Conor Cruise O'Brien
From Free net encyclopedia
Conor Cruise O'Brien (born 3 November, 1917) is an Irish politician, writer and academic.
O'Brien was born in Dublin, Ireland to nominally Catholic parents, Frank and Kathleen (Sheehy) O'Brien. His father made his wife promise to send Conor to Sandford Park School, despite the inevitable objections of the local Catholic clergy. His mother had three sisters, all of whom lost their husbands in the watershed year of 1916. One of his aunts was Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, wife of executed pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington.
Conor was educated at Sandford Park School and Trinity College Dublin, neither of which was Catholic or nationalist in ethos. His first wife was Christine Foster, who came from a Belfast Presbyterian family. They were married in a registry office in 1939, which was contrary to Catholic teachings. His college education led to a series of appointments in the public service, most notably in the Department of External Affairs (now Foreign Affairs).
All of this made O'Brien something of an increasingly anomalous iconoclast in post-1922 Irish politics, particularly in the context of government by Éamon de Valera's Fianna Fáil (which best translates as "Soldiers of Destiny") party, since those who did not conform to Catholic mores were generally not preferred in the public service appointment process at the time.
In the Dept. of External Affairs, O'Brien served as a diplomat under the pro-physical force republican, Seán MacBride, the Nobel Peace Laureate of 1974. McBride was the son of John MacBride and Maud Gonne. O'Brien was particularly vocal on the anti-partition issue during the 1940s and came to world prominence as a special representative to Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General of the United Nations, when, in 1961, Katanga tried to secede from what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Under pressure from a range of international interests, he eventually resigned and wrote To Katanga and Back (1962) which is still considered a classic of both modern African history and the inner workings of the United Nations.
From 1962 to 1965 he was Chancellor of the University of Ghana. Following this he was the first Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities at New York University until 1969.
Cruise O'Brien returned to Ireland and was elected to Dáil Éireann as a Labour Party candidate. In 1973 he was appointed Minister for Posts & Telegraphs. During this period he developed a deep hostility to militant Irish republicanism. He extended and vigorously enforced censorship of the media, banning members of Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army from being interviewed on radio or television. He boasted of keeping a "black book" of names of people who wrote letters to the daily newspapers and appeared to him to be pro-Irish republicanism. His stance caused controversy within and outside the government. In 1977 Cruise O'Brien lost his Dáil seat, however he was elected to Seanad Éireann. The following year (1978) he became editor of The Observer newspaper.
He held visiting professorships and lectureships throughout the world, particularly in the United States, and controversially in apartheid South Africa. He coined the acronym GUBU on foot of a statement by Charles Haughey. It's interesting to note that the same Charles Haughey is sometimes reputed to have been the first person to have used the famous description of Cruise O'Brien's role in Irish politics as being "like a lighthouse in a bog, brilliant but useless". This can be taken either as a compliment or insult depending on your point of view.
Up until 1994 Cruise O'Brien was pro-vice chancellor of the University of Dublin. In 1996 he joined the United Kingdom Unionist Party and secured a seat in the elections of May 1996 and was a member of that party's delegation to the peace process talks, during which he praised the approach of Ian Paisley. He was forced to resign from the party in 1998 after writing an article encouraging unionists to embrace the idea of a United Ireland to thwart Sinn Féin.
Conor Cruise O'Brien's many books include The Great Melody (1992), his magisterial biography of Edmund Burke (a figure with whom he feels a great personal affinity, as Burke is apparently one of his ancestors), and his Memoir: My Life and Themes (1998). He is now married to his second wife, the Irish-language writer and poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi, five years his junior, who was the daughter of the former Fianna Fáil TD and Tánaiste, Seán MacEntee; they have a son and a daughter, both adopted.