their goodness to the workers, but if the workers did not agree with them, then that was just too bad. It is not surprising that, although she fought a number of elections, she only won a seat once: in the Sinn Fein landslide of the 1920 municipal election.
cy. Hannah's son, Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, decided in favour of a closer identification with the working class; he became a Marxist, of sorts, joined the Irish Labour Party (then going through a Left-Republican phase), set up a "Citizens' Action Bureau", and was eventually expelled for over-zealous support for Larkin. His cousin Conor moved in an opposite direction. He also joined the Labour Party, but he did not become a Marxist. Finally, he left it to take mental expression of Fianna Fail Republicanism. the exponent of neutrality even, as over Abyssinia and Spain, against the Catholic Church Catholicism vs. Marxism At the same time he began to write. What he wrote was wholly in keeping with his career. Under the name of Donat O'Donnell he contributed a number of book reviews, some of which were collected subsequently in a volume, Maria olicism against Marx. He also wrote a Doctor's Thesis, that was expanded subsequently to be published as Parnell and his Party. This work's subject is explained by its title; it is a book about oligarchs; the people outside the Council Chamber appear only in its Prologue and its Epilogue. What is more, when its author tries to relate them to his subject, he turns not to Karl Marx but the Italian precursor of Fascist "theory", Vilfredo Pareto.
By 1958, when Parnell and his Party was published, Dr. Cruise O'Brien's career had received a new impetus. In 1956 the Republic of Ireland entered UNO. Here it was able to give a positive form to its neutrality, and to do so in a manner that gave it an aura of international importance and benevolence. It was the era of Bandung, when the "non-aligned" nations took their positions above the Cold War, and, at least in theory, as mediators between the two sides therein. As the only neutral white English-speaking country, Ireland was able to appear as a particularly important arbiter in the cause of peace.
An Irish Nehru One who adopted the conception of the neutral's role was Conor Cruise O Brien. His aunt was long dead and he had nothing to continue to tie him to the Irish Republican Movement, now starting a new desperate military campaign. The cause of peace: even more, the cause of Ireland as vanguard of peace, gave him a cause above that of the mere gunmen. In the United Nations he was fighting the battles of all small, exploited countries for a world in which their cases could be discussed reasonably and under rule of law. The cause of peace was the cause of the neo-colonies. Of course, he was not so much wrong as topsy-turvy: the victory of the workers, as vanguard of the world's exploited peoples, will mean the achievement of peace, not the other way around.
But Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien knew nothing of this. The background of world politics were and "gloaters". The achievement of peace was simply a matter of the UNO General Assembly, in which his own and similar non-aligned countries had a disproportionate vote imposing its will, presumably through an ex tension of peace-keeping forces such as hac been established after the Suez crisis The Congo Crisis In 1961, these views received their acid test.
Dr. Cruise O'Brien was sent to the Province of Katanga that had recently broken away from the new Congolese Republic, as UNO Agent to end effectively its separation. His failure in this task is told in his book To Katanga and Back. The short story of it is that Conor discovered that the world was not as he had thought. Between the clashing interests of imperialism and its exploitees, UNO could not act as Bonaparte. When, through its agent, it tried to do this, the man got run down and / isolation, the matter of his private relationships were used as the excuse for hurling him not only from UNO but from the Irish Department of External Affairs.
His reaction to this was minimal. Certainly, he had to recognise that the United Nations Organisation was not the heavenly body that he had imagined. It might also be said that he gained greater sympathy for the struggle of the colonial people against the colonisers. It is diffi cult to imagine the post-Katanga O Brien writing the criticism of Red Indian Nationalism that he had written previously. But there was nothing more. Whether or not he re-appraised his position consciously, it is impossible to say. What is certain is that the basis of his political analysis did not alter. When he turned to the anti-colonial struggle, he turned to the formal institutional leaders of neo-colonialism. In Ghana, he supported first Nkrumah and then, because Nkrumah did not act in the manner recognised by west European liberalism, he welcomed the military coup that overthrew him, ignoring totally the decline in economic independence it meant for its country.
Literary Criticism divided. They are dioner very gped or very bad / productions of this period are easily The good is mainly his writings on literature (most notably his article on Yeats, "Passion and Cunning" and his study of Camus) and his pamphlet, Conflicting Concepts of the Unitea Nations (of his coffee-table production, United Nations, Sacred Drama, it is kinder not to write). They are, in short, works which enable him to concentrate on the actions of individuals or elites, and to ignore, as far as possible, the pressures brought upon them from the masses outside or from economic relations. The bad can be summed up as the works in which he Herod Explains and Murderous Angels, of which the former is an attack on the rational basis of political action and the latter must be seen in more detail.
It tells of the tragedy of Hammarskjold and Lumumba; of the clash between the forces of "Peace" and of "Freedom". To prove the reality of this clash, he refers to the fact that it was Princip, the hero of Yugoslav (or at least Serb)
freedom who shot the bullet that started the First World War. A paradox, we are meant to feel. But, of course the paradox is in the author's own mind. To start with, it is over simplifying to describe Princip as either a "lib erator or the "man who started war". He was a petty-bourgeois Pan-Slav acting against the Austrian political hegemony that was, in his area, merely the expression of world imperialist powers that eventually had to clash. Similarly, though the description of Lumumba is, in the circumstances, just enough, the casting of Hammarskjold as the personification of "peace" i merely accepting the man's subjective estimate of himself. Because he limits himself to the political predicament (apart, of course, from the European exploiters of Katanga who were rather too obvious to be ignored), because, too, the opponents of the economic system that he ignores are themselves overlooked, except as background, so he portrays his false choice.
Murderous Angels is a liberal tragedy, rather of its author's continuing identification with the "responsible": the powerful.
Academic Career Most of these 1960s writings appeared at a time when Dr. Cruise O'Brien was suffering the effects of his fall from diplomacy. Unable to obtain a job in Ireland, he became Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana. Then, having than a Socialist drama. Its title is symptomati job in New York. Unlike his writings, his actions in these positions are almost wholly to his credit. He stood for academic freedom against Nkrumah. In New York, he was beaten up by the cops on an anti-Vietnam war demonstration.
Again, there is nothing surprising in this. The high idealism and elitism of his training were bound to be shown to their best advantage in academic life with its often low standards of morality, where, despite all talk of student power, the issues tend normally to be worked out on an elitist basis, separate from the rest of the population. This last fact, which is the real problem for socialist academics, does not seem
viodsly, when Limerick had Ireland's one, recent, anti-Jewish pogrom. For all this he wa nerely reprimanded on two occasions (over th Maoists, after physical violence had been given their shop and over the anti-Semitic issue) and forced not to welcome the Springboks. Deputy in this matter (including some who thought they were "profor Coughian 's expulsion. The troube wad that "); with Dr. Noel Browne, he held out lis opposition was not a Socialist one: Coughlar vas denounced, in turn, for being against "free dom of communication (in the Maoist business), to accept apartheid and for anti-Semitism. his attempt to break the cement strike were not mentioned. As a result, the Labour Party rank and file were justifiably confused; the only people who' have left permanently have been ome bourgeois liberals Cruise O'Brien took up half-an-hour of the time there having a motion passed demanding the gelease of Irish clerics held in prison by the Nigerians for their part in the Civil War there.
Taking all these facts into account, it was, naps, as satistactory as it was natural t Cruise O'Brien should not have made a serious attempt to "educate" the Labour Party rank and file to his "Socialist" views, preferring to keep his talents to the central Administrative Council and to various gatherings of literati.
However, until August 1969, he had not actually done anything qualitatively reactionary. It could be said that he had made mistakes, but they were, at least, errors made in pursuit of aims, either progressive in themselves, or not decisively regressive, or else they were mistakes of omission rather than commission.
Bogside-the Acid Test
The newspapers in this country ure giving the impres But the Bogside barricades were the beginnings of an acid test for Dr. Cruise O'Brien, his policies and their relevance to the objective needs of the Irish working class. As early as January 1969 he had written (in the Irish Times, of course) of his views on Northern Ireland and the civil rights movement. As usual, his analysis was subjective, remarkably vague, and essential ly elitist. He had already stated (in his Irish Times-New Left Review article in 1966) his rejection of the Republican claim to the Six Counties; for him, the fact that the northeastern Protestants did not want to be ruled from Dublin was sufficient to justify their regime. Now, he showed himself ready to accep the Broposepresence that Stormont acceptec that all Irish Republican claim to British Ulster be renounced, that the inhabitants of that area be won to reunify with the rest of Ireland by improved social welfare beneits and that, in the meantime, pressure shoulc e brought to bear on the British Governmen to grant civil rights reforms. In this way, th laims of "peace and of "freedom" might b reconciled. The question of imperialism wa ignored, the possibility of grass-toots action was avoided and the whole form of the "Northern Irish state, with its built-in provision for sectarianism was not investigated.
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is King. No one else in the leadership of the Irish Labour Party had such a carefully worked-out view of the north-eastern situation. Without any discussion the Cruise O'Brien policies became Labour policies. In Augus 1969, an Irish Labour deputation went to Lor don to ask for British troops to protect the north-eastern minority. Subsequently they boasted that they had been the only Party to do so. And in the following Spring, Deputy Cruise O 'Brien stayed quiet at an Oxford Union debate after a previous speaker had declared: "The only decent thing done by British troops in Iretowards compromising with imperialism and Arab land was to shoot Connolly But the worst was not yet. At the end of the following April, several Republican Irish Mini sters lost their portfolios under the suspicion of having bgen involved in running guns to the minority in Northern Ireland. Here was clearly an offence against "peace". What was more their records in office had not been those of left-wingers, so there was, probably, an offence against "freedom" as well.
Accordingly, Dr. Conor Cruise O'Brien saw that the situation needed a demonstration of the full Machiavellianism of Dag Hammarskjold He denounced the fallen Ministers as potential "Green Fascists", pointing out, not only their undoubted social conservatism, but also what he termed their "chauvinism" and their "contempt for bourgeois democracy". He praised the rightwing advocate of "Law and Order", the Leader f the Opposition, Liam Cosgrave, who informe n the Ministers concerned, using British source to do so. At the ITCWU Conference he made an emotive plea for "peace", such as put some of the Union's Northern Officers in an impossible matter for psychiatry) to ally all believers in the "democratic process" (including Cosgrav and the other heirs of Ireland's one actual Fascist Party) against the gun-runners and their allies. It was pointed out to him that this was merely a revival of the parliamentary "Popular Front" which had failed to stop reaction anywhere it was tried. He pointed out that Hitle and Mussolini had not been opposed in taking power by such bodies and quoted Trotsky on the United Front (of working class bodies) to justify his position.
The Re-Conquest of Ireland Delayed What happens next is uncertain. Nonetheless, there are definite trends that one can foresee. emerging, depending on national industry, but Revolution is less likely now than it was in August 1969; reaction, whether Fascist or less than Fascist, is now operating north and south of the border. The Reconquest of Ireland, in James Connolly'ssense, has probably been post poned for a few more years In achieving this result, Conor Cruise O'Brien has played an important role. His activities in the recent crisis are amongst those that bring home to one the fact that while the Irish revolutionary left failed at this juncture, its failure was one of youth; the petty-bourgeois politi cians' collapse was that of senility. Idealist, elitist and metaphysical, Cruise O'Brien repre sented the best that could be done with these methods. Seeking absolute good through dis cussions "at the top" and on a basis that ignores the objective factors of the problems concerned can now be seen to be no longer, if it ever was the way to achieve the blessings of Socialism.
But there is more to it than this. methods described above may be futile, but when they are imposed on a grouping that seeks and is beginning to possess, a mass following in the working class, in a developing revolutionary situation, they can be catastrophic. On the on hand, the Irish Labour Party, the third party ir the Republic of Ireland, was encouraged to scat once more on the national struggle. Its nemesis is that its immediate future depends now less on itself than on its opponents The whole of Conor Cruise O'Brien's life has led him to approach social problems from th standpoint of authority, albeit benevolent auth ority. Without this basis he is still operating on the assumption of it and encouraging his colleagues to do so too. If he cannot remain in Paradise, then he will try at least to act on the principles that moved him there. He ignores the fact that both outside the Paradise from which he fell and the Purgatory in which he finds himself is the large mass of ordinary human beings who are determined to get themselves a place in the sun.
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Naturally the second generation could not be satisfied by this essentially compromising poli-
-a position in the Department of External Affairs; by the end of the 1930s, the last Irish Govern-
Cross, a book notable not merely for its Catho- lic sympathies but for its readiness to play Cath-
goes outside these limits. They include all his writings on Ireland, and also his two plays, King