Introduction

I continued to develop the Irish Times Science and Technology column, which ran weekly from 1970 to 1976(2); initially it was a 'feature' and then later it moved to the financial page, becoming in the context more applied-scientific. This was stimulating and to this day is remembered with nostalgia by many people I have met since, including industry leaders, who read it during their student days.

I went on to generalise the OR and Statistics experience via the Industrial Liaison Office, from which I initiated the TCD Applied Research Consultancy Group. This survived up to 1980, and employed up to 8 people. It turned out to be primarily a fringe enterprise generator, rather than a problem-solver, though valid work was done. The College however stood it down, and went for a model where the spin-off enterprise was the main output.

Politically, I continued to fight a losing rearguard action against the rising tide of 'official IRA' militarism, which increasingly was trying to compete with the Provisionals. When they went into political assassination, with Senator Barnhill, this was the last straw, and I resigned, though without rancour, as I wanted to keep the lines of communication open. I made an attempt to re-establish a working relationship with the 'orthodox left' (the CPI), but this proved totally barren, the pathology of the latter having gone beyond redemption following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. A subsequent period with the Labour Party proved to be equally barren, in that procedures for policy development, and analysis of problems in terms of feasible routes towards solutions, with membership participation, and a learning mode, were largely non-existent.

During the 1970s the family scene(3) was dominated by the death of JJ in 1972, and my setting up home with Janice. Towards the end of the decade my elder daughter Una went to the US; my son Fergus went through College and became a composer; Nessa was born to Janice and me.

The Irish Times Science Column

March 24 1971:

The Regional Scientific Councils were founded... to provide a meeting-ground for the exchange of ideas between scientists of various disciplines in centres other than Dublin; they were conceived as a means of establishing an intellectual climate, a stimulus to the imagination, for those condemned by their employment to rustication or exile from the heady atmosphere of the Metropolis.

They have a historical precedent in the 18th century: the Lunar Society in Birmingham united in monthly philosophical dinners a small group of innovators, craftsmen and scientists who were at the centre of the technology of the first Industrial Revolution. They were practical men and they questioned the dogma that all good must flow from London. They used to meet at the full moon, the better to see their way home on horseback, whence the name.

The Cork Council... is in a sense the leading one, in that it has a broader base from which to draw its membership. The scope of its activities includes popularisation, by means of lectures on topics of interest, to a mixed lay and specialist audience; it also provides a career guidance service, does regionalist political lobbying and holds exhibitions.

This pattern has tended not to include the reading of learned papers and the publishing of proceedings, which on the whole is all to the good.

Nor has it led directly to the development of interdisciplinary work among scientists; this however may occur as a result of chance contacts or conversations at Council events.

There is no Scientific Council in Dublin, fulfilling any analogous function. If there were to be one, it would be likely to have a rather different emphasis, as many of the functions carried out by the Regional Councils are already catered for by the specialist bodies and by old-established bodies such as the Royal Dublin Society.

These reflections are stimulated by a visit to the Carlow Scientific Council's exhibition which took place on March 9-11. Carlow is an expanding technological centre, with some 100 or so qualified professionals. The Regional College of Technology is due to open this year (1971), providing courses in industrial chemistry (among other things)... with emphasis on natural products and on the needs of local applied-scientific research, which is centred in the Oakpark centre of the Agricultural Institute, and in the research laboratories of Erin Foods ltd and the Irish Sugar Co, of which Dr Tadhg Twomey is the Director.

There is little evidence so far of local science-based industry 'spinning off' from either of the main research centres. The main obstacle to this, possibly, is the existence in the semi-State bodies of a civil-service approach to pension rights; the latter would be forfeited by anyone leaving a research-centre to start a science-based small enterprise......

May 5 1971:

A word is perhaps necessary on the question of whether to have an Irish scientific, voluntary-membership) Institution, or an Irish section of a UK one. This is a highly political question, which is not helped by communications barriers which are placed sometimes by the London HQ, and sometimes by the Dublin Government, in the way of Irish specialists (organised in UK-based Institutions) talking to the authorities.

There are no political boundaries among working scientists. The natural interaction crucible for Irish scientists and technologists is the island of Ireland for cross-fertilisation and interdisciplinary work, while for specialist work within the discipline the natural crucible is the British Isles, Europe, the US and the world.

We need to organise so as to have access to both types of network. Thus any attempt to have a 26-county 'national' body which cuts off our Northern colleagues is basically negative, though it may sound 'patriotic' to some to counter-pose such a body to one with London HQ. On the other hand, London-based bodies,for which Ireland is a region, can be negative if they discourage autonomy.

To build a national scientific consciousness under these circumstances is decidedly tricky, requiring tact and diplomatic ability of a high order. No wonder we have so far been unsuccessful....

October 20 1971:

The death on September 15 of JD Bernal FRS has passed without comment in Ireland (to my knowledge), apart from one or two minor obituary notices. Readers of this column will have noted that from time to time I have invoked his name in connection with the idea of social responsibility in science. I take this opportunity of paying tribute to a remarkable Irishman, who ranks with Joyce and O'Casey as a world-figure in human culture. The fact that his career was constrained to develop outside the mainstream of Irish life has resulted in most Irish people being unaware of his existence. That this is not the case for emigrant writers of equivalent stature constitutes a measure of the relative status of science in the Irish consciousness.

Bernal, if he had remained in Ireland, would be unlikely to have become a world-figure.... an unfortunate truth that has to be reckoned with. Science in Ireland, though now beginning to know itself, is still stunted by decades of impoverishment.

Bernal was educated in England and went to college at Cambridge. On completing his Tripos he got the opportunity of going into research under Sir William Bragg, of X-ray crystallography fame (this physical technique enables spatial structures of molecules to be elucidated). He was from a land-owning family near Nenagh, Co Tipperary: the same class of 'minor landed gentry' that has contributed Parnell to politics and Yeats to literature. His principal contribution to science was his development of the technique of X-ray diffraction analysis to the extent that it could be used to unravel the structures of large and complex molecules. He can therefore be counted among the initiators of the currently booming science of molecular biology. If Watson and Crick are counted as the founding fathers, then Bernal was the grandfather.

However, he was far from being the ivory-tower purist; he was an all-rounder, working at all levels. During his 'fundamental' period in the thirties, he was active in the foundation and organisation of the Association of Scientific Workers, the first scientists Trade Union.

(The latter has recently merged with a number of other 'white-collar' unions such as ASSET and the Insurance Guild to form ASTMS, of which the general secretary is Clive Jenkins.... The Irish section of ASTMS organises the staffs of the IIRS, the Agricultural Institute and other Irish scientists and technologists. The Bernal 'social responsibility' tradition persists... there are plans for expert working groups..... to develop an informed view on questions such as technology-based redundancies.....)

Then during the war, along with the generation of basic scientists who evolved into technology via radar and nuclear weapons, he became associated with what became subsequently known as 'Operations Research'. As scientific adviser to the Chief of Combined Operations (Lord Mountbatten) he was actively involved in the research background of the Normandy landings; this despite his political reputation as a Marxist.

His most significant contribution to what has come to be known as 'the science of science' was perhaps his 1939 book 'The Social Function of Science'. Such was the impact of this that on the 25th anniversary of its publication a tribute to it was organised in the form of a book of essays by leading scientists, mostly FRS, who had been influenced by Bernal's work. Entitled 'The Science of Science', it is compulsory reading...... The editor was JG Crowther. Few people can have had the satisfaction of a pre-obituary tribute of this calibre.

I had a brief exchange of letters with Bernal in 1967. This was when, in the pre-National Science Council days, we had a voluntary federation of most of the specialist associations, known as the 'Council for Science and Technology in Ireland'. We had big ideas, but, of course, no resources. We thought, at one stage, of trying to put on the pressure for the siting of a major international laboratory in Ireland, as a stimulus to Irish science. We had in mind molecular biology, as the front-line where the most rapid and spectacular advances were being made.

I wrote to Bernal, hoping that he might come over. But by then he had had the second of a series of cerebral hemorrhages, and he was unable to take the invitation up. Despite his condition, however, he showed an informed interest and '...would have been delighted to contribute most actively because it is a scheme that is near to my heart...a sign of a scientific renaissance in my native country...'

He then went on to cite a list of possible international contacts which would need to be lobbied, and to stress the need for '...ample connections with agriculture and medicine...'

It seemed to him '...to be worth connecting it with the International Biological Programme under the ICSU, though this would require considerable negotiation...'

I have heard no more of this project. The CSTI didn't have the resources to lobby for it. The ball passed to the feet of the National Science Council......

There is scope, I feel, for an interdisciplinary lobby of active scientists to take up questions like this in an informed manner. The CSTI was a non-starter, because it was a federation of existing bodies.. Like a convoy, it was limited to the speed of the slowest.

A society with an individual (rather than corporate), active, socially conscious membership, devoted to the organisation of pressure for socially desirable objectives in Irish science, would have a positive role to play. Derry Kelleher (of the Chemical Engineers) and myself in November 1968 attempted to found such a body; we got virtually no support. We were disgusted at the way in which the CSTI, in which both of us had been involved, had folded up without even a whimper when the National Science Council was established, despite the fact that the CSTI recommendation regarding the NSC structure had been ignored.

Possibly now the time is ripe for re-examination of the need for a gadfly-society of the type we had in mind. We wanted to call it the Kane-Bernal Society, after Sir Robert Kane and Desmond Bernal. It could fulfil a function, by the physical presence of its members at events, analogous to what this column is trying to do via the printed word. It could research and publish pamphlets developing specific proposals for science policy in Ireland in more depth, and in a more permanent and effective form, than can this column.

What better means of inaugurating it than at a meeting to commemorate JD Bernal?

RJ in post-split Sinn Fein

The Dublin leadership, and the present writer, remained in touch with what was going on in the North, as best we could. The NICRA was trying to keep going in the increasingly polarised post-pogrom situation, with the support of the politicising republicans, and partial support from the CPNI, with Betty Sinclair continuing to play a key role, supported by Joe Deighan and John McClelland, CPNI members who had Connolly Association (CA) background. There was however a London 'NICRA' which was presenting itself as an alternative to the CA, under Blaneyite influence, and in the general confusion the NICRA proper was not alive to this danger. Greaves remained in touch, attending the NICRA annual conference in January 1971, and subsequently meeting John Hume in Derry, whom he suspected of drafting a 'Bill of Rights' as '..an alternative to the thing those Reds have prepared..'. This however turned out to be simply a submission to the Crowther Commission; John Hume made him welcome and showed him round(4).

Greaves in Belfast as usual went to see Betty Sinclair, who had been at a meeting of West European CPs, and had '..expected to see me there..'. She gave her impressions: '..the old camaraderie of pre-war years has gone... the Dutch will not sign anything... the Italians did not seem to care about anybody but themselves..'. She went on to tell him '..that whereas the Republicans for all their faults would be glad to have Joe Deighan and John McClelland on the Civil Rights executive, the Party (which means the Stewarts) has vetoed it. I was unable to get any closer to the problem..'.

It seems we are increasingly up against the rampant theoretical confusion of the West European post-Stalinist Left, which popped up with depressing regularity to frustrate Greaves's attempts to develop a broad consistent movement for the limited objective of Civil Rights in Northern Ireland

There was on January 24 a meeting, organised under NICRA auspices, which however Greaves regarded as the result of an 'orange-communist cabal .. analogous to the NILP..'. Speakers at the meeting were Kader Asmal, Greaves, then Hume. Greaves spoke with a 'strong republican bias' given the situation. He suggested that 'they (the CPNI) were at their old trick, to demand something and then object to it when they got it, to pose as great reformers before the republicans, but by doing nothing decisive, to hold the Orangemen and the NILP. Hume had been brought in, in an effort to confuse the issue..'.

CDG here was attempting to develop a critique of the CPNI, whose role in the development of the NICRA had been ambiguous. In fact the conference seems to have been a genuine though somewhat confused attempt to develop public support for the Bill of Rights approach, which they were trying to extend to economic questions. There was however an undercurrent of anti-communism against which they had to try to swim.

There was a sequel to the foregoing, which Greaves picked up from Anthony Coughlan in London on January 31 1971: it seems that Micheal O Riordain and Cathal Goulding were busy discussing an 'anti-imperialist conference' which might be called jointly by the Belfast and Dublin Trades Councils. They had brought in Peoples Democracy (PD), it was understood at the Republicans' request, and had decided not to mention Civil Rights but to discuss only the EEC and economic matters. Coughlan thought that the omission of civil rights was partly a sop to PD and partly in accordance with the 'orange communists' that were in the North; it was all confusion; they had no general perspective except with regard to their own small groupings.

I don't recollect anything ever coming of this; it is a reflection of the general level of disorientation and confusion of both the Marxist left and the republican left, in response to the perceived current threats of the Provisional campaign and the looming concept of the EEC as the new Act of Union.

The role of the British Army in Belfast was treated in the February 10 issue #62 of Nuacht Naisiunta. Belfast republicans were increasingly divided between the 'official' and 'provisional' positions. All eyes were on the possibility of a 'federal solution', with Callaghan, working closely with the Tory Home Secretary Maudling, in Dublin, to discuss a Lynch-Heath deal which nominally ended the Border but in fact gave Westminster a role in Ireland as a whole. The situation continued to deteriorate, with shootings in Belfast, and anti-red witch-hunting. There was an instruction to Cumainn to avoid contact with the 'breakaway group'. Conor Cruise O'Brien challenged Tomas Mac Giolla to a debate on the North. This took place subsequently, in Newman House. It was well attended, and chaired by Fr Austin Flannery. It received some publicity, ideas were exchanged with suitable rhetoric. It could perhaps be regarded as a stepping-stone in the rise of CCO'B to prominence as a Northern 'expert'.

During the first quarter of 1971 the split situation became increasingly embittered, with continuing concern with the EEC issue, and the perceived threat of a British-dominated all-Ireland 'federal arrangement'. The principal theoretical influence would appear still to have been Coughlan, whose explicit agenda at the time was along these lines. It became evident however that from this time on the influence of myself and Coughlan were in decline, though the momentum of political convergence(5) of the 'broad left' continued for a time; in the end it was undermined by the increasingly militarised situation.

Meanwhile, according to Greaves(6), in the North there was increasingly evident a '..carve-up..' of the NICRA executive positions between the '..IRA and the CP..'. he meant the CP and the Republican Club representatives, some of whom may residually have considered themselves as the 'official IRA' but whose motivations were still political; the leading person in this context was Malachi McGurran. The 'primarily IRA' element had by now gone 'provisional', and would end up suppressing NICRA meetings. Joe Deighan and John McClelland, who were ex-CA stalwarts with long experience of democratic lobbying in the London environment, were sidelined. This reflected a 'Left-Republican convergence' in the worst sense; and it persisted later with organisations like the Resources Protection Campaign in the south: the heavy-handed Stalinist top-down tradition and the Fenian conspiratorial top-down tradition were the key converging philosophies, both being pathological sources of party-driven 'machine-voting', in a context where a broad knowledge-based movement was needed. In such a situation there was no room for ordinary civil rights activists.

During the second quarter of 1971 the Dublin Sinn Fein leadership was concerned with the Forcible Entry Bill, political prisoners in Britain, the Guinness and Whitegate Refinery disputes, unemployment, the National College of Art crisis, Bodenstown, pub bombs and sectarianism, local government, fishing rights, tenants rights, feminism, and the EEC. On April 13 1971 there was an Easter statement from the IRA, calling for confrontation on social, economic and political issues, and avoidance of military confrontations, while helping people where necessary to defend their homes. Thus Goulding still felt he had to retain the IRA persona when making political statements.

On April 19 1971 there was a call in Nuacht Naisiunta to open up meaningful discussion with 'other left groups', referencing current published material in the Irish Socialist and the Irish Democrat. '...To dismiss the old-established Marxist left as "a bunch of academics" or as "pure trade unionists" is to underestimate seriously the degree of theoretical and practical development... with regard to the national question..'. The Irish Socialist contained an article by Betty Sinclair which pointed out that the use of force by '..extremists among anti-Unionists... serves to unite Unionism..'. The Democrat attacked the Tribune (the London left-Labour periodical) for their support of 'Direct Rule', and called for a Bill of Rights giving republicans in the 6 counties the right of organisation and propaganda; also to disarm the Orangemen and close down the 'gun clubs'. A draft Bill of Rights, as an Amendment to the Government of Ireland Act, had been tabled. This was identified as the last chance perhaps for decades to make use of constitutional reform procedures with some chance of being listened to.

At the WTS on April 20 the committee discussed the Gaeltacht radio, and a collection of Tone's writings. Derry Kelleher resigned as joint secretary and I succeeded him.

I went to Bodenstown for the unveiling of a new monument (to replace the one blown up by the loyalists). Moss Twomey (a veteran republican who had been active in the 40s and 50s) spoke, and both 'official' and 'provisional' groups were there. There was an EEC aspect, and a Breton, the sculptor Yann Goulet, was there, who walked away when they played the Marseillaise. Kelleher went with him.

The foregoing was noted by Greaves(7), who went on to '...suggest that the EEC opposition send a delegation to London to get big money off the sugar planters. They are thinking of employing a man at £10 a week to work in Cathal's spare room. I told them I would advise him not to consider it. A £10 man would make no impression. Crotty has been at it full time for six months, living on his savings, but must soon stop..'.

There is an echo here of JJ; protected sugar from beet in France was, and still is, a relic of the Napoleonic wars, defended by vested interests ('les bettraviers'). It is economic nonsense where tropical producers of cane sugar can produce under favourable conditions at low cost and need to export to develop their economies. CDG, like JJ currently and earlier, had in mind the overall iniquity of European protected agriculture, seen in global terms. The 'sugar planters' were of course the British sugar giants, like Tate and Lyle, who depended on tropical sugar. These would have been strongly anti-EEC.

The Wolfe Tone Society on May 4 1971 held a general meeting. It was supposed to be 'as gaeilge', but turned out to be 'gan cainteoiri', and so was a flop. It had been projected to relate to the need for a radio in the Gaeltacht, and speakers were to include Eoghan Harris and Breandan O h-Eithir; there is a notice to this effect.

Around this time, or perhaps earlier in 1970, I remember attending an Oireachtas event centred in Rosmuc, organised by Cearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta, and a pirate radio was run for the duration, using equipment lent by the republican movement. This created political pressure for the official setting up of Radio na Gaeltachta. The above projected meeting would have been in this context.

The WTS May 18 committee meeting considered the use of Irish language at meetings. Issues relating to the Tailors Hall, Community Schools, Planning Acts, the Liberties, the Dodder and the SF leadership came up. Tomas Mac Giolla, was invited to address the July meeting on 'short-term political alternatives to Fianna Fail in the context of the EEC threat, what role for the republican movement?' It was suggested that the feedback from this event would be helpful in drafting a political manifesto.

At the WTS general meeting on June 1 1971 Uinsean Mac Eoin read a paper 'Watchdog on Developers'. The idea of an All-Dublin federation of amenity groups was suggested, as part of the battle for the restoration of local democracy.

Issue #77 of Nuacht Naisiunta on June 13 contained a statement opposing the proposed Church domination of the boards of the projected Community Schools, and defending the secular democratic composition of the current Vocational Education Committees.

Malachi McGurran's Bodenstown speech was reported in the June 21 1971 issue; he aspired to working-class unity across the sectarian barriers in the North, and attempted to link the Northern situation to the impending EEC referendum. Then on June 28 there was a further attempt to define what was meant by the 'national liberation movement' in terms of a multi-class, multi-organisation anti-imperialist alliance with the working people in the lead. After the removal of alien imperial influences it would then be possible to build a socialist society. A follower was promised for the next issue, but this never came.

We have here increasing evidence of ideological confusion and political floundering. The shots were increasingly being called by the Provisionals in the North, and the attempted political road was being marginalised. The present writer was no longer in a leading position, but he contributed to the development of the 'Mornington School' during the following summer.

Nuacht Naisiunta in the 3rd quarter of 1971, as well as the internment question, covered issues which included existing prisoners, the EEC, Radio na Gaeltachta, fishing rights, housing in Dublin, and the CIA.

The Mornington School was announced in the July 5 1971 issue, initially from July 4; there would be sessions on 'Imperialism and the Irish Nation', on 'the Cultural Revolution', and on the Northern situation. The School would be open for August and September also, in proportion to demand. I remember contributing to this school; we built up quite a good library of relevant Marxist literature, and held group discussion sessions around readings.

There is in the WTS archive an m/s paper by Uinsean Mac Eoin, dated 'Sept 6' annotated 'discussed 14/7/71'. It is concerned about the politics of a federal agreement thought to be on the agenda between Heath and Lynch. It is not clear what its standing is. From the date September 6 it would appear to have been produced prior to the (projected and perhaps apocryphal) October 1970 Newry meeting of 'radical groups'.

Greaves in July 1971 came up with the idea of making the Connolly Association conference educational, and moving in the direction of an 'Irish Democrat Supporters League' to strengthen the paper, and to get Trade Unions to join(8). The entry continues however as follows: '..today the devil Heath announced his EEC plan. The shadow of a West European Fascist Empire hovers over us, and I wonder how well the Celtic peoples, leave alone the working class of England, fare..'.

Nuacht Naisiunta issue #81 on July 12 1971 claimed Martin O'Leary as the first martyr of the new phase of struggle. His funeral in Cork was reported, Seamus Corry of the ITGWU laid a wreath. He had lost his life at the Mogul mine at Silvermines, in an IRA action in support of the striking miners.

According to local lore this action, which involved disabling an ESB sub-station (a hazardous operation), had a positive political effect. The present writer however wants to place on record that he had nothing to do with it, and would have opposed it had he known it was in prospect. It illustrates perfectly the nature of the problem of dealing with the still dominant culture rooted in the traditional military nature of the IRA, which had persisted despite our best efforts since 1965. The elitist role of the IRA, in acting 'for' the workers from outside, is the antithesis of that projected for the type of left-wing democratic activist organisation we had being trying to build. This was the beginning of the end of my association with the movement.

There is in the WTS archive a document written by RJ entitled 'Notes on the Northern Situation'; it is worth reproducing in full, as it summarises the present writer's then perceptions. It would have served as input to the August 3 1971 meeting of the Society.

Notes on the Northern Situation / RJ 25/07/71

There are signs that the form of the political solution is taking shape. The 'two-nation' idea of O'Brien is more than a theory. It is fast becoming a reality, thanks to the worsening sectarian situation in Belfast.

Consider the following steps from the point of view of Britain:

1. Draw out the republicans into an insurrectionary position in Belfast and Derry. In Belfast, this has the effect of causing pogroms, splitting finally the trade unions, rendering any idea of working-class unity impossible. In Derry this has the effect of putting pressure on Lynch to intervene militarily.

2. Arrange with Lynch that this military intervention when it takes place will look like a withdrawal in the face of a provisional campaign, and that Lynch will recover more national credibility, thus gaining support for his EEC referendum.

3. Arrange a political leadership for the 'liberated area': this is the group which has withdrawn from Stormont. The factors involved in the setting up of this group were (a) the external affairs people in the Arts Club meeting (b) O'Leary. In other words, the civil service and the Labour Party channels of influence.

The form of the political solution is therefore a 29 county Free State, with movements of populations out of Belfast, and a split in the Trade Unions. This will look sufficiently like a step towards the Republic to gain Lynch some kudos, or maybe the alternative leadership which is waiting in the wings, if Lynch is not the man to do the job.

This at the time was our perception of what was going on behind the scenes, in the background of the 'arms crisis', with Haughey in the wings. We were convinced that the over-riding issue was membership of the EEC, that there was a Lynch-Heath understanding, and that re-partition was the goal. This perception has been dismissed as fantasy. But there was a plan to arm the Provisionals, and to do military training in Donegal. We were aware of numerous intrigues which were going on, all over. Who connived? Do we yet have the full story? The paper went on:

How is this strategy to be countered?

[A] Preserve working-class unity in Belfast. This is a tall order, but may possibly be approached by the Belfast Executive (of the official republican movement) approaching the Trades Council, in writing, backed up by leaflets, press statements etc, repudiating the deeds of unknown arsonists, probable agents provocateurs, and bombers, on Protestant shops, especially co-ops which are the property of the workers. This repudiation should be accompanied by an offer to support local vigilante groups, set up under Trade Union control, to defend initially co-op property, ultimately peoples property from arson by these unknowns. Also to urge that the Trades Council, once these Peace Corps were set up, should press the military to confine their attention to protecting public property and to leave over patrolling of streets where the workers live, law and order being taken over by the Trade Union Peace Corps. Make it known that the official movement will give unconditional support to a Workers Peace Corps organised under TU control.

[B] Take the initiative in pressing the MPs who have withdrawn, into a new position, different from the 'Catholic liberated area provisional government' position that they have got themselves into. Press them to bid to form an alternative government in Stormont on the common programme of opposition to the EEC with the anti-EEC elements in the Unionist Party. Try to convert the withdrawal into something different from a link in the Lynch-Westminster chain. The exact nature of this bid has yet to be worked out, but it must be such as to split the Unionists, and it must come with pressure from below, from trade unionists worried about EEC effects. And it should not look like a 'challenge to the Constitution', or the alliance with the anti-EEC Unionists is a non-starter. Again, a tall order, but it should at least be called for, so that some people in retrospect may see we were right.

There is no record of the status of this document; it probably is analogous to that of Uinsean MacEoin as discussed on 14/07/71, though from a more left-wing perspective. The Provisionals were seen, correctly, as a totally destructive influence on the embryonic working-class unity we had tried to nurture, with some initial success. It was of course hopelessly unrealistic, grasping at straws, in a disastrous situation. The starting-point, the 'Heath-Lynch collusion' in an EEC-oriented strategy, deserves the attention of critical historians. How much substance did it have? How important was strategy relating to the EEC in the minds of the Government, in the context of the Northern crisis?

Nuacht Naisiunta in issue #83 dated July 27 1971 recorded that there were raids on the Sinn Fein Head Office and on peoples' houses, to coincide with raids by the British and RUC in the North. The raids in the 26 counties were associated with acts due to agents provocateurs, and there were indications that all Dail groups had agreed on a procedure for introducing internment, based on an alleged discovery of a plot to stage a coup d'etat. There was of course no such plot, but the situation illustrates the extreme paranoia of the Fianna Fail government regarding left-wing actions to draw attention to the failings of its social policies, and domination by speculative urban development interests. Ivan Cooper in Derry was highly critical of these actions, on the grounds that they increased the danger of internment dominating the scene in the North.

At an extended committee meeting of the WTS on August 3 1971 a memo to Jack Lynch was projected, to be drafted by a sub-committee consisting of RJ, Oliver Snoddy and Manus Durcan. The September meeting 'as gaeilge' was to be on the North. Kelleher would speak on the Guinness run-down. The committee met again on August 8 and issued a statement to Press from which is worth reproducing the concluding summary:

WTS Open Letter to Jack Lynch - August 9 1971

2. Crude nationalistic statements from 26-county political ends by spokesmen close to the Government have helped identify undeservedly the civil rights movement with the partition question and to drive it into the ghettos, giving rise to the present danger of civil war in which the prime sufferers would be the divided working people.

3. The onus is in Westminster to undo the damage done by the Carsonite rebellion. This is possible if it (a) abandons all claim to rule Ireland (b) announces a programmed disengagement (c) disarms the Orangemen and bans the Orange parades (d) imposes a Bill of Rights on Stormont and concedes enough independence to Stormont to enable it to take its own EEC decision and to deal with Dublin as it wishes.

4. The onus is on Dublin to secularise the Constitution and to provide for an Irish federal regional structure.

5. Any talks between a reformed Stormont and Dublin to be entirely a matter for the Irish and without interference by Westminster.

6. No internment, whether as part of a package deal or otherwise.

7. No political settlement involving re-drawing the Border, movements of populations, 'Catholic areas' or any principle which questions the Irishness of Protestants.

The 'Letter to Jack Lynch' got substantial coverage in the national press, and some congratulatory letters came in. I wrote also to Paul Johnson in the London New Statesman, thanking him for the coverage of the issue in terms of the need for a phased withdrawal, and enclosing a letter for publication; I also enclosed a copy of the foregoing 'Open Letter to Jack Lynch', giving it the status of a draft yet to be agreed, but published as a discussion document; also a copy Anthony Coughlan's EEC document. The letter for publication covered much of the ground of the 'Letter to Jack Lynch', and added in also the following:

"The 32-county Irish Congress of Trade Unions is already waking up to the EEC implications. The first significant resolution, calling on the Congress Executive to meet the Dublin Government to discuss the implications and to examine alternatives, came at the 1970 Congress from the largely Belfast-based Sheet-metal Workers and Coppersmiths.

"There are apocryphal stories about, of anti-EEC meetings organised by republicans in Protestant areas of County Down, where after being duly jeered by the Paisleyites a special EEC edition of the United Irishman was nonetheless bought and read.

"If any shock treatment exists capable of making the Northern Protestants realise that they must face the world as Irishmen, this is it...".

The ICTU opposed EEC entry in 1972, but to no avail; the referendum was carried by a massive 73% majority. Our attempt to use the EEC as a unifier for perceived working-class interests across the sectarian divide was, on the whole, wishful thinking. For more extensive coverage of these and related political issues, see Appendix 10.

There is a gap in the Nuacht Naisiunta record from July 27 until August 16, when there was a statement from Northern Command, describing what amounted to a battle between the 'official IRA' and the British Army, in an attempt to resist a swoop leading to internment. They called for a political solution, but not the one in prospect in the current Heath-Lynch talks.

In the subsequent commentary, Nuacht Naisiunta attacked the Provisional bombing of Protestant halls and premises, and the black-and-tan role of the British Army backing up the armed Orange mob. Under a sub-head 'what Heath wants' it was suggested that the role of the Orange mob had killed the 'new Union via the Lemass-O'Neill road'. His alternative was (a) to provoke sectarian strife to the extent of movements of populations (b) pull in the Border to include a 90% Protestant area and (c) do a deal with Lynch handing over some 'Catholic' areas. This was regarded as giving Lynch enough political capital to win the EEC referendum, and to give Heath an Irish puppet vote in the EEC Council.

Clearly the WTS analysis of the Heath-Lynch negotiations had been taken on board. The arguments were developed along the lines of the 'Letter to Lynch' above. This analysis has been dismissed as fantasy by some commentators, but does it not begin to look familiar when we contemplate the recent history of Bosnia? We were aware of the possibility of such a scenario developing when we were attempting to demilitarise the situation and develop a political approach via Civil Rights.

It was basically the then thinking of Anthony Coughlan, perhaps with some input from Greaves, in desperation, under the pressure of a situation rapidly descending towards what we would now recognise as Bosnian. I had little to do with it, apart from my July 25 memo above. My attention at this time was on the Mornington School, where people were trying to absorb some of the historical background, including European political experience, and the experience of the Labour movement in Britain. We built up quite a useful library, which went historically back to the English Republic (as analysed by Rodney Hilton), included most of the Irish republican classics, also TA Jackson, Greaves etc, and most of the works of Connolly. Immediately after internment however it became obvious that the activists, however much they aspired to take the political road, could think of nothing but internment and all background political education was increasingly seen as irrelevant.

I as WTS Secretary wrote on August 16 to the New Scientist congratulating them on their 'riot control' article which had emphasising the political rather than the technical aspect. I followed up with an outline of our current position, summarising past history.

There were extended WTS drafting committee meetings on August 17 and 23 1971 on the North, with inputs from Daltun O Ceallaigh and Anthony Coughlan, the key concepts being a 'reformed Stormont' and 'imposition of democratic constitution from Westminster'. An attempt was made to get into dialogue with the Provisionals, but the outcome of this is not on record.

The revised and expanded Coughlan draft was in the end issued as from the Society, and is on record. It covers 3 foolscap pages of single-spacing small type, covering much the same ground as the foregoing, in more depth. It drew a response from Garrett Fitzgerald, who '..found much to agree with in it, although there are some points on which I would put a slightly different emphasis. I should like to congratulate you on having prepared a rational policy statement at a time when so many people are reacting irrationally..'. He supported our opposition to 'direct rule'.

Nuacht Naisiunta in the August 23 and 27 issues gave details of a battle of press statements between Head Office, the Provisionals, Conor Cruise O'Brien, and a bogus statement issued by the Special Branch purporting to be from the 'officials'. These present a challenge to aspirant historian-interpreters; it is clear that once we get into a military situation deception is the order of the day. The emphasis changed on September 7 when the Republican Clubs commented on the scene, the target being the Provisional bombing, and Blaney. On September 20 Northern Command, while visibly on a war footing, and claiming British casualties, attempted to dissociate itself from the 'lunatic bombings which have affected the livelihood of the working people..'.

During August 1971 John Miller in TCD wrote to the Wolfe Tone Society seeking to organise a quarter-page ad in the London Times signed by members of TCD staff. Desirée Shortt for the Tailors Hall Directors wrote confirming the letting to the Society of the musicians gallery room above the main hall, and naming it the 'Wolfe Tone Room'. The Society occupied this for a time, and held its meetings there regularly on the first Tuesday of the month, starting September 7 1971.

The first Tailors Hall meeting of the WTS was on September 7 1971. It was one of the 'as gaeilge' series; Maolseachlainn O Caollai and Risteard O Glaisne spoke, on the general theme of the Aug 23rd statement.

A copy of the invitation to this meeting is on record; it was in support of the Civil Rights demands in the North; projected speakers also included Janice Williams (she maintains however that she did not speak, and was not even asked, suggesting that the sub-committee organising the meeting was not functioning properly) from the South, while from the North there were projected Jack Bennett, Joe Deighan, Bernadette Devlin and Frank MacManus. In the event, Padraig O Snodaigh, O Caollai and O Glaisne spoke, and a letter from the North by Joe Deighan was read (the Northern list of names seems to have been somewhat aspirational). The 'August 23 Statement' was supported by a resolution. A statement by Maolseachlainn O Caollai on behalf of Connradh na Gaeilge was issued to the press, in English, giving some historical background on the use of Irish by Scottish Presbyterian settlers in the 18th century.

On September 10 1971 again in the Tailors Hall there was a book-launch for Greaves to promote his Mellows book, and to present Maire Comerford with a copy. It seems also around this time we tried to get 'prominent people' to sign the letter to Jack Lynch; George Gilmore wrote in declining, and David Thornley, then in controversy with Cruise O'Brien, felt it would be impolitic, while agreeing with the letter privately. There is in the WTS archive a Hibernia cutting dated September 24 on Thornley's political position.

The September 28 1971 Nuacht Naisiunta issue referenced a document from an un-named source which reported a CIA secret meeting in Washington, indicating a serious interest in Irish internal affairs, with roles for executives of US-based companies in Ireland.

The WTS October 5 general meeting held a post-mortem on the attempt to get the Irish-language group working for September (ie we explained the weakness of the September meeting by the failure of the Irish Language group to deliver). Successive North memoranda were considered. A tax and social reform group was set up. Finally at the October 19 1971 committee the need to loosen up the Irish language constraint was recognised.

There was an attendance analysis; the consistent supporters were said to be RJ, Cathal MacLiam, Derry Kelleher, Alan Heussaff and Joy Rudd. Occasional were Uinsean Mac Eoin, Dermot O'Doherty, Seamus MacGabhainn, Micheal O Loinsigh. Janice Williams was also a consistent supporter at this time, but she seems to have been overlooked. Richard Roche had dropped out(9).

The Nuacht Naisiunta then resumed, after a gap in the record, on November 9 1971, the Sinn Fein Ard Fheis having taken place in the interval. Elected to the Ard Comhairle were Mairin de Burca, Seamus Costello, Cathal Goulding, Tony Heffernan, Derry Kelleher, Malachi McBirney, Malachy McGurran, Liam McMillan, Donnacha Mac Raghnaill, Sean O Coinnaith, Eoin O Murchu and Mick Ryan. There was provision for regional representatives from 13 defined regions, 4 of which were in 9-county Ulster.

There was a reference to an educational conference in Greystones, to be held on November 21 1971, as an open event. Outside speakers included Matt Larkin, de Courcy Ireland, Oliver Snoddy and Tom Redmond, indicating a conscious aspiration towards a 'broad left' programme.

There was also a report of Malachy McGurran's speech at the Edentubber commemoration; by using this event they were asserting continuity with the 50s tradition, while changing the political message and distancing themselves from the Provisionals: '...can they justify their sectarian attacks on the Protestant workers, and would they agree with ...their leader when he says that if the Protestant people don't like the Provisionals' Irish Republic then they can get out?'

The November 16 issue focused on visits to Dublin by British politicians; they urged no talks while there was internment in the North. It was reported that O Bradaigh and Mac Stiofain had admitted that they were prepared to meet in secret with the 6 Tory MPs. There was also an evaluation of the Ard Fheis suggesting that with the increased scale of the event there had been trouble over democratic procedures; they had attempted to concentrate discussion into 6 main resolutions.

The call for 'no talks with the British until internment is ended' was re-iterated on November 22 1971 in connection with the visit of ex-Prime Minister Harold Wilson. This issue also contained a statement from the 6-county executive of the Republican Clubs which was supportive of the Civil Disobedience campaign being promoted by the NICRA. The latter was exposed to a takeover threat, associated with Aidan Corrigan, an attempt to develop a 'Provisional' political base (the 'Northern Resistance Committee' set up in Omagh on November 21). The article went on to accuse the Peoples Democracy of '..courting the Provisionals in an attempt to win the influence that they had failed to do within the NICRA..'. There had earlier been a Dungannon NICRA conference which had resisted this Provisional or perhaps Blaneyite takeover threat; the people concerned had retired to Omagh to set up their rival show.

These manoeuvrings need further analysis, perhaps in the context of the history of the NICRA and its attempts to keep the campaign broad-based political despite the developing Provisional campaign, with the 'officials' also being active militarily.

The relative political positions of the NICRA and the 'officials' was illustrated in the November 30 1971 issue of Nuacht Naisiunta, in which they published in full the NICRA demands (effective local democracy under PR and reformed Stormont, not 'direct rule'; legislation against discrimination and sectarianism, and the ending of internment) but then went on to assert the demand for the all-Ireland Republic, and to highlight the role of the 'official IRA' which was then actively at war with the British. Sean O Cionnaith in the US had been experiencing trouble and misreporting in his attempts to explain this complex situation, with the Provisionals also being active.

The December 7 1971 issue opened with an attempt to get Hillery in Foreign Affairs to take up the case of the internees, but then went on to publish a 3-page manifesto signed by Eoin O Murchu, with the title PRO. This attacked the 'Wilson Plan': a Commission drawn from the 3 parliaments in Dublin, London and Belfast, to draw up a new 32-county constitution, for an Ireland within the Commonwealth, with retention of Special Powers and internment. The statement countered by urging the development of workers' unity across the sectarian divide in the political struggle against the Common Market, which was opposed in the Protestant community by Boal and Paisley(10).

Leading off with a partial list of prisoners and internees, and a listing of actions in Galway, the main content of the December 14 1971 issue of Nuacht Naisiunta was a report of an anti-internment rally in the Mansion House organised by the Dublin Comhairle Ceanntar. The speakers were Seamus O Tuathail (the editor of the United Irishman, who had happened to be in Belfast in a sporting capacity and had been picked up, but subsequently released), Malachy McGurran, Tomas Mac Giolla, Bernadette Devlin and Micheal O Riordain. The principal message was supportive of the NICRA demands, as noted above, but the press it seems picked up on a remark by Bernadette relating to the assassination of Senator Barnhill, and the overall message was lost.

It was becoming increasingly clear that the role of the 'official IRA', in the context where the NICRA was attempting to develop a mass campaign of civil disobedience against internment, was totally counter-productive. The Barnhill episode was among the final factors which triggered my own withdrawal from membership of the movement. The embryonic left-wing unity suggested by the above Mansion House event was tragically aborted by the persistence of the military mind-set; this pathological tradition, fuelled by competition with the Provisionals, subsequently was syphoned off and flourished with Costello and his 'INLA', after the 'officials' in the end got sense and called a cease-fire.

The final Nuacht Naisiunta issue of 1971 was on December 21; it reported the names of the officer board of the new Ard Comhairle: Secretaries were Mairin de Burca and Tony Heffernan, vice-Presidents were Malachy McGurran and Derry Kelleher, Treasurers Donnacha Mac Raghnaill and Janice Williams, Organiser Sean Garland, Publicity Eoin O Murchu, Education Derry Kelleher. It contains also a statement from 30 internees in Crumlin Road supportive of enhanced political actions to counter the negative effects of the Provisional bombing campaign, and to counter the threat of internment in the 26 counties.

The Year 1972, Bloody Sunday etc

Bloody Sunday was covered in the February 7 1972 edition, calling for unity behind the NICRA banner, but also acting as a political outlet for the South Down / South Armagh command of the official IRA; '..the whole world (was) looking on in disbelief..'.

Shortly after this I resigned. I felt that, given my precarious self-employed situation, I was no longer in a position to contribute anything, though I had hopes that the emergent 'left-unity' situation as indicated at the Mansion House meeting might consolidate, with the leadership in what appeared to be good hands. This hopeful situation was however killed by the further descent into militarism, stimulated by the Bloody Sunday events and internment.

Nuacht Naisiunta however apparently had nothing to say about the Aldershot incident, where the 'official IRA' attempted to 'retaliate' for Bloody Sunday. Maybe one or more issues are missing from the record; there is no way of knowing, as the sequential numbering had been abandoned. The present writer went to see Goulding after Bloody Sunday, urging restraint, so as to keep the attention of the international media on the exposure of this British act of barbarism. The Aldershot event was however, it seems, already set up; Goulding said nothing.

Tomas Mac Giolla on March 13 speaking at the UCC Republican Club attributed responsibility for the violence and terror in the North to all three governments. He included Dublin '..because of its deliberate, calculated campaign through 1969 to split the Republican Movement and divert the Civil Rights struggle into a military campaign. Mr Lynch and his government were deeply involved in this as was Mr Tim Pat Coogan and some of his staff on the Irish Press. Their activities were documented in the pages of the UI in 1969 and 1970 and recently were again exposed by the London Times "Insight" team in their book "Ulster"..'.

Concluding Remarks on RJ's SF Period

In January 1972 I formally pulled out of Sinn Fein, and, indeed, from the so-called 'official IRA', which had been showing signs of re-emergent militarism, consequent on the August 1969 events. I remained however in reasonably good standing, and was in a position to continue to help them with their internal education programme during the summer of 1972, at the 'Mornington School', although the environment was increasingly becoming poisoned by the internment process, with peoples' thinking totally dominated by perceived military objectives, and being 'on the run'.

Janice remained on the Ard Comhairle until the next Ard Fheis, at the end of 1972, after which she also bowed out.

Nuacht Naisiunta continued up to June 1976, constituting a record of the ongoing attempts to keep political republicanism going on a 'broad left' basis, the IRA remaining in existence even after it called a ceasefire in mid-1972. The political movement's attempts to survive, with sales of the United Irishman, distribution of anti-sectarian leaflets, support for the residual Civil Rights campaign etc, were increasingly restricted, being caught in the crossfire between the Provisionals and Costello's INLA(11).

It is important to put on record how in those days we did our best to transform the Fenian conspiratorial tradition into an open principled democratic one, using the best aspects of the Marxist democratic-revolutionary tradition, and trying to avoid top-down Stalinism, though this kept surfacing via Costello and those for whom the military tradition was dominant.

I remember Costello expressing admiration for Stalin, because he used to rob banks for the Bolsheviks!

Greaves never forgave me for making the attempt as I did; he wanted to let the Fenian tradition die, for lack of intellectual resources, and rebuild a movement from scratch, based on the organised working-class, with in mind Micheal O Riordain as focus. He had had a hand in setting up the Irish Workers League in 1948 with this in mind, but he had illusions about its potential. It was a basically flawed concept. No way would this have been possible, given the dead hand of Stalinism, which to my mind was much more of an incubus than that of the Fenians and the IRB, though the latter of course had the potential to become a native Irish Stalinism, as indeed they did.

My judgement at the time was that there was more democratic potential in moderating and upgrading the Fenian tradition into a new-wave political force, capable of uniting broad strata of working people, including working owner-managers and self-employed, on an all-Ireland basis, than there was in narrow 'workerist' Marxist orthodoxy as embodied fundamentally in MOR, and perceptibly in CDG and co.

I hoped later to develop this thesis with as much evidence as I could muster, and try to build a neo-Marxist 'market socialism' model, of which the central ideas was 'direct democratic control over the capital investment process by the people concerned', the State being the referee and not a player. The apostolic succession is Marx Engels Connolly, but we have, as yet, no credible follower of Connolly of the same stature. Maybe we can provide the raw material to help one emerge, and I look to the left-green convergence to pick this up(12).

The germ of this idea is in my father's interactions with Plunkett House in the period 1913-1933, and this has been described in the earlier chapters. There is actually some degree of continuity of philosophical position between my father and myself, which I did not recognise when he was alive. I have in Chapter 3 presented evidence that he was promoting the writings of Connolly in the 1920s, on the international network, and that during 1921 and 1922 he was giving lectures on economics in the evening to working people in TCD, more or less unofficially, with the support of Tom Johnson.

JJ's Last Act: the EEC and Berkeley's Querist

I give here one of a series of letters(13) which JJ wrote to the Irish Times some time before he died:

Irish Times, December 18 1970: 'The Invisible Coalition':

Sir / One is sometimes tempted to join one of our left-wing revolutionary organisations in the hope of teaching them a little sense. Many of the ends they have in view are highly desirable but the means used to further them are deplorable. An outstanding example is the destruction of the Nelson Pillar. A well publicised movement to have Nelson removed and Wolfe Tone substituted would have commanded widespread sympathy and the significance of the change would have been obvious to everyone. Many similar more recent episodes could be referred to.

Watching the political game from the outside one cannot help being amazed that so many of the personalities concerned cannot see the the obvious. The political Labour party which has not the remotest hope of ever becoming a majority party in the life time of most of us, is hopelessly divided on the question for or against coalition. The real coalition is staring us all in the face but we do not see it. That is the de facto coalition between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail to land us all in the EEC with our eyes shut.

The greatest betrayal of our national interests and freedom since the Act of Union in being openly planned by the major parties, and the general public silently acquiesces. The Labour party, instead of wasting its energies in a dispute about a coalition with Fine Gael, should consciously adopt the cause of an all Ireland radical party that is determined to keep all Ireland out of the Eurocrat Empire by every legitimate means.

Many people up north have grave misgivings about the EEC but they lack organisation and leadership. The Labour party can make no more valuable contribution to the cause of natural freedom and self determination on an all Ireland non-sectarian basis than this. If they fail to adopt this obvious cause in my view, they should have not only their eyes, but their heads examined.

In the last few years of his life JJ pulled together several of his published papers and re-worked them into chapters supporting the projected 'definitive edition' of Berkeley's Querist. Some correspondence he left suggests that he had some difficulty in finding a publisher interested in this Querist project. In the end it was published in 1970 by Dundalgan, with some TCD sponsorship. Some copies were taken up by libraries; it got few reviews, and was remaindered(14).

He submitted it for the degree of DLitt by extern examiner, and the degree was awarded in May 1972, on the same occasion as the composer Shostakovitch was awarded an honorary degree. I had to help him up the steps to receive it.

Shortly afterwards he went into Limerick hospital (he was then living in an extension of my sister's house near Nenagh) for a minor operation, to do with what the surgeons laconically call 'the plumbing'. He made heavy weather of the anaesthetic, and died as a result. When last I saw him he was in intensive care, and we held hands. Before the operation I recollect seeing him sitting up contentedly in bed, reading something lightweight, perhaps PG Wodehouse, or a detective story. Once he had put his Berkeley book to bed, he felt he had done all he could. He had shown up at a meeting in Athlone in early 1972, which was attempting, against the tide, to persuade Irish farmers that the EEC was to be viewed critically. He was however content; he had published his book and got his Doctorate.

Coincidentally, perhaps by way of epilogue, the Dublin University Co-operative Society, which JJ and others had founded in 1913, died shortly afterwards(15).

Operations Research

I had established my credentials with the Operational Research community when working with Aer Lingus in the previous decade; the Airline Group of IFORS the international federation used to meet regularly, and the modelling work we did on the performance of real-time computing systems, and on fleet planning, had given us in Aer Lingus some some standing with the international community. As a result I was asked to be a member of the international programme committee, and I found myself in the front line at conference-time.

The IFORS conference was influential in raising the profile of Operational Research in the Irish context; I had been working with Gordon Foster in the TCD Department of Statistics on developing an MSc programme, and I was able to contribute to the utilisation of university based research results in industry, as well as to getting 'real-world' problems for the MSc students concerned(17).

Post-resignation Politics

The Campaign used to meet in various scattered locations, and eventually, when it had become the Irish Sovereignty Movement, in the basement of a house owned by Uinsean Mac Eoin in Mountjoy Square, which he was engaged in re-developing. This was also the venue for the meetings of the then declining Wolfe Tone Society. It was a cold and uncomfortable location, and did not help our public image. I recollect an occasion when we had caught some mice, and had lit a fire, and a leading member of the group, who incidentally was a schoolteacher, came up with the question 'do mice burn?'. Subsequently reflecting on this, I had occasion to use it as an example of the gulf between the culture of the Irish aspirant political elite and the culture of technical competence(18).

The interactions generated by the anti-EEC campaign were diverse and creative in their own way. We were supported among others by Seamus Deane, then in UCD (he is now in Notre Dame). He then edited a periodical called Atlantis which was an attempt to fill the gap left by the demise of Sean O Faolain's Bell, and indeed the earlier Irish Statesman. It was a critical review at a high intellectual standard, in a format such as to remain vertical on the bookshelves and be referenced. I had previously done a review for Atlantis of the Irish volume of Lloyd George's secretary Tom Jones's Whitehall Diaries. In this context, wishing to capture some of my Sinn Fein experience, Seamus Deane asked me to contribute a paper on a critical analysis of the various visions of the 'New Ireland' which had been floating around during the previous decade or so. This I did with alacrity, being then in an unattached political state, searching to make meaningful contact with the Left, such as it was. The paper was developed initially at a Wolfe Tone Society event which I outline in what follows.

Desmond Greaves recorded attending a conference organised by the Dublin WTS in the Nuremore Hotel, Carrickmacross, in November 1972(19). This was a significant attempt, on the part of the Society, to focus on Northern issues, and some of the papers were subsequently published. Maire Comerford, Jack Bennett, Kader Asmal, Derry Kelleher and the present writer were also there, as well as Liam de Paor from UCD. Anthony Coughlan was not present, being then pre-occupied with the post-Referendum transformation of the Common Market Defence Campaign into the Irish Sovereignty Movement. When he got sight of Jack Bennett's paper however he took steps to publish it, and there was some dispute over how the proceedings of the conference were to be published. In the end some of the papers appeared in various separate publications, but I don't think the conference was ever published as an integrated proceedings, under the WTS imprint, which is a pity, because in my recollection it was a significant event.

The people opposed to the EEC included, as well as 'official' and 'provisional' Sinn Fein, the Communist Party, the Labour Party, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and a good few non-political 'concerned citizens'. These held together for a time in the Irish Sovereignty Movement, the objective of which was to keep a watching brief over the way the Government related to the EEC. They considered at one time attempting to become an electoral force, but drew back, preferring to remain as a cross-party political lobby. The active politicals concerned attempted to develop activities of their own, under the label 'Left Alternative'.

The existence of the latter was the basis for some organised Irish participation in the 'World Congress of Peace Forces' which met in Moscow in October 1973(20). This was attended by a group of 30 rather disparate people from Ireland. There was a strong journalistic contingent which included Donal Foley from the Irish Times, Carmel Duignan and Sean O Mordha from RTE, Liam McGowan from the Sunday World, Prionnsias Mac Aonghusa and his father Criostoir and John Mulcahy of Hibernia. As a result there was quite good coverage of the event in the Irish press, including a series of articles by Liam McGowan which contrasted his experiences with those from his earlier visit in 1955, when along with Anthony Cronin and Peadar O'Donnell he had been demonised by the Catholic Standard. Brezhnev gave a lengthy keynote speech on the Yom Kippur middle-east crisis, being reported at length by Donal Foley on October 27.

The group also included some Trade Union people: Robin Joseph, secretary of the Scientific Staffs Branch of ASTMS, Betty Sinclair of the Belfast Trades Council, and others. Seamus Scally was there from the Labour Party, Kevin McCorry from NICRA, Brigid Wilkinson from Amnesty International, Con Lehane from Citizens for Civil Liberty, John McGarry from the Irish United Nations Association. The present writer was there representing the Dublin Wolfe Tone Society. One Joan O'Brien was there from the Language Freedom Movement; this was a cause of some tension in the group.

There was a group of Communist Party of Ireland people, including Micheal O Riordain and Edwina Stewart; also Betty Sinclair as above, and Frank Edwards of the Ireland-USSR Society. The group also included leading left-oriented politicising republicans Tomas Mac Giolla, Sean Garland and Dessie O'Hagan. The present writer, having resigned from the republican movement, subsequently for a brief period re-joined the Communist Party, with the aspiration to help along the convergence of the republicans with the left, which seemed to be beginning to develop some dynamics. This Moscow episode seemed at the time to be an indication of some degree of philosophical convergence between the two traditions, and the fact that a reasonably broad-based group could be assembled and persuaded to go to view the Cold War issues from a Moscow perspective, seemed to augur well.

A highlight of the plenary sessions was Salvador Allende's widow's account of her husband's overthrow by the CIA-engineered coup in Chile; this was then recent history. Donal Foley reported these in the Irish Times on October 27. (Shortly afterwards in Dublin, with Jim Fitzgerald I helped organise a concert of Chilean music by Isabel Parra, in aid of the refugees.)

Overall however the conference was a top-down railroading operation. There were various working groups set up, to discuss previously prepared documents. I attended the one on 'Economic, Scientific and Technological Co-operation', and contributed a prepared position paper, in which I attempted to develop a role for smaller fringe-countries in the 'east-west' in helping to transfer scientific knowhow to the 'south'.

I had recently completed the preliminary analysis of the 1971 Census which gave for the first time a head-count of people having qualifications in science and engineering(21).

It was evident that there was a reserve of qualified manpower available in Ireland, and that this tended to be exported to the already-rich core of the post-imperial world. I was then also building up the TCD MSc programme in Statistics and Operations Research, and we had experience of practical techno-economic development work with graduates from various scientific disciplines.

Some of the TCD projects(22) on which we were working seemed to me to be models relevant to the development economics of the 'third world'. There would perhaps be scope for an internationally-funded development agency to locate in Ireland, and/or in one or more other European 'fringe' countries, for the purpose of training a cadre of graduates from third-world countries in techno-economic analysis relevant to their development programmes, with emphasis on a co-operative approach to adding value to to products of primary producers.

I attempted to develop a correspondence with various people I had met at the conference who were concerned to influence the fate of any 'peace dividend' which might emerge as a result of the 'detente' process in the direction of suitably located postgraduate programmes addressing the development economics environment. Regrettably this did not succeed. This particular conference did not enable the necessary related networking to develop.

I was attempting to use the 'international movement', in the form it had assumed under Soviet domination, as a vehicle for bottom-up networking among people who were prepared to adopt a democratic, bottom-up approach to the transfer of technologies relevant to the development-economics of the third world. I was, perhaps, attempting to build on a development philosophy which I had earlier encountered peripherally at an Irish Management Institute conference in Killarney: that of ('small is beautiful') Schumacher, who had addressed the conference but had been totally sidelined(23). I did however spend some time with him at the conference, and we exchanged ideas.

Very little, if any, of the contributions of the Moscow participants, many of whom were dedicated experts of international standing, were embodied in the final documents, and this was remarked upon by perceptive participants, with whom I subsequently corresponded. It was a classic top-down, railroaded, Stalinist affair, geared to the propagation of Soviet foreign policy.

On returning to Ireland I found myself in the position of acting secretary to what became known for a period as the 'Irish Peace Group'. It was, presumably, hoped that there would be some cohesion, and some continuity of effort, but despite some efforts on my part, nothing ever came of this. It must go down in history, from the Irish political angle, as an interesting 'junket', from which some people perhaps may have gained some experience of the state of the 'international movement'. Those perceptive enough may perhaps have seen some early warnings of the subsequent demise of the USSR.

The Kane-Bernal Society Mk 2

The group, apart from Kelleher and myself, included Myles Parker, Robert Blackith, Martin Speight, Paul Dowding, Noel Murphy and others; the latter was a UCD chemical engineer, while most of the others were basically environmentalists from TCD. We identified various problems and opportunities in the general area of the interface between research and the implementation of its results, mobility of people between teaching and research, the human aspects of implementation of innovative systems, problems of man-machine relationship, definitions of 'growth', planned obsolescence, urban planning, supply and training of technicians.

We got as far as drafting a constitution, and I have a copy with amendments in pen. The 'Methods of Work' section called for '...a periodic meeting to hear progress reports from problem-area groups, and the reading of papers by people of suitable standing, either in public events organised by the Association, or on the grounds of other societies..... the encouragement of interdisciplinary and inter-institutional contacts... publication of a newsletter.'

I also have copies of drafts of articles written by me and by Kelleher on the analysis of the Guinness crisis; I have no evidence or recollection however of their being published. The thrust of the analysis was directed at the nature of the Guinness management structure, and the opportunities presented for diversifying with the support of the available bio-technical knowhow into areas other than the fermentation of sugar to get alcohol.

There are records of various meetings throughout 1972, and interactions with the Biomedical Engineering Society (via Noel Murphy) and the Industrial Archaeology Society, with Dr HS Corran, and I seem to have been able to use the contacts to generate related published material via the Irish Times column(2).

After the end of 1972 the trail goes cold, and I suspect that the network continued informally as an ideas-supply source for the Column. It is appropriate to resurrect some of these Irish Times articles, and I have made them available in Appendices 11 and 12, as they relate to the 'science and society' and socio-technical' streams.

The Wolfe Tone Society in Decline

Issue #2 contained an article based on a paper which my sister Dr Maureen Carmody read to the Society, entitled 'Protestants in the Republic', from the perspective of a medical doctor who had raised her family in the Protestant community of Nenagh, where her late husband Dermot Carmody had been the Vicar. It also contained a critical paper on the educational system, presumably by Joy Rudd, which focused on the question of denominational control.

Reaction to the Energy Crisis

The memorandum outlined the dangers involved in nuclear power production, leaning mostly on the Brown's Ferry experience in the USA. It noted the aspirations of the physicists to produce fusion energy, but set this aside as being long-term (the date post-2000 was suggested!). It then went on to develop a strategy for conserving fossil fuels, while various forms of solar energy were developed to the extent of becoming economic. A key concept in the conservation plan was the development of the gas grid to feed a multiplicity of small local combined heat and power systems, rather than to convert the Kinsale gas to electricity in a large generator, in a location where the waste heat would have to be thrown away. Proposals for a nodalised system of public transport were also outlined(24).

Brief Encounter with the CPI

Greaves visited Dublin on March 22 1975 to attend the CPI congress, which took place in Liberty Hall. Support for the 'declaration of intent' was on the agenda. There were some 120 people there. He noted that '..they had a number of resolutions and adopted the somewhat unusual procedure of debating them one after the other and voting on the whole lot tomorrow..'. I too had noted this, being present, and marked it down as another piece of Stalinist procedural pathology; voting after the debate has been forgotten encourages machine-like voting in support of the leadership's position on each issue. Greaves however seemed optimistic about the prospects: '...many new recruits and promising young people... new branches springing up all over the country, thanks to their having the right policy..'. MOR in the closing session paid a warm tribute to CDG for his '..40 years stand for Irish independence in Britain..'.

In June 1975 Greaves claimed to have received a phone-call (in fact, she had written to him, and spoken to him subsequently in Cathal MacLiam's place) from Janice Williams, then Secretary of the Wolfe Tone Society, asking him to speak at a meeting, in the context of its policy of fostering the convergence of the Left with the 'official' republicans, along the lines suggested in the 1970 'Freedom Manifesto'. It seems they had sought permission to reprint his Marx House pamphlet on the national question, but now wanted to print an edited version of a tape recording of the talk which he was invited to give. This he declined to have anything to do with, writing to the Chairman Cathal MacLiam to that effect.

Greaves was, it seems, content to let the WTS run down, and was un-supportive of our efforts to keep it going. My vision when with the republicans had been to transform the movement into one which would be primarily political, and represent the common interest of workers, working managers, owner-managers and self-employed, conceived consciously as a class alliance around common class interests in a national liberation context, and in that sense being basically Marxist. Greaves always dismissed this as 'making the revolution without the workers' and as 'petty-bourgeois', the latter being a dismissive label. He was of course himself petty-bourgeois, and most of the working class has petty-bourgeois aspirations, aspiring to own its own business. His dismissal of his own roots, and his failure to recognise the unrealistic nature of the aspiration to working-class purity, was a barrier to his total understanding of the Irish situation, though he did understand it better than most Marxists in Britain.

Greaves had positive insights, like (on November 29 1975) '...the Irish proletariat is not revolutionary at all, and does not recognise any such vanguard..'! Of course! This was precisely the reason that I had attempted to develop the broad-based class alliance concept, on rational grounds, avoiding jargon labels like 'revolutionary vanguard', or indeed 'proletariat'. This sort of language however crept into the 'official Sinn Fein' after I had resigned, under the influence of ultra-leftist elements who joined, filling the intellectual vacuum. My resignation had been caused by the re-assertion of the militarist culture in the movement, perceived as being the way to compete with the 'Provisionals'.

Greaves visited Dublin again on February 10 1976, primarily for a meeting with the ITGWU executive about his projected history, which seemed likely to proceed. From his political contacts he picked up the way official SF had infiltrated and taken over the Resources Protection Campaign, as they had done with the NICRA. He concluded with a revealing passage: '..I notice on all sides the same impatience with SF that I feel myself. This claim to national decision-making without popular mandate is objectionable, and I think that there is an element of it inherent in the idea of a Communist Party with a special status in a socialist state, which requires serious examination, though it is not a subject I have ever given much thought to..'.

SF at this time under Eamonn Smullen's guidance was attempting to upstage the CPI and become the recognised Irish embodiment of the 'international movement'. It is interesting that this was a trigger for Greaves's implied questioning of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' principle, the article of faith on which the 'international movement' placed so much weight.

However pathological the situation is where there is one highly centralised Stalinist top-down organisation claiming 'revolutionary vanguard' status, the existence of two such is indeed a recipe for disaster, with each claiming to control broad-based bodies by the exercise of disciplined infiltrating voting machines. This was a long way from the situation envisioned in the 1970 'Freedom Manifesto' as published in the United Irishman, which, though flawed in its ambiguity regarding the IRA, enshrined the pinnacle of the present writer's influence.

The Irish Socialist around this time was edited and largely written by Eoin O Murchu, who had been active in SF in close association with Eoghan Harris during the latter's period of intellectual dominance. The circumstances of his move from 'official' SF to the CPI remain obscure to the present writer. At the time of my resignation from SF in 1972 EOM was seeking to issue a damning statement but was over-ruled by the then leadership, who respected my integrity.

In July 1976 according to Greaves there was a complaint by SF against the present writer, calling on Micheal O Riordain to discipline him for exposing to key leading people in the Resources Protection Campaign that the left were at war within it, fighting for take-over(26).

This was indeed true; I had been present at a broad-based meeting in Athlone, attended by ASTMS and other trade union people with strong technological skills, with standing and influence, some of whom I knew personally thanks to the Irish Times 'Science and Technology' column; it looked like the Resources Protection Campaign was beginning to attract technological heavyweights.

I was however appalled by the way the meeting descended into a slanging match between rival voting machines on some motion, the purport of which I forget. I attempted to generate a knowledge-based compromise consensual amendment, but was shouted down by both sides. This was, if anything, evidence of an ignorant petty-bourgeois struggle between two so-called 'working-class' voting machines, in a contest for the ownership of an organisation which neither of them understood. Greaves did not have a clue about this, and added some pejorative remarks about the present writer.

Science and Marxism

Helena was associated with the TCD Communist Society, which ran occasional political events of student interest. I attended one at which she spoke on the 'scientific revolution'. While much of the discussion was somewhat 'up in the air', I felt it no harm to encourage the idea that mastery of science was an important aspect of social change. So when Helena came up with the idea of an invited speaker from the USSR with a science background, I was prepared to make an effort to ensure that the event was supported by at least some members of the College science community, and I made this known. This however turned out not to be welcome; I was accused of 'wanting to take over' the meeting. So I did little, but I did turn up to hear what the USSR speaker had to say. She had presumably got him to come over via the Party network.

The meeting was not very well attended; she had apparently made it an event to which outside political people came in, rather than as a promotional event relating Marxism to the student and College environment. The USSR guest speaker (I forget his name) turned out to be a tired hack, for whom this presumably was a trip to the West as reward for loyal service. However I took him as a possible source of insight into current USSR developments, and I asked a question about the Lysenko episode, which had earlier been a crunch issue at the interface between science and politics. The speaker however brushed aside the question, on the grounds that Lysenko, being by then discredited, was not a fit subject for study in a science context.

In other words, the problem of the dialectics of the interaction between science and society, including the analysis of historic pathologies, had not been identified in the USSR, and was being simply ignored. We had here an example of the atrophy of critical thinking under Brezhnev. However I did not get the impression that any of the Irish Marxists of the 'high church' picked up on this.(27)

Tensions with the CPI

The Irish Peace Group, as we saw above, had emerged out of an attempt to set up a broad-based peace lobby based on a group of politicals and journalists who went to a World Peace Council conference in Moscow in 1973, at one of the high points in CPI-republican convergence. It included Tomas Mac Giolla, Micheal O Riordain, Betty Sinclair, Robin Joseph (then Secretary of the ASTMD Scientific Staffs Branch), Cristoir Mac Aonghusa and his son Proinnsias, Donal Foley of the Irish Times, and a few others, including Irish CND people. It had a tenuous existence for a while, but lacked cohesion. During my secretaryship I attempted to make some things happen, but without much success. It was basically a postal address for receiving masses of World Peace Council published material, which was of questionable value. Here was Greaves on the CPI network making the case against my attempting to develop any sort of positive role for myself on the fringe of 'high-church left orthodoxy'. I subsequently discovered that O Riordain had been leaking the highly libellous internal character-assassination document he had prepared in support of my expulsion to journalist members of the Peace Group. I am not surprised nothing came of it.

On December 1 1977 Greaves went to Dublin, basically to work in the National Library, but the timing was coincidental with a reception at the Soviet Ambassador's house on December 2. Micheal O Riordain was to be invested with the Order of the October Revolution, and had secured an invitation for Greaves, who heard this at the last minute via Betty Sinclair. It was an event for the Party leadership and their friends, and a few other key people, among them Sean MacBride. A copy of Greaves's Life and Times of James Connolly was presented to the Ambassador, which Greaves autographed. Con Lehane and Cathal Goulding were present.

This would appear to have been an event which in effect asserted CPI priority on the international network, in front of selected other observers. No-one from England was there, apart from Greaves himself. He made no comment on the event in his Diary.

There was a reference in his Journal by Greaves on December 11 1977 to the present writer's expulsion from the CPI which managed to avoid any serious explanation of the issues involved, and to add in various 'negative spin' comments. My expulsion was consequent on a public row I had with a leading Party activist. I had had negative experience of him when we were both in the republican movement. After I resigned on the militarist issue, he wanted to issue a damning statement, but was prevented by the leadership from doing so. It seems they wanted to retain ongoing good relations with me, and to accept my reasons for resignation in good faith.

Later this particular activist took up with the Eoghan Harris group who was then advising Goulding, initiating the policy move away from republican objectives and towards support for international capital, welcomed as a 'generator of an Irish proletariat' (!). When he later made the transition to the CPI, under unexplained circumstances, he was made welcome and lionised, rapidly becoming a guru of the Stalinist political culture which still remained in fashion in the CPI.

In this capacity this particular activist spoke at a meeting in November 1977 on cultural issues, as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution. He defended the repressive Zhdanov cultural policies of the USSR, which had led to the isolation and persecution of numerous globally-famous Russian literary and scientific figures, and had stifled critical comment. I quite rightly attacked him for this, pointing out that if the Party was ever to have any influence it would have to decouple itself from this sort of carry-on, and learn to apply Marxism creatively to specifically Irish problems. For this I was expelled, with a duplicated libellous character-assassination document being circulated by O'Riordan. This event showed up the total political bankruptcy of the CPI, and its inability to read the signs of the coming disasters, which were then increasingly apparent(28).

Brief Wolfe Tone Society Resurrection

I read a paper entitled On the Problem of Democratic Unity to the Dublin WTS on January 24 1978 which was subsequently published in the anarcho-trotskyist periodical 'the Ripening of Time', Issue #9, March 1978. This was associated, in a subsequent Ripening of Time Issue #13 evaluating our earlier contributions from their particular political angle, with a paper in Issue #11 by Derry Kelleher critical of the evolution of 'official Sinn Fein' towards the 'Workers Party' labelling. In this I attempted a class analysis of Ireland, distinguishing between North and South, and identifying the type of parasitic bourgeoisie which is currently (2002) being exposed in the Tribunals. I went on to analyse how these classes were represented in a complex political structure, mentioning particularly the mafia-like control of the working-class exercised by Fianna Fail. I attempted to map out how a new left might emerge in the undergrowth, with a convergence of progressive elements currently working in the Labour Party, Sinn Fein and the Communist Party. I tried to analyse the cultural obstacles to this, which included divisions in attitudes to the Provisionals. I compared the process to small-shopkeeper competition; this had showed up in the EEC Referendum. I suggested how a convergent political line might be developed, along the lines of a 'Co-operative Democratic Federation'.(29).

This 'Ripening of Time' paper would perhaps have had more impact had it been published under the auspices of a journal having a wide readership among the people concerned, but none existed. We were reduced to dependence on an ultra-left splinter-group for publication outlets. We should of course have developed Tuairisc to an appropriate level as the vehicle for material of this nature, but alas the energy was gone out of the Wolfe Tone Society, and it died.

There is on record (in the WTS archive, though Anthony Coughlan is 'fairly certain' that it relates to the Sovereignty Movement) a Programme for 1978 which has the following items: Jan 24: AGM; Feb 14: 'British Attitudes to Irish Unity' (C Desmond Greaves); March 14: 'Attitudes to Irish Unity' (Fr McGreil); May 9 'EEC - a Step towards Irish Unity? (Micheal O Loinsigh); it then goes on suggesting titles without speakers, implying aspirations to cover areas like 'citizens rights', 'Labour and Irish Unity', control of education as an obstacle to unity, the political impact of religious differences, cultural diversity in a united Ireland. It is perhaps worth remarking that the lack of reference to the various electoral events which took place during the decade suggest a certain detachment from current politics in the 26 Counties.

There is no mention of this WTS meeting in Greaves' diary, though he was in Dublin for some time around this date; this suggests he did not set store by it.

During the 1970s I recollect that the membership of the Society became extended and somewhat diluted. The meeting-place in Mountjoy Square contributed to its negative image. It attempted to provide opportunities for the 'left alternative' network, which included the Labour Left, the CPI and the 'official republicans'. The latter evolved into the Workers Party via a period as Sinn Fein the Workers party. This trail was mostly sterile and I am not going to pursue it. The brief renaissance in 1978 was intended to develop something around the opportunities presented by the Sunningdale Agreement, such as it was. I don't recollect any event at which the WTS was formally wound up, but the records remain with Anthony Coughlan, and we are indebted to him for their preservation.

The Applied-Research Consultancy Group in TCD

The TCD applied research and consultancy group was set up in 1976 with the help of a £25,000 training grant from the IDA, after a period of operation of an Industrial Liaison Office financed by the National Science Council.

During the preliminary period it had become apparent that the gap between research done in the academic environment (no matter how 'applied' in nature) and the problem-solving needs of industry was too wide to be bridged by academic staff in marginal time aided by research students.

The 'ARC Group' formula was developed during 1976 in discussion with the IDA, which was interested in strengthening the linkages between Irish third-level education and the rapidly developing high-technology sector of industry in Ireland. It consisted in taking in full-time junior consultants having applied research experience at post-graduate level, who would be capable of taking industrially sponsored projects to completion within a deadline, with the aid of some co-ordinated support from academic staff members having relevant expertise.

These 'project officers' were, so to speak, amplifiers of academic expertise, rendering it available for industrial problem-solving to a client's deadline, rather than within an academic schedule.

At the conclusion of the third year of the ARC Group enterprise (in which an estimated £102,000 revenue was generated, years one and two having shown revenues of £16,440 and £43,475) there are employed a manager, secretary, eight project officers, two technicians and the equivalent of 2 or 3 more graduates in the form of part-time support from about 10 academic staff whose expertise had been found useful and who were willing to work as internal consultants, taking their reward either as personal income or as additions to their personal research funds.

The group currently consisted of four units relating to ten or more academic departments:

1. the micro-computing laboratory, specialising in dedicated application of microprocessor technology (hardware and software);
2. the bio-systems unit, specialising in software developments for special-purpose data-banks, mainly in applied biology and agriculture;
3. the applied physics unit specialising in the development of innovative instrumentation for industrial quality and process control;
4. the environment / applied biology unit which was engaged in doing base-line surveys, environmental impact analysis and monitoring, as well as general-purpose problem-solving where there was a biological factor (e.g. spoilage).

Charges depended on the length of the project, level of required expertise, amount of special services required etc; they ranged from £15,000 to £25,000 per man-year, or £100 to £150 per day. Project sizes range from a man-day to a man- year; the average was about two man-months.

The ARC Group on the whole tried not to compete directly with the State applied research institutes, though in some cases a competitive role was thrust upon it. It preferred to see itself as a specialised sub-contractor to the State research institutes, as well as a supplier of services not available elsewhere in the country. Nor did it wish to compete with existing commercial suppliers of services; it preferred to develop systems and licence them out.

Its main stock-in-trade was the expertise of those academic departments where the research was relevant to industry. The main advantage to the college was an in-house window into industrial problems, providing ideas for basic-applied research of academic interest.

The current year's academic MSc project could, if set up with insight, turn out to be the solution to next year's industrial problem.

The ARC Group was discontinued at the end of 1980, with the present writer's contract continuing, at the level of 'research leave', for some years subsequently. It did not succeed in covering its costs and making a profit for the College, though on total-cost accounting it did so to the extent of about 85%, paying for services (eg computing time, office space and staff consultancy) received from the College. The IIRS at the time suppled a service to industry which was subsidised by the State to the extent of the order of 50%. It was constrained in the type of contract it could offer to junior consultants, with the result that there was a turnover; it was in effect a training ground for people who subsequently contributed to the development of the then nascent high-tech industry.

The College subsequently set up procedures for encouraging and spinning off high-tech enterprises, and this on the whole has been successful. The ARC episode can perhaps be seen as a pilot for the subsequent model, from which lessons were learned. Some work of significance was done during the ARC period, and I look upon it as relatively speaking a success story(30).

George Jeffares and the Labour Party

Since 1969 George had been trying to get the Party to stand aside from the disastrous policies of the USSR as implemented in their intervention in Czechoslovakia. He was supported in this by a group which included Sam Nolan, later Secretary of the Dublin Trades Council, Mick O'Reilly, later a leading ATGWU activist and others. In or about 1977 things came to a head, and this group resigned en bloc, leaving the CPI denuded of any critical intellectual ability. The vacuum was filled by Stalinist doctrinaire elements, leading to the situation which forced my own resignation.

George joined the Labour Party, and ran a local branch from his house in Rathgar, where I attended the meetings. He also resurrected the Dublin Regional Council, and attempted to develop it as a focus for in-depth political discussion of key issues, with expert speakers, attracting support from a handful of critically thinking members of the party in Dublin who aspired to influence party policy. He contributed to a Foreign Affairs Committee, to which I was also eventually recruited.

I have no records and few positive recollections of this political period, which lasted about a decade, ending in May 1987 with the Single European Act debacle, which I describe in the next chapter.

Notes and References

2. I edited the material from the Irish Times Science and Technology column into a book In Search of Techne during the early 1980s, for publication by Tycooley, a firm specialising in servicing the UN development agency market. Unfortunately the firm closed down. I am taking this opportunity to publish the material in the present supportive hypertext. It relates primarily to the 'science and society' and 'socio-technical' streams of the hypertext, which are referenced primarily from Appendices 11 snd 12.

3. I treat the family developments in the 1970s in more detail in the family module of the hypertext.

4. See the Greaves Diaries, January 22, 1971 for more detail on these episodes.

5. For example, at the Wolfe Tone Society on March 2 Joy Rudd spoke on Community Schools. The paper in full is on record in the WTS archive. There is also a copy of a memorandum and resolution attacking the undermining of the concept of the 'community school' by handing over ownership and control to religious denominations, and for dealing only with the Catholic Hierarchy. This was on the agenda on April 6.

6. Greaves Diaries, April 11, 1971.

7. Greaves Diaries April 24-26 1971. In Belfast on April 26th CDG met with Hughie Moore and others, urging them to produce an anti-sectarian pamphlet. Joe Deighan had become more active, and Bobby Heatley was noted has having been making mincemeat of the PD. Back in London on April 28 1971 it turned out that Fenner Brockway's Bill of Rights was again on the agenda. This occupied much time and space, culminating in a lengthy account of the lobby on May 5. The Bill went to the Lords on May 12. CDG had been working on this for years, but Labour was now in opposition, and the Bill was rejected.

8. Greaves Diary July 7 1971. Hostility to the EEC was evidently becoming an increasing factor in CDG's thinking, expressed here in somewhat exaggerated wording.

9. There is a hiatus in the WTS record after this; meetings in the Wolfe Tone Room of the Tailors Hall continued for a time, and then later the Society started meeting in the basement of a house owned by Uinsean Mac Eoin in Mountjoy Square. We were there for some years, and various events took place, but the role of the Society became increasingly marginalised. The location was against it; once a visitor from the North spoke at a meeting, and his car was stolen. There are however a few relevant documents on record, and with luck more may turn up.

10. In the perception of the Left, including Greaves, the Wolfe Tone Society and the politicising republicans, there was a strong conviction that the Heath-Lynch talks and the thinking of the Government had linked joining the EEC with a political solution to the Northern problem involving re-partition and a re-writing of the Irish Constitution. We were being brought in to into the Commonwealth, and also with Britain into a Greater Act of Union, we being in Britain's pocket. Analysis of the State papers (cf the 2002 release, Taoiseach papers) however suggests that the EEC and the North were quite unrelated issues, in the minds of both parties in the Heath-Lynch talks. The Wilson plan for a revision of the Constitution however had substance. The indications are that Lynch's opposition to it was more based on defence of the Roman Catholic clauses in the 1937 Constitution than on the Commonwealth issue, on which he stood publicly. The opposition of the extreme Unionists (Paisleyites) to the EEC was on the basis that they regarded it as a Roman plot. The aspiration of the Left to ally with them on the issue, based on their regarding the EEC as a German neo-imperial scheme, was ill-founded and illusory.

11.. I leave the analysis of this period to others; Derry Kelleher perhaps can be said to have made a start, though much remains to be done to counter the various dismissive Unionist academic analyses of the politicising republican left, such as that of Patterson.

12. The 1970s module of the political thread of the hypertext contains some of JJ's last letters to the press as well as an account of my own post-republican evolution in search of sensible politics in various areas of the 'left'. I have also over-viewed the continuing post-split evolution of 'official' Sinn Fein, based on further analysis of Nuacht Naisiunta, their internal newsletter, which ran from September 1969 to June 1976. This is currently accessible in the Workers Party archive in their Hill Street headquarters, Dublin 1. The high point of the evolution of post-split 'official Sinn Fein' is perhaps represented by Tomas Mac Giolla's July 1972 Carrickmore speech, at a Northern Republican Clubs conference. This was re-issued in 2000 as a pamphlet.

13. I have selected this from the series given in the beginning of the 1970s political module of the hypertext. The others deal with the same problem from different perspectives, and include some critical notes on Garrett Fitzgerald's economic statistics. He also in March 1971 contributed to the debate on Northern Ireland, referring back to his Civil War in Ulster.

14. Bishop Berkeley's Querist in Historical Perspective, Dun Dealgan Press, 1970. I have abstracted JJ's Querist chapters, and put them together with some background correspondence, and a review, in the hypertext. It is accessible from the 1960s module of the academic thread. This work has since been referenced in the context of the 'development economics' domain by Salim Rachid in the University of Illinois, who has identified an 18th century 'Irish School of Economic Development' which included Swift, Berkeley, Molyneux, Dobbs and Prior, the latter two giving the group an important applied-scientific dimension.

15. The obsequies of the DU Co-operative Society took place shortly after JJ's decease. By the 1970s it has become an anachronism. If it were to upgrade itself to modern retailing standards, it would have required substantial capital investment. The procedure for keeping track of member purchases in books was cumbersome. It was difficult to recruit and maintain staff to service the required opening hours. On top of all this, the Students Union, which had expanded with the quasi-political wave of the 1960s, and was making money in the travel business, decided to go into retail trade, in competition with the Co-op, which was perceived as being part of the 'old Establishment'. These factors all added up to a death sentence.

16. Professor Naylor's paper is in the Proceedings of the 1972 IFORS Conference in Dublin (North Holland, 1973) p205. I have embedded an overview of the paper and my response in the techno-economic stream, and my response is accessible in full.

17. I expand on the techno-economic modelling experience gained with Professor Foster's Masters Degree in statistics and Operations Research' in the 1970s module of the techno-economic stream in the hypertext.

18. I used this episode to illustrate some issues relating to education and the practical arts in a paper Science in a Post-Colonial Culture published in a somewhat mutilated form in the Irish Review of Spring 1990. I have given the original paper, over which I stand, in the hypertext. The published version I repudiate, in that in the editing it lost its principal message.

19. Greaves diaries November 1972; it is regrettable that the record of this potentially important event, which brought together a group of experienced and influential people to focus on the Northern Ireland question, is missing from the WTS archive. The event would perhaps have assumed greater significant had the proceedings been integrally published. My paper and that of Greaves were published in Atlantis 5, April 1973; this was a half-yearly scholarly journal edited by Seamus Deane. I had established standing as a contributor to this with my earlier review of the Irish volume of Tom Jones' Whitehall Diaries in the previous issue, Atlantis 4, September 1972. This stimulated me to contribute to the subsequent issue, which was dedicated to a vision of a 'new Ireland', and in this context I persuaded Greaves to contribute his November 1972 WTS paper. Both were opportunities for political reflection, and they are available in full in the hypertext, along with my Tom Jones review.

20. I give some more detail on this in the 1970s module of the political stream in the hypertext.

21. This was subsequently published: An Approach to National Manpower Planning in Science and Technology, Journal of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland, Vol XXIII Part II, p21. The completed paper was delivered on January 9 1975 by RJ, co-authored with Genevieve Franklin. I had occasion to deliver some lessons from this paper at a seminar of the Society of College Lecturers in 1975, for the benefit of the Industrial Development Authority.

22. Some of the TCD projects on which we were working have been referenced by Julian Mac Airt in Chapter 6 of his book Operations Research in Ireland (Mercier Press, Cork, 1988). I expand on the projected 'technology transfer to the third world' concept, as adumbrated in the Moscow working group, in the 1970s module of the techno-economic stream.

23. Such was the extent of his isolation that I had found myself unable to report on him in the 'innovation' stream of my Irish Times column, in which I evaluated the IMI event critically. I was however able to write at some length about the Moscow conference in the 'third world' stream of my column at the time.

24. A copy of this memorandum, dated May 1975, is available in the hypertext.

25. In my initial encounter I agreed to attempt to do some back-room work on economic modelling of the two parts of Ireland separately, and to compare their performance with the performance of a united economy. I had done some macro-economic modelling work with Crotty, and had a feel for how it might be done credibly, without however getting bogged down in detail. This actually turned out to be a tall order, due to incompatibility of economic data-sets in the two parts of the country. I wrote some notes on how the problem might be addressed, and these are accessible in the 1970s module of the political stream of the hypertext.

26. Constructive democratic political work in 'broad groups' has always been bedevilled by political ideologues behaving sectishly, and I wrote some notes for internal use in the CPI addressing this problem. Regrettably I don't think they had any impact or influence. I tried to behave in the Resources Protection Campaign according to my own guidelines, and was censured for it; I was supposed to have voted mindlessly with the 'voting machine'.

27. This episode made my expulsion inevitable, although I tried to develop some rational discussion around the issues, and I have made available copies of related correspondence. I never managed to get the issues discussed openly.

28. The period with the CPI in the mid-1970s was largely unproductive, a painful lesson in the pathology of decline. Some of the episodes I have described are partially documented in the Greaves Diaries covering the period; these give the dates reliably, but the comments are mostly my own. The Diaries however would in this period constitute a useful source for a student of international relations within the international Communist movement. The stresses within the CPGB and their relationship with the evolving Irish situation are documented with insight.

29. The paper by RJ On the Problem of Democratic Unity from Issue #9 of The Ripening of Time is available in full in the hypertext; it is summarised in Appendix 10.

30. The present writer found the ARC Group experience a stimulus for the development of an integrated philosophy of techno-economic (eg biomass energy systems) and socio-technical (eg global genetic resources in support of the food crops, marine database development) modelling. I embedded something of this philosophy in a Technology Ireland paper of January 1978.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999