Anthony Coughlan Festschrift - Village Magazine

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July-August 

NTHONY (TONY) Coughlan, born in Cork in

1936, could – while studying English, Histor y

and Economics at UCC, engaging in student

politics, founding a branch of the Labour

Party – hardly have foreseen the intensely

personal political career that lay ahead of him, even if

it was largely chosen and self-fashioned.

Degree secured in Cork, he moved to London

where he studied for a postgraduate degree in

Social Policy at the University of London.

There he joined the Connolly Association and

befriended the English republican Mar xist and biog-

rapher of James Connolly and Liam Mellows,

Desmond Greaves, who would influence him

strongly. In 1961 Coughlan moved to Dublin where

he entered his academic career as lecturer in Social

Policy in TCD.

Introduction

In the Introduction to the book, Michael Quinn, one

of its three editors, writes:

“In more recent decades – in the era of the Euro-

pean Union and the near-global domination of

transnational capital – with the National Platform

Tony has consistently held that the most important

political task for all democrats is to join in inter-

national campaigns in defence of the nation state.

He has tirelessly campaigned against the central-

ising and unaccountable EU bureaucracy;

articulating instead the alternative case for a

Europe of independent and co-operating nation

states as the most effec tive means to impose social

control on private capital and multinational corpo-

rations. Most notable, perhaps, has been Tony’s

A Festschrift

for Anthony

Coughlan: Essays

on Sovereignty and

Democracy

Edited by Frank

Keoghan, Ruan

O’Donnell and

Michael Quinn.

Iontas Press,

Maynooth, 2018.

In this book 18 essays written by associates of Coughlan in his political

activities bear on the man himself, those activities and related

matters. Reviewed by Desmond Fennell

Anthony Coughlan Festschrift

Anthony Coughlan.

Pic: Eamonn Farrell/

Photocall Ireland

POLITICS

July-August 

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prominent role in decisive legal

actions at the hightest courts in

defence of Irish constitutional

rights, and his leadership in

campaigns against the adoption

of a succession of EU treaties

into Irish law. Even as we edi-

tors and the essayists combined

to fashion this festschrift, Tony

continues in the vanguards of

the Brexit and Irexit debates

and developments, and has

actively engaged with the

State’s Citizens’ Assembly on

the question of how referenda

can best be conduc ted in a dem-

ocratic manner”.

The essays

The book divides the 18 contributed essays into four groups. In

the ﬁrst, ‘Assessing Anthony Coughlan’, his Danish friend MEP Jens-Peter

Bonde tells of their collaboration and occasional disagreement as they

dealt on EU matters with their respective national parliaments. Column-

ist Deaglán de Bréadún writes that, though he values Coughlan as a

thinker, he is more comfortable with his views on Northern Ireland – he

is referring to Coughlan’s active support for the Civil Rights movement

in its time – than on the EU. Professor Ray Kinsella, measuring Coughlan’s

republicanism against ancient Greek standards and those of Wolfe Tone

and Connolly ﬁnds it not wanting. And he declares Coughlan’s writings

on the EU, Brexit and Irexit entirely free of xenophobia.

In the second group, “Constitutional Imperatives” Patricia McKenna

narrates how, during the Maastricht Treaty referendum she won a case

in the Supreme Court to prevent the State again using public funds to

promote its preferred side in a referendum. Séamas O Tuathail tells his

story as a member of the legal team that acted for Raymond Crotty

during the victory in the Supreme Court, which ruled that ratiﬁcation of

the Single European Act by the State required approval by referendum.

Finally in this group. Deputy Thomas Pringle recounts why he became

concerned that the European Stability Mechanism might transfer

signiﬁcant ﬁnancial control from Ireland

and the steps he took in the hope of pre-

venting this.

Eoin O Murchú

My eye is caught further down the line

by what looks like a profound essay by

Eoin O Murchú ‘Historical Roots of Our

Surrender to the New Imperialism’. Delv-

ing back into Ireland’s nineteenth-century

history, O Murchú points out that, unlike

most other European countries and the

North of Ireland, most of Ireland in that

century did not, could not, develop an

industrial, capital-owning bourgeoisie.

Then when Fianna Fáil in the 1930s spon-

sored semi-state-run industries in the

hope that this would lead to a growth of

private industr y, the State made the mis-

take of not breaking the link with Sterling

so as to have a self-managing Irish ﬁnan-

cial system. When we joined the EEC we

replaced as controlling power the Bank

of England with the European Bank. We

have not yet tried full independence.

Along with fulﬁlllng its festschrift role by publishing its eighteen

essays, the book contains a variety of other pieces long and short on

ﬁgures who have contributed to the anti-EEC movement; for example,

a piece on Ray Crotty’s contribution by Séamas O Tuathail. The book

presents the marching army of the anti-Brusseleers complete; a boon

to old friends, with many good photos of individual marchers

Looked at from another angle, we have in these pages a large amount

of the Irish political thought of the last sixty years; the part constitut-

ing a non-violent-nationalism directed against a new deprivation of Irish

sovereignty, this time by a composite Continental European power. It is

important to see this latterday intellectual and legal resistance in the

context of the proud history of Irish nationalism – a stance and resist-

ant action thrust upon us by refusals of neighbours - with the

collaboration sadly of some of our own – to let us simply manage our

own affairs in our own way.

Missing Populist Party?

Noting from the evidence of this

new book all the effort made

against this latterday imperialism,

one must also note its failure hith-

erto. Recent events on the Continent

show us that to make the Brussels

power or the accommodating home

power shift even slightly, you need

some frightening force. You need on

your side what respectable people

call a ‘populist’ party: a large

number of rough, angry people. Without that your objection to the pre-

vailing imperialism is dismissed as intellectuals pursuing an outdated

nationalism.

From 1976 to 1982 Dr Desmond Fennell taught History and Politics at

University College, Galway and from 1982 to 1993 English Writing at the

Dublin Institute of Technology. His book s and journalism have dealt with

Irish and international culture and politics, and with history, travel, reli-

gion and literature.

Lassitudinous

digging

Coughlan makes the

case for a Europe

of independent and

co-operating nation

states as the most

effective means to

impose social control

on private capital

and multinational

corporations

Ray Kinsella declares

Coughlan’s writings

on the EU, Brexit and

Irexit entirely free of

xenophobia