BIOGRAPHY: As someone who worked on occasion with Dr Martin Mansergh during his years in the public service, I took up this biography with interest.
I knew him as a scholarly figure with a deep sense of history and an enormous capacity for work. Despite his influential role and the very considerable contribution he has made to public life over more than 20 years, however, Dr Mansergh maintained a low public profile until recently. Because of this, I wondered if an account of his life and career would be of sufficient general interest to justify a full-length biography.
I left down the book 313 pages later convinced that Kevin Rafter has written a book of some importance. I would commend it to anyone with an interest in Irish politics over the past 20 years and particularly to anyone interested in the origin and development of the peace process in Northern Ireland.
The book traces Dr Mansergh's family background in Tipperary and his career after leaving Oxford in the early 1970s. Since then he has been an Irish public servant of commitment and integrity, a one-man think-tank for Fianna Fáil in opposition, and principal advisor on Northern Ireland to three Taoisigh. He had an important role as intermediary with the Republican movement in the earliest stages of the peace process and he has been deeply involved behind the scenes ever since. He had a large part in crafting parts of the Good Friday Agreement and a particularly important role in drafting wording to resolve the complex constitutional issues in the Agreement.
The author describes his work as an unauthorised biography. True, no doubt, Dr Mansergh, when first approached, was "a bit taken aback, flattered but really not sure about the subject". But it is also clear that he gave very considerable help to the author. This included access to Mansergh family papers and to Martin's own voluminous archive of speeches, cuttings and other documents as well as two full interviews and numerous less formal conversations.
The book is not a scholarly biography - it is the work of a good journalist and none the worse for that. One of its merits is the series of quotations from the author's interviews with the Taoiseach and other important political figures. These include leaders of Sinn Féin, with whom Dr Mansergh engaged in prolonged dialogue, first on behalf of his party leader, Charles Haughey, in opposition and, when Fianna Fáil returned to office, on behalf of the Government. This was a dialogue conducted initially in great secrecy, a sustained debate over a long period on what might be called the "theology" of Irish Republican nationalism.
As a historian himself, and as the son of a distinguished academic historian, Nicholas Mansergh, whom Professor Joe Lee has described as "the supreme authority" on the Government of Ireland Act 1920, Martin Mansergh was well-qualified to conduct such a dialogue. Others might have been equally familiar with the complex arguments over concepts such as self-determination and consent which have echoed through Irish history for much of the 20th century.
Mansergh, however, spoke with additional authority in his role as a trusted political advisor to successive leaders of Fianna Fáil, in and out of Government, and he had highly developed drafting skills. But he brought something else to the dialogue which, in the event, proved to be of great importance. This was his deep emotional commitment to the Republican ideal and his conviction that it should - and could - be pursued by political means and not by violence.
Initially, some of those he dealt with over the years in Dublin, Belfast and London found the intensity of this commitment disturbing but it was that which, over time, won him the trust of the Republican leadership in Northern Ireland.
That his role came to be valued by others who dealt with him is evident from a letter he received from John Major in December 1994 as Fianna Fáil went out of office. Major spoke of his "friendly and open manner" and described his "profound historical knowledge" as an "invaluable asset".
Rafter is not uncritical of his subject. He makes the point that, in some of his writings on recent Irish political history, Mansergh's views are partisan and reflect his party commitment rather than the detachment expected of an academic historian.
And he notes the irony of Mansergh's opposition in 1985 to the Anglo-Irish Agreement which, arguably, helped over time to open the way to the peace process as its consequences worked themselves out in the North. Nor is the book by any means the definitive account of the long and tortuous path which led eventually to the Good Friday Agreement. Understandably, Rafter's concern is with the role of his subject and the comments and views of those he interviewed have a similar focus.Mansergh's role was crucial at times. But there is still much to be written about the part played by others such as John Hume, Fr Alec Reid, and Charles Haughey and there are still others who have not had public recognition.
Even if not definitive, this book is worth reading as an account of the origin and development of the peace process - preferably, I would suggest, in conjunction with Ed Moloney's recent major history of the IRA. It is also of interest in its own terms as a biography of an interesting, important and as yet little-known figure in Irish political life over the past 20 years.
Nicholas Mansergh, a distinguished historian of Anglo-Irish relations, believed that the historian cannot stand above events but only stand aside from them. His son, Martin, a historian, and now a Senator, has done neither. Instead he played a part in shaping events which could ultimately bring lasting peace to this island.
Noel Dorr retired as Secretary General of the Department of Foreign Affairs in 1995
Martin Mansergh: A Biography. By Kevin Rafter. New Island, 347 pp. €14.99