Category Archives: Journalism

On reading opposing newspapers in Ireland, 1922 & 1888

During his spring 1922 reporting trip to Ireland, American journalist Frederick Palmer made a stop in the recently partitioned Northern Ireland. While traveling from Dublin to Belfast, he made this observation about Irish newspaper readers:

When you find that one fellow passenger in a compartment on a railway train is reading the London Morning Post with grim satisfaction and another is reading the Republic of Ireland with shinning eyes, it is folly to start a debate between them in the hope that it will result in an amicable agreement. The Morning Post is the organ of the “die hard” British Tories … As for the masses of southern Ireland, the Morning Post believes that they belong to a slave race that should be eternally ruled by their landlords for their own good.

It refers to the republican Dail Eireann as a ‘menagerie’ and predicts that Mr. Collins and Mr. De Valera will end their differences in an orgy of fratricidal ruin and disorder. And it is doing that best that it can to promote this outcome.

Compared to the violence and abusive performance of the Morning Post, which smacks of the gutter, the Republic of Ireland preserves relatively an aristocratic calm and the manners of gentlefolk. The Republic of Ireland is the organ of the De Valera movement. I have been caught in a railway compartment with both irreconcilable sheets in my possession and the stares at sight of this awful inconsistency moderated as my fellow passengers comprehended that I was one of those mad Americans from whom ignorance of local customs and any eccentricity might be expected.

Readers of both papers believe all that they read in their organs with a faith which none of us at home has in the editorials laid before us on our breakfast and dinner tables.[1]“So Erin Drifts Into War”, Kansas City Star, March 26, 1922, and other papers in April 1922.

The passage reads like a faint homage to the American journalist William Henry Hurlbert, who visited Ireland 34 years earlier. In his book, Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American, Hurlbert wrote of his Jan. 30, 1888, arrival at Kingstown (Dún Laoghaire since 1920). There, a dockside news vendor named Davey was described as “a warm nationalist, but he has a keen eye to business, and alertly suits his cries to his customers.” Recognizing the conservative Member of Parliament from North Tyrone traveling with Hurlbert, Davey “promptly recommended us to buy the Irish Times and the Express as ‘the best two papers in all Ireland.’ But he smiled approval when I asked for the Freeman’s Journal also.”[2]William Henry Hurlbert, Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American. [New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1888.] 38. The first two papers were unionist; the third moderately nationalist.

The Republic of Ireland, which debuted a few weeks before Palmer’s 1922 arrival, folded the following year, at the end of the Irish Civil War. The Freeman’s Journal, founded in 1763, closed in 1924. In London, the Morning Post was sold to the Daily Telegraph in 1937 and the former title disappeared from newsstands. 

See my Ireland Under Coercion, Revisited series, which explored Hurlbert’s book. For more about the Republic of Ireland, see January 1922: U.S. press on Irish newspaper news.

References

References
1 “So Erin Drifts Into War”, Kansas City Star, March 26, 1922, and other papers in April 1922.
2 William Henry Hurlbert, Ireland Under Coercion: The Diary of an American. [New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1888.] 38.

U.S. press on the rise and fall of the Paisley dynasty

UPDATE:

Mervyn Gibson, grand secretary of the Orange Order, has said the poor performance of Northern Ireland’s unionist parties in the July 4 general election “could have been a lot worse for unionists, it wasn’t too bad. But there is a lot of work to do to promote the union.” As Twelfth parades stepped off across the province, he told the Belfast Telegraph there is “massive growth in Orange activity across the country.” This claim is suspect, according to nationalist Irish News columnist Brian Feeney. He writes the Orangeism’s “ageing membership is a fraction of what it was fifty years ago. Many marchers can’t manage the distance of their parades. Instead of a manifestation of the power of unionism ‘the Twalf’ is Exhibit A of what has happened to unionism.” … Northern Ireland’s Secretary of State Hilary Benn attended a Twelfth parade in County Fermanagh one day after meeting Irish Tánaiste (deputy PM) Micheal Martin in County Down. “I see my job as being a friend to all, beholden to none, but an honest broker in Northern Ireland,” said Benn of the newly empowered U.K. Labour party.

ORIGINAL POST:

Ian Paisley Jr.’s defeat in the United Kingdom elections marks the first time in 54 years that the family will not represent Northern Ireland’s North Antrim constituency at Westminster. The Rev. Paisley Sr. entered Parliament in June 1970, then 15 months later founded the militant Democratic Unionist Party. Now, the DUP’s loss of two other seats in the July 4 election means it is no longer the largest or dominant party among 18 representatives from Northern Ireland.

Paisley’s defeat has been called “a political earthquake,” one that reveals division among those who seek to maintain Northern Ireland’s union with Great Britain. It comes as Northern Irish Protestants begin their annual July 12 Battle of the Boyne commemorations. It will worth watching to see if unionism’s troubles manifest at this year’s marches and bonfires. (See update above.)

The election result sent me to U.S. newspaper databases[1]Newspapers.com and ProQuest. to review coverage of Paisley Senior’s rise to political power early in the Troubles.

Paisley Sr. in 1970.

The firebrand preacher was named in the U.S. press as early as 1951, when Religion News Service reported on the St. Patrick’s Day formation of the Free Presbyterian Church.[2]“Presbyterian Church Inaugurated In Ulster”, RNS via Public Opinion, Chambersburg, Pa., March 31, 1951. More widespread coverage of Paisley began in 1962, when the Associated Press reported that Italian police had detained him and two other Protestant preachers from Northern Ireland for distributing pamphlets in St. Peter’s Square to protest a meeting of the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council.

Paisley did not surface in the New York Times until 1966, when he was mentioned in 14 stories, mostly about his incarceration for unlawful assembly and related rioting in Belfast. In covering that year’s Twelfth marches, the Times American-born correspondent Dana Adams Schmidt reported that Orangemen were “divided over a form of religious and political extremism known as Paisleyism. … (He) has gained an avid following with emotional tirades against the Catholic Church, against the ecumenical movement and against the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Capt. Terence O’Neill.”[3]”A Divided Northern Ireland Celebrates The Battle Of The Boyne”, New York Times, July 13, 1966. “Dana Adams Schmidt, Reporter Based In Europe and Mideast, 78”, New York Times, … Continue reading

Paisley had already developed a relationship with the namesake founder of the Christian fundamentalist Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The university bestowed Paisley with an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree, and Jones visited the Free Presbyterian Church in Belfast in October 1966. The American preacher told the Irish congregation that the United States and the United Kingdom had in common “the same biased press.”[4]“Jones Charges British, U.S. Press Biased”, Associated Press via The State, Columbia, S.C., Oct. 28, 1966. Paisley’s namesake first son was born in December 1966.

Dynasty begins

By the time he was elected to Parliament four years later, Paisley Père was a fixture in U.S. press coverage of Northern Ireland. He was described as “Northern Ireland’s answer to Alabama’s George Wallace. … Both men possess formidable oratorical talent, and both speak—with varying degrees of subtlety and fervor—to the deep-seated fears of many people.”[5]“Paisley Alters 20th Century”, Marvin Kupfer of Newsweek Features via Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y., June 30, 1970.

Paisley joined the House of Commons months after Catholic civil rights crusader Bernadette Devlin won a Mid Ulster by-election to become the youngest woman elected to Westminster. The 21-year-old claimed the seat in London, unlike traditional Irish republican abstentionists.

“These are the two symbols of Northern Ireland today … the Socialist martyr, hope of despairing Catholics … (and the) ordained apostle of right-wing reaction, arch-sectarian, defender of Protestants who feel their world and its values crumbling away,” wrote one correspondent.[6]”The Rebel In Armagh Jail, The Hater In The Pulpit”, Anthony Carthew of the Daily Mail, London, via the New York Times, Aug. 9, 1970. Another said she was “a rabblerouser, Castro in a miniskirt” while he was “a rank demagogue and an embryo Fascist.”[7]”Bernadette Devlin, Rev. Ian Paisley Symbols of N. Ireland Polarization”, Edwin McDowell in the Arizona Republic, Sept. 14, 1970. McDowell later worked for the Wall Street Journal and the … Continue reading Noted U.S. conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr. worried that “Paisleyism is more important than Paisley, and would most likely survive him. … If Paisleyism triumphs, Northern Ireland will disintegrate.”[8]Buckley’s July 1970 column was widely published in U.S. papers.

Paisley Jr. in 2020.

Northern Ireland did disintegrate into bloodshed, which lasted until the late 1990s. As it turned out, Paisley had a longer and more successful political career than Devlin. But he eventually moderated his position enough to lead the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness. (Alabama’s Wallace also moderated his politics later in his career.)

Dynasty ends

Paisley Sr. retired from politics in 2011, and he died three years later. Paisley Jr. replaced his father at Westminster in 2010, and was re-elected three times. He was defeated by 450 votes this month by Jim Allister, leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice, which split from the DUP in 2007 as a more hardline party. Since his loss, Paisley refused to join the DUP’s call for unionist unity, and he has dodged the press.

The end of the Paisley dynasty rated only two paragraphs in the New York Times‘ online roundup of the U.K. election. It was the paper’s first mention of the family since the father’s death a decade ago. Most U.S. media outlets have ignored the fall of the house of Paisley.

References

References
1 Newspapers.com and ProQuest.
2 “Presbyterian Church Inaugurated In Ulster”, RNS via Public Opinion, Chambersburg, Pa., March 31, 1951.
3 ”A Divided Northern Ireland Celebrates The Battle Of The Boyne”, New York Times, July 13, 1966. “Dana Adams Schmidt, Reporter Based In Europe and Mideast, 78”, New York Times, Aug. 26, 1994.
4 “Jones Charges British, U.S. Press Biased”, Associated Press via The State, Columbia, S.C., Oct. 28, 1966.
5 “Paisley Alters 20th Century”, Marvin Kupfer of Newsweek Features via Press and Sun-Bulletin, Binghamton, N.Y., June 30, 1970.
6 ”The Rebel In Armagh Jail, The Hater In The Pulpit”, Anthony Carthew of the Daily Mail, London, via the New York Times, Aug. 9, 1970.
7 ”Bernadette Devlin, Rev. Ian Paisley Symbols of N. Ireland Polarization”, Edwin McDowell in the Arizona Republic, Sept. 14, 1970. McDowell later worked for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
8 Buckley’s July 1970 column was widely published in U.S. papers.

Post-treaty Ireland’s brief ‘nationalist happiness’

Col. Frederick Palmer, a veteran American war correspondent, sailed into the Queenstown harbor on Feb. 2, 1922. His use of the town name that honored Victoria’s 1849 visit drew a quick correction from “an Irishman on board my steamer,” Palmer later reported. The passenger informed him the name was changed to Cobh with the establishment of the Irish Free State. The correspondent used the anecdote to open his exploration of “how it feels for the Irish to be free, and what the Irish are going to do with their freedom.”

Palmer told his U.S. readers: “It is from the people by the way-side that one gets the real story of Ireland today. They would not be Irish if they did not know how to talk. An Irishman can tell more in a sentence than some people can in a book.”

Col. Frederick Palmer, about 10 years before his 1922 trip to Ireland.

As he waited for the tender to take him to shore, Palmer, 48, stood 5-foot, 9-inchs tall under “brown-gray” hair; a “long oval” face, “fair” complexion, and “prominent” chin, with gray eyes behind glasses, in the parlance of his U.S. passport.[1]1921 Passport application. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; NARA Series: Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 – March 31, 1925; Roll #: 1478; Volume … Continue reading He had accumulated more than two decades of reporting from conflict zones: the Greco-Turkish War of 1897; the Philippine-America War of 1899-1902; the Boxer Rebellion in China (1900); the Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902); the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905); the Balkans in 1912; Mexico City in 1914; and the First World War.

As a New York Herald correspondent before the Great War, Palmer earned what today would be an $800,000 annual salary. But he gave it up to become what he called “the pioneer press censor and general utility public relations” man with the American Expeditionary Force.[2]John Maxwell Hamilton, Manipulating The Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda [Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2020], 110, 237. Other top American journalists had joined the Wilson administration: George Creel, Charles Edward Russell, and Ray Stannard Baker, among others. Only Palmer earned a military rank.

As he arrived in Ireland, Palmer’s 1921 exploration of international conflicts, The Folly of Nations, was drawing positive press reviews in America. In one passage of the 400-page book, he wrote:

If the Irish had relied upon propaganda, would they have won concessions from the British government? They have proved that when a people are in the exalted mood to offer blood sacrifice, even in the era of the machine gun and rapid-firing artillery, there is no preventing the progress of a sniping warfare, with the connivance of the masses, from month to month and from year to year.[3]Frederick Palmer, The Folly of Nations [New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1921] 197.

It was not the correspondent’s first visit to Ireland. “I had seen it in the old days of Redmond and Healy, and again two years ago (1920) under the reign of terror when the faces of all the people were gray and the Sinn Fein leaders proscribed. I had always thought of the Irish as at heart the kindest of peoples, generous of impulse as they were obliging and civil of manner. Confirmation of that view is complete after the severest of tests.”[4]“People Of Ireland Get Down To The Task Of Learning Gaelic”, The Toronto Star, Feb. 27, 1922. Story dated Feb. 10, 1922. The same story appeared in other papers at later dates with later … Continue reading

Later in his opening piece, Palmer continued:

There is something in the smile on all the Irish faces, in the light in Irish eyes worth coming from afar to see. It is happiness, sheer nationalist happiness; the happiness glowing out of great depths, over a dream come true after hundreds of years of waiting and striving. It is enough for the men and women in the streets of the towns and in cottage doorways from Bantry Bay to Donegal that the British are going. People who live faraway in the back country, and who doubt if it really can be true, journey to the railroad stations to watch the passing of the ancient enemy, and meanwhile bear themselves in a way that amounts to fine dignity—a finer dignity than some of the other people who have recently achieved nationhood have shown.”

The Buffalo Times, March 12, 1922.

For six weeks Palmer traveled Ireland “end to end” from his base at the Shelborne Hotel in Dublin. His six-part series for the New York Evening Post was distributed to other U.S. and Canadian newspapers under the title “Building The Irish Free State.” The stories appeared in newspapers through April, the datelines changed to appear more recent than it really was.

Palmer devoted most of his reporting to interviewing the now divided pro- and anti-treaty Irish leaders, who faced a general election in mid-June. He described Eamon de Valera as “the voice for another man’s words,” insisting “the real power behind him is Erskine Childers, who is not Irish in blood, manners or training.” Further, Palmer continued, “the driving force behind Childers himself is Mrs. Childers. She does not appear in public. There is no mention of her in the press, as there is of Miss MacSwiney, the sister of the martyr mayor of Cork; or Mrs. O’Callaghan, the wife of the martyr mayor of Limerick, and other female extremists.”[5]“Silent, Frail Little Englishman And Boston Wife Real Force Behind Valera, Says Palmer”, The San Francisco Journal and Daily Journal of Commerce, April 16, 1922, and other papers before and after … Continue reading [6]Mary Alden “Molly” Childers, nee Osgood, was a native of Boston. Her husband was executed by Free State forces in November 1922. “Of all the men I ever met, I would say he was the … Continue reading

The next time Palmer disembarked from a liner was in mid-March at New York City. He told a dockside reporter: “What Ireland needs now more than anything else perhaps is a sturdy and quick development of her industries. The people realize this and are striving to bring it about. They want the Irish in America to come back home and with capital and brain power (to) assist in building up the country. When I left Ireland there was a project underway for big development in the harbor of Queenstown.”[7]“Free Staters Will Win, Say Frederick Palmer”, New York Tribune, March 21, 1922.

Palmer had already forgotten the name change to Cobh. And the deepening rupture among Irish republicans would soon spoil the country’s brief nationalist happiness.

References

References
1 1921 Passport application. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington D.C.; NARA Series: Passport Applications, January 2, 1906 – March 31, 1925; Roll #: 1478; Volume #: Roll 1478 – Certificates: 135500-135875, 29 Jan 1921-31 Jan 1921. Cedric “Arriving Passengers” List, Queenstown, Ireland, February 2, 1922. The National Archives in Washington, DC; London, England, UK; Board of Trade: Commercial and Statistical Department and Successors: Inwards Passenger Lists; Class: Bt26; Piece: 715; Item: 45.
2 John Maxwell Hamilton, Manipulating The Masses: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of American Propaganda [Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 2020], 110, 237.
3 Frederick Palmer, The Folly of Nations [New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1921] 197.
4 “People Of Ireland Get Down To The Task Of Learning Gaelic”, The Toronto Star, Feb. 27, 1922. Story dated Feb. 10, 1922. The same story appeared in other papers at later dates with later datelines.
5 “Silent, Frail Little Englishman And Boston Wife Real Force Behind Valera, Says Palmer”, The San Francisco Journal and Daily Journal of Commerce, April 16, 1922, and other papers before and after this date.
6 Mary Alden “Molly” Childers, nee Osgood, was a native of Boston. Her husband was executed by Free State forces in November 1922. “Of all the men I ever met, I would say he was the noblest,” de Valera declared.
7 “Free Staters Will Win, Say Frederick Palmer”, New York Tribune, March 21, 1922.

U.S. opinion on Ireland, 1919: the view from Rome

Msgr. John Hagan

Monsignor John Hagan became rector of the Pontifical Irish College in Rome during the Irish War of Independence. The County Wicklow native, who had been vice-rector of the Catholic seminary since 1904, succeeded Michael O’Riordan in late 1919. Both priests were staunch Irish nationalists. Hagan was in close contact with Irish separatists and used the May 1920 beatification of Oliver Plunkett (1625-1681) as a propaganda coup that became known as “Sinn Féin Week in Rome.”

In summer 1919, shortly before O’Riordan’s death, Hagan drafted an article for Vatican officials that sketched his views on Irish affairs abroad since the end of the First World War. Below are excerpts on how public support for Ireland in the United States was unleashed after the November 1918 armistice. It is unclear whether any of Hagan’s material was ever published. Reader beware: the monsignor wrote sprawling sentences.

Till the signing of the armistice, and indeed for some months after, it could with truth be asserted that outside Ireland there was no such thing as an Irish question, or if there was anything in the shape of feeling on the matter it was one of hostility or indifference or coolness. … Even in the United States where the program of Irish independence had always reckoned millions of supporters, sympathy had been dimmed considerably after the (spring 1917) intervention of that country in the European arena; and naturally enough English propaganda had left no stone unturned to foster feelings of hostility or indifference, partly by the old methods of defamation, partly by periodic discoveries or inventions of alleged German plots, and partly by making it appear that as far as England was concerned there was no difficulty in the way of a solution of the Irish question and that if any difficulty existed it was due to the failure of the Irish themselves to formulate anything in the shape of a substantial claim supported by practical unanimity. …

(In the United States) public expression of opinion could be cooled by the ardor of war, and could be retarded or perverted by English control of the ocean cables, and could be rendered impossible by an iron discipline imposed on the country by President (Woodrow) Wilson and an army of English propagandists, but only as long as hostilities lasted. The moment hostilities ceased the previous attitude of indifference or aloofness gave way as if by magic to an outburst of enthusiasm and to a loud-voiced demand that to Ireland first of all should be applied the principles in defense of which the President had led his country into war. As early as December (1918) the country was ablaze; and a series of meetings, culminating in a huge gathering of the Friends of Irish Freedom at Philadelphia, brought the United States into line and led to an active program which has admittedly brought Ireland out of the purlieus of a simple question of English domestic policy into the forefront of international considerations affecting the immediate outlook and the future good understanding that has to be arrived at if England is to face the financial and commercial burthens arising out of the five years’ struggle that is just drawing to a close.

In the 10-page typescript, Hagan also described the activities of the American Commission on Irish Independence; Bishop Michael Gallagher of Detroit’s outspoken view on the Irish question (quoted extensively); and Eamon de Valera’s then month-old tour of the United States, including his July 13, 1919, address in Chicago (also quoted extensively). Hagan’s papers have been digitized by Georgetown University. I’ll have more about this valuable source in a future post.

In 1926 Hagan moved the Irish College at the Church of St Agata dei Goti to its present site on the Via dei S.S. Quattro. Photo from my April 2024 visit. (I got inside the gate.)

On war reporting and trauma, then and now

PERUGIA, Italy–At the International Journalism Festival, the psychological toll of war reporting vies for attention with the role of fact checking in this record “Year Elections” and the fast-developing impacts of artificial intelligence. A few presentations here on conflict coverage provided contemporary perspectives on my work about early 20th century American journalists in revolutionary Ireland.

BBC journalist and author Fergal Keane, born in London and raised in Ireland, spoke about his latest book, The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear, and PTSD. As described by the Guardian, “The book traces a line back through the alcoholism that killed his father to his ‘family history of hunger and war’ in Ireland: the famine of the 19th century and then the bloody fight for independence. His grandmother received an injured veteran’s pension for her role in a conflict as brutal as those Keane went on to cover.[1]Emma Graham-Harrison, “The Madness by Fergal Keane review–the BBC correspondent on conflict, fear and PTSD, The Guardian, Nov. 17, 2022.

At #IJF24, Keane described his decades of war coverage as the manifestation of an addictive personality. “There’s never such a feeling of being alive in places with such a close presence of death,” he said. And unlike other addictions, this one came with more praise and awards the longer he continued; unlike the alcoholic or drug addict who engenders growing disgust and disdain with each episode of bad behavior.

“A big war is the biggest story in the world,” Keane said. “It’s natural for a journalist to want to be there.”

Fergal Keane and BBC colleague Richard Colebourn seated opposite their images on the screen at the International Journalism Festival, Perugia, Italy, on April 19.

But by January 2020, recently named the BBC’s Africa chief, Keane experienced three breakdowns and landed in a locked psyche ward. “You don’t’ notice that your (mental) defenses have crumbled,” he said.

Writing The Madness became part of his “reckoning,” Keane said. He quoted the poet Robert Lowell, “Why not say what happened.”[2]Epilogue” from Day by Day, 1977. That’s also natural for journalists.

In his 2017 book Wounds: A Memoir of War and Love, Keane detailed how his grandmother, Hannah Purtill, her brother, Mick, and his friend Con Brosnan, in North Kerry took up arms against the British Army. The trauma she suffered manifest itself as depression he observed as a boy in the 1960s. Keane also described the revolutionary period as “a heroic myth.”

Not every war correspondent gets PTSD, Keane noted. He also was sympathetic to journalists, especially freelancers, who do not have access to the same high-level mental health care that he accessed through as a BBC employee. Keane praised the younger generation of correspondents as being more “emotionally literate” about such care, and he scoffed at the notion there was ever a “golden age” of war reporters.

At another #IJF24 war coverage panel, the BBC’s Jeremy Bowen, a veteran of 20 conflict zones, said he doesn’t care for the phrase war reporter. “I prefer journalist,” he said. “You are there to be accurate, fair, and empathetic. You are there to work out the truth.”

Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said domestic journalists in conflict zones, including the so-called “fixers” who assist visiting correspondents, usually have the toughest challenges during a war. “You are reporting on your family and friends, and you can’t go home.” She said social media reporting has made these domestic reporters more visible targets to hostile regimes or insurgents.

From left to right, Jeremy Bowen of the BBC; moderator Janie DiGiovanni of The Reckoning Project; photographer Ron Haviv; and Jodie Ginsberg of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Image on the screen is Haviv’s work from Bosnia.

References

References
1 Emma Graham-Harrison, “The Madness by Fergal Keane review–the BBC correspondent on conflict, fear and PTSD, The Guardian, Nov. 17, 2022.
2 Epilogue” from Day by Day, 1977.

Subscription appeals for Irish newspapers, part 2

The Joseph P. Tumulty papers at the Library of Congress contain a folder labeled “Support for Ireland.” Among other items it contains subscription solicitations for two newspapers: The Irish Statesman and The Irish Press. Details about the Statesman found in part 1 of this post .

Discussion of the 1930 solicitation letter for the Irish Press, below, must note this newspaper was the Dublin daily published from September 1931 until May 1995; not the same-name weekly published in Philadelphia from March 1918 until May 1922. Irish republican leader Éamon de Valera was the driving force behind the Irish paper, which he tried to finance with funds from the 1920 Irish bond drive in America. The bond was promoted by the earlier Irish Press, which had direct ties to Sinn Féin separatists fighting to establish the Irish Republic. The Philly weekly sided with de Valera, then touring the United States, in the bitter split among Irish republicans in America.

Once the 1921 treaty with the United Kingdom was accepted, the new Irish Free State filed a lawsuit to collect $6 million in bond funds still held in America. De Valera and other Irish republicans counter sued for the money. The matter dragged through U.S. courts until 1927. Finally, the New York Supreme Court ruled the money should be returned to the original bond subscribers. That’s when de Valera began his effort to encourage the bond holders to sign over their returns to help him launch the new Irish Press.

The main appeal of the enterprise, as seen in the letter above, was to free Ireland from the “mental bondage” of British newspapers. But the paper also would become a powerful tool for de Valera’s political ambitions. U.S. journalist, author, and social activist Charles Edward Russell chaired the American committee assisting De Valera’s effort. Another committee member, Chicago lawyer John F. Finerty, had litigated the bond case on behalf of the Irish leader and active in the de Valera-created American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic.

Another ally, Joseph McGarrity, who published the first Irish Press, suggested that De Valera try to interest newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst in establishing a new paper in Ireland, according to David McCullagh. “A Hearst newspaper would be sympathetic to de Valera’s politics–but it would be out of his control. No more was heard of the idea.”[1]David McCullagh, De Valera, Vol. 1, Rise 1882-1932.[Dublin: Gill Books, 2017.] 397.

The Pittsburgh Press, Feb. 22, 1930.

The newspaper effort brought De Valera back to America several times between 1927 and 1930. He visited numerous big city papers to inspect press equipment and develop a roster of potential editors. But his main mission, McCullagh says, was to learn how to keep both financial and editorial control of the newspaper that finally debuted in 1931.

The story of the Irish Press American Corporation, incorporated in Delaware, and the parent company in Dublin, is long and convoluted. The effort was hampered by the crash of the U.S. economy, the Great Depression. Details of how many shares were turned over, and how much money was raised, are disputed. “However, it is safe to conclude that the fundraising operation in the United States fell short of the total set for it,” David Robbins wrote in his 2006 thesis.[2]David Robbins, “The Irish Press, 1919-1948, Origins and Issues.” MA in Communications theses, Dublin City University, June 2006.

It is unclear in Tumulty’s papers at the Library of Congress whether he ever subscribed to the Irish Statesman or the Irish Press. The subscription return forms are blank, but could be a additional copy of forms that he completed and returned.

References

References
1 David McCullagh, De Valera, Vol. 1, Rise 1882-1932.[Dublin: Gill Books, 2017.] 397.
2 David Robbins, “The Irish Press, 1919-1948, Origins and Issues.” MA in Communications theses, Dublin City University, June 2006.

Subscription appeals for two Irish newspapers, part 1

I’ve been reviewing the Joseph P. Tumulty papers at the Library of Congress, mostly correspondence from his work as secretary (chief of staff) to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. I also viewed a post-White House folder labeled “Support for Ireland.” Among other items, it contained subscription solicitations for two newspapers: The Irish Statesman and The Irish Press. Details of the former begin below the image. I’ll write a separate post about the latter.

Note the incorporation of the Irish Statesman with the previously established Irish Homestead. Sir Horace Plunkett founded the latter agricultural journal in 1895. Poet and painter George William Russell, known as AE, joined the effort, first as a contributor, later as editor until the Homestead folded in 1918. Plunkett also published an earlier iteration of the Statesman in 1919-1920 as the official organ of his Irish Dominion League, which favored keeping Ireland within the British Empire rather than a separate southern state and partitioned north.

Plunkett remained a director and contributor to the new Statesman, with Russell named as the editor. The weekly’s editorial philosophy considered the Irish in Ireland as one people, regardless of the 1921 partition. The “15th September” referenced in the brochure was the journal’s first issue in 1923. The brochure also boasted the Statesman‘s roster of contributors:

A subscription to the Statesman cost $4 annually, or 10 cents per copy, in America. The journal’s debut received limited attention in the U.S. press. In Wisconsin, a Capital Times editorial praised the its efforts to find “a just balance between the interests of rural and urban communities” to be “worth emulating” in the American Middle West.[1]”The Irish-Statesman And Our Farmer-Labor Problem”, The Capital Times, Madison, Wisc., Oct. 12, 1923. The 1920 U.S. Census had revealed for the first time that more Americans lived in cities than rural areas. In heartland states like Wisconsin, the fledgling Farmer-Labor Party attempted to make common cause among agricultural and industrial workers who had suffered in the First World War economy.

In Miami, Florida, hardly a hub of Irish America, the Herald praised Russell, insisting his talents ensured the new paper would be “read all over Europe and America,” according to the unbylined op-ed. “It has the same power that any small country paper has anywhere in America, but he has made it the voice of a race and of a chaotically struggling people, which is of tremendous significance.”[2]No headline, A8 editorial page, The Miami Herald, Oct. 28, 1923.

Back in Ireland, the outlook of the Taum Herald (County Galway) was less optimistic. “Being thoughtful, giving food for reflection, it is not likely we fear, to be too popular in a community where so little serious thinking is being done, and it is because we know and appreciate its good qualities and merits that we dread its ultimate success.”[3]No headline, page 2, The Taum Herald, Sept. 29, 1923. The Statesman lasted for only seven years.

“The paper bids farewell to its readers’ because—and only because—the people in Ireland who are prepared to back their opinion of its merit with a weekly payment of threepence, are not sufficiently numerous to give reasonable hope of its becoming even approximately self-supporting,” Plunkett wrote when the journal folded April 12, 1930. The weekly “finally succumbed to the apathy of the Irish reading public,” professor of Irish literature Frank Shovlin later concluded.[4]Frank Shovlin, “The Irish Statesman, 1923-1930” in The Irish Literary Periodical 1923–1958, [Kiribati: Clarendon Press, 2003].

The 1923-1930 run of the Statesman is available at the Library of Congress. The National Library of Ireland holds numerous resources related to the paper, including Edward Doyle Smith’s 1966 Survey And Index of the Statesman, with an extensive discussion about Russell.

NEXT: The Irish Press

References

References
1 ”The Irish-Statesman And Our Farmer-Labor Problem”, The Capital Times, Madison, Wisc., Oct. 12, 1923.
2 No headline, A8 editorial page, The Miami Herald, Oct. 28, 1923.
3 No headline, page 2, The Taum Herald, Sept. 29, 1923.
4 Frank Shovlin, “The Irish Statesman, 1923-1930” in The Irish Literary Periodical 1923–1958, [Kiribati: Clarendon Press, 2003].

Catching up with modern Ireland

March was a newsy month for Ireland, including the failed constitutional referendum, a sour St. Patrick’s Day visit to the White House, and the shock resignation of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Here’s some coverage and commentary that has caught my attention:

Varadkar resignation, Harris ascension, Donaldson resignation

Varadkar

The messiah complex: Neither Leo Varadkar, nor anyone else, could be a ‘savior’ of Fine Gael, Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times (Ireland)

“He was able, articulate and – in the twin crises of Brexit and the Covid pandemic – reassuringly adept. But his great talent was for riding out contradictions, not for resolving them. He managed to walk the line between politician and anti-politician, conservative instincts and an increasingly progressive society. …”

Update 1: The governing Fine Gael has selected Simon Harris as its new leader. There was no opposition to him within the party. At 37, he is set to become Ireland’s youngest taoiseach on April 9; a year younger than Varadkar when he took the job in June 2017. Some are already calling Harris the “TikTok Taoiseach.”

Harris was first elected to the Dáil in 2011 and managed Ireland’s COVID-19 response as minister for education, research and science. He has dismissed calls for a general election before the scheduled contest in March 2025.

Update 2: Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, abruptly resigned March 29 after being charged with sexual offenses. Leaders of the Northern Ireland say the development will not impact the power-sharing government, but it has rocked Irish and British politics.

Reverse reads on referendum result

Ireland’s Snakes of Secularization“, National Catholic Register (USA)

There is a very understandable desire among the faithful in Ireland — and elsewhere — to interpret this month’s rejection by Irish voters of a pair of “woke” constitutional amendments as a decisive Catholic inflection point. According to this narrative, the unexpected and overwhelming rejection of these amendments represents a watershed moment in terms of reversing the tide of secularization that has washed over Irish society in recent decades. Unfortunately, that’s probably untrue. … The hostility of voters toward the progressive inanities expressed by both amendments can’t be taken as a sign that secularism is now generally on the wane in Ireland — or that a concomitant rebirth of Catholic faith is broadly underway.

Ireland and the terrible truth about wokeness“, Spiked (England)

Ireland has become hyper-woke. Its elites are fully converted to the gender cult. They promote the ruthless policing of ‘hate speech’, which really means dissent. They damn as ‘far right’ anyone who raises a peep of criticism about immigration. Their culture war on the past is relentless. Woke is the state religion of Ireland now. And if you thought Catholic Ireland was sexist, irrational and illiberal, just wait until you see what wokeness unleashes. … The irony is too much: in ostentatiously distancing themselves from bad old religious Ireland, the elites have created a system of neo-religious dogmas that makes the Catholic era seem positively progressive in comparison.

Green (and blue) at the White House

Biden

Can the Irish Get Biden to Change His Policies on Gaza?, New York (USA)

Many of the actual Irish — the ones who came over from Éire for this annual celebration of the shamrock diaspora — spent the afternoon trying to talk sense to Biden over his Gaza policies, and his confounding (to them) support of Israel’s relentless military response to Hamas. … The Irish have a long-held kinship with the Palestinians. They see parallels between their struggle against Israel and the Irish struggle against British rule. They see in the famine that is gripping Gaza today a tragic echo of their own. This has been true for decades, but never more so than now. … So just beneath all the stout suds, these were the fault lines on display at Biden’s St. Patrick’s Day party this year: his assumption that the Irish were his friends and that so were the Israelis. But it’s no longer so easy to be both.

Three more stories:

  • Britain is appealing a ruling against its Legacy Act, which gives amnesty to ex-soldiers and militants involved in Northern Ireland’s “Troubles.” Victims’ families have challenged the law, and a Belfast court in February ruled it breached human rights. The Irish government is separately contesting the law before the European Court of Human Rights.
  • Rose Dugdale, who left a life of wealth to become a partisan activist fighting for Irish independence in the 1970s, died in Dublin, aged 82.
  • The Central Statistics Office launched the Women and Men in Ireland Hub, ” which features data from the CSO and other public sources broken down into six main themes: Gender Equality, Work, Education, Health, Safety & Security and Transport.

“Reporter vs. reporter” reprised

I’m reprising my “Reporter vs. reporter” series, below, while I work on a few other projects. This series details the 1920 feud between American journalists Carl Ackerman of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, and Charles Grasty of The New York Times, as they covered the war in Ireland. Happy to hear from readers with additional information. Enjoy. MH

Ackerman

Grasty

Part 1, President’s envoy?

Part 2, London confrontations

Part 3, Irish-American reaction

Part 4, Behind the scenes

St. Patrick’s Day 1924 in the U.S. press: serious to saccharine

UPDATE: The Washington Post describes how Irish anger over Gaza may make for a tense White House St. Patrick’s Day at this year’s bilateral gathering. The New York Times explains “the deep roots of Ireland’s support for Palestinians.”

ORIGINAL POST:

March 1924 brought the first St. Patrick’s Day in a decade that the Irish were not fighting on the continent or at home; first against the British, then against each other. “We have been loosed from the charted world that preceded the Great War into the trackless jungle that has followed it,” wrote Irish author James Stephens. Below are some examples of how the U.S. press cast the first post-war celebration of Ireland’s patron saint. The content ranged from the serious to the saccharine.

Cosgrave’s message:

Many U.S. papers published Irish President William T. Cosgrave’s call for unity and peace, which was distributed by International New Service. The Irish needed to follow the spirit of St. Patrick to “form our deliberations and regulate our actions so that differences of opinion may always be discussed without rancor, as they may be adjusted without violence,” Cosgrave wrote. He offered the “hand of welcome to our separated countrymen in the northeast.” This referred to the six partitioned counties of Northern Ireland, “which refused to accept the Free State and have an independent government,” the wire service explained. [1]”President Cosgrave Appeals To Irishmen” Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, March 17, 1924, and other papers.

Stephens’ essay:

Irish author James Stephens wrote a column that began: “There is nothing more astonishing than the speed with which Ireland has forgotten her subjection.” Later in the piece, he continued: “To claim that we wish to go our own way implies that we know the way we wish to go and that we are willing and eager to take the path. But we have been loosed from the charted world that preceded the Great War into the trackless jungle that has followed it.”[2]”Sees Wall Of Brass Erected About Ireland”, The Buffalo (N.Y.) News, March 17, 1924.

Magazine cover:

March 13, 1924, Life magazine cover by Fred G. Cooper. The issue featured other illustrations related to St. Patrick’s Day, including “Ireland and Peace” by Charles Dana Gibson.

Tumulty’s revision:

Joseph Tumulty, who had been a top aide to former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, wrote a front-page story for The Boston Globe to rehabilitate Wilson’s reputation among the Irish. Wilson had died six weeks earlier, aged 67, after years of illness and paralysis from an October 1919 stroke. He had ostracized Tumulty near the end of his life in a political dispute.

Wilson favored home rule for Ireland up until the start of the First World War. But he became increasingly agitated with Irish republicans from the 1916 Easter Rising through the 1919 Paris peace conference. He especially resented the efforts of John Devoy, Daniel Cohalan, and other Irish American activists to scuttle the League of Nations.

Tumulty waved off the division:

The only disparity of opinion between Woodrow Wilson and those who ardently advocated for Ireland’s freedom in this country was as the method of approaching this great goal. It was the case of different men seeing the same thing in a different way and approaching a settlement of it from different angles. … He did not feel himself openly to espouse the cause of Ireland for, to have done so might have added difficulties to an already chaotic world situation.[3]”Wilson Ideals Freed Ireland”, The Boston Globe, March 17, 1924.

Coolidge’s draw:

At the White House, U.S. President Calvin Coolidge made the first draw of the 23-nation Davis Cup lawn tennis tournament. He picked Ireland, “much to the amusement of those gathered for the ceremony, who immediately recalled that today was St. Patrick’s Day,” according to a wire service report. Ireland lost its match against France, played in Dublin later that year.

St. Patrick’s platitudes:

But the most common content found in American newspapers were saccharine poems, prose, and party ideas about St. Patrick and the Irish. The full-page newspaper display below is from the fantastically named Unterrified Democrat of Osage County, Missouri. The American contributors include Mary Graham Bonner, an author of children’s books; Willis F. Johnson, a New York Tribune and North American Review editor and author; and Blanche Elizabeth Wade, a poet and author.

Double click the image for closer viewing. You will not find anything related to the previous decade of trouble in Ireland.

Page of St. Patrick’s Day content in Unterrified Democrat (Osage County, Missouri), March 13, 1924.

References

References
1 ”President Cosgrave Appeals To Irishmen” Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal, March 17, 1924, and other papers.
2 ”Sees Wall Of Brass Erected About Ireland”, The Buffalo (N.Y.) News, March 17, 1924.
3 ”Wilson Ideals Freed Ireland”, The Boston Globe, March 17, 1924.