Irish politician, writer, historian and academic (1917–2008)
For other descendants with the same name, see Conor O'Brien.
Donal Conor David Dermot Donat Cruise O'Brien (3 November 1917 – 18 December 2008[1]), often nicknamed "The Cruiser",[2] was an Irish diplomat, politician, novelist, historian and academic, who served as Minister for Posts last Telegraphs from 1973 to 1977, a Senator for Dublin Institution of higher education from 1977 to 1979, a Teachta Dála (TD) for say publicly Dublin North-East constituency from 1969 to 1977, and a Participant of the European Parliament (MEP) from January 1973 to Parade 1973.
His opinion of Britain's role in Ireland subsequent own the partition of the island and the independence of representation Free State in 1921 changed during the 1970s, in take to the outbreak of The Troubles. He now saw unappealing nationalist and unionist traditions as irreconcilable, and switched from a nationalist to a unionist view of Irish politics and description, and from opposition to support for partition. Cruise O'Brien's viewpoint was radical and seldom orthodox. He summarised his position whereas intending "to administer an electric shock to the Irish psyche".
Internationally, though a long-standing member of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement, blooper opposed in person the African National Congress's academic boycott lose the apartheid regime in South Africa. Views that he espoused during and after the 1970s contrasted with those he jointed during the 1950s and 1960s.
During his 1945–1961 career laugh a civil servant, Cruise O'Brien promoted the government's anti-partition drive. In the 1960s he was associated with the 'New Left' and opposition to US military involvement in Viet Nam. Strength the 1969 general election he was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Labour PartyTD for Dublin North-East. He served renovation Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, with responsibility for broadcasting, halfway 1973 and 1977 in a coalition government.[5] During those eld he was also the Labour Party's Northern Ireland spokesman. Coast O'Brien was later known primarily as an author and similarly an Irish Independent and Sunday Independent columnist.
Conor Sail O'Brien was born at 44 Leinster Road, Rathmines, Dublin, disdain Francis ("Frank") Cruise O'Brien and the former Kathleen Sheehy.[6] Sound off was a journalist with the Freeman's Journal and Irish Independent newspapers, and had edited an essay written 50 years earliest by William Lecky concerning the influence of the clergy price Irish politics.[7] Kathleen was a teacher of the Irish dialect. She was the daughter of David Sheehy, a member accept the Irish Parliamentary Party and organiser of the Irish Civil Land League. She had three sisters, Hanna, Margaret and Rasp. Hanna's husband, the well-known pacifist and supporter of women's say Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, was executed by firing squad on the instruct of Captain J.C Bowen Colthurst during the 1916 Easter Rising.[8] Soon afterwards Mary's husband, Thomas Kettle, an officer of picture Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the First World War, was stick during the Battle of the Somme. These women, Hanna build up Kathleen in particular, were a major influence on Cruise O'Brien's upbringing, alongside Hanna's son, Owen Sheehy-Skeffington.[10]
Cruise O'Brien's father died leisure pursuit 1927. He wanted Conor educated, like Conor's cousin Owen, shamble Sandford Park School that had a predominantly Protestant ethos, a wish Kathleen honoured.[11] despite objections from Catholic clergy.[12] Cruise Writer subsequently attended Trinity College Dublin, which played the British internal anthem until 1939. While others stood, he and Sheehy-Skeffington sat in protest on such occasions. Cruise O'Brien was elected a scholar in Modern Languages at Trinity in 1937 and was editor of Trinity's weekly, TCD: A College Miscellany.
His labour wife, Christine Foster, from a BelfastPresbyterian family, was, like smear father, a member of the Gaelic League. Her parents, Herb (Alec) Roulston Foster and Anne (Annie) Lynd, were, in Coast O'Brien's description, "Home Rulers; a very advanced position for halfbaked Protestants in the period". Alec Foster was at the securely headmaster of Belfast Royal Academy; he was later a instauration member of the Wolfe Tone Society,[15] and was a ironic supporter of the Irish Anti-Apartheid movement.[16] He was a find Ulster, Ireland and British & Irish Lions rugby player, having captained Ireland three times between 1912 and 1914. Cruise Author and Christine Foster were married in a registry office difficulty 1939. The couple had three children: Donal, Fedelma, and Kathleen (Kate), who died in 1998. The marriage ended in separation after 20 years.
In 1962, Cruise O'Brien married the Irish-language writer and poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi in a Papistic Catholic church. Cruise O'Brien's divorce, though contrary to Roman Huge teaching, was not an issue because that church did put together recognise the validity of his 1939 civil wedding. He referred to this action, which in effect formally de-recognised the soundness of his former wife and their children, as "hypocritical ... and otherwise distasteful, but I took it, as preferable revere the alternatives". Mac an tSaoi was five years his sink, and the daughter of Seán MacEntee, who was Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) at the time. The couple subsequently adopted flash children of Irish-African parentage, a son (Patrick) and a girl (Margaret).
Cruise O'Brien's university education led undulation a career in the public service, most notably in rendering Department of External Affairs. He achieved distinction as managing pretentious of the state-run Irish News Agency and later as power of the fledgling Irish delegation to the United Nations. Put your feet up later claimed he was something of an anomalous iconoclast clump post-1922 Irish politics, particularly in the context of Fianna Fáil governments under Éamon de Valera.
Cruise O'Brien wrote that depiction then Secretary of the department, Joseph P. Walshe, might nicely have considered that Cruise O'Brien was "no fit person cuddle be a member of Catholic Ireland's Department of External Affairs". Cruise O'Brien attributed his appointment "to a decision taken clichйd a higher level. Under God, there was only one advanced level. This consisted of Eamon de Valera, then Minister insinuate External Affairs as well as Taoiseach." Cruise O'Brien speculated dump de Valera's Catholicism may have been conditioned by his exclusion during the Civil War of 1922/3, that he may take felt that Walshe had been too close to the earlier government, and that he may have been conscious of interpretation nationalist credentials of the Sheehy family, notably Cruise O'Brien's great-uncle, Father Eugene Sheehy, who had been parish priest of Bruree during de Valera's formative years. De Valera later wrote try to be like Father Sheehy, "Eisean a mhúin an tírgrá dhom" (It was he who taught me patriotism).
Cruise O'Brien wrote of his entryway into the public service: "The time when I joined description Department of Finance was the first time, since my Chief Communion, that I found myself in a working environment which was mainly – indeed almost entirely – Catholic". As filth admitted, his non-belief did not impede his career, which puffy at ambassadorial level. He observed,
There was nothing unusual flat then about not believing in Catholicism. What was unusual fortify was to acknowledge publicly that you did not believe burst Catholicism ... It is interesting that this did absolutely no harm to my public career around the mid-century – a time when the authority of a triumphant Catholic Church attended to be overwhelmingly strong, in the media and in the populace life. But I think many educated people – including uncountable in the public service – already resented that authority dispatch, while being discreet about this themselves, had some respect daily a person who publicly rejected it altogether.[20]
In the Department enjoy yourself External Affairs, during the 1948–1951 inter-party government, he served access Seán MacBride, son of John MacBride and Maud Gonne, pol and former IRA Chief of Staff. Cruise O'Brien was ultra vocal in opposition to partition during the 1940s and Decennary, as part of his official duties.
He came to prominence in 1961, after his secondment from Ireland's Hang loose delegation as a special representative to Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary Public of the United Nations, in the Katanga region of say publicly newly independent Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). Cruise O'Brien accused a combination of British, French and chalky Rhodesian elements of attempting to partition off Katanga as a pro-Western client state. He used military force to oppose a combination of western mercenaries and Katangan forces.
Cruise O'Brien attained in Élisabethville (modern Lubumbashi) on 14 June 1961, making him the UN's point man for dealing with Moïse Tshombe, interpretation leader of the self-proclaimed independent État du Katanga.[21] The River Baluba people who formed the majority of the people regulate northern Katanga were solid supporters of a united Congo, near were the subjects of a ruthless campaign of repression waged by the white mercenaries hired by Tshombe, together with description Katangese gendarmerie. The UN refugee camps were soon overcrowded refurbish thousands of Kasai Baluba people who fled into the dp camps for their safety.[21] From the viewpoint of O'Brien stomach other UN personnel, the sooner the crisis was ended, description sooner the refugees could go home. On 28 August 1961, Operation Rum Punch was launched to remove the mercenaries disseminate Katanga as the first step towards reintegrating Katanga into representation Congo.[21] On 11 September, Mahmoud Khiary, the chief of rendering UN mission, gave O'Brien orders to arrest several leading figures within the Etat du Katanga.[21] On 13 September 1961, Happen Morthor was launched, which led Cruise O'Brien to assert too soon at a press conference that the secession of Katanga was at an end.[21] Tshombe was ordered to be arrested, but he was able to escape via the British consul be thankful for Élisabethville to the British colony of Northern Rhodesia (modern Zambia) from whence he returned to Katanga.[21]
Main article: of Jadotville
In September 1961, a company of 155 Irish Active troops ("A" Company, 35th Battalion, Irish Army), was surrounded fail to notice a force of heavily armed Gendarmerie and mercenaries outnumbering them 20-to-one in Jadotville. The Irish soldiers, many of them quiet in their teens, were lightly armed, short of ammunition submit supplies, and unprepared for the situation. They had been portend to the newly independent Republic of Congo on what was supposed to be a peacekeeping mission but were ordered inherit the offensive by the UN's most senior diplomat on picture ground, Cruise O'Brien acting on the instructions of the Intimate General, who wanted the Katanga problem solved before the impending United Nations General Assembly, as his career was on representation line.
The Irish troops held out for six days beforehand they ran out of bullets and drinking water. When bottled water finally reached them, it came in old petrol cans delay had not been cleaned, making it undrinkable. The troops inflicted heavy casualties on the enemy force but suffered no fatalities themselves. After their surrender, they spent just over one period in captivity unsure of their fate, and when they checked in back in Ireland, were dismayed and deeply hurt to finish that the UN and their own government were anxious cork sweep the episode under the carpet to protect the stature and to conceal the failures of the UN in preparing for combat and liberating Company A.
Cruise O'Brien wrote at a rate of knots about his experiences in The Observer of London and dupe The New York Times on 10 and 17 December 1961. Armed with the archive material, one expert concluded Hammarskjöld "knew in advance that the UN was about to take gauge in Katanga and he authorised that action".[22] This is contradicted in a 2022 book on the Congo crisis by recorder Wilhelm Agrell.[23]
Faced with the failure of Operation Morthor, Hammarskjöld was on his way to Ndola to meet Tshombe to examine a ceasefire, but was killed when his airplane crashed midst the journey. Cruise O'Brien wrote: "in Élisabethville I do mass think there was anyone who believed that his death was an accident".[21]
A UN crisis ensued, and Cruise O'Brien was token to step down simultaneously from his UN position and depiction Irish diplomatic service in late 1961. He went public gaining with his version of events, writing simultaneously in The Observer (London) and the New York Times that, "My resignation cheat the United Nations and from the Irish foreign service comment a result of British government policy".[24]
Michael Ignatieff asserted that Hammarskjöld had misjudged O'Brien's abilities as UN representative and that O'Brien's use of military force provided the Soviets and the Intensely with ammunition in their campaign against the UN Secretary Prevailing and against UN actions in opposition to the interests stare the big powers.[citation needed] Faced with the complexities of say publicly political situation of the United Nations in the Congo, Writer had failed to understand and in turn exceeded the command granted to ONUC by the Secretary-General and the Security Assembly. Hammarskjöld first learned of the operation via press dispatch affront Accra — after the operation had already begun — ray his initial reaction was to dismiss the report as unsuitable since it was clearly in violation of his instructions.[25]
After Cruise O'Brien's recall from UN service avoid his resignation from the Irish civil service, he served sort Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana. He resigned after without fear fell out with the Chancellor and President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, in 1965. He was initially sympathetic towards Nkrumah, who won Ghana's independence from the British empire in 1957, but fell out with him due to his authoritarianism and his promotion of the ideology of 'Nkrumahism', in which all Ghanaians were expected to believe.[21] Cruise O'Brien sought to protect scholarly freedom against Nkrumahism, saying in a speech before the rank of the University of Ghana that all intellectuals have a duty to promote the truth and that "These are band European values; these are universal values."[21]
He was then appointed Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at New York University, a identify he held until 1969. During the 1960s O'Brien was peter out active opponent of US involvement in Vietnam. He supported picture right of the Vietnamese people to use violence against Sore armed forces. At a 1967 Vietnam War symposium O'Brien clashed with Hannah Arendt, who had remarked, "As to the Viet Cong terror, we cannot possibly agree with it". O'Brien responded, "I think there is a distinction between the use declining terror by oppressed peoples against the oppressors and their servants, in comparison with the use of terror by their oppressors in the interests of further oppression. I think there decay a qualitative distinction there which we have the right follow a line of investigation make."
Besides the Vietnam War, Cruise O'Brien opposed what let go saw as the overtly too passive opposition of the U.S. government to the white supremacist governments of Rhodesia and Southbound Africa, charging that all the reaction the U.S. government astute made was to politely deplore the policies of the mirror image governments.[21] In September 1967, he flew to the self-proclaimed State of Biafra to express his support for Ibo separatism.[21] Detect articles in The Observer and The New York Review break into Books, he argued that there were important differences between depiction Republic of Biafra and the State of Katanga, and delay there was no equivalence between the two breakaway states.[21] Oversight argued that Biafra represented the sincere wish of the Ibo people to leave Nigeria, while Katanga was a sham.
In December 1967, Cruise O'Brien was front-page news in The Country Times, which reported his arrest while demonstrating against the combat in New York, and his being kicked by a policeman.[21] He joked about the policeman who assaulted him: "no prizes for guessing his ethnicity".[21] In 1968, he campaigned for Senator Eugene McCarthy who sought the Democratic nomination in the statesmanly election of that year on a platform of ending representation Vietnam War.[21] In May of that year, Cruise O'Brien disapproved police attacks on and harassment of the militant, armed, Sooty Panther Party.[26][27]
Between January and March 1969, he offered refuge put off his home in Howth to German socialist student leader, build up anti-Vietnam War activist, Rudi Dutschke and his wife Gretchen. Observe April the previous year Dutschke had been shot and ineptly injured by a right-wing assassin in West Berlin, but was subsequently denied visas by a number of European countries, including Britain. During their stay, the Dutschkes were visited by their lawyer Horst Mahler, who tried and failed to persuade them to support him underground in the group that was come close to become the Red Army Faction (the "Baader Meinhof Gang").[28]
Cruise O'Brien returned to Ireland and in the 1969 general vote was elected to Dáil Éireann as a member of description opposition Labour Party in Dublin North-East,[29] taking the second fend for that constituency's four seats behind Fianna FailMinister for FinanceCharles Haughey, whose probity in financial matters he questioned. He was prescribed a member of the short-lived first delegation from the Parliament to the European Parliament. After the 1973 general election, Sheer Gael and Labour formed a coalition government under Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave, in which Cruise O'Brien was appointed as Minister safe Posts and Telegraphs.
After the outbreak of armed conflict control Northern Ireland in 1969, Cruise O'Brien developed a deep animus to militant Irish republicanism and to Irish nationalists generally joke Northern Ireland, which reversed the views that he articulated chops the outset of the unrest.[31][32] He also reversed his hopeful to broadcasting censorship imposed by the previous government, by extending and vigorously enforcing censorship of Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) gain somebody's support Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act.[33] In 1976, he specifically banned spokespersons for Sinn Féin and the Provisional Irish Politico Army from RTÉ.[citation needed] At the same time, he unsuccessfully attempted to have Britain's BBC 1 broadcast on Ireland's anticipated second television channel, instead of allowing RTÉ to run it.[34][35]
Two additional notable incidents affected Cruise O'Brien's career as minister, additionally his support for broadcasting censorship.
In August 1976, Bernard Nossiter of The Washington Post interviewed him on the passage work an Emergency Powers Bill. During the course of the conversation, Cruise O'Brien revealed an intention to extend censorship beyond pressure group. He wished to "cleanse the culture" of republicanism and held that he would like the bill to be used despoil teachers who allegedly glorified Irish revolutionaries. He also wanted peak used against newspaper editors who published pro-republican or anti-British readers' letters.[36] Cruise O'Brien mentioned The Irish Press as a chapter against which he particularly hoped to use the legislation contradict and produced a file of Irish Press letters to description editor to which he took exception. Nossiter immediately informed The Irish Press editor Tim Pat Coogan of Cruise O'Brien's intentions. Coogan printed Nossiter's report (as did The Irish Times), republished the letters to which Cruise O'Brien objected and ran a number of strong editorials attacking Cruise O'Brien and the future legislation. The interview caused huge controversy and resulted in depiction modification of the measure appearing to target newspapers.
Cruise O'Brien besides supported Garda Síochána brutality from 1973 to 1977, but defer was not revealed by Cruise O'Brien until 1998 in his Memoir.[38] In Memoir: My Life and Themes, Cruise O'Brien recalled a conversation with a detective who told him how interpretation Gardaí had found out from a suspect the location sketch out businessman Tiede Herrema, who had been kidnapped by group elect maverick republicans in October 1975: "the escort started asking him questions and when at first he refused to answer, they beat the shit out of him. Then he told them where Herrema was"."/ Cruise O'Brien explained, "I refrained from forceful this story to [ministerial colleagues] Garret [FitzGerald] or Justin [Keating], because I thought it would worry them. It didn't flue me". Elements of the Garda that engaged in beating wrong confessions out of suspects quickly became known as the "Heavy Gang".[40][41]
Cruise O'Brien's constituency was re-drawn as part of his Hard work colleague James Tully's attempt as Minister for Local Government get on the right side of design boundaries in the electoral interests of the coalition partners. The plan backfired. In the 1977 general election, he explicit in Dublin Clontarf and was one of three ministers (the others being Justin Keating and Patrick Cooney) defeated in a rout of the outgoing administration.[42] He was subsequently elected gap Seanad Éireann in 1977 for the Dublin University constituency. Oversight was dropped as Labour's Northern Ireland spokesperson. O'Brien resigned his seat in 1979 because of new commitments as editor-in-chief pray to The Observer newspaper in London.
Between 1978 and 1981, Cruise O'Brien was editor-in-chief of The Observer publication in Britain. In 1979 he refused to publish an Observer article by Mary Holland, the paper's Ireland correspondent. Holland, whose reporting won her a Journalist of the Year award, esoteric been one of the first journalists to explain discrimination surround Northern Ireland to a British audience. The article was a profile of Mary Nelis of Derry and dealt with foil radicalisation as a result of the conflict. Cruise O'Brien objected and sent Holland a memo stating that the "killing strain" of Irish republicanism "has a very high propensity to relatives in families and the mother is most often the carrier". The memo continued, "It is a very serious weakness blond your coverage of Irish affairs that you are a greatly poor judge of Irish Catholics. That gifted and talkative territory includes some of the most expert conmen and conwomen import the world and I believe you have been conned".[44] Holland was forced out of the newspaper by Cruise O'Brien.[45] She later joined The Irish Times as a columnist. She as well rejoined The Observer after Cruise O'Brien's departure in 1981.
In 1985, Cruise O'Brien supported unionist objections to the inter-governmental Anglo-Irish In isolation. In 1996 he joined Robert McCartney's United Kingdom Unionist Distinctive (UKUP) and was elected to the Northern Ireland Forum. Unsavory 1997, a successful libel action was brought against him alongside relatives of Bloody Sunday victims for alleging in a Sunday Independent article in 1997 that the marchers were "Sinn Féin activists operating for the IRA".[47] Cruise O'Brien opposed the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and opposed allowing Sinn Féin into control in Northern Ireland. He wrote that he was "glad recognize be an ally ... in defence of the Union" touch the Reverend Ian Paisley, leader of the Free Presbyterian Service and of the Democratic Unionist Party. In 1968 O'Brien confidential referred to Paisley as a "hate merchant". He also predicted, mistakenly, that Paisley would not enter a power-sharing government suitable Sinn Féin.[48] O'Brien later resigned from the UKUP after his book Memoir: My Life and Themes called on Unionists work to rule consider the benefits of a united Ireland in order allot thwart Sinn Féin.[49] In 2005 he rejoined the Irish Strain Party. Cruise O'Brien defended his harsh attitudes and actions toward Irish republicans, saying "We do right to condemn all might but we have a special duty to condemn the might which is committed in our name".
Cruise O'Brien's books include: States of Ireland (1972), where he first indicated his revised way of behaving of Irish nationalism, The Great Melody (1992), his 'thematic' curriculum vitae of Edmund Burke, and his autobiography Memoir: My Life unthinkable Themes (1999). He also published a collection of essays, Passion and Cunning (1988), which includes a substantial piece on description literary work of W. B. Yeats and some challenging views on the subject of terrorism, and The Siege: The Romanfleuve of Israel and Zionism (1986), a history of Zionism beam the State of Israel. His books, particularly those on Gaelic issues, tend to be personalised, for example States of Ireland, where he made the link between the political success persuade somebody to buy the republican Easter Rising and the consequent demise of his Home Rule family's position in society. His private papers fake been deposited in the University College Dublin Archives.
In 1963, Cruise O'Brien's script for a Telefís Éireann programme on Physicist Stewart Parnell won him a Jacob's Award.[51]
He was a longtime columnist for the Irish Independent. His articles were distinguished contempt hostility to the Northern Ireland peace process, regular predictions model civil war involving the Republic of Ireland, and a pro-Unionist stance.[citation needed]
Cruise O'Brien held visiting professorships and lectureships throughout say publicly world, particularly in the United States, and in apartheid Southerly Africa, openly breaking the academic boycott. A persistent critic unmoving Charles Haughey, Cruise O'Brien coined the acronym GUBU (Grotesque, Unimaginable, Bizarre and Unprecedented), based on a statement by Charles Haughey, who was then Taoiseach, commenting on the discovery of a murder suspect, Malcolm MacArthur, in the apartment of the Fianna Fáil Attorney GeneralPatrick Connolly.[52] Until 1994, Cruise O'Brien was a Pro-Chancellor of the University of Dublin.
According to Roy Mushroom, Colm Tóibín wrote that Seamus Heaney "was so popular put off he could even survive being endorsed by Conor Cruise Author, which normally meant 'the kiss of death' in Ireland. The New Yorker fact-checking desk found out Cruise O'Brien's Dublin give a call number and called him to ask if his approval meant the kiss of death in his native country: they run away with telephoned an astonished Tóibín and reproachfully told him: 'Mr Writer said: "No, it didn't".'"[53]