Its near 700 pages are very interesting, and I’d recommend them to patients, pensioners and prisoners spared the distractions of parenthood or work.
Garret was a brilliant man, and the success of Aer Lingus over some decades was largely his doing. He was also an educator teaching statistics in Rathmines Tech and Economics in UCD. He used invite pupils to his home for discussion of his subjects and take them back to their homes late into the night. A cultivated, civilised gentleman.
Up to a point. Even with statistics he could be slippery as an eel, as when he sought to invalidate Sinn Fein’s 1918 popular mandate to establish a Sovereign Republic which his father fought for in 1916 and risked his life to maintain until December 1921.
To Garret’s credit, as Taoiseach in 1981 he refused to bow to American pressure. The Soviets, either deliberately or accidentally shot down a South Korean airliner, killing all its passengers. The Americans demanded that Shannon Airport cease servicing Aeroflot, the Soviet Airline. Not only was that a money-spinner for Shannon, but the Soviets supplied all Shannon’s Aviation Fuel at a bargain price.
On the other hand Garret believed that Ireland should have joined NATO in 1949 and stayed in it. Most NATO countries engaged in filthy repressive wars in their colonies long after 1949 or embarked on murderous and illegal aggression ever since. To its credit Ireland both at the League of Nations and the United Nations pursued Rational and Ethical policies to prevent wars, defend the rights of colonised peoples, and to curtail the spread of nuclear weapons.
Garret was rightly proud of his father’s role in the general Editorship of The Irish Bulletin. Its main compiler Frank Gallagher, and Robert Brennan who had helped found it, were on opposite sides to Desmond Fitzgerald in the Civil War, as was Lawrence Ginnell who had first started it. Gallagher in “The Four Glorious Years” and Brennan in “Allegiance” told the story of the Bulletin recalling the good work of FitzGerald.
Garret wrote “In November 1919 my father launched an underground daily newspaper, the Irish Bulletin, which was published from different locations without a break until the truce of July 1921. His insistence that nothing be published that could not be stood over in every detail infuriated many of his colleagues who were less meticulous in their concern for the truth,,”
The IRISH BULLETIN continued publication until the signing of the “Articles For Agreement” in December 1921.
It was launched, but not as a daily sheet by Lawrence Ginnell, Dail Director of Publicity in May 1919. Ginell was a formidable character who had been an MP in the British House of Commons, broke with the Redmondite party and organised a successful agrarian “Ranch War” from 1906 to 1909. He was a lawyer. He took the Republican side in the “Civil War”. He died, aged 71 in April 1923.
Garret’s blanket smear on his father’s colleagues has not a single detail that can be stood over in ANY detail. When Desmond Fitzgerald was arrested by the Brits, Erskine Childers took over from him as General Editor.
Childers took the Republican side in the “Civil War” and got shot for it.
A small revolver given him as a present by Michael Collins was the pretext for his elimination.
Comments are closed.