Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics and Society [Paperback]

It is sad that the most read Irish historian outside Ireland happens to be the Republican fellow-traveller, Tim Pat Coogan. Then, Coogan seems to aim mostly at the Irish-American market. It is sad because Coogan's bias is not widely recognised, whereas if it was, his books would probably be subjected to more than unthinking acceptance. For me, Joe Lee is by far the greater historian, and this work by him beats anything of Coogans into a cocked hat. Not that they disagree overmuch, Lee is also a Nationalist writer, but his judicious weighing of the evidence and his unblinkered and unwavering devotion to historical truth make him by far the better of the two as a writer and a professional historian. One place where they disagree is on the position of De Valera, whom Coogan has dethroned from his former eminence among 'constitutional' Republicans. Lee supplies a far more sympathetic and truthful analysis of 'the Long Fellow'. Another area where American readers may be surprised is the short shrift given to Sean McBride, later a leading light of Amnesty International and a recognised 'jet-set liberal'. However, McBrides interventions in domestic Irish politics were mostly inept and disastrous for this followers and friends. Also for a believer in religious liberty, he was obsequious to the Catholic church in a most apalling fashion. Therefore, read this book to have your expectations challenged, and old opinions undermined. Possibly, the best Irish historical work to emerge from the 20th century, and a book that will be recognised as such.

Well researched and entertaining, this is the most readable work yet written on the subject of Ireland's painful progress since the early part of the century. The closing sections of Lee's opus contain some intuitive conclusions about his fellow countrymen, particularly the sections entitled 'Character' and 'Perspectives'. Scholarly guff on the subject of Ireland's breach birth and subsequent delinquency are rarely the stuff of bedtime reading but this is easy on the brain, partly due to Lee's strictly logical approach to his theme and partly because of his enormous skill as a writer. If you want a book on Ireland that doesn't read as though it were written by some OAP in a tweed G-string who hasn't seen sunlight since 1965, this is the one for you. Terrific.

Don't be fooled by the featureless cover and the matter-of-fact title. This is a beautifully written, cogently reasoned and very witty book about modern Ireland. When I bought it, I thought it might be just a slab of hard information: I was so pleasantly surprised by its polished prose and mordant humour.

When I was a teenager J.J. Lee appeared one night as a guest on Ireland's famous 'Late Late Show' to discuss this new book. Gay Byrne introduced the volume as having much to say about Irish begrudgery. Lee, without being at all plaintive, swiftly explained that for much of the twentieth century people in Ireland were gripped by a mentality that saw success as a form of opprobrious craftiness, never something to emulate. In the book he attributes this national character defect to 'the primacy and the tenacity of the possessor rather than the performer ethic.' [p. 528] Fault-finding, he explained on the show, was a national pastime, and added: 'I can guarantee you that right now, there are people going through this book like sniffer dogs, and when they find a mistake, their day is made.'

During my years at college in the early nineties, Lee's book appeared on our Soc & Pol curriculum; and at about the same time Lee gave some fascinating interviews for a documentary series entitled 'The Irish condition'. It has taken until recently, however, for me to get around to tackling this volume. But how rewarding it has been.

Lee combines an excellent panoramic sweep of Irish twentieth-century life with a remorseless assessment of how the country has performed when judged against similar European nations. Finland, for example, [see p. 527] took in enormous numbers of postwar refugees (Karelieans); had fought against and paid reparations to a far more menacing post-colonial neighbour (Stalinist Russia); and its war of independence was followed by a civil far far worse than that of Ireland (Finnish fatalities = 100,000, Irish fatalities = 600). And yet today Finland is one of the most equitable and economically successful societies on Earth with a primary education system and a welfare state that is second to none. Nor can this lake-punctured, snowbound nation claim to be better blessed by Nature than the Emerald Isle. So if the Finns could get their act together, what was stopping the Irish? The answer, which becomes painfully clear throughout the book, is attitude.

The most conspicuous example of this is the failure of successive governments to grasp the economic nettle and stop the country from 'living away beyond our means' - as the Taoiseach Charles Haughey described it in a 1980 television address. But even Haughey, as Lee points out, 'recoiled from the electoral implications of financial responsibility' [p. 501]. When it later emerged that Haughey had been living the high life at around the time of this national address, both his cupidity and the seething Haughey-hatred it gave rise to was a two-sided proof of 'the primacy of the possessor ethic'. Haughey validated the helpless nation's cherished myth that material success can only be won dishonestly, by people we should religiously hate.

Examples of the more entertaining aspects of Lee's book include the following:

On Eamon DeValera's atavistic vision of Ireland as 'a land whose countryside would be bright with ... the laughter of comely maidens':

'As the Fianna Fail nag trotted up to the tape for the 1944 elections, "comely maiden" was unceremoniously dumped out of the saddle and "rural electrification" plonked in her place as a better bet to brighten up the countryside.'
[p. 241]

On the pall of lassitude hanging over the country, and attitudes thereto:

'Some still clung, as to an article of faith, to the assumption that Southern Ireland, or at least the Southern Irish, simply could not industrialise. Industrialisation required sterner qualities of character than Paddy, charming a chap though he could be in his sober interludes, could muster. It was somewhat cruel to impose the strain of trying on the poor fellow.'
[p. 379]

Nor do the Northern Unionists get by without a withering observation. On Lord Brookborough:

'His resignation was heralded in February [1963], when he categorically denied any intention of resigning: "I want to say perfectly frankly and straightly that I have no intention whatever of resigning as your Prime Minister." He perfectly frankly and straightly resigned the following month, much to his disgruntlement, for he was still only seventy-five.'
[p. 413/4]

(Or as Claud Cockburn used to say: never believe anything until it has been officially denied.)

I daresay that if J.J. Lee's academic focus were broader than that of a small country in the north Atlantic, his intellectual pedigree would make him a world-class historian. As an analytical mind well-capable of forming a strong opinion based on remorseless reasoning and expressing it in polished prose, he is surely up there with the likes of Tony Judt and A.J.P. Taylor. If you have an interest in Irish history and the trajectory it has taken over the last century, this should be your starting point.