Attacks against Jews in Irish Free State.

Arsemageddon wrote: »

There is a good article on the pogrom in Limerick here. It may have been quote small, but it was a nasty episode.
http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/the-limerick-pogrom-1904/

Our current minister for foreign affairs Charlie Flanagan's father Oliver was a rabid anti-Semite. It's often been suggested that Charlie Flanagan's pro-Israel stance is due to him wanting to atone for his father.

Here's a few quotes from Oliver's first day in the Dail.





http://oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/debates%20authoring/debateswebpack.nsf/takes/dail1943070900009?opendocument

That's some pretty wild & controversial stuff.

The government & church did a good job of keeping it out of the history books.

Well it' not in the history books. You know Ireland was one of the worst countries in Europe for censorship in the 20th century, and I include the eastern Soviet buffer states. And like their Soviet counterparts they were very good at hiding evidence.

This state since the 1930's - late 1980's had been run like a Catholic Theocracy, nothing could be done with the Bishops or a Cadinals approval. Dev himself felt that the arts in Ireland were to be promoted only when they observed the "holiest traditions", but should be censored when they failed to live up to this ideal. Section 31, what they were doing there was what Chomsky called "manufacturing consent".

And people wonder why Protestants didn't want to live a Priest Ridden state.

When you think about it, how the local priest would get info on pretty much your whole life, and if he thought you would be a threat to the state, because you might be a republican communist, socialist, anarchist etc... he reports you to a Bishop. The Church pretty much controlled large aspects of your life that's pretty totalitarian stuff,

Are you denying the Catholic Church played an unusually high role in Irish politics in the last 150 years?

No, of course, I don't have any type of documented evidence, nor do I believe priests & government ministers were meeting in a smokey darkroom going over a list of incidents that could or couldn't be mentioned.

I do believe however the overall influence of the Church & Conservative politicians helped to mould the state in a self-censoring society, a "manufacturing of consent" were incidents like this or the antisemitic diatribes of Olivier Flanagan were not fully appreciated for how horrific or disgusting they actually were, and even still to this day don't seem to be taken seriously, just meh, "he was just a cute hoor" sort of attitude.

Some very good points there, great post.

But I disagree with you fundamentally that the Irish are naturally a conservative people, it is a conservatism driven from the top downwards. They certainly were not conservative during the 1918 - 1924 period. When for example the Mansion House was packed out on the 18th of November 1918, when the Dublin trades council & socialist party of Ireland organized a meeting inside it, to commemorate the one year anniversary of their brave comrades who carried out the Russian Revolution & the establishment of the Russian Soviet Republic with quotes from Trotsky on the flyer. And all the Soviets declared throughout Ireland in creameries, factories, asylums, mines, etc... and it is no coincidence that was a period the Catholic Church was unable to control the mass of poor Irish & working class. It wasn't until after the civil war the Priests & Bishops reinstalled their authority.

Kevin O’Higgins soon after the Irish Civil War (or counter-revolution) bragged “we’re the most conservative revolutionaries to ever see through a successful revolution”. The Free State Speaker of the Dail Michael Hayes who was a centrist himself had the measure of O’Higgins when he said “he didn’t understand it…… what the whole struggle had been about. He reduced it to the notion of the Irish People simply getting a parliament.” He “despised the attitude of protest, the attitude of negation, the attitude sometimes of sheer wantonness and waywardness and destructiveness which…. has been to a large extent a traditional attitude on behalf of the Irish people.” He was determined to cure the patient of the Irish character and establish respect for “the rule of law”. Anyone who’s ever read much on Kevin O’Higgins knows that that is a fair description of him in the early 1920’s.  To establish “law & order” he surrounded himself in the cabinet around ex-Clongowes Boys & member of the Catholic upper professional classes, who could barely conceal their contempt for a semi-lawless but land-hungry peasantry.

The Irish Catholic Church had a number of features to it that helped secure its place in Irish society. The Church here had an aura of an oppressed church & it identified very much with the Irish poor, during the land wars of the late 19th century most of the junior clergy sided with the Land League, and again during the Tan War a lot of priests & even some small few Bishops supported Sinn Fein, (although most priests & Bishops were against the IRA’s guerrilla campaign) even into the period of the early Troubles again junior clergy were at the front of the civil rights marches, some even joined the Provos, like the Claudy Bomber I don't think very much but it is interesting, and even that first Provisional IRA army council was heavily influenced by the Catholic church, Sean MacStofain wrote how he took the Church's line & was against abortion, divorce & gay marriage, Billy McKee was the same, he got pissed off because the Marxist-Leninist IRA leadership banned rosary beads at IRA funerals and the thing McKee became famous for was defending a Catholic Church from a Loyalist mob with UVF gunmen in the mob. So conservativism was even imposed on the most (or one of the most) revolutionary organizations in the country, whose aim was a 32 County Socialist Republic, but they made it clear time & time again that their Socialism had nothing to do with the Soviet Socialism of Russia or China as that evil, Godless blasphemy.

 Contrast the Irish Church with say Spain, where the Church was identified with large landowners & the Monarchy, and during the Spanish civil war it backed Franco & the Fascists, so it's no surprise the CNT/FAI and other Marxists & Anarchists destroyed churches & executed members of the clergy.         The same thing happened in France, the Church was identified with the aristocracy & monarchy, and French revolutionaries set out to destroy all three of them suppressed the Catholic Church and creating the Cult of the Supreme Being. In Ireland, militants were fighting to defend churches and in Spain & France militants were fighting to destroy them.

Irish Nationalism/Republicanism became intertwined with Catholicism, even tho I'm opposed to Ulster Loyalism, when they said Home Rule was Rome Rule, they had a point.

I can't disagree with too much of that.

I do think had the civil War (counter-revolution) not happened & the carnival of reaction that followed partition not taken place, then Irish society would have liberalized itself much sooner (North & South).

That's an interesting point about the famine trauma being expressed through the church, there really was no other national organization like a Social Democratic or Communist party to express it through. The problem with groups like Young Ireland & IRB is that they're underground movements & conspiratorial, there not widespread among the populace, & don't become a nationwide movement until they carry out an action that resonates with the people.

"Michael Noyek, Estelle Solomons and Bob Briscoe spring to mind."

Wasn't one of these lads part of a delegation that went to Moscow to establish diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union & the Irish Republic? I could be wrong but I do remember reading about the Soviet/Republican talks & it mentioned one of the diplomates on the Irish side was Jewish, I also remember reading that a Jewish Irish Republican who was inspired by the IRA campaign, was one of the founders of a Zionist paramilitary group in Mandatory Palestine in the 1940's to carry out attacks against the British regime in Palestine.