Introduction

The 'Techne Associates' concept evolved out of this re-invention process. This was an attempt to develop a science, technology and innovation 'brokerage' as a commercial operation, initially in association with TCD, and eventually in its own right(2).

The relationship with the Labour Party made it easier to get consultancy projects out of State agencies where Labour in government had influence: in particular the Youth Employment Agency, which sponsored my exploration of the Regional Technical Colleges as local enterprise generators(3). This work I understand has since proved useful.

I spent some time in Brittany, with some French government support, looking at small innovative high-tech enterprises, from the angle that they might be targets for synergetic commercial agreements with comparable firms based in Ireland. This aroused the interest of Shannon Development, and some further work along these lines ensued(4). A further related project (in 1987) involved looking at the role of the Innovation Centre in Limerick and its relationship with the National Institute of Higher Education (NIHE), which had hitherto been somewhat abrasive. I proposed a model, based on the development of the NIHE postgraduate process as the prime innovation contact-point, which has since become the norm.(5).

The foregoing work enabled me to make a useful contribution to some work the National Board for Science and Technology had contracted with the EU to do, exploring the potential for inter-regional linkages between 'less-favoured regions'(6).

While all this was going on Janice and I were involved in the Strasbourg case on the 'right to re-marry', which we had agreed to take up, at the suggestion of the Divorce Action Group. The case was handled by Mary Robinson, who subsequently became President of Ireland.

Relations with the Labour Party became strained as a result of the way they handled the 'Single European Act', stifling debate at Conference by highly questionable methods. I therefore made the transition to the Green Party, and began to contribute to the development of their policies, procedures and organisation.

Retaining an ongoing interest in international affairs and the peace movement, I participated in a 'floating conference' in a boat on the Dnieper, which led to some further insights into the way the USSR was going into crisis.

Critical interaction with the economic Establishment continued via the SSISI(7), at the level of comments on various papers on industrial policy etc, which are on record.

The 1981 UN Conference in Nairobi on 'New and Renewable Energy Sources'

With the money raised by organising the conference, the IUNA was able to fund the participation of the present writer in the UN conference, a memorable experience, some aspects of which I have recorded, and summarise below. I give first a brief outline of the Irish contributions, as recorded in the IUNA conference proceedings.

I briefed MacBride for his preface to the Proceedings; in fact I took over the whole organisation and management of the conference, which I did from the TCD Industrial Liaison Office. In the initial Liberty Hall meeting which MacBride had called, it became apparent that he did not have a clue whom to invite: it was dominated by aging Clann na Poblachta supporters, whom he felt he needed, to bolster his ego. I laid it down as a condition of my participation that it should be handled strictly as a techno-economic exercise, and I produced a list of the people who should be invited, whom I had mostly got to know as a result of my earlier renewable energy work, which had arisen out of my treatment of the energy crisis in the Irish Times column. He had to back down and accept this.

The preface concluded: "...High powered propaganda and salesmanship very nearly persuaded our own establishment in Ireland to push the country into the adoption of nuclear energy as an alternative source of energy. Luckily, a healthy and informed public opinion reacted vigorously against this trend. It was realised that there were many other sources of renewable energy available to us, and indeed to many other countries of the world which were not being adequately availed of. These included:

Solar energy,
Wind energy,
Wave and Tidal energy,
Peat, Biomass, and Timber.

"These were all freely available to us in varying degrees. But they had no powerful transnational financial interests to promote them. It is in these circumstances that the United Nations, with constructive foresight, took the initiative of convening the World Conference on New and Renewable Sources of Energy, which was held in Nairobi in August 1981. As soon as the United Nations had taken the decision to convene the world conference at Nairobi, the Irish United Nations Association took the initiative in convening a preparatory conference in Dublin so that Ireland would be in a position to make constructive contributions to this great world problem..."

"...The Preparatory Conference was duly held, through the hospitality of Carroll's Theatre, in Dublin on 13 May 1981. It was a most useful and constructive conference in which all those involved in the production of energy, both in the private and public sector, participated actively. In this connection, great tribute must be paid to both Mr Terence Gavaghan and to Dr RHW Johnston for the input which they both made in the preparations for the Preparatory Conference, and in the follow up.It was their untiring energy and organising ability that ensured the success of the Preparatory Conference.

"As a result of the Preparatory Conference we found it possible to be represented at the United Nations World Conference in Nairobi by Dr RHW Johnston. His contribution at the Conference itself, and the many contacts which he made there, have proved of very considerable value....".

Objectives of Preparatory Conference in Ireland

(1) to ensure that interested organisations and the Irish public are made aware of the scope of the UN Conference in Nairobi;

(2) to ensure that the NBST paper to be presented in Nairobi is backed by appropriate supplementary briefing material, particularly where Irish experience has relevance to developing countries.

The response to the conference call, in terms of contributed papers and attendance, was considerable; the 1970s energy crises were fresh in the public memory. I summarise this below; there is no point in giving the papers in full, as the proceedings are available, and anyway they would need updating in the light of subsequent developments.

Norman L Brown, former energy adviser to UNAID, in a keynote paper gave a global overview of the energy scene, with particular reference to developing countries. He stressed the high proportion of energy which was dependent on firewood, and the consequent threat to forests. He made the link between fossil fuels, atmospheric CO2 and global warming, the relationship between which were already common knowledge in the scientific community.

Dr Keith W Robinson, of the National Board for Science and Technology, over-viewed the Irish contribution to the UN conference. Giving a passing reference to peat, an effectively non-renewable resource, in terms of the forestry potential of cutaway bog, he gave priority attention to wind and biomass, and mentioned wave and tidal power, small-scale hydro, geothermal and direct solar conversion, in all of which areas research was ongoing, though on a small-scale. He stressed the importance of energy system analysis in the context of selection of strategic options. Overall Irish work in this field was poorly developed and needed attention.

Contributed Papers

There were three papers on mini-hydro topics, from Richard Flaherty on run-of-the-river schemes, Paddy Belton (who manufactured mini-turbines), and BM Kelly on modular design.

There were peat papers from J Cooke and J Martin, both of Bord na Mona. Short-rotation forestry was covered by Dr Michael Neenan of the Agricultural Institute (Oakpark, Carlow) and Dr Trevor Gibbons of TCD, who outlined approaches to the techno-economic analysis of production systems (to which work the present writer had earlier contributed). Michael Jones of TCD (Botany) outlined tropical biomass options, and Jerry Healy reported on some EEC-funded biomass developed using cutaway bog as site. Chris Shouldice (Agricultural Institute) surveyed liquid fuels from biomass sources, including rapeseed oil. Frank Lunny went into biomass combustion problems in boilers.

There were contributions from Dr CT Isolani (the United Nations University European representative) outlining the global research position, and from several Irish-based institutions with an interest in export of knowhow: Michael O'Donnell for HEDCO (Higher Education for Development Co-operation), Michael Maloney for DEVCO the state agency export development service, Bill Jackson for APSO (Agency for Personal Services Abroad), Tim Cahill O'Brien for IDA (Industrial Development Authority), and Gerry Murphy for Coras Tractala the export trade promotion agency.

This completes the listing of the contributions; one can perhaps comment in retrospect on the nature and extent of the co-ordination problem if we were to 'get our act together' in an energy crisis situation. The present writer at the time made an effort in this direction. He went on to outline some conclusions reached as a result of the preliminary Irish conferences, followed by some conclusions reached following the experience of the Nairobi conference itself:

"It is appropriate to supplement this message by a reference to current UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) policy, which is to collaborate with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on the production of wood-based charcoal for industrial purposes, including smelting (cf Rome meeting 15-16 January 1979). This technology, if successfully introduced into tropical countries having forest reserves, could sound the death-knell of the latter. The primeval forest of Ireland was largely wiped out in the 17th and 18th centuries by smelting with charcoal, as if it had not already been enough plundered in the interests of the British Navy. Modern charcoal production involves pyrolysis of wood, with gas and oil as by-products, these also being fit for local industrial energy and transportation needs. It can be an efficient process and is seriously under consideration as one of the energy conversion options for use with managed biomass plantations in developed countries. If this technology is unleashed in developing countries lacking energy other than forest reserves, it could be a recipe for world ecological disaster, unless accompanied by a massive re-forestation programme....

"Peat technology tends to be somewhat site-specific. It overlaps with biomass in that in some cases (eg papyrus) the possibility exists of harvesting the current annual production, while in other cases the accumulated biomass, when removed, can be replaced by a renewable system There is export potential in both cases for special-purpose harvesting machinery, or the knowhow for its local production....

"Biomass, like peat production, is very site-specific. In this context, biomass does not only refer to short or long rotation forestry but to non-woody biomass which may be more suitable under some conditions. Examples of non-woody biomass are sugar cane and beet production on agricultural-quality land and papyrus in more marginal areas. The guiding principle for biomass production should be high yielding renewable resources occupying land not required or unsuitable for food production.

"Questioning the thermal efficiency of 'wet' processes, Mr JF Kelleher (Owen Kenny & Partners) pointed out that power alcohol production from molasses, a waste by-product (except where it can be used as cattle feed) from raw cane sugar manufacture, was providing a substitute for petrol in certain Third World countries. However, about 75% of the energy realisable in the power alcohol had to be provided by the fuel input to the distillation process...".

This of course is the redoubtable Derry Kelleher whom we have met in the Kane-Bernal and Wolfe Tone Society context.

"In photovoltaics, the design and construction of a 50 kW pilot power station near Cork (Wrixon) will enable valuable systems experience to be gained in a pre-economic full-scale operation, during the period immediately prior to the mass-production of low-cost photo cells.

"In the capture of diffuse solar energy, despite the adverse seasonality factor, there were indications that solar panel technology was already cost-effective in new housing... In wind energy, the elements of a viable system exist.... In the field of small-scale hydro-systems, similarly, the elements of a viable system exist...

"It was generally conceded that the Conference was useful in that it enabled those concerned with renewable energy technology to interact with those concerned with development co-operation in the context of a specific problem common to Ireland and other energy-deficient developing countries. An impression of fragmentation among the agencies emerged...."

It was the intention of the writer, when at Nairobi, to act on behalf of those of the supporters of the IUNA Preparatory Conference who were not directly represented in the Government delegation, along the following lines:

1) To keep in touch with the Government delegation and to exchange relevant information during the course of the Conference.

2) To seek informally to cultivate contacts with new and renewable energy experts in other countries, both developed and developing.

3) To ensure that the experience of the Nairobi Conference is appropriately made available in Ireland to those working in the field and to the relevant agencies concerned.

The following section gives some conclusions drawn from the Nairobi experience:

"...Networks have been set up among non-governmental organisations, and between the latter and key governmental contact-points, which are likely to lead to significant opportunities for increased funding for renewable energy work in one form or another.

"...The status and role of relevant NGOs in the UN decision-making procedure has emerged strengthened and with enhanced experience.

"...There is emerging an embryonic appreciation of the common interest between the disarmament lobby (which is active in 'east-west' UN negotiations which are centred in Geneva) and the 'orderly energy transition' lobby which has initially been focused at Nairobi. It is increasingly evident that the resources soaked up in the arms race, if diverted towards the energy transition problem, would enable the latter to he resolved within a decade or two. At Nairobi, this emerged strongly from the NGO people (who were all 'south' and 'west'; there were no 'eastern' NGOs in the political sense) and also from the 'eastern' governmental delegations. These two political forces, however, showed no signs of being aware of each other, though they were saying the same thing.

"...There is an enhanced understanding of the crucial role of local energy availability in the development process; the concept of the 'autonomous community renewable energy centre' as the development-focus for the future has gained respectability and now ranks in importance comparable with traditional large-scale centralised urban-based systems, particularly where 'national grids' are non-existent.

In conclusion, it is worth while placing on record that the Irish governmental contingent consisted of a 'front-line' group (Mr Conor Murphy, Department of Foreign Affairs; Dr Owen O'Neill, Department of Energy; Dr Keith Robinson (National Board for Science and Technology) backed up by a support group consisting of Mr Sean Tinney (ESB), Mr Maurice Keane and Mr Val Martin (Bord na Mona) and Mr Tim Cahill O'Brien (IDA).

The objectives of the support group were promotional, and significant success was achieved (a) by the ESB/Bord na Mona team in selling 'electricity from peat' technology (b) by the IDA in selling a crash-course in renewable energy technology assessment.

In addition to the above, the writer set up some contacts which could perhaps have led to the establishment of postgraduate programmes in renewable energy systems engineering, on a collaborative basis between Irish and Third World universities. Such a training programme would have been in a position to attract such finance as does become available for the promotion of 'north-south' technology transfer procedures on the higher education net work...

On the whole, the impact of this conference was minimal; oil prices declined, and the sense of urgency evaporated. The various people went their separate ways. In retrospect, however, it must be said that the conclusions were valid, and remain valid to this day. Wind energy in Ireland is beginning to become a significant source, belatedly. In Denmark they took it seriously in the 1980s and they now export standardised wind-turbines to service the wind-farms of the world. On the whole, we can perhaps claim to be creative innovators and adapters, but must admit to being weak on the organised follow-through.

The Institute of Physics (Irish Branch) Technology Group

We attempted to identify people doing physics in Ireland which had industrial relevance, and we ran some seminars, mainly in Cork and Galway, at which we attempted to interface the industrial engineering fraternity with the physics which was going on in the RTCs and university colleges. On the whole however we were not very successful, though perhaps we were influential in the promotion of applied-physics courses whose graduates were more employable in industry.

The Institute of Physics however never managed to pick up as members the industry-based people who had emerged from these courses, and the problem of how to balance the academic orientation of the Irish Branch of the Institute of Physics remains with us.

Left Politics and the Patronage Process

On November 20 1982 there was an Irish Sovereignty Movement seminar in the Shelbourne, addressed by Greaves, which I attended, perhaps nominally on behalf of the Labour Party International Affairs Committee, but I don't recollect what the impact was, if any. It would have had to do with the neutrality issue, in the context of the Falklands war.

The 1980s were spent initially in the Labour Party, with subsequently, at the end of the decade, a transition to the Greens. Most of the effort however went into socio-technical consultancy(10), where this could be picked up, and this had political undercurrents. In this context I had the problem of finding a means of economic support when the TCD contract came to an end in 1984. I found the Labour Party contact useful in this context, Ruairi Quinn, our local Dublin SE TD, being then the Minister in charge of the science and technology, innovative enterprise development and suchlike. This led eventually to some contract work with the Youth Employment Agency, which helped keep the wolf from the door in a very lean period. The concept originated in terms of a projected venture-seeding process, which I called Techne(2), generating some contact with the Minister, and with Niall Greene, a Labour Party influential who headed the Youth Employment Agency.

It is worth remarking on the importance in Irish culture of political networking in the obtaining of jobs or contracts with State agencies. I found myself at the receiving end of what amounted to favours, engaged in a process of which I had been critical.

There was a socio-technical episode with a political dimension which took place in Carlow, in March 1984. Greaves mentioned it in his diary. It seems I had saved a factory in Carlow, organising a meeting of Trades Council, Chamber of Commerce, Agricultural Institute (Oakpark) people and the Regional College people, who did not otherwise know each other. We produced a paper which seems to have been influential. Padraig O Snodaigh in the National Library, having Carlow contacts, had tipped me off about the problem. Regrettably I do not remember the details, but I would not have been able to call the meeting were it not for the extent I had established myself in the 1970s as the spokesman of the applied-science community, via the Irish Times Column.

Science and Irish Culture: the Historical Background

Richard Kearney was then editing the Crane Bag, which was a critical cultural review(12), one of the many subsequent attempts to fill the niche vacated by The Bell which had pioneered the role in the 1940s, with Peadar O'Donnell in the lead. I remember going to Richard's place in Pembroke Cottages, Donnybrook, and discussing the question in some depth. The result was an analysis of the impact of the 'British Association for the Advancement of Science' meetings in Ireland, which took place in 1835, 1843, 1853, 1857, 1874, 1878, 1902, 1908. This provided a series of snapshots of the cultural evolution of science in Ireland, prior to the first world war. The scene was dominated by colonial culture, and the events were triumphal celebrations of the scientific and technological might of the Empire.

The emergent Catholic bourgeoisie had been largely excluded by Cardinal Cullen's ban on the 'godless colleges', but people like Callan (of induction coil fame; he was physics professor in Maynooth), Kane (best known for his 1943 Industrial Resources of Ireland book), Hennessy and a few others were gaining recognition. Callan had studied under Galvani and Volta in Italy, and Kane with Liebig in Germany. Kane became the 'token Catholic' heading Queens College Cork, in an attempt to beat the Cullen ban. Thomas Davis, then editing the Nation, attended the Cork meeting in 1843, but failed to appreciate the essential nature of the problem of how to relate mastery of scientific technology with the Irish republican vision. He did however pick up some potentially innovative publishing procedures, relating to reproduction of photographs.

De Valera attended the 1908 meeting, along with David Houston, a College of Science lecturer, who subsequently taught science for Patrick Pearse in St Enda's. The latter went on to develop milk quality control procedures for the dairy co-ops. The remainder of the participants were representative of the elite at the time, their names being mostly unmemorable. Thus the links between the emergent Irish national elite and the imperial and global science scene were somewhat tenuous.

JD Bernal FRS and Ireland

The present writer had encountered Bernal's writings in the 1940s, in the context of the developing Marxist thinking among the student left. I had subsequently been in touch with Bernal himself before he died, in the context of my attempts in the 1970s to initiate some 'science and society' studies and activities, with Derry Kelleher and others under the banner of the 'Kane-Bernal Society'. This contact continued virtually, via the Bernal biography support group, during the lengthy gestation of the projected book which did not finally get published until 1999(14).

Bernal was initially educated locally; he and his younger brother Kevin went first to the Nenagh convent school, then to the Protestant school in Barrack St, this being regarded as preferable to the boys school run by the Christian Brothers. The building once occupied by this school is the prime candidate for locating the Bernal plaque.

Bernal picked up locally an early interest in science. In his teens he was aware of the Birr telescope, with which the Earl of Rosse had some 60 years previously pushed forward the frontiers of telescope design, and was in touch with several other local gentleman-amateur scientists, one of whom, Launcelot Bayly, introduced him to crystallography; with another, one Parker, Bernal went geologising. He developed a feel for industrial technology though contacts with local industry, and the mine works at Shalee.

His mother (who was American) had wanted to support his scientific inclinations, and researched the Irish educational opportunities. In the end she sent him to boarding-school in England, initially to Stonyhurst, then later to Bedford, whence in 1919 he went to Cambridge. There was family religious pressure (they were Catholic 'minor landed gentry') to take him out of the Protestant school, and the level of teaching of science in Irish Catholic secondary schools, even in the elite Clongowes immortalised by James Joyce, was not up to the standard required by his mother. Boarding-school in England was considered necessary.

Bernal was however acutely aware of what was going on in Ireland, and observed it during his vacations, keeping a journal, which is archived in Cambridge. He recorded his support for Redmondite Home Rule, and subsequently for Sinn Fein, which position later under the influence of Cambridge colleagues, primarily Henry Dickenson and Alan Hutt, evolved into Marxism and support for the Bolsheviks. The influence of his mother's Protestant background, and early exposure to interaction with the Nenagh Protestant community, helped him to avoid identifying the Irish national question with Catholicism, as many had done. During his Bedford period he had been devoutly Catholic, but in Cambridge he recorded how he lost his faith sequentially: '..first God, then Jesus, then the Virgin Mary, and lastly the rites... now I had a quarrel with the Church because I could not help seeing it as an active agent of political reaction..'.

His Cambridge work on crystallography drew him to the attention of Sir William Bragg, who was then setting up his research team to take advantage of X-ray diffraction techniques. He worked with Bragg in the Royal Institution until 1927, contributing to the experimental technology by the design of the X-ray photogoniometer subsequently to be produced by Pye of Cambridge as the standard tool of the domain.

Bernal then went back to Cambridge in 1927 to a lectureship in structural crystallography, where for the next decade he worked on the structure of liquids, inventing the 'statistical geometric' approach to liquid modelling, and on solids of increasing complexity: pepsin, proteins, viruses, identifying the type of helical structures which subsequently led to the discovery of DNA.

Politically Bernal's student Marxism, picked up in the immediate aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, evolved into an increasingly positive attitude to science and the role of scientists as a political force. He retained an interest in Ireland, and his brother Godfey recollected, for the present writer, his interacting with the German engineers who in the late 1920s were working on the Shannon hydro-electric scheme, which was planned to supply an Irish 'national grid', then an innovative concept. This project has received global recognition, with an international award, on the occasion of its 75th anniversary in 2002. It was a key component of the infrastructure of the eventual industrial development of the Irish Free State.

During his Cambridge period he had, thanks to his political activities, picked up much experience of the interactions between science and government, with Marxist insight into the historical background. This led him to publish his seminal Social Function of Science in 1939, which was celebrated in the 1964 festschrift The Science of Science, edited by Goldsmith and McKay as the founding text of the thriving scientific study of science itself in a social context, which by then had begun to thrive(15).

Politically after the war Bernal was increasingly isolated by the 'cold war' environment. He put much effort into the World Peace Council and to the nuclear disarmament movement. He was among the prime movers in initiating the Pugwash conference, which was an important communication channel between the USA and the USSR at leading science and government level during the worst period of the cold war. In this process he kept in the background himself, not wishing to compromise Pugwash by his Marxist associations.

Bernal had a totally integrated and egalitarian approach to science and to politics; for him the works of the technicians and craftsmen were as important as those of the scientists. He regarded this egalitarian teamwork process as being a basis for his visionary model for the socialist society of the future, rather than the flawed state-centralist model in the east. He participated however in the Lysenko debates in the Engels Society, the forum for Marxist scientists in Britain, with JBS Haldane and Hyman Levy, mostly at the philosophical level, but finding it uncomfortable turned his attention subsequently to the peace movement and to the promotion of trade unionism among scientists, having been a founder member of the Association of Scientific Workers. Successive editions of his Science in History(15) gave declining attention to Lysenko's significance.

Having burned his fingers with the Lysenko episode, in his review of Watson's Double Helix, and of the period, in 1968, Bernal concentrated on evaluating his own lab's relationship to the work, and how they had managed to 'miss the boat', despite having developed the key experimental technology. He was unable to make the leap into the ethical and political problems which subsequently have emerged on the fringes of molecular biology and its applications. It could be said that the 'Lysenko debate' has, in effect, re-surfaced, with a new twist.

Due to Bernal's relative isolation during the Cold War, many of his ideas were developed as a sort of 'Bernalism without Bernal' in various 'science policy research units' during the later 1950s and 1960s. They were taken, with acclamation, to the US by Derek de Solla Price, a Bernal disciple. These units now flourish, in Sussex, Edinburgh, Manchester and elsewhere, usually with some recognition of Bernal's influence. There is one in University College Dublin, in the foundation of which the late Professor Patrick Lynch had a hand. The latter was co-author, along with the engineer HMS 'Dusty' Miller, of the 1964 OECD Report 'Science and Irish Economic Development', which was consciously, though implicitly, Bernalist. The authors both on different occasions explicitly admitted to Bernal's influence in the OECD Report context to the present writer, though publicly due to his Marxism Bernal had then in Ireland somewhat the status of a 'non-person'.

Bernal in Ireland however enjoyed something of a 'posthumous rehabilitation', in the form of a Royal Irish Academy discourse by his colleague Dorothy Hodgkin FRS, which took place in 1980(13). The vote of thanks was proposed by Tom Hardiman, then the Executive Chairman of the National Board for Science and Technology in Ireland.

I have sometimes had occasion to ponder on what might have been my personal reasons for empathy with Bernal. We were both just too late to have had the possibility of being involved in a world war, and observed the war from similar situations: an upper-crust boarding-school, with vacations in a 'minor gentry' rural environment. During vacations the war imposed a need to improvise in all sorts of ways involving the need to understand technology, particularly that of energy. There was a degree of alienation in the neighbourhood network: Bernals as Catholics in a Protestant minor-gentry environment, the Johnstons as jumped-up Ulster peasantry. Thus turned our respective attentions to intellectual pursuits, and in both cases there were opportunities to become interested in science and technology. In both cases our university periods were dominated by world-shaking political transformation. Perhaps on another occasion I may explore this further..

In practical terms, I count the main influence of Bernal as being in fuelling my current concern with the cultural history of science and technology, in the peripheral, post-colonial, emergent-nation environment. Bernal touched on this, but left the analysis unfinished. He coined the term 'brain-drain' during the 1950s, but failed effectively to address the problem of how political movements for national independence might deal with the 'brain-drain' problem at source, in the process of revolutionary transformation of emergent nations. I have, to the best of my ability, despite overwhelming constraints, attempted to take this up, swimming personally against the emigration tide, and helping to contribute to the creation of opportunities for science graduates, to the extent that I have been able to do so.

Science in Ireland 1800-1930

Scientists in Ireland have an ongoing identity crisis, unlike the literary Irish, whose international recognition is usually unquestioned, even when, like Shaw or Beckett, they make their careers abroad. Visitors from abroad however usually express surprise when they discover that (for example) Hamilton or Tyndall were Irish.

This question was addressed in a modest preface by the editorial group, which included Dr ND McMillan of Carlow RTC, Professor DL Weaire of TCD and Professor Susan McKenna Lawlor of Maynooth, from which I quote: "why did Ireland, in those days more distant in practical terms from Britain and Europe, produce so many notable figures in the history of science? The question is at least as significant as its much discussed literary equivalent with which there is, no doubt, some subtle connection..."

The book falls into three sections: mathematics, astronomy and experimental science. Contributions from abroad tend to fall into the mathematics area; there is some concentration on the relationship between research and teaching, on the influence of the French mathematical revolution, and on practical 'hand and eye' instruction.

One can see national politics lurking in the French connection; this is a vein needing to be exploited within the paradigms of Irish national historiography....

Apart from the Dunsink, Armagh and Birr Castle observatories there were some half-dozen lesser-known centres of significance, usually run by gentleman-amateurs.

Dr JG O'Hara (who is working in the Leibniz Archiv, Hannover) had contributions on Humphrey Lloyd (who cultivated an extensive network abroad in relation to the measurement of the earth's magnetism) and on the correspondence between Hertz and Fitzgerald. This was in connection with the verification of the Maxwell theory of electromagnetic wave propagation, which is at the root of all modern radio communication, a key frontier area of physics at the time. The three world centres for the development of electrodynamics at the end of the 19th century were Berlin (Helmholz), Cambridge (Maxwell) and Dublin (Fitzgerald). The work of O'Hara, in establishing the international standing of Irish-based science in the 19th century, is helping to lay the foundation for the future approaches to Irish history which are needed to give Irish science the place it deserves.

Other contributions are on Samuel Haughton and the age of the earth (Norman McMillan), John Joly on colour photography, radioactivity and (again) the age of the earth (John Nudds), the transatlantic cable (Dr D de Cogan, from the Nottingham Engineering School), and two biographical studies: Mary Ward (microscopist 1827-1869, by Dr Owen Harry of QUB) and Robert Woods (biophysicist 1865-1938, by Professor C S Breathnach of UCD).

Why is this important? I suggest that it is because in the history of science and technology in Ireland we have a unique laboratory within which can be analysed the tensions between the fundamental internationalism of science and the conflicting technological needs of the imperial State, in competition with those of the emerging embryonic nation. Overlay this with the cultural tensions arising from religious pluralism within the emerging Irish nation, and we begin to see a web of fascinating but possibly frightening complexity. No wonder traditional political, economic and social historians have shied away from it.

Yet the problem will have to be addressed, if Irish experience is to be used effectively in helping to form policies for using scientific technology in the contemporary third-world development process.

The present writer's outline solution, for what it is worth, is to create an academic appointment, for the study of the history of science and technology in Ireland, within a history department which is strong in economic and social history, and is alive to the need to enhance creatively the study of the nation-building process in a post-colonial situation. Do I ask the impossible?

Rural Technology

Between Michael Shiel's history of rural electrification in the Republic under the leadership of the Electricity Supply Board and Wallace Clark's family epic of the linen-mills of Upperlands near Maghera on the Clady river, there is an interesting complementarity which may perhaps help to illuminate an aspect of the problem of Irish nationality.

Clark traces the history of his family firm from its origins in the 1700s to the present day. The key invention was the beetling-mill, dating from the 1730s: fine weaving may have been learnt from the French and points of bleaching from the Dutch, but harnessing of water-power to the processing of linen came from the Anglo-Irish inventors. Ireland is blessed, more than most countries, with rivers of fall of about one in thirty, and width around 30 feet; of a flow which a private individual could dam, ideal for waterwheels.' The beetling-mill was an adaptation of the hammer-mill or the spade-mill to the needs of the linen process, replacing one of the more laborious operations.

Jackson Clark dammed the Clady in 1740 and initiated the development of an industrial complex which lived entirely from the water-power of the Clady right up to 1889, when the first steam-engine was bought to power a stenter-frame. Prior to this the power for the mills had come entirely from a series of water-wheels and, later, turbines (incidentally, for Clark's benefit, a Belfast invention first described by Thompson at the 1852 meeting of the British Association in Belfast, under the name 'vortex water-wheel'). The extra cost of steam, at £30 per HP-year compared to £3 for water, paid off by providing independence of the weather. Water-power remains, however, an important supplementary energy-source to this day. Indeed, it provided as early as 1908 a source of modern-standard 220-volt AC, when most municipal utilities were on the old Edison 110-volt DC standard.

Social historians will find useful material illustrating the paternalist company-town which arose as the fruits of Ulster Protestant rural enterprise. Written as it is from the angle of the leading family, it leaves gaps in the record to be filled by social (particularly labour) and political historians, although the period described so well by Michael Farrell in 'The Arming of the Protestants' is touched upon; one has to read between the lines here.

Once these limitations are recognised, we are left with an interesting and readable book, of significant interest to the economic historian and to historians of technology. It is a pity the author didn't give more attention to this aspect in the indexing, which is somewhat sparse.

Turning now to Michael Shiel, we have a well-researched and documented history of the ESB rural electrification scheme, which formally extended from 1946 to 1976, bringing electricity to 99% of the houses in the country.. There is scope for someone to develop the pre-history of electricity in Ireland; this is skated over in one short chapter dealing with the pre-ESB scene, in which credit is given to Callan in Maynooth for his early (1830s) work on electromagnetic induction, and to Parnell for switching on the first public lighting in Carlow in 1889. The latter was supplied from a flour-mill four miles away: is there a story here to parallel Clark's? There were 161 separate electricity systems in the Free State in 1925. All these were subsumed into the ESB in 1927 and shortly after, and most generators were shut down. It would be interesting to know what was the statistics of the 161: how many were municipal, how many 'big-houses', how many industrial enterprises. I suspect that there was a strong Protestant component in this early electrification, associated with the process of 'improving landlords' transforming themselves into an industrial bourgeoisie; possibly there was a significant Quaker component: very much the southern analogue of the Clark process, but less concentrated and on the whole less successful.

If credits are to be given in the pre-history, why only Callan? What about Parsons, the centenary of whose steam turbine was celebrated recently with an international conference in Dublin, and Purser Griffith, who not only pioneered peat production but systematically drew attention to Irish hydro-electric potential, providing a foundation for McLaughlin's subsequent successful assault on the Shannon? This is the type of touchy issue that underlies Irish nationality; an 'us and them' question. What do 'they' have to do before 'we' accept 'them' as 'us'?

This was all leapfrogged by the ESB, which in a decade brought Ireland into the vanguard of European technology, with a copious supply via a national grid at 20% of the previous cost per unit. This was the most impressive achievement of the partially-complete Irish democratic revolution: cheap energy for the people, the Catholic peasantry triumphant breaking the monopoly hitherto held by the Protestant landlords and capitalists. By 1939 there were 170,000 consumers connected, rising (somewhat miraculously) through the war years to 240,000 in 1945. There remained, however, 400,000 rural dwellings in darkness.

Pre-war approaches to rural electrification had been limited to within 2 km of the existing transmission network; this had been laid out with the main towns in mind. Lemass in 1939 called for new plans, and by December 1942 the ESB had produced the essentials of what became the 1944 White Paper, which was substantially the plan as implemented. It was a very substantial scheme, involving 1M poles, 75,000 miles of new distribution-line additional to the 2000 miles then existing, 100,000 transformers. A special organisation was set up under WF Roe, which recruited raw graduate engineers, demobbed army-men and local trainee craftsmen into a quietly efficient organisation which gained universal respect. In the words of the Parish Priest of Carnaross, Co Meath, '...these nice people came amongst us, did their job with speed and efficiency......behaved quietly and decently and left without any fuss or display..'

The firm of Unidare came into being to supply cable and transformers. Numerous small firms now exist in remote places, like Gweedore and Clontibret, due to local entrepreneurship doing what can be done with cheap power. Inmost cases the 'fixed charge' (or 'ground rent' as it was called in some places where it was a bone of contention) was recovered by simply replacing the old battery radio: in pre-transistor days these had vacuum-tubes and required two separate power-sources, both expensive.

Coasters were used to ship the poles and heavy equipment to small Western ports, especially Donegal. Most of the poles came from Finland, Irish forestry not yet being well-grown. There is a reference to the use of Irish in the negotiation of the contract, to financial advantage. This aspect of nationality needs to be sung louder. I have heard of other instances. It might even appeal to Wallace Clark, and help him and his fellow-Irish Protestant entrepreneurs to take positive advantage of the opportunities presented by the New Ireland Forum!

Towards the end of Michael Shiel's book there emerge signs of strain: has the ESB, under rural political pressures, over-invested in a dispersed system that will have difficulty in becoming economic? Small, decentralised local electricity generation is again in favour and many of the old mill-sites are being re-activated. Cost-conscious rural-dwellers turn to LPG for cooking. Microelectronics is beginning to be used to schedule the farm load and chop peaks that would overload the fragile network. We have yet to develop the full implications of the gas grid: we could be back to municipal generation, with combined heat and power, by 2000. Maybe it will emerge that the isolated farm dwelling is an anachronism and we should be in villages, like the continentals. Sociologists in 50 years time may blame rural electrification for helping to perpetuate the individualistic tradition of dispersed high-cost living, where it would have made more technical, economic and social sense to have built up the villages.

Science Brokerage as a Business?

As an alternative step towards this concept I backtracked and produced the following paper 'Innovation, Enterprise Development and the 3rd-level Colleges' in October 1984, and it helped lay the basis for the subsequent work with Limerick and the RTCs.

Background

The role of college-based industrial consultancy, fortified in the cases of the NIHEs (ie National Institutes of Higher Education, being prototype Universities of Technology in Limerick and Dublin) by the intelligence of industrial problems gathered by students in the course of their co-operative stages, is given explicit recognition and encouragement through the Industrial Liaison Offices.

Opportunities for serviced business start-ups exist in various innovation/enterprise incubator centres in proximity to college campuses.

There is stated to be no shortage of finance for taking marketable concepts to full-scale production, once they are market-researched, prototyped, production-engineered etc to the extent that risk is minimal.

Despite this the flow of actual viable venture-opportunities remains a trickle. There is a bottleneck in the system.

The Problem

For example, it seems that where the enterprise centre depends primarily on the College (as with Dublin Institute of Technology and Prussia St) it operates well below capacity; also that where the centre is working at or near capacity (as at Limerick) the flow from the College is minimal.

A factor contributing to the low flow from NIHE (Limerick) is the matching problem (of conflict) between student projects (identified during the co-operative stage) and the interests of the academic supervisor.

A factor influencing both cases is the pull of the best students into existing jobs, to fill an already-defined role.

An additional factor, which favours the student's decision to opt for the 'easy' road if it presents itself, is the fact that most if not all student projects are within-discipline and individual (and thus a long way below the enterprise-threshold). Despite the clear message of the Deans' Conference there is no trend yet into team projects involving complementary skills from science, engineering and business.

We are clearly dealing with a high-entropy situation, where the lubrication-process needs to involve putting resources into the organisation of structured networks linking resources, needs and knowhow.

Outline Solution

The prime function of this interface would be to become familiar with the regional resources and needs, translating these into problems and opportunities, linking the latter with identified knowhow-sources in the College, thus setting up an 'enterprise network' around each problem/ opportunity.

In some cases, the 'chemistry' of the network will 'work', and a project will specify itself, around which a group of students will gather, possibly under the leadership of a member of the 'network group' in the role of external supervisor. In such cases, the project will make the transition from the College to the Enterprise Centre with a forward momentum and a creative team structure.

This process will require seed-funding, supplementing the 'sweat-equity' of the participants, who will mostly have no actual cash to put in. The seed-funding will constitute an equity-stake in favour of the agency.

Thus we are talking of a hands-on managed venture-seeding processor catalysed by an active agency located in the innovation/enterprise centre, distinct from the College, but charged primarily with the conscious development of the College as a resource.

Immediate next step

The above outline was a sort of manifesto which helped to sell the socio-technical consultancy work which followed, as described below, following the digression to Strasbourg.

Church and State: The Strasbourg Divorce Case; the Education System

The first divorce referendum was run prior to the conclusion of the case, and this of course contributed to the main case being lost, as the judges deferred to the verdict of the people. There was one judge who placed on record a dissenting verdict, and the legal opinion was that this was what the court really thought. If the referendum had been deferred, and the case allowed to finish without the explicit political message dominated by the Catholic view, it is probable that we would have won. A post-case referendum would then have enabled the constitutional change to have taken place earlier. In the event, however, we had to endure a further decade of anomalous marital status, which however we had no difficulty in surviving.

Nessa went to school initially in Scoil Bhride, the famous Louise Gavin Duffy foundation in Oakley Road, which was Irish-language based. In fact, she went initially to an innovative pre-school group on Scoil Bhride premises, which Janice succeeded in founding, and which has continued successfully since, contributing to the revival of the school, which prior to that had been in decline. Janice currently (2002) serves on the Board of Management.

There are political issues embedded here. The school was nominally attached to Rathfarnham Catholic Church parish, with the priest as manager, which of course was the initial anomaly, as the Irish language is not the property of the Catholic Church, which indeed during the 19th century did its best to suppress it. Under pressure from parents of all-Irish schools, the Department of Education had to accept a patronage procedure under Bord na Gaeilge, with management committees, on which however the Bishops retain nominating rights, so that the anomaly persists. At the time of writing (2002) there is a key case developing with a school in Dunboyne, with the Principal being sacked by the Board of Management over an issue relating to the teaching of religious doctrine in a multi-denominational context. Janice in the Scoil Bhride context remains alive to these issues.

Nessa then went in 1990 to the St Louis nuns in Rathmines, this being the nearest second-level school. Her Quaker status helped in both cases to ensure survival in the predominantly Catholic environment. Our preliminary enquiries with the school gave a positive impression which in the following years was vindicated. The alternative would have been some Protestant fee-paying school, and subsequent comparative anecdotal studies, on the family and neighbourhood network, were favourable to Louis, which was non-fee-paying.

It emerged that most of the St Louis girls came from far-away places like Tallaght, reinforcing our impression that Dublin parents mostly are under the illusion that some school far away is better than the one available locally. The scene is dominated by petty-bourgeois snobbism, and much peak-hour traffic is generated. Ownership and management of the school system remains a key issue on the political agenda, the current system being socially divisive and economically costly, with its parasitic transport load.

Innovative Enterprise and the 3rd-Level Education System

In the course of several consultancy assignments, sponsored by the Youth Employment Agency and the National Enterprise Agency, it was possible to develop a directory of people and centres available as local sources of consultancy expertise for innovative enterprise start-ups, and to outline a procedure where feasibility studies of marketable concepts were acceptable as final-year undergraduate or postgraduate projects.

This constituted as an exercise in socio-technical analysis(3), and as a result I built up some standing as a '3rd-level interface' consultant, so that in 1987, after the Brittany and 'linkage' episodes, I was asked to do some analysis of the relationship between the NIHE in Limerick and the Innovation Centre which had been located close to the campus, but which had failed to interact. We come back to this below.

Ireland and Brittany

A strong maritime tradition in Brittany, and a prosperous fishing industry, constitutes a source of experience from which the Irish have yet significantly to draw; despite comparable or greater natural resources this Irish sector remains weak.

It was decided, given the time available, to restrict the scope of the study to a search for candidates for a 'binary twinning' process, this being defined in the following terms:

(a) twinning between research centres in Ireland and Brittany where in both cases there is a strong incentive to convert scientific knowledge into viable economic technology giving employment within the region;

(b) innovative enterprises, associated with the above centres and committed to growth in the region, might possibly provide scope for two-way licencing agreements, giving mutual access to each other's markets with complementary products, and to each other's R&D sources.

I wrote a resumé(4) which gave the basic statistics of the pilot-study, without specific detail, and concluded by suggesting a constitution for a 'technology transfer network', which if appropriately set up and funded might prove useful to innovative small and medium firms in Brittany and Ireland in strengthening their viability. It might also, for example, increase their access to such EEC project funding as was conditional on international co-operation.

As a result of the foregoing work the writer was asked to contribute along the following lines to a major European study of the process implemented by the National Board for Science and Technology.

1986: Inter-Regional Linkages

I attempted to identify a sub-set of regional activities or initiatives where the ERDF-enhanced (European Research and Development Fund) autonomous growth process may be further enhanced by deliberately fostered inter-regional synergistic linkages.

Typically one might expect such linkages to develop between:

(a) a 'Less Favoured Region' (LFR) engaged in initiating an integrated regional development plan, and another LFR (possibly having a cultural empathy) which had initiated such a plan some years previously and had gained some experience in surmounting cultural barriers etc;

(b) two or more LFRs having common access to a natural resource;

(c) several LFRs developing a common approach to a common problem such as to make it worthwhile to share a research and training facility.

I identified some negative experience, in that where major non-teaching centres of research (national or Community) have been implanted in an LFR (usually for political reasons), the spin-off in the form of linkages with regional industry, and related inter-regional linkages, is usually slight. Interaction via the 3rd-level postgraduate teaching system was crucial.

We defined a 'Technopole' as a managed complex having third-level teaching, postgraduate applied research and enterprise Incubation facilities, acting as a focus for dynamic growth in an LFR.

We defined a 'Technet' as a specialist sectoral network, involving one or more technopoles, possibly inter-regional, having access to postgraduate research and enterprise incubation facilities appropriate to a particular sector or technology.

It was proposed that the basic policy for the development of LFRs should involve the identification and enhancement of appropriate 'technopoles' and 'technets', bringing together knowhow and resources so as to generate autonomous enterprise and economic growth. It was further proposed to provide in the 'technopole' specification a functional unit whose task it would be to identify and support the development of inter-regional linkages (both with other LFRs and with the developed central regions).

To summarise, if the development of inter-regional linkages is to take place, it is essential that within each LFR there should be at least one pro-active unit, with adequate resources, knowledge and initiative, in a position to promote and maintain them.

Once there is in existence in an LFR a technopole with a pro-active linkage development unit, having the competence and ability to recognise potential synergies, there are various types of linkage opportunity which can be developed, for example:

(a) Research Associations: a grouping of firms in several LFRs using a particular technology, with support from local research centres, developing where necessary specialist facilities at an appropriate location. We are envisaging the transfer of the old-established RA principle as pioneered in Britain into a mode appropriate to LFR development.

(b) Demonstration Projects: one might envisage the establishment of projects, with an appropriate innovative technology implanted in an LFR environment, enabling hands-on experience to be gained in a variety of LFR environments.

(c) Licencing and technology transfer between an firm and an appropriate partner firm in a developed region, or an innovative firm in a developing LFR.

(d) Development of a rationale for the implantation of an appropriate JRC (joint research centre) into a particular LFR environment, for use by several LFRs sharing a problem, or having access to a common type of resource.

(c) Organising trips abroad, or periods of study and work-experience, with identified personnel appropriate to identified regional problems. NB: this process should not be dependent on an exchange process, as stipulated in (eg) the COMETT scheme; people in LFRs on balance need to spend more time abroad gaining experience than people in developed regions.

(f) Development of a positive structured approach, involving the postgraduate RTD personnel and SME management, to language and cultural barriers.

It was considered essential that decisions relating to ERDF funding applied to any of the above actions be made rapidly and with minimal bureaucracy, by an accessible agency within the LFR technopole, according to guidelines laid down centrally in the Community interest.

Political Transitions

The Labour Party had planned its annual conference for December 1986 in Cork, in the City Hall. As a consequence of the Sovereignty Movement Campaign, led by Anthony Coughlan, there was a significant amount of informed opposition to the Single European Act (SEA), especially from the Trade Unions, and from residual elements of the Labour Left. The possibility existed of a conference decision against.

Coincidentally there happened to be an industrial dispute in Cork with the municipal workers, who manned the City Hall. This enabled Dick Spring to call off the Conference, in a pseudo-left act of 'solidarity'. He went on to make a personal television appearance, urging support for the SEA. This piece of political maneuvering I found absolutely sickening. If they had wanted to defend party democracy and run the conference in the City Hall despite the strike, it should have been possible to do a deal with the municipal workers to come in for the necessary few days, to oblige the party, or some suitable agreement could have been made, such as to use the conference as a lever in support of the workers' claims. So in effect the Labour Party went into the ensuing referendum without any agreed policy, and with Dick Spring's TV appearance used as the means of establishing one, by default.

Shortly afterwards I met with Roger Garland, then the only Green Party TD, and a few others, and became convinced that the banner of non-violent social-reform politics was passing to the Greens, with the addition of long-term sustainability and environmental concern(22). This was a step in the direction of the type of integration of science with social concern which I had been seeking over the years, and which the traditional European Left, in all its forms, had ignored.

Greaves, shortly before his sudden death on August 23rd 1988 in the train on the way back from a meeting in Glasgow, wrote a lengthy entry(23) on July 4 where he looked back reflectively on the 1930s and Stalinism:

'..in a sense there had to be "primitive accumulation". This was achieved by Stalin, and people put up with him, when the alternative was to join the third world themselves. Stalinism led to stagnation because everyone's aim was to keep his head down. The result was a series of mistakes in which the western CPs were alienated - whether what he did was wrong was another matter; I think not. But there was a mass perception in the West that socialism didn't work, capitalism did. Now if Gorbachev succeeds in the economic field the western public will see an alternative to capitalism. The differences on the left may be healed; the Labour Party will relax its anti-soviet stance. Though by then the financial feudalism of the SEA will have been clamped down on us and we may spend thirty years in an "Austro-Hungarian Monarchy", reactions will be encouraged when this increasingly displays its contradictions and breaks up under the impact of revolt in the third world..'.

So it seems Greaves had hopes of Gorbachev, as indeed we all did, or at least those of us who tried to build an independent Marxist movement based on bottom-up democracy. Most of the 'hard left' in Ireland rejected Gorbachev.

July 12: '...This morning's Independent had a story about the split between Adams and the IRA. If Adams goes into politics he will take IRA arrogance with him, make all sorts of blunders and end up like Garland..'.

His death was premature and tragic. Despite his latter-day coldness, I retained a high regard for him till the end, and I went to his funeral, which took place in Liverpool towards the end of August 1988.

Socio-Technical Issues within the Firm: the Mentec Project

It was an attempt to combine relational database technology with the then fashionable 'expert system' approach, to build an accessible record of in-house sales and maintenance experience, with regard to customers and products, in several distinct business sectors. The 'expert system' aspect involved combining qualitative judgments of sales people with hard data, and it was somewhat naively assumed that these judgments would be forthcoming from the sales people who were seen as the end-users.

While a working version was built, the project stalled, and Mike Pierce, though the Chief, found himself unable to push it through against the resistance of his sales people, who had not been in at the initial basic conceptual design stage; this had evolved interactively between Mike and myself.

A salutary lesson was learned, on both sides, which was later developed in the 1990s, with IMS and the IT-USE project, described in the next chapter. It is also an illustration of the 'expertise elicitation problem' on which many 'expert system' projects foundered.

Last Days of the USSR and the role of Gorbachev

I had visited the USSR in 1973 (for a World Peace Council event, of which the value was questionable, being dominated by unreconstructed procedures inherited from the Stalin epoch), in 1979 (professionally, on behalf of the UN FAO) and in 1986 (for a World Federation of Scientific Workers assembly).

In 1986 it was possible to see the beginnings of a critical appraisal of the past, but the 'dead hand' was still in evidence. By May 1988 however it was evident that the flood-gates had opened, and we were dealing with a radical-democratic revolution, of the type which had tried to happen in the 1920s and been killed by Stalin, and then had again tried to happen in the 60s and been killed by the weight of Stalin's appointees. The 1980s re-think however was being implemented by people whose political formation were totally post-Stalin and who had no inhibitions.

The Cruise itself

The 'Peace Cruise' was organised by the Soviet Peace Committee, who had invited representatives of peace organisations in the West to engage in an exchange of ideas with Soviet specialists, in a floating conference, punctuated by visits ashore in the main towns (Kiev, Kanev, Cherkassy, Zaporozhye, Kherson and Odessa).

Participants paid their own fares but once there were the guests of the Soviet Peace Committee. The Irish group consisted of representatives of Irish CND, the Irish Peace Council, the Irish Peace Institute and Centre for International Co-operation (Limerick) and Women for Disarmament; the press was represented by Maureen Fox of the Cork Examiner. I participated on the initiative of the Dublin Monthly Meeting Peace Committee, with the support of Dublin Monthly Meeting (Quakers).

The Soviet group numbered some 30 and was composed of academics and researchers of a high level of distinction in areas such as philosophy, history, politics and law. Their support for the politics of 'perestroika' and 'glasnost' was palpable; the Soviet Peace Committee was clearly a leading body in the radical democratic transformation which was in progress.

There was a group of comparable size from the USA, which included 22 peace groupings (represented in ones and twos) and 10 press people. The other participants were primarily from West European countries.

The conference broke up into 4 seminars: disarmament (primarily looking at what was going on in the UN), the peace movement (looking at problems of citizen diplomacy etc), spiritual life (this covered a wide area including the analysis of the 'image of the enemy', peace education, the Christian millennium in Russia etc) and innovations in Soviet society (the economic and legislative reforms underlying 'perestroika').

I participated in the fourth seminar and came away with an impression of the depth of the long-delayed democratic revolution that was then in progress. The key Soviet participant was Valery Savitsky, Deputy Director of the Institute of State and Law, USSR Academy of Sciences, who was an uncompromising critic of past practices, in a manner which left Western critics without arguments. I have kept notes of the proceedings and have produced a 12-page commentary of my own based on the discussion, which I have sent to the Soviet Peace Committee for their consideration. The main thrust of this was on the problem of using expertise trained in the military, space and nuclear programmes for the peaceful transformation of Soviet industry under perestroika, and it is aimed primarily at the economic specialists who were present.

Events of religious interest included a visit to the Kiev monastery, now handed back to the Church, which was the base for St Cyril's mission of a millennium ago, and to a seminary in Odessa.

Also of interest was a discussion which took place in the Odessa Hall of Sciences between some local academic Marxists and the cruise participants; included among the latter was an Orthodox prelate who had joined the cruise and was one of the key participants in the 'spirituality' seminar. There appeared to emerge a feeling that assertive atheism was 'passé' and that the role of Marxist academics should be focused, not simply on 'non-belief', but rather on a philosophical study of the nature of belief and of existence, within which convergence between Marxism and Christianity might perhaps prove feasible, especially given the agreement on the need to change the world rather than simply to contemplate it.

On this theme there was a move made by Mikhail Zykov, a Cruise participant who lectures in philosophy at the Lunacharsky State Institute of Theatrical Arts, to set up a "World Spiritual Network" of correspondents who would exchange papers and ideas. This would appear to be an attempt to initiate a personal correspondence network, initially under the umbrella of the Soviet Peace Committee, which is a further innovative step towards the opening up of personal contact opportunities. I have added my name to this network and hope to initiate a correspondence. There is some unease among intellectuals that the perestroika process may be blocked by conservative forces, but momentum would seem to be building up so as to make it effectively irreversible.

I placed 20 copies of Richard Harrison's "Irish Anti-War Movements", courtesy of the Dublin Monthly Meeting Peace Committee, in school and community libraries along the route, via local-based interpreters, who were mostly English teachers in schools and colleges. These were received with interest and appreciation.

Perestroika politics.

Alcohol

It would appear that there was a problem of vodka being drunk by workers during the working day, and in excess in the evenings leading to subsequent absenteeism, and that this problem is now perhaps less acute. Its solution should however not be approached by closing down hotel bars and making people queue round the block for a Sunday bottle of wine.

I have instead suggested to them that it is better approached by (a) raising the price of vodka relative to beer and wine (b) encouraging a beer and wine culture as an alternative to a vodka culture (c) opening up the democratic process in the workplace, so that the type of frustration leading to alcoholism does not build up (d) development of social pressures towards sobriety in a manner which is visibly successful elsewhere (eg litter, bus-tickets etc).

If the USSR is to develop its vast potential for intellectual interaction via international conferences (incidentally a good earner of foreign exchange as a form of specialist tourism), it will be necessary for them to appreciate the key role of the talk among the specialists in the bar afterwards. This is where all the real information is exchanged; the papers and discussions are simply means of identifying whom one wants to talk to afterwards over a glass of beer.

In this context the existence of a segregated 'hard-currency bar' (as was the case in the Cruise boat) was a total disaster, as it put barriers between Soviet and Western participants. I understand that this procedure is on its way out, and not before time.

Personally I rejected the 'hard-currency bar' and spent my free time in the company of Soviet citizens drinking local beer.

Democracy

It would appear that Pamyat itself has positive aspects, involving the conservation of aspects of the environment having historic or Russian cultural heritage value. However it would appear that some people interpreted Russian culture has being exclusive, and needing a perceived enemy to unite it, with the Jews playing that role. This of course is at the root of Fascist ideology, and is intrinsically anti-democratic.

In many, if not most, bourgeois democracies there are by now laws which forbid incitement to race hatred, with severe penalties. (They are not always implemented consistently, but at least they are there.)

In the Soviet Union there is excellent legislation against propaganda or incitement to war. This enlightened legislation should lend itself to easy amendment to include incitement to racial, religious or ethnic hatred, enabling the prosecution of those attempting to develop Pamyat into an organisation expressing racialist ideologies. (I made this point in the Odessa seminar.)

Failure to prosecute this tendency, on the grounds that this would be an infringement of the new perestroika liberties, would appear to be an example of the type of bureaucratic action (or inaction) referred to in the opening paragraphs intended to discredit perestroika.

It also appeared that the term 'intellectual' covered people like writers and artists, and that the intellectual role of the scientists and engineers, who alone are in the position to supply the knowhow capable of transforming the productive process, was little appreciated.

If this perception, which certainly existed among the Soviet specialists involved in the seminar, is general, then we have a dangerous misunderstanding.

In subsequent conversation, also, it emerged that Party membership for intellectuals is restricted on a quota basis, presumably because they are perceived to be less reliable, subject to careerist motivations etc. I criticised this view, beginning with an assertion of the key role of intellectuals such as Marx, Engels and Lenin, and indeed most of the original Bolshevik leadership before they were purged by Stalin. Anti-intellectual 'workerism' I suggested was a relic of the Stalin epoch. I also suggested that it was at the root of many of the problems now being recognised under perestroika.

Scientists and Engineers

I went on to stress that the creative application of scientific principles in the upgrading of the quality of work, by the development of instruments, equipment, processes, tools etc is the key intellectual task, without which perestroika will remain only words and aspirations.

The objective of the transformation of the work process should be the elimination of all repetitive inhuman work, and the upgrading of all work by humans to the level of decision-making and management, leaving the inhuman work to the robots. Thus ultimately the distinction between 'worker' and 'intellectual' must be eliminated. What is needed is a workforce consisting of scientists (pushing forwards the frontiers of understanding of the laws on nature), engineers (building productive systems based on these laws) and technician-operatives (working the productive systems with understanding and insight, and in a position to identify problems and opportunities for improvement).

Perestroika is going to need to pay considerable attention to the problem of quality of goods, the logistics of their supply, the reliability of the process of their production, and the development of techniques of devolved management, with intelligent use of the computer, in all its forms (mainframe, mini, micro, on-line, real-time, networked etc).

Most if not all of the knowhow in these areas must be available in the USSR in the military and space technology areas. The problem would appear to be in making the transition towards general industrial applications.

The catalysing of this transition is going to require a new breed of 'innovation specialist', who can specify and develop the appropriate type of advanced production system appropriate to specific production centres, and set up the contacts, training programmes, sources of supply necessary for its implementation.

This is not a bureaucratic task, nor simply a purchasing task; it is a creative applied-scientific task, which can only thrive in an environment with the minimum of bureaucracy.

Structured Mobility

Such an innovation consultancy group, if it existed, might contribute to the Soviet end of various Joint Venture concepts currently being discussed (including one with Ireland). It would be balanced at the other end by a corresponding group of European innovation specialists, familiar with European and US research resources, and with Western industrial marketing and innovation practice.

At this time I was actively involved with Brendan O'Regan and others in Limerick, who were exploring how Shannon Development could be supportive of the socio-economic innovation process in the USSR, giving a practical dimension to the Peace Movement. I recollect some destructive remarks made in the Dublin publication 'Phoenix' at the time, which were based on confidential correspondence between myself and Brendan O'Regan relating to these matters. This can only have happened if the Special Branch were accessing it, and leaking it. State 'dirty tricks' processes have their own momentum. I have never bought Phoenix since.

Social Organisation

Some Specific Problem/Opportunity Areas

Communications

An advanced digital telephone system, with in-house switchboards in all organisations (rather that direct lines from offices to the general exchanges, as is the norm at present), and adequate international and inter-regional capacity, is essential.

Also required is a 'packet-switching network' for computer-based communications; this becomes feasible once the system is all-digital.

Steps are already being taken in this direction, particularly I understand with the aid of the Finnish firm Nokia. There is perhaps room for speeding up the process, making use of other resources in the West.

Transport

It is feasible to prevent this 'vicious spiral' by imposing a rule of absolute priority for the public system, allocating lanes as necessary, and to impose lane discipline on individual motorists (noticeably absent at present, especially in Moscow).

Agriculture

Over a decade ago at a conference in Algeria, on the international 'operations research' network, the writer encountered two young researchers from Havana University, who had built, with their own hands, the first Cuban computer. Although a primitive device by modern standards, they had successfully applied it to the analysis of the logistics of moving the sugar-cane to the mill, in a specific location, taking into account the constraints imposed by light railway operations on the given layout.

This suggests that there could be developed a role for a regional university or college of technology, in the training of students in information-technology using problems arising in enterprises in the immediate environment, and introducing advance information-technology to the regional economic environment.

This has been the standard practice in Ireland for nearly 2 decades, with the result that we produce excellent students, well versed in practical applications of advanced technologies, to the extent that they are in demand all over Europe and in the US.

There may be opportunities opened up for collaboration between Irish universities and the USSR in this particular area of information technology; this needs to be explored further.

Energy

The most easily available alternative is conservation; there is much gain to be made in the use of clever applications of computers in the optimal management of energy-using systems.

Other alternatives are the various forms of renewable energy: wind, wave, tide, direct solar energy conversion, biomass. There is scope for extended participation in the global R&D network which is looking into these areas, and the pooling of experience.

The most promising long-term renewable energy technology is based on amorphous silicon, for which the cost of production is now in reach of the threshold economic figure of $1 per installed watt capacity.

Engineering and scientific personnel at present committed to the nuclear energy programme need not present too great a re-deployment problem. Indeed they can constitute a resource capable of supplying some at least of the 'new breed' of innovation specialist mentioned above.

Finance

If the convertible rouble was initially fixed at a rate such as to make imported consumer-goods look expensive, this would not be a problem. It should be fixed somewhere between the present rate and the 'black' rate....

This would largely undermine the black market, and would render Soviet manufactured goods highly competitive on the export-market, enabling foreign currency to be earned to offset the increased rouble-price of advanced productive equipment purchased from abroad. Soviet bulk commodity exports would remain at world prices, earning correspondingly more expressed in roubles.

There are many areas where Soviet goods are under-priced relative to what the consumer market abroad would stand, if an export philosophy were to be developed. Home-market price-increases, if tied to quality upgrades, should not present too much of a problem.

A devalued rouble would enable a tourist trade to thrive, and present many opportunities for the worker co-operative approach to small business development (eg hotel and car-hire business etc). Social control mechanisms would be put under some strain, but would be likely to cope.

The key thing would be to keep social control over the investment of the accumulated surplus of Soviet industry, and not to allow firms to invest abroad motivated by profits alone. This is the worst feature of capitalism.

Investment decisions at firm level are presumably the business of the Board of Directors. Under capitalism these represent the shareholders and no-one else, and this is the root cause of all the problems analysed by Marx.

Under reconstructed socialism, it would make sense to define the Board of Directors on a representative basis, with separate constituencies representing workers, suppliers and consumers, in some appropriate ratio, with the State, regional or local government representative as Chairman or 'moderator' of the possibly conflicting interests.

The relative interests of the consumers or suppliers (vs the workers) would depend on the specific situation. In some cases competition can take care of the consumers' interests; if there is no alternative source of supply however the consumer interest on the Board should be strong. Similarly on the supply side: if the suppliers have no alternative outlet their Board representation should be strong.

It should be possible to quantify the rules for democratic enterprise management in specific cases, and this is a development area for study.

The rules of democratic procedure, applied in an economic context, have evolved usefully in the context of the co-operative movement in the West, from roots in 19th century England which were known to, and admired by, Marx. Because of the emphasis in recent times on the role of the State, they have had little chance to develop under socialism. Perestroika presents an opportunity for their resurrection.

The foregoing represents a summary of the present writer's contribution to the seminar, as it was contributed to the Soviet Peace Committee. Regrettably the politics of reconstructed socialism which seemed to want to emerge during the cruise did not materialise, and we now have a mafia-dominated capitalism of the worst description. The blame for this must be attributed to the residual Stalinist group which subsequently staged the putsch against Gorbachev, leading to his replacement by Yeltsin. The politics of this putsch must have been in preparation at the time of the cruise; I recollect the sensation caused by the 'Andreevna letter' which was published in the newspapers at the time. This threw down a renascent Stalinist gauntlet.

I wrote the following notes on 11/02/89 during the emerging USSR crisis, and I think they may be worth placing on record as an indication of my thinking about the USSR at the time.

1. The historic agenda for socialism was defined by Marx and Engels at a period when the European nations were becoming established and their boundaries defined in a framework of bourgeois democratic revolution: a centralist nation-state, equality before the law for all citizens, one man one vote. Marx regarded the bourgeois-democratic nation-state as a stepping-stone towards socialism, the latter being characterised by the extension of the democratic principle to the ownership of capital, and the management of industry. This was the 1848 aspiration, which however was defeated. The European states in the aftermath of this defeat became defined on the basis of hegemony and imperialism, and were usually multinational.

2. A political party with socialist aspirations did not achieve state power until 1917, in an imperialist state without a democratic tradition, in the middle of an imperialist war. The early Soviet democracy which emerged was fragile and lacking in precedent (their sole prior experience was the 1905 Petersburg Soviet, and before that the Paris Commune). The Soviet state took over much of the imperial bureaucracy, which was accustomed to ruling by administrative ukase.

3. In this situation it is not surprising that the political differences between the ultra-leftist Trotsky and the moderate Bukharin led to the emergence of Stalin, who 'resolved' the political problem simply by exterminating both, and any followers who wanted to explore the road to socialism by political methods. Stalin operated a top-down Russian imperial machine, with appointed officials operating simplistic doctrinaire policies. He has left a terrible legacy, which Gorbachev is now facing.

4. Gorbachev is the first of the post-Stalin generation to achieve influence. He has to take up Marx's task of completing the democratic revolution, as it were, retrospectively, in a state where the socialist revolution has been (after a fashion) completed without it. He faces formidable obstacles, not the least being those in the bureaucracy who owe their careers to the unquestioning implementation of Stalinist methods of work. These are the direct inheritors of the old imperial bureaucracy; they are anti-democratic and Russian chauvinist. They stand behind such manifestations as Pamyat, which is a Russian nationalist movement of the right, with virulent anti-semitic policies.

5. He also faces the task of modernising Soviet industry, and ensuring that the fruits of the high-technology efforts (hitherto concentrated in the military and space sectors) are generalised, by free mobility of trained personnel. The obstacles to this are formidable and rooted in traditional imperial bureaucratic practice.

6. The non-Russian Soviet Republics are another problem-area. Imagine if the British Empire in 1918 had been held together under a London government seeking to build Socialism. Few if any of the ethnic groups of the old Empire would have accepted to see their social systems regulated by London-originating legislation, however well-intentioned.

7. The process of establishing democratic territorially-based national states, with equal rights for individual citizens irrespective of ethnic origins, has scarcely begun. The imperial system, whereby Russians have de facto priority rights throughout the USSR, has only now under Gorbachev begun to be challenged.

8. Gorbachev is addressing all these problems with energy and insight. He is likely to succeed, indeed he must succeed, as the consequence of failure is a reversion to something worse than Stalinism, characterised by paranoia and xenophobia, to which the response can only be reversion to the 'cold war' at best, and a shooting war at worst.

9. Success will be measured by the continued cohesion of the USSR, despite the increasing autonomy of its constituent states. Many different experiments are possible in structuring Marx's road to the democratic management of capital (ie socialism) within an economic system retaining some central planning of investment priorities. The results of these experiments will enable lessons to be learned at a rapid rate. A single unitary experiment which goes disastrously wrong is not a good school.

10. One of the most important forces in the new wave of Soviet politics is the green movement. In this there is a parallel with industrial western Europe, particularly Germany. There is on the horizon a common enemy, against which the human race can and must unite: our own ignorance and lack of foresight, which are now being recognised as the source of the threat of the 'greenhouse effect' and the 'ozone hole'. This 'common external enemy' (of our own making) must force some convergence in global thinking in economics and politics.

11. The socialist forces in the West are historically divided as a result of the legacy of Stalin. It is no longer relevant to defend the indefensible abroad against attacks by our oppressors at home. The problem of democratising the ownership of capital in the West (ie the aspirations of the Left) can be achieved through a convergence of the traditional sectors of the Left with the Greens. Reconstruction of the EC states under the influence of 'perestroika' is in sight on the political agenda, provided the left-Green converging consensus can accommodate the aspirations of the submerged nations which have not yet achieved statehood.

12. The Irish have a special status as the sole ex-colonial state in the EC, and as such have an important potential role-model for other emerging nations. We also have special status in the EC as the only non-member of NATO. These qualities give us status as a location for events of international significance, with UN standing, not only for east-west events (where neutrality is important) but also for events addressing the outstanding problem-areas of ethnic nationalism, and the elaboration of solutions within a democratic framework. (I am thinking not only of the Irish, but also the Scots, Welsh, Basques, Armenians, Kurds, Palestinians, Estonians ....)

13. A Gorbachev visit to Ireland could perhaps help to place the above problems on the global political agenda.

The foregoing constitutes a sort of manifesto for the type of politics which the present writer has tried to help to develop via the Green movement during the 1990s and into the new millennium. It is a matter for eternal regret that we do not have a reformed USSR under Gorbachev as an international bastion of support. However I suggest that the manifesto stands on its own; it does not depend on any external State power supporting it. An international movement based on the principles embedded in it, built from the bottom up, is beginning to look feasible.

More on Science and Culture

Introduction

With the exception of a short statement of the problem by Dorinda Outram (IR 1), there has been no attempt to date to ensure that science is considered in the context of Irish culture. Nor is there any apparent awareness that the process of the transformation of science into useful technology, and the application of technology in the generation of utility, is itself a cultural phenomenon, subject acutely to the constraints of a post-colonial cultural environment.

The present writer attempted to rectify this omission from the Irish cultural canon with an article in The Crane Bag (12), which treated the series of British Association meetings which took place in Ireland as historic snapshots of science and its application in the colonial culture, raising a series of questions regarding the role of the colonial scientific elite in the context of the Irish nation-building process. These questions remain largely unaddressed by historians, or indeed by historians of science, despite their importance in other post-colonial situations such as India, Kenya, Zimbabwe etc.

This article is a second attempt to address the same problem, this time from a contemporary rather than a historical angle.

I propose to begin with two illustrative vignettes, which I hope will help to state the problem. I then go on to comb the issues of IR from the start up to now for illustrative references, or glaring omissions, which fill in the statement of the problem in more detail. I do the same for a recently published book (27) from Manchester aimed at the Irish Studies market.

Coming round to the search for an approach to the solution, I analyse the content of a quarterly published in Britain entitled 'Science as Culture', which addresses the problem as seen from the angle of the imperial heartland. Despite much interesting content, I conclude that this excellent journal has not addressed, and is unlikely to address, the problem as stated.

I go on to suggest that the seeds of the solution to the problem exist but are lying dormant within the sub-cultures of the specialist disciplines of science and technology in Ireland. These seeds need to be planted in the type of soil that IR is cultivating, and made known in the broad national culture, broadening and enriching it.

I go on to suggest how this might be done, with the IR playing a seminal role.

Statement of the Problem

Think about it, though. Here were people, of the intellectual calibre to develop as leaders of national political movements; some have in fact since become eminent. Mostly about 'two generations off the bog', and having lost the basic craft feel for the properties of organic matter known to their agricultural forbears, they would have been totally dependent on an urban educational system for knowledge, plus of course their own experience. Yet they were unable to make the simple inductive leap from the cremation process (known to them in human culture) to an obvious procedure for getting rid of a dead mouse. We would seem to have here an illustration of the width of the gap between the verbal and the practical cultures.

Second vignette: the present writer was in Kenya, attending a UN conference on 'New and Renewable Energy Sources' (8). This lasted several weeks, and there were weekends. On one weekend, he took up a contact with a mission school in a remote area, with a view to getting a worms-eye view of the post-colonial Kenya scene. The school, as well as teaching basic literacy, taught agricultural practice. Land had been transferred from colonial settlers back to African farmers. The colonial settlers had been competent agriculturalists, practising 'contour ploughing' as an anti-erosion device. When the Africans took over the land, they reverted to ploughing up and down the hills, with the result that the effects of erosion were already visible. Rejection of the colonial culture, it would seem, included blanket rejection of all its aspects, whether good or bad.

This then is the statement of the problem: in a post-colonial situation, how does a government, seeking to assert an independent lead in the development process, ensure that the 'practical arts', needed for mastery of the technology necessary for national survival, are effectively nurtured and embedded in the national culture, after transfer from the colonial elite?

The Problem as seen in 'The Irish Review' to date

She goes on: '...the absence of science from the Irish political tradition as a source of ideology points up the isolation of even radical Irish politics from the continental mainstream, where science-as-progress/reason-as-justice has been present ever since the days of Condorcet...'

In reference to John Banville's novels Kepler and Copernicus: '...so peculiar is a culture which deifies history yet yields to literature the vital task of rendering visible heroic models of the scientific pursuit....'. She might here have added that Banville's heroes were mainland European.

She finishes by asking questions: what does it mean to make a career in Irish science? What substantive science has been produced in Ireland? She warns would-be scholars approaching this question that the Faustian paradigm with the 'military-industrial complex' at its core is hardly appropriate. She sketches an alternative paradigm, with 'flash-points' of genius at the European fringe, in the 'late-emerging' European nations; this she prefers to the colonial model appropriate to Canada or Australia.

To this excellent adumbration of the challenge I have not seen any response.

I attempted to respond, and the paper is accessible in full in the hypertext(25). I am not reproducing it in full here, as much of the ground has been covered earlier.

Epilogue to the 1980s: the Clifford Correspondence

I wrote to him, touching on questions like the Campaign for the Separation of Church and State, Canon Sheehan and the All for Ireland League, and Horace Plunkett, Father Findlay and the co-operative movement, religious education and the technical competence question, on most of which he had commented earlier. I was increasingly of the view that critical views such as his, relating to Northern Protestantism and Catholic nationalism, needed to be taken seriously, and that there was an increasing need for a serious egregious critical journal.

I suggested that '...there was the makings of a technically competent and patriotic national bourgeoisie among the southern Protestants, typified perhaps by Purser Griffith, who pioneered much of the ground subsequently covered by the ESB and Bord na Mona. They are largely unsung...'.

'...No-one has analysed how the Ulster Liberal Home-Rule-supporting bourgeoisie was emasculated; it certainly existed and my father Joe Johnston would have counted himself among them. He wrote a pamphlet against Carson in 1913, exposing the disastrous consequences of the Larne gun-running, from a 'Home Rule within the Empire' position (which was the staging-post that the AFIL were promoting)...'.

'...Regarding the consequences of the Larne gun-running: have you ever looked into who the people were who did the Howth gun-running? Was it perhaps a foreshadowing of the way Mountbatten handled India: ensure a religious divide, and see that both sides are armed? I often wonder. Might not the Asgard crew be regarded as the sort of upper-class adventurer such as the British dirty tricks department might recruit for a nefarious purpose? And they ensure Childers gets killed in case he spills the beans?..'.

Brendan Clifford replied on August 25 1990; I give the following extracts:

'...I seem to remember that we had some disputes about Connolly and about Marxist political economy in the late sixties. I think I have rescued Connolly from his 'interpreters' - Leninist, Social Democrat, or theological - and restored him to the position which he made for himself. Of course, CD Greaves' book is the one that is found in all the bookshops. Yet I think that my pamphlets have had more effect in the vital part of the world where things are done. I know that because of them a number of people who would otherwise be in the IRA are not in the IRA...'.

'...In the early seventies I became aware, through contract with some New Left Review intellectuals and a brief, though close, acquaintance with a Welsh professor whom I notice appearing much on television of late, Gwyn Williams, that I had always read Marx into a background of philosophical commonsense gleaned from Locke and Kant, and that I had discounted as mere flourishes of rhetoric passages which they spun into a comprehensive and systematic philosophy. I was certain that humanity could not live within a mere systematic elaboration of the Preface to a Critique of Political Economy. The New Left gave Marxism its highest development as a pseudo-science in the middle and later seventies. They did this with great commercial success, and their jargon saturated the British Labour movement, with the result that it became incapable of empirical thought and Thatcher took over. All I have heard in politics from the New Left since Thatcher took over has been silence. Gwyn Williams seems to have combined rhetorical Welsh nationalism with echoes of Marxist pseudo-science in order to become a TV personality...'

'...I know that for most of a century Southern Protestants have felt considerable antipathy towards Northern Protestants. I find the Protestant middle class in the North contemptible, but for the opposite reason to what might be supposed. As soon as they become slightly cultured, they become disdainful of the culture of the mass of the people, and they segregate themselves into Cultra or Malone Road or Hillsborough. They become nice people and wash their hands of vulgar practices. At the same time they remain Unionist. But they do nothing to make the Union civilised. And they leave it to upheavals of the uncouth masses to ensure that the Union stays. I'm afraid that the element that is unashamedly Orange is the only element I have a shred of respect for...'.

'...All the institutions of civil society have gone by default of the respectable Protestant middle class into nationalist hands. Since Protestant society remains thoroughly Loyalist - at the end of the day, even Cultra is found to be crudely Loyalist - that is a thoroughly unhealthy state of affairs. It means that the feelings of the mass of the people are given expression only in the demagogy of party politics. Virtually everything else in the institutions of society is manipulated against them. That would be well enough if there was a probability of their will being broken. Twenty years ago, in debates and private discussions with supporters of both wings of Republicanism, I disagreed with the view that their will could be broken by the combination of physical force and political cleverness. It was not broken. It was only made to turn vicious...'.

'...I am occupying that part of myself by producing a dispassionate history of Catholic nationalism from the heroic days of Walter Cox and JB Clinch, and of the two significant resistances to Catholic-nationalism, The Nation and The Cork Free Press. And I don't know there is much else I could do. It is Angela who has worked out a secular programme and given it political currency in the Church & State magazine during the past eight or nine years. It has been very interesting seeing the lines of thought she and others work out in the magazine make their way into the public mind at a lapse of about two years...'.

'...The campaign against the Godless Colleges must have had the effect you mention. I took it up last year in a debate with Bob Cooper (the Fair Employment Agency executive) as a factor leading to imbalance amongst employers in the North. And I asked why his FEA in its analysis of the "normal" factors in the causation of the differential employment pattern between Protestants and Catholics, so that the "discrimination" element could be specified, had taken no account of the lack of Catholic entrepreneurship. I said that discrimination could not account for the lack of Catholic entrepreneurship. All were equally free to be obsessed with industry and devote their lives and their savings to small business and dedicate themselves to making it larger. But, if virtually all the entrepreneurship came from one community and that community as a whole had an obsession with science, technology and thrift, one could not in the normal course of events expect the result to be an even distribution of employment in both communities. This point had been made a number of times in Workers' Weekly in comment on FEA reports. Cooper made no reply. But in live debate his failure to reply would be very obvious...'.

'...It's a long time since I read Plunkett's dispute with the Catholic clergy about the industrial consequences of Catholic education and culture, but I think his reasoning was essentially on the same lines as mine. And one of the things I liked about Canon Sheehan was his brisk attitude on this matter. He said that if Catholics didn't stop whinging and get on with doing they would continue to be the cause of their own misfortunes. And he pointed out how the Jews managed to do things under forms of oppression entirely beyond the experience of Irish Catholics. My debate with Cooper was a couple of days after I had spoken about Canon Sheehan down in Newmarket. And I began by quoting Canon Sheehan on whinging. Cooper, a good Protestant who beats his breast unceasingly for the sins of his people, has an adoring following of nuns. And they did not think at all kindly of Canon Sheehan that day...'.

'...What I remember about the Larne and Howth gun-running is that the former was done with the maximum secrecy and the latter with maximum publicity. The former seemed to be done for an absolutely earnest military purpose and the latter as a piece of Redmondite exhibitionism. Childers was an overt imperialist at the time of the gun-running. And he was obviously an imperialist in 1914-18. I don't know what he was at the end...'.

I have reproduced the foregoing extracts(29), as a partial guide to some areas needing further elucidation. I find it regrettable that a forum for the development of egregious critical ideas has never managed to survive in Ireland, with any continuity of experience, in recent decades.

Notes and References

2. The 1984 'Techne' concept emerged as a distillation of the TCD experience. I give the basic inaugural document in the hypertext, in the socio-technical stream. I also give some notes in the academic stream on my relationship with TCD at this time, along with some references to scholarly-type publications.

3. An 'executive summary' of the Regional Colleges report is available in the hypertext. I have also expanded on this at some length, in sequence, in the 1980s module of the socio-technical thread of the hypertext, as over-viewed in Appendix 12. There were two reports on regional colleges, and a user-manual for community enterprise activists who needed to access their local Colleges for support.

4. The concept of inter-regional linkage development I develop further in the hypertext, in the socio-technical stream. It led further to the related concept of a 'quad-linkage' between a high-tech firm, and its associated research unit in a college, in Ireland and Brittany. I reported on this for Shannon Development.

5. I have treated the NIHE(Limerick) and the Innovation Centre more fully in the 1980s module of the socio-technical stream of the hypertext.

6. I include an abstract of my 'less-favoured regions' report, as prepared for editing into the Irish National Board for Science and Technology Report on this topic. An overview of the Report, somewhat expanded from the abstract, is given in the 1980s module of the 'socio-technical' thread as summarised in Appendix 12.

7. This SSISI interaction included industrial policy 1982, mergers 1989 and Newman 1990. This is over viewed in Appendix 6.

8. I make available some notes on the contributed papers, which were given in the Proceedings at the level of one-page abstracts. The 1981 UN conference, its political background and implications are treated in the 1980s module of the techno-economic stream.

9. I have the minutes of the Industrial Group of the Institute of Physics (Irish Branch), which met for a period in the early 1980s, and have outlined what happened in the 1980s module of the socio-technical thread.

10. I have treated extensively socio-technical consultancy in the 1980s module of this stream, which is over viewed in Appendix 12 (see note 6 above).

11.Among the reviews in with a science in history flavour were in 1981 a couple relating to Hamilton and Tyndall. I have focused on this 'science and society' theme in Appendix 11.

12. The Crane Bag paper was published in Vol 7 #2, 1983, the 'Forum Issue'. I never got to see a proof copy, and it is full of misprints, which I have corrected in the hypertext version.

13. I have expanded on the Bernal influence in the context of the science and society theme as over viewed in Appendix 11 (see note 11). Dorothy MC Hodgkin FRS, who worked under Bernal in Cambridge in the early 30s, has published a biographical memoir in Vol 26, Biographical Memoirs of FRSs, Dec 1980. She also read a paper in the Royal Irish Academy on Oct 28 1980, based on Bernal's Microcosm; this was published in Vol 81, B, No 3 of the RIA Proceedings on Sept 2 1981. Helena Sheehan in Dublin City University has a chapter on Bernal in her Marxism and the Philosophy of Science, a Critical History (Humanities Press International, 1985 and 1993). The biography entitled Sage (his nickname) by Maurice Goldsmith, published by Hutchinson in 1980 is based largely on secondary sources.

14. A multi-author biography J D Bernal: a Life in Science and Politics, with insights from people having first-hand experience of his multi-dimensional activity, edited by Brenda Swann and Francis Aprahamian, was published in 1999 by Verso. Authors include Ritchie Calder, Eric Hobsbawm, Chris Freeman, Hilary & Steven Rose and others; Chapter 2 on the Irish roots was contributed by the present writer. Abridged versions of the first two chapters, by Ann Synge on the family background and by the present writer on Irish political and scientific influences, were published in Notes and Records of the Royal Society, Vol 46(2), 267-278 and Vol 47(1), 93-101 respectively. See also P G Werskey, the Visible College, Allan Lane, London 1978, and EA Roberts, the Anglo Marxists.

15. Bernal's own publications, apart from his numerous scientific papers, include: The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Cape, 1929), The Social Function of Science (Routledge Kegan Paul 1939), The Freedom of Necessity (RKP 1949), Marx and Science (Lawrence and Wishart 1952), Science and Industry in the 19th Century (RKP 1953, Indiana University press 1970), World Without War (RKP 1958), Science in History (Watts 1954, 1957 and 1965), The Origin of Life (Wiedenfelt & Nicholson 1967), also posthumously: The Extension of Man: Physics Before 1900 (W&N 1973).

16. Science in Ireland 1800-1930: Tradition and Reform, edited by JR Nudds et al, published in 1986 by the TCD Physics Dept £10. I was asked by John Banville to review it for the Irish Times later in the year.

17. Reviews, probably Books Ireland, circa 1987: Linen on the Green, Wallace Clark, Universities Press (Belfast), NPG; The Quiet Revolution, Michael Shiel, O'Brien Press, £15... See also JJ's contribution to the debate in the Seanad in 1945; he drew attention to the problem presented by isolated rural housing which has currently become acute.

18. This 1984 'Techne' concept is explored in some depth in the 1980s module of the socio-technical stream. An opportunity arose in January 1987 with the Irish Times to do a retrospective review of my earlier criticism of the Aer Lingus Young Scientists Exhibition, from the previous decade, specifically in relation to the 'Group Projects'. I used this to advocate a reorientation of the exhibition from 'seed corn for export' towards acting as a generator of innovative enterprise for the Techne venture-seeding process.

19. Greaves Diaries, Sept 14 1983; the reference to the Strasbourg divorce case is totally misleading. Janice and I allowed our case to go forward challenging the Constitution at the European Court of Human Rights, not the European Commission. We were selected from a panel of similar volunteers by the Divorce Action Group, on the grounds that we were considered the most likely to win.

20. This memorandum on the national question, to a Labour Party Commission set up to study it in January 1986, is available in full in the hypertext. I also made some efforts via the Links Europa network to arouse interest in the Northern Ireland question, and the implications of the Single European Act, among European socialists. I kept in touch with the Links Europa network during my transition to the Green party, and they published in 1990 some of my material relating to the 'Green-Left Convergence' process in European politics.

21. I have made available my paper to the Ulster Quaker Peace Committee in full in the hypertext.

22. The Green Party work of the present writer does not begin properly until the 1990s decade, but I record my positive thoughts on the first encounter at the end of the 1980s political module, referencing the 1989 Green Manifesto, which I uploaded to the GreenNet, a pre-Web Internet conferencing system which was beginning to be useful as a tool in support of international political networking.

23. Greaves Journal, Vol 37, July 4 1988. I am indebted to Anthony Coughlan for checking out this reference and the other earlier ones, and helping with interpreting the handwriting. Coughlan has contributed an obituary essay to the Labour History Society. For further insights into Greaves see Elephants Against Rome, Leirbheas, 1999, ISBN 0-9518777-8-X, which is an epic poem he wrote, capturing the essence of his formative years. His earlier work Four Letter Verses and the Mountbatten Award was published during his lifetime and launched on June 2nd 1983 at a seminar in Trinity College, introduced by Anthony Cronin. The 1999 publication was sponsored by the Greaves Summer School Committee. Coughlan in his introduction provides a key to some of the characters in the poem, real people in the 1930s and 1940s. The title metaphor suggests an attempt to overthrow the (British/Roman) Empire by unruly natives from the fringe.

24. The 1988 Mentec database and its socio-technical implications are described in greater detail in the 1980s module in the socio-technical stream of the hypertext.

25. I have expanded in the hypertext on this assessment of developments in the USSR, as seen in the Peace Cruise of 1988. My contemporary view of the role of Gorbachev is also on record. Also worth a look is the record of the attempts I made in the late 1980s to resurrect de Valera's earlier scheme for developing a Radio Eireann World Service, using the short-wave bands. When in the USSR I was totally dependent for news on the BBC World Service via my pocket SW receiver.

26. The 1990 Irish Review paper, as an outline of the 'science and culture' position as seen in 1990, is accessible in full, uncut, in the hypertext.

27. Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism and Culture; David Cairns and Shaun Richards, Manchester University Press 1985.

28. Belfast in the French Revolution, Brendan Clifford, Belfast Historical and Educational Association, £UK7.50. On this occasion I also reviewed Artisans and Sans-Culottes, Gwyn A Williams, Libris, £UK7.85; I mention this on foot of Clifford's mention of Williams.

29. I have reproduced the correspondence in full in the hypertext, in association with the 1980s political module,

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999