When Northern Irish civil rights activist Bernadette Devlin came to America - VIDEO

Bernadette Devlin

Earlier this month, the Irish Film New York festival showcased a series of provocative films from Ireland, including Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey. 

The 90-minute documentary explores the rise and evolution of Northern Ireland firebrand Bernadette Devlin, who famously rose to prominence in 1969 after the Battle of the Bogside in August which brought The Troubles to the attention of the international community.

Devlin is best known for being elected to Parliament at the ripe old age of 21 and for her ceaseless commitment to justice in the North. 

What is often forgotten is that Devlin made an eventful trip to America back in 1969.  She was hoping to drum up support for the cause of civil rights in Northern Ireland, just as Eamon de Valera and John Devoy had done on earlier trips to the U.S. 

Instead, Devlin exposed deep rifts between Irish Catholics in America and in Ireland.

It seemed a match made in heaven.  Devlin was passionate and articulate.  She was a telegenic lass from the “old country” with an accent that surely charmed every third generation Irish American who heard it.

But this was 1969, arguably one of the craziest years in American history.  It was a time for choosing sides. 

And it turned out that Devlin and Irish Americans, more often than not, found themselves on opposite sides of the issues of the day.

Irish Americans wanted to hear about the dirty Brits and how the Protestants in the North were oppressing Irish Catholics in Belfast and Derry.  Devlin, of course, was more than willing to talk about this as she visited pubs, AOH centers and Knights of Columbus halls from New York to San Francisco.

But things got complicated when Devlin broadened her definition of injustice. When she began talking about how the struggle for civil rights for African Americans in the U.S. was just as important as the fight for Catholic civil rights in the North … well, Devlin found herself on the receiving end of some cold, hard stares.

Devlin ended up criticizing Irish American kingmaker Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Those who had initially raised money for Devlin, once they heard her controversial views, gave the money to American charities instead.

By 1969, many Irish Americans had begun questioning their centuries-old alliance with the Democratic Party.  Many viewed late sixties developments from hippie culture to skyrocketing crime rates as signs of American decline. 

Many Irish Americans grew increasingly conservative.  They blasted liberals such as New York City Mayor John Lindsay, and some even supported segregationist George Wallace for president.

This, even as they supported radicals like Devlin in Northern Ireland.

The result?

“People who were wearing ‘Dump Lindsay’ buttons and who...had supported George Wallace for president” came out to support the radical socialist Devlin.

This description (of a Devlin fundraiser in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn) comes from one of the more fascinating reports on Devlin’s U.S. trip - a 12-page article which appeared in the January 1970 issue of Harper’s, written by Sara Davidson.

Davidson followed Devlin across America and along the way offers interesting insights, even as she unintentionally manages to offend all involved.  (Was it really necessary to highlight the speech of Brooklyn Irish Americans watching Devlin’s car pass by, who comment, “Why you gotta pick dis street to come down?”)

The article culminates with a Los Angeles rally before a “schizophrenic crowd” consisting of demure white-haired Irish Americans and hippies and radicals who’d come to see the revolutionary from Ireland.

Hey, it was 1969.

Facing questions about whether or not the money she was raising would be used to fund the armed struggle, Devlin cut her American trip short in early September.

Exhausted and frustrated, Devlin apparently found that war-torn Northern Ireland was easier to handle than 1960s America.

CORRECTION: As I noted in last week’s column, Democratic Party officials initially did not accept Timothy Cardinal Dolan’s offer to say a prayer at their convention back in August.  However, as numerous readers noted, Dolan eventually did visit the convention and offer a prayer. My apologies for not mentioning this.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

Here, listen to 'Barricade' from Bernadette: Notes on a Political Journey:

Don’t forget the Irish rabble rousers - 'Activist New York'

Activist New York  exhibition opens at Museum of the City of New York    

The year was 1981.  It was early May, the weather was turning warm, and the New York Yankees were on their way to another World Series – though not before Major League Baseball players went on strike, resulting in a short, strange season.

On May 5, 1981, Irish New Yorkers poured out into the streets when news came out of Belfast that Republican hunger striker Bobby Sands had died. An estimated 10,000 people closed off several blocks in Manhattan near the British consulate. 

On the waterfront, longshoremen called for a one day boycott of British shipping, while others proposed a national boycott of British Airways. Finally, Transit Workers Union head John Lawe called for members to drive with headlights on all day to acknowledge Sands' death.

In these days of Occupy Wall Street and gay marriage, protest and the change it spurs is very much in the news.  So much so that the Museum of the City of New York recently opened a new exhibit called “Activist New York.” 

The exhibit, according to organizers, “explores the drama of social activism in New York City from the 17th century right up to the present. In a town renowned for its in-your-face persona, citizens of the city have banded together on issues as diverse as historic preservation, civil rights, wages, sexual orientation and religious freedom.”

The issues the exhibit explores are undoubtedly important. But it would have certainly added an interesting dynamic to the exhibit if it also explored the way various immigrants have championed their national causes and the way ethnic enclaves around New York responded.

Needless to say, Irish New York rabble rousers have had their share of moments in the “Activist New York” spotlight.

There was, of course, the moment when Sands’ death shed light on the problem of The Troubles in the North.  That was at the start of the 1980s. 

By the end of that turbulent decade, a Belfast fellow named Joseph Patrick Thomas Doherty -- and his many supporters --made Northern Ireland an important issue in the 1989 race to be New York City mayor.

Doherty was arrested while working at a Manhattan bar, accused of serving as an active IRA soldier.
The British wanted him returned to the U.K., and while serving as U.S. attorney in charge of the case, Rudy Giuliani earned many enemies in the Irish community.

That Northern Ireland would become a flashpoint in the 1989 race for New York mayor was unlikely, to say the least.  That year, crime and racial tension were spiraling out of control. 

David Dinkins was aiming to become New York’s first African American mayor.  And yet, both Dinkins and his opponent Giuliani were forced to have “full-fledged policies about the former Irish Republican Army guerrilla,” The New York Times reported at the time, adding that “the 'Doherty issue’ … could sway votes in the mayoral election.”

This, of course, was a testament to Irish organizers harnessing the network of Irish American support across the five boroughs.

Then again, perhaps this should be no surprise because the Irish have been loud and proud members of “Activist New York” for decades.

Many Irish New Yorkers were fierce in their support for the 1916 Easter Rising, and nationalist rallies in venues such as Madison Square Garden attracted upwards of 20,000 Irish American supporters.

Visits by the likes of Eamon de Valera were also popular – and controversial. 

After all, during the World War I era, many criticized the notion of “hyphenated Americans” who could feel loyalty for both Ireland and the U.S.

After World War I, Irish-born activists in New York used their political skills to found the Transit Workers Union. 

The Irish are a particularly interesting study in activism because subsequent visits by nationalist leaders – think Bernadette Devlin in the late 1960s – rallied support in some parts of the Irish American community, but also alienated many others.

So, if you go to visit “Activist New York” at the Museum of the City of New York, realize that it tells a good story. But it is only part of the story.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

The good old days? - Anti-Irish, anti-Catholic bigots and the KKK

Thomas Nast cartoon

It is always interesting, at this time of year, to remind people that cartoonist Thomas Nast – beloved
for more or less inventing our cherished image of Santa Claus – was also a wildly anti-Irish, anti-Catholic bigot.

For proof, see any of his cartoons from the late 19th Century in which the Irish look like apes and Catholics are depicted as crocodiles or other scheming, rapacious beasts.

Nast has been in the news of late because an entity called the New Jersey Hall of Fame has suggested that he perhaps be enshrined in their institution.

Such a situation can make you think about many things, but one thing that comes to my mind is that what we think of as “the good old days” were pretty damned bad.
------------------
READ MORE:
More news articles Irish politics from IrishCentral

Up to 350 Irish priests were likely accused child abusers

Top Irish carols and hymns to get you in the Christmas spirit - VIDEOS
------------------
Oh, without a doubt, we have our problems today.  This is reflected in polls which show that Americans feel about as bad as you can about everything from the economy to Congress.

Along with that, inevitably, comes a feeling that things were once good but we lost something along the way.

Hardly.

Look at politics for a moment.  You bet we have our problems now.  You can say we have a real problem with these boneheaded Tea Party types or these freeloading Occupy Wall Street types.

But that is baby stuff compared to the rough stuff that emerged from the political scene, say, in the 1920s.

In fact, not one but two new books have recently been published about the power and influence of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th Century.  Talk about your fun holiday reading!

The titles are One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s by Thomas R. Pegram and Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-1930 by Kelly J. Baker.

In his review of the two books in The New York Times this past Sunday, National Book Award-winner and Irish American historian Kevin Boyle blunders a bit by more or less comparing the Tea Party to the 1920s-era KKK.

“Imagine,” Boyle wrote, “a political movement created in a moment of terrible anxiety, its origins shrouded in a peculiar combination of manipulation and grass-roots mobilization, its ranks dominated by Christian conservatives and self-proclaimed patriots, its agenda driven by its members’ fervent embrace of nationalism, nativism and moral regeneration, with more than a whiff of racism wafting through it.”

He’s speaking, of course, of the Klan, but leading readers to think of the Tea Party.

Even if you agree with Boyle’s characterization of the Tea Party, to see them as inheritors of the Klan’s  tradition says more about the Tea Party’s current critics than it does about the group itself.

If anything, even if you believe the Tea Party is the new Klan, this shows you how much better off we are today.  After all, there’s no denying certain, maybe even many, Tea Party members have dabbled in race-baiting, class warfare and religious zealotry.

But those things are not central to the philosophy of the Tea Party, as they proudly were to the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s.

The Irish, Italians, Jews, the Vatican.  The Klan vociferously fought against all of these things and more.

As Ken Burns’ recent documentary on Prohibition showed, the Klan was making a final stand for a rural, Protestant America that saw cities as mongrelized bastions of sin.

And when Roman Catholic Al Smith was roundly beaten in the 1928 presidential election, it might have seemed the Klan was going to win.

Perhaps most interestingly, Republicans sat out this fight.  This was an intra-Democratic clash, with the ethnic Tammany Hall wing of the Dems doing battle with the racist, anti-immigrant rural wing of the party.

Yes, the KKK had members on the Supreme Court and in Congress and in state houses across the country. But the Klan was eventually ushered off the national stage.

Their paranoid impulses, of course, stuck around.  We see vestiges of it today all across the political spectrum.

Vestiges are one thing.  Burning crosses are another.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Irish ghosts haunt the presidential campaign trail

Ron Paul. (AFP/Getty Images)

As Martin McGuiness embarks on an Irish presidential race that is sure to resurrect a fair share of ghosts from the past, Americans are also slogging their way through a tough presidential campaign.

Recently, an interesting spat broke out involving a controversial candidate, a current Irish newspaper columnist, and a fascinating yet forgotten pundit from the past.

The next thing you knew, the charges of anti-Semitism and McCarthyism were flying, and it was real hard to tell who the liberal and who the conservative was.

More broadly, there is ongoing confusion about the Irish and their politics in America.  Were they really predominately union-loving Democrats before becoming, predominately (or not) Reagan-loving Republicans?

Perhaps it’s time for you to meet John T. Flynn. Flynn is touted as a great thinker by the presidential campaign of Republican maverick -- or is that kook? -- Ron Paul.

On the campaign trail, Paul touts Flynn’s many controversial books, such as As We Go Marching, The Epic of Freedom and The Road Ahead.

Though Mitt Romney and Rick Perry get all the press, Paul recently placed second in a closely watched Iowa straw poll and often places an impressive third in Republican polls.

The number of folks who remember Flynn is small these days, but he was a towering intellectual figure -- loved and loathed -- in the 1930s and ‘40s.

What did Flynn believe?  Well, that’s where things get complicated.

John Thomas Flynn was born outside of Washington in 1882 to John and Margaret
Donovan Flynn.  As John E. Moser writes in the 2005 book John T. Flynn and the Transformation of American Liberalism, “In good Irish Catholic fashion, (Flynn) was educated in parochial schools.”


Famed for his passionate argument, an intellectual adversary once described him as an “eternal Hibernian in eruption.”
------------------
READ MORE:

Why America still feels so strongly it has lost its way after 9/11


To Obama and the left -civility is a one way street

Green energy stimulus bang for buck costs 5.5 million per job
------------------
Flynn rose to prominence as a basher of the elite and supporter of FDR’s New Deal, which aimed to heal the scars of the Great Depression.  So, Flynn’s a liberal, right?

Well, not quite.  He grew to hate Roosevelt, seeing the president himself as an elite.  He later embraced the rabid anti-Communism of fellow Irish Catholic Joseph McCarthy.

Super-conservative, right?  Well, no, because Flynn clashed with right-wing icon William F. Buckley and bashed military spending as a problem which drove Americans into debt.

He also opposed American military involvement abroad, and was a prominent member of the America First Committee, along with Socialist Norman Thomas and hero-turned-Jew-baiter Charles Lindbergh.  This opened Flynn up to charges of anti-Semitism.

To this day, no one can quite piece the puzzle of John T. Flynn together.

Irish American Newark Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine, for example, is a Paul supporter who has traded barbs with a conservative radio host named Mark Levin.

A recent article in the American Spectator magazine argued, “When a [Ron] Paul supporter like…Mulshine repeatedly zeros in on conservative talk radio host Mark Levin, always dismissing the Jewish Mr. Levin…Mulshine seems to be conjuring the ghosts of Ron Paul’s favorite, John T. Flynn.”

In other words, Mulshine -- and Flynn -- are anti-Semites.

Mulshine would have none of this, noting that he is “as Irish as Paddy’s pig.”

On occasion Mulshine also calls “Sean Hannity…as dumb as a Dublin doorknob.”  That, Mulshine says, “does not make me anti-Irish.”

Perhaps the only tradition John T. Flynn fits neatly into is the very complicated Irish American political tradition.

Like many Irish Democrats, Flynn was raised to be wary of elites. And yet, like Joseph P. Kennedy, his belief (perhaps because they were still insecure Catholic in Protestant America) was that Americans should not sacrifice their lives in foreign wars.  Especially ones which allied them with the British.

Finally, like Joe McCarthy and, yes, even the sainted Bobby Kennedy, anti-Communism was a central tenet for John T. Flynn.

That’s one reason why, in 2000, the fanatically anti-Communist John Birch Society named Flynn, alongside dictators such as Franco and Pinochet, as one of its top 25 heroes.

Interestingly, the fellow who wrote the list for the Birchers was the group’s Brooklyn-born President, a lad named John F. McManus.

Where does that leave us in 2012?  I guess it means that a vote for Ron Paul is a vote for John T. Flynn.

What that means exactly is entirely up to you.