Conor Cruise O'Brien
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Conor Cruise O'Brien (Irish: Conchubhar Crús Ó Briain; born 3 November 1917) is an Irish politician, writer and academic.
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[edit] Early life
O'Brien was born in Dublin, in Ireland, to nominally Catholic parents[citation needed], Francis ("Frank") Cruise O'Brien and Kathleen Sheehy. Frank, a journalist with the Freeman's Journal and Irish Independent newspapers, had also edited some of William Lecky's historical studies of European nationalism[citation needed]. Kathleen was an Irish language teacher and daughter of David Sheehy, a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party and organizer of the Irish National Land League. She had three sisters, all of whom lost their husbands in the watershed year of 1916 [citation needed]. These included Hanna, wife of murdered pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, and Mary, wife of Thomas Kettle, a member of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers who died during the Battle of the Somme.
O'Brien's father made his wife promise to send their son to Sandford Park School[citation needed], despite the inevitable objections of the local Catholic clergy[citation needed]. O'Brien subsequently attended Trinity College Dublin which, like Sandford Park, was neither Catholic or nationalist in ethos. O'Brien was editor of Trinity's weekly, TCD: A College Miscellany. His first wife was Christine Foster, who came from a Belfast Presbyterian family. They were married in a registry office in 1939, which was contrary to Catholic teachings.
[edit] Civil service
O'Brien's university education led to a series of appointments in the public service, most notably in the Department of External Affairs (now Foreign Affairs).
O'Brien became something of an anomalous iconoclast in post-1922 Irish politics, particularly in the context of government by Éamon de Valera's Fianna Fáil party, since those who did not conform to Catholic mores were generally not preferred in the public service appointment process at the time[citation needed].
In the Department of External Affairs, O'Brien served as a diplomat under the pro-physical force republican, Seán MacBride, the Nobel Peace Laureate of 1974. McBride was the son of John MacBride and Maud Gonne. O'Brien was particularly vocal on the anti-partition issue during the 1940s.
[edit] International postings
O'Brien came to world prominence as a special representative to Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General of the United Nations, when, in 1961, Katanga tried to secede from what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. See the Congo Crisis. Under pressure from a range of international interests, he eventually resigned and wrote To Katanga and Back (1962) which is still considered a classic of both modern African history and the inner workings of the United Nations.
From 1962 to 1965 he was Chancellor of the University of Ghana. Following this he was the first Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at New York University until 1969.
[edit] Irish politics
O'Brien returned to Ireland and in the 1969 general election was elected to Dáil Éireann as a member of the Labour Party, representing the Dublin North East constituency together with three other TDs, including Charles Haughey. He was appointed a member of the short-lived first delegation from the Oireachtas (Irish parliament) to the European Parliament.
Following the 1973 general election, O'Brien was appointed Minister for Posts & Telegraphs in the coalition Cosgrave government. During this period he developed a deep hostility to militant Irish republicanism. He extended and vigorously enforced censorship of the media, banning members of Sinn Féin and the Provisional Irish Republican Army from being interviewed on Irish radio or television. At the same time, he attempted to get Britain's BBC 1 television channel broadcast on Ireland's proposed second television channel. [1]
His stance caused controversy within and outside the government. In the 1977 general election O'Brien lost his Dáil seat, but he was subsequently elected to Seanad Éireann.
In later years he would be elected to the Northern Ireland Forum as part of Robert McCartney's UK Unionist Party. He than resigned after writing a letter encouraging UKUP members to consider and even embrace the idea of a United Ireland; making it seem that his motives for joining the UKUP were more based on hatred of the IRA and militant Irish Republicanism than on support for Ulster Unionism.
[edit] Polemics and Academia
Between 1979 and 1981 O'Brien was editor-in-chief of The Observer newspaper in Britain. He held visiting professorships and lectureships throughout the world, particularly in the United States, and controversially in apartheid South Africa. He coined the acronym GUBU (Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented), based on a statement by Charles Haughey, who was then Taoiseach, commenting on the discovery of a murder suspect[2] in the apartment of Patrick Connolly, the Attorney General at the time.
Until 1994 O'Brien was pro-vice chancellor of the University of Dublin. In 1996 he joined the United Kingdom Unionist Party and secured a seat in the elections of May 1996 and was a member of that party's delegation to the peace process talks, during which he praised[citation needed] the approach of Ian Paisley. He was forced to resign from the party in 1998 after writing[citation needed] an article encouraging unionists to embrace the idea of a United Ireland to thwart Sinn Féin.
[edit] Writings
Conor Cruise O'Brien's many books include: his picture of the politics of polarisation States of Ireland (1972), The Great Melody (1992), his revisionist biography of Edmund Burke (a figure with whom he feels a great personal affinity, as Burke is apparently one of his ancestors [citation needed]), and his Memoir: My Life and Themes (1998). He also published a collection of essays, Cunning and Passion (1986), which includes a substantial piece on the literary work of William Butler Yeats and some challenging views on the subject of terrorism. Perhaps his most controversial work is The Siege (1989), a sympathetic history of Zionism and the State of Israel. His books, particularly those on Irish issues, tend to be very involved and personal such as States of Ireland where he made the link between the political success of the republican Easter Rising and the consequent demise of his Home Rule family's position in society. His private papers have been deposited in the University College Dublin Archives.
He is a long time columnist for the Sunday Independent and his articles have been distinguished by hostility to the peace process in Northern Ireland, regular predictions of civil war in the Republic of Ireland and an openly pro-Unionist stance. In 1997, a libel action was brought against him by relatives of Bloody Sunday victims for alleging in one article that the marchers were "Sinn Féin activists operating for the IRA" [1]
[edit] Legacy
O'Brien's had three children with his first wife Christine Foster -- Donal, Fedelma, and Kathleen (Kate), who died in 1996. O'Brien's second wife, is the Irish-language writer and poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi. She is five years his junior, and the daughter of former TD and Tánaiste, Seán MacEntee; they have a son (Patrick) and a daughter (Margaret), both adopted.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ See The Oireachtas Debates for more information on O'Brien's BBC 1 campaign.
- ^ Malcolm McArthur subsequently convicted of murder.
[edit] External links
| Preceded by: Gerard Collins |
Minister for Posts & Telegraphs 1973 – 1977 |
Succeeded by: Pádraig Faulkner |
Categories: Articles with unsourced statements | 1917 births | Irish Labour Party politicians | Irish writers | Irish diplomats | Catholic Unionists | Living people | Former Teachtaí Dála | Members of the 19th Dáil | Members of the 20th Dáil | Members of the 14th Seanad | Natives of County Dublin | Members of the European Parliament from Ireland | UK Unionist Party politicians
