1640s Today Famine Or Holocaust? Fianna Fail Renaissance? John Minahane Jack Lane Labour Comment page 14 page 16 back page IRISH POLITICAL REVIEW October 2010 Vol.25, No.10 ISSN 0790-7672 and Northern Star incorporating Workers' Weekly Vol.24 No.10 ISSN 954-5891 What's Constitutional? Béal an Lenihan Junior Minister Mansergh Speaks So Brian Lenihan made the journey Fianna Fail Junior Minister Martin Mansergh has been putting himself about. from Cambridge University to Beal na Speaking at the McCluskey Summer School he said that Fianna Fail could not contest mBlath. It was a short trip. Now, if he had elections in the North because it was a party in government in the Republic and to do so gone to Kilcrumper! . would create a conflict of interest and damage the peace process. He hailed his appearance at the place Senior Fianna Fail Ministers, Dermot Ahern and Eamon Cuiv, have been encouraging where Michael Collins,master of the the setting up of Party organisations in the North. The measure is generally supported Treaty state, was killed in an absurd gesture by Cumainn around the South. The question of contesting elections in the North has not of bravado, as a "public act of historical arisen as a practical proposition because party organisation is still in a rudimentary stage. reconciliation". But Mansergh has jumped in to pre-empt it, supported by the new leader of the SDLP, This historical reconciliation was made Margaret Ritchie. The Irish News wrote: over sixty years ago, when those whom "Martin Mansergh's comments will come as a blow to party members lobbying for the Collins had left in the lurch made a final Republic's senior governing party to contest assembly elections next year. The minister repudiation of the Treaty by shaking the of state and former special adviser to the taoiseach on Northern Ireland also said he had dust of the British Commonwealth from doubts about whether there was any political advantage to being an all-Ireland party. their feet and contributed a joint account "Sinn Fein are the only party to contest elections throughout Ireland… “The political of the War of Independence with those advantage of being an all-Ireland party is debatable, given the difference in conditions and roles north and south of the border”, he said. “There has often been felt to be space north who had refused to subscribe to the Treaty of the border for an unapologetic constitutional republicanism. While Fianna Fail has in the first place. (See The Anglo-Irish acknowledged formally in a number of ways the existence of significant political support War by Sean MacEoin, Tom Barry, Oscar for it north of the border, it is difficult for a government co-sponsor of an only recently Traynor etc.) bedded-down peace process to enter itself into electoral competition without creating a Lenihan launched Eoin Neeson's book conflict of interest. Opposition parties of course are under no such constraints“." on Myths From 1916 in Dublin in 2007. But, in a democracy, Opposition Parties are Parties which aspire to form the The way he blanched when Manus Government. And, in the Republic at present, all three Opposition Parties are in with a O'Riordan concluded the meeting by good chance of becoming Government Parties within a couple of years. Supposing they singing The Foggy Dew spoke volumes. organised in the North now, would they have to dis-organise if they won the election? He found the Somme much more And, if Fianna Fail loses, will Mansergh agree that it is free to organise in the North until congenial. it wins an election? Pre-empting the issues, and imagining problematic situations in advance of actual What Lenihan needs to be reconciled practical developments which might give rise to them, is the way not to do things in the with is historic Fianna Fail, shaped from North. The only sensible way there is to feel your way and see what can be done. Belfast the heritage of Liam Lynch, who was television interviewers did their best over many years to stultify Sinn Fein by binding it systematically hunted down by Collins's into imaginary 'scenarios' about the future. And they did the same with the SDLP before acolytes after he left them leaderless. What that. (But UTV/BBC interviewers were models of well-informed good sense by need is there for him to reconcile with comparison with RTE interviewers whose only interview technique for Sinn Fein was Treatyite Fine Gael? (Does it exist? Did a hectoring, condemnatory, tone of voice.) any trace of it survive the 1948 repudiation The future is not a suitable subject for political analysis as a means of throwing light of the British |Commonwealth by Fine on what should be done in the present. It doesn't exist until it emerges from what is done Gael in alliance with a recently retired in the present, and therefore it cannot be a guide to the present. It cannot be grasped by Chief of Staff of the IRA?) calculus in advance of the event. And, if it could be known in advance, that knowledge The historic accommodation over the operating in the present would probably prevent the known future from happening. Treaty happened long ago. It happened Human nature, as Dostoevsky observed, is perverse in that regard. The variability of by Fine Gael giving up on the Treaty after human conduct is infinite, therefore, as Goethe put it, the grey calculus of human affairs Fianna Fail had broken it, and becoming cannot stop the sprouting of "the green tree of life". Or, as Kant put it, nothing straight a party in the Anti-Treaty democracy can be made out of the crooked wood of humanity. established by Fianna Fail. Between post- The logic of Mansergh's position is that Northern Ireland should be sealed up in its 1948 Fine Gael and Fianna Fail a continued on page 2 continued on page 7 slowly than the SDLP was. There is C O N T E N T S already significant discontent with it, What's Constitutional. Junior Minister Mansergh Speaks. Editorial 1 despite the calibre of its leaders and the Béal an Lenihan. Editorial 1 awareness, on the part of some of them at Readers' Letters: In Defence Of Peter Hart. Jeffrey Dudgeon 3 least, of what Northern Ireland is. New Unionist Leader. Conor Lynch 5 Editorial Digest. (Violence; Electric; Orange Order; Iris Robinson; Omagh; The political culture of Sinn Fein lies in City Of Culture; Consultants; British Army; The Pope; Eames/Bradley; the personal understanding of its leaders Legal Bills; New Taxes; GAA, Up In Down; Wee Ulster; Settlers & Natives) 7 worked out through experience. There is Corrupt Ireland? John Martin reviews Shane Ross's The Bankers 8 no sign in Sinn Fein publications of the Sean Lester: Gageby Gagged By Madam. Manus O'Riordan (report) 10 quality of understanding that enabled it to Shorts from the Long Fellow (Bond Market; Irrevocable Guarantee; A Sovereign do what it has done in the North. Its Default; Economic Recovery? Irish.economy.ie; Brian Lenihan In Beal na mBlath) 11 publications are empty. Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi. Wilston John Haire (poem) 12 It was our view in the mid-1970s that A No-Go Area For Fianna Fail? Jack Lane 13 the Provos were effective in the North Mr. Blair Clarifies The Issue That Defines Him—The War In Iraq. JL 13 insofar as they were the specific product A Discussion On The 1640s. John Minahane reports on the launch of of 'the Northern Ireland state'. They An Argument Defending The Right Of The Kingdom Of Ireland (1645) became part of the traditional Republican by Conor O'Mahony 14 movement of the country because that Famine Or Holocast? How Many Died? Report of talk given by Jack Lane was what was to hand when the 1969 at Féile Duthalla 2010 16 pogrom threw the Catholic community Es Ahora. Julianne Herlihy (Rolling Stone Magazine; Shell & Ireland; The Times; into flux. At a certain point the Northern Battle Of Britain; 'Wartime' Britain; Private Eye) 18 element separated itself from that general Meeting Pat Murphy. Brendan Clifford reviews Pat Murphy, Republicanism and went its own way so Social Republican 20 successfully that it is now the biggest After The Single Currency. why not a Euro Bond? (Report of letter by party in the 6 Counties and unapologetic David McInerney) 21 IRA men are are senior Ministers. It is the Jack Jones Vindicated. Manus O'Riordan (Part 3) 22 fact of IRA men in political office that Naval Warfare. Pat Walsh (Part 3) 25 offers the best hope of the 'Peace Process' Remembrance Day. Wilston John Haire (poem) 28 being sustainable and remaining a process, Does It Stack Up? Michael Stack (Coillte Teoranta; Oil Industry; Education; rather than falling into a routine—as Revenue Commissioners; NAMA; Norway And Its Oil) 28 Mansergh desires. But the Provos lost something as well Labour Comment, edited by Pat Maloney: as gaining something by separating from Fianna Fail Renaissance? by Philip O'Connor traditional Republicanism. (back page) Some years ago Mansergh, to our astonishment, published in the form of a Limbo, and that people should try to be state. Its bedding down owes little or review, in the Times Literary Supplement, nicer to one another in it. That was also his nothing to Fianna Fail's "co-sponsorship" a long condemnation of Rory O'Brady's father's position. He appears to be closely of it, and nothing at all to the SDLP's biography of General Maguire.