Introductory Overview

In 1913, after returning from Oxford and gaining his Fellowship, he wrote a polemical book attacking Carson and the arming of the Orangemen. He had encountered Carson in Oxford at the time Carson had addressed the Oxford Union, and had later thrown down the gauntlet of armed resistance to Home Rule with Tory support at Blenheim. This perhaps was JJ's greatest and most insightful political act, and he spent his subsequent career consistently attempting to undo the harm done by that disgraceful Tory conspiracy.

In 1914 JJ applied for and got an Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowship; with this he travelled round the world. The War initially prevented him from fulfilling the European sector of his world trip, but in lieu of this he was enabled to spend time in France in the autumn of 1916, doing an economic study of French agricultural production under wartime conditions. The AKTF experience must have been the stimulus for his switch from classics to economics, which he proclaimed as his field from then on, without having studied it formally. This gave rise to tension with the TCD authorities, which continued throughout his career.

Having decided to switch from the classics, and being determined to re-invent himself as a development political economist, with a primary interest in agriculture, JJ found his academic career in TCD becoming difficult and fraught with tension and controversy. He therefore sought to re-interpret elements of his classical background in terms of the development economics of the ancient world, and he was able to relate this, together with his AK experience, to the problems of the emergent Irish national state.

In the published account of his 1916 AK French agriculture project, JJ emphasised the importance in the Irish context of good local government and a strong co-operative movement, an exercise in analysis in the 'political economy' domain.

JJ's Albert Kahn period, and subsequent contact with Charles Garnier the AK Foundation Secretary (lasting right up to 1949), indicated a consistent role for him in support of Irish independence, with which the AK Foundation was in sympathy and to which it lent early support. He was responsible for a series of briefings to Garnier about the current Irish situation, which Garnier used in France as a means of mobilising French public opinion in the Irish interest during the war of independence.

This post-1914 career re-orientation helped JJ to relate to the developing political situation in Ireland, from a Protestant Home Ruler perspective. Much of his subsequent political and economic activity was directed at trying to undo the worst effects of Partition, by maintaining links with people in the North who retained all-Ireland vision.

Post-1916 JJ seems to have been engaged actively in politics, but presumably with circumspection, as he has left few papers. He published in the Manchester Guardian and London Times, under a pseudonym, material which was supportive of the Canadian-type resolution of the political problem, in the context of the opportunity presented by the 1917 Irish Convention. During the War of Independence he remained in touch with the AKF and kept Garnier briefed about Irish affairs, with a view to trying to influence French public opinion.

JJ in Oxford

Fisher probably was influential in pointing JJ in the direction of applying for the Albert Kahn Travelling Fellowship(2), though in later life JJ attributed this to Mahaffy in Trinity College Dublin. Fisher had himself applied for the Albert Kahn Fellowship in 1912 but failed to get it. Kahn was a philanthropist who had made a fortune in Africa and was concerned about the perceived European drift into inter-imperial war. He had set up his Foundation in 1910, the primary UK contact being HA Meiers the Principal of London University; there remain records in the UCL Library. The network extended pre-war to Germany, Japan and the USA, as well as the UK and France. Fellows became members of the 'Autour du Monde' Club, and Kahn hoped, by educating promising young opinion-leaders in the cultures of foreign countries, that the drift to war would be countered.

In Lincoln College JJ mixed with a Liberal set(3) who were supportive of Home Rule for Ireland, and whose leading members were active in defending the Liberal position in the Tory-dominated Oxford Union. This Oxford Liberal network extended into Balliol and included GDH Cole, who later became a key economic influence on the 1945 Labour Government, and into Trinity with Lionel Smith-Gordon. JJ remained in contact with both in later years, Smith-Gordon becoming a luminary of the Irish co-operative movement in Plunkett House.

JJ initially participated in the Fleming Society in Lincoln, which was philosophical rather than debate-oriented. Economics in ancient Greece was discussed in the spring of 1911. Perhaps this was among the factors which turned JJ from ancient history and classics to economics. He then switched to the Lincoln Debating Society, where he made his maiden speech on January 28 1912 in favour of votes for women, supported by Llewellyn Williams. The motion was defeated. Later that term, along with WJ Bland, he helped unsuccessfully to oppose a Tory motion '..that the party system is a fraud and a failure'.

JJ had been given the status of Senior Affiliated Student on account of his previous attendance at TCD and was thus able to complete his degree in two years. He was awarded first class honours in Literae Humaniores in Trinity Term 1912; the degree of BA was conferred on him on 10 October 1912. In his subsequent career, after waiting the decent interval and paying a fee, he was able to trade as MA (Oxon), on top of his Trinity College BA (Mod). He never got around to doing his doctorate in his early period, and he subsequently regretted this, achieving this distinction only in 1970, with a D Litt conferred on foot of his Berkeley book. The combination of the Albert Khan Fellowship and a period of intense political and journalistic activity between 1913 and 1923 undoubtedly came between him and the achievement of conventional academic distinction.

JJ Returns to TCD

In response to this crisis in 1913 he wrote his Civil War in Ulster(1), polemicising against Carson and in support of all-Ireland Home Rule, publishing it in October of that year, in time for the Protestant Liberal rally in Ballymoney in November. The basic approach of the book was Liberal Enlightenment rational argument; he suggested that the threat of Rome Rule, in the light of European historical experience, was illusory, and that Ulster Protestants had nothing to fear and everything to gain; it was certainly not worth fighting a civil war to resist. He underestimated seriously however the imperial mind-set of the Tory Party, and their ability to influence the subversion of the Army, with the 'Curragh mutiny' making the Larne gun-running possible, engendering a coup-d'etat against the Liberal Government and the Home Rule process.

The Trinity College Board(4) was at this time picking up the impression that the 'Fellowship by examination' procedure was allowing into permanent tenure a type of academic recruit whom they regarded as unsuitable. On Mahaffy's initiative they gave JJ leave of absence to take up the Albert Khan Fellowship with alacrity. I conjecture, given their hard-core Unionist political complexion, that they were glad to have him out of the way for a while, after he published Civil War in Ulster.

Trip Round the World

JJ sought in vain evidence for the type of political community with which we are familiar in Europe. The concept of family and kinship had not begun to be transcended by those of the citizen and the nation-state. An important obstacle to this was the caste system, which existed not only among the Hindus but also among the Muslims. Among Europeans in India the caste system also de facto existed; they were far from giving a good examplar for the principle of egalitarian citizenship, to judge from the unwritten rules governing access to the 'station club'.

JJ remarked on the small proportion of people who understood and wrote English, all of whom had their training in an English environment. It was from this elite that Indian nationalism drew its support; JJ pointed out the anomaly that the Indian nationalist elite wanted to impose its own rule on the Indian masses using second-hand English principles, without any Indian character at all. He counterposed the need for a sense of Indian citizenship, capable of modernising and getting rid of child-marriage, suttee and other barbarisms.

He smelled corruption in the legal system, where barristers earned more per day than the judge did in a month. The temptation for the litigant to square the judge was considerable.

JJ went into the origins, dynamics and current statistics of the caste system. It was conjectured that it originated in the need of the Aryan invaders to differentiate themselves from their darker predecessors. The complexity of the religious concepts imposed the need for a numerous and skilled priesthood. Sometimes movements to eradicate the caste system emerged, but these simply tended to become new castes. It mattered little what one believed, as long as one obeyed the ceremonial procedures appropriate to one's caste.

JJ was highly critical of the over-dependence on use of text-books and rote-learning throughout the educational system, to the detriment of the ability to understand genuinely, and to reason. He was inclined to blame the Macaulay policy on education in the English language for this, and to call for a positive approach to education in the vernacular and in their own classical traditions, as embodied in the wealth of Sanscrit texts, while accepting a role for English as a national lingua franca. He argued that English should not be the medium of instruction until the basics had been taught in the vernacular, and a competent level of English had been learned.

In an extensive section on agricultural credit JJ then went into the details of how co-operative credit organisations were set up, the key motivation being the substitution of an interest regime of 12% on deposits and 18% on loans, this being a vast improvement on the 75% charged by the moneylenders. The purpose of the loan was discussed at lending-time. One got longer terms for sinking a well than for a wedding. The effect was to restrict extravagant expenditure on ceremonial feasts, and encourage productive investment.

The influence of the growing movement, and its role in training people for citizenship, was considerable. There was also evidence that it was helping to break down castes, in that low-cast people were taking responsible positions, and high-caste people did not have an automatic right to more favourable loan terms.

The Calcutta Statesman on December 31 1914 noted the fact that in the Punjab the joint stock banks had been in trouble while the co-operative banks weathered the storm and improved their position.

Later in his life JJ referred to writing his Albert Kahn Report(2) in 1915-16 while waiting for conscription to be imposed. This must have been a first draft, because it did not get finally published until 1920 after the war. He had a chance to put in addenda, in one of which he referenced a book by HW Wolff on 'Co-operation in India' and highlighted the process of political citizenship training in the co-operative movement, leading to the possibility of enhanced local government. He contrasted the India situation with that in Ireland, where representative local democracy had fallen under the influence of gombeen-politicians, and co-operative initiatives tended to be attacked as conspiracies against trade.

The State in India JJ regarded as a relatively benevolent bureaucracy, in a position to act progressively without gombeen influence. I quote: '..Imagine a Parliament consisting of John Dillons, Lord Clanrickardes, and Sir Edward Carsons, and you will have a faint idea of what an elected Indian political assembly would be like. A proposal to establish co-operative societies for the benefit of rural India would the strangled at birth by a Parliament thus constituted...'.

Back to TCD: the Co-op

The first meeting, with JJ present, took place on Tuesday November 11 1913; at this they planned the first general meeting which took place the following Friday, November 14, in the Graduates Memorial Building. Provost Traill had agreed to be the President, and there was an Honorary Council which included Sir Horace Plunkett, Father Finlay, Sir Henry Bellew, George Russell, Harold Barbour. The working committee included Professor Bastable, Joe Biggar, EW Deale, WJ Bryan and JJ, who was in a position to parade his recently-acquired status as FTCD.

The committee met subsequently on January 26 1914; there were 14 people present, including JJ; it was agreed that Sealy Bryan and Walker should print the annual accounts. (This firm of jobbing printers were, it seems, occasional publishers; their imprint is on JJ's 'Civil War in Ulster', which they had published the previous October. I suspect that JJ got them the co-op business, such as it was, as a friendly 'thank you' gesture.)

At the February 23 meeting, in JJ's absence, with 17 people present, Joe Biggar proposed JJ as Secretary and he was elected, and appointed to attend the general meeting of the Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society. Suppliers cheques for some £160 were passed.

The 46th Annual Co-operative Congress was held in Dublin, on the Whit weekend, 1914. The Handbook of this conference contains a review of the consumer co-op scene in Ireland, which was quite undeveloped; it would have been matched by one of the smaller English counties. The Congress was held in Dublin as a gesture in the direction of strengthening the Irish district, and mending fences with Sir Horace Plunkett's Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, with which they had been in dispute in the 1890s. The Co-operative Wholesale Society had attempted to establish creameries in Ireland, but these had mostly failed, being superseded by the IAOS creameries, which depended on local societies appointing their own managers. The emerging Irish movement had found the Co-operative Union structures too inflexible.

The embryonic Dublin consumer co-ops however remained with the Union; they existed in Rathmines, Inchicore, Thomas St, Dorset St and Fairview. The Inchicore one went back to 1859, and serviced the railway workshop workers; it was criticised in the Handbook for being exclusive. The Dublin meeting of the Union in 1914 however turned out to be a false dawn. It seemed however at the time to open for JJ a window into Irish co-operative politics, for which he then had hopes, but these proved illusory.

JJ would by then have applied for the Albert Kahn Fellowship, but I suspect that he regarded it as a 'long shot', and did not expect to get it, or he would not have taken on the responsibility of being the DU Co-operative Society Secretary. Meetings then become quarterly; there was one on May 4 1914; the minutes are in JJ's writing; there were 11 present; discount deals for students with firms were announced. The Secretary JJ was sent as delegate to the forthcoming co-operative conference. JJ attended this, which took place before he left on his Travelling Fellowship.

Thus it would seem that the politics of the Irish co-operative movement was top of JJ's priority at this time, remaining so for more than a decade, despite the diversions of the national revolutionary period. He did however in the 1920s turn his attention to the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS) and Plunkett House, once it became apparent that the Co-operative Union was not a viable prospect in the Irish context as it had developed.

The Dublin University Co-op lapsed somewhat during his absence, but when he returned he took it up again with enthusiasm, and it survived. At the November 22 1915 meeting, JJ took over doing the minutes. He wrote marginal notes on the earlier minutes, realising the extent to which things had fallen apart in his absence. At the December 3 meeting, with 10 present, JJ's detailed minutes include a decision to try to capture the trade of the College Kitchen for the Irish Agricultural Wholesale Society (IAWS), with some aggressive marketing. This came up at the Board, and the latter agreed to leave it to the Bursar's discretion, a rebuff. There followed a decision to cultivate relations with the IAWS, which was related to the IAOS rather than to the Co-operative Union; this was an indicator of a turn towards Plunkett House, and a response to the lack of College official support.

At meetings in the first months of 1916, with JJ as secretary, there was evidence of a major effort to get more business. There was an attempt made to do a deal with the Dublin Consumer Co-op secretary to encourage non-College Dubliners to shop in the College, making postal or phone arrangement; this looked somewhat like grasping at straws. Business was in decline because of the decimation of the College population due to the war.

Then came the Easter Rising, and the shop was occupied by the Officers Training Corps, which was defending the College against the insurgents. JJ as secretary was reduced to writing letters to the military HQ looking for compensation, which by the end of the year they received. JJ's last 1916 minutes were of the meeting on October 16. He continued to attend the meetings, with the status of Secretary.

The DU Co-op continued to be active in co-operative politics: at a meeting on May 7 1917 the question came up of whom to vote for as the Irish representatives on the Board of the Co-operative Union (the all-UK body). It was agreed to vote for Smith-Gordon, Tweedy, Palmer, Adams and Fleming. Smith-Gordon had been encountered by JJ in Oxford, where he had shone as a socialist debater in the Union. RN Tweedy was an engineer who subsequently became a founder member of the Irish Communist Party. The co-operative movement in this period was a focus for those who wanted to democratise the economic system from the bottom up, and who identified with the politics of the Left in this spirit. At a subsequent meeting on February 26 1918 RN Tweedy was nominated to the Board of the Irish Section of the Co-operative Union.

Thus on the eve of the 1916 Rising we have JJ at the beginning of an academic career, just having completed his Albert Kahn world tour, and living in a flat in Fitzwilliam Square, my mother being pregnant with my sister Maureen. He was engaged in lecturing students in ancient history who were being prepared for the Indian Civil Service examination(7). He was actively involved with Plunkett House, and in promoting consumer co-operatives in the context of the Co-operative Union, the College one being a sort of pilot-project. In this context he was friendly with people like George Russell ('AE') and had encountered James Douglas. He had many contacts on the Liberal Home Rule and co-operative networks.

Easter Rising Aftermath

The article began with a scholarly reference to the fatalism expressed in the writings of Edmund Spenser: '...they say it is the fatal destiny of that land that no purposes whatsoever which are meant for her good will prosper and take good effect'. JJ went on to report on '...a journey...undertaken with the object of making an independent study of the condition of the country without the pilotage of leaders of political parties, though their opinions where sought received the great attention they deserve.' (The opening quote supports the hypothesis that this was JJ; also travel during the TCD long vacation would have been feasible.)

He noted that Sinn Fein had gained support from the Nationalists, the reasons given being (a) that the Nationalists participated in the Coalition, (b) that they agreed to the 'mutilation' of Ireland, and (c) that they omitted to procure for the Dublin rebels that measure of clemency with which rebellion in another part of the Empire was treated.

He went on to describe the wide variety of types of people who are in Sinn Fein: '..well-read, well-travelled and earnest...students of political history and political economy....the poor have been given ideals which they never before associated with politics.....Thus a great movement has developed...its strength and dimensions are visible everywhere.. ...portraits of the rebels exhibited in the shop windows.... It enlisted the support of a part of the labouring classes and then devoted itself to an object which could avail them nothing. That was probably a condition of its receipt of certain funds...'.

He went on further to contrast the violent denunciations of Redmond with the profession of admiration for Carson, regarded as strong, honest and just. '..who might well receive a cordial greeting in unexpected quarters..'. This complete misunderstanding of the role of Carson and the Larne guns was at the root of most subsequent disasters! Further: '...it is thought likely that many who have given their sympathies to Sinn Feiners as a protest against recent events might support the Nationalists if a test were made with "exclusion" out of the way...'. JJ was here clinging tenaciously to his vision of all-Ireland Home Rule.

'The Nationalists...are confident of the unwavering support of such followers of substance as the shopkeepers and farmers. Among the latter however there is a growing disinclination to mingle ... in the tumult of politics. They are more prosperous than they ever have been. The co-operative movement has helped them towards that prosperity, and the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society has taught them to reap the great advantages which now come within their reach. Yet it is manifest that they are much less popular with the labourers than the "ould gintry" used to be... through settled ownership of land they are drifting from nationalism into a political category that has now no representation...'.

He also wrote from France journalistically for the Times, while travelling on his Albert Kahn project. There was an article on September 29 1916: 'War Agriculture in France / The Benefits of United Action / A Lesson to British Farmers', from a Correspondent in France; this was credibly JJ. He was also moved by his French experience to contribute a series to the Irish Times entitled 'If the French Ruled Ireland'. In this he also used material related to his Albert Kahn project, in which he had analysed how French agriculture was coping with production during the war, using co-operatively owned machinery, with positive local support for the co-operative organisation of agriculture from the State, administered by the Prefects(9). In his 'virtual history' Irish Times articles he basically transferred the French republican model to Ireland, with the British having in the 1880s got tired of Ireland, transferring her to France, for treatment as an offshore island like Corsica. He had the Meath ranchers going into tillage for winter-feed, with consequent increased productivity of finished cattle and livestock products.

He is also on record as having participated, by August 1916, in the committee of the Irish Constitutional Association(10) along with AE, Diarmuid Coffey, Maurice Moore, Edward McLysaght, Alec Wilson and James Douglas. The objective of this was 'full Dominion Status' for Ireland.

There is during this period a record of a controversy in the Irish Times, initiated by JJ in a latter dated November 20 1916, and published on the 21st, attracting editorial comment. He made the case that the anti-Redmond Nationalists are not necessarily 'seditionists', nor are they 'pro-German'; they are supporters of all-Ireland Home Rule, a constitutional policy which had been subverted by the Ulster covenanters and their political allies the Tories, with the introduction of the gun, to the extent that the Imperial Parliament was powerless to enforce a law of its own making.

JJ was thus pressing home the arguments of his Civil War in Ulster(1). In it he developed an argument for all-Ireland conscription in return for all-Ireland Home Rule: '...the only policy worthy of a statesman is one which will be daring to the point of recklessness. Announce that the Act suspending Home Rule Act will be made inoperative from the 1st of February 1917. Invite a conference of all Irishmen representative of all sections of the country to meet together in the knowledge that, if they fail to agree about some better scheme of Irish government, the existing Act, with all its faults, will be in operation on February 1st... In any case, let the Government make it clear that it will enforce both conscription and Home Rule with equal impartiality in all parts of Ireland, and it will have no trouble in enforcing either..'.

He went on: '...one of the facts I have endeavoured to face is that there is such a thing as a strongly nationalist point of view, and lately I have taken some trouble to estimate its force and understand its nature. Another ... is that at least three fourths of Nationalist Ireland do not read your able editorials on Ireland's duty in the war...'. This was an outcome of his journalistic travelling for the Times during the 1916 summer vacation. He felt that all-Ireland Home Rule could be pushed in the direction of Dominion-type status, and that all-Ireland conscription would pre-empt Orange armed resistance(11).

I am inclined to think that JJ's support for all-Ireland conscription was motivated by a combination of his feeling of the need for active support for France, and his understanding of the need to keep Ireland in one political unit, rather than primarily by support for Britain and the Empire. During all this time he was in correspondence with Garnier the Albert Kahn Foundation Secretary, whom he kept briefed with material for pro-Irish publication in France, in support of Irish participation in the post-war Peace Conference(12).

The Constitutional Convention

There is no direct reference to JJ in McDowell's book(14) on the Convention, although JJ was actively promoting Dominion Status wherever he could, in support of the Constitutional Association objectives. This is evident from the Garnier correspondence(15), and I understand that he wrote in support of this position in the Manchester Guardian and probably elsewhere, though perhaps pseudonymously. I have been able to track down some articles which could credibly have been JJ's in May 1917(16). The following key extract certainly reflects JJ's lifetime conviction:

'...The Irish people...have no use for the Government scheme of a truncated nationality....the existence or the pressure of .. Sinn Fein... does not affect the matter.... Partition is bad, partition without the vote of the counties affected is worse, but a partition scheme which, while refusing a referendum before dissection, insists on a referendum before the wound can be repaired, making reunion as difficult as possible, and subjecting it to the veto of the most inveterate of prejudices, is the worst of all forms of partition......The Ulster democracy has never voted for Partition... The interest and sentiment of commercial Ulster are against Partition, the interest of Protestant episcopalian Ulster are against it...'.

JJ and Agriculture in France

During his absence in France my mother was left with my sister, a few months old, in the flat in Fitzwilliam Square. Her sister Florrie was then working in Dublin, as a 'typewriter', and living in Haddington Road nearby, so this probably contributed to the support system, which also would have included his sister Ann who was in college.

The reasons for JJ's switch from classics to economics are becoming increasingly clear. The Albert Kahn influence, his problems with the College (in part due to over-production of classics people), and his writings on the Co-operative Movement all point in this direction(18).

The Thomas Davis Society

JJ continued to take an interest in the Co-op in TCD; by 1919 business began to take up again, with students war-survivors trickling back. Roles of committee members were defined: there was a sub-committee to keep in touch with the needs of the junior years. Then at the end of 1919 they pulled off the deal that set them up viably for the long haul: they set up the Lunch Buffet, in the Dining Hall. This was an immediate success, and gave a good foundation to the wholesale purchasing operation, which they did via the IAWS. JJ then took over the Chair, which he occupied up to the end of 1922. He pulled out of active participation on co-op affairs once he saw it was on a sound business footing.

Notes and References

2. For more about the Albert Kahn Foundation see the related background module in the hypertext; there is also an overview of, and entry-points to, this theme via Appendix 3. The dominant part played by India in his 1914-15 world tour was due to the opportunities presented by the presence there of his elder brothers in the Civil Service. The visits to Java, China, Japan and the USA are in less depth; they are also treated in the hypertext summary of the Report, the main body of which deals with India. The Mahaffy attribution he made in a 1952 Seanad speech.

3. Names associated with the Liberal set include H Llewellyn Williams, WJ Bland, FK Griffith, P Guedalla and others. During his Oxford period he on record as having been 'in digs' with one Mallampally Narasimham, an Indian student from a landed family with an interest in Christian doctrine, and Samuel Thomas, the son of a Welsh engineer, who had opted to go for the classics. The Oxford period constitutes an important aspect of his academic formation, though it did not give rise to published work. In the support documentation for Civil War in Ulster I have also gone in some detail into the student politics of the period, in the lead-up to the famous Union debate addressed by Carson, at which JJ and this group were present. JJ's political papers from this period are somewhat scanty, but I have outlined their scope for this decade in some supportive notes in the hypertext which relate to the 'political' theme.

4. In Appendix 2 I have given an overview of JJ's long-standing and uncomfortable relationship with the TCD Establishment. See also my notes in the hypertext on the TCD Board meetings, where the issue of 'Fellowship by examination' and the over-supply problem comes up.

5. For access to JJ's Albert Kahn records see note 2 above. I have overviewed the family background in Appendix 1 and given some more detail about my mother and her role in the Albert Kahn tour in the family module of the hypertext for this decade.

6. The hostility of the Dublin shopkeepers ti the TCD Co-op was reported by Bulmer Hobson in his paper Irish Freedom in June 1913. The 'co-op' episode occurred in the context of JJ's emerging interest in economics and alternative business models. He used the experience to write in Plunkett House publications subsequently. In an article in Better Business, the Plunkett House promotional publication, in April 1916 JJ contributed some of his experience of the movement in India. This must have gone to press on the eve of the Rising. The Board minutes of the period also have JJ on record not only in support of the College co-op in 1913, but also later on July 4 1917 in support of a better deal for the 'skips', or College menservants who looked after the students' rooms.

7. JJ's interaction with academic life at this time was problematic. He was attempting a personal re-definition from classics to economics, in an environment where, in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising, the Board was lionising Carson, the target of JJ's 1913 book.

8. JJ kept a scrap-book for this period, which he deposited in the 'rare printed books' section of the TCD Library. I have abstracted this for the 1910s module of the political stream of the hypertext.

9. I have collected more of JJ's journalistic comments, in summary or in full, in this decade's module of the 'political' thread in the hypertext. This is overviewed for the century in Appendix 10. His 1916 Food Production in France Report I have also summarised in the hypertext.

10. See p6 of the Introduction to J Anthony Gaughan's edition of the Memoirs of Senator James G Douglas (UCD Press 1998). JJ remained close to Douglas in later years; they co-operated in the Senate on issues relating to the North. Sources for the political interactions of JJ during this period are far from clear, those few I have are available with the JJ source material in the Linenhall Library, Belfast, by courtesy of John Killen.

11. I have given in the hypertext extract from the TCD Library scrapbook extensive extracts from JJ's arguments, which motivated his continuing support for the lobbying of the Convention.

12. I have abstracted for the hypertext the Garnier correspondence from the relevant file in JJ's papers, where it is preserved in Folder 4.

13. There is among JJ's papers some correspondence with Erskine Childers when the latter was Secretary of the Irish Convention; this relates to JJ's submissions to that body. The evolution of Childers' political philosophy is somewhat enigmatic and controversial: from a typical upper-class jingoistic position in the 1900s, to arming supporters of Home Rule in 1914; from Lloyd George's appointed Convention secretary in 1917 to anti-Treaty Republican publicist in 1922. Andrew Boyle's Riddle of Erskine Childers (Hutchinson, London, 1977) goes some way to explaining his trajectory, and his treatment was apparently welcomed by his son who became President. For the present writer however there remain questions unanswered, about the Asgard episode among other things.

14. RB McDowell, The Irish Convention 1917-18, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1970. I can't resist remarking in this context that McDowell, like many others with a strong Unionist background, turns a blind eye to the Larne gun-running, despite its considerable scale, and its significance as the introduction of the gun into Irish politics in the 20th century. In his background introduction to the main theme of the book he mentions the miniscule Howth episode with the Asgard, but ignores Larne, though he goes in detail into the various political manoeuvrings for the exclusion of Ulster from Home Rule. There is a need perhaps for further analysis of the available background material. I append in the hypertext for example some notes extracted for this period from the Maume study of the politics: The Long Gestation: Irish National Life 1891-1918, Patrick Maume, Gill and MacMillan 1999.

15. Garnier was the executive secretary of the Albert Kahn Foundation; he and JJ corresponded right up the the 1940s. The first Garnier letter I have on record is a response to documentation on the Convention sent to him by JJ. I have added some notes on the Convention in this Garnier module, to explain the background to the correspondence in the Albert Kahn context. This theme has political ramifications into the foreign affairs of the nascent Free State.

16. I have given extensive abstracts from these May 1917 Manchester Guardian articles in the section of the 1910s political stream of the hypertext which is based on the JJ scrap-book in the TCD Library.

17. When doing this he got accreditation from the Irish Times, and wrote up the experience in journalistic mode, as well as in his Report, which was published as a pamphlet by Maunsel.

18. I develop this aspect via the Plunkett House channel in Appendix 4, with the support of the Plunkett Foundation in Oxford. There are also strong indications that JJ was directly influenced by Standish O'Grady, who had been writing for Jim Larkin's Irish Worker prior to the war, promoting worker co-operative approaches to economic development; see his To the Leaders of Our Working People, ed EA Hagan, UCD Press 2002; I have reviewed this for the December 2002 Irish Democrat. For more on O'Grady's politics see Hubert Butler's 1978 essay, re-published in his book 'Escape from the Anthill' (Lilliput 1985), which deals with his period in Kilkenny during the Boer War.

19. For the Thomas Davis Society reference, and Dermot MacManus's role in it, I am indebted to a lady QUB historian whom I encountered at a John Hewitt Summer School in or about 1996. It could have been Edna Longley, but perhaps not. To my eternal regret I have been unable to pin this down, having failed to note it at the time. Nor is there any record of the TDS in the TCD MS room. JJ had contact with McManus in the 1920s, when the latter smoothed the way for JJ's journalistic coverage of the post-civil war situation. Later in the 1930s their relationship became strained, with MacManus supporting the Blueshirts. There is subsequent correspondence in JJ's papers with McManus dated June 1965. McManus was then retired and living in Harrogate. He had contributed a paper to the Harrogate Literary Society entitled The Irish Literary Revival 1890-1935. I reference this also from Appendix 4, as the content relates to the cultural background of Plunkett and the co-operative movement, and also from the 1960s chapter, when JJ did some travelling in Mayo, trying again to pick up the co-operative trail on the fringe of what the present writer was doing. It is probable that he called at the McManus estate at Killeaden, having received some notes from McManus about its history.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999