A letter from Anthony J Jordan regarding Professor Roy Foster’s allegations against Major John MacBride, published in Foster’s first volume on the life of W.B.Yeats published in 1997.
Major MacBride, who had led an Irish Brigade, resisting British aggression against the Boers in the Second Anglo-South African War, was shot by the British for his part in the 1916 Rising.
Roy Foster , Carroll Professor of Irish History at Hertford College, Oxford is retiring after some years and is a pillar of the revisionist school” of History.
Those interested in the character and worth of either, or both, the late Major MacBride, and the still active Professor Foster should find Mr Jordan’s letter of interest.
Donal Kennedy.
‘Professor needs to correct the record’
Oxford University Press has published a book of essays to mark the retirement of Professor Roy Foster from the Carroll Professorship of Irish History at Oxford and also to mark his extraordinary career as a historian, literary critic and public intellectual.
However, there remains one unanswered question in a distinguished career which remains to be rectified. It occurred in his 1997 first volume on the life of WB Yeats, The Apprentice Mage. It concerns Major John MacBride, who organised an Irish Brigade to fight with the Boers against the British in the second Anglo-Boer War and who was later one of those leaders of the Easter 1916 Rising in Dublin, executed by the British.
In Foster’s biography he writes of the divorce case Maud Gonne took in Paris in 1905 against her husband Major John MacBride, and refers to ”the catalogue of MacBride’s crimes” listing some details.
This, despite the fact that MacBride faced these allegations, at his own insistence, in the French Court and was acquitted.
This remains a glaring injustice to John MacBride, all the more so given Roy Foster’s reputation. In the intervening years, in my own books on the Yeats/Gonne/MacBride triangle and in person, I have requested Professor Foster to explain or correct his record on this matter. I do so now again at the end of his tenure at Oxford.
Anthony J Jordan
Gilford Road
Sandymount
Foster has always been anti-Irish. He has always championed the unionist/British agenda to the detriment of the Irish struggle for independence. He along with Kevin Myres and their cohorts in government like John Bruton and Shane Ross arrogantly besmirch the names of those who had a bit of backbone and stood up against their oppressor. It’s as simple as that.
Or to put it another way, he holds a different point of view.
I’m not sure you can classify Kevin Myers and Foster as being cut from the same (Union Jack) cloth. Myers, who is probably one of the best journalistic writers (though I disagree with him) pays little heed to objectivity – being as he is as close to Southern Unionist as damn it, whilst Foster in my opinion has written ‘objectively’ (example above excepted) based on an examination of the facts.
Although sharing largely the Republican view of Irish history I dont think it is necessary to denigrate those who dont analyse things similarly – especially when they are clearly outstanding historians like Foster.
Donal,
What are the allegations?
It seems strange that Foster would not correct the record – you might expect that fellow historians comments would be enough to force his hand.
Having said that, if Foster believes the allegations stand up he could include reference to the court case and still suggest that he believes, based on his own review of the evidence, that McBride was ‘guilty’ – and let the readers make up their own mind of the truth of the situation.
He mat well turn up on the Late Late or similar (as he is a bit of a celebrity) and will probably have to explain himself.
Mr Jordan shouldn’t hold his breath.
In fact John McBride was neither directly involved in leading the Rising nor in leadership, having simply “jumped the fence to join the lads” at Steven’s Green. He held no rank at all in the IV, ICA or other bodies.
His execution was simply spite and revenge on the part of the Brits.
In the second Anglo-Boer War he was second in command to an Irish American, Blake, of one of two “Irish Brigades” — neither of which ever numbered more than 300 men. Most Irish joined the Boer commandos.
The men with him were a hard-drinking lot, capable though they were, who could not fit in with the abstemious Calvinist boers.
He was also self-commissioned “Major” in this nevertheless valuable “mini-brigade” work, blowing up bridges to slow the British advance and helping the Scandinavian and German field gun men on the Boer side.
They put on a great show at Spionskop, Dundee and in pinching donkeys laden with mountain guns when the Brits tried to escape the siege of Ladysmith, melding with the Irish British troops.
The Maud Gonne matter was a tragedy, but unfortunately John was a hard drinker in spite of his Major’s swagger. 🙂
But yes, having done the online Trinity period course twice and seeing no balance created, I can only conclude that unionists run the department.