If you read my BLOG “HISTORIC DOCUMENTS?” (20 Oct) I covered two stories. One arose from its front page story for Easter Monday 1966 reporting that 900 veterans of the 1916 Rising (roughly half the total number of insurgents “out” in 1916) were present at the GPO for the Golden Jubilee of its outbreak. Isurmised that a similar proportion of civilians survived in Ireland who remembered Ireland, before, during and after the rising, and that they had many years toreflect on those times. Thus were better equipped to comment on them than “experts” who had not reached the age of reason at the time of the GoldenJubilee. Fifty years later those “experts” appear not yet to have reached that stage of development. For example I cited Fintan O’Toole (born 1958) Fergal (1961) and Seamus Murphy SJ.
The second was a verbatim reprinting of an Editorial in THE IRISH TIMES of 9 July 1969. It was headed “MINUS ONE” and concerned a Catholic who had joined the Ulster Unionist Party but had left, finding it unwelcoming to Catholics.
The Editorial was written with the grace and style of a long gone era but embodied ideas too advanced some people as it “Unionism, like its Siamese twin Orangeism” as “a wholly sectarian and racist duality.” It referred to a hope that there had been that the sectarian deadlock might be broken by the success of the Civil Rights movements and it ended with the prayer that there would emerge “here and there a man of some independence who will resolve to stand out a little more against the tide of ill will and perversion.”
Under its Editor, Douglas Gageby, the Irish Times had doubled its sales since 1963, by coming to terms with the establishment and development of the Irish State and recognising the validity of the lives and interests of the Irish people and not just thei Protestant minority, and committed West Britons.One
of its most distinguished alumni. the Dublin-born Brian Inglis, who cut his journalistic teeth on the paper wrote his memoir “West Briton” so I’m not throwing out an insult. I should however make clear that Ulster Unionist Orangemen are not labelled as West Britons, and only a tiny minority of them read the
Irish Times.
Douglas Gageby was brought up in Belfast, was a Protestant,,studied at Trinity College Dublin, joined the Irish Army as a Private and served as an Intelligence Officer during World War 2, afterwards joining the IRISH NEWS AGENCY directed by Conor Cruise O’Brien and in 1954 became the first Editor of Dublin’s Evening Press the newest title with the Irish Press Group founded by Eamon de Valera.
Gsgeby supported the Civil Rights movement in the North, which campaigned for the voting rights in local elections there to be brought into line with the democratic arrangements established in Britain in 1946. Nationalists and Republicans, Socialists and Liberals in the North of Ireland supported the movement. But the Unionist/Orangeist siamese twins knew that the reforms would greatly reduce their ability to allocate jobs, houses, and contracts to their cronies and clients, end their fifty years monopoly of office at Stormont and that they might some day have to share with, or even cede power to, Catholics,Socialists, Liberals or Republicans and even, horror of horrors, end the connection with England.
At the time Harold Wilson’s Labour Government was viewed favourably by most Irish people as a modernising and benign one. Swinging London, the Scouse/Irish Beatles, Dave Allen and Val Doonican were not considered a threat by anyone in Britain or most people in Ireland.I cannot have been the only one who thought that with a bit of common sense and goodwill Anglo/Irish quarrels and Anglo/Irish wars of centuries were buried forever.
But within weeks of that Editorial the shit hit the fan in the North of Ireland and flew in greater volume and increasing strength for thirty years. And Douglas Gageby was perceived as such a dangerous fellow that he was the subject of a letter marked “SECRET AND PERSONAL” both at the top and at the bottom to Kelvin White of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London from Andrew Gilchrist, the British Ambassadorin Dublin, dated 2nd October 1969 –
“Your letter of September 24th – Major McDowell and No.10 Downing Street.
“2. I had McDowell to lunch today. It is all about something he mentioned to me before, but now he is hotter under the collar about it.
” 3. McDowell is one of five (Protestant) owners of the the Irish Times, and he and his associates are increasingly concerned about the line the paper is taking under its (Protestant,Belfast-born) Editor,Gageby, whom he described as a very fine journalist, but on Northern questions a renegade or
white nigger. And apart from Gageby’s editorial influence, there is difficulty lower down, whereby sometimes unauthorised items appear, and authorised items are left out.
“4. So far (except for last item) nothing new. But McDowell went on to say that he now felt certain that a certain degree of guidance of which lines were helpful and which unhelpful, might be acceptable to himself and one or two of his friends on the Board; this is what he had in mind telephoning to No.10.
“5. Oddly enough I had McDowell in mind in certain conversations I had in London a fortnight ago. His present approach requires rather careful handling and I shall discuss it in London next week. I am writing this letter in case you wish to brief No.10 and assure them that we will do what we can to exploit this opening. I am destroying this correspondence.”
Like in the best “cliff-hangers” I promise to comment further on the curious case of the IRISH TIMES. I remember when film serials were known as follier-uppers. I’ll leave yez in suspenders………………..
Stair faoi cheilt. Brilliant research.
Sean McBride tells a good yarn in his memoirs of this period working with Connor Cruise O’Brien in the Irish Press that quite often he would have to send back the Cruiser’s copy to be rewritten as it was “too Marxist”
How people change, great piece by the way, keep em coming.
Was Gageby not ‘brought up’ in Carrickfergus? He went to Inst, but it had and has an enormous catchment area.