Early life and education
He was born in the Sliabh Luachra area of Munster, Republic of Ireland. [1]
 | This section needs expansionwith: information on parentage and education. You can help by adding to it. (March 2012) |
Brendan Clifford | |
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| Born | 1936 (age 86–87)[ citation needed ] |
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Brendan Clifford (born 1936)[ citation needed ] is an Irish historian and political activist.
He was born in the Sliabh Luachra area of Munster, Republic of Ireland. [1]
| | This section needs expansionwith: information on parentage and education. You can help by adding to it. (March 2012) |
As a young man, Clifford emigrated to the United Kingdom and became involved in left-wing politics. Initially, he was an associate of Michael McCreery, a leader of the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity, [2] a small British Marxist–Leninist group that had left the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1963. Later, he joined the Irish Communist Group which soon split into two factions; Clifford sided with the Maoist faction, which named itself the Irish Communist Organisation (ICO). [3] In 1967, Clifford gave a public speech on the Republican Congress in Wynn's Hotel, Dublin, [4] at a meeting of the Irish trade union group Scéim na gCeardchumann. [4]
In the early 1970s, he joined the other ICO members in advocating the "two-nations theory" –that the Ulster Protestants formed a separate nation and the Republic of Ireland had no right to force them into a United Ireland against their wishes. [2] Clifford soon became a prolific publisher of material advocating the group's viewpoint. The ICO later changed its name to the British and Irish Communist Organisation (B&ICO). [5]
He was an active campaigner against Irish nationalism alongside other B&ICO members including his wife Angela Clifford, [6] Jack Lane, Manus O'Riordan and Len Callendar. [5] By the late 1970s, according to historian Richard P. Davis, Clifford and historian Peter Brooke were effectively leading the B&ICO. [7]
In the 1980s, Clifford began campaigning for the organisation of British mainland political parties in Northern Ireland. [8] He was an active member of the Campaign for Equal Citizenship political-advocacy group which advocated this aim. [8] Clifford was strongly against the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement and wrote several pamphlets attacking the agreement and especially the Irish politician John Hume, whom Clifford regarded as a reactionary Irish Nationalist; [9] and Queen's University Belfast, which Clifford claimed was biased against the Ulster Unionists. [10]
As the B&ICO became inactive in the mid-1980s, he began working through several new groups, including the Aubane Historical Society, an organisation originally intended to be a local history organisation, but later expanded into the role of opposing the "revisionist" movement in Irish history; [11] and the Ernest Bevin Society, the B&ICO's British branch. In a piece written for The Independent , Clifford argued that Northern Catholics had no interest in a United Ireland and therefore electoral integration was the answer to the Northern conflict: "Opinion polls now confirm what one knew from experience in the Sixties, that most Catholics did not want to join the Republic. That fact is, however, of no electoral consequence". [12] Clifford also criticised the Irish Republican Army (IRA) campaign of violence as futile: "The IRA wants to revolutionise the Irish State to make it fit for Irish unity. But nothing is less likely than a revolution in the Republic, and all concerned know it". [12]
Clifford also defended the British Monarchy, arguing it played a socially beneficial role in British society. [13]
Clifford opposed the Gulf War (1990–1991); he was dismayed at Irish academic Fred Halliday's support for the conflict and wrote a Bevin Society pamphlet, The New Left Imperialist, that was strongly antagonistic toward Halliday. [14] [15]
In the 1990s, Clifford and Lane published several books on Irish history, including Notes on Eire: Espionage Reports to Winston Churchill, 1940–2, an account of Irish writer Elizabeth Bowen's World War II intelligence reports to Britain. The book marked an abandonment of the opposition to Irish nationalism that had characterised Clifford's earlier work. [16] This book provoked some controversy because Clifford argued the Anglo-Irish Bowen was not in any way an Irish writer. [17]
Clifford stated Franco's rule brought political stability to Spanish society: "Spain evolved under Franco. It is doubtful in the extreme whether the Spanish Republic which he overthrew was capable of evolving". [18]
Clifford has also argued Britain, not Germany, bears responsibility for starting World War II: "Going over the events of 1939 one can hardly suppress the thought that Britain decided to aggravate Germany over the last national issue remaining from the Versailles arrangement and make it an occasion for war, lest no further opportunity for war should present itself, and the Munich Agreement [(1938)] should prove to be a settlement". [19]
Discussing the book The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922 – August 1939 in an essay in Notes on Eire, Clifford argues that Hitler's speeches are "coherent arguments" and claims he can see how Hitler was able to persuade the Germans to follow him. [20]
Clifford also argues that pre-World War II British governments had no interest in stopping the Nazi persecution of the Jews and that the importance of the Holocaust in World War II has been exaggerated by modern historians: "the extermination of the Jews was an obscure incident in the hinterland of the German-Soviet War.... The Jews were not being exterminated when Britain declared war. The Jewish question does not figure in the declaration of war. The extermination did not begin until two years into the war, after Britain had succeed in spreading it to Russia. It was unimagined even by the most daring spirits in the SS in the summer of 1939". [21]
He has also taken issue with Irish histories of the Irish Free State during the Second World War. In a critique of the book Ireland and the League of Nations 1919–1946 edited by Michael Kelly, Clifford claims the book and others reflect non-Irish viewpoints. [22]
Clifford has endorsed David Irving as a historian and argued the charges of Holocaust denial laid against Irving are unjust, stating Irving has not denied that "millions were killed deliberately" by the Nazi government. [23]
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The Troubles were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it is sometimes described as an "irregular war" or "low-level war". The conflict began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed to have ended with the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Although the Troubles mostly took place in Northern Ireland, at times violence spilled over into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe.
James Craig, 1st Viscount CraigavonPC PC (NI) DL, was a leading Irish unionist and a key architect of Northern Ireland as a devolved region within the United Kingdom. During the Home Rule Crisis of 1912–14, he defied the British government in preparing an armed resistance in Ulster to an all-Ireland parliament. He accepted partition as a final settlement, securing the opt out of six Ulster counties from the dominion statehood accorded Ireland under the terms of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty. From then until his death in 1940, he led the Ulster Unionist Party and served Northern Ireland as its first Prime Minister. He publicly characterised his administration as a "Protestant" counterpart to the "Catholic state" nationalists had established in the south. Craig was created a baronet in 1918 and raised to the Peerage in 1927.
Unionism is a political tradition on the island of Ireland that favours political union with Great Britain and professes loyalty to the British Crown and constitution. As the overwhelming sentiment of Ireland's Protestant minority, following Catholic Emancipation (1829) unionism mobilised to keep Ireland part of the United Kingdom and to defeat the efforts of Irish nationalists to restore a separate Irish parliament. Since Partition (1921), as Ulster Unionism its goal has been to maintain Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom and to resist a transfer of sovereignty to an all-Ireland republic. Within the framework of a 1998 peace settlement, unionists in Northern Ireland have had to accommodate Irish nationalists in a devolved government, while continuing to rely on the link with Britain to secure their cultural and economic interests.
Plan Kathleen, sometimes referred to as the Artus Plan, was a military plan for the invasion of Northern Ireland by Nazi Germany, sanctioned in 1940 by Stephen Hayes, Acting Irish Republican Army (IRA) Chief of Staff.
The Society of United Irishmen was a sworn association in the Kingdom of Ireland formed in the wake of the French Revolution to secure "an equal representation of all the people" in a national government. Despairing of constitutional reform, and in defiance both of British Crown forces and of Irish sectarian division, in 1798 the United Irishmen instigated a republican rebellion. Their suppression was a prelude to the abolition of the Irish Parliament in Dublin and to Ireland's incorporation in a United Kingdom with Great Britain. An attempt to revive the movement and renew the insurrection following the Acts of Union led to an abortive rising in Dublin in 1803.
The Emergency was a state of emergency in the independent state of Ireland in the Second World War, throughout which the state remained neutral. It was proclaimed by Dáil Éireann on 2 September 1939, allowing the passage of the Emergency Powers Act 1939 by the Oireachtas the following day. This gave sweeping powers to the government, including internment, censorship of the press and correspondence, and control of the economy. The Emergency Powers Act lapsed on 2 September 1946, although the Emergency was not formally ended until 1976.
Brendan Peter Simms is a Professor of the history of international relations in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge.
James Anthony Lane is an Irish republican and socialist from Cork. He was a central figure in left-wing politics in Cork city during the 1960s to late 1980s and involved in many campaigns. He was also influential in republican circles nationally and a well known advocate of socialist republicanism of a Marxist-Leninist hue.
There are a number of alternative names for Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland consists of six historic counties of Ireland, and remains part of the United Kingdom following the independence of the other twenty-six counties as the Irish Free State in 1922. In addition to, and sometimes instead of, its official name, several other names are used for the region. Significant differences in political views between unionists and Irish nationalists are reflected in the variations of names they use for the region. A proposal to change Northern Ireland's legal name to Ulster was seriously considered by the UK and Northern Ireland Governments in 1949 but in the end, the name "Northern Ireland" was retained.
Ian Adamson OBE was an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) politician and paediatrician, who was the Lord Mayor of Belfast from 1996 to 1997. He was a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly (MLA) for East Belfast from 1998 to 2003.
Mount Stewart is a 19th-century house and garden in County Down, Northern Ireland, owned by the National Trust. Situated on the east shore of Strangford Lough, a few miles outside the town of Newtownards and near Greyabbey, it was the Irish seat of the Stewart family, Marquesses of Londonderry. Prominently associated with the 2nd Marquess, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Britain's Foreign Secretary at the Congress of Vienna and with the 7th Marquess, Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, the former Air Minister who at Mount Stewart attempted private diplomacy with Hitler's Germany, the house and its contents reflect the history of the family's leading role in social and political life in Britain and Ireland.
The Ulster Volunteers was an Irish unionist, loyalist paramilitary organisation founded in 1912 to block domestic self-government for Ireland, which was then part of the United Kingdom. The Ulster Volunteers were based in the northern province of Ulster. Many Ulster Protestants and Irish unionists feared being governed by a nationalist Catholic-majority parliament in Dublin and losing their links with Great Britain. In 1913, the militias were organised into the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and vowed to resist any attempts by the British Government to impose Home Rule on Ulster. Later that year, Irish nationalists formed a rival militia, the Irish Volunteers, to safeguard Home Rule. In April 1914, the UVF smuggled 25,000 rifles into Ulster from Imperial Germany. The Home Rule Crisis was interrupted by the First World War. Much of the UVF enlisted with the British Army's 36th (Ulster) Division and went to fight on the Western Front.
The British and Irish Communist Organisation (B&ICO) was a small group based in London, Belfast, Cork, and Dublin. Its leader was Brendan Clifford. The group produced a number of pamphlets and regular publications, including The Irish Communist and Workers Weekly in Belfast. Τhe group currently expresses itself through Athol Books with its premier publication being the Irish Political Review. The group also continues to publish Church & State, Irish Foreign Affairs, Labour Affairs and Problems.
In Ireland, the two nations theory holds that Ulster Protestants form a distinct Irish nation. Advocated mainly by Unionists and loyalists, who used it as a basis for opposing Home Rule and, later, to justify the partition of Ireland, it has been strongly criticised by Irish nationalists such as John Redmond, Éamon de Valera, Seán Lemass and Douglas Gageby.
The Aubane Historical Society (AHS) is a historical society of amateur historians based in Millstreet, County Cork in Ireland, focusing on local history and the Irish revolutionary period. Brendan Clifford and Jack Lane, members of both the AHS and British and Irish Communist Organisation (BICO), grew up in the Aubane area of north Cork. The AHS has published numerous pamphlets on local history matters, often in relation to the Home Rule politician William O'Brien, the novelist Canon Patrick Sheehan, and the local poet Ned Buckley. According to Jack Lane, the AHS was originally intended to be a local history organisation, but later expanded into the role of opposing the "revisionist" movement in Irish history. The Society has been highly critical of Peter Hart, whom it accuses of falsifying interview material, with denunciations of Roy Foster, Brian Hanley, Paul Bew, and Henry Patterson. The AHS regularly attacks Hubert Butler and Elizabeth Bowen, whom it claims acted as a British spy in Ireland during the Second World War and hence lacking any Irish identity. AHS has worked with some writers who might be seen as representing a more traditional republican perspective, including Desmond Fennell, Brian P. Murphy osb, Eoin Neeson and Meda Ryan.
Thomas MacNevin was an influential Irish writer and journalist, who died under "peculiarly sad circumstances" in a Bristol asylum.
The Cork Free Press was a nationalist newspaper in Ireland, which circulated primarily in the Munster region surrounding its base in Cork, and was the newspaper of the dissident All-for-Ireland League party (1909–1918). Published daily from June 1910 until 1915, and weekly in 1915–16, it was the third of three newspapers founded and published within a decade by William O'Brien MP. It developed a unique approach to the national question and to the social issues of the day, with a pronounced conciliatory view to achieving Home Rule for the whole of Ireland. It displayed a favourable attitude towards the Sinn Féin movement. Its main rival newspapers were the Cork Examiner and the Freeman's Journal.
Samuel Smyth was a Northern Irish loyalist activist. A founder member of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) he was the early public face of the movement as the organisation's spokesman, and he later became involved in the group's attempts to politicise. He was assassinated by the Provisional IRA as part of the Troubles. Author Steve Bruce described Smyth as the "sometime editor of the Ulster Militant and a loose cannon who enjoyed an exciting and erratic relationship with the UDA".
Denis Liddell Ireland was an Irish essayist and political activist. A northern Protestant, after service in the First World War he embraced the cause of Irish independence. He also advanced the social credit ideas of C. H. Douglas. In Belfast, his efforts to encourage Protestants in the exploration of Irish identity and interest were set back when in 1942 his Ulster Union Club was found to have been infiltrated by a successful recruiter for the Irish Republican Army. In Dublin, where he argued economic policy had failed to "see independence through," he entered the Seanad Eireann, the Irish Senate, in 1948 for the republican and social-democratic Clann na Poblachta. He was the first member of the Oireachtas, the Irish Parliament, to be resident in Northern Ireland.
The Irish Political Review is a monthly Irish magazine dedicated to Irish politics and history. It is known for its criticisms of historians associated with the "revisionist" view of Irish history, especially Peter Hart and Roy Foster.
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