Anthony Coughlan

Anthony Coughlan is an academic, Secretary of The National Platform for EU Research and Information Centre and retired Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Social Policy at Trinity College, Dublin. (It is suggested that he is left wing, however he has taken contrarian views on divorce and lately on the Marriage Equality Referendum) He actually gave evidence for Des Hanafin in the Challenge to the Divorce Referendum.

He has contributed to various debates in the media such as on RTÉ's Questions and Answers, both in his capacity as a lecturer and as a spokesperson for lobby groups such as the National Platform. He opposed EU enlargement and EU treaties such as the Single European Act, Maastricht Treaty, Amsterdam Treaty, Nice Treaty, Nice Treaty re-run and the Lisbon Treaty.^[1]

Recently he has been making contributions to the post-Lisbon Treaty debate and made submissions to the Oireachtas committee on Europe on behalf of the National Platform.^[2]

Born in Cork, he became politicised while studying English, history and economics at University College Cork in the fifties, setting up a branch of the Labour Party in the college. He moved to London where he studied for a postgraduate degree in Social Policy at the University of London. In London he joined the Connolly Association,^[3] and would have befriended the republican socialist C. Desmond Greaves.^[4]

He returned to Ireland and took up a job lecturing in Trinity College 1961. He became involved in the Wolfe Tone Society when it was set up in 1964 becoming acting as its secretary as well Dublin Housing Action Committees, both of which were heavily populated by members of the Republican Movement most of which evolved into Sinn Fein the Workers Party. The Wolfe Tone Society(WTS) campaigned for civil rights in Northern Ireland and supported the NICRA. Contributed articles to the United Irishman and Tuairsc the paper of the Wolfe Tone Society.

He left the Republican Movement in 1970, he was joint secretary with Raymond Crotty of the Common Market Defence Campaign,^[5] he participated in the Common Market Study Group and campaigned against Ireland joining the Common Market^[6] and has campaigned against greater European integration policies through various organisations since such as the Irish Sovereignty Movement^[7] and National Platform.

Coughlan married Muriel Sadlier in 1983.^[8]

Submissions and articles

• Turning us into real EU citizens by Anthony Coughlan, Munster Express, Friday, June 13, 2008
• An EU Watershed Decision by Anthony Coughlan, Peoples Movement website
• Nation, State Sovereignty and the European Union by Anthony Coughlan, Studies An Irish Quarterly Review Issue 369, vol.93, Spring 2004
• Constitution of the Dublin Wolfe Tone Society - Roy Johnston / Anthony Coughlan.
• Archive of Publications by Anthony Coughlan, Open Library
• The Case Against the Common Market, a pamphlet by Anthony Coughlan and Roy Johnston (1967)

References