My father is on record as being involved in economic research connected with the work of the Boundary Commission(1), in the Agriculture Commission 1922-24(2), and in a Prices Tribunal(3) in 1926 (sometimes labelled 'Profiteering Tribunal').

JJ made an unsuccessful attempt to get elected to the Seanad in 1926; I have some papers connected with that, and I put them on record here.

He produced a canvassing postcard with his picture, appealing '..for the support of all voters who desire the reconstruction of the Nation's economic life on sound economic principles.' He gave as his qualification his status as a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, and Lecturer in the School of Commerce; also Barrington Lecturer in Economics, and Member of the 1922 Agricultural Commission.

This photo of Joe Johnston appeared on his 1926 election publicity material.

The postcard continues, on the obverse side: 'In an effort to avert the serious consequences arising out of the Ulster situation, he published "Civil War in Ulster" in 1913. In "Groundwork of Economics", recently published by the Educational Company of Ireland, Talbot St, Dublin (Price 2/6), he has sought to make the elements of this important science interesting and intelligible to all Irish men and women.'

JJ kept some records of the 1926 Seanad election in a scrap-book. There are cuttings referencing JJ's contributions to transport economics, making the case for common interest between railway shareholders and ratepayers (the argument is based on the cost to ratepayers of damage to the roads caused by long-distance heavy loads which should go by rail, and which ratepayers were in effect subsidising).

There is a copy of a newspaper advertisement, which JJ had put in: 'ELECTORS REMEMBER Economic experts will play an important part in moulding the economic policy of the State. Thoughtful electors will ensure that the Senate contains at least one TRAINED ECONOMIST by voting 1 JOHNSTON'.

There is a cutting which gives the complete panel to go before the electorate for the Seanad. This was made up of 19 outgoing Senators, 19 chosen by the Seanad, and 38 chosen by the Dail. JJ's name appeared among the latter 38; his name was followed by (G.) which suggests that he had got a Cumann na Gael nomination. There were a few (F.)s listed: John Ryan, James Dillon etc which suggests that the F stands for Farmers. Other Gs were Henry Harrison, TP McKenna, Marquis McSweeney; the G's were dominant. JJ had, it seems, joined with Cumann na Gael to get on the panel, which would be voted on as one ballot nationally.

There is further cutting which gives an integrated list of all Seanad candidates, with a few words about each. JJ is given as Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, with an address 9 Trinity College, (DN*) the latter meaning a Dail nominee, with the * implying he was a Government candidate. Other candidates with whom his results may perhaps be compared were Douglas Hyde, Darrell Figgis, Sir Arthur Chance, Patrick McCartan, Marquis McSwiney, Liam O Briain, these being people of some intellectual attainment, associated broadly one way or another with the national movement, and credible 'specialist expert' types of Seanad candidate. Of these the only other DN* was McSwiney.

(It is perhaps significant that Marquis McSwiney had previously interacted with JJ in the Albert Kahn Foundation context. JJ probably was in a position to use his record, as a promoter of the Sinn Fein and subsequently the Free State interest in France via Garnier, as a lever to get the Government nomination.)

There is a cutting giving some details of how the Dail panel was selected; it was quite complex, and JJ got on the panel on the 41st count. Topping the poll was one Denis Houston, a Labour candidate, and JJ it seems benefited by his transfers.

There are cuttings referencing Oliver St John Gogarty, and a derogatory one from a Dungannon local paper(4)

Then finally we get the Seanad election results, analysed by constituency. JJ got a total of 1196 votes, and this compared with 1710 for Douglas Hyde, 601 for Dr McCartan, 1066 for Liam O Briain, 788 for the Marquis McSwiney, 509 for Darrell Figgis and 3722 for Sir Arthur Chance. The large numbers, leading to seats, went to people with high local profiles in certain constituencies, rather than than to people with 'specialist niche' profiles such as the ones listed, none of whom got in. Thus the Seanad electoral procedure showed itself to be flawed, its aspirant role as 'panel of experts' being frustrated by the electoral procedure.

It is interesting to identify the constituencies where JJ picked up votes. Most were of course in Dublin, but after Dublin came in order of size of vote, Laois-Offaly, Donegal, Sligo, Wexford, Carlow-Kilkenny and Cavan. This would suggest that he had gone consciously for, or at least picked up, the Protestant vote. He had subscribed to a press-cutting agency and this had picked up items in the Church of Ireland Gazette advocating that readers should vote for JJ; there had also been a review of 'Groundwork in Economics' in that same paper, linking its publication to his candidature in the Seanad election.

JJ finally, after the Seanad was reconstituted in 1937, got to represent Trinity College on 3 separate occasions, from April 1938 to July 1943, when he lost in Dev's mid-war election to TC Kingsmill-Moore. He got in again however in April 1944 and served up to June 1947. Then he served again from March 1948 until July 1949.

JJ's 1938 appeal to the TCD graduates who constituted the electoral college was as follows:

"All thoughtful persons must admit that Applied Economics should be an instrument of political as well as academic education. Since I am University Lecturer in Applied Economics I appeal with confidence to the Electors of Dublin University as a Candidate for Election to the Senate of Eire.

"If you elect me the Senate will contain a University representative who is professionally competent to examine all public questions in a scientific spirit with special reference to their economic aspects and implications.

"The Senate is being constituted on principles of vocational representation in order that it should contain persons qualified to examine public questions in precisely this spirit. In my present capacity I endeavour to further the welfare of the University and of its Members, with which is intimately bound up the welfare of the country, North and South ; if elected I shall be able to do so more effectively.

"As an Ulsterman who is also a citizen of Eire I regret the barrier that separates North from South. I regret also the unwisdom of adding incompatibility of economic structure to political and fiscal separation thus creating on our side of the Border. vested interests in the maintenance of Partition. It would be more statesmanlike so to order our affairs that our Northern fellow-countrymen might come to regard the idea of reunion with diminishing reluctance.

"An honorable settlement of the 'economic war' and a restoration of' normal commercial relations with Great Britain and Northern Ireland are absolutely necessary if we would arrest the decay of our agriculture which must remain the foundation of our national economy."

He listed the following of his published works as being relevant to political image he wished to project:

Groundwork of Economics (The Talbot Press, Dublin), The Nemesis of Economic Nationalism (PS King & Son, Ltd, and The Talbot Press, Dublin), Articles in The Economist, The Economic Journal, The Nineteenth Century, and in the current (February, 1938) number of The Fortnightly.

He had got the support of a broad-ranging election committee which included Professors Broderick and McConnell (Mathematics), Stanford (classics), Walton and Werner (science), Duncan (economics), Curtis (history), Furlong (philosophy), Rudmose-Brown and Lidell (modern languages), Purser (engineering), Torrens (medicine), the Bishop and the Dean of Clogher (Enniskillen), Dean of St Patrick's, and numerous others spanning the spectrum of leading active Irish-residing Protestant Trinity graduates.

He had a panel of honorary secretaries, who handled contact with graduates on the register, all over Ireland, mostly consisting of Church of Ireland clergy, teachers and academics outside Dublin (for example WH Porter in UCC, Rev AA Hanbridge in Dundalk Grammar School), with a core-group in Dublin consisting of WA Beers, RBD French and JM Henry; he has also LJD Richardson in Cardiff University whose role would have been to take care of the emigrants in Britain.

His first contribution(5) to the Senate debates was on the topic of the trade agreement which ended the Economic War; the motion was introduced by de Valera. In the lead-up to the War he used the Seanad consistently to outline his approach to how the coming emergency should be handled, emphasising the role of Ireland as a source of food supply for Britain, while consistently supporting neutrality.

During the War in the Seanad he consistently defended the interests of Irish agriculture(6), to the extent that he neglected the interests of his constituents, the TCD graduates, so that that he lost his seat in 1943. His 1943 electoral address attempted to put his work in context, and I give it here in full.

When de Valera called his mid-war election in 1943 my father was living in 'the Glen', a house near Drogheda which he had bought at the start of the war; there was a 20-acre farm attached, which he farmed, employing a man and keeping the books, as he had done over a decade earlier. This decoupled him somewhat from College politics, and he was not in such a good position to canvass and organise his support-group as he had been in 1938, though he had managed to add about 20 people to it. As a result he lost the seat, to TC Kingsmill Moore. His election address is available, and I reproduce it in full, as it summarises his then political position.

"In seeking.re-election it is proper that I should give some account of my activities in the legislature during the five years in which I have had the honour to be one of your representatives. "In the course of the year 1938 I was invited, along with one other Senator of no party affiliations, to occupy a seat on one of the two Front Benches. I made it quite clear that I surrendered nothing of my independence, and that I did so mainly because it would add to the value of the service to my constituents and to the country. A Front Bench Senator has special opportunities for making his point of view effective. He can take part more easily in informed exchanges with the Ministers, and thus influence the course of the more formal proceedings. Needless, to say a Front Bench seat is no sinecure. One must be alert all the time, especially when some topic is under consideration with reference to which one has special knowledge or responsibility.

"My formal speeches occupy many columns of the Official Reports. In my maiden speech I stated that the Minority in Eire were not content to be regarded merely as guests, even if welcome guests, in the national household. I claimed on their behalf, as full members of the national family, the right to contribute to the "spiritual content of the national being' and maintained that our culture and our tradition should be regarded as Irish equally with that which derives from a Gaelic origin. Until we can create in Eire the concept of an Irish nation which transcends and yet embraces all its separate cultural, racial and religious elements, I held that the problem of Partition in the narrower sense must remain insoluble. Only thus could the "rainbow arch" of Irish unity and peace, of the poet's dream, be constructed, and in that sense I admitted that we of the Minority in Eire might be regarded as "rainbow-chasers," but in no other.

"When the present war broke out I took an early opportunity of pointing out that while neutrality was the only policy possible in our circumstances, it was nothing to be proud of and equally nothing to be ashamed of. If the war had originated as an effort by the League of Nations, of which we are members, to impose sanctions on an aggressor State we could not lawfully or honourably have remained neutral. If we choose to belong to whatever form of World Order shall emerge from the Present conflict, we shall have to accept its responsibilities and limitations, if we would share its privileges. In the meanwhile, we still retain, by our own choice, the privilege of membership of the British Commonwealth of Nations, which is so important to Irish University Graduates; it is to be hoped that this will become the basis of a better human understanding, as well as of more intimate commercial relations, with our British neighbours in the post-war era.

"Agricultural development, in conjunction with fully restored access to the British market, affords us the best opportunity of rapidly increasing the national income. Our general economic policy should have this main object in view, even if it involves some temporary slowing down of the rate of industrial development. I urged on the Minister of Finance that it should be part of an agreed national policy that the "agricultural horse" should be restored to his rightful place between the shafts of the "industrial cart" thus reversing the situation that has existed in recent years. The Government has recently appointed me a member of a small expert Committee of Inquiry on post-emergency agricultural policy, and I am now engaged in the study of the technical and economic questions involved.

"In the period of post-war reconstruction questions of general economic, as well as of agricultural, policy are bound to arise, and it is most important that the voice of a professional economist should continue to be heard in the legislature. The economic basis of any social security plan will also require close examination. In this and other connections the social and civic rights of women must be carefully safeguarded.

"In the matter of the Irish language I would have welcomed a policy of preserving the bilingual character of Ireland in the sense in which Canada is a bilingual country, it will be difficult enough to prevent Irish from dying out in what is now the Gaeltacht. Irish could have been used as an instrument of an education at once liberal and national in the rest of the country, but the teaching of other subjects through the medium of Irish to children whose mother-tongue is English is an educational monstrosity.

"In the matter of compulsory school attendance I shared in the opposition to those aspects of a recent Bill which seemed to give the State excessive power at the expense of parental authority, and the Bill has since been held by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional.

"My views on these and other matters of public interest are on record, and have occasionally reached the wider publicity of the daily Press. I think I may fairly ask that every Elector should consider my public record before deciding the order in which he (or she) should cast his vote.

"My public duties were exceptionally heavy in the early part of this year, and my ordinary work was increased owing to the temporary absence of a colleague on war work. In the circumstances I did not feel justified in stating my case to the electors until I could do so without prejudice to public and academic interests. I hope that electors who have already been approached by other candidates, and who may have agreed to support them, will nevertheless regard themselves as free to vote.for me.

"It is possible that one or other of the new Candidates would, if successful, advocate many of my political ideals with greater eloquence than mine, and equal sincerity. But it is quite certain that no such person could have, here and now, the experience and authority derived from five years' service at Leinster House in a most critical period in the history of the University and of the world.

"If I secure re-election I shall deeply appreciate the honour and do my best to be worthy of it. My re-election by an emphatic vote would also give clear proof that I have your moral support in the course I have taken in public affairs, and enormously strengthen my advocacy of' all those causes and ideals which command our common loyalty."

Although he had in his nominating group some 20 more people than he had had in 1938, mostly clergy, whose support he had perhaps picked up through his son-in-law Rev Dermot Carmody, and there were no notable defections from his 1938 panel, he lost his seat to TC Kingsmill-Moore. I suspect his acceptance of 'front-bench status' might have told against him. While De Valera, in offering him front-bench status, apparently appreciated his critical feedback, the apparent approval of de Valera would perhaps have counted against him with the TCD graduate electorate.

After his defeat he was however recruited to serve on the Commission on Post-Emergency Agriculture(7), and his main work during the latter part of the war was in this direction, to the extent that his Seanad contribution became somewhat marginalised, though he did contribute substantively to the debates after 1944, when he replaced Dr Rowlette, and served with TC Kingsmill Moore and Professor Fearon. I don't have a copy of his election address on this occasion; he probably just fine-tuned his 1943 one.

The 1948 Election

In the modules of this Seanad stream I have outlined his contributions to the 1950s debates(8), in some cases in full. He consistently alluded to the Partition question, and to the potential for a constructive Protestant presence in a unified national State. In this context he worked closely with James G Douglas(9), the Quaker businessman who had been advising Michael Collins and organising war victim relief.

Notes and References

2. James Meenan in his biography of George O'Brien (Gill and Macmillan 1981) refers (p126) to the latter's participating in the 1922-24 Agricultural Commission, along with JJ, Sir John Keane and Tom Johnson, the leader of the Labour Party; it was chaired by Professor Drew. It also included politicians and farmers' representatives. According to O'Brien, the main thrust of the Commission was in support of traditional Department of Agriculture policy, as it had developed prior to the foundation of the State, initially under Horace Plunkett. I have summarised these in the hypertext.

3. The Prices ('Profiteering') Tribunal was set up in 1926. Most of the cuttings JJ kept in his scrap-book subsequent to the 1926 Seanad election relate to this, and to his work on the economics of the distributive process, which he identified as being dominated by 'middlemen' who were instrumental in depressing agricultural prices. About this time he was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to study this process.

4. I give more detail of this background material in the 1920s public service module in the hypertext.

5. JJ's first contribution to the Seanad debates I have given in full; it is accessible from the 1930s public service module of the hypertext, along with those of his other speeches which I have been able to reproduce in full.

6. JJ's contributions during the earlier part of the Emergency were critical of the way that the 1930s agricultural policies had left the country on the verge of starvation. I have summarised these in the first 1940s public service module in the hypertext, and where possible given them in full; the yellowing paper does not lend itself to scanning.

7. This Commission produced a series of Reports which did in fact influence post-emergency agricultural policy significantly, and JJ regarded them as being among his most significant contributions in the public arena. I have summarised them extensively in the hypertext. The Commission was chaired by TA Smiddy and included RC Barton, C Boyle, Professor JP Drew, Henry Kennedy (Chief Executive of the IAOS), J Mahony and EJ Sheehy. Both Professor Drew and JJ had served on the earlier Commission from 1922 to 1924.

8. There are no signs of moderation or deference to de Valera in his final Seanad contributions, which I have abstracted in the 1950s public service module of the hypertext.

9. James Douglas's memoirs, edited by JA Gaughan, were published in 1999 by UCD Press, and I have reviewed them for a London Quaker publication, and made the review available in the hypertext.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 2002