Here I continue to give an account of the development of the Green party. I also 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. There is also a developing Quaker aspect, and the discussion with Orange contacts continues.

Reforming the Orange Order?

TECHNE ASSOCIATES / Techno-Economic, Socio-Technical, Socio-Linguistic and Environmental Consultancy / P O Box 1881 / Rathmines / Dublin 6

Cecil Kilpatrick / 8 Artifinney Road / Hillsborough / Co Down BT26 6JP

Jan 31 1998 / Dear Cecil Good to hear that your operation was a success and you are on the road to recovery.

I have pursued Mary Freehill on the question of the Dawson St plaque. I gather that the position is that they have met with Rev Kennaway and are awaiting the exact wording from him. This is also the question of the exact address, in the while it is on record as no 52 Dawson St, it need to be established that this is the same as 52 today, in that numbering can change. She put him on to the public records office in Henrietta St. Last she heard was that he had phoned her wanting to discuss it further, and she was out, but he did not leave a return phone-number.

So it seems the ball is in your court, and needs to be acted on quickly. It looks like you need someone to act for you in Dublin in order to establish and confirm the exact location. Are there not some students in TCD, researching matters historical, who are in tune with the GOLI? There certainly was one on the platform in Buswells along with Henry Reid, the time they made the presentation in Dublin of the GOLI political position. Not so long ago. I forget his name. It should however be possible to mobilise him as 'your man in Dublin' rapidly, to sort this out, and get the thing moving. I would make the offer myself, but it is actually difficult for me to get to central city places during working hours, as I am still working full time with this firm in Glenageary.

You mention the Foresters, of which it seems you were President. Tell me more. I have heard references to Foresters Halls here and there. This presumably is another all-Ireland organisation of historic standing. Is it actual foresters, to do with trees etc, or is is as much to do with trees as the Masons are to do with masonry? Has anyone written its history?

I am not surprised about the poppy, as it has been totally acceptable to wear a poppy for many decades, though few actually do it.

Regarding the Constitution: the lack of one in the UK is actually a real problem. Parliament can do what it likes. The Government of Ireland Act, as the Constitution of NI, was never voted on by people in NI, it was simply enacted by Parliament. The Constitution of the Republic can't be touched by the Dail; it has to be amended by referendum of the people. There is a basic asymmetry in the constitutional situation which is likely to cause problems in any political settlement. One road would be for Westminster to enact a Constitution of NI Act which contained in it the provision that it only becomes law when supported by a referendum. The RUC could then affirm loyalty to this constitution, which would be the people's property. Such a constitution should enable the Government of NI to enter into arrangements with other European States to its advantage, unconstrained. This would be virtually the Independence option, and it should be on the table.

Regarding Mary McAleese: she made her appearance at the Churchtown meeting-house last Sunday, and the place was packed, with a representative gathering of Friends from all Ireland, as it happened to coincide with a Yearly Meeting Committee meeting.

I never before saw such an intensity of witness; one could not get a word in edgewise. Most if not all were touching on the Northern question, and on the Church-State question. One particular one was a discourse on the development of Christianity under Paul to be inclusive of the gentiles, taking it out from being a Jewish sect.

I had the makings of a contribution in my head, which however I was unable to formulate in the time available. It was along the lines of trying to link the origins of Quakerism in the 1640s and 50s with the question of the relationship between Church and State, the latter being questioned in the field by Friends heckling the preachers. I also wanted to bring in the rejection of the sacramental aspect of communion, and the acceptance of the community aspect of the symbolism of the Last Supper, reflected in our eating together before Monthly Meeting. This however would have required some honing to get it into a form suitable for standing up and bearing witness. I did however get the chance to talk to her afterwards, and I did raise some of these points conversationally.

The children in the Sunday School presented her afterwards with their art work, and she chatted them up with evident pleasure. On the whole, a good time was had by all, and I think we acquitted ourselves creditably, on an occasion which had, after all, the status of a 'Royal visit' by a lady whom we sometimes jokingly refer to a Mary II.

As regards the Maze: what indeed is going on? Mobile phones, indeed. The mind boggles. It won't be long until the have their own web-site. I wonder was Mo Mowlam right to be seen to pander to them. The performance of Billy Wright's gang since must also open up a few sores. 'Measured military response' indeed. Since when is random shooting of Catholic taxi-drivers a 'military response'? Some way must be found of uniting the middle ground of ordinary decent people, of all religions, and isolating these psychopaths.

The Plain People of Ireland reacted to the Warrington bombing with marches in the streets, and a Presidential visit to convey condolences. I look forward to the PP of U doing the same or the victims of the current and recent events. There were some demonstrations in the streets yesterday against random sectarian killings. Maybe this is a beginning.

I'd better stop. By the way, Mary Freehill's address is 77 Grove Road Dublin 6; her phone number is 496-4777.

Yours sincerely....

Next in sequence I think was as follows:

....I had postponed replying to yours of March 17, as I did not know quite what to say about the evolving situation in the Stormont talks. However these have, it seems, now produced something like the beginnings of an agreement, supported by all participants, who however now have to try to bring their supporters onside.

Let me touch on the points in your letter, before going into what may end up being called the Easter Agreement, and supersede in importance the Easter Rising.

I look forward to seeing your Life of King William, when published. I wonder will it give any support for, or recognition of, what I may perhaps call the Keller Thesis, that the imposition of a Constitution and Rule of Law on the absolute monarchy was a progressive step in the evolution of European democracy? I hope so.

Regarding the location of the site in Dawson St I think I will have to opt out on this one; perhaps as I said you should try to motivate one or other of the TCD historians to dig into it.

Thank you for clarifying about the Foresters. I see you have been a real forester. This is an important 'renewable resources' profession and will increase in importance as the price of oil goes up. I see our hardwood resources being totally wasted. The French use their roadside trees as sources of raw material for a local furniture industry, and they trim them to keep the trunks straight. The Irish just let theirs grow wild and get covered in ivy. This is an area where we need a cultural revolution. There is more to forestry than Sitka Spruce.

There is certainly need for enquiry what is going on in the Maze. How do prisoners get guns unless prison officers connive? I have a hypothesis that there is a gang somewhere in the British Establishment which wants it to go on, because they are making their careers from it.

Now perhaps I can come around to the Agreement. Janice and I (by the way, we got married on Feb 28, in Churchtown Meeting House, after 'living in sin' for 28 years; I got my divorce from my first wife, who left me in 1970, the previous October, thanks to the divorce referendum having gone through) were in Lisburn for the Yearly Meeting, and we had a radio with us, with which we kept in touch with the news.

The Friends seem to accept that it has the makings of a peacemaking procedure, and are prepared to work positively within it. It is important however that the leaders bring the most of their people with them, into what I think will be recognised as a win-win situation.

The Union intact for as long as people want it, and the framework in place for doing business to the mutual advantage with the Republic. An Assembly which will be something like the 'Reformed Stormont' which the Civil Rights people wanted way back in the 60s, such as to enable normal politics to develop.

Gerry Adams will have the job of persuading most of his people to give it a try, next weekend, and I wish him well in doing so. The few dissidents who seem to be dropping out and working at the fringe to plan mayhem are, it would seem, being 'shopped' by their neighbours, and picked up by the police, most of the time, and this process will increase if the deal can be made to stick.

Trimble it seems has the business community behind him; there undoubtedly is money to be made in increasing the integration of the all-Ireland market. I hope the Orange Order will buy into this process, and give it a blessing. Issues like the prisoners and the victims remain on the agenda, and of course 'decommissioning' which must not be made to look like a 'surrender'. There may be useful South African experience here.

There are begrudgers who have been outside the process, by their own decision, and it is beginning to look as if such people, on both sides, have nowhere to go. The begrudging element on each side is just about comparable, reflecting the balance of the agreement. The ghetto warlords will need to be displaced by local government and community democracy, which hopefully will bring out the issues common to ghetto-dwellers of all religions. This also was an old Civil Rights aspiration.

I hope the Orange Order will see its way to giving it a try, at least staying neutral, and perhaps even giving support to a framework which will enable them to redevelop their all-Ireland structure and aspiration, and enhance their support for democracy and the rule of law within which the Protestant religions can thrive.

I should perhaps add that many of the coming generation of Quakers are dropout Catholics, and they are bringing a new and welcome flavour to Quaker thinking. Roman Catholicism as a 'dominant' ethos is undoubtedly on its way out.

Good luck in your deliberations, which I hope will be guided by wisdom and Christianity. / Yours sincerely....

The foregoing reflects our initial contemporary assessment of the Good Friday Agreement. I shortly after got the chance to review Kilpatrick's William of Orange for Books Ireland, in a 1798 bicentenary context; he came clean about the role of the Pope.

Notes for the Dublin Monthly Meeting Peace Committee on the Dept of Foreign Affairs Human Rights (HR) Seminar March 7 1998

Iveagh House 80 St Stephens Gn, Dublin 2;
phone 478-0822 ext 2560; fax 478-5923;
e-mail fergal.mythen@iveagh.irlgov.ie.

I spoke to him and he has expressed interest in the development of the DFA sector of the Government web-site as an ongoing virtual continuation of Saturday's seminar. More on this in due course; I have send him an e-mail enquiry with a view to eliciting more about this vision.

Note that there were many NGOs concerned with HR in the specifically Irish context, and these presumably are contacts for a similar seminar associated with the Dept of Justice; we should watch this space. HR is not simply a matter for other places and therefore solely a DFA concern.

I attended the workshop sessions on (a) the 'universality' of HR concept and (b) HR and democratisation.

Session [A] Universality:

Karen Kenny chaired the session; she turned out to have had important experience in several UN trouble spots where there has been a learning experience arising from the overlap of HR and peacekeeping. Orla O'Sullivan of Amnesty was rapporteur. Maura Leen of Trocaire, Frank Jennings of Amnesty and Frank (Larue?) of the UN mission in Guatemala spoke.

The first spoke too fast, tried to cover far too much ground, and went on too long; I found her difficult.

The second was standing in for Mary Lawlor; he attempted to explain in context the concept of 'Asian values' and appeared to support the idea that the priorities are national decisions. In practice this is taken to mean that socio-economic needs are more important than civil and political rights, and to assert otherwise is taken as being Western imperialism. World Bank projects often cause abuses. There are abuses against women in the name of culture.

The third I found well-meaning but not substantive.

Feedback issues:

2. Islam: not to be seen in the same light as the policies of Islamic States. Suppression of results of democratic election in Algeria has generated Islamic extremism.

3. Dichotomy between socio-economic and cultural HR issues and civil-political issues: the key to the bridging of this is in the strengthening of local democracy. See note below.

Comments on session [A] on Universality:

(b) emerging from the confusion of the unstructured discussion was fuel for a conviction that the key to bridging the dichotomy mentioned above is the village-level producers co-operative, a democratic association of primary producers, organised to market their produce, and because of its existence, in a position to set up local water and electricity supplies, education, local radio etc generating a first level of local democracy in which civil and political liberty can be exercised. Such steps however are nearly always viewed by central government as subversive, and this opinion was strongly supported by Karen Kenny in subsequent interval discussion; she advocated increased status for the work of Tom Barrington.

(c) Arising from the previous comment: we have a bad record in Ireland on this question, because local government was set up in the 1890s 'top down' and the co-operative movement was quite separate; education was taken over by the Churches decades earlier, and the Danish road to 'Folk High Schools' run by the co-ops was barred.

However there are some co-op hinterlands where something along these lines can be observed, for example Lough Egish in Monaghan. This process however is unable to flower without total reconstruction of local government in Ireland, on the basis of the rural towns and their hinterlands, supported by well-resourced Regions. This the DFA NGO agenda spills over into the political agenda on the home ground. Who are we to be advising about making a bridge over the HR dichotomy via local government without having our own house in order. Also, electricity and piped water are no longer an issue, though perhaps water is, now that there is a need to pay for it.

Session [B] Democratisation:

The Garda input was important, based on Bosnia experience. There were no international norms; they wrote them. People in the aftermath of a peacekeeping situation do not understand their rights. Nor do recruits understand the role of policing. It is basically a training problem, and a problem of development of internationally accepted norms of democratic policing.

The military input, apart from 'operational law', the Hague etc, was in terms of the perceived importance of not leaving behind a vacuum when the military task is done.

Binchy used the experience of using the Irish Constitution as a weapon in the defence of HR; this was a slow learning process, but the experience had been transmitted to Tanzania via a spell in the TCD Law School by a Tanzanian judge, a mutually rewarding experience. The conflict between the 'communitarian' view of HR and the individual view was noted. (Indeed. His own position of the divorce question suggests support for the communitarian view, that minorities should be voted down. He did however seem to suggest that he viewed this as a bad thing, suggesting inconsistency.)

Karen Kenny was the star of the show; she drew all this together, and evinced positive experience of UN operations had military, policy and HR people all working together, the pilot experience being El Salvador, where a war has been successfully translated into a working political and civil process. This experience has been repeated in Cambodia and Guatemala, with more or less success; less so in Rwanda, because the integration of the 3 elements is deficient.

This sets the agenda for Mary Robinson: to integrate effectively HR into all peacekeeping operations, and introduce proper training for HR officers. KK had been in 3 out of 6 UN operations, but had never been trained or de-briefed; in other words, the UN learning process is fortuitous.

Feedback: this included reference to the training of torturers by the US army, in a contribution by a Texas Professor.

Comment: the other element in the process is the socio-economic dimension, as indicated under [A](b) above. The settlement should include training in how to run a village producers marketing co-op, and how to develop this into local government at village level. This makes the bridge between the socio-economic and the civil-political, and must be put on the agenda in a positive light, and not regarded as subversive. We should develop this in our submission.

Post-Publication Add-ons

See for example Standish O'Grady and Socialism, my review of Ed Hagan's To the Leaders of Our Working People, UCD Press 2002, pb ISBN 1 900621 41 X, stg£12.65, €17. I give here the first paragraph:

Ed Hagan, who is Professor of English at Western Connecticut State University, and a stalwart of the Irish Studies community in the US, has done us a service by resurrecting a series of articles written by Standish O'Grady during 1912-13 in Jim Larkin's Irish Worker. He has rescued O'Grady from the image imposed on him by Yeats and others, that of a romantic quasi-feudal visionary, and placed him firmly in the progressive anarchist tradition of Kropotkin, and also that of Owenite Utopian socialism, as exemplified in the Ralahine commune described by Connolly in Labour in Irish History...

We also have Ireland and Post-Colonial Theory, edited by Clare Carroll and Patricia King, published in 2003 by Cork University Press, which is a collection of essays on the theme, with an afterword by Edward Said, the Palestinian guru of the domain who is based in Columbia University, NY. It is ground-breaking, in that it provides a serious academic source for comparative study of the Irish colonial to post-colonial transition in the global context, as an alternative to the European. In the latter context some historians have tended to overlook the colonial aspect of the Irish experience.

See also my The Trouble with Origins, a review of Northern Ireland: the Origin of the Troubles, by Thomas Hennessy, Gill Macmillan, ISBN 0-7171-3382-6, £24.99/€29.99, which was commissioned by Books Ireland at the end of 2005 and I submitted the following text in January 2006, conscious that it might need to be edited down. I am leaving it in full here. If it subsequently appears with cuts, these I will bracket. I again give the first paragraph:

This is an important book, and it does break some new ground. For the present writer (whose name occurs in the index) it helps to refine further the definition of the problem of what constitutes a nation, how a nation defines itself. The author Thomas Hennessy takes as given the ethnic-nationalist model which is embedded in the British imperial culture, and is dismissive of the civic/economic model which tried to emerge in the 1790s under Enlightenment influence, within which a Marxist class-based model might credibly have evolved....

I give also The Need for a Balanced Reappraisal of the USSR: A Review Essay by Erwin Marquit, editor of the US periodical Nature, Society, Thought; this is a critical review of Socialism Betrayed: Behind the Collapse of the Soviet Union by Roger Keeran and Thomas Kenny; New York: International Publishers, 2004. 236 pages, cloth $25.00, paper $14.00. This is an example of constructive critical Marxist thinking, of which much more is needed. RJ July 7 2006.

I have set up a cumulative record of post-2001 political review publications, which includes material additional to the above, in reverse chronological order. I have included the foregoing reviews in this sequence. See also the political sector of the current Techne web-site.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999