INSIDE POLITICS:Conor Cruise O'Brien served as a minister yet he exercised his greatest power through his ideas, writes Stephen Collins
CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN was one of the most influential public figures in Ireland in the second half of the 20th century. Although he served as a TD and a minister he exercised his greatest power through the force of his ideas, as expressed in books and newspaper articles for more than half a century.
His greatest achievement was to get the people of his country to reassess the meaning of Irish nationalism. Even many who regarded themselves as being utterly opposed to his political views were influenced by him and, well before the end of his life, his basic position of utter rejection of IRA violence and the promotion of the principle of consent with regard to the future of Northern Ireland had become accepted as the political orthodoxy.
When he began to propound his ideas about nationalism and challenge the notion that a united Ireland should be the supreme political goal the atmosphere was completely different.
The emergence of the Provisional IRA after the loyalist pogrom of 1969 put the country into a dangerous position, and outright civil war and the destruction of the economy was a real possibility.
The collapse of Yugoslavia into appalling ethnic violence in the 1990s shows what can happen when nationalist sentiments are whipped up to a frenzy and used by cynical politicians. Something similar almost happened in Ireland in 1969 and 1970, but thankfully the Fianna Fáil taoiseach, Jack Lynch, managed to see off the forces that wanted to push the country over the brink.
O'Brien, though, went a step further and gave intellectual force to the argument not simply that a united Ireland could not be achieved by force, but that it was wholly inappropriate and dangerous to seek to include in a state a substantial number of people who did not wish to belong.
Although many of his views came to be accepted over time O'Brien showed enormous courage in propounding his principles in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the face of deep-seated hostility not only from Sinn Féin/IRA but from most mainstream Irish politicians who could not face the fact that Northern unionists were British, and entitled to remain so for as long as they remained in a majority.
In the end even the IRA accepted the consent principle. While it galled O'Brien to see Sinn Féin involved in a powersharing arrangement in Northern Ireland his pen proved mightier than the IRA's sword even if it took 30 bloody years for his message to sink in.
Of course, he also made political mistakes. His determination to defeat the objectives of Sinn Féin/IRA led him to ignore the faults on the unionist side, and his venture into Northern politics in the 1990s as a member of Robert McCartney's fringe unionist party devalued his real achievements.
In party politics he made a considerable impact on the country in the period from 1969 to 1977 when he was elected to Dáil Éireann as Labour TD for Dublin North East. It was the same constituency as his prime opponent in the politics of the Republic, Charles J Haughey. The arms crisis of 1970 in which Haughey was directly involved was one of the factors that caused O'Brien to reassess traditional nationalism and he was a bitter opponent of Haughey thereafter.
In the Labour Party O'Brien's views caused huge dissension but with the support of the party leader, Brendan Corish, he swung the party behind his policies despite intense opposition. That opposition came not only from a number of traditional party TDs like Sean Treacy and Stevie Coughlan but from the other two well-known media figures Justin Keating and David Thornley.
As Labour Party spokesman on the North, O'Brien had a platform to air his views at every available opportunity, attacking the IRA campaign and all those who supported it.
One direct consequence of the arms crisis was that Labour reassessed its opposition to coalition with Fine Gael and the party dropped its anti-coalition stance. When the two parties came to power under Liam Cosgrave in 1973 O'Brien was appointed as minister for posts and telegraphs which meant he had responsibility for broadcasting.
There were regular spats with the media over the implementation of Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act, originally introduced by Fianna Fáil, which banned Sinn Féin from the airwaves. O'Brien alienated some of his old liberal allies by defending the ban to the hilt.
While he was a minister he also made regular speeches on the North, frequently stirring up a hornet's nest. While some of his cabinet colleagues were furious with him for courting controversy, Cosgrave never attempted to rein him in. As far as Cosgrave was concerned, O'Brien was Labour spokesman on the North and entitled to express his views in that capacity.
While many expected that O'Brien would be a maverick as a minister he showed absolute loyalty to the taoiseach and that loyalty was reciprocated. The devout Catholic Cosgrave was at the other end of the political spectrum to O'Brien on many issues but, on the North and the defence of democracy, they shared the view that the IRA campaign had to be defeated at all costs.
O'Brien lost his Dáil seat in the Fianna Fáil landslide of 1977 but that did not quieten his voice or his involvement in Irish political life. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as well as writing powerful and influential books about history and ideas, he also wrote regular and influential newspaper columns. His overriding theme was the national question and the preservation of tolerant democratic values.
Of Conor Cruise O'Brien it can truly be said he did the State some service.