I had originally labelled this theme 'Barrington' but it subsequently emerged, in organising the material, that JJ had many published works which were popularising economic concepts, or controversing on economic issues, which were not directly associated with his role as Barrington Lecturer. It seems to make sense to widen the scope of the Barrington label to include these. I hope the Barrington Trustees will forgive me for doing this. I think I can claim that his popularising and controversing published works were continuing the Barrington tradition after the role of the 'lecture' as medium had become increasingly marginalised, in competition with radio and television.

It then subsequently occurred to me that my own Irish Times 'Science and Technology' weekly column was in the same tradition, so I re-labelled the theme 'Intellectual Outreach' and integrated my father's role and my own, as successive popularisers of knowledge.

JJ Background: the Barrington Trust - the SSISI Link

From the very beginning there was a strong link between the SSISI(1) and the Barrington Lecturers, the former advising the Trustees of the Barrington bequest regarding the choice of lecturer and topics of lectures.

There is given a complete series of Barrington Lecturers from 1852 to 1946 in Black's Centenary Volume. Prior to World War 1 there is a sequence of names, none of whom is known to the writer, but then I can't claim to be a historian of economics in colonial Ireland. No doubt they did their best to imbue the towns and villages of Ireland with the principles of the Liberal Enlightenment, and we can conjecture that they interfaced with the work of the co-operative movement in the 1890s and subsequently. The most notable of the Barrington Lecturers pre-war was C H Oldham, who was a prolific contributor of papers to the Society between 1895 and 1925.

There was a hiatus between 1913 and 1919, and then from 1920 to 1931, Joe Johnston was the only lecturer on record, 'intermittently'. He was active again from 1932 to 1935, and then again in 1946. His colleagues in his later period of activity were John Busteed 1932, 1935, 1946, J Lamberger 1932-36, F T Lloyd Dodd 1937-43, 1945, Liam O Buachalla 1937-40, 1942, 1944, James Meenan 1938-40, Denis O'Donovan and Michael Murphy 1941, B F Shields 1941-44, J J Horgan 1944-45, Henry Kennedy 1943-45, M J Gorman 1946 and R D Collison Black 1946.

It would appear that JJ was instrumental in the revival of the series after the First World War, and that other lecturers came in after about a decade. According to Black during JJ's period the Council of the SSISI lost touch with what was going on in the Lectures, and only took control again in 1931. During the earlier part of this period the Society met in Plunkett House.

To get at the content of the Barrington lectures during the period would require a scan of the local papers, and it is only possible to do this where we can unearth dates and locations.

Minutes of the Barrington Trust

The 1896 Minute records a meeting in 35 Molesworth St with Richard M Barrington in the chair, with William Lawson and Jonathan Pim present. Minutes of three previous meetings, 17/01/93, 4/12/94 and 22/01/95 were approved and signed. It was agreed to appoint CH Oldham lecturer for 1896. These minutes were signed on 5/2/04 by RM Barrington.

This 1904 meeting was well attended: RMB in the chair, with present Manliff Barrington, JM(?) Shaw, Joseph T Pim, WF Bailey(?), TG Foley, CH Oldham, W Lawson, Sir William Findlater, Jonathan Pim, Arthur Samuels and WJ Johnston. This was an indication that the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society was taking an interest. The posts of lecturer were advertised in the Dublin, Belfast and Cork papers, and also in the Times, Athaneum and Scotsman. Four names were selected from the applicants. The minutes are scarcely legible, but it seems that they left it to the SSISI to make the choice. These minutes are unsigned.

The next minutes relate to 1909; on 15 Nov they advertised in the Times, Athaneum, Scotsman, Spectator, Irish Times, Freeman's Journal, Cork Examiner, Northern Whig, Belfast Newsletter. They also sent copies to TCD, Oxford, Cambridge, NUI, QUB, and to Profs Bastable, Marshall and Edgeworth in TCD, Cambridge and Oxford respectively.

As a result of this, 16 applications were received and these were considered on 23/12/09, at a meeting attended by AW Samuels KC, William Lawson, Ninian Falkiner, RM Barrington and Manliff Barrington. Four applicants were invited to address a meeting of the SSISI on 14/01/10 in the Leinster Lecture Hall, 35 Molesworth St, the President Justice Cherry in the chair. The lecturers and topics were:

JH Jones (Cardiff) 'Dumping and the tinplate industry';
Edward Kelly (RUI) 'Free Trade and Nationality';
HL Murphy (TCD) 'The "Infant Industry" case for Commercial Restriction';
WR Macauley ORR (RUI) 'The Individual and the State'.

On Jan 15 the Council met and recommended HL Murphy for 1910. There is a pencil note to the effect that he continued for 1911 and 1912.

During this period Arthur Griffith was, on the whole, a hostile critic of the Barrington Lecturers, who were promoting a Free Trade ethos, and were critical of the type of economic nationalism advocated by Griffith.

(JJ could have attended this meeting; he was in the final year of his Classics Moderatorship in TCD, and planning to go on to Oxford. The choice reflected the concerns of the Irish liberal elite regarding the coming Home Rule situation.)

There is then a note dated 1915 to the effect that the Trustees were now Manliff Barrington, Amy Barrington and Cecil Vivian Barrington. The lectures were in abeyance due to the war.

On Feb 20 1920 Amy and Manliff Barrington met the Council of the SSISI at 93 St Stephens Green, under the chairmanship of Sir William Thompson. Also present were Mr Wood, Mr Sparkhall Brown, Ninian Falkiner, CH Oldham and others. There were five candidates: Joseph Johnston FTCD, John J Walsh UCD, John J Clarke (Liverpool), JG Smith (Birmingham) and R Richards (Bangor). 'The qualifications of the candidates were carefully discussed, and on the Council's unanimous recommendation, the Trustees appointed Mr Joseph Johnston to be Barrington Lecturer for this year.' Manliff Barrington wrote to JJ accordingly. The SSISI however in its meeting on January 29 1920 decided against taking on again the administration of the Barrington Trust(2).

1921-22: 'Mr Johnston delivered lectures in these years, but owing to the disturbed state of the country in the latter part of 1922 and in 1923 (there were problems) in having regular courses, and in 1923 they were discontinued.'

1924: 'In this year Mr Johnston instituted classes in his rooms in Trinity College for working men. They were well attended and in July at a meeting which I attended papers were read by three members of his class, and a discussion followed. Mt Thomas Johnson, the Leader of the Labour Party in the Dail, was in the chair.... The classes were continued in the autumn...'

The minutes, which appear to have been kept simply as notes rather than as signed records of meetings, presumably by Manliff Barrington, then go on to record the continuation of JJ as Barrington Lecturer for 1926 to 1928 (in pen) and then from 1929(3) to 1933 in pencil, with the indication that in 1932 and 1933 he was joined by J Lemberger MA of QUB. A couple of blank pages were left, in the hopes of infill, and then the record takes up again for the 1937-37 session, under the influence of the revival of interest on the part of the SSISI, as engineered by JJ.

Minutes of the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society (SSISI)

In the SSISI records exceptionally there is some detail available for the 1932 programme. Lemberger lectured on June 18 at the Belfast School of Technology and on June 19 at Newcastle Co Down. JJ lectured at Carrickmacross on March 30, Ballybay March 31 and Bray on May 25, on 'Ireland and the World Crisis'. Then on Sept 29 at Navan and Sept 30 at Wexford on 'the Place of the Cattle Trade in the Economy'(4). Busteed is said to have lectured at Newmarket, Ballyclough, Skibbereen, Cork, Clonmel, Thurles, Tralee, Limerick; no dates were given.

Mary Daly in her 1997 book records a lecture by JJ in Termonfeckin (near Drogheda) in December 1935, in which he attacked the 'self-sufficiency' concept, and got into trouble with the Barrington Trustees, to the extent that his lectureship was not renewed. The content of this lecture related to his then topical book 'The Nemesis of Economic Nationalism', which had evolved out of an earlier pamphlet of the same title, based on Barrington lectures delivered in 1933.

Subsequent to this the SSISI records confine themselves to the appointments, and there is no record of places or dates. There is reference to 'reports to the Trustees', which presumably contain this information, but this has alas been lost. There are in the Barrington archives two large volumes of cuttings for 1895, 1896 and 1904, which indicate what perhaps still exists somewhere, and the present writer would dearly like to find where they might be. Collison Black in QUB who wrote the 1947 centenary history has no knowledge of them, nor has Mary Daly in UCD, who wrote the 150th anniversary record of the SSISI as published in 1997. They may yet turn up in the recesses of the Barrington family, or in some university archive. I leave to others to pursue this trail.

When the record resumes in 1936/7 we have J Lemberger QUB for Ulster (no topics given), JF Meenan UCD for E and SE Saorstat (population, emigration, banking), and Liam O Buachalla UCG for W and SW Saorstat (Connemara economic problems, money, banking, industry, capital, labour, co-operation) Attendance at these lectures was in 100s.

In 1937-8 Lemberger (due it seems to pressure from JJ; see the SSISI thread) was replaced by FT Lloyd-Dodd (Principal of Belfast College of Technology) for Ulster (consumer co-operation, earnings and hours of labour, old and new industries, social and economic organisation in Germany, economic consequences of changes in population); Meenan remains but no topics are given; also O Buachalla remains and dedicates the majority of his lectures to various aspects of co-operation, with an incursion into the Irish industrial tradition; average attendance 216, in places like Rosmuc, Kilronan, Cloone (Leitrim) as well as Galway.

In 1938/9 the same team continued; only Lloyd-Dodd is on record as regards topic: shorter working week, hire-purchase, economic nationalism and self-sufficiency(5), raw materials and colonies.

1939/40: the team continued, with the war, social credit and agriculture as the main themes.

1940/41: four lecturers now, one for each province, though Ulster appears to mean Northern Ireland; Donegal is never mentioned, and Cavan is treated as Leinster. Lloyd Dodd continues, primarily on the war; for Leinster we have Denis O'Donovan, on the social and economic organisation of Germany, and a critical look at the social credit movement. (We can here perhaps detect the James Meenan influence; this UCD economist went on to write approvingly of Italian corporate state fascism, in a book published in 1944 by Cork UP; the author introduces it as a regretful post-mortem.) Michael Murphy of UCC took care of Munster mostly from the dairying angle, and BF Shields of UCD covered the West (vocational guidance, family allowances, the minimum wage, man and work...).

From 1941 onwards the record-keeping in the Barrington archive is meticulous; dates and locations are given. I am not here going to give details; it is for someone who works on the history of the Barrington Lectures to do this; I am primarily here concerned with the input from JJ. There is concern with agriculture, industry, the Beveridge Plan in Britain and its implications for Ireland, social security, the current issues of the day. It is recorded where the reports appeared in the local press. There is a thesis here for someone.

Then in 1945/6 JJ appears again as a Barrington Lecturer(6), this time in his capacity as a Senator, along with Prof John Busteed of UCC for Munster, Prof Collison Black of QUB for Ulster and MJ Gorman of Albert College for Connaught. The Black lectures were widely reported (dates given).

This detailed reporting continues for some years. In 1949/50 the Ulster Barrington Lecturer was N Cuthbert, who concentrated on the employment question. He subsequently was co-author of the Isles and Cuthbert Report, which was the first genuinely critical analysis of the NI economic scene. The role of JJ on the SSISI Council was consistently to ensure that the Society had all-Ireland vision, and that the NI scene was examined critically. He achieved this through influencing the Barrington Ulster appointments. Cuthbert continued for Ulster until 1951/52. In 52/53 he was replaced by AA Bath.

The detailed record, with locations, dates and names of local papers, continues until 1959/60. The names include many subsequently famous: Garrett Fitzgerald, Norman Gibson, Labhras O Nuallain, Micheal MacCormac and others.

Then in 1960/61 there is simply a record of the names of the lecturers: Labras O Nuallain, T Raftery, JW Garmany and MJ Fitzgerald. The lectures were then suspended for a year.

I recollect that at a meeting organised by the Irish Association for Derry, in order to celebrate the new University of Ulster, then expected for Derry given the Magee College focus, John Garmany was present, in the company of John Hume. This was in 1965, and was the trigger for the Civil Rights movement, once the University went to Coleraine(7). The series continued in outreach mode during the 60s, but with declining audiences, due to the influence of television. Then in the 70s they drew back into the university campuses, and in the 80s to the Regional College campuses. Then in the 1985 the Trust decided to institute a prize for a good popularising lecture to be given in the SSISI, and that is how and where the Trust currently operates, hopefully with a benign influence on the economic gurus, to encourage them to make their output comprehensible to a lay public.

The only contact in the latter years between JJ and the Barrington Trust was via Dr EH Attwood of the Agricultural Institute, who had been a Barrington Lecturer in the 60s. Dr Attwood's PhD was supervised by JJ. This would have been JJ's last remaining contact with the SSISI scene, from which he had bowed out after his period as President, in the early 50s. In 1964 Roy Geary and TK Whittaker were responsible for rejecting his paper on 'Consumer Demand as the Basis of Credit', on the grounds that it was basically a philosophical tract, and not relevant to the SSISI. The econometricians were in charge, and JJ was a back number.

Post-Barrington Popularising Publications by JJ

• JJ published a 30-page pamphlet(8) in 1957, critical of the then disastrous Irish economic situation, with the support of the Irish Association, and with a foreword by Sir Graham Larmour (Ulster Weaving Co) who had in 1954 succeeded JJ as President of the Association. The production of the pamphlet was supported with advertisements from Ford, Hughes Bros, Ulster Weaving, Gentex, Batchelors, Golden Vale, the Educational Building Society, the National City Bank, Pye, Wolsey, the ESB, Mattersons, Roadstone, Duthie Large and Hibernian Insurance, reflecting the channels of influence available to the then Council of the Association.

  The earlier articles in the pamphlet had formed the subject matter of an address to the Irish Association in November 1955; the last was written after a discussion sponsored by the Association in Belfast on 12th November 1956, when Professor CF Carter MA, the Queen's University of Belfast, stated the implications for Northern Ireland, and Professor Johnston those for the Republic, of the European Common Market and Free Trade Zone proposals.

• in 1962 JJ outlined the arguments about the European Economic Community (the 'Common Market')(9), with reference back to agriculture in the unregulated world of the 1920s, in which context he had served in 1926 on a Prices Tribunal, making a close study of the relationship between the prices received by the farmers and the prices paid by the consumers, as they varied over time.

  The theoretical background at the time had been established by the American authors Foster and Catchings, and JJ had been able to crystallise his conclusions into a criticism of that book. The problem was that '...agricultural production is not integrated into the normal machinery of credit to the same extent as commerce and industry.... if the bargaining power of agriculture, suitably organised everywhere for production, processing and marketing, could be put on terms of economic equality with non-agricultural commercial and industrial concerns, one of the hidden causes of periodic depression would be alleviated if not abolished..'. In other words JJ was re-iterating his classic 1920s Barrington Lectures position in support of the objectives of Plunkett House.

  In chapter 7, which is given in full in the hypertext, JJ regaled the reader with some of his experience with horticulture as a supplementary small-farm activity. It is 'anecdotal', in the manner disparaged by the economic Establishment, but I prefer to describe it as an account of some pilot-projects which would have been generalisable, provided the marketing were taken care of by suitable organisation.

• In 1966 JJ published a short booklet(10) of essays and collected newspaper articles which was his last attempt to address the lay public with economic arguments. I give the following extract from JJ's preface:

  "Irish history is full of ironies, paradoxes and anomalies. With the establishment of a national government in 26 counties of our island in 1922 one would have thought that the future of the Gaeltacht was assured, and with it the possibility of restoring the language as a second vernacular in an increasing proportion of our total area. Actually, if statistics mean anything (and they sometimes do) the survival value of Gaelic as a spoken language was greater under alien rule than it has been under a succession of native governments. An attempt is made in the following pages to explain the forces which have operated to undermine the economic position of the small farmer in Ireland. The problem of preserving the Gaeltacht is part and parcel of the general problem of assuring the future of the small farmer. If one aspect of it is primarily concerned with preserving an essential element in our cultural heritage, another is concerned with maintaining (or restoring) a sound human foundation for our national economy as a whole."

Intellectual Outreach Publications by RJ

Outreach work during the 1950s and 60s is perhaps best approached in the 'science and society' context(13). During the 1970s the Irish Times Science and Technology column(14) was the principal outlet; in its time it as innovative in the Irish context and I think it was influential; it ran for seven years from January 1970 to December 1976.

During the 1980s I published some contributions to the analysis of the problem of public transport in the Dublin area, and also some critical comments on the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Economic Community. I also organised a JD Bernal Memorial Seminar, and published some notes on 'Systems Modelling in Management Science in an Operations Research niche newsletter. I began to address the 'Science in Irish Culture' issue substantively with a paper in the Crane Bag, a journal edited by Richard Kearney(15).

I put considerable effort in the 1990s put into attempting to get an organised academic historical centre for the study of the 'science and society in Ireland' question. I also developed my earlier critical analysis of European agricultural policy, culminating in my 2001 'Sustainability' paper, and contributed to the development of Green party science policy(16).

Notes and References

2. This is on record in the SSISI Minutes, and Mary Daly mentions it in her 150th anniversary book A Spirit of Earnest Inquiry (SSISI 1997).

3. Much of the material of these early Barrington Lectures by JJ is embodied in his book 'A Groundwork of Economics', published in 1926 by the Educational Company of Ireland. If any local press reports turn up I will record them in the 1920s Barrington module of the hypertext.

4. I have managed to track down the local press reports of these lectures and these are available in the hypertext.

5. We have an echo here of JJ's 'Nemesis of Economic Nationalism'); Lloyd-Dodd seems to have been a JJ follower on this issue.

6. The JJ lectures took place in Bagenalstown on Dec 12 1945, Kilkenny Dec 13 and Nenagh Dec 14; the topic was 'Our Agricultural Prospects'. Also in Athlone March 21 1946, Tuam Oct 21 1946 and Ballina Oct 22, the topic being 'Public Enterprise and Economic Development'. They were reported in the Nenagh Guardian, the Western people, Irish Times, and the Tuam Herald. Kilkenny local press thought it 'too dry' and declined to report. The material used in these lectures JJ subsequently worked up into his published book 'Irish Agriculture in Transition'. The Tuam lecture was an occasion of contact between JJ and RM Burke, whose estate had become a co-operative farm; see the 1940s module of this Barrington thread.

7. This cross-checks with the IA records. So the Barrington Lectures in their Ulster extension must have had some influence in the preservation of a residual, and the development of a new, all-Ireland consciousness, laying the basis for a new political approach to an all-Ireland vision, initially via the Civil Rights movement. This vision is currently embodied in the Good Friday Agreement.

8. The Sickness of the Irish Economy (Irish Association, 1957); the production of the pamphlet was supported with advertisements from Ford, Hughes Bros, Ulster Weaving, Gentex, Batchelors, Golden Vale, the Educational Building Society, the National City Bank, Pye, Wolsey, the ESB, Mattersons, Roadstone, Duthie Large and Hibernian Insurance, reflecting the channels of influence available to the then Council of the Association.

9. Why Ireland Needs the Common Market (Mercier Press, 1962).

10. Irish Economic Headaches: A Diagnosis (Aisti Eireannacha, 1966): the publisher Rayner O'Connor Lysaght accepted it as #2 in a series of which the first was a polemic by Martin O Cadhain 'Mr Hill: Mr Tara' concerned with the politics of the language movement.

11. This included his last Berkeley paper Monetary Manipulation: Berkeleyan and Otherwise; Hermathena CX p32, 1970, and his Bishop Berkeley's Querist in Historical Perspective (Dun Dealgan Press, 1972), as well as his unpublished Consumer Demand as the Basis of Credit, all of which are accessible from the 1960s academic module of the hypertext.

12. This was broadly based on the Hessen paper of 1932 on the Social and Economic Roots of Newton's Principia, which had influenced JD Bernal to write his 1939 Social Function of Science. I seem to recollect that much of it was devoted to the problem of finding position at sea, and its influence on trying to understand the movements of the moon and the planets, in the context of the longitude problem.

13. The 1950s period was one of absorbing the culture of science, and the working relationship between scientist and technician; there was little opportunity for outreach. There were more opportunities in the 1960s to popularise 'science and society' issues, especially during the 'Council for Science and Technology in Ireland' episode, and in the Operations Research context.

14. I introduce this via the 1970s outreach module in the hypertext.

15. The first set of topics are covered in the 1980s outreach module of the hypertext, and the second set in the 1980s science and society module of the hypertext. The Crane Bag paper, on the 19th century British Association meetings in Ireland, appeared in Volume 7, #2, 1983, the 'Forum Issue'. It provided a series of snapshots of the state of science in Ireland over the century.

16. These topics are covered in the 1990s outreach and in the 1990s science and society modules of the hypertext. The paper Biotechnology and Sustainability was published by Teagasc in Farm and Food, Spring 2001 issue, along with some reports on the 1996 Amsterdam conference of INES (International Network of Engineers and Scientists) on this topic.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 2002