I continued to take an interest in what remained of the Left after the 1989 crisis, in the hopes that it might prove possible to rescue the Marxist baby from the Stalinist bathwater. An aspect of this was the Desmond Greaves School, which had been initiated in 1989 by Anthony Coughlan and others, in an attempt to keep alive the legacy of C Desmond Greaves, especially as regards the analysis of the Irish national question in Marxist terms. I took a somewhat critical view of the way it evolved, managing as it did to avoid taking seriously the need for a 'Left-Green convergence', and also to avoid serious critical analysis of the ongoing Provisional violent campaign.

The following material begins in 1989, at the time when a Greaves commemoration event, with possible annual continuity, was under consideration. Greaves died in 1988. I treat all this together as a post-Greaves module, nominally in the 1990s.

The Desmond Greaves Summer School

Notes (1) towards a CDG Memorial Event; RHWJ, 11/2/89

2. It should address a series of key problem-areas to which CDG gave critical attention: what constitutes a nation, the emergence of the nation-state, democracy and socialism (including the analysis of the Stalin phenomenon), national culture (including science and technology), the role of the intellectual.

3. It should seek to involve at least some leading university and college-based radicals, who would be in a position to influence the thinking of postgraduate students, or people who might themselves be able to become mature postgraduate students, towards addressing the problem-areas outlined.

4. It should act as a constructive critical proving-ground for ideas emerging via this process, so that when they eventually become published in a form suitable for public opinion formation, they will be effective and influential, and reach appropriate markets.

5. It should avoid the academic label, and attract people who are in influential positions in the trade union, political and cultural movements, who are in search of innovative practical ideas for implementation in the real world. It is essential to achieve a constructive academic/practical mix.

6. Above all it should also avoid like the plague a workerist anti-intellectual label, such as has characterised most attempts at theorising on the Left to date.

7. Given that we are in the bicentenary year of the French Revolution, it might be appropriate to devote the initial event to the analysis of the democratic republican nation-state as it has evolved subsequently in Europe, with particular reference to the way in which its emergence has been so often aborted or poisoned under the influence of centralising imperialist demagogues (Napoleon, Bismarck, Stalin, Hitler).

8. Given also that we are in the midst of the post SEA integrating process, can we draw lessons from post-Union Irish history? The left has traditionally been critical of the O'Connellite Repeal movement, with its political conservatism and catholic hegemonism. Is this not the precursor of the anti-SEA 'holy alliance'? The left has always identified with the democratic objectives of the Young Irelanders, but has perhaps not been alive to the missed opportunity presented by the Chartists, who were at the time in the lead in the struggle for English democracy. Is not the analogue of this the emerging Left-Green consensus on mainland Europe? Perhaps the Irish role in the EC is to be the catalyst of 'perestroika', with Ireland as the Esthonia of the EC.

Notes (2) towards a CDG Memorial Event; RHWJ/JW 18/2/89

Background

This needs critical and scholarly attention, and the Irish are peculiarly well placed to pioneer a democratic understanding of the nation-building process in the aftermath of imperial interference.

The output of such scholarship must be Gramscian, in that books produced must get read and understood by the intelligent activists who are in a position to lead the working people into the promised land. And also some if not all of the authors of the books themselves must turn their hands to praxis, as Desmond did.

Let us also expand on the Stalin aspect. It is our belief that a significant aspect of Desmond's motivation to devote himself to the national-democratic revolution in Ireland was an instinctive desire to distance himself from what was going on in the arena of Marxist orthodoxy. He understood the nature of the mess being created in Eastern Europe and wanted no hand act or part in it.

The isolation of the 'hard left' in the West from the philosophical battlegrounds of the intellectuals is an aspect of Stalin's legacy. As a result the academic arena is an ideological wilderness.

Desmond was aware of this need, and in the 40s cultivated the student radicals. Of that generation there are few survivors, but you can count RJ, Paul O'Higgins and the late Toni Curran; also, in a sense, Justin Keating. Toni was an activist, but P O'H and RJ can claim to have kept some intellectual standing among our peers. RJ personally has been in the past, and remains currently to some extent, in a position to influence the kind of problems that post-graduate students address. The overall effect however has been miniscule. There were too few of us, and we were scattered to the winds.

The Problem as we see it ('we' here means RJ and JW)

Unless we can somehow develop the 'think-tank' aspect of this seminar, and provoke in-depth study of the key problem areas by contacts in the academic system whom we stimulate to do so, then we are wasting our time. We are not in the business of providing a weekend relaxation and drinking for a handful of tired middle-aged trade unionists. We are in the business of trying to set up a process for re-asserting Irish nationhood in a new political environment, in a form appropriate to the political opportunities, and possibly differently from the processes that were at work in the 19th century.

Given that there are only a handful of academics of any standing who are prepared to stand of ISM platforms (McCaughey, O Tuathaigh, Asmal, Crotty), let us state the problem in the form of how do we get a seminar going in such a way as to augment this supply, by asking the right questions, and stimulating people to work on problem-areas which will be of help to us in our task.

Steps towards the solution

If this approach is adopted, the people concerned should not be approached until the briefings are written and a cohesive philosophy for the seminar has emerged. This must be done on paper, not off the top of the head at a committee meeting.

An alternative approach is is first to define the topics, and then see if we can find names to allocate to them. This, in the present situation, is more difficult; there are few uncompromised intellectual resources to choose from.

(This is not a reason for dismissing them. The current practice of allocating disparaging labels and dismissing someone if they are not 100% in agreement with some orthodox world-view is not conducive to development of the resource. Better to look for the areas of agreement, and build on them by actions in that area, thus possibly extending them.)

Names we can do without: Eoin O Murchu, who had little or no rapport with CGD ever, and who is an unrepentant supporter of the Zhdanov approach to culture, and Stalin's methods in politics.

This advice was of course totally disregarded, to the detriment of the standing of the seminar.

The other names on the list quoted at the meeting fall into 2 groups: (a) those who interacted with CDG, and might have personal insights to contribute in the aftermath of ACs biographical paper, and (b) those who might be helpful in developing the 'think tank' aspect.

Both groups are important; the former to provide the energy necessary and organising ability necessary for filling a hall, the latter also as a source of ideas.

Of the names mentioned I would include in the latter group Devine, O Caollai, O Snodaigh and O Tuathaigh. This is the group which needs extension.

When we sat down in August 1987 to circulate our 'Note on the Need for National Democratic Policy Development' document, we wrote down a list of names which included AC, Kader Asmal, Kelleher, McCaughey, Crotty, Brian Leonard, John Montague, Paul O'Higgins, Seamus O Buachalla, Declan Kiberd, Breandan O h-Eithir, Richard Kearney, Brian Falloon, Michael D Higgins, Emmett Stagg, John Maguire, Donnchadh O h-Ealaithe, Alan Matthews, Helena Sheehan, Padraig O Snodaigh, Deaglan de Breadun, Peadar Kirby, Fintan O'Toole. We had discussed the document in draft at length with Shay Courtney, who is now a professional historian.

Of this lot the only ones to respond were McCaughey, Leonard, Kiberd, Kearney, Falloon, Michael D H and Helena Sheehan. We didn't pursue it.

When subsequently in Sept 88 we wrote around to a few people about the 89 bicentenary, the following additional names came to mind as people with a practical scholarly contribution to make: de Courcy Ireland, Risteard Mac Annraoi, Tom Graham (a Courtney contact), Desmond Fennell, Tom Barrington, Mike McKillen, Bill Hyland, Joy Rudd, Norman McMillen, Connie Ramillon, Eamonn O Ciosain, Patrick Faveraux etc etc.

We can see disapproval of some of these being exuded. Let it. You have to build on what you have got. Let's find the positive areas.

If you want potted biographies of all of these people, it is another night's work, and if there is the demand we will do it. The point is that they are all people who in our opinion have some contribution to make in the assessment of the current national situation, and in the development of new thinking in this area, such as to cause the necessary ferment. No one will have the type of revealed certainty which the Christian Brother/Stalinist mind seems to want. We are in a sea of doubt and confusion, and the most we can hope to do is create one or two islands of reduced uncertainty. There are no simplistic answers written in books. We will have to write the books, or stimulate them to be written.

If we are not in a position to develop the CDG event as a focus and stimulus for creative work by the kind of people listed, and as an opportunity for them to interact creatively with activists, catalysing the development of ideas into reality, then we may as well give up.

No revolution can take place without an intellectual core.

Further Notes (3) towards a CDG Memorial Event RJ 27/2/89

[A] Guidlelines for Selecting and Briefing Invited Speakers

2. Statements of the problems to be addressed should be given them well in advance, so that they have the time to divert some of their research effort towards analysis of the problem and an approach to the solution.

3. Papers should follow the classical applied-scientific structure: background to the problem, statement of the problem, analysis of its elements, development of theoretical base for the solution, estimation of the resources necessary in practice for making the solution a reality, identification of the immediate next step necessary for the mobilisation of these resources, etc.

4. Invited commentators should themselves be people fit to contribute a paper on another occasion, from a different but complementary angle, and/or be people associated with the resources constituting the solution to the problem.

5. Prospective speakers should be approached by people who know them and are in a position to explain convincingly the background and philosophy of the seminar.

[B] Some prospective speakers and associated relevant problem-areas:

2. A word on Kearney, who appears to have been relegated to the demonology. He is attempting in his own way to develop a critique of current society, and should be encouraged to do so. In proportion as he interacts with national- minded people, he will pick up a feel for the national question. He is likely to reflect in his scholarship the inputs he receives. He is now in the middle ground, well to the left of the conscious historical revisionist element, and in my opinion if he joins them it will be by default, ie through lack of intellectual stimulus from those who try to take up the national position.

3. Eamonn O Ciosain; currently lecturing in Maynooth; has worked in University of Rennes; is familiar with the Breton political situation, with particular reference to the church/state problem in the management of education; has been insistent that the Breton language schooling should participate in the classical Republican 'laique' tradition, and should not be dominated by the Catholic Right. Is a grandson of Sean Beaumont, who was one of the Protestant Irish language revivalists of the Douglas Hyde tradition; his current Catholicism is a product of the working of the 'ne temere' decree, and he is aware of this aspect of the national identity problem.

A suitable topic might be 'the role of the education system in the development of a national consciousness: some European comparisons'.

Suitable speakers to the paper, having follow-through potential, might be Seamus O Buachalla (author of the standard work on Pearse as an educationalist; also, more recently, a critique of the the role of the Churches in Irish education, with particular reference to the role of Cardinal Cullen), Joy Rudd (educational sociologist), Bill Hyland (was Chief Statistician in the Dept of Education, and is a strong supported to the laicisation of school management).

Eamonn O Ciosain is known to and approachable by Janice Williams.

4. Gearoid O Tuathaigh: UCG History lecturer; has supported the ISM on historical issues relating to the SEA campaign etc. One of the few historians who has resisted the tide of Europrovincial revisionism.

An appropriate topic for him might be 'the nation-state in European history', in which a critical look might be taken at the way the 1790s democratic republican concept has so often be subverted by the imperial process (eg not only Ireland under the partition arrangement, but also France under Napoleon and subsequent imperial epochs, Germany under Bismarck etc). It would be interesting to look at such nation-states as have emerged (Norway, Finland) and see how they resolve the problem of ethnic pluralism (eg Finland with Swedes and Lapps etc), and how in some cases it is unresolved (eg Greece and Macedonia).

Speakers to the paper should include Padraig O Snodaigh and should also perhaps be selected from the younger generation of radical historians, on the advice of Shay Courtney, and should include SC himself.

Another possible speaker to the paper is Risteard Mac Annraoi, who is a historian whose MA thesis in TCD was the basis of his book on the history of peace movements in Ireland. He is currently in Cork working on a local history project. He is English, and is a fluent Irish speaker. He is particularly interested in the positive nation-building role of the Protestant minority, and has worked for a period with the Quaker archives.

All the above 'speakers to the paper' are potential contributors to subsequent papers, and this should be put to them when approached. We are here planning something with an eye to the follow-through potential.

Looking retrospectively at the above outline, I see no reason to amend it; it is a pity that none of it was taken up; if any of it had been I would have put the work in to help broaden it. I think it is most important that the scope be broadened, and that the intellectual and ideological nettles be grasped; also that genuine ideological controversy be encouraged, rather than the 'labelling and dismissing' procedure, which suggests that those who do it are afraid that their own ideas might not stand up, a long-term weakness of progressive ideology.

Notes (3) towards the First Greaves School; RJ August 1989

1. The event should constitute a 'think-tank of the Left' imbued with the Gramsci 'philosophy of action': in other words, a stimulus to get accepted among Irish intellectuals the need not just to contemplate the world, but to change it.

[While the focus (in the Greaves memorial meeting) was narrow, with priority given to the CP and Provisional positions, there was some interaction with the Labour Left, who came out of curiosity; there was no visible attempt to interact with the intellectuals who are the potential sources of ideas in the Summer Schools, except by the process of labelling and dismissing, which is not good enough.]

2. It should address a series of key problem-areas to which CDG gave critical attention: what constitutes a nation, the emergence of the nation-state, democracy and socialism (including the analysis of the Stalin phenomenon), national culture (including science and technology), the role of the intellectual.

[The two first issues were addressed by McCorry, and it is a pity he was cut short; the others contributed nothing new; some of the other issues visibly wanted to come up in the discussion; there was not the time to address them in any depth.]

3. It should seek to involve at least some leading university and college-based radicals, who would be in a position to influence the thinking of postgraduate students, or people who might themselves be able to become mature postgraduate students, towards addressing the problem-areas outlined.

[This task has not even begun to be addressed; a focus could have been provided for middle-ground intellectuals critical of the Establishment to interact with the Left, rather than to dissipate their efforts in the Establishment summer-schools. Study of the extensive reporting of the Humbert, McGill and Yeats will reveal potential radical criticism which would respond to the provision of a focus, and could be pulled in the national direction.]

4. It should act as a constructive critical proving-ground for ideas emerging via this process, so that when they eventually become published in a form suitable for public opinion formation, they will be effective and influential, and reach appropriate markets.

[The Coughlan paper presumably will end up publishable, though if published it should be made more comprehensive, and include an assessment of (Greaves's) role in interaction with the student left of the 40s, and in the foundation of the Irish Workers League.]

5. It should avoid the academic label, and attract people who are in influential positions in the trade union, political and cultural movements, who are in search of innovative practical ideas for implementation in the real world. It is essential to achieve a constructive academic/practical mix.

[We did not get this; no-one went away with any specific ideas what to go and do tomorrow.]

6. Above all it should also avoid like the plague a workerist anti-intellectual label, such as has characterised most attempts at theorising on the Left to date.

[There was evidence of this in the meetings of the planning committee.]

7. Given that we are in the bicentenary year of the French Revolution, it might be appropriate to devote the initial event to the analysis of the democratic republican nation-state as it has evolved subsequently in Europe, with particular reference to the way in which its emergence has been so often aborted or poisoned under the influence of centralising imperialist demagogues (Napoleon, Bismarck, Stalin, Hitler).

[This opportunity has been lost; there was no attempt to analyse the negative role of centralism, with its propensity for taking over imperial State machines and allowing the latter to impede national development.]

8. Given also that we are in the midst of the post SEA integrating process, can we draw lessons from post-Union Irish history? The left has traditionally been critical of the O'Connellite Repeal movement, with its political conservatism and Catholic hegemonism. Is this not the precursor of the anti-SEA 'holy alliance'? The left has always identified with the democratic objectives of the Young Irelanders, but has perhaps not been alive to the missed opportunity presented by the Chartists, who were at the time in the lead in the struggle for English democracy. Is not the analogue of this the emerging Left-Green consensus on mainland Europe? Perhaps the Irish role in the EC is to be the catalyst of 'perestroika', with Ireland as the Esthonia of the EC.

[There is lurking Catholic-hegemonism in the resistance on the part of national-minded people to taking up the 'Church and State' issue, and the consequent leaving of this important battlefield to anti-national liberals. The attitude of Ann Speed to this was positively pathological: she justified the abandonment of the issue by the alleged fact that it was dominated by the B&ICO; this of course is quite untrue, the key people being such as Justin Keating, and Bill Hyland (ex Chief Statistician of the Dept of Education, and an important source of inside intelligence).]

Postscript 30/8/89

1. It is important that a tradition of starting on time be developed in progressive circles. It is this that gives the bourgeoisie its effectiveness. On any other network where I am active, meetings start on the dot. People arriving to sample the intellectual atmosphere, and who arrive on time only to wait up to an hour sometimes, can only conclude 'these people are not serious', and will never come again.

2. If this is to take place, it will be necessary to make proper arrangements for people to be fed. There is a kitchen in Kinlay House, and it is feasible to make catering arrangements, either professionally or on a voluntary basis. If there is no in-house catering, people should be given a map of the surrounding streets and the locations of the appropriate eating-houses, of which there are several in the neighborhood of the Central Bank. Leave at least an hour and a half.

3. A good schedule would be: assemble and register from 11.30, over a cup of coffee; 12.00 introductory keynote speech giving an overview of the school, outlining the issues to be addressed, and the qualities of the people addressing them. 13.00 lunch break; return 14.30 for session on first topic, break up into groups 15.15 to discuss the paper in depth, 16.00 report back interactively, end session 16.30; coffee break; 17.00 introduce next topic, which should be controversial, and generate food for overnight thought, and discussion at the social (NB have an MC who knows who can sing, and does not impose excessive songs on people who primarily want to talk!)

4. As regards management of groups: you need for each group a facilitator, who acts as chairman, and has seen the paper in advance, developing a feel for the key discussion areas to be probed; you also need a rapporteur, to note areas of consensus emerging. These are different roles, and should be different people, selected in advance; you cannot expect people who may not know each other to come up with good choices.

5. Start on the Sunday morning at 11.00 with group discussions on the second session; rapportage 12.00, break for lunch 12.30. Start 3rd session 14.00, finish 16.00; have someone wind up with an overview, picking on the developmental points which have emerged in the rapportage; close 17.00. Drop the idea of a visit or outing; people clearly prefer to exchange ideas. ~ nd should be different people, selected in advance; you cannot expect people who may not know each other to come up with good choices.

The following letter to Anthony Coughlan arose from the second Greaves School, held in August 1990.

10/10/90

Dear Tony

Thanks for the quick response. I'll try and answer some of your points.

1. Yes the school was worthwhile, but I would not call it good, though it was good in parts. I have notes on it, and can expand at length on the detail of what was good and what was bad, but perhaps the best time to do this would be when planning the next one. Perhaps the best thing was McCartney, who opened up the analysis of the historical revisionism thing in a manner which may enable things to be discussed with less 'labelling and dismissing'.

There is a lot of re-thinking going on, perhaps more than is in evidence on the surface. The Cambridge paper you enthused about in the Democrat is in fact the tip of the iceberg. You should talk to Shay Courtney about this. There is mobility of postgrad students going on, some of them ex Long Kesh; a whole re-revisionst network developing. Also these historians who are in the 'labelled and dismissed' category: some have their good areas; you should sound out people like Connie Ramillon. Basically, if you are going to build up the Greaves School as a serious contribution to the analysis of revolutionary history, you should cultivate the actual historians and get them in on the planning. A good start would be to talk to Courtney, and take his advice on who is who among the rising generation.

2. The whole question of convergence of authoritarian systems against democracy, and the associated marginalisation of liberal issues, is part of the current pathology. I have noticed that there is a certain type of Catholic-nationalist element, of which I suppose Maire Bhreathnach is the extreme example, which seems to be attracted to the kind of seminar you have been promoting. Alice Glenn you even had once, I seem to remember. I don't feel we should be encouraging a younger generation of people like that to emerge. If we cheer them when they claim the referendum results as national victories, then we are suggesting that the national aspiration is something like Salazar's Portugal (much admired by UCD academics in the 30s).

I think it is insensitive of you to be critical of Janice for reacting to these vibes, and she (and I) will do so again, unrepentantly. And if people who should know better (eg Charlie Cunningham) apparently support the Catholic Right in the pub afterwards, what am I to conclude? There are similar unholy alliances developing in the USSR which typify the extremes of the Stalin (ie 'Christian Brother Marxist') mind-set. I suppose the convergence of Jimmy Stewart, Gerry Adams, Desmond Fennell, Ulick O'Connor and your good self in Liberty Hall was fortuitous? I read the report on Monday's Irish Times with fascination. I wonder who prepared the press statement? There are certain stylistic touches that seem familiar. Committees within committees, real committees and phony ones, lists of intended names! I can understand why Bulmer Hobson resigned when he did.

3. Can we not get rid of the 'nation-State' and talk instead about 'national democracy'? Your John Boyd thinks Britain is a nation. Is the 26 counties a nation-State? In my view we have 2 States and no nation, only the makings of one, in process of being strangled during a prolonged birth. People in the West don't identify with the gang in Dublin. The State we have is the enemy, an imperial relic. It's NOT a State defensive of the emerging Irish nation.

4. The people labelled and dismissed as '2-nationists' should perhaps be re- examined; perhaps they are more to be reckoned with than we thought. Brendan Clifford is one; he has dug up some good stuff on Canon Sheehan and the All for Ireland League; he writes as a North Cork Protestant, and analyses the way the Home Rule movement went Catholic-separatist, and how Canon Sheehan tried to resist this, from a liberal-democratic basis, with a view to bringing the Northern Protestants along with Home Rule. There were many Northern Protestant liberal Home Rulers, and my father was one. They have been 'written out' of history. Clifford also did good stuff on the French Revolution and the North, which I reviewed. I have steered Flann Campbell in his direction.

5. Back to national democracy: I have never supported the European Parliament as any kind of panacea. One should NOT 'leave aside' the desirability of getting more power at local and regional level; this is CRUCIAL. This is seen by some as 'undermining the State', because it is genuinely radical, attacking the main roadblock against democracy, which is centralist bureaucracy.

OK suppose we succeed in getting cantonal-level democracy, and the existing States are weakened as a results, who then will deal with the TNCs? The existing States are too weak to deal with the TNCs anyway. They have ceded power to Brussels, which is like a sort of multi-headed monarch, and set up a Parliament without powers, so that the TNCs run Brussels, and there is even less democratic control than there was via the States.

There is clearly a game going on whereby Brussels wants to weaken the States, and one of its weapons in this game is the cross-border development region. Insofar as this strengthens local and regional identity and democracy, it should however be encouraged.

But if the States are weakened, the only way to regain the democratic process is at local/regional level and at federal level. An acceptable goal for me would be a European federation of cantons, lander etc, with the old central imperial States dismantled (primarily the nuclear-armed centralist ones, Britain and France), and a modest federal centre, prevented by constitutional provisions from becoming imperial/centralist on the British pattern.

In such a federation, the cantons should be entitled to group themselves in sub federations, for various purposes (cultural, shared common services etc), which would become new patterns of nations within the federation: Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Galicia, Lombardy or whatever, uninhibited by London or Paris.

The trouble with the 19th century process of 'nation-building' was that in all cases it was a hegemonistic leading group at the centre imposing itself on the fringe. The new process should involve regions opting into groupings voluntarily. Bottom-up rather than top-down.

The role of the Federal Parliament should be to set the ground rules, on a 'Bill of Rights' basis; it should be more like a regional unit of the UN; indeed this might be a political road to follow: enhance the UN and strengthen the UN Regional Groupings (using 'regional' here in the UN sense).

There is no clear new paradigm emerging, and we must not cling nostalgically to old ones. I certainly have no claim to special insights. My gut feeling is that the Marxist theory of the State is going to have to be totally re-worked, and the theory of the nation with it, and some new kind of democratic bottom- up non-hegemonistic nation-state concept developed, of which the seeds may be found in Connolly. Exclusive ethnic-nationalism is an enemy concept; inclusive geographic multi-ethnic nations are on the agenda, but they have to be wanted subjectively, and that is the problem. Feminist thinking needs to be brought into the mix, also ecological ('green'). The old nation-State concept of the 19th century is rooted in the Old Testament and is basically hegemonistic and patriarchal; modern Israel is perhaps the archetype.

Regarding the 'greennet' system: we have here a global communications system with which it is possible to carry on continuous electronic conferencing, both at the policy development level and at the level of conveying information for publication by the global media.

There is a conference 'reg.Ireland' where news of the North is put, regularly, by a US-based Provo supporter. This conference should be used by those who want to convey to the global media the existence of other political options. The Govt is alive to this, and has started to put in material via a new agency called Toppsi, which has started up with EC money, to encourage electronic communications. There are altogether some 150 conferences, and anyone can contribute to any of them. The problem is to select the signal from the noise. I am slowly building up a small group of serious networkers, whom I intend to try to develop into an interactive study-group on the problem of ethnic nationalism. I have had, by telex, a cri-de-coeur from a contact in the Soviet Peace Committee seeking insights into this issue, and I think it should be taken seriously.

I think that's all for now. / Yours sincerely / RoyJ

Tony Coughlan / TCD / 5/8/91

re: Greaves papers & school

Dear Tony

May I again offer you some criticism of the way you are handling these matters, and I hope you will take it as constructive.

Greaves School:

I never received an invitation. I heard about it by various roundabout routes, and that you had got Bradshaw, and that it was in Beggars Bush. Both positive steps. But I still hadn't got the overview; I only got it today, by going round to Cathal and asking for it.

The encounter with Cathal suggested to me that he is not taking his directorship of the school seriously, and that he has no respect for the participants. The basis for this conclusion is that he stated that again there would be no arrangements for food at the 'garden party', people being expected to pick up a junk-food take-away in Rathmines. This emerged in a context in which I had made the neighbourly offer to help with the food.

The people concerned, you would hope, are not 1960s hippies, but mature people who know how to live. To offer a 'garden party' at 6.00 pm and not to offer food is simply beyond the bounds of any credible tradition of hospitality.

Now to the programme: I see you put Bradshaw first, at the improbable hour of 7.30 on the Friday night, and that Saturday morning is blank. This cuts out those (like us) who are on vacation but coming back that weekend; they might make events on the Saturday but are unlikely to make the Friday.

How do you handle him? does he just look in, give his paper, and depart, or does he participate in the whole event, treating the occasion with the respect a research seminar should get? My feeling is that he as a professional would not be enthused by interacting with a biochemist, a trade union secretary and 2 journalists over a period of 2.5 days, and that he would only feel academically rewarded if the company were to include at least a few serious historians who were into post-revisionist thinking. I doubt however if many such would show up for a school as a whole, though it is just possible that they might show up for the Friday night, but would skip the rest of the school.

Mac Siomoin's thoughts on the colonised mind are probably interesting in their own right, and are one aspect of the problem; one could develop this aspect in a future school; Fennell has had a lot to say about this; it would be interesting to pull in some international experience (eg Fanon and the Algerians); in this context however with the heavy lead-in by Bradshaw it blurs the focus by taking up the language issue. There are ways in which the language issue could be related to the Bradshaw thesis, but I wonder is Mac Siomoin alive to them?

As regards the 7.30 start: this reeks of the sloppy old left tradition of 7.30 for 8 starting at 8.15. Nothing is more off-putting to serious people than this type of codology, and may I inform you that it is not the practice in other arenas.

There is also the relationship with the 5.30 reception: does this last till 6.30, and are you expected to get food in Beggars Bush between then and 7.30? Or is there food served at the reception? All very obscure, and the timing is implausible.

Sean Redmond as a good lay activist will no doubt have good things to say about Marianne Elliott, but critiques at this level will not cut ice. You need to put up a professional historian, or else keep quiet until you are in a position to do so, if you are claiming to organise a forum in which you are fielding Bradshaw. By doing this you are debasing the Bradshaw coinage, and (without in the least wishing to imply Sean is in any way unworthy) he won't thank you. You will get him once, but not again.

Farrell and Moriarty in this context are also both lightweights, though Farrell has written some good contemporary journalistic-style history.

As regards the committee: it seems to me to be a long way from the necessary balance between 'loyalty to and understanding of the CDG contribution' on the one hand and 'new blood' on the other. I would regard Francis Devine as being the one person of the necessary standing on which you could perhaps build, to pull in other relevant new blood.

I went on to take up the question of the Greaves Diaries, but did not get around to pursuing this at that time.

Tony Coughlan / TCD

31/8/91

re: Greaves School and the Left Crisis

Dear Tony

This is a follower to my letter of Aug 8 and an assessment of the current state of the School. In the end, as a result of chance, we did manage to get to the Bradshaw, and I got to the Mac Siomoin. We had to miss out on the Sunday events because of pressure in the domestic front, but we brought Mazé our Breton guest along to MacLiam's and he had useful encounters with Dermot O'Doherty and Justin Keating. Indeed we had trouble getting rid of Justin and got little sleep that might.

Which brings me to the problem of the School as I see it. I put the essentials of this down in a document at the very start, when you were planning the first, and the more I see of it the more I am convinced I was right.

A school only has meaning if the people who attend it are prepared to relax and devote their whole time to interacting and absorbing the atmosphere of the occasion. This is simply NOT POSSIBLE in a Dublin situation with events dispersed over space and time. The school as such is a non-event.

I enclose a cutting from Liz MacManus which in my opinion captures the essence. You should not 'label and dismiss' this particular insight, which transcends all political boundaries.

Where was Bradshaw when Mac Siomoin was speaking? Where was Redmond when Bradshaw was speaking? Where was the opportunity afterwards for Bradshaw to interact with the few frustrated historians who were there, trying to get a word in edgewise into the windbaggery and rhetoric?

(This included Mary Cullen and the feminists! RJ 30/8/93)

If you want a model for how to run a school, look at the Robert Lynd School on Sept 13. It keeps the group together, and has interactive facilities on the spot. Expand the Lynd school to a week and you get the MacGill formula. In both cases people are prepared to pay, because it is their vacation or weekend activity that they enjoy doing. By running a school at bargain-basement cost you demean it, and skimp on the essential services.

Bradshaw might well be Bob Bradshaw's son; he certainly looks like him, and the age would be about right; he referred to his father being jailed for IRA activities; if this is the case we have an interesting phenomenon; Bob was a hard-core atheist; I used to drink with him in O'Neills the odd time in the 60s; he was in the IRA in the 30s, and observed the 60s transformation with benign detachment. Interesting that the son became a priest.

This alas proved not to be the case; Bob Bradshaw was not his father.

His paper undoubtedly would have been better responded to if the audience had been interested in scientific historiography, instead of wanting to grind a political axe, as most of it seemed to do. My instinct would have been not to expose the like of Bradshaw to windbaggery from the discredited lumpen-left, but to interact him with people whose ideas have development potential, with the potential to write the books.

Mac Siomoin told me little I didn't know, and left many key paths unexplored, like the 'godless colleges' business, and the Belfast engineering role of Mac Adamh. He is obviously not familiar with the extensive modern literature on language and culture, of which Fishman is the guru; if O Ciosain had been there he would have run rings around him. (You remember I gave you O Ciosain as a target in my first-shot paper.) So in this area the Greaves School is a long way from being able to claim leading-edge progressive research status. I offered you a window into this early on, which you didn't take up. My instinct not to bring Mazé along to any of the actual school was correct; Mac Siomoin would have been the only contact-point, and he would have got nothing from it, although in a sense Mazé is the Mac Adamh of contemporary Brittany.

in the sense that he runs a high tech firm and is Breton national-minded; MacAdamh ran an engineering works and invented the modern water-turbine, supplying the emerge-source for the Ulster linen-mills, as well as pioneering the Irish dictionary with the Academy. RJ 30/8/93.

I won't comment on the Sunday events, except to wonder who among the contemporary historiographers is likely to take up Sean Redmond's contrast of Desmond's with Elliott's work. If Bradshaw had pulled a historical specialist audience into seminar mode, and Redmond's paper had been interacted with the same audience in the presence of Bradshaw, we might have made something of the occasion. This could have been planned for and made happen.

Now let me try to suggest some pointers for the future. It seems to me that the key issue is how to pick up the radical-democratic Marxist tradition which has survived in Ireland via Connolly and give it a European dimension, filling the vacuum left by the shattering of the Soviet centralist tradition, now in retrospect a disastrous diversion, associated with Lenin and Stalin. The Connolly branch of Marxist national-democracy can perhaps be linked to the unfinished debate between Lenin and Rosa Luxembourg, who perhaps has status analogous in the Polish context to Madge Davidson or Betty Sinclair.

My feeling is that Desmond, in distancing himself from the Party in Britain and concentrating on the Irish anti-imperialist struggle, was aware of the corruption of the Soviet model. He was always scathing about O'Riordain's millenarianism, and his organising of trips east for the lads. Yet in his crucial speech to the founding meeting of the IWL in 1948 he was acting for the International Affairs Committee of the CPGB. I was there and heard him. Subsequently in College I remember his defence of Lysenko, and he influenced Justin for a while, to the extent that I remember an encounter between Justin and Gatenby the genetics professor, in which the latter complemented Justin on the quality of his father's pictures, a very gentlemanly put-down!

At some point however Desmond must have had second thoughts. I remember his analysis of the Hungarian intervention, in which he was critical of the people associated with the IWL (which was, in a sense, his creation, as it would not have constituted itself in the way it did had it not been for his intervention) and used them as negative examples to illustrate the Hungarian debacle. And the IWL intrigued against him in London.

So my feeling is that in his journals there probably are notes relevant to the development of democracy in the left. I would like to see his records of the events involving him which I remember. This would be a spin-off of my reading of his journal for scientific contacts; both could lead to separate studies, and both would be legitimate historiographical studies, possibly for publication in Saothar, or even in NLR.

What I would like to do is come over some Saturday morning, and have a quick scan, and then possibly isolate some areas for further study in greater depth. The originals are of course essential; I have no problem with his writing, and have some experience of his conceptual shorthand, especially from that period.

1/9/91 Continuing this on the Sunday, after a mountain walk in which we dropped in on Shay Courtney. I was surprised not to see him show up at least for the Bradshaw, as I knew he knew Bradshaw and had intended to go.

It seems a kitchen sink unit arrived on the Friday and was occupying the centre of the floor, and when that happens there is no option but to plumb it in. Anyway as you know for Courtney Bradshaw is an old-established contact; he had heard him on the Joe Duffy programme during the week, and will make contact during the 1791 bicentenary proceedings which are taking place in Dublin and Belfast in October; Jim Smith is giving a paper. You will recollect that Jim Smith is one of the names I suggested to you 2 or 3 years ago as one of the younger historians to watch in this context; a contemporary of Shay he did his PhD with Bradshaw. So the re-revision process is alive and well among the professional historians, and taking up the mantle of the United Irishmen.

All of which seems to me to suggest that the role of the Greaves School is NOT to be pushing an issue which is well in hand among the historians, but instead to be taking up issues at the current cutting edge of the philosophy of action, the key ones being where there is the maximum of confusion, namely national democracy and the role of the State; also the role of the Party and the relationship between the Party and the national democratic movement.

There should be a mine of ideas on these issues in Desmond's notebooks and papers, the analysis of which should bring the Labour History Archive into the forefront of historical research, of much broader than Irish significance. That is, assuming the material ends up properly archived and catalogued and available to scholarship.

Courtney was on about a Fás scheme; it seems this has been done in a historical context elsewhere, and it works well; there are people around who know how to take documents and establish their chronologies and relationships, a non- trivial and often tedious task. The problem is NOT to establish typescripts, but to catalogue originals meaningfully. Do you have any feel for the number of categories it might be necessary to establish? I know in my own case there must be hundreds.

What I would like to do, if you will accept the offer, is take a look at the size of the problem, and do some pilot sampling. I could do this when I drop in (perhaps next Saturday morning?) to take my preliminary look at the journal for the period I mentioned. I could then perhaps advise you as to how the Courtney scheme (as I understand it) might work, and what the problems might be.

The scenario which I see developing out of the Fás contact is the establishment of an effective centre for the study of labour history archives in Beggars Bush, properly equipped with a computer, having relational database facilities (we are not in the presence of a mere word-processing problem; it is a matter for a sophisticated knowledge-based system, which is an area I know about on my professional network) and possibility of generating desk-top publishing.

This facility could then be extended to include archives like the Gilmore and Comerford papers; the Labour History archive would need to be extended in its scope to include the archives of radical national democracy with which the labour movement in Ireland has always uneasily interfaced.

There MUST be Gilmore papers somewhere; his cottage was full of them, and if Charlie took them over I think he probably kept them, and they might now be in the possession of the family.

What will happen to the de Courcy Ireland papers? And, indeed, my own?

It seems to me that we are in the presence of a historic opportunity to upgrade Beggars Bush to be a centre for the study of the problems of how to relate socialism to national democracy that would have no parallel elsewhere. The 'foot in the door' would be the Greaves papers.

What we do NOT need in this context is any bureaucratic filtration process. I seem to detect something of this in your reference to typescript versions of the journal. Anything that puts a barrier between the historian and the original material is simply not acceptable.....

Between 1946 and 1960 I was Desmond's first port of call when in Ireland, and we discussed many issues in depth. So I would know his shorthand, and would appreciate the significance of references which might otherwise be obscure. So I feel I would be useful in interpreting the material from this period.

I feel we are on the threshold of a GREAT HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY to rescue the mainstream of Marxist thinking via what was hitherto a side-stream via Connolly, and establish the Connolly model for the democratic republican nation-state as the European norm. This of course has relevance for Serbia and Croatia, because are not the Serbs in Croatia the analogues of the Protestants in Ulster: Serbian towns embedded in seas of Croatian villages; total mutual inter-dependence in economic terms, requiring the development of an inclusive Croatian nation-state in which the colonising Serbs would be welcome. I must say I think your Amarach listing of national questions was somewhat simplistic. Marxist theory here has a long way to go, but the Connolly model is a good start....

What follows is not directly related to the Greaves school, but is a series of responses to various initiatives by Anthony Coughlan, in which he attempted, among other things, to relate the Greaves intellectual legacy to the developing crisis in Yugoslavia. This politics reflected itself into subsequent Greaves Schools for a time, and I became increasingly uneasy with it. Coughlan remained a critic of the EEC and the EU process, and we remained in touch in that context.

The 1992 Maastricht Referendum

20/6/92

Dear Tony

In response to your of June 17, I enclose £20 towards the reduction of the debt. ....

I did send you some political notes on Feb 14, none of which I saw any evidence that you took on board. If you feel you want to consult the letter, and have mislaid it, let me know, and I will regenerate it for you. I find I can stand over most, if not all, of it in retrospect.

Let me give you one or two post-mortem insights. The principal one is the impression that many informed political people who would have voted 'no' on questions of neutrality and sovereignty in the end voted 'yes' because that did not want to be in the same camp as the Hanafin gang and the ayatollahs. They voted for what they perceived as the European enlightenment against quasi-Muslim fundamentalism. This was reinforced by the appearance of fundamentalist youth rallies in the streets.

There were several good initiatives on the neutrality question, the best being from the Cork Quakers, which I had a hand in helping to promote and publicise. Jony Wigham ran a fringe event at the Yearly Meeting, at which a good few Nunan books were sold, and there was serious discussion. I spoke to the Dublin Monthly Meeting on the eve of poll, and there was serious consideration given to it, and significant support for the 'no' position, but there were several there who had been supporters in '72 had reversed their position for the reason I indicated.

The Greens were campaigning actively, and they had the full political support of the European Green Co-ordination, which met in Dublin last weekend. This was somewhat to their surprise, as they had been inclined to write off the major European Green parties as being 'pro-European', and to vote to hobble the powers of the Co-ordination in its attempt to assume the role of a mandated body; this they are now on the road to becoming.

In the new ball-game which is emerging, the battle is going to be for local and regional democratic structures, which will enable the fringe to hold its own against the macro-economic forces leading to the reinforcement of the core. As I said before, the roles of central states and central superstate agencies are going to have to be curtailed, and we will have to find means of developing constructively the democratic forces at local and regional level, and weakening the centralist forces. The central state (of your so-called 'nation-state' model) is NOT a suitable vehicle for this democratic reconstruction, as it is mostly parasitic, especially in its Irish form (where it is a construct inherited from the period of imperial rule).

This parasitism it at its worst in the 3rd-world countries which have adopted the State structures of the imperial system; this is Crotty's 'undevelopment' scenario, of which the Irish are the pioneers.

The centralism of the traditional 'working-class movement', and the associated bureaucratisation, should be another indicator to you of the need for a new paradigm: the Trade Unions which were solidly 'no' in '72 came out solidly for 'yes', and what if any discussion was there within them.

The ultimate logic of the centralist 'nation-state', run by a centralist 'working-class party' is the use of the Russian colonists in the Baltic States to prevent the re-emergence of the latter, and, worse, the current 'ethnic cleansing' by Serbian gangs of Muslim villagers from Bosnian villages.

The democratic alternative scenario which I can see developing in the European reconstruction process is going to have to be 'bottom up', inclusive, and with democratic control exercise over economic decisions at the level of the community and the enterprise; we need to re-invent the co-operative movement.

The Irish Partition question is going to have to be challenged in this mode by the peoples living in the marginalised border areas, reclaiming the economic spaces weakened by Partition, and regenerating the natural hinterlands of the towns and urban networks. A theoretical basis for this can be found via Connolly in Marx, whose core-concept was the need for democratic control over the capital re-investment process. Connolly had the Ralahine model in mind for how this might work. Connolly never promoted State centralism; this was a construct which emerged in the USSR under Stalin. The whole political structure of the European Left has been poisoned by this pathology, and is on the whole beyond redemption, apart perhaps from some individuals.

I think I have said enough / Yours sincerely RJ

Post-Jugoslavia

1/08/92

Dear Tony

I must say I am appalled at the simplistic approach to the Yugoslav crisis, suggested in your July 23 statement. I don't have the time or energy to go into it in depth; Janice, who has some detailed knowledge of the linguistic history, and knows people on the applied linguistic network, is in process of adapting some of her thesis material into an essay for your benefit.

The complexities of the European national questions have so far totally eluded valid theoretical treatment within the canon of Marxist orthodoxy, and the latter is in such discredit that it has in my opinion nothing to contribute. The Stalinist hardliners seem to have reverted to pan-Slavism, and the Serbian 'ethnic cleansing' programme (which you so conveniently overlook) is being fuelled by supplies from Russia shipped up the Danube, in defiance of sanctions.

What we have all over Eastern Europe is pockets of old imperial colonists planted here and there, lots of little Ulsters. The future of these enclave ethnic minorities is not movements of populations, any more than it is in Ulster. It is in the context of multi-ethnic political democracy, with a Bill of Rights to defend minorities.

The Croatians failed to persuade their Serb enclaves that they would be OK, giving the Serbs the pretext to move in, applying the 'ethnic cleansing' process to the unfortunate Croatian villagers, who had been there for centuries. The German haste in recognition, without guarantees for the Serbian enclaves, was certainly destructive. This was a German thing; the EC did not have its act together well enough to restrain it. An argument could be made that the EC needs more political clout, if re-emergent German imperialism is the be contained. But German imperialism I don't think has the German people behind it, the way it used to.

What we need is a strong UN-backed Bill of Rights procedure for recognition of new States, in defence of ethnic minorities. The old 19th century 'nation-state' process, where the State is run by a hegemonistic ethnic group (like the English in the UK), needs to be improved upon; we need to develop a nation-building process via confederations of multi-ethnic city-states, perhaps on the Swiss model, as an alternative to the totally barbaric 'ethnic cleansing' process, which is generating a new Palestine problem in the heart of Europe. The Serbs will simply have to be stopped doing this, by UN intervention, and the displaced peoples restored to their homes, with compensation, and enabled to build up the type of pluralistic democratic structures which the Bosnians originally wanted. They were demonstrating in the streets, for a peaceful democratic transition, until the Serbian snipers (the Arkan gang) moved in.

If the Serbs are let get away with this form of barbarous racial nonsense, and it becomes the European norm, what hope is there for any sensible political development in Northern Ireland?

What is this nonsense about multinational states being 20th century creations? historical legitimacy conferred by age? Are you suggesting that Scotland, Catalonia, Brittany etc have no right to nationhood?

There is as much validity in expecting the Croatian or Bosnian Serbs to accept their new political structures, as there is for expecting the Northern Protestants to accept a United Ireland. We aspire to make the latter happen, in a context where there would be an environment friendly to economic development. We should be consistent and encourage the former to happen also. OK maybe Tito's boundaries could have been on the table, but peaceful procedures for adjusting frontiers, in accordance with natural economic hinterlands, should not be too hard to develop, given the political will.

Cantons are not necessarily 'ethnic'. They are natural economic entities, a city and its hinterland. The ethnic cantonisation of Bosnia was a Serbian concept; the Bosnian Serbs (the Orangemen) were joking about zoos for European muslims as endangered species. You admit that the initial Bosnian politics was against any such monstrosity. What ended that initial unified Bosnian politics was Arkan's gangs.

There is a pro-Serbian propaganda element being echoed by sources such as Micheal Mac Aonghusa, Eoin O Murchu etc, who have always followed the old Soviet line; their sources must now be dominated by the pan-Slav interest, reflecting the old sorehead Stalinist core, now allied with the Pamyat Russian-nationalist gang.

If you want to keep any credibility for your EC critique (which of course is needed badly) you will need to distance yourself from that lot, and cultivate more the Joe Nunan position, and indeed the Greens. In the recent referendum I must say that Joe Nunan was much more effective and credible than your lot was; you were totally leapfrogged.

If I may make a suggestion: why don't you drop all that for a while, and concentrate on making the Greaves school into a centre where people making critical analyses of the nation-building process, in the post-imperial context, can interact, in research seminar mode? And contribute some of your own researches, in a field where your academic standing is relevant? Ethnic issues in social administration, in multi-ethnic communities? There is plenty of UK-originating material looking for critical review (the Islamic schools etc), and plenty in the North; in the Republic there is the question of the travellers (who are segregated in the dole-queues).

We should have here in Ireland something to say about problems of multi-ethnic communities, and should be able to contribute our experience to the reconstuction of the components of the late Yugoslavia. The trouble is, we haven't got our act together; our own academics have ignored the issues. If you are prepared to accept the foregoing as a basis for some interactive discussion, then perhaps we can get together soon, but here rather than in your place, as I am not as mobile as I was. If not, I'll simply get on with trying to put my book together.

Sincerely RJ

Janice's paper:

7/08/92

Dear Tony,

This is a follow-up to the discussion I had with you on the phone where I told you I disagree with many of the points you made in your statement on "EEC interference in Yugoslavia". Since then Roy has replied to it and we have received your letter, which also contains comments on Roy's Irish Times letter.

To deal with the latter first, I would stand over Roy's letter. His use of the term Europe did not refer specifically to the EC, incidentally. However what the EC does is going to be a major factor in the shaping of Europe as a whole whether we like it or not. From what we hear of the latest developments in Yugoslavia, even more sinister interference from forces far less democratic than the EC, eg Islamic Jihad, is now a real threat, leading many of us to wonder whether the EC should have done more rather than less.

As to the main point in your statement, that the EC is the fundamental cause of the mayhem, I do agree that perhaps there was not enough preparation before recognition. On the other hand, there was a push factor as well as a pull factor, in the form of the break-up of the old ideocracy that was Yugoslavia. There was a fear on the part of the breakaway republics that the Serbian crypto -ascendancy, which federal legislation in the old Yugoslavia had prevented from going overboard, would now run rampant. The republics turned to the EC for official sanction because they had no-where else. The UN will not interfere in what it regards as an internal national problem. I am glad that you include the US among the interferers in your letter to Roy because they were meddling there before the EC.

After the free elections in 1990 in which the Yugoslav CP was heavily defeated in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia but victorious in Serbia and Montenegro, Slovenia and Croatia held referenda in which the overwhelming majority voted for independence. Bosnia and Macedonia, at that time, declared their intention of holding similar referenda. (The Bosnian referendum was not an afterthought on the part of the Muslims, inspired by the EC, as you would imply in your statement.)

Outside interference came first from the USA. James Baker, on the eve of the declarations of independence in June 1991, arrived in Belgrade. Upon realising that he was unable to dissuade the presidents of the four republics concerned from their aspirations towards independence, he encouraged the Serbian generals of the Communist Yugoslav People's army to intervene. The US had probably hoped that a strong Yugoslavia could be the basis of a strong pan-Slavic federation which, with US help, could be an effective block to EC expansion in the Balkans. The defeat in Slovenia, where 2,800 soldiers and officers of the Yugoslav army went over to the side of the Slovenian territorial defence forces, gave Baker its own answer to that one. It was after the fighting had stopped in Slovenia that the EC began to participate in the proceedings. Meanwhile the US had washed its hands of Yugoslavia. Bush is now making noises again about intervention, since the rumours of intervention from other Islamic countries.

Yugoslavia, as we all know, was itself brought into being through outside interference ("political meddling", if you like) after Versailles in 1918 and Yalta in 1945. If I may quote a Croat writer in an article in Planet #89, Oct/Nov 1991, it is "the product not of Croats or Serbs, but rather of the misunderstandings between them."

The ethno-linguistic scene is more complex than your statement would imply. You omit to mention the Hungarian enclave in Vojvodina and the Albanian enclave in Kosovo, for example. There was an attempt to develop a common Serbo-Croat State language with de jure recognition of Croatian, Macedonian and Slovenian standards. The real situation was, however that of Serbian ethno-linguistic hegemony, similar to Russian ethno-linguistic hegemony in the USSR. For example, in schools where Slovenian, Albanian, Macedonian and Hungarian were the medium of instruction, Serbian was compulsory, but in schools where Serbian was the medium of instruction, these languages were not taught, even to Macedonians, Slovenians and Albanians living in Belgrade. The promotion of a separate Croatian standard and national identity was heavily suppressed in 1945, while the creation of a Macedonian standard and national identity was promoted. There was no objective linguistic reason for this. Macedonian is no more different from some dialects of Serbian than is Croatian. (Bulgarians regard it as a dialect of Bulgarian.)

However, as Roger Garaudy once said, "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy" and no doubt the Stalin-Tito army and navy of the time had expansionist aspirations into Greece via Aegean Macedonia, a factor very much alive now in the minds of the Greeks who oppose the recognition of Macedonia by that name. (Not that the Greeks have a leg to stand on with regard to ethno-linguistic democracy. They refuse to acknowledge any minority language rights within their own boundaries except the Turks).

However the promotion of any separate Croatian standard was considered highly subversive in Tito's Yugoslavia (even though Tito was himself a Croat). This linguistic ascendancy was, of course a reflection of the ethnic power- relations. Serbs dominated the army and the central administration. They just cannot accept the new situation and are fighting hard to retain their ascendancy.

It is not true to say that Slovenia is homogeneous either; 19000 Italians live there, in Istria on the coast, a significant proportion of the total population. They don't seem to have objected to Slovenian citizenship. There are also Slovenians minorities in Italy and Austria.

Where are your sources for stating that the Hungarians were arming the Croats? Compared to the Serbs the Croats appear to have no arms worth mentioning. Given that Croatia did not give enough reassurance to the Serbian minority within its boundaries (were they really given enough time to do so before the Serbs turned their guns on them?) does that justify what happened at Osiek and Vukovar and Dubrovnik?

Terrible as the Serbian persecutions were under the Nazi-collaborating Ustashi, to use this as an excuse for Vukovar and Osiek is not on. These WW2 persecutions were carried out under the orders of the pro-fascist head of government. Many Croat people took part in the anti-fascist uprising in which Croats and Serbs fought shoulder to shoulder. Equating Croatian nationalism with fascism and using it as an excuse for persecution, I regard as being the same as equating Breton nationalism with fascism. French centralists of both left and right have done this and still do, simply because some Breton nationalists collaborated during the war.

(This type of ignorance influenced the left in Ireland; one of the items on Micheal O Riordain's "dossier" against Roy, leading to his expulsion from the CP. was that he was on friendly terms with Alan Heusaff! Of course Riordain has never heard Alan's account of the war.)

Tito alone was not responsible for drawing up the Serbia-Croatia boundary. Before Yugoslavia came into existence there were ethnic Serbs, amounting to 30% of the population, living in the Kingdom of Croatia that was part of the Hapsburg Empire. If it is right for Serbs to opt out of a newly independent Croatia, was it not also right, in Northern Ireland for Protestants, or the planter stock, who regard themselves as British, to be allowed opt out of a newly-independent Ireland? We can't have it both ways.

As for Bosnia, a Bosnian sense of national identity had been in gestation for decades, comprised of Serbs, Croats and Muslims. Bosnians were recognised by the Yugoslav regime as a separate nationality in 1967. This fact of a Bosnian nation was referred to in 1987 by Professor Gyorgy Szepe of the Research Institute of Linguistics in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in a paper he gave to a UNESCO-funded symposium (which, as a committee member of IRAAL, I helped organise) on the Less Widely Taught Languages of Europe held in Dublin.

His colleague from Yugoslavia, Olga Tomic, a Macedonian, was present and approved. An ethnic group, such as are the Muslims of Bosnia need not necessarily be defined by language, any more than a nation. It can be a cultural feature such as religion. As with "Catholic atheists" and "Protestant atheists" in Northern Ireland many Bosnian Muslims no longer practise their religion. Those who do are of the liberal variety. Serbian claims of a threat of a fundamentalist Islamic state arising from among them are utterly false. Yet this has been one of the reasons given by Serbs in order to justify "ethnic cleansing".

Whether or not other Islamic countries intervene, by depriving them of the right to citizenship of the independent republic of Bosnia, there is, more immediately, the danger that their fellow Muslims, the Albanians in Kosovo will rally against the Serbs in solidarity. Will Albania then come to the aid of Kosovo?

I do not agree that "Ireland can do nothing about the Yugoslavias of this world, except not interfere in matters that are none of our business." We have our own national problem, our own minorities our own language conflict. The building of a world where these can be resolved peacefully is very much our business.

Where I think your opinions differ with those of Roy and myself is over the definition of what is a nation. Nations have the right to self-determination. Fine. But what is a nation? The UN defines nations on the basis of existing boundaries. They do not have a very clear definition. But then, even if you accept the UN definition, you have to accept Switzerland and Belgium, for example, and are they not multi-ethnic (and multi-lingual) democratic states?

To redraw the boundaries of the nations of Europe on an ethno-linguistic basis alone is impossible. Are you saying the Alsatians should become part of Germany, for example? Are you going to chop off Austria's minorities and have German speakers join a Greater United Germany? What do you do with the poor Sorbs? How about restoring the old Catalan empire? After all Catalan is spoken in the Balearics, in France and a part of Sardinia.

Yes, the first and fundamental definition of nationhood goes back to the French (and of course American) Revolution. The idea of equal rights for each individual citizen. Language doesn't figure in Tone's writings. That came later with Davis, under the influence of Herder and the Germans.

While there are umpteen definitions of what is a nation, basically they fall into two categories.

1. The French - which says that a nation exists through the collective will of its citizens to live together and share a common future.

(The French then began to put limitations on those rights. First they suppressed the Rights of Woman and sent Olympe de Gouges and others to the guillotine. Next, they the only suitable medium of expression for the ideas of the New Universal Man was the Universal language of French, at the time when, even in France, Parisian French was a minority language.

All other languages and cultures had to be violently suppressed as subversive. Not content with that, Napoleon set out to "revolutionise" the rest of Europe and that through the medium of French. No way, said the Germans, we are German. We have our own language. We'll do it our way through German. Others followed suit and so the idea of one nation, one language was born.)

2. The German - (which developed as a reaction to French chauvinism and ideological imperialism) which insists on objective criteria for nationhood, eg. one language, one territory, one culture. Roy's and my definition fall into the first category. Yours appears to fall into the latter and it's tying you up in knots, because, while it may have worked for some nation-states in the 19th century, those with fairly homogeneous linguistic situations, it can no longer work in today's Europe. In or out of the EC, the 19th century nation-state has had its day in Europe. Out of Europe it is even less workable.

We are going to need smaller units, that is why the old imperial federations are breaking up. We are also going to need federations as the new smaller units cannot stand alone. That is why they turn to the EC. Its not adequate for their needs but it's all there is. The more new nations that go banging on its doors the better. It's already not working the way it hoped.

The large units are feeling the strain. I'm more afraid of Britain than Germany. The German army is having trouble finding recruits. German youth is not buying the military scene. Their system of government is more regionalised and democratic than Britain which has... "the long-term historical legitimacy conferred by age". (!)

I feel there is a need to separate citizenship from ethno-cultural identity, (Actually, I hate the term "ethno-cultural" identity. I prefer the Irish word, "duchas", which has no equivalent in English.) There are precedents for this already in Europe. Switzerland is one example. You also have democratic rights for Swedish speakers in Finland, Finnish speakers in Sweden, German speakers in Denmark. They do not feel a conflict of citizenship. Insisting on ethnic nationalism is a recipe for spreading the Yugoslav conflict throughout Europe. The whole thing needs to be thought out carefully with respect for all local grass-roots feeling. I do my best in my own field, in the Celtic League, the national committee of the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, and I hope my own academic research, which has been on the back-boiler for the past few years and which I hope to resume soon, time and finance permitting.

I would welcome a discussion on these things some time. I enjoy discussion and exchange of ideas when or where I can get it on my own terms. However I don't like being talked at, labelled and dismissed and won't do it myself. I find the nationalist/revisionist debate totally sterile, a false dichotomy, and I do not wish to participate. Which is why I shall not be attending the CDG summer school this year.

Best wishes / Janice

From RJ:

Tony Coughlan / 24 Crawford Rd / D9

12/08/92

Dear Tony

Thank you for your rapid response to Janice's notes. This is in danger of escalating. We need an appropriate intellectual forum where these issues can be clarified, among people who have some common philosophical basis, perhaps pre-Leninist Marx via Connolly.

Let me try to home in on the aspects of your position with which I am most uncomfortable.

1. The demonisation of the EC, and Germany, in the context of the Yugoslav debacle: yes we agree that the German and EC recognition hastened the disintegration, but was it malign? Or was it just ill-informed? I don't think it was malign, to the extent of wanting to create all this mayhem. It was self-interested, in that there were client-States up for grabs. What was missing, and what should be made standard under a recognised UN procedure, is a system of guarantees for minority interests; the analogue of the Westminster Bill of Rights which we wanted for Northern Ireland. The absence of this gave the Serbs the pretext to grab their enclaves, and introduce the gun, in Carson mode.

2. The Serbs since have successfully managed to demonise themselves. The core of this process is 'ethnic cleansing', which even in your long letter of Aug 11 you manage to ignore. This is not invented; it is the generalisation of the process initiated with the Belfast pogroms on 1919-20, and is being perpetrated as conscious policy, primarily against the unfortunate Bosnian Muslims. This process is the natural fallout from the 19th century mode of nation-building: a hegemonistic central group establishes a State and pushes out the frontiers as far as it can. The Serbs were such a group in Yugoslavia, and they have resisted, in their decline, the emergence of the fringe-national groups, using their local 'kith and kin' in the fringe nations just as the British used the Irish Protestants.

3. There WAS the makings of a Bosnian nation, with intermarried and locally interacting Muslims, Serbs and Croats; this was no more a long shot than Wolfe Tone's Protestant, Catholics and Dissenters. This process of emergence was wrecked by the Serbs sending in Arkan's snipers, again the analogue of the Larne gun-running. There was NO threat of Muslim fundamentalism; this was a Serb propaganda invention. EC recognition in this case was not malign, either; it should however have been associated with the Bill of Rights process, and some procedure for gaining the agreed support of Serbia for the process, without threats. Talk of 'ethnic cantons' originated with the Serbs, who referred to the alleged need for a 'European Muslim zoo'.

There IS a basis for non-ethnic, economically sensible cantons, based on cities and their hinterlands, with mixed populations, with minority rights guaranteed by a Bill of Rights, confederating into a federal democratic State. How otherwise are the rights of the Jews and the Gypsies to be defended? This is the democratic nation-building model which the UN and the EC should be supporting and promoting.

3. Involvement in EC foreign policy is already with us, and here to stay. What we need are better procedures for contributing to its development, in an informed manner. Had we had this, and had the machinery been in place, perhaps the recognition by Germany and the EC would have been more circumspect; we could have brought to bear our negative experience of the ethnic minority problem, and the partition process, and sounded a warning in time. Yes it is complicity with imperialism, and there is nothing new in that.

The Irish people voted for it. We are again part of an imperial system. Democratic reconstruction of that system is high on the agenda, and we need to participate in this process, seeking allies. There is a new ball-game.

4. No-one is saying the Bosnian Muslims are a nation, least of all themselves. They claim to be Bosnians, and there are Serbs and Croats in Bosnia who also support Bosnian nationhood, whom some call 'traitors'. Just as there are Protestants who support Irish nationhood. Even the Muslim States who are considering intervention recognise this, and as a result are holding back; this is NOT (yet) a Muslim jihad, though in a doomsday scenario it could become one. The Bosnians seem to get most empathy from the Palestinians, who are themselves victims of the 'ethnic cleansing' process.

5. Thus the central problem is, admitting that the problem was made worse by haste in recognition, and inadequate recognition machinery, how NOW do we bring an end to this atrocious process of 'ethnic cleansing' which is being perpetrated by the Serbs against innocent people in large numbers? And ensure that it does not occur again?

6. As regards the Greaves school: I do not think that it will be effective in 'gutting Foster'; the historians will carry on their own controversies on their own ground. Listening to O Murchu is somewhat low on my agenda. The whole reeks of the paranoia of the old Left in terminal decline, paying the price for decades of workerist anti-intellectualism. I think you will have to do some more strategic thinking, and distance yourselves from Irish Catholic nationalism in the form it has taken consequent on Partition, and pick up on the neo-Marxist analysis which is happening via the ecological movement, the green-left convergence, and the re-discovery of Connolly. Critical analysis of State centralism, and the bureaucratic and anti-democratic factors which caused the disintegration of the USSR, is badly needed. Let me know if and when you come around to this, and then maybe I'll take an interest.

Yours sincerely / RJ

RJ to Tony Coughlan

15/8/92

Dear Tony

I have read the Edward Pearse article you sent me for my edification. His last paragraph: 'An enlarged Serbia is a perfectly rational thing, so is a Muslim-free city of Sarajevo, drawn generously. Both should have had Western backing from the start.'

Muslim-free? Is this not direct advocacy, by Guardian writers, of the Serbian 'ethnic cleansing' procedure? The Enid Blyton imperial school?

Cantonisation: where did this concept originate? What did its originators mean by it? It seems to have been taken up as being ethnic-based, with movements of populations. What it should mean is strong local government, based on cities and hinterlands, with PR and safeguards for minority rights of existing populations guaranteed by a confederal government. This should be the model for any new state-building process, with active UN support.

The key to civilised living is the economic life of the city and its hinterland, with the democracy of the neighbourhood community and the workplace. Where we have multi-ethnic situations, there is no gain for anybody in tearing such mixed communities apart. Yet that is what those steeped in imperialist thinking seem to prefer to do. Their motivation is to prevent unified working communities on their fringes from developing.

Where in your 'pure' ethnic 'cantons' are there roles for the Jews, or the Gypsies, or the Hungarians (who exist in pockets all over, as relics of imperial planting)?

In the Welsh republic, would you justify the English clearing the residual Welsh out of Wrexham or Pembroke?

Where the Irish experience is important is in making known our own history, and the disastrous consequences of the armed Tory conspiracy of 1914, with which the Serbian behaviour has many parallels. If Irish experience had been made known forcefully, the EC would perhaps have been more circumspect about recognition, and more exacting in laying down the conditions.

Yours sincerely / RJ

RJ to Tony Coughlan

20/8/92

Dear Tony

Thank you for your letter of Aug 17. Yes it is a good discipline to put ideas on paper, and let's continue to do so.

1. It is perfectly possible to be self-interested without being malign. I refuse to believe that it was the intention of the Germans when recognising Croatia to cause the amount of mayhem that has taken place. I am enough in touch with Germans of the decision-making generation to be able to assess this as ignorance rather than malice. The weak link in the existing situation, regarding development of EC foreign policy, is the lack of experience and analytical ability based on insight, and machinery for integrating the insights available to the various separate Foreign Offices.

2. It is perfectly obvious where the 300,000 Serb refugees came from: the towns in Croatia and Bosnia which are the victims of Serbian artillery. The whole scene has been created consciously step by step by the Serbian neo-Stalinist centralist State, in a political scene based on an alliance of Stalinist centralism with Serbian racialist irredentist nationalism. There would appear to be support for this from a similar alliance in Russia, as a result of which they are being supplied with oil via the Danube. A thoroughly malign conspiracy, which what has been called the 'Stalinist sorehead rump' in the West has been supporting, and echoing Serbian propaganda. You want to watch that you are not being taken for a ride by that gang. They took me for a ride for long enough, while like Gorbachev I continued too long to over-estimate their internal regeneration and reform potential. Their current support for the Serbian position confirms for me that they are beyond redemption.

3. The leadership of the Bosnian Serbs has war criminal status; when the Yugoslav army (ie the Serbian army) withdrew from Bosnia they left their equipment and much of their personnel. The Bosnian Serb gangs recruited by the expedient of threatening Bosnian Serb youth that they would be shot unless they joined; those who objected were shot, and the Muslims were blamed, as part of the plan. The 'Muslim fundamentalist' canard is the analogue of 'Home rule = Rome rule'; the trouble is that if you split people up on that basis, this canard will become true; where else now have the Muslims to turn to? The Serbian youth recruited by force were then blooded by burning out their Muslim neighbours. Do you not give any credence to Maggie O'Kane, who also writes in the Guardian?

4. Serbia itself was the elite in-group with the inside track in running the Yugoslav State. Serbs learned the common language in Cyrillic but not in Latin script. Croats had to learn both, and their own developing dialect/language in Latin script was discriminated against. The central State in rump Yugoslavia controls the flow of information and has successfully kept most of the people in ignorance about what the Bosnian Serb gangs are up to. There is however a peace movement within Serbia; I have insight into it via a dispatch from Joel Sax, a Californian Quaker who has travelled on a fact-finding mission. He when speaking in favour of peace by negotiation at a peace rally was attacked by a Serbian woman, who held that the only possibly course was to take out the artillery which is bombarding the Bosnian towns, using force to do so. She, presumably, comes within your definition of 'Serbian refugee', ie someone unwilling to face their neighbours when their home town is being bombarded by people bearing the same label.

5. Edward Pierce has put himself out of court with me by his advocacy that the Muslims should be cleared out of Sarajevo with EC support. You can't seriously support such a position. I wrote to you about his article, which was quite pernicious.

6. The question of Bosnia vs Yugoslavia and nationhood is highly complex, and deserves serious study. Is Britain a nation? The national identity process should be let develop, and it involves a web of economic and cultural interactions, a communications system, the existence of a intellectual and a business elite, with a local/regional marketplace. This process can be very successful in composite peoples, as indeed was the case in England. It has been less successful in Ireland. There were undoubtedly signs of it happening in Bosnia. It failed to happen in Yugoslavia as a whole. The Serbian centralist elite perceived the existence of the Bosnian process, and took steps to nip it in the bud, by a process analogous to the British 'playing the Orange card'.

There are Serbians on the run all over Europe who want no hand act or part in the current criminal genocide, and hopefully a movement will arise within Serbia which will put a stop to it.

All right, if Bosnia is a region like Ulster, does that justify the Serbs clearing the Muslims out? The Bosnian Serb gangs are engaging in genocide, with the connivance of the Serbian Government, and we as a democratic nation should be doing all we can to put a stop to it. This is NOT a German invention; it is what all the evidence adds up to.

6. Our vote for the EC represented the wishes of the people of the Republic, according to constitutional procedures. While there may be an analogy with the Act of Union, including the bribery element, there are other factors at work which render it acceptable in most peoples minds, and we who opposed it have to reckon with this. The progressive course is to try to democratise the system, and render it less imperialist, to look for analogues of the Chartists to ally with etc. And in this context, if an undemocratic centralist authoritarian State on the EC border is engaged in bombarding cities and burning out people on racialist criteria, we should seek to ally with forces which would press for a political settlement, restoration of people to their homes, provision of funds to help them rebuild, and to see that the criminal racialist gangs are brought to justice.

RJ to Tony Coughlan

15/5/93

Dear Tony

I don't have time to respond to the various elements of Serbian propaganda which you seem to be promoting, in various locations, and under various guises, except to make the following points:

1. There is no reason to put Muslims in quotes, as if to deny their right to cultural existence in Europe. There are Catholics and Protestants all over Europe who accepted their religion because of the political events of centuries ago. They don't normally get quotes.

2. Lloyd George, Clemenceau and the Treaty of Versailles are commonly regarded as being at the root of the rise of Hitler. There were people in the 30s who failed to identify the nature of the Hitler threat. Those who in the end did so included many who had been critical of the Versailles Treaty. No-one, when in the end they got around to trying to contain Hitler, was bleating about it all being the fault of Lloyd George and co (even though it was). No credible democratic opinion can justify the bombardment of civilians, and cultural foci, in all those Croatian and Bosnian towns and cities, in the interest of establishing some 'ethnically pure Greater Serbia'.

A monster has been created, and it is the concept of the 'ethnically pure nation-State', with the right to expand its frontiers to include all territory where any of its 'kin' live. Where have we seen this before? And is this not the image of Ireland which is being (wrongly) picked up by McGimpsey and co?

We will all have to think again, especially about the Irish nation, and whether it ever existed, or still has the potential to exist, as a unification of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter cultures....

Sincerely / RJ

Greaves School Comments September 1993

Flann Campbell / 25 Green Rd / Blackrock

3/09/93

Dear Flann

I have assembled all the stuff I have written which relates to the Greaves School, and which I have submitted either to Tony or to Cathal, and it adds up to some 37 pages, including an essay on language and nationality from Janice.

I have never had any evidence that the slightest attention was paid to it; it is as if I had become a 'non-person' in the Stalin tradition. Yet when I go to the Hewitt school, and submit constructive critical comments, I get a response by return from Edna Longley.

Please take a look at the script, and tell me if I have a case to be considered, that the Greaves school should develop a policy towards the reconstruction of national democracy, along philosophic lines based on Marx and Connolly, but casting aside the false start due to Lenin and Stalin.

The key issues in this context are that national democracy should be based on where you live and not on ethnicity or religion, and that democracy should be in small units close to the people.

There are hints of this in Connolly in his treatment of Ralahine in the Reconquest. Also the same philosophy is coming up via the Greens all over Europe. The Greens are going to have to re-invent the basic Marxist analysis, which is rooted in the need to get democratic control over the capital reinvestment process. Those of the Marxist tradition who can cast aside their previous dependence on remote utopias, and on Stalinist procedures, could do worse than throw in their lot with the Greens, as I have done.

Desmond I am suggesting was a pioneer of this process, before it became recognised. The Greaves School could become the think-tank of the Left-Green Convergence, and could in that context assume European significance. I don't think Tony is receptive to this vision. I would like to try it on you. Of the others listed on the Committee, I would regard Daltun O Ceallaigh and Francis Devine as perhaps amenable to an approach, but I would like your opinion first: am I on to something, or is this a red herring chasing a dead duck?

Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston

The document included all the foregoing material, but Flann at the time was in decline and did not have the energy to pursue the matter further. I never succeeded in getting as good critical analysis of the Greaves School going, such as to have enabled some intellectual interaction to have taken place in the Green / Left / Republican spectrum.

During the rest of the 1990s I stopped trying to influence the course of the Greaves School, which settled in to a routine, with a nod in the direction of the need to activate the academic community in a critical direction, which was only partly successful. The academic interface remained relatively undeveloped. I attended consistently, but did not regard the emergent message as having priority. Subsequent to the 2000 School however there appeared to be a re-think in gestation, and I sent the following letter to Anthony Coughlan, and then after the 2002 School I e-mailed the incoming Director, Kevin McCorry. I give these below:

Anthony Coughlan / 24 Crawford Ave / Drumcondra / Dublin 9 / August 31 2000

Dear Tony

May we (ie Janice and I) give you some feedback on the Greaves Summer School, as requested. Most of this letter is mine, and Janice supports it; Janice has also made some points, which I intersperse, and I support them.

I have an extensive file of feedback material from the early days, into which I put some effort, but I gave up, because it was being totally ignored, so I dropped out. Then after I had dropped out, I noticed that some of my ideas were actually being taken up, namely, that the academic community should be stimulated to dedicate some research attention in the direction of problems that the Greaves School had specified. This does in the end seem to be emerging, though it could be argued that sometimes the choice of academic has been somewhat eccentric. We are not not going into the historical analysis of the record of the School, though it would be useful if someone were to do this. The 2000 one presents enough material.

Organisation

The notices should go out well in advance, and should include procedures for accommodation arrangements: B+Bs with addresses, phones and e-mails. Receiving a notice in August for an event in August is simply ridiculous. The speakers, if the think-tank aspect is to be developed, should be selected not only in good time, but also with some strategic objective in mind, related to the politics of the future, and their interactivity should be part of their motivations to attend; this requires some negotiation, at an astute political level. It should not look like a last-minute scratched-up event, where unconnected speakers come, give papers, and go. In fact, there is a role for the Committee to organise discreet intermediate think-tank events, closed to the public, for disparate elements to explore privately the common-ground potential.

The School itself should be competently run on the technical side, with attention paid to the audio levels and the position of the microphone, and facilities for floor speakers to be heard. The shape of the room and the seating is important: the platform should be on the long side, and the seats in circular rows, with easy access for floor speakers to get to the front. There were respected elders who attended on the Saturday, could not hear a thing, and skipped Sunday in disgust.

Politics

"The campaign which resulted in the McKenna judgement was a good and principled one. We do however find that some difficulties have arisen out of its implementation in the real world. Where a constitutional change has all-party backing in the Dáil, the issue of 'equal funding' and 'equal publicity for both sides of the argument' can, as a result of the McKenna judgement, create an artificially polarised debate, leading to a bland campaign and poor turn-out on polling day. Never was this more in evidence than during the referendum for constitutional change prior to the Good Friday Agreement. The Government was unable to make a whole-hearted appeal for change and had to trump up an argument against. These difficulties need to be addressed. Does every flat-earth society, creationist campaign, voodoo and astrological association have equal right to the air-waves with elected representatives? (JW)"

Neutrality

Left-Republican-Green convergence?

"It was good that the school was able to give him a platform. As Risteard Ó Glaisne pointed out, it's rare that his opinions get an airing in the media. At the same time, it would have been better to have put a Green TD or Joe Higgins on the same platform. To give him a whole session to himself could give the impression that the DG summer-school is a Sinn Féin front. (Well maybe it is and I'm naive, but I hope that's not the case. JW.)"

I can add that I attended a Socialist Workers Party conference which took place in Trinity College and which attracted substantial support and had many interesting speakers. The time has past when such initiatives can simply be 'labelled and dismissed'. There is need for rational analysis of the processes whereby a left-wing movement becomes 'doctrinaire', and interaction with those intellectually in the lead, with a view to finding creative areas of common ground on which a broad-based movement may develop.

Strategic leadership and vision

We have been credibly informed that members of the named Committee had complained that they had never been consulted and that in fact the Committee rarely if ever actually met as such. If this is the case, consideration should be given to reconstituting it, such as to enable an active and discreet cross-party radical think-tank role to be developed, meeting between annual events, perhaps quarterly or monthly. The old Wolfe Tone Society was in its time a relevant model, and perhaps something along those lines could be re-developed, so as to sharpen the focus of the School in 2001.

Developments

Yours sincerely / Roy H W Johnston

Circulation:

I don't recollect the 2001 Greaves School, but I attended some of the 2002 one, having previously sent the following to Kevin McCorry the new Director:

From: Roy Johnston

To: kevin.mccorry@sspship.ie

Subject: greaves school

Date sent: Mon, 12 Aug 2002 14:26:33 +0100

Kevin I see you are now the Director of the Greaves School. May I wish you success in any attempt to regenerate it, and offer what support I am in a position to give.

May I begin with a couple of friendly critical notes, in the hopes that you as Director will be able to take feedback on board. I have attempted to do this in the past, but have never got the slightest acknowledgment, it is as if I am to be regarded by the Greaves acolyte group as a non-person. I seem to have been the victim of a character-assassination process, and I can produce evidence of this.

The feedback note I sent in 2000 is attached as an RTF file, so you might consider it as background flavour. I made considerable efforts in the early days, to no avail. I can resurrect these, if you are interested, as the arguments remain valid.

The key to the success of summer schools is the extent to which they can attract postgraduate students associated with the Irish Studies community abroad. The key to this is the development of a critical fringe to the Irish academic research system. Tony tried, but he got the wrong people. He was taken for a ride by people like Luke Gibbons. The development of a critical network in the academic system is the key to the regeneration of Irish politics. Desmond was coming round to this in his latter days, with the Liverpool School, as is evidenced from his journals. His earlier rejection of the academic system was a product of previous experience, but in the end he recognised that the situation had moved on.

So the content of this years school shows signs that you have given up on this aspect; it is mostly the 'usual suspects'. It suggests last-minute panic planning....

I might try and come for the Ronan Bennett, but this is always a bad weekend for us, for numerous reasons; we have plans to be in Wexford. The arguments about planning and location and timing etc as outlined in the attached file remain valid.

You have quite a problem in turning the school round and upgrading its significance, but it is not insoluble. The 'critical political' school concept needs to be elaborated and sold widely. Let me know if you want any more thoughts on how this might be done.

RoyJ

Kevin replied as follows:

From: "Kevin Mc Corry"

To:

Subject: RE: greaves school

Date sent: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 10:38:57 +0100

Roy / Thanks for your email. Certainly I agree that we need to drastically revamp the school. Among the proposals that I would want to be considered for next year are themed schools (Understanding Ireland Today?, Relevance of social control of the economy as a democratic issue? The future of the EU? etc. etc), a programme of activity throughout the year, linking/cooperating/merging? the school with the Ireland Institute as the only other non-party radical education body around today. We need a proper Green/Republican/Socialist think tank that can create what I think you once described as the intellectual infrastructure for democracy. After we get this school over I'd like to communicate with you further about the future of the school either directly or through this contraption (yes, I'm a complete unreformed Luddite!!!) Best wishes to you and Janice. / Kevin

I took this as a positive response, and replied as follows:

From: Roy Johnston

To: "Kevin Mc Corry"

Subject: RE: greaves school

Date sent: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 19:25:19 +0100

Thanks Kevin for taking my e-mail seriously. Maybe we can get together on the Saturday night, or perhaps in the pub after Friday. I hope to make the Bennett; I'll have to miss Tony, and I might make the O Broin. Janice can make nothing; there are other factors.

Let me respond interstitially to some of your points, so as to suggest an agenda:

Thanks for your email. Certainly I agree that we need to drastically revamp the school. Among the proposals that I would want to be considered for next year are themed schools (Understanding Ireland Today?, Relevance of social control of the economy as a democratic issue? The future of the EU? etc....

The theme needs a focus, should not be too abstract.

...... a programme of activity throughout the year, linking/cooperating/merging? the school with the Ireland Institute as the only other non-party radical education body around today....

Good thinking. They publish a journal which could double as the proceedings of the School, and come out twice a year instead of once. Daltun's publishing programme could perhaps enmesh with it, and the combination develop a higher profile. Also, publish via the Web, innovatively, with web and print versions complementing each other; I am currently developing an approach to this professionally. It is the way academic publishing is going to have to go.

..... We need a proper Green/Republican/Socialist think tank that can create what I think you once described as the intellectual infrastructure for democracy....

Yes! now we are talking. We need to think of a good name, not the name of a person, because we are into new ground historically. Maybe from Greek mythology.

...... After we get this school over I'd like to communicate with you further about the future of the school either directly or through this contraption (yes, I'm a complete unreformed Luddite!!!)....

It is the most important invention since printing, and has been totally abused. I'll show you what I am doing some time if you care to drop in.

I should ask, were you able to access the attachment? These are often problematic. If not, I'll re-edit the content into an updated paper, taking on board the above.

RoyJ Subsequently:

I should add that in the real presence yesterday I suggested the Enlightenment as a possible theme, in the hopes of going into it in greater depth in the bar afterwards, but he failed to turn up, which I take as a directorial lapse. Perhaps if I make MacLiam's tonight (problematic) we can discuss it further.

Discussing it subsequently with my daughter Nessa, it emerged that the perceived attack on the Enlightenment from the academic Right is regarded as 'old hat' and well contained. Earlier, when Tony was on about 'historical revisionism' with the school, I had looked into this among the historians, and picked up that this internal battle was going on in depth among historians, and was 'in hand'; they regarded the Greaves school attempts to support them as a bit of a joke. In fact I gain the impression that Luke Gibbons played a practical joke on Tony, sending a postgraduate student to the Greaves School with a paper saying absolutely nothing but peppered with all the right cliches, a sort of Humanities version of the 'Sokal Affair' which exposed the phoniness of some areas of 'science and culture' studies (are you familiar with this?). I know I sat through her paper unable to take a single note, because it was content-less, but she seemed to get the audience on her side by uttering the accepted cliches with regularity.

So it is important to get at least some existing critical academics into the planning group for the school, and find a toe-hold in the academic network, such as to get the school taken seriously as a place where good critical material is introduced, prior to eventual publication.

As regards the Green-Left convergence aspect, this also is crucial; the Greens are currently the growth-point, and it is necessary to get them to understand in the necessary depth the nature and role of Capital. You need to bring in a creditable Green intellectual to the planning group, and to ensure that the content of the school looks at issues perceived as Green, so as to enable it to be marketed among Green policy-makers, while relating the issues to the Capital question, and indeed the the national question.

Why don't you market-research a range of concepts for the development of the school (a) among its existing supporters and (b) among a wider group spanning the green / left / republican spectrum. This should be quite feasible.

I have gone on long enough. I feel I have to get 14 years of frustration off my chest, and help pave the way for new blood.

RoyJ

Time will tell how this develops. It currently has the status of 'unfinished business'. RJ 2/09/02.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999