stretcher." Those that were left of the marchers, having come through another vicious attack on their entry to Derry, were welcomed by Farrell, who had been rushed from hospital to address them in Guildhall Square. "But while we protest with all the vigour we can summon against the abuses of the system, we must not lose sight of our real enemy. Since January 1st we have been attacked and harassed by groups of people who think they are hostile to what we represent. But these attackers are not our enemies in any sense. Largely they are the Protestant people who are impoverished under the same predatory system Impoverished they are, and wholly misled."

(The facts for this section are taken from the book "Burntollet" - by Bowes Egan and Vincent McCormack.)

The Ambush
Marchers ran frantically in all directions for help and cover as stones and bottles came showering down upon them. Some clambered through hedges in the hope that they might pass unnoticed among the attackers. They were quickly identified by the fact that they wore no white armbands. In many cases they were batoned by members of the police force who were mingling freely with the attackers in the fields. Others kept moving forward in the hope of leaving the attack behind, but ammunition dumps had been supplied the whole length of the road as far as the bridge, so that the attackers could easily run along above them on the
H

THE NORTH-IX.

CRISIS RE-OPENED AND UNIONISTS CRACK UP

ON REACHING DERRY a large reception was held for the marchers outside the Guild Hall. Later that evening riots broke out between Derry youths and the police and during the night a large force of reportedly drunken R.U.C. men entered the Bogside area and indiscriminately smashed windows and assaulted bystanders. There was widespread protest at this apparently unprovoked attack on the Bogside by the R.U.C. and despite demands for

order. The crisis was re-opened. The following Saturday, January 11th the P.D. in conjunction with the local C.R.A. branch held a march in Newry. Again a restriction order was placed by the Government on the route of the march and when the demonstrators reached the prohibited area they sat in peaceful protest on the streets. Afterwards the marchers split up and about 200 of them were met by as many policemen blocking their way across Market Square with eleven police tenders. A section of the demonstrators, ignoring the pleas of civil rights stewards wrecked and set fire to the tenders. The police stood by passively, watching more than 7,000 worth of Government property go up

an independent inquiry a special Police inquiry was set up under Inspector Bailie to investigate allegations concerned with the R.U.C. invasion. In retrospect, this incident assumes considerable significance in the light of the August 12th-16th defence of the Bogside against the R.U.C. The moratorium on marches and demonstrations which followed Capt. O'Neill's speech on December 9th was now well and truly over. The P.D. march had exposed the sectarianism of the B Specials and if any further proof were needed the R.U.C. attack on the Bogside demonstrated the blatant partisanship of the "forces of law and

in flames. It has since been asserted that the passivity of the police was predetermined and that agents provocateur were responsible for the orgy of destruction which discredited the civil rights movement and the P.D. in particular, in front of so many television cameras and press reporters. In the following weeks another crisis erupted in the Unionist Party, precipitated by the announcement of a Commission under the English Judge, Lord Cameron, to enquire into the sources of recent strife in Ulster. Many of the right-wingers in the Unionist party saw this as a clear threat to the constitution of Stormont and the thin

edge of the wedge of a Westminster take-over. On the 24th January the Deputy Premier and Minister for Commerce, Brian Faulkner, dramatically resigned on the grounds that the Cameron Commission involved an abdication by Stormont on the question of "one man, one vote." At the time the resignation was unexpected and traumatic. Just six weeks previously Capt. O'Neill appeared to have overcome a possibility of a rift within his own party for the foreseeable future. But now, with the resignation of his most influential minister the whole leadership question was re-opened. Immediately following the resignation there was an acrimonious exchange of letters with charges of disloyalty and countercharges of double-dealing. The longstanding feud between O'Neill and Faulkner was now very much in the open. Essentially, this was a feud between the landed capital and bourgeois elements within the Unionist Party-O'Neill representing the former and Faulkner the latter. This was the first real revolt of the bourgeois element within the Party and would have been impossible without the existence of a rabid militant Paisley wing. It was Craig who initially launched this revolt, but Faulkner was its obvious champion. Faulkner's tactics were typically shrewd. He resigned at a time when O'Neill's inability to cope with the continuing crisis was becoming more blatant and the form of his resignation was especially astute. He made verbal concessions to the left on the "one man, one vote" question, while implicitely appealing to the right in his bid to oust O'Neill. Faulkner is a neat handsome man of forty-seven, with prosperous family connections in the shirt and textile business. He is much closer to the traditional Presbyterian businessman, hard working and God fearing than O'Neill, with his big house background and civilised Ascendency traditions. He is married to a former secretary of Lord Brookeborough, doesn't smoke or drink, instead, sails and hunts. When he was elected to Stormont at the age of twenty-eight he was the youngest ever M.P. He has been, in turn, a competent Chief Whip, a tough Minister for Home Affairs and, since 1963, a spectacularly successful Minister of Commerce. A few days after Faulkner's resignation, William Morgan, Minister of Health and Social Services and an old crony predictably followed him to the back benches. Capt. O'Neill responded to this new challenge by calling a General Election.
45

THE NORTH-X.

THE
GENERAL ELECTION
WHEN CAPT. O'NEILL called the General Election for February 24th it was not to trounce the parliamentary opposition, but rather to assert the dominance of himself and his class within the Unionist party. The previous election had taken place in 1965 and another was not legally due until 1970. The Unionist party held 37 of the 52 seats on the dissolution, the remainder was divided as follows: 9 Nationalists, 2 Northern Ireland Labour, 2 Republican Labour, 1 Liberal and One National Democrat. The election was not unusual only in that it was being used to resolve an internal conflict within the Unionist Party but also in that it introduced two new elements into the political arena. To the chagrin of many of / their comrades John Hume and Ivan Cooper offered themselves as candidates on a Civil Rights ticket. Their action was criticised by many of those who felt the civil rights movement ought to remain clearly outside party politics. However, they felt with some justification that the civil rights demands should be represented at a parliamentary level. Both challenged incumbent Nationalists Eddie McAteer and Paddy Gormley. The Nationalists had been entirely left out in the cold by the non-sectarian civil rights movement. Intrinsically the Nationalist Party was sectarian, appealing to Catholics on that basis alone, as Unionism had appealed to Protestants. Apart from the civil rights element the electionalso introduced the People's

candidates at will. It's totally undemocratic.''' (New Left Review, No.

55).

Capt. O'Neill - "mobilised the utmost resources of the landowning classes "-but failed.

Democracy to the political fray. The People's Democracy contested seats held by both Unionists and Nationalists and declared war on both green and orange toryism. They fought a strictly non-sectarian campaign on a solialist platform, demanding one man, one job, one family, one house. The election line up was as follows: Unionist 43 Independent Unionist 18 Protestant Unionist 6 Nationalist. 9 N.!. Labour 6 Republican Labour 5 National Democrats 7 People's Democracy 8 Liberal 2 Independent 4 People's Progressive 1 During the elections social cleavages within the Unionist block emerged dramatically. O'Neill mobilised the utmost resources of the landowning class, including its absentee notables resident in England, and above all the Duke of Westminster. O'Neill was able to keep substantial support within the business community, which did not desert wholly to the Faulkner camp. Conversely, Faulkner and Craig were able to use a disgruntled clique within the landowning class (Brooke borough clan) against O'Neill. The fight became increasingly bitter, and it was eventually evident that O'Neill had succeeded in unnerving powerful sections of the business class with the vision of social disintegration that might follow his removal. Faulkner retaliated by whipping up pseudoradical sentiment with social attacks on the oligarchy, similar in tone to those of Paisleyism: 'The great strength of the party is that in its local association the trade unionist counts for as much as the boss. Now we have landed gentry and big money imposing their

The officialUnionists were split into pro-O'Neillite and anti-O'Neillite camps. The official or independent Unionists were similarly dividedcontesting official Unionists of the opposing faction. The Paisleyite Protestant Unionists stood against the O'Neillites who are not being opposed by officialUnionists. The results of the election were a defeat for O'Neill in his power struggle within the party. He failed to win a sufficient number of Catholic votes to which he had made his major moderate appeal. It is significant that whereas a considerable number of middle class Catholics seemed to vote for O'Neill the Catholic working class seemingly could not bring themselves to do so. This sector opted for the first time in the history of Northern Ireland for militant radicalism in the shape of the People's Democracy. The latter though winning no seats did surprisingly well in both traditional Unionist and Nationalist areas. From the Opposition point of view the significance of election was in the defeat of the two Nationalist leaders McAteer and Gormley by Hume and Cooper. This indicated that the former crucial issue of partition was at least shelved for the time being in favour of the more immediate demands of the Civil Rights movement. The results of the election were (with the 1965 figures in brackets) :Unionists 39 Nationalists 6 N.!. Labour 2 Rep. Labour 2 Independents 3 Liberals o Nat. Dem. o (37) 6 unopposed. ( 9) 1unopposed.
( 2) ( 2) (-) ( 2) ( 0)

THE NORTH-XI.

CRISIS CONTINUES -O'NEILL GOES

AFTER THE elections the PD again took the initiative and announced their plans for the coming month; squatting in Belfast prestige office blocks, days of civil disobedience in protest against the Public Order Amendment Bill (which was to strengthen police control over demonstrations), and sit-ins in public buildings. At the AGM of NICRA, on March 16th, the Chairman, Betty Sinclair and the Secretary John McAnerney and three other executive members resigned in protest against the growing domination of the PD over the civil rights movement, which they believed was driving NICRA away from its moderate, broadbase towards radical excesses. The same evening seven of the Omagh CRA committee resigned for similiar reasons. Their purpose was to freeze the PD members out of NICRA but their resignations effected the opposite. They were replaced by somewhat more radical Republicans such as Frank Gogarty and the PD influence if anything, increased. Bernadette Devlin's victory A Westminster bye-election was pending in mid-Ulster, following the death of the Unionist M.P. Mr. Forrest. The Unionists chose the late M.P.'s widow. The Opposition groups held a nominating convention at which Miss Bernadette Devlin, a P.D. Queen's student was chosen to contest the seat against Mrs. Forrest. The Republican candidate, Kevin Agnew, who had announced his intention to contest the election withdrew his nomination in favour of Bernadette Devlin. With a united Opposition this formally Republican seat was virtually assured for Miss Devlin-providing the Republicans didn't abstain. The Election took place on the 18th April and Miss Devlin won by 33,600 votes to 29,337. The election of Bernadette Devlin to Westminster enormously enhanced the P.D.'s influence in N.I.C.R.A., and within Northern politics generally. It also brought to Westminster the articulate, urgent voice of Ulster's new militants. Her maiden speech in the House of Commons on April 22nd was a masterpiece of its kind and captured world headlines with it compassionate pleas for justice in Northern Ireland. Meanwhile violencewas again erupting in Northern Ireland. On April 2nd

an electricity plant was blown at Castlerea which gave Mr. Porter, the new Minister for Home Affairs, an excuse to introduce immediately the SpecialPowers Act. R.U.C. invade Bogside On April 19th a N.I.C.R.A. march in Derry was attacked by Paisleyites. In the ensuing disorder the R.U.C. invaded the Bogside supported by the B. Specials. Rioting and fighting carried on all night and many Bogside families were terrorised. One of these families, the Devenny's, had the police enter their house and club Mr. Devenny unconscious. Mr. Devenny, who suffered from a weak heart died as a result of the attack on July 20th. On April 20th the Silent Valley Aqueduct which supplies water to Belfast, was blown up, and seven city post officeswere burned to the ground. The government blamed the I.R.A., which disclaimed responsibility and, in turn, blamed the Paisleyites. O'Neill Resigns ON APRIL 22nd O'Neill went to London for a meeting with Mr. Wilson and returned to demand from his Government support for one man, one vote in local elections. He gained only a very slender majority in the parliamentary party.

for Agriculture on the grounds that he believed that the introduction of one man, one vote in local government elections "might encourage militant Protestants even to bloodshed." Chichester Clarke had been one of O'Neill's strongest supporters up to this time and resignation signalled the end of O'Neill's reign. Chichester-Clark v. Faulkner On April 28th, O'Neill announced his resignation as Prime Minister and leader of the Unionist Party. The contest for leadership emerged at first as a three way struggle between Mr. Brian Faulkner, Major ChichesterClarke and Mr. John Andrews, leader of the Senate. Later Mr. Andrews withdrew, leaving the contest between Faulkner and Chichester-Clarke-the former again representing the business class in the party-the latter stepping into O'Neill's shoes as the representative of the landowning class and orthodox Unionism. Chichester-Clarke won the election by a single vote which was two less than that which O'Neill commanded during the height of his crisis. However, on his election he won a unanimous vote of confidence. His cabinet transpired to be a rather clumsy blend of pro-O'Neillites and anti-O'Neillites. Brian Faulkner reluctantly accepted the position of Minister for Development and though Mr. Robert Porter and Mr. Roy Bradford, both O'Neillites, were appointed to the Ministeries of Home Affairs and Commerce respectively, they were each saddled with staunch hard-liners as their junior ministers, Mr. John Taylor and Mr. John Brooke. The election of Chichester-Clarke is shrouded in mystery and suspicion. It is widely believed that his resignation a few days before Captain O'Neill retired was a clever tactical ploy encouraged by O'Neill himself to ensure that Faulkner would not be his successor following his own inevitable downfall. Certainly the Major's presence at Captain O'Neill's farewell tea party reception seemed to indicate the existence of a conspiracy of some kind. Major James Chichester-Clarke46-M.P. for South Derry (which in the 1969 Election he contested with Bernadette Devlin) was very much in the CraigavonAndrews-Brookeborough and O'Neill mould. He was educated at Eton and joined the Irish Guards in 1942 and was in the same regiment as Captain O'Neill. He was wounded in 1944. From 1947 to 1949 he was A.D.C. to the Governor General of Canada. He became M.P. for South Derry in 1960and Chief Whip in 1963.
47

It was now evident that O'Neill's position as Premier and leader of the Unionist Party was untenable. Since the beginning of April when the Unionist Party Council had given him a mere 75 vote majority out of a total of 601 votes and the Young Unionist Association had passed a vote of no confidence in him, it was obvious that at last his time had come. On Wednesday, April 23rd, Major Chichester-Clarke resigned as Minister

THE NORTH-XII.

THE SlITER

HONEYMOON
ON THE election of a new government under Major Chichester-Clark, a period of relative calm ensued in Northern Ireland. The opposition parties announced their acceptance of the Government's time-table of reform, and N.I.C.RA. suspended its plans for a Civil Disobedience Campaign. However, it did announce its intention to picket all entry points into Northern Ireland, but this plan was a miserable flop and a full-scale review of N.I.C.RA.'s activities was undertaken. Eamonn McCann, of the Derry Citizens' Action Committee and of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, launched an attack on the" timid" and " weak-minded" within N.I.C.R.A. On the 28th June, N.I.C.R.A. held a demonstration in Strabane in protest against the Government's failure to initiate any of its reform programmes. At this meeting differences within N.I.C.RA. clearly emerged for the first time in public. McCann again attacked the moderate element within the Civil Rights Movement, was supported by

Bernadette Devlin, but was repudiated by Austin Currie. McCann's main point was that by suspending demonstrations and marches N.I.C.RA. was allowing the confrontation in Northern Ireland to become not one between the inter-denominational forces of reform and the Unionist monolith, but rather a sectarian feud between aggrieved militant Catholics and working class Protestants. McCann's thesis was vindicated by riots in Derry and elsewhere following the July 12th Orange demonstrations, when "hooligan elements" on the Catholic side took to the streets in orgies of destruction and violence. Two people were wounded by gunfire in Derry during these disturbances. The Derry Citizens Action Committee condemned the" wanton hooliganism" but serious trouble continued in both Derry and Belfast. On July 14th, Francis McCluskey, a 70 year-old farmer from outside Dungiven, died following a RU.C. baton charge in Dungiven during disturbances on the previous evening. McCluskey was the first victim in the cause of Civil Rights in Northern Ireland. Following these disturbances which had spread to Derry, Belfast, Dungiven and Lurgan the B Specials were put on stand-by duty.

In Derry peace moves began to offset any violence emerging from the Apprentice Boys march to be held on August 12th. Meanwhile, in Belfast the situation worsened considerably. Catholic families were forced to take refuge in school halls in Ardoyne. In an attempt to control the deteriorating situation, N.I.C.RA. organised squads to prevent disorders and violence. However, at the beginning of August, Belfast witnessed its worst rioting in thirty-four years. Barricades were erected along the Shankill Road and evacuation of families from threatened Catholic areas continued. On August 7th Chichester-Clark left for London for discussions with Mr. Callaghan on the forthcoming Apprentice Boys demonstrations. It was later leaked from Whitehall that the legal implications of British troops being engaged in police action in Northern Ireland were being studied in Whitehall and discussed at the Chichester-Clark/Callaghan meeting. Despite these apparent expectations of violence and the practically unanimous forecasts of disturbance in Derry on August 12th by informed c ommentators the provocative Apprentice Boys Demonstration was allowed to take place. Its folly is outlined below.

THE NORTH-XIII.

her security and the security of others like her. The Bogsiders had also learned how to interpret the signs as they squatted beneath a roughly painted slogan reading "You are now entering Free Derry." It is not a coincidence that they chose to gather where they could watch the parade and be near enough to hear it. And it's not surprising that they initiated choruses to counteract the pointed revelry of the Apprentice Boys. Nor was it all that unpredictable that some one would think of throwing pennies down to them and that others would follow suit and that this gesture

THE SIEGE OF DERRY 1969

DERRY ON the 12th of August, 1969 was a city decked out for a showdown which no one could control. The coloured flags and shuttered windows, the few spectators and the hordes of journalists, the plaintive music and the derisive laughter, the riot shields and the banners, the ice cream vans and armoured cars were not as unreconcilable as they first seemed. There was

was the taunting and jeering and the police barricades, and out came the stones, the catapults, the stewards, the helmets, the shields and the batons. Everyone was watching the police and they knew it. And they knew that this was their role, guarding their people against the agressive minority. So they threw no stones, though there were ample supplies at their feet, and they made no baton charges so that everybody would see the Fenians in action and establish for once and for all the truth about the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The Bogsiders were also watching the police and they knew, if some journalists didn't, that passivity and restraint were not the distinguishing qualities of the R.U.C. In the last year alone they had been at the receiving end of enough baton charges to leave little doubt as to the treatment they were now forestalling. They had only to remember the words October, Burntollet and Devanney to feel confident that their position was a defensive one and that if the police weren't advancing, that was because of the intensity of the resistence the Bogsiders were putting up. At another front, round in Sackville Street, where some nylon-masked Bogsiders had gone to attack the Parade the police felt compelled to return fire. Of course it was different round here, because all the television cameras were focussed on Waterloo Place. And it was quite reasonable that, because of a shortage of numbers at this point, they should welcome some support from the loyalist crowd. But the Bogsiders at that posrtion saw it differently. The police and the Paisleyites were jointly invading the area, so it was here that the first petrol bombs appeared. A petrol station in William Street was attacked by a man wielding a pick-axe and a helmeted youth charged up the street with a wheel-barrow full of empty bottles. But the vanguard of the resistence at William Street was becoming increasingly disconcerted by the immobility of the police in Waterloo Place. There was something sinister about this restraint. It smacked of strategy and cunning. However, there was a precedent which could explain it in the passivity of the police during the January People's Democracy rally in Newry. On that occasion, police restraint had allowed "a rowdy element" to disgrace a movement renowned for its non-violence. And on that occasion, as on this, many. journalists and television cameras were present. So someone shouted" move back and

a relation between them all, and a relation too between the noble city walls and the squalid Bogside below them. When a woman strained to peer over the turrets of the wall at a sullen group of youths staring up from Lecky Road, she related to them in the terms dictated by the parade: "Look at them," she said, secure in her hostility. " Look at them asking for it." Derry on the morning of the " twelfth" was a city charged with gestures, signs and words to maintain

would be interpreted and spoken about and expanded till all hell was let loose. And that happened about three o'clock in the afternoon when the parade was passing Waterloo Place where the Bogsiders could easily gather and where the police and journalists had gathered, because everybody knew, even if Major Chichester-Clark pretended he didn't, that that was where it would all begin and when it would all begin. The march was on schedule and so

let the bastards in." And the idea caught' on quickly enough to suggest that others were thinking along the same lines. Then, for an hour and a half, the police were barraged with taunting invitations to come and try now what they had done in January and April, while the stones rained down on them from the two Bogside Streets, William Street and Waterloo Street, that converge at Waterloo Place. A year of Civil Right campaigning had revealed the weak point of the Unionist fabric-paradoxically enough its simultaneous reliance on the British Government and on the RU.C. The Civil Rights movement had aimed at the relationship between Stormont and Westminster, but in spite of the extent to which public opinion had been shocked, the British Government had in effect refused to interfere. The Bogsiders were now determined to attack the RU.C. But the Bogside operated as community in itself, not as a socio-political movement within a larger community. It could do this because of the fury and indignation unleashed by previous police incursions into the area which made the struggle a popular one, held together organically
50

rather than ideologically. Once the first stone had been thrown, the fear of reprisal served to escalate the situation, increasing the determination of the Bogsiders to bring the RU.C. to bring the R.U.C. to its knees. Now that the Bogsiders were beyond pacification the stewards, many of whom were Civil Rights leaders, confabbed together and the general consensus was that they would be better employed, either organising the struggle or trying to negotiate terms with the police. After about two hours of passive resistance the position of the RU.C. at Waterloo Place was critical. A number of policemen had been hit and carried off to the great delight of the Bogsiders. The morale of the others was dwindling while their fury and frustration increased. Finally, at about 5 o'clock the order to retaliate with stones was given. There was no shortage of ammunition and within minutes the police had pushed forward the barricades in William Street. At the junction of Rossville Street and William Street the police encountered the first of the Bogsiders'

barricades. They were now in command of William Street and some other side streets, but it was difficult to say where they could go from here. The RU.C. command had quickly sensed the mood of the Bogsiders. They had refused to allow their men retaliate with stones in the hope that the emotions of the mob would gradually subside. In the panic of the Sackville Street confrontation, however, the order had been ignored. Two commanding officers now argued as to whether or not the force should enter the Bogside. The superior officer, who recognised the danger, was defied and the blunder of the day was committed. At about 7.00 p.m. the police advanced on Rossville Street. Cries of " fenian bastards" and" I.R.A. scum " indicated the extent to which emotion was dictating the action. Hammering their batons on their shields, they took advantage of every loophole in the defence and within minutes the Bogsiders were driven back in a desperate retreat to the huge reserve barricade at the very heart of the area. A number of shots were fired by the RU.C. One Bogsider was wounded in the shoulder, another in the mouth. Indiscriminate batoning took down among others a fully uniformed Knight of Malta first-aid man. In the wake of the police, a large mob of loyalists invaded the area, showering stones at the windows on either side. One or two of the rearguard police made an attempt to tu rn them back, but their influence was negligible. However, a dramatic turn of events at the barricade cut short the invasion. A petrol bomb which landed at the feet of a policeman set his clothes alight. Taking advantage of the resulting confusion, the Bogsiders vaulted the barricade and rushed the police. The force broke into an hysterical retreat and along with their supporters clambered over the unwieldly barricade into the relative security of William Street. The recapture of Rossville Street revealed to the Bogsiders the extent of the damage which the " invasion" had caused. Many people were lying on the ground, their heads pumping blood. A block of twenty or so flats on the righthand of the advance was left without a window intact. Everywhere there was evidence of senseless injury and destruction which had achieved nothing strategically. The police were returned to their previous position, having brought about nothing other than an intensification of the resistance.

(Continued on page 54)

THE NORTH-XIV.

THE BELFAST MASSACRE

WORKING CLASS Catholics of Belfast enjoy none of the advantages which made the Bogside struggle a success. They belong to a town where they are numerically inferior, geographically divided and surrounded on all sides by the most militant protestants in Northern Ireland. While indignation and jubilance marked the Bogside struggle the atmosphere in Belfast was one of fear bordering simultaneously on hysteria and despair. The news of the Bogside conflict reached Belfast on the evening of Tuesday 12th. Men returning from work brought home news of Derry to their small terraced homes or cramped apartments. With their families they watched filmed reports of the fighting on television. What they saw in these shots was a siege on the part of the dreaded R.U.C. being fiercely resisted by their fellow Catholics in Derry. Later that night pipe bands and large crowds of protestants met Apprentice Boys and representatives of the Orange Lodges in Belfast, who had partaken in the Derry parade. As they marched home from York Road station and the bus depot crowds of Catholics assembled in the streets of their two main ghettoes half in the hope of staging some kind of counter action and half in anticipation of attack. Divis Street/Falls Road runs southwest from the city centre and constitutes the larger of the two Catholic areas in Belfast. Falls Road is, in effect, an extension of Divis Street, but the junction of the two is also the junction of two predominantly protestant areas, Springfield Road to the north and Grosvenor Road to the South. The latter constitutes the southern boundary of the Divis Street area while the Shankill Road area lies to the north. Further north, separated from the rest of the Catholic community by the Shankill Road the Crumlin Road area is situated. Understandably, the Catholic communities in Belfast live in a constant state of siege. During the night of August 12th every sound of revelry that carried over from the neighbouring protestant areas increased the tension. Two bands, accompanied by about 600 Apprentice Boys and supporters waving Union Jacks and singing "The Sash" left York Road railway station and marched to the
52

Shankill Road. On their way they passed Unity Walk flats where "the most serious rioting in thirty-four years" had taken place on August 4th. But this time the orange parade was not stoned. The night passed without incident, though evacuations and house swapping which had begun earlier in the month continued. Protestants and Catholics housed in hostile areas exchanged houses. The talk continued and the news kept pouring in from the Bogside. By the following night the Civil Rights Association had got word around of a planned demonstration outside the Divis Tower flats. It was intended that such a meeting, in the heart of the Divis Street area and in defiance of the newly announced ban on public demonstrations would worry and occupy the police without endangering the situation. However, as the crowd increased so did emotions and before long the assembly was out of control. They set off along Divis Street chanting" S.S. R.U.C." in the direction of an R.U.C. barracks in Springfield Road. After a fairly harmless demonstration outside this they returned along the same route and made for the Hastings Street barracks situated in the heart of the catholic area. This was attacked with petrol bombs and nearby buildings were set alight before police landrovers and armoured cars appeared and dispersed the crowd. Along the route of the retreat cars were petrol-bombed and pushed into the road to delay any advance of police or protestants. When news of the B Special mobilisation reached the catholics on Thursday 14th the already tense atmosphere became hysterical. Barricades were erected at all entrances to the area and those that were in existence from the previous night were reinforced. Pavement slabs and telegraph poles were torn out of the ground. Buses, lorries and vans were hi-jacked and positioned between Divis Street and the Shankill Road area. Catholics living in the low terraced houses that connect the two areas were evacuated and reinstated in the houses of their more favourably situated friends. Protestant mobs, led by stewards with white arm bands, were advancing south on the Falls area and north on the Crumlin area. By about 11.00 p.rn. two hostile mobs faced each other in Hooker Street to the north of the Crumlin Road. The two sides fought viciously with stones and petrol bombs. The night was filled with sectarian catch-cries

and obscenities and before long pubs and houses were ablaze. At length two police armoured cars appeared and charged into the midst of the battle. They were pelted with stones and petrol bombs and one of the cars, having crashed, because of a petrol bomb had to be abandoned. The catholic crowd cheered and charged back into the fray with renewed confidence. A subsequent protestant charge brought about a terrifying clash. Again police cars rushed in to try and separate the mobs, but it was the sound of four bursts of automatic fire which finally brought the crowd to their senses. While the first shots rang out in the Crumlin area a mob from the Falls Road/Divis Street area had laid siege for the second night in succession to the R.U.C. barracks in Hastings Street. They were dispersed by armoured cars and the area was sealed off. From the roof top of the Divis Tower Flats another crowd showered stones and petrol bombs on the armoured cars patrolling the area. By 12.30 p.m, mobs of protestants, two to three hundred strong had moved in along most of the routes connecting the Falls Road/Divis Street area with the surrounding protestant areas. In both catholic areas in Belfast the cry for guns became more and more desperate. For the rest of Thursday night the pitch battle of the Bogside kind was replaced with sniper activity. Bullets ricochetted along the narrow streets. When a mini car raced down an inadequately barricaded street everybody ducked for cover. Seconds later shots and blasts of automatic fire rang out. During that night thirty-three people were shot; three men and a nineyear-old boy fatally. Catholics claimed that B Specials had been seen distributing guns among protestants. Protestants claimed that the LR.A. were at work among the catholics. Many people who were shot were in their houses when the bullets penetrated windows and walls. On Friday the confrontations continued at the barricades, notably in Percy Street and Cupar Street between the Shankill Road and Divis Street areas. Buildings from which snipers were at work were set alight, while lorry loads of men raced backwards and forwards collecting material to reinforce the barricades. A youth was shot dead as he came out of his house on Kashmir Road. Inside Clonard Redernptorist Monastery men begged priest for blessings

(Continued on page 54)

before running into the fray. Outside a priest administered last rites to a man who had been riddled with shotgun pellets. From an upstairs window of the monastery streets of terraced houses and enormous factory buildings could be seen blazing throughout the day. The bells of the monastery chimed hysterically while the priests questioned the wisdom of calling out women and children. Schools and community halls were used as relief centres. Nuns of the Bon Secour Nursing Home in Divis Street harboured shooting victims until the St. John's Ambulance arrived. Men stationed at unbarricaded entrances and exits stood aside for the ambulances that raced in and out of the area. By 5.00 p.m. the catholics on the street were in command of two small calibre .22 rifles. At Clonard Gardens, beside the Monastery, catholics failed to dislodge a sniper from a house in Cuper Street because of a chronic shortage of ammunition. Protestants behind a barricade in Bombay Street were driven back by fire from Divis Street. When the troops arrived in Divis Street at about 6.30 p.m. they were greeted with subdued applause and cheering. Men and women stood by as the soldiers poured into the blazing streets, cordoned off side-streets and took up positions behind the barbed wire barricades. There were no signs of jubilance or triumph but many visible signs of relief. During Friday night snipmg continued despite the presence of the troops. A soldier in Bombay Street was wounded and B Specials guarding Paisley's home were fired on from a passing car. A protestant invasion from the Shankill Road area was forestalled by troops using tear gas, while snipers were in command of a nearby mill. Shots were indistingushable from the crackling of burning buildings. For the second night in succession fire brigades were unable to bet to the burning homes. Locals attempting to fight the blaze in St. Gall's school beside Clonard monastery used a tender left at their disposal. When the sniper fire became too heavy they left the school to burn. The catholic Ardoyne area north of Crumlin Road was under intense siege the whole of Friday night. By midnight on Friday the toll of shooting victims in Belfast had risen to a total of 87. A man shot by a sniper's bullet at 4.11 a.rn. on Saturday was the sixth death in Belfast's three nights of chaos.
54

THE SIEGE OF DERRY.

Continued/rom page 50..

Vice-chairman of the Citizens' Defense Association, negotiated terms with Lieutenant-Colonel Bill Todd, the Bogsiders cheered in the troops and sang out the police. The result of Doherty's negotiations produced a guarantee of no entry on the part of the troops, police or B Specials and a guarantee of protection from civilian invasion. However, a telephone conversation between Bernadette Devlin and the Prime Minister produced less optimistic results. The troops were not replacing the police, the B Specials would not be withdrawn and there could be no guarantee that troops would not enter the area. However, the jubiliance of the crowd could not easily be dampened. The people had led their own fight and they would make their own interpretation of its effects. Relief at the opportunity for a rest from the turbulance of the previous days overwhelmed the need to clarify terms. And so, while Belfast was entering one of the worst nights of its history, the Bogside celebrated a confident victory. The tragedy of what happened in the ensuing days-particularly in the chaos of Belfast-was an indication that the various parties and movements which represented the minority did not fully reflect the mood of the people. While the C.R.A. could " call out " its people, it could not control the course of events on the streets. While it had defined the political end to be achieved its avowed means were not in keeping with the temper of the time. By disassociating themselves from the "hooligans" responsible for the July riots in Belfast and Derry, the Catholic hierarchy and the civil rights leaders had avoided the accusation of having failed. They talked about steps backwards as if there had been any concrete steps forward. They failed to realise that the pace of their demands and their scope as regards putting an end to sectarianism were inadequate. They regarded the police reaction (notably in Derry in October, at Burntollet in January and in the Bogside in April) as further indications of a corrupt set-up rather than as a definite worsening of the situation. They had failed to read the significance of O'Neill's overthrowal and the emergence of an even more right wing government. Despite constant goading by the People's Democracy, they had resisted any hardening of their line till they had become irrelevant to few other than the relatively comfortable Catholic middle class.

Excepting the inconsequential nocturnal withdrawals of the police to their original positions in Sackville Street and Waterloo Place, the battle remained static from this time till the arrival of the British troops on the evening of Thursday, August 14th. Neither side could afford to call a halt, and clearly neither side was capable of routing the other. Tear-gas was introduced to counteract the incendiary advance of the Bogsiders along Little James Street in the early hours of Wednesday morning, but this was offset by the darkness, which prevented the police gaining any positive strategic advantage from the use of their new weopon. When daylight returned the Bogsiders had equipped themselves with hydrants, fire extinguishers, wet sacks, goggles, and handkerchiefs doused in sour milk, vinegar or lemon juice. First-aid centres had been supplied with vaseline, and leaflets were being circulated giving information on how to deal with CS gas. While some cartridges were sent to Dupont chemical factory for analysis, others were jammed on poles which the Bogsiders carried to the barricades chanting suggestions as to how the police should dispose of them. In positive terms the battle was now for both sides no more than a gesture. It had passed through many stagesprovocation, counter-provocation, action, offensive, counter-offensive-but had now returned to a somewhat more violent version of what it had all been when the youths in Lecky Road sat watching the activities surrounding the Walker Memorial. However, if it was a gesture, it was a sufficiently dangerous one to warrant some kind of emergency measures. There was no shortage of ideas when it came to these. The Civil Rights Association called out other towns in the province. The B. Specials were activated. The Taoiseach made menacing noises on television. Troops were mobilised south of the Border. However the Bogsiders remained adamant in their demand. Only one measure would satisfy them because it alone would imply no reversal to the status quo. When the British soldiers arrived, so did sanity. Their colourful appearance and the rapidity of their movements as they phased out the weary RD.C. riveted attention. Their evident amazement at the bitterness of the situation they encountered underlined their impartiality. While Paddy Doherty,

THE NORTH-XV.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE I.R.A. ?

ONE OF THE most intriguing questions to emerge from last months events in Northern Ireland is-where was the LR.A. ? It is quite certain that the support Bogside got was minimal. Staff Headquarters now claim that one of their units built barricades for the Bogsiders. Undoubtedly this is true and is corroborated by the people of Bogside. But it was hardly a unique contribution. The preparation of defensive weapons was organised by the Young Socialists. And had the B Specials attacked the night the troops were sent in, there were no guns in Bogside and none had been brought in. The LR.A. missed out on Belfast also. This was much more unforgiveable. The B Specials had been mobilised and the Shankill Defence Committee made no secret of its aims. The R.U.C. were obviously no protection. And the Special Branch ensured that the people of Falls Road would be even less protected by swooping on the four known LR.A. men in the area and arresting them. Thus the LR.A. could not even protect its own supporters in the area and allowed strong political capital to fall into the hands of the Stormont Government. No LR.A. appeared in Belfast on Thursday night and next day five people were dead. On Friday morning there was an attempt to bring arms into the area. Two people bringing it in were arrested. But some valuable rounds of ammunition were smuggled through. These were useful in scaring off the Whippet Cars on Crumlin Road that night, but next day another two people were dead.

Specials to an even greater extent and the LR.A. would be totally defeated by them. There was no pattern to the LR.A. presence in the North. It is clear that they were poorly armed, that they were desperately short of ammunition, and that the confidence they were once held in has dwindled considerably. This seeming failure must be analysed to show that the absence of the LR.A. could have been predicted and that the exaggerated bombast of Sinn Fein meetings in Dublin was a mere smokescreen. Similarly the celebrated diversion of sending 100 enthusiastic youths up to Dundalk was nothing but an obscure lie. Before the gay party set off, it was noised around by the LR.A. that it was a diversion. But it was certainly not a diversion for slipping units over the border. The absence of the LR.A. was as a result of the policy of the Ard Chomhairle of Sinn Fein. In the last five years Sinn Fein has swung to the left. It has deliberately emphasised the need for social revolution in the South a requisite for unifying the country. The LR.A. which used to have a military objective now is merely a terrorist group. As such, it may be having a more beneficial effect in the South, but it is in no state to take on the B Specials or the R.U.C. for that matter. Its guns are out of date and are bought from ordinary dealers. Its members are known by the Special Branch and depend on lack of evidence of their activities for their continued freedom.

nationalists in the party quiet while they pushed socialist issues had gone completely awry. Thus while Sinn Fein did nothing, the LR.A. claimed it had done heroic acts. Thus while Sinn Fein tried to ensure that the South remained quiet and supported the militant postures of Fiana Fail, the LR.A. claimed it was the provisional government of the entire country. At the same time Sinn Fein has pulled out of Northern politics an autonomous party. The Ard Chomhairle was instrumental in setting up the Civil Rights Movement and has encouraged its members to engage in moderate constitutional politics in the North. Sinn Fein has stressed the South in its organisation and policy and has relied on the Civil Rights Movement to win Protestants from Unionism in the North and thus create a situation for republicans to once again freely voice their views.

Radical Progress
In the South, Sinn Fein has worked through front organisations. These link issues as diverse as the ownership of ground rents, the ownership of Irish land, the ownership of rivers and the whole question of Civil Rights for the West. In these fields, full time Sinn Fein organisers have made a good deal of radical progress. The LR.A. has co-operated fully in these Sinn Fein campaigns. When Sinn Fein have agitated in an area, the LR.A. gives concrete effect to their demands. Thus the Meath Land League was helped by the LR.A. when they burnt the farms of two Germans and an Englishman. The demand for Civil Rights in the West was helped when an American fishing firm which had cut across the livelihood of local fishermen had its lobster boats destroyed. The LR.A. has been reconstituted since the collapse of the border campaign in 1962. It acts now as the small armed wing of a militant socialist party. It is armed poorly. It has a good deal of explosive which can be manufactured from basic materials. The use of this explosive needs only two or three men and weapons are necessary only in the event of a chase. Thus a small, tight " army" can have a big political effect. The LR.A. statement was probably designed to stave off a crisis in the Sinn Fein party and to save the face of the republican movement. It was desperately needed because the last month has seen the failure of most of what the republican movement had planned and hoped for and the apparent temporary success of the LR.A. chief enemy-the Fianna Fail Government.

Pompous Statement
Yet despite the evidence of their nonpresence in the North, the LR.A. issued an incredibly pompous statement on their role in the North and their future aims. The statement is, to say the least a puzzling document. The political references to a workers and a small farmers state and to the financiers, aristocrats and imperialists who are a curse to the country appeared to be drawn up by the socialist wing of Sinn Fein. But incredible statement that the U.N. had talked enough about Tibet and Peru and should turn its attention to Ireland shows a different influence. Most of the document is couched in the old right wing jargon and makes silly claims of authority as the provisional government of Ireland. The document was probably another smokescreen. Sinn Fein's policy on the North had failed. They had let down the Catholic population in the North by not giving them enough arms to scare off the Specials. And their tactics of keeping the right wing

Late, Amateur, Uncertain

One could sum up the LR.A. help to an unprotected people as late, amateur and uncertain. In Newry and Armagh the absence of the LR.A. was as marked and no units succeeded or dared attempt pass through the B Special road blocks. Units did succeed in reaching Dungannon, Coalisland and Ardoyne in Belfast. In all of them they were told to go away, because even though the B Specials were terrorising Dungannon and Ardoyne lay in the path of a Paisleyite attack, the local population believed that the presence of the LR.A. would attract the attention of the
56

THE NORTH-XVI.

THE REPUBLIC' A failure to understand

SINCE THE Civil Rights movement first made impact on Northern Ireland affairs the Republic's political leaders have consistently and practically uniformly misinterpreted or misunderstood the movement's objectives. There has been a failure to recognise that the Civil Rights demands were made within the political context of the Northern Ireland State until very recently-and always within the political reality of the link with Westminster-and that therefore the issue of partition was an irrelevance.

Re-unification impractical
The Civil Rights leaders saw the crude and brutal exploitation of the Catholic minority as the product of a corrupt and intricate social system which had been in the making for three centuries with the active assistance of

Jack Lynch. T.V. speech-strong language, timid proposals. the British crown and the passive apathy of the rest of Ireland. It was capitalism at its most vicious and exploitive and the N.I.C.R.A. and P.D. Radicals saw the struggle as a frontal onslaught on an entire system. Of course, the Orange State would have been crushed within a United Ireland-and from this viewpoint the re-unification of the country might have been a valid objective-as a means towards an end. However, the effort to abolish partition had in the previous fifty years not alone proved sterile but had actually led to further exploitation and discrimination. Furthermore, the partition issue often proved a distraction from the really pressing issues of justice and freedomfor it (partition) was frequently repre-

sented as an end in itself-quite divorced from the other objectives. The signal successof the Civil Rights Movement in the past year has been to remove the barren irrelevant question of partition from the political arena and to spotlight the injustices which permeate throughout the Unionist State. The Republic's political parties and especially Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, both cling grimly to the re-unification ideal-it being the only surviving objective of the Independence struggle with which they can live in even the most hypocritical terms. The notions of egalitarianism, meaningful political independence and a vibrant culture are quietly shelved. The partition question can alwaysbe trotted out as affirmation of a continuing loyalty to a past heritage -in the secure knowledge that nothing tangible can ensue. Cosgrave and Blaney mouth worn-out shibboleths Since October 5th last, a number of politicians, especially Neil Blaney and Liam Cosgrave, have mouthed the worn-out shibboleths on partitionwhilethe civilrighters and the Nationalists in the North were assiduously avoiding any mention of the subject. Admittedly both politicians in question encountered some opposition to their stands-Blaney in the form of a mild rebuke from the Taoiseach; and Cosgrave in the expected shape of a speech to the contrary by Garret FitzGerald, seeking to remove the partition issue from political controversy at the time. However, it wasn't until the recent crisis that the yawning gap between the Republic's conventional wisdom on the subject and the stark realities became obvious. On Wednesday, August 13th, Mr. Lynch delivered his "historic" speech callingfor a U.N. peace-keeping force to be sent to the North and announcing the establishment of field hospitals on the border. The speech reflected the conflicting tendencies within the cabinet and by its use of strong language (e.g. "the present situation cannot be allowed to continue " and " the Irish Government can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and perhaps worse ") on the one hand and rather timid proposals on the other-" the Irish Government has therefore requested (instead of demanded) the British Government to apply to the United Nations (instead of a direct application by the Irish Government as was later made) for the urgent dispatch of a peace-keeping force to the Six-Counties of Northern Ireland . . . "
58

The setting up of field hospitals on the border was rather pathetic gesture of activity-and their usefulness perdictably has proved to be minimal. Attitude to North-Ambiguous The Government's policy towards the North has been ambiguous to say the least for some time. Ever since the Lemass-O'Neill meetings there had been a tacit recognition of the constitutional position of Northern Ireland and indeed a more or less formal recognition that the O'Neill administration was a competent and progressive one with which a Fianna Fail government could do business without losing

too much face. However, the Civil Rights crisis proved the O'Neill administration to be neither particularly competent nor progressive and showed that Fianna Fail had been mixing with rather dubious characters after all. This change of attitude towards the Northern Government is reflected in the Taoiseach's T.V. speech in which he said "Indeed the present situation is the inevitable outcome of policies pursued for decades by successive Stormont Governments." Boland-emotional It appears that confusion dominated the Cabinet discussions during the hottest days of the crisis. Kevin Boland threatened to resign unless the Irish Army was sent into Derry on Wednesday, August 13th. This idea was seriously discussed and it appears that a tacit understanding was made that under not very clearly specifiedcircumstances the troops would be sent in. There seemed to be general agreement that partition was the root of the Northern problem and the only lasting solution could be reunification. Nevertheless there was some recognition of the immediate unreality of reunification and variant of Quintin Hogg's idea that

civil rights in the North should be guaranteed by a tripartite agreement between the governments of Northern Ireland, Britain and the Republic. However, this idea has not been officiallycanvassed as yet because the time is not deemed opportune either diplomatically or politically. The mobilisation of the first line of reserves was again symptomatic of Cabinet muddle and confusion. There was no clear idea what they were supposed to do-the idea that they should co-operate in a U.N. PeaceKeeping Fc rce was obviously nonsense but it was thought they had better be around in case there was something for them to do and it relieved some of the frustrated tensions in the Government. Abroad-A Shambles Abroad the Government's initiative were a shambles. The idea of a peacekeeping force was out from the start and indeed the Government knew this, and its own Mr. Aiken had spoken against even the raising of a similar issue at the U.N. last year on the NigerianjBiafran question. That Dr. Hillery managed even to get a hearing at the U.N. is thanks to the good will of certain ex-colonial countries and Finland. Of course, the British delegate Lord Caradon himself agreed in advance to allow Dr. Hillery have his say and then let the matter quietly drop. While the Government was deep in confusion the Fine Gael party was up to its neck in it. In the absence of all other ideas Cosgrave peddled the allparty committee stunt (" we want to get on the act too ") and of course, the old partition hawk was given quite a good airing. A special party meeting was called to discuss the issue which it did, in its usual chaotic matter. This meeting was memorable for a rather sharp exchange between Sir Anthony Esmonde and Cosgrave. Gerald Sweetman confided to the listeners of " Later than Late " that he would prefer to have Northern Irish people massacre each other than have British troops on Irish soil. The Labour Party acquitted itself best of all, thanks mainly to Conor Cruise O'Brien. Partition was not raised by them. The issues of civil rights were kept clearly in focus and there was no silly talk about U.N. Peace-Keeping Forces. An official Labour delegation even visited Northern Ireland, something which never even occurred to either of the other two parties. The Northern crisis has shown that the people of the South are just as retarded in their appreciation of the present situation in Northern Ireland as are the more die-hard sectarian elements in the North.

THE NORTH-XVII.

WHERE NOW?
THE PROBLEMS of the North are so immense at the moment that an observer who ventured to forecast the future with any confidence would be very foolhardy. But the outlines of the conflicts of the next year are already taking shape, just as the pattern of last year stood out for all to see once the RU.C. attacked the civil rights march on October 5th. Britain inextricably Implicated Britain is implicated inextricably now. Mr. Callaghan wanted to avoid such a position more than anything else. Indeed he was so eager to avoid the use of British troops in the North that he pushed a reluctant ChichesterClarke to mobilise the B. Specials, thereby forcing the British into the present situation. Britain and the Labour Party are implicated now whether they like it or not. The British troops now will be blamed along with the British Government for any further outbreak of violence in the North. This is what Mr. Callaghan wants to avoid. Before this, Britain ignored the North except when trouble broke out. When this happened Britain acted as mediator for peace and reaped the resultant credit. In this way, too, a rift between the Tories and the Labour Party did not develop and the possible political advantage which the Conservatives could get from the North did not interfere with Westminister policy. If the British troops are confronted by a riot, Westminster must lose. They are trusted by neither Catholics nor Protestants. They will be fighting on two fronts. Furthermore the R.U.C. is a more efficient riot force than the troops. It can be less discriminate in its methods and can shape its tactics with the certainty of support from the Protestants. Thus the troops would probably lose unless they used their weapons which would be disastrous for Westminster on an international level. Thus Westminster must involve itself more consistently in the North. The plan clearly is threefold, Westminster will dictate decisions directly to the Stormont cabinet. The joint communique issued by Mr. Callaghan at a press conference was not even voted on by the Stormont cabinet and

must have been a straight dictate by Mr. Callaghan. Secondlythe administration of the North will come much more fully under Westminster control. The placing of two top civil servants from Whitehall in the North must be of great significance. Most decisions involving sectarian discrimination are worked out on an administrative level and Westminster hopes to abolish the hitherto easy transition from cabinet to administration in institutionalising sectarianism. Thirdly the R.U.C. and B Specials will remain under strict army control. This will be combined with the full use of the army to stop any resurgence of street demonstrations. On August 31st the army used helicopters in the environs of Fermanagh to ensure that there were no demonstrations at the trial of 45 civil rights demonstrators. Even the powerful Blackmen had to call off their annual march on August 30th in obedience to the orders of Stormont. The British troops have such a vast tactical mobility and such a range of weapons, that any banned march henceforth will not easily disobey Mr. Porter's orders. It is most probable that the banning of all marches will be announced regularly at the beginning of each month. The period of intense Protestant ritual demonstration is over for a year. No Stormont Government would dare ban the "twelfth" but now it faces only the prospect of Catholic demonstrations and Paisleyite parades. What Westminster intends to do is clear: it will enforce law and order, paralyse the Unionist militia, force through reforms, and try and keep the new army police force neutral. Mr. Paul Rose, M.P., Chairman of Labour Westminster Group on Northern Ireland said on September 2nd that Mr. Callaghan knew far less of the North than his predecessor, Mr. Roy Jenkins. And indeed Mr. Callaghan would be very ignorant of the North if he believes that the situation is at all safe. There are three crucial groups which can destroy his whole strategy. The Paisleyites, the C.RA. and the Irish Government are all in such a position. The C.R.A. Now The C.RA. has grown in prestige and power on the streets. It cannot easily stay off them now. Once Mr. Callaghan returns, the pressure to return to the streets will be very great. Similarly if British troops are used to put down civic disobedience the Irish Government will have great pressure put on them to act. And if Bogside

erupts again, as it very well may, the use of British troops will be far more repugnant to Irish public opinion than the use of the RU.C. Thus the Irish Government is by no means certain not to force a major diplomatic crisis on Westminster by the use of its army. It is significant that the reserves will not be demobilised by the Irish Government until after Mr. Callaghan returns. If the Irish army was used, it would probably split the two major parties in Westminster more bitterly than anything else. The Paisleyites But the really crucial groups in the North in the next year must be the Paisleyites, the U.V.F. and the B Specials. Callaghanhas kept the peace so far by conciliating Catholic opinion. He visited Bogside and Falls Road. However he has totally underestimated the cost of this. Never before have Protestants been so humiliated. They have had their barricades forceably removed by British troops. The people of Shankhill have fought with British troops. Westminister has openly tolerated Catholic areas erecting barricades and keeping out the RU.C. But the Protestants have probably been most angered and annoyed by the treatment meted out to the B Specials and RU.C. They are to be guarded, disarmed and sixteen are to be tried for their behaviour in Derry. The defeat of the R.U.C. in Derry must have but a large effect in unleashing the Protestants in Belfast the followingday. Thus a lot must depend on Mr. Paisley. If the Hunt Report in six weeks radically effects the RU.C. and apportions a degree of blame to them, then Mr. Paisley can call on a huge fund of Protestant anger. Clearly the Stormont Government is attempting to stop him doing this. But if they fail, then for the first time loyalists will be fighting the British, Unionism will be split and trouble could spread all over the province. One must doubt if any genuine attempt to demobilise the Specials would be acceptable to the U.V.F. which has 10,000 members, according to the Sunday Times Insight team. It is also doubtful that anything else will allow the C.R.A. to stay off the streets. One group must act once the Report is issued. Until Hunt reports there will probably be a temporary lull. There have been about four of these in the last year already. During them liberals claimed that peace has been found. Then trouble broke out again in a worse form. This pattern should continue.

Protestants are armed and angry. The Catholics no longer look for reforms but an end to the police state, unemployment and marginal poverty. These demands cannot be met by Callaghan. His greatest effect so far has been to raise Catholic hopes too high, and to anger the Protestant community. This is not an impressive record.

Attitude of New Conservative Government

The long term prospects for the North are worse. The attitude of the forthcoming Conservative Government will probably be more proStormont. At any rate the Home Secretary, Mr. Quintin Hogg, will find a sizeable extreme right-wing in the party which has traditionally supported the attitude of the 10 Unionist M.P.s in Westminster. The economy of the North will probably get worse, rather than better. Already two industries, the pottery and cloth makers, have called for a removal of Selective Employment tax to compensate them for a loss in tourists purchases and for cancelled overseas orders. No firm has as yet withdrawn plans for investment in Northern Ireland. But firms report loss in contracts and new investment may emerge in a considerably reduced scale. The tourist industry has been more than halved by the troubles of last month and was already drastically down on previous levels. Tourism is Northern Ireland's second largest industry and tends to benefit counties West of the Bann to a large extent. It is likely that employment will get worse rather than better all over the province and that it will get proportionately even more imbalanced between the East and the West of the state. This offers little comfort for the next few years for conservative politicians. It effers little solace for moderates in the British Conservative party who may encounter a growing Powellite backlash on the North, particularly if the South intervenes. In the next two months the conflict between power and flattery in the minds of the leaders of the U.V.F. may decide on whether an even worse pogrom will be organised and unleashed by the Protestant fascist movement.

A VIEW FROM LONDON

THE NORTH
SINCE OCTOBER 1968 there has been a great deal of-usually loosetalk about the Irish problem in British politics. The essence of that talk has been that, the problem of Home Rule and independence for Ireland having been a wrecking agent in British politics for nearly half a century from the time Gladstone fell on the Home Rule issue in 1886, the Civil Rights crisis of the 1960s might yet provide the material for yet another Anglo- Irish explosion in our own time, the consequences of which none of us could foresee, but which would certainly be appalling. That may well be so: though the thesis is one I found to be very popular in Ireland when I visited Dublin in the week the Prince of Wales's Own went into Derry, it is far from unfamiliar in Westminster. Last October, for example, Transport House (the Labour Party HQ) officials and Ministry of Defence civil servants, using Denis Healy as their advocate, pleaded with the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary not to let the Army get involved in Ulster: the consequences, they were sure, would be civil war in the United Kingdom and the ensuing destruction of the Labour Party. That advice was heeded as long as possible. It was not until just before the fall of Terence O'Neill that James Callaghan and the Home Office made a radical reappraisal of the situation: from April last they have been convinced both that disturbances in the North would continue and that it would be necessary eventually to send in the Army. (The formula loosely used in conversation, which gave rise to no end of dangerous misunderstanding, was that Westminster would have to "take over "), Since April, though, it has been a question of "when" rather than "whether" the Army would be needed.

IN BRITISH

POLITICS
Westminster. As long as the majority of the people of Northern Ireland, speaking through their Parliament in Stormont, wish to remain within the United Kingdom, the first principle of every or any British government will be the preservation of the Union. No ambiguity ought to be allowed to conceal the significance of this fact, whether it is palatable or not. The principle of preserving the Union, moreover, does not in any way impede the power of a British government to insist on reform. Section 75 of the Government of Ireland Act (as amended in 1923) gives Westminster power to amend and clarify existing Northern Ireland legislation; the act and the Governor's Letters Patent both give to the Queen the right to reserve the Royal Assent to Northern legislation her Westminster government does not favour. Nobody, of course, wants to risk a Unionist explosion by invoking these powers: that is why London chooses to proceed by argument and exhortation. But the powers are there: and a "review of the constitutional relationship" is a loose way of saying they might be used. Moreover, the 1920 Act also provides for the transfer to Westminster of responsibility for internal security: that is the legal basis on which General Freeland is now acting ; it has neither connection with nor influence upon the question of Partition.

persuaded beyond a doubt that only Armageddon could precipitate the reforms that could bring into the lives of Northern Catholics the dignity, security and freedom that they had been denied for fifty years. Conversely, many Unionists-and not only the diehards-feared that only rigid adherence to the status quo could stave off Armageddon and dissolution of the Union, while at Westminster, Labour ministers freely confessed that, though they would put what pressure they could on Stormont, they feared to create a situation which might eventually involve the electoral destruction of their own party. That was all before April last. I have gone into it because it was an essential prelude to what has happened since. The evolution of opinion on all sides is of crucial importance to understanding the nature of the crisis in which the North, the Republic and the British government find themselves now, and the steps which need to be taken for its resolution. Further, what happens in the future will be determined by what the British government does or fears to do: it may do too much, and precipitate a Unionist explosion; or too little, and bring the Catholics on to the streets again in despair. But what matters now is the actions and attitudes of Westminster and how other parties to the situation can influence those actions and attitudes. In consequence, everybody involved ought to base his own actions (in the light, of course, of his objectives), on the fullest possible understanding of Westminster.

Tories committed to Reform

Further, British politicians are personally and politically, as well as legally, committed to reform. One of the satisfying features of the situation in London is the agreement of both government and opposition on this subject, a state of affairs sovery different from the last Ulster crisis, in the early years of this century. On one of Captain O'Neill's visits to London he and Mr. Heath discussed both the constitutional situation and reform: and Mr. Heath authorised Captain O'Neill to convey to his own diehards the utter commitment of the Tory party to reform and to the Union. The same communication was made to Unionist diehards at the Conservative conference in Blackpool last October and it has been repeated many times since by the Shadow Home Secretary, Mr. Quintin Hogg, both publicly and privately. In an inaccurate and potentially highly misleading article in The Sunday
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Review of Constitutional ship

Relation-

Fear of Armageddon
What was noticeable about all discussion and conversation between October and April, in a more or less marked degree, was the instinctive fear of Armageddon-a fear produced by too great a respect for the destrictive record of Ireland's role in British politics. I personally found Irish Nationalists convinced that Armageddon would bring about a dissolution of Partition and, in February in Belfast, civil rights workers were

Some careless remarks and even more careless analysis have in the past obscured such an understanding. It has been commonly said, for example, that the intervention of British troops would necessarily lead to a review of the constitutional relationship between London and Belfast: and it has been as commonly concluded from that that the structure of Partition might be endangered, that the British government might, in certain circumstances, hand the North over to the Republic. Nothing could be further from the truth: what Stormont might have to fear if it cannot keep order and bring about reform, is further absorption in the United Kingdom, the endangering of its Home Rule status vis-a-vis

Times of August 17, it was suggested that the Unionists might have won some new commitment from the Tory party in the person of its deputy leader, Mr. Maudling. Contrary to impressions, there has been no change in the Conservativeposition. But Mr. Heath has made it quite clear that he is deeply concerned about the meaning of the Government's statements. The opposition is anxious to avoid the kind of misunderstanding which leads to mistrust and danger and to this end Mr. Heath is now insisting that, when Parliament re-assembles, it should be clearwho-whether the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary or some other minister-will be directly answerable

action from the British government--of the king expressed in the Civil Rights demand for direct rule from Westminster-eommensurate with the size and gravity of the problem as seen from Dublin. For another, though since last October one of the fundamental reasons for the success of the Civil Rights movement in capturing British opinion had been its dissociation from the question of Partition, there was a tendency, in the aftermath of the August riots, to resurrect the issue of Partition and fuse it, in an emotional synthesis, with the Derry and Belfast riots and the Civil Rights movement. On the other hand, on Friday, August 15, an unrepentantly

15-17). I, on the other hand, have reason to believe that the government and its military advisers saw the problem as an imperial one, that is, in the light of imperial experience. Now, I know that the formulation of this attitude often gives offence in Ireland, but it means simply this: experience dictates that sending in troops does not automatically restore order, that, indeed, sending them in too early or too late may precipitate the situation the action is designed to avoid, may make it impossible for the troops to act as umpires, may actually involve them in the conflict. The intervention in Derry was a masterpiece because it fulfilled the criteria that, in the light of experience around the world, the British government laid down: it took place exactly at the moment when both sides were exhausted. At every ministerial meeting that has taken place since last October (and the same is true of every meeting between Government and Opposition leaders) the attempt has been made to separate (at least in the mind) security from reform, though it is generally recognised that ultimately they are interdependent. This might be expressed epigrammatically, by saying that, in the security question, the experience of imperial military administration is being brought to bear, while in the case of reform the relevant standard for judging Stormont's plans is that of the rest of the United Kingdom. But no senior politician at Westminster can be shaken from the conviction that, though the intervention of the Army may appear in Ireland to have been tardy, any rushed or precipitate intervention would ultimately have produced much greater bloodshed that it averted. Distinction between Security and Reform None of this is to suggest that the judgement of Westminster is unfailingly either sensitive or accurate. But the separation of the problems of security and reform is important. Westminster is satisfied both with the reforms to which the Unionist government is contracted and, broadly, with the timetable laid down for their implementation. The problem is how to prevent, in the meantime, such a disruption of the situation as might either threaten the implementation of reforms (through reaction from Unionist diehards) or render them valueless (through explosion from oppressed Catholics). Until the watershed of last April, it was possible to hope this could be done, by following the advice and judgement of Captain O'Neill: the

to M.P.s on the subject of government policy. But it is on the expediencyand wisdom of individual actions that discussion will take place, not on constitutional principle, and, to express this fundamental agreement between the parties, there is now some talk of setting up an all-party committee to keep the Northern situation under review and report to Parliament. From this situation as it exists certain important consequencesflow. When I was in Dublin in August, I found a certain ambiguity in the attitude of people I talked to. For one thing, there was a tendency to expect some radical
64

Nationalist friend said to me, "Now I just want the trouble to stop. When it's like this, I can't care about the Border." The Timing of Troop Intervention No Irish attitude to the British government is entirely objective: it depends entirely on what you want to achieve and what you are willing to pay to achieve it. Some of my Irish friends were angrily criticising the British government for not sending in troops earlier, or for not taking over the entire internal security of the North at that stage (the weekend of August

strength of his personality, his understanding of the necessity for reform and his commitment to it, as well as the trust and confidencehe enjoyed in London, meant that the British government had a source of advice it could rely on for disinterestedness. No such perfect understanding and confidence has since existed between London and Stormont. ",'""~=" But the fall of O'Neill was a double tragedy. For the election of February which ultimately lost him his position, was called by him on the advice of Harold Wilson, and this was the first of a series of (now admitted) tactical mistakes in the handling of the North by London. The most important

ahead, everybody realises that an other such blunder by Westminster could cause a catastrophe. To avert such a blunder, the Conservative opposition will concentrate, when Parliament re-assembles, on trying to ensure that the Government understands every step it takes, by means of the closest possible parliamentary questioning. The British Government will have no shortage of advisers to weigh for it the strength of Unionist feeling. Mr. Callaghan will also have his own men in Belfast. What he lacks, and what the Government feel the lack of, is a disinterested souce of advice from the Catholic and Civil Rights position.

partition and oppression and between partition and disruption. On the basis of that analysis,his policy since August has been wholly consistent and may have served the additional purpose of quieting extremists at home. Unfortunately, however, it has totally broken his lines with the British government and ensured that any advice he may offer will be distrusted and disregarded. But, as I said earlier, it is entirely a matter of objectives. Mr. Quintin Hogg has tried to bring about a meeting of Irish minds by suggesting a declaration of religious and civil rights north and south of the Border and he passionately believes that a solution will be in the offingonly when Belfast, Dublin and London agree that civil and religious liberty are everybody's first priority. He also knows-every politician in London knows-that that might be a bitter pill for a Dublin government to swallow. It might have to be swallowedin secret. But if one's first objective is not the ending of Partition, or the securing of the status quo, but the return of peace and the advent of progress to Northern Ireland, then one must accept the fundamental principles of the British government and try to ensure that tactically, in security matters, they make no more mistakes. To that end, from the Catholic point of view, there is no better expedient than mutual confidence, now destroyed, between Dublin and London. Special Envoy If the Dublin government wanted to accept peace and progress as a priority above abolition of the Border, they could do nothing better than appoint a special envoy to London ; an envoy solely charged with this question and wholly concerned to establish trust and the right to convey the feelings and convictions of the Catholic minority to the British government. His appointment would require both sacrifice and statesmanship from Ireland. He would have to be a man enjoying the utmost respect and confidence in London. If he could be persuaded to interrupt his retirement, the right choice would clearly be Dr. F. H. Boland. But, of course, to make such an appointment would involve accepting that the real responsibility for peace in the North, and the real hope for social reform lies, not in any further disruption, but in developing the sensitivity and responsibility of London: it lies in accepting the London view of priorities and trying to influence London's tactics. It is a clear if not an easy choice.

mistakesince then was Mr. Callaghan's failure to understand the significance of the use of " B" Specials in Derry last month. Callaghan and The Specials It has been suggested that Mr. Callaghan insisted on the use of the Specials to ensure the exhaustion of the civil power before the military moved in. The plain fact of the matter is that, though he realised the Specials were unpopular, he did not begin to grasp the detestation Catholics felt for them, and the Stormont government were incapable of conveying it to him, so he did not discouragetheir mobilisation. From the use of the Specials came the controversy over their continued employment, and even the subsequent and dangerous controversy over storing their arms in a central armory. In the critical days that lie
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By its flirtation with nationalism in August, and its unreal demand for direct rule from Westminster, the Civil Rights movement disqualifies itself for such a role. Miss Devlin, though unequalled as an exponent of the wholly justified emotion of civil rights, came to be regarded as untrustworthy after her election for Mid-Ulster by her advocacy of anarchistic and internationalistic socialist fringe causes in England. She has now disillusioned even her supporters on the Labour back benches. Lynch may have right but But Miss Devlin is wholly consistent: she sees constructive anarchy as the only way to a millenium of reform in the North. She may even be right. Mr. Jack Lynch may also be right: he has continually insisted on the indissolubility of the link between

It was here that Freud first encountered the use of hypnotic suggestion by which Charcot could induce or remove at will paralyses and anaesthesiae in certain patients.

one whose instincts were far more powerful than those of the average man but whose repressions were even more potent! "

Drug Peddler
Since childhood days Freud had been dominated by the desire to be famous. His initial ideal of the great hero (Hannibal had been his favourite) gradually became replaced by the ambition to be a great discoverer in science. He became excited by the potential of the drug cocaine, particularly its properties of reducing pain and creating lasting exhilaration. Freud found using the drug helped him overcome the periodic bouts of depression and apathy to which he was prone. With the possibility of using his investigations as a way to making a name for himself he wrote a paper on the drug and, not fully realising its addictive properties, became as dangerous as a modern drug peddler by indiscriminately advocating its use to his friends. One of his closest friends Fleischl eventually developed a severe addiction which later in part contributed to his death.

Private Practice
Immediately after his marriage at the age of thirty, Freud started in private practice. The inadequacy of the methods currently in use for the treatment of "nervous diseases" forced him to seek for new and more effective weapons for his" therapeutic arsenaL" He discarded the then popular electrotherapy as having" no more relation to reality than an Egyptian dream book." In its place he used hypnosis (which he had seen used by Charcot and later by Bernheim at Nancy) to enable the patient to recall forgotten events and for making suggestions to modify the patient's subsequent behaviour. Even this method Freud found limited as it was not possible to hypnotise all his patients or always produce a sufficient depth of trance for suggestion to be effective. Josef Breuer, one of Freud's friends had developed a new technique for healing hysteria, a condition which results in paralyses and other physical disturbances arising without any apparent organic basis. Breuer had hypnotised Anna 0., a talented, attractive young patient, had relaxed her and encouraged her to talk about anything that came into her head. Eventually, the girl recounted in detail and with full emotional reactions a painful incident which she had repressed from awareness and her symptoms disappeared. Freud reasoned that traumatic events, though forgotten, could still be operative at an unconscious level and were the direct cause of the physical symptoms of the hysteria. The

I. FREUD-THE

MAN

A 200 FOOT STEEPLE was perhaps the only distinguishing characteristic of the little town of Freiberg, situated some 150 miles north-east of Vienna in what is now Czechoslovakia. It was here on the 6th of May in 1856 that Sigmund Freud was born, the first child of the second wife of an unsuccessful wool merchant who, it is said, resembled Garibaldi.

Childhood
Freud has attributed his later selfconfidence in the face of hostility to the fact that he was his mother's favourite. He was also an able pupiL At the Sperl Gymnasium in Vienna, he remained top of his class for seven years. As an adolescent his interests were broad and varied. In addition to Latin and Greek, he could read both English and French fluently and had also taught himself Spanish and Italian. But it was towards literature and philosophy, towards human concerns, that his major interests lay. He considered law, even politics, but career possibilities for a Viennese Jew of modest means were limited.

Relationship
In his personal life Freud was a model of Victorian propriety. There is no evidence of any sexual relationships save with his future wife Martha Bernays. His 900 letters to her (they were apart three of the four and a half years they were engaged) show the passionate quality of his feelings, but even here he felt it necessary, with the prudishness of the period, to apologise for even a casual allusion to her feet! As Ernest Jones, his friend and biographer puts it " Freud was some-

University
Pragmatically but somewhat reluctantly Freud decided on medicine and installed himself at the University of Vienna. It was eight years before he graduated. After experimenting with zoology and chemistry, he settled to research in the physiology laboratory of Ernst Briicke where he remained for six years, publishing numerous papers. Freud enjoyed research and it was only the insistent advice of a friendly teacher that forced him to realise he had to earn a living. So Freud finally took his degree and entered the General Hospital in Vienna. A s a junior physician, however, he was still able to carryon research and publishing, now in cerebral . anatomy.

Paris
At 29 he was appointed Lecturer in Neuropathology and awarded a travelling scholarship which enabled him to study for five months with Charcot in Paris. With characteristic shrewdness Freud gained access to Charcot's inner circle by offering to translate the great man's works into German.

Adler from the group in 1911 followed, to Freud's especial sorrow, by Jung in 1914.

War
The end of the First World War saw Freud living in defeated Vienna on a diet of thin vegetable soup and treating patients in an unheated consulting room dressed in overcoat and gloves. In 1920 he published the most controversial and least accepted of all his words, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, where he postulated Thanatos, the instinct within us all that strives for death. One may well speculate about the effect that the violence of the war and the death of his daughter Sophie that same year had had on his thinking. Fame and Cancer In the twenties Freud's work largely centred on the development of Ego psychology, in particular on the analysis of the characteristic ways in which the ego is able to defend itself from the anxiety aroused by the external world and by repressed instinctual drives. His daughter Anna, the only one of Freud's children to follow in his footsteps, was to elaborate these ideas subsequently. 1923 was marred by the first symptoms of the cancer of the jaw that eventually led to thirty-three operations and was to torment Freud until the end of his life. By now he was enjoying world fame. In 1924 he was offered $25,000 or "anything he cared to name" by the Chicago Tribune to psychoanalyse two murderers who had caught the headlines in the U.S.A. Sam Goldwyn also offered Freud $100,000 to work on a film of famous love scenes from history. Freud refused both offers. Freud's final writings were devoted, as for example Civilisation and its Discontents, to sociological considerations and an analysis of man's relationship with society. Hitler came to power in 1933. Shortly after, Freud's writings along with those of Einstein and H.G. Wells were blazing in public bonfires. Freud was still in Austria when the Nazi invasion took place in 1938. Eventually, after representations on Freud's behalf had been made by Mussolini among others, he was allowed to leave. He
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collaboration of Freud and Breuer culminated in their joint publication in 1895 of Studies in Hysteria. A mutual attraction developed between Breuer and Anna. When his wife became jealous, complaining that he could talk about no one else, Breuer broke off treatment, never to return to his "cathartic" method, and took his wife to Venice for a second honeymoon. Psychoanalysis emerges Freud, however, persevered. He refined the technique of free association which he gradually used to replace hypnosis. Through his experiences with patients and perhaps more importantly, his own protracted selfanalysis he gradually came to focus attention on childhood and place particular emphasis on the key role of early sexual development in the formation of neurosis. 1900 saw the publication of the first major work on psychoanalysis, The Interpretation of Dreams. In this Freud sets out his theory of the unconscious and of repression and attempts to show how mental phenomena such as dreams and neurosis are a product of conflict between different mental systems. The book was either ignored or reviewed badly and it took six years to sell the 600 copies printed (Freud received less than 50 from its publication). The Three

Essays on the Theory of Sexuality came in 1905. In this, his second major publication, he formalises his ideas on the development of the sexual instinct from infancy to maternity and demonstrates the intrinsic relationship between sexual perversion, neurosis and development in early childhood. Establishment A band of devoted followers, later to become the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society, gradually began to gather round Freud. He was particularly gratified by the support and interest shown by Carl Jung, a young Swiss psychiatrist. With the growing international recognition of psychoanalysis Freud was invited to deliver a series of guest lectures in the U.S.A. Freud characteristically prepared these during the course of a brisk half-hour walk immediately before each lecture. The Circle Splits In the following year came a steady stream of publications on psychoanalytic technique and theory. Freud now numbered the eminent among his patients who included, for example, Gustav Mahler. But they were years also marked by growing dissension in the close knit psychoanalytic circle, which culminated in the secession of

II. FREUD-HIS IDEAS

TO MANY people psychoanalysis means little more than that infants are supposed to do in infancy what adults do in adultery. To give a brief adequate account of Freudian theory is a little like describing the operation of a motor car in five six letter words. Freud's own theories were developed and modified over a life time. His use of animistic imagery for conceptualising intangible mental phenomena invites misunderstanding. To make matters worse, to many analysts and analysands psychoanalysis has not much meaning unless you undergo the process and experience what is being talked about. Otherwise it is like trying to adequately convey the experience of waterskiing or going up in a balloon by merely talking about it. It you want a potted account, however, read on.

A. Theory
There are three basic areas which are fundamental to an understanding of psychoanalysis. They are intrapsychic conflict, the unconscious and the development of the sexual instinct and its effects on personality and behaviour.

1.-lntrapsychic

Conflict

A man is not a unity. There are broadly three different types of forces within him, forces which may and often do conflict. Freud called the first of these the id. The id is the source of all instinctual energy, primitive, seeking only to satisfy itself, to relieve tension through pleasure. This pleasure can come through action leading to consummation or through fantasy. The young baby is dominated by id impulses. If he is in pain tension builds up, immediate gratification is demanded and he screams for a bottle or a nappy change. If his needs are met, tension is relieved and he rests back satisfied. As a child grows older, his perceptual and motor abilities develop. He is gradually able to build up ideas, to " internalise" his external world. He is no longer merely a passive recipient, he can act upon his world. Another principle now begins to emerge
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in conjunction with the pleasure principle, the reality principle. The ego, as Freud calls it, mediates between the individual and the external world. Like the id it is also concerned with obtaining pleasure but this has to be by means of reality. To obtain maximum pleasure or to avoid pain, the ego may see it is necessary to postpone immediate gratification. If this occurs, although they are both in the service of the same end, the ego may come into conflict with the id. When the infant becomes a young child, he is generally subject to demands from adults, especially parents, to mould his behaviour in particular ways. The child is likely to identify with one or other of his parents and he will " introject" their demands. Their injunctions become internalised. Immediate control by others then may not always be necessary, the child develops a superego or conscience. The superego become an important source of internal conflict as moral teaching and demands made by parents in our society are frequently in opposition to instinctual needs. Freud did not mean to imply that id, ego and superego are identifiable processes in the human brain. Rather they are conceptualisations to refer to the forces which govern behaviour, one of instinctual, hereditary origin, the others a function of learning, especially early learning. These forces often want to go in opposite directions. An adolescent may feel sexual desire and wish to relieve this through masturbation. But he has been taught, perhaps, that masturbation is evil, or perhaps even that it could cause him harm, so both superego and ego (which is a function of the way that a person perceives reality even though his perception may not be valid) in this case oppose the drive. Much of living consists of conflicts, major or minor, when part of us wants to go in one direction, the other part in another. The way we resolve these conflicts makes our personality what it is. We may be "hysterical." In the face of conflict we repress unacceptable drives and deny their existence. Alternatively, desire or hostility which arouses guilt through conflict with superego principles may be projected on to others. This projection is frequently onto members of minority or " out" groups. So respectable middleclass negroes may be seen as reeking with lust. The behaviour of meek, middle-class students may be interpreted as cloaking reckless promiscuity. This projection, through allowing the projector to dwell" justifiably" and at length on the faults of others, may

provide him with the opportunity for a degree of vicarious satisfaction without guilt. An obsessive, on the other hand may handle unacceptable impulses by " isolating" them, i.e., by admitting them to awareness but at the same time stripping them of all emotional intensity. Or the anxiety aroused by the conflict may be assuaged by ritual " undoing." Carefully avoiding stepping on the cracks in the pavement or excessive hand washing, for example, may represent ways of " undoing" or expiating disturbing impulses. With this type of explanation, the analyst is able to make sense of a good deal of apparently paradoxical behaviour. Outward shows may be least themselves. It may be just that person who is so concerned to demonstrate how masculine he is, who may be uneasily harbouring latent homosexual or feminine tendencies.

2. -The

Unconscious

Impulses which are repressed from awareness do not therefore cease to exist. They may still affect behaviour even though we are unaware of them. They may emerge in distorted form in our dreaming or fantasies. They may influence our small mistakes and slips of the tongue. They may emerge in the form of neurotic symptoms. These may take (quite rarely nowadays though) physical form-even paralysis or blindness, or they may take the form of vague generalised anxiety, generated by conflicts of which we may be unaware. Or perhaps we may perform senseless, useless actions without knowing why. Because the analyst needs to see the whole person, much of analysis consists of uncovering repressed material, making the unconscious conscious. To this end, the analyst may use free association, dream interpretation (by unravelling the distortions imposed by the censorship of the ego on unconscious impulses) and close analysis of the patient's behaviour.

3.-Sexual

Development

One of Freud's greatest findings (one which has been amply vindicated since by more scientific research) was his realisation of the tremendous importance of childhood, particularly the first five years of life. The young child's mind is peculiarly plastic, unable to always clearly differentiate fantasy from reality and is without developed mechanisms to cope with pain and anxiety. It is at this time that traumatic events (or events subjectively perceived by the child as traumatic even though they may not be viewed as such by its parents) can have their most telling effect.

Freud placed particular importance on the development of the sexual instinct by which he meant in a broad sense the drive to gain pleasure from stimulation of various bodily areas. He considered the child to advance through a biologically pre-set sequence of development. The first phase takes place over the first five years of life. The child's initial focus of attention is on gratification by means of sucking. As teeth develop his pleasure comes through biting. In the first year his whole happiness depends almost entirely on others. If his needs are satisfied his reaction to the external world will be geared to optimism. If he is deprived his impression of the world may be of a painful hostile place. Fixation at this stage may result in an adult overconcerned with oral satisfactions, chewing sweets, smoking, talking and drinking. As he grows older, becomes mobile and develops the capacity to communicate with his parents, in Western Society the child is expected to gain control over his bowel movements and excrete only at the proper time and place. This poses an important conflict for the growing child. In addition to the need to control the pleasure he can obtain through retention and
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elimination of faeces he is now, perhaps for the first time, in a position to manipulate behaviour. He is requested to do something. He can submit, rebel or accept the pattern without much conflict. The analyst would consider that the foundation for important personality traits is laid down at this stage. Depending on how the child resolves the conflict he may later become obsessive, a hoarding personality, creative, sadistic, submissive or rebellious. In the third phase, the child of four or five turns his attention to his genitals. Contact with children of the opposite sex may arouse curiosity. The young child may enjoy masturbation or arousal situations like bath time or being bumped up and down on daddy's knee. A little girl if she comes into contact with boys, perhaps younger brothers, may experience a sense of loss at not possessing a penis. The boy, at this stage, may develop strong feelings of attraction towards his mother. This attraction may be complicated by a feeling of rivalry with his father which may lead to fear and hostility. This is the well-known Oedipus complex. There is some reason for considering, rather than being universal, this may be a function of the family structure found in certain societies like that, for

example, of Freud's time. The way the five-year-old boy handles this conflict again will determine his adult sexual and psychological pattern. Satisfactory adjustment may be made by intensified identification with his father. Sexual feelings re-emerge at puberty. These are no longer auto-erotic but generally involve a search for a partner. The pattern they adopt now and the type of partner chosen will depend in a complex way on the events of the infantile period. So Freud explained sexual perversions where the satisfaction obtained comes primarily from oral or anal as opposed to genital contact, as being largely the result of a fixation at one or other of the infantile stages, a fixation which occurred through either lack of or over gratification at that time. As indicated before, personality and neurotic traits are also very much a function of this early development. The type of reaction learnt in conjunction with each stage may predominate in the adult. So a person may be generous or mean, obsessive or hysterical, optimistic or pessimistic and so on in various degrees and combinations.

B. Therapy What happens when you go to a Freudian analyst :

I.-In the initial interview the analyst would endeavour to find about the conscious you and what you felt was wrong. He would probe your background, family, present environment, work life, any significant incidents which had occurred and your personal relationships. At this stage, he would try to make a tentative diagnosis and decide whether to take you as a patient or refer you elsewhere. 2.- The next stage is designed to uncover unconscious aspects of your personality. You would lie relaxed on the famous couch, with the analyst out of sight behind you, saying anything that came to mind. The fundamental role of analysis is that you should not inhibit or hold back anything. You might recount dreams, experiences; inevitably thoughts would drift back eventually to childhood days. The analyst's aim is not to intervene, to

remain neutral, objective, to piece together your personality at all levels. 3.-Eventually he would begin to convey his interpretation to you. The aim now would be to get you to be aware of your repressions and your characteristic defences, to get you to replace, unconscious, irrational mechanisms by conscious, rational decision. To this end the analyst would use "transference." During the course of the analysis you would project on to him or " transfer" your attitudes, loves, hates, especially those developed towards those people who had been significant to you in early life. The primary reason for the analyst's withdrawn neutrality is to facilitate this process. The transference normally has a positive phase where the patient may become very closely emotionally attached to his analyst and a negative phase where he may become hostile. When the transference process has been worked through the patient is in a position to recognisethe reasons underlying the irrationality of his behaviour and perhaps is able to modify this and learn more appropriate reactions. The foregoingaccount is a generalisation, of course. The pattern of treatment will depend on analyst and patient. No two analysesare ever quite the same. III.-DEVELOPMENTS Some other strands in the web of psychoanalytic tradition : Alfred Adler was the first to break with Freud in 1911 ostensibly because of theoretical differenceswhereby Adler saw "striving for superiority" as the primary motivating force in human behaviour. Carl jung, Freud's" Crown Prince" was the next to break away, also in disagreement with Freud's emphasis on sexuality. Jung went on to develop his own school of "Analytical Psychology." He developed among other ideas that of the " collective unconscious." This refers to the deepest strata of the unconscious which Jung saw as being a residue from experiences acquired during man's evolutionary development. Jung never very successfully combatted accusations of Lamarckian thinking underlying this concept. With its quasi-mystical but very positive emphasis on developing the

patient's potentialities through "individualation" (basically the process of utilising the deep, inner forces of one's unconsciousand completingthe" self") Jungian analysis has had considerable appeal for artists and creative people. Theories developed by the psychoanalytic pioneers clearly owe a lot to introspection and self analysis. Their own personalities proved the most fertile source of their ideas. It is instructive to compare the personalities of the theorists with the emphasis of their theories. Freud, a man of strong but inhibited passions, emphasised sexuality; Adler, a short but ambitious Jew suffering,accordingto the accounts of his contemporaries, pronounced inferiority feelings, emphasised "Compensation for inferiority"; and Jung with a Lutheran pastor for a father, displayed besides a ponderous German erudition, a love of mysticism and a dislike of Freud's sexual emphasis. Certainly a good deal of the conflict between these men is explicable as being generated by personal incompatibility rather than by more rational differences. Personal experience was also a dominating influence on the NeoFreudians. Erich Fromm and Karen Homey, both emigres from Germany to the U.S.A. during the thirties and both strongly influenced by Marxist thinking, broadened Freud's ideas to place much more emphasis on social factors in the development of personality and neurosis. Fromm provides a bridge between Marxist and Freudian ideas, rejecting Marx's concept of personality as essentially a function of the prevalent, economic system and Freud's emphasis on the opposition of individual and society. Fromm in inspired historical analyses of different social contextsfrom Fascism to Capitalism, demonstrates how personality and society mutually interact. The NeoFreudians, through related theorists like Erik Erikson and Harry Stack Sullivan, have had a considerable influence on American psychiatry. In Britain, where there was a preponderance of women analysts, the emphasis turned towards the analysisof children. Both Freud's daughter, Anna and Melanie Klein, another emigre, have created new methods or modified orthodox techniques to this end. Klein has also developed some important theoretical differences from Freud's theory in relation to early childhood development and she has tended to emphasise the importance of aggression as opposed to sexuality as a formative influence. Anna Freud, along with Hartmann and others has also taken up the lead given by Freud in his later

writing with a more extended analysis of ego functions. IV.-PSYCHOANALYSIS An evaluation William James, Wilhelm Wundt, J. B. Watson. These were all more or less contemporaries of Freud and equally, if not more, eminent in their time. Yet how many of them are known today? How old fashioned they sound. Whereas the image of Freud remains almost as fresh and modern as that of hippies or polystyrene. There is no denial of Freud's impact on twentieth century society. His concepts,however garbled, are a part of modern vocabulary, are inherent in the way we conceptualise. It is sometimes hard to appreciate the originality of Freud's contribution precisely because he is now part of the way we think. Freud must be counted with Darwin, Einstein and Marx as one of the profound influences on this present age. However, in spite of all the assertions of the analysts, psychoanalysis cannot be considered a science within any meaningfuluse of that term. Numerous critics have pointed to the lack of empirical validation for Freudian hypotheses, the circularity and indeed the intestability of many psychoanalytic concepts. What empirical follow-up that has been done by the psychologists suggests that there are more than a good few holes in the psychoanalytic fabric. Some hypotheses have been established as having some validity but others have fared less well. To say this is not to deny the quality of Freud's observations and the greatness of his work. It is merely to argue, as for example, Alasdair Mcintyre has done, that Freud's contribution is that of the novelist rather than of the scientist. His descriptions have sensitised us to important aspects of behaviour and increased our ability to perceive its origins and underlying meaningfulness. But it is understanding of a literary kind, subtle but imprecise and unquantifiable, not fulfillingto any degree the scientific ideals of measurement, prediction and control. Even the value of psychoanalysisas a therapeutic method can be severely questioned. Relatively few objective studies have been done to assess the success of analysis. The majority of these suggest results little better than treatment of any kind. However, the technical difficulties of assessments of this sort are substantial and the results tell us little more than the validity of psychoanalysisas a therapeutic method has not been satisfactorilyproven. It is only fair to point out that this conclusion is likely to apply to nearly all
73

other forms of therapy at present available which attempt to produce gross behavioural changes in the life pattern of an individual. From a pragmatic point of view, merely in view of the length and expense of treatment required, psychoanalysis has relatively little to offer for the cure of specific symptoms in an everyday medical setting. Other methods currently being developed such as behaviour therapy may well have more potential in this context. Where psychoanalysis has most to offer, in my opinion, is as practical, ethical philosophy. As Philip Rieff has pointed out, Freud is "not only the first completely irreligious moralist, he is a moralist without even a moralising message." Freud, with the characteristic detachment of the scientist of his time, considered value judgments to have no place in his theory. Yet paradoxically his theories have important ethical implications. Much of his theorising inevitably leads to a debunking of accepted values and ethical principles. In Freud's terms perversion is no longer sin, it is mere childishness ; religious belief as a denial of the painful realities of death and insignificance, partakes of the quality of neurosis ; revolutionary action becomes a replay of childish revolt against the father and unthinking patriotism a mere re-enactment of childhood submission.Whether the specific Freudian explanations are precisely the correct ones is not the point. The fact that such clearly held convictionsmay have their origin in the chance vagariesof development defuses their potency. Psychoanalysisis essentially a denial of the absolute. The essenceof analysis is to get the patient to live his life without the prop of beliefs lacking conscious rational bases. One can see Freud's philosophy as the precursor of the contemporary hippie pattern of non-involvement, of" playing it cool." The point of differentiation is that for Freud not anything goes, what goes must be reality in as far as it is possible to determine it. One could argue that the failure of psychology and psychiatry to develop effective therapy for patients leading inadequate and maladjusted lives is partially a function of their insistent attempt to avoid direct contact with the ethical and orientation systems of their patients. Major therapy to change ineffectual life patterns, at least for an intelligent patient, must touch on his beliefs and orientations to the world at large. Freudian analysis does offer the patient some chance of coming to terms with the reality of his situation and of what he is. Whether this will be conducive to happiness or even adjustment
H

will depend on the individual patient. It may well be that psychoanalysis is better regarded as an education for the healthy rather than as a cure for the weak. The paradoxicalposition of Freudian analysis is that while its attempt to break down the illusions forced on us by id, ego and superego may be seen as positive, one could also regard the destruction of these illusions without replacement as a sort of negative nihilism. One way in which Jung and Erich Fromm, for example, differ from Freud is in their attempt to provide formulae by which their patients can live. Jung offers the mystic process of individuation, Fromm the humanist virtue of productive love. The nihilism implicit in Freudian theory might be considered to have important potential consequences for Western society. The debunking of dogmatic, moralistic systems and the expositionof the idea of the universality of instinctual demands may not only have provided an important impetus in launching the permissive society but may also contribute to the toppling of what Weber has called the Protestant Ethic. To undermine beliefs,to reduce the need for sublimation, to lessen the guilt generated by early conflict may be, if one accepts a Freudian viewpoint, to adulterate the initiative, drive and purpose that led to the prosperity of industrialised Western Society. Permissive education and the provision of direct outlets for instinctual satisfaction (at least in the U.S.A. and in Britain and other European countries) may well eventually work in this direction. Whether you regard this process as welcome or otherwise depends on your point of view. In any case, even should it occur, the development will probably be counterbalanced by increased automation and organisationaleffectiveness.

Ireland Ireland boasts about five operative analysts, though they might not be recognised as such by the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London. They are primarily centred in the Irish Psychoanalytic Association which operates from a peaceful, old, rambling house in Monkstown. The impetus for their initial existence came from their late founder Jonathan Hanaghan, a warmhearted, inspiring and in some ways brilliant man who came from England to Dublin in 1917and gathered a small group of devoted disciples round him in a manner not unreminiscent of Freud's early Vienna circle. The therapeutic approach adopted seems on fairly orthodox analytic lines, except for the unusual (and perhaps somewhat paradoxical) fusion of Christian beliefs and principles with Freudian techniques. Patients range from priests to charwomen. Fees depend on the patient's ability to pay. The analysts work long and hard and, orthodox or not, provide, I would consider, a useful service; perhaps one of the few places in Ireland where people can at least talk out their problems without hurry or restriction.

V.-ANAL YSIS THE CONTEMPORARY SCENE

Basic References If you want to find out more try :ON FREUD'S LIFE:

The U.S.A., of course, is where most analysts are to be found and not just because they need it more. It takes an American to afford the expense analysis is likely to involve, perhaps twice a week sessionsfor over two years at not insubstantial fees. A high fee is considered an essential part of the treatment-it's said to make the patient more co-operative. The American Psychoanalytical Association (primarily Freudian) claims approximately 1,000members. In Britain, the demand for psychoanalytical servicesis increasing rapidly. A recent estimate puts the number of practising Freudian analysts at nearly

Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. (Pelican abridged edition).
ON FREUDIAN THEORY:

S. Freud. Two Short Accounts of Psychoanalysis. (Pelican). S. Freud. An Outline of Psychoanalysis. (Hogarth Press). C. Hall. A Primer of Freudian Psychology. (Menta). D. Stafford-Clark. What Freud Really Said. (Pelican).
ON PSYCHOANALYSIS:

J. A. C. Brown. Freud and the Post Freudians. (Pelican).

PEADER O'DONNELL
Talks to the Monday Circle
THE MONDAY CIRCLE is a book club which was founded on an experimental basis by Denis Murphy (director St. Patrick's Woollen Mills, Carbery Fisheries, Coras Tractala) and Dorine Rohan (freelance journalist and author) in Cork in the winter of 1967. The object of the Monday Circle was to provide a club for a group of young people interested in Irish writers and Irish literature, who wished to deepen their knowledge of Irish writers of today. Every month the membersselect as reading material, the works of a specific author. On the last Monday of the month the author is invited as guest of honour to a dinner at which the members question him on his work, writings, views on Irish life and literature, etc. The club has proved a success beyond all expectations and the discussions with such authors as John B. Keane, Peadar 0 Donnell, Ulick O'Connor, Edna 0 Brien, John D. Sheridan, Bryan McMahon, Patrick Power, Seamus Murphy, Terence de Vere White and Gerald Y. Goldberg have proved enlightening, stimulating and totally rewarding for all those present. The founder members were a group of young Cork people: Denis Murphy, Chairman, Dorine Rohan, Hon. Secretary, Michael Bradley, Jean Duggan, James N. Healy, Charles Hennessy, Abbey Hennessy, Clodagh 0' Meara, Tony Meagher, Carrie Roche and Eithne Rowan. The membership was later expanded to fifteen when Bryan McMahon, Jnr., Craig McKechnie, Patrick McCartan and Paddy DillonMalone joined in 1968. The membership has been deliberately limited to such a small number as it is feared that with a larger number, some of the relaxed friendly and stimulating atmosphere of the discussions would be lost. Dorine Rohan has taped all the discussions and they are an interesting and possibly unique record of the opinions experiences and ambitions of some of the most prominent men and women on the Irish literary scene today. This month NUSIGHT starts the first of a series of extracts from these discussions -edited and written by Dorine Rohanwith the Monday Circle dinner at which Peadar O'Donnell was guest of honour.
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Biographical Note
Peadar O'Donnell was born in Donegal, in 1893, and was educated locally and at St. Patrick's College, Dublin. He became a school teacher in Donegal but in 1918 gave up teaching to become organiser of the LT. and G.W.U. He

joined the LR.A. and at the Truce was O/C. 1st Northern Division. He took the Republican side in the crisis of the Treaty and was elected to the Executive of the LR.A. He was in the Four Courts when it was attacked on 28th June, 1922. He was in jail with Liam Mellowes when the latter with Rory O'Connor ,McKelvey and Barrett were executed on the morning of the 8th December. O'Donnell was held for some time as hostage in Donegal. He had begun his writing in jail, and his first novel, Storm, about the AngloIrish war was published in 1925. In his " In Depth" portrait of O'Donnell in the Irish Times (April, '68) Michael McInerney writes: " Yet in spite of this preponderance of soldierly activity I think it is true to say that Mr. O'Donnell's greatest battles during his sixty years of almost continuous activity,

were won by the wielding of the pen, voice, and his creative gifts, rather than with the bomb or the gun. Indeed, his most fruitful and, in the long run, most important victories were in the winning of men's minds away from nationalism and physical force to ideas of social, civil and cultural freedom envisaged by his own heroes, Tone, Emmet, Lalor, Pearse, Connolly, and his own special friend-Liam Mellowes." Among O'Donnell's best known fiction works are Adrigoole, The Knife, The Gates Flew Open, On the Edge of the Stream, The Big Windows, Islanders and There Will Be Another Day. He was also a strong literary influence in nonfiction during his management of The Bell. He himself says his period as editor of Poblacht (the Republican paper), from 1924-1934, was one of the happiest and most active of his career.

Peadar O'Donnell on His Writing

I'm a bad person to talk about books and writing really I was never very interested in books or in writing for their own sakes. My pen was a weapon and I used it as such because I was always involved in agitation But anyone who practises any of the arts finds that he does get caught up in the jargon peculiar to his craft or art. Writing in particular has developed a jargon of phrases and cliches. In fact I once heard someone talk about 'the colour of word chords' -everyone seemed to know what it meant, but I didn't! The second reason one writes a book-I think in one's formative days, one is very exposed to vivid impressions, and every impression opens a window onto some aspect of your environment. Writing is just the gift of getting back later to one of those windows and looking out onto the particular aspect of the environment to which it gives access; and if you have a theme and you are going to make it come alive, you call upon the people of the environment to live it out, and the people you call up are true to the environment and authentic in that way. Now the interesting thing about these vivid impressions is this: I think that we get a lot of impressions which are real physical communications for us but they don't break through the level of our consciousness to form part of our reflective life; but one day you find yourself writing in the field to which these things belong, and working on them excites your mind. These communications which hitherto re78

mained suspended below the level of your consciousness suddenly take light, and you get a view and depth which you didn't hold until that moment, which you yourself enjoy. Now perhaps an extreme case of this is Joyce's Ulysses. Stephen D. lets loose bits of the liturgy, phrases from this writer and that, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas More, street ballads-all these things had registered at an earlier stage and are now released by this technique. His' Bloom' has no roots in Ireland. He is of Middle Eastern origin; he wants to be educated and noble and he wants a lot of the things which are really natural to Stephen D. Stephen D on the other hand is a Nationalist and a Catholic and passing through the Jesuits he has become a cynic; and he has the humiliating experience in a brothel of finding that the effect of the training of the Jesuits on him is that he cannot fulfil himself the way he wants-so you get these two, the intellectual frustrated, and the equally frustrated Bloom. At that particular time British rule in Ireland looked down on Nationalists and Catholic and if you renounced Catholicism it was like going over to the Castle, and he wasn't able to do that or accept his Catholicism and so he emigrates. And then you have that wonderful scene of the burial, where nobody has any sympathy for the person who is being buried and someone sees a rat scurrying across behind a tombstone and he says to his companion that they should walk by the grave of the chief, Parnell; you are asked to see in that the meaning that Parnell was eaten by a lot of rats. If someone decides to write a book

in any area of his own environment, if his sympathy with life remains richly alive, he deepens his understanding of life and it is not just as he experiences it that he recalls it. There is some little touch of the environment and he takes the idea into the workshop of his mind and beats it under the magic of the imagination, and thus you get your story. Now the reason I say this is that when I wrote Islanders (I was locked in solitary confinement with nothing to read), it almost wrote itself in my mind. I found my mind escaping to boats and islands and things that I loved. But if I were to read Islanders now, I think I would say that it was phoney! that it was either written by a man in prison or in exile. Now the reason I say this is not because its sentimental, but because I go back to the islands now and I find there is nobody left there, so my story-which had a happy endingit and life were not going in the same direction. I love my islands, and I had no idea at that time that they were going to die. I had no idea we would betray the people who pushed us forward. Now when I wrote The Big Windows it was different; I knew at that stage that that Glen was going to crumble. I had been wounded in 1921 and I was lying on a bed of straw on the floor of a house where they had given me shelter, and the two women, the mother and daughter-in-law were chatting happily together at the fire side. They thought I was asleep and I thought it unusual to hear two women of the house so friendly, and I liked it; I like happiness. Well, going off next day I said to the fellow with me, "Do you see that

young woman at the big windows? They are unusually big windows. He said she was from the islands and he didn't know much about her. I imagined that woman going to live in the Glen, away from her islands which are so full of light and she must have found her glen house very dark from the shadow of the mountains and the half-door, so she must have put in the unusually big windows. I don't know if that was the answer, I've never been back. But when I was being pushed by Jonathan Cape to write another novel, (they had previously published Islanders which I had smuggled out of prison and it had done very well. It had in fact been chosen as book of the month by a Catholic club, ironically enough in America), well, I was wondering what to write and I thought to myself of this woman of the island. How she would have more light in her eyes and her mind, and she would be a more cultured and sophisticatedwoman and she went to the Glen and absorbed these two handicaps. Then, I thought how am I going to end it? I couldn't end it like Islanders, as I knew by then that the Glen was going to wither. Now land is cruel--especially marginal land. It must be in strong hands; and people on the island are much more used to a woman losing her husband, so she took her child and went back to the island, and the people of the Glen talked of her and all she did and said. Now life was simple on the island and uncomplicated in the Glen, and so the stories are very flat with not much depth to them; although in the Big Windows there is a slight suggestion that no matter how enlightened we are, there's an outer fringe to which our enlightenment doesn't extend and everyone has his private fears. I thought to reduce this question of the enlightened area to "threepenny bits" and I took the woman who had to fight against the superstitions of the Glen, seduction and so on and in that way it had its depth. Now contrast that with a novel of Dostoyevskywho takes people, lifeliving and with all their opinions and sits back; with a plurality of voicesand people fighting out quite conflicting views and aspects of living. He seems to just stand aside to let them fight it out-just bearing witness. I was in jail again in 1927 when a family on the Cork/Kerry border died of hunger and I knew it must be some freakish circumstance because neighbours don't let neighbours die of hunger in a mountainy district. I was in a vicious sort of mood at the time and I decided that I would write a story which I based in Donegal based on those headlines as I had never

been in the Cork/Kerry border at that time. Now I had this problem-if you are going to have two people crushed in by circumst.ancesthey have to be worthwhile if there's going to be a tragedy. So I created a family so vital that when it came to a story where they had to hit the headlines, I had to murder them! Now, the Gates Flew Open is an example of a bad tempered book! In this book Mellowes plays a big part. You know, often in life one admires people from a distance, and if one meets them close up, one often finds that they are limited and disappointing. Well, I can say of Liam Mellowes truthfully, that he was the only man I ever met for whom I would have tossed my own life on the scrap heap to save his life. He was completely selfless and unambitious for himself. He went to the U.S.A. for de Valera and found that people who were organising the meetings for De Valera objected to Negroes and Indians joining

me that he saw him being led blindfolded to his death, and he went over to him and took off the blindfold and said, "Look, Mellowes, you're not dying like that," and he heard his confession. Now what happened was this: the priest said to him, "Look, Mellowes, are you sorry for any wrong you did? " and Mellowes replied: " Of course I'm sorry for any wrong I did," and the priest read into that statement enough to let him proceed. So I said to the priest, "I'm very glad I met you, because I was always venomous against the priest who heard his confession because I thought you had bluffed up to the last moment and then you were so scared of a man of his stature dying in such a fashion that when you found the bluff would not work, you heard his confession. Now, I believeyou that it was just a generous Kerryman's impulse." So when I wrote that letter recently, I said that the third man is still alive, and now it's up to him, but he could only come in by letting down the other two priests. The Bell Yes, the black mark of Irish cultural life was that there was no publishing house. Joe McGrath gaveme a thousand pounds to start the Bell and I didn t realise it was so big a cheque until I looked at it afterwards. Then I got a group of industrialists together and told them that a literary magazine could only survive if it out-cropped an industry, and then I said that we would need some civilised industrialists who would direct token advertising towards the Bell. And Davy Frayne-the Scotsman-undertook to speak for them all, and he was very patient with me. He explained that the war was on, that there were not enough materials available and that advertising would only increase their troubles. So I said " Don't worry, there is no safer place to advertise than with me! If you advertise with me I can guarantee you will have no results! " The Bell must be one of the few magazineswhich wound up with money in the kitty. The reason I wound it up
79

the meetingsand this, I think, deepened his awareness of social problems. Somebody, a moment ago asked about the recent letters concerning what happened before Mellowes execution. Well, what really happened was this: the chaplain had refused him absolution, but he was very strong spiritually. A man who could write to his mother, after being refused absolution, and say that he believed, like the old Gaels who died for Ireland, that they did not need prayer-that is a tough man. Now Father MacMahon and Father Fennelly were two of the chaplains and there was a third one whose name I won't give because he is still alive, and it's up to him to disclose it; but I met him and he told me what happened, when Mellowes was going to be executed. This priest told

when it was going well was because I did not want to see it die a slow death. You can't sit and wait for material to come in to you with a magazine like that; or you just become a dustbin. You've got to go out and get the stuffpush the magazine against life. I had a very good man in Tony Cronin, but poor Tony was very unreliable and I couldn't get anyone else to do the running around, so I wound it up. Sometimes I think I should have wound it up when Sean 0 Faolain stopped editing it. Someone asked there if the Bell or a similar magazine would survive in a socialist society. It might; when I go to Eastern Europe and they talk to me of the classical works etc.-I wait and then I ask them "What is the position of the small magazine, because all you young people were conditioned by the circumstances before the revolution. Well, these young people write under the new circumstances. How free are they? And I always find my stand more popular with the young than the old people. It is a great pity that there is no secular publishing house in Ireland. Mercier Press are a publishing house, but they publish mostly religious books. The others are only printing houses or kept going on charity. Another reason that we don't have a good publishing house is the censorship ban. There was an amusing incident once in a publishing firm in Dublin and there was an order for 250,000 books for a certain book which was a very good order. But the linotype operator refused to print it on the grounds that it was pornographic. So we got a priest in who explained to him that the order was for export, so it was okay!"

Religion
Well, I can answer that best by way of telling a story. Maria Ducci was very much on the rampage in Catholic Action here at one time, and the editor of Black Friars came to Dublin and he came in to see me at the Bell for a comment on this outburst of Catholic Action. I thought to myself
80

" Someone is giving your leg one hell of a pull to send you to me," so I decided whoever it was, I wouldn't let them down; so we adjourned to the Gresham for a coffee and my mind was working nineteen to the dozen on the way down, so we sat down and I said, " You'll find it difficult to understand this. Evangelical outbursts are rare in purely Catholic countries because authority is very well rested. In Protestant countries you have evangelical outbursts because nearly every Protestant has to make his own religion. But in Ireland, you must remember that for a period the priests and the bishops deserted the people and went on a high jinks into politics and we were left with no pastors for a time. We were still Catholic, but we had no priests and no bishops. We held on to our religion and, of course, we thought one day they would come back" Then one day after their adventures they came back and I said to him "You know, you can't do this sort ofthing-be robbed of pastors and bishops for a period without introducing Protestant trends; and the evangelical outbursts that are being seen in Ireland now are merely the manifestation of Protestant trends introduced into the Catholic Church in Ireland during the time that the bishops and priests deserted us! " Now the funny thing about it all, is this: it never mattered one rattling damn to me whether a priest or layman made a statement-I dealt with it as an opinion and I would go so far as to say that I was numb in many ways about this. I could knock hell out of an opinion and be quite surprised to find an angry man around me about the opinion-because I never noticed him. So as far as I was concerned, I regarded these playboys of the clergy who went off in that way as just playboys, and I had the greatest contempt for them. I remember an amusing incident which happened when I was a young fellow at home in Donegal. We used to go to the Home Rule meetings as did the shopkeepers of the village-good Nationalists, and the priests, and the Parliamentary M.P. made speeches generally about Manchester marches, and we did all the cheering. Then the I R.A. movement came and we zipped up the village and told the people of the village whom we spoke for to say nothing and that we would do all the talking. And one day we had done something stupid and the parish priest had a go at us during a sermon and me and my organisation moved out. And the last man to leave the church was a shopkeeper whom we knew had no sympathy with us. So

afterwards somebody said to him that day, " In the name of God, Anthony, what possessed you to leave the church this morning?" "Indeed, I'll tell you the reason," he replied, " every customer I had in the world had left the church! " You see Ireland in my opinion is not a clerical-ridden country, but it's a yahoo-ridden Church! and it's the black bastards of the laity who are the trouble in Ireland. And you don't get an anti-clericalism movement among workers. They may stop practising their religion like many of the Irish who go to England, but they are not anti-clerical. Anti-clericalism is a middle class manifestation.

Nationalism
Nationalism is not dead. You must remember that even the anti-Hitler warfare was all patriotism and even in Russia it was' Mother Russia.' Nationalism dies when colonialism dies and all subject nations are free to realise their ego as a nation; then they can afford to forget about Nationalism. Sean Lemass and Co. have done a wonderful job here in the south by evolving a nationalism without the slightest trace of anti-Imperialism in it. Where the imperialists withdrew from the emerging countries they retained their financial control. Algeria is the only country where they have carried out the revolution to the degree that they eliminated colonialism or neo-colonialism of the withdrawing country. Cuba did, but could not have done so without Russia.

Common Market
I think the Common Market will strip the population of this country and Scotland and Wales. I mean, why the hell should anyone set up an industry in Ireland when the market is across on the mainland of Europe. The cartel Common Market was not a movement by the French, German and Belgian people. It was the cartel of these countries roping off territories for themselves to exploit. When they were organising industry in this country, it was all they could do to get them to move twenty miles outside Dublin so why will anyone move half way across Europe? If Britain goes into the Common Market, Ireland will be at their heels. You can't afford to spend forty years creating a dependent economy and then have the market you have depended on slip into somewhere else to where they've been pulled in for a subsidy. And its the damnedest nonsense our fellows going around for discussions.

Ireland Today
I never go in for wishful thinking. I am not an angry man, but I am angry that there are a million Irish people in England. The first thing I would have done is to take the industrialists and say 'How much further can you expand and how many more people can you employ with financial help from us, and what are the areas you can't reach, and for the rest, I would have bought the knowledge, not the firms. I don't know any country which does not borrow to expand its industry, but we will not even use our own. In this country the Dail is the screen for the policy-makers and the ministers are their stooges. When the policies go wrong, the Government is thrown out and a new one comes in, but the policy-makers remain there. I think it is a wonderful escape to have the people excited over education, but it only means we are producing a different type of emigrant. I would like a Government that would concentrate on Irish industry with roots in the country first, and give them the greatest facilities possible for expansion. And where private enterprise couldn't take it, I'd have hired experts, but I would not have let in alien firms. The main weakness of the Irish economy today is in not being able to accommodate all the Irish people who want to be accommodated. No, I don't advocate joining the "rat race," but I look at the question realistically. In any Irish village if the young people have money in their pockets they'll brighten their village, and marry and have a family, etc. The material basis for life must be there first and then the other follows.

If you select a clever idea and life cannot use it, it will just develop into a cult and not grow from there. It will be contained within that bridgehead. You have one woman in Limerick, Frances Condell, who was a good example at the front. And all the women of Ireland should have written to her encouraging her in public life. If you are going to do any agitation, you must remember that the individual himself doesn't do it. People must be involved. You can change the direction you are going in, but you must shorten your steps to bring people along with you. Now when I was doing the Land agitation, I was at home in Donegal, and one day the Guards came for me and took me away and in the evening, they let me out

Women
I think except for the Connolly short period in Dublin that women did not playa part in the National Movement and on account of not having the participation in leadership they were pushed out of equality in industry. Before any equality emerges, women must get equal pay for equal work. Irishmen are pretty backward in relation to women and Irish women will have a pretty hard fight to break their way through. And there is only one way to be free, and that is to practise freedom. I think the road is wide open for women if you will only get some group that will serve as a focus for feminine revolt. If I were advocating it I would suggest that women should burst out on a concrete issue such as housing and force themselves into the front row on this. If you are agitating you must select an idea that life can use, then it will form into a movement.

again. And the following day they did the same thing, and so on for a few days. And after a few days a neighbour said to me, "What on earth are you at, Peadar, there was a time when no one could get hold of you and now two Guards can come and get you any day of the week." And I said, "Yes, but if you read about that, would you believe it?" and he said "Indeed I wouldn't," and I said" That's just it, and they won't get me again." Now the interesting thing was that I took my work with me every day to the barracks and one day when the sergeant told me I could go, I said, " Look, Sergeant, I'm in great form for work, would you ever leave me for a while and send me in a cup of tea? " So he sent in the tea, and after that when he took me in, he would give me a clock and say, "There you are, you'll know yourself when to go! " So there is no need to quarrel with the police. You see, violence must be the crystallisation of the highest point of courage and intelligence in a mass movement going forward.

PEIG SAYERS
lE SEAN

o SOlllEABHAIN
(An Bloscaod Mer), agus chaith is daichead eigin bliain da saol ansiud, Saolaiodha Ian clainne di ach cailleadh an chuid ba mho acu og, Fagadh Peig ina baintrigh go luath ina saol, agus b'eigean di bheith ag bracadh leis an saol chomh maith agus fhead sf feasta, Ba mhinic aduirt si go raibh cuig chliabhan deag ar an oilean nuair a phos si, agus bun6c i ngach ceann acu. Ar an la inniu, nil fear na bean na garsun na gearrchaile ann, gao tracht in aon chor ar bhunoc-e-an ait go leir faoi chaoirigh agus coinini agus eanlaithe. Is mor an t-atharrach saoil e. Bhi de phribhleid ag Peig go raibh mar athair aici fear a raibh lear m6r scealta agus seanchais ina cheann aige, agus 6 tharla gur bhronn Dia bua cuimhne thar an gcoitiantacht uirthi, thug si lei go cruinn an meid a chuala sf ona bheal agus I ag fas suas. Uaidh sin is ea phioc si suas an chuid is mo den stor de eolas traidisiunta agus de scealta, idir fada agus gearr, a bhiodh aici a aithris 0 mhean aois amach. Ni raibh an saol ar a chois an uair sin mar ata anois, agus of thugadh ach duine fanach cuairt ar an Oilean Tiar suas go dti daichead bliain 0 shin. Ansin thosnaigh cuairteoiri mar Carl Marstrander agus Carl Borgstrom on Iorua, An Dr. Robin Flower (" An Blaithin ") 0 Shasana, agus Kenneth Jackson on Bhreatain ag tabhairt turais o am go ham ar an oilean ar their na Gaeilge. Bhreacaidis sios scealta agus amhrain agus seanchas 0 na seandaoine ann agus chuiridis i gcl6 thall agus i bhfus iad. Nuair a scriobh Flower an leabhar brea san, The Western Island (1944) mar gheall ar an Oilean Tiar, chuir se caibideal speisialta isteach ann mar gheall ar Thomas Criomhthain (udar An tOilednach) agus ceann eile mar gheall ar Pheig Sayers. D'fhoilsigh Kenneth Jackson cnuasach de scealta 6 bheal Pheig i milealoideas, iris an Chumainn le Bealoideas Eireann, sa bhliain 1938, agus bhi daoine ag caint uirthi feasta mar bhean gurbh hiu f cuairt a thabhairt uirthi. Theadh Maire Ni Chinneide, bean Sheain Mhic Gearailt, go dti an t-oilean gach samhradh agus d'aithin si ar a seanchas nar ghnathbhean Peig, D'aitigh si uirthi gur choir di sceal a beatha agus cuntas ar an saol san oilean a dheachtu da mac, Micheal 6 Guithin ("An File "), agus leis au aimsir of leabhar amhain ach dha cheann uaithi a cuireadh i gclo le cabhair Mhaire : Peig (Comhlucht Oideachais na Eireann), agus Machtnamh Seanamhnd (Oifig Dhiolta Foil-

AR AN triu hi de Mhi na Lunasa i mbliana do nochtadh leac mar chuimhneachan ar Pheig Sayersag ceann a hua i reilig Dhun Chaoin i gCiarrai. An Dr. Seamus 6 Murchadha as Corcaigh do ghearr an leac mhaisiuil sin, agus ba e

an Priomh-Bhreitheamh Cearbhall 6 Dalaigh a nocht f ar son an Choiste Cuimhneachain (Micheal 6 Siochfhradha, An tAthair Tadhg 6 Murchadha, Domhnall 6 Morain, Annraoi 6 Braonain,agus me fein), Bhi airgead chun na gcostasa ghlanadh a bhailiu ag an gCoiste le bliain roimhe sin, agus fuarthas sintiuis 6 chein agus 0 chomhgar ina chomhair. Mura bhfuil breall orm, is e seo an t-aon leac chuirnhneachain amhain ata ina seasamh sa tir seo do sheanchai (is mar udar leabhar a togadh leac ag ceann ua Thomais Criomhthain roinnt bhlian 6 shinsa seanreiligsa duiche cheanna), Nior choir gur mar sin a bheadh an sceal, mar bhi seanchaithe mora eile sa cheantar san agus i mbaill eile ar fud na Gaeltachta gur dhiol cuimhneachain mar sin iad, chomh maith, Ag leamh irisi bealoidis on Ruis dom le roinnt bhlian anuas, chonac tagartha go tiugh iontu don omos ata a thabhairt ansiud do na seanchaithe cluiteacha, idir fir agus mna, Agus i gcathair Helsinki sa bhFionnlainn ta dealbh bhrea ina seasamh cun na leigfear i ndearmad Tepana Yesi, an seanchai deireanach i Karelia a raibh an fhiliocht chianaosta ar ar bhunaigh Elis Lonnrot an Kalevala (dan naisiunta na Fionnlainne) le haithris aige. Cerb I Peig Sayers so, agus cad a bheir gur thuill si cail chomh mor san a bhuanodh a cuimhne ? Rugadh i mBaile Viocaire i gceantar Dhun Chaoin i gCorca Dhuibhne i sa bhliain 1873. Phos sf go hog fear de mhuintir Ghuithin ar an Oilean Tiar

seachan Rialtais). Leathadar san cail Pheig go foirleathan i measc Gaeilgeoiri, agus bhlais Bearloiri cuid de fhealsunacht Pheig nuair a cuireadh leagan Bearla den dara leabhar an fail, An Old Woman's Reflections, le Seamus Ennis. Ba mho na riamh a bhiodh tarraingt ag daoine ar an oilean de thoradh na leabhar san agus roinnt leabhar eile do lean iad, agus ba gheall le bainrin ina cuirt Peig gach samhradh ag failtiu roimh strainseiri agus ag caint leo. Fuair na ceadta blas den chanuint sin uaithi, mar ba mhuinteoir maith ar a sli fein i, Ni raibh sagart na seipeal, siopa na dochtuir ar an oilean, agus is ar an gcalm a bhiodh na hoileanaigh ag braith chun a mbiodh uathu, idir easnaimh chorpordha agus spioradalta, a sholathar d'fharraige on mintir i nDUn Chaoin no sa Daingean. Bhi scoil an oileain ar bheagan leanbhgan aon dalta in aonchor i ndeireadh baire-s-agus bheartaigh an Rialtas ar thithe a chur ar fail i nDUn Chaoin don lion bheag daoine a bhi le haistriu amach, Nior mhaith leis na seandaoine an seanfhod a threigint, agus Peig mar dhuine orthu, ach gheilleadar go leir nuair a thainig an t-am. I mBaile Viocaire a chuir Peig agus a mac futhu. Nuair a bunaiodh Coimisiun Bealoideasa Eireann sa bhliain 1935, ceapadh bailitheoiri thall is abhus chun dul i mbun oibre. Toghadh Seosamh 6 Dalaigh 0 Bhaile Viocaire an bhliain dar gcionn agus chaith se cuig bhliain deag ag gabhail den obair. Aon chuairt arnhain a thug se ar Pheig Sayers istigh ar an oilean ; d'fhailtigh si roimhe, agus ba leir do go raibh fonn uirthi a raibh d'eolas agus de scealta aid a thabhairt do. Bhi curarn an ti uirthini raibh aon bhean eile sa teach-agus ni chun sui cois na tine a bhiodh si agus i ag eachtrai do, ach sios suas ar fud an ti, agus scealta agus seanchas a thal aid ar an mbailitheoir. An uair fanach a shuiodh si, agus sceal aid a innsint, leathadh si amach a dha lairnh agus d'fhaisceadh si lena cheile iad faoi mar bheadh duine bheadh ag achuini chun De. B'in nos a bhi ag seandaoine eile, chomh maith. Bhi Peig seacht mbliana agus tri fiehid an uair sin, agus i briomhar, broidiuil i mbun gno an ti. Nior mhaith lei ar dtus sui sios agus a sceal a chur sios ar an Edifon ; ni : bhiodh si ar a suaineas na ar a cumas mar sin, adeireadh sf. Nuair a thainig Peig ehun conaithe i mBaile Viocaire ar an mintir, ni bhiodh ar Sheosamh 6 Dala ach cupla neomat siuil a dheanarnh ona theaeh fein chuici. Theadh se chuiei gach la, no gach re la, ag breacadh eolais sios uaithi 0 Mhi na Samhna 1942 go dti Deireadh an Fhomhair, 1943, gan tra a theacht ar astor eolais na easnamh ar a

cuimhne. Istoiche is fearr a bhiodh si chun seanchais, nuair a bhiodh curaim an lae curtha i gcrich aid. Shuiodh si ar aghaidh na tine amach, agus i cromtha anuas uaireannta ag feachaint isteach sa tine, no scaoilte siar sa chathaoir, agus a haghaidh in airde ar na frathaca agus a suile dunta. Bhiodh si foidneach, geilliuil i gconai, nuair a bhiodh Seosamh a ceistiu, agus ni raibh ceist da gcuireadh se uirthi na biodh a freagra aid, agus sceilin mar leiriu ar an abhar a bhi a chioradh acu. Thosnaigh an radharc ar bheith ag teipeadh uirthi an Fomhar san; bhi deieh mbliana agus tri fichid da saol istigh faoin trath san, ach bhi si abalta ar an snath a chur i gcro na snathaide fos faoi sholas an dorais. Thug an Dalach roinnt bhlianta ina dhiaidh sin ag bailiu i geontaethe eile, agus thug Peig tamall san ospaideal sa Daingean i rith an ama. Nuair a thug se cuairt aris uirthi ar an deichiu la de Mhi na Samhna, 1950, bhi si sa bhaile ina teach fein aris, sinte ar an leaba, agus i daH-" dorcha, dorcha, dorcha," mar duirt si fein, Thagadh tocht goil uirthi nuair a chuimhniodh si ar na laetheannta roimis sin nuair a bhiodh ar a cumas bheith ar fud an ti, agus scealta a aithris aid gan dua, gan disceadh. Chaith an Dalach cuid mhor den da bhliain sin (1950-1951) ag scriobhadh sios abhair uaithi, agus i ar a leaba. Ba mhinic ina haonar i nuair a bhiodh a mac amuigh i mbun gnotha eile, agus ag paidreoireacht agus ag machtnamh a chuireadh si an t-am isteach. Nuair eirigh Seosamh as a phost mar bhailitheoir don Choimisiun (chuaigh se le muinteoireacht), thug se cuairt ar Pheig Oiche Shamhna, 1951 chun slan fhagail aiei. Rug si ar laimh air agus phog si go duthrachtach a lamh ; thainig cnead inti agus ghoil si. Duirt si leis gurbh fhada lei go dtagadh se chuici i gconai, agus go mbeadh oiread uaignis uirthi ina dhiaidh agus a bhi i ndiaidh einne clainne lei. Nior fhead si a thuilleadh a ra ansin. Scaradar. Bhi deireadh le bailiu 0 Pheig. Mhair si seacht mbliana eile gan leas radhairc, an chuid is mo den am ina teach fein, tarnall in ospaideal i mBaile Atha Cliath, agus an treimhse dheireanach faoi churam na mban rialta in Ospaideal an Daingin, ait ar cailleadh i i Mi na Nollag, 1958. I rith na dtri mblian no mar sin a chaith Seosamh 6 Dalaigh ag bailiu eolais 0 Pheig, scriobh se abhar ona beal a lion se mhile leathanach de phaipear-e-isteach is amaeh Ie milliun go leith focal. Ta na scribhinni sin i seilbh Choimisiuin Bealoideasa Eireann, i gcoimead don Stat. Tiocfaidh an t-am, le congnamh De, nuair a fhoilseofar sraith leabhar ina mbeidh na scealta, idir fada agus gearr, an

seanchas go leir, na hamhrain, na paidreacha, na seanfhochail agus na tomhaiseanna, agus mile gne eile de sheanchultur ar gcine i gclo, Is mo rud a chabhroidh chun cuimhne Pheig Sayers a choimead beo: na leabhair a dheachtaigh si da mac ; na grianghrafa do thog na ceadta duine di; an pictiur daite a rinne Sean 6 Suilleabhain, peinteir, di; na taifeadta a rinne Robin Flower, an B.B.C., Radio Eireann agus Coimisiun Bealoideasa Eireann da glor ; agus an leac ag ceann a hua i reilig Dhun Chaoin, Is i an chloch chuimhneachain is mo agus is luachmhaire agus is buaine ar a earn, le congnamh De, an t-eolas go leir a chruinnigh Seosamh 6 Dalaigh uaithi. Nuair a bheidh san ar faille leamh ag muintir na hEireann ar ball, aithneoidh siad gur bhean suaithinseach go leir 1. Bean mhaordha, cuiosach ard ina baill beatha ba ea Peig Sayers. Aghaidh bhrea aid, agus thugadh na cuairteoiri go leir faoi deara na hathraithe a thagadh ar a cuntanos, agus sceal a aithris aid, ag freagairt don abhar a bhi i gceist, Bhi feith an ghrinn go laidir inti, nuair oir sin don ocaid, ach chonnacthas ag sileadh deor i agus Caoineadh na dTri Muire a ra aiei. Lean an croi eadtrom aid, d'ainneoin ar ghabh si trid de bhracadh agus de thriobloid] an tsaoil. Dochas inDia agus foidhne an da threith ba laidre ina dearcadh ar an saol. Rug Peig an chraobh, mar sheanchai lei i gceantar (Chorea Dhuibhne), ait a raibh na scoir daoine suas lena linn a raibh cail tuillte acu i mbun na ceirde ceanna san. Bhi a Ian bua aid. Bua cuimhne a bhronn Dia uirthi; ba dhoigh leat uirthi na cuala si sceal na eaehtra na amhran na einni eile riamh nar thug si lei go cruinn e, agus bhi sin ar bharr a teanga aid nuair a bhearfadh an ocaid oiriunach uirthi, Bhi bua cainte, leis, aid, agus stil nadurtha chun sceal a thabhairt amach. Ealaiontoir ba ea i, mar bharr air sin; bhi ar a cumas snas ur a chur ar sceal gach uair innseadh si e, gan cnamha an sceil fein a atharu san am cheanna, Tiocfaidh an t-am nuair a bheidh staidear a dheanarnh air sin, mar ta taifeadta ar fail de scealta a togadh sios uaithi agus fiche bliain de spas aimsire idir an da thaifeadadh. Mar bharr ar a bhfuil raite mar gheall ar Pheig, nior mhiste a lua go raibh bua fealsunachta aid, chomh maith, do dhuine mar i na raibh aon oideachas mor uirthi seaehas an meid a thug si lei on duchas agus on saol ina timpeall. Leigh aris an leabhar ud, Machtnamh Seanamhnd, agus chifir narbh aon ghnathdhuine 1. Beannaeht De lena hanam agus le hanama na seanmhuintire go leir anonni.

BOOKS
ERNEST HEMINGWAY Baker: Collins, 63s.

by Carlos

"NOT A DEFINITIVE biography, nor was it meant to be "-says the author. And he adds-" It is not what is commonly called a critical biography." "Finally," he confesses, "this is not a thesis biography"-there will be no purposeful effort to discover what exactly dominated Hemingway's psychological outlook, what shaped the nature and direction of his career as man and artist. All this in the preface, and one wonders anxiously what in God's name kind of biography it can be. Baker, it turns out, has plumped for fact. Most of the facts are here-up on seven hundred pages of them-diligently collected, and earnestly set down. The over-all result is a book wearisome and exciting by turns: wearisome in its relentless compilation of facts, exciting when Hemingway (almost in spite of the author, one feels) shakes off the statistics and stalks the reader's imagination like a Tamerlane-a Tamerlane a la Life Magazine but in this wizened century one can hardly ask for more. For the statistics, let the reader deal with them in God's good or evil time. For a taste of Hemingway in charge, take this account of an episode in the Second World War. It is 1944, and the Germans are waspishly tangled with the American advance. The narrator is Buck Lanham, an American officer, and buddy of War-Correspondent Hemingway "The meat had just been served when an 88 crashed through the wall which Hemingway was facing. It went out the other side without exploding ... J was the last one to get to the head of the stairs [which led to an adjoining cellar]. I looked back. Hemingway was sitting there quietly, cutting his meat. I called to him to get .. into the cellar. He refused. I went back and we argued. Another shell came through the wall. He continued to eat. We renewed the argument. He would not budge. I sat down .. We argued about the whole thing but went on eating. He reverted to his favourite theory that you were as safe in one place as another under artillery fire unless you were being shot at personally. I pointed out that this was precisely what was being done. . We continued to argue, to drink, and to eat . .. The firing presently died down and the rest of the group came back up. The food was re-heated and the dinner continued." An admirable vignette, and probably no simple coincidence that it belongs to the later Hemingway history. With his

man-of-action bias, and its accompanying cult of the physical, he was then especially vulnerable-and becoming more so every year. And, of course, the more vulnerable the more interesting. Accordingly, his cavorsions in the Europe of 1944 provide perhaps the best reading in the book: Hemingway tearing up the rule-book to assist the French Resistance, liberating Paris--or seeming to, entertaining the world at The Ritz, following the advance and, by the hour, adverting to the stench of death. This is a Hemingway who compels respect, largely because he so evidently knows-and knows in the bone-the poetry of combat, or, in other words, he is gaily in love with existence.

What of the writer? The wonder to this reviewer is how he got any writing done. Carlos Baker's presentationintentionally or otherwise-gives one the feel of a Hemingway who was manof-action first and writer/reporter afterwards. Many would assert that the Hemingway corpus bears this out. And, in a curious way, the other writers who come and go in these pages seem to crowd Hemingway to the margin, albeit to the margin of the literary as opposed to the broad world. Joyce, Dos Passos, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein-it's a procession, even an awesome one. Enough to cow Hemingway? More than likely. Certainly, re-reading In Our Time and The Old Man And The Sea, drawing on recollections of the other novels and stories,

and making what one can of Baker's account, the picture of a man who took his greatest risks facing nature in the raw-rather than at his desk-emerges strongly. And what of the women-they also come and go. As Hemingway whirls from continent to continent, Hadley gives way to Pauline, Pauline to Marthe, Marthe to Mary. One admires their courage. Obviously, living with him was as impossible as it was exciting. Contrary to popular opinion, however, he was no dedicated womaniser. If Baker is to be believed (and on the basic rhythms of his subject's life, he gives one the sense of reliability), Hemingway simply took them as they came. And, besides, he simply hadn't the time. For the record, he seems to have broken fifty-fifty in the marriage-stakes-not a bad score: a delightful first wife in Hadley, ragged wars between, and unstinted love and care from Mary Welsh at the close. That terrible close: physical disintegration followed by mental near-disintegration, and then suicide. Baker is terse on the subject-and, it may be, validly so. Perhaps that ending was implicit, the natural climax to a life vehemently lived on well-defined (if limited) terms. To say that Hemingway was a classic American type may strike some as a mean truism, yet there is a degree of tribute involved in the verdict. With regard to the Je suis red-blooded homo Americanus side of him, it has to be admitted that what comes most readily to mind is Mailer's Why Are We In Vietnam ?-that savage indictment of the breed. Simplifying for artistic reasons, Mailer shows us the breed at its worst. Hemingway-the finest of him, and most of him-manifested the breed at its reckless best. Alongside the violence, went astonishing courage, generosity, gentleness, even innocence. He wasn't a great writer, couldn't have been-he'd been cast for another role. (The brooders of the American South could be relied on to supply the great writers). He desired-at least intermittently-to be a literary artist of stature but The Muses would have none of it. Crucially, he lacked a sense of irony-the defect of his nation. Combined with an absence of bitter dedication, that lack kept him-qua writeramong the ranks of the great reporters. It is as one of that band, likely, that he will be remembered. And as one who, between typewriters, fought and hunted loved, hated, drank, sang and argued from Chicago to Venice and back again while the going was good. Came a time when the going was no longer good: he had earned the right to call it quits-and did so.- TOM MacINTYRE.