Continuing this decade with pamphleteering in the same mode as his earlier Barrington work, these works also merit inclusion in the 'Barrington' thread. JJ was still attempting to popularise economic concepts which were somewhat against the tide.

In 1962 he published, with Mercier Press (Cork) his 'Why Ireland Needs the Common Market'. This he promoted as a sequel to his 'Irish Agriculture in Transition', published in 1951; I have earlier referenced this from the 40s module, at it relates to work done in the late 40s.

There is among his papers a preprint of an article published in the Irish Press on April 20 1966, entitled 'The Relevance of a Berkeleian Theory of Credit to the problems of Today'. This is the germ of the 'Consumer Demand' monograph rejected by the SSISI, which he subsequently published in mimeographed form, and which I have reproduced in full. It is an essay on the nature of money, and how it relates to credit. 'Any theory of credit that is concerned with the mere monetary aspect of things, and ignores the commercial aspect, bears a certain resemblance to pre-Copernican astronomy'.

The core idea of the essay is that producers should be credit-worthy if there is a demand among consumers for what they can produce, and this '..requires a determined effort by the public authorities to strengthen the bargaining power of useful producers whose bargaining power is weak.... Credit in the true sense is intimately bound up with the social and economic welfare of consumers as a whole. Since this also depends on specialisation of production and freedom of exchange we must regard freedom of commerce and flexibility of price relations, in conditions of social justice, as necessary conditions for the soundness of the credit structure...'.

Then in 1966 he published, with Aisti Eirennacha, a pamphlet 'Irish Economic Headaches: a Diagnosis'. This represented a radicalisation of company, in that the publisher was Rayner O'Connor Lysaght, and the pamphlet was the second in a series of which the first was Mairtin O Cadhain's 'Mr Hill: Mr Tara'.

RJ and Science Outreach

There was however a significant outreach episode in 1967, arising from the CSTI lobbying. It took the form of a series of articles in the Irish Times, at the request of Fergus Pyle, then the Features Editor. There was a series of five, under the generic title 'Science in Ireland'. They are worth reproducing here, as they set the stage for the subsequent 1970s weekly column, a concept which I succeeded in selling to the Editor Douglas Gageby.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999