Madam - May I add my voice in appreciation of Douglas Gageby. I am prompted by having heard, on the radio, that he picked up his understanding of Irish history from Alec Foster who was Inst headmaster when Gageby was there. This adds to the Foster legend for me, because as well as being Conor Cruise O'Brien's ex-father-in-law, he was a member of the Belfast Wolfe Tone Society when it was instrumental in setting up the War Memorial Hall meeting from which the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association subsequently emerged.
This was in the context of the attempt which was made in the 1960s by Cathal Goulding and others, including Anthony Coughlan and myself in the Dublin Wolfe Tone Society, to politicise the republican movement, and "take the gun out of politics" on the national unity issue.
When the gun came back in, decisively, with the August 1969 armed pogroms, the basis was laid for the emergence of the "Provisionals", and our politicisation project was, for a time, bypassed. I welcome its re-emergence, under the leadership of Gerry Adams, and hope he succeeds where we failed.
In the post-1969 situation I personally was somewhat at sea, and I owe it to Douglas Gageby that he bought a proposal I put to him that I should run a weekly "Science and Technology" column.
The column ran from 1970 to 1976, and covered, among other things, the impact of the National Science Council on the Irish scientific research scene, under Dr Stan Nielsen.
I gave up doing the column in 1976 because I found a conflict of interest between it and my project to develop an applied science consultancy service on the fringe of the TCD academic research system. I wish to place on record my eternal thanks to Douglas Gageby for having given me the opportunity to make the case for the importance of science in Ireland, in a column which I think was to some extent influential in its time.
In conclusion, may I say that Douglas Gageby was a key actor in the process of rediscovery of the all-Ireland political role for the Ulster Protestant community, as pioneered by Bulmer Hobson, my father Joe Johnston and many others, who alas have been mostly forgotten.- Yours, etc.,
ROY JOHNSTON,
Techne Associates,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.