It might sound a little daft, but I was truly shocked by some of the details O’Toole gives about the Republic in the two decades after the end of World War II. Ireland might have rid itself of the largely hated British elite running the country, but they were now subject to the rule and whim of a far smaller and just as ruthless home-grown elite.
This consisted partly of a hugely reactionary, wholly uncaring Roman Catholic church seemingly unconcerned with the real spiritual welfare of the Irish people that was almost exclusively intent in keeping the nation under its yoke
and preserving its monopoly on Irish thought. We are now also aware of the, often rampant, sexual abuse young children - mainly boys - which continued with impunity and which was well-known to the church authorities who cynically posted an offending paedophile priest to a new parish.
In cahoots with the RC church was an equally cynical Irish establishment led by the ‘elder statesman’ Éamon de Valera who was hell-bent on snuffing out any hint of progress and enlightenment which might have led to the amelioration of the circumstances of the Irish people.’
You were ‘shocked’, you ask? I certainly was shocked: by draw-dropping figures and statistics quoted by O’Toole. Until the mid-20th century a huge percentage of rural Irish had to live in appalling conditions, with no electricity and internal sanitation, and after WWII the total population of the Republic fell by around three million to just over two million.
De Valera and his essentially right-wing nationalistic cronies were so intent on keeping Irish life and culture ‘pure’ that, essentially, they would not allow any foreign investment in Ireland, not that the pitiful educational standards under de Valera’s regime made such investment at all attractive to foreign firms. In short, there were hardly any jobs for anyone.
The upshot was that young Irish men and women were in despair as to what to do with themselves and saw no future in their home country and were forced to emigrate, most usually to Great Britain - oh, the irony! - to find work where all they were offered was manual labour. This was for many years the era of signs in English households looking to rent out rooms proclaiming ‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’.
It would be futile here to repeat what O’Toole writes except to say that the emergence of the Republic from a backward economic basket-case to the reasonably successful self-respecting nation we know now took many, many years and there were severe setbacks along the way.
Not least of these was the crookery of men such as Charles Haughey, common knowledge throughout Ireland - a man who was paid comparatively modest salary as PM owned his own Ireland and lived well beyond his mean - and others which damaged the Republic a great deal.
Even the apparent economic success of the Republic to this day, as reflected in its official GDP figures, is pretty much a chimera. Rather too much of the GDP income is not at all Irish: although the money made by the many foreign firms who partly settled in Ireland and who employ a great many Irish and is thus counted as part of ‘Ireland’s GDP’, most of it flows out of Ireland.
Even Ireland’s membership of the EU (the EEC, then EC as were) was not as straightforward as it might seem: for several years Ireland was keen to join up, aware of the benefits of membership, but Brussels was certainly not half as keen: what, the thinking was, did a backward backwater west of Britain in the Atlantic have to offer the EEC / EC in return? Would it be a healthy market for European goods? Didn’t much look like it.
But anyway many in Ireland felt that the nation’s future would be better served by allying with the United States, though others also warned that such an alliance would certainly not be a relationship of equals.
To conclude, it is important too stress that O’Toole is exceptionally even-keeled: he does not (or certainly does not seem to have) and axe to grind.
One attraction of his book is that in a very informative and effective way he leavens his account of recent Irish history with details of his own life. But note: this is done quietly, subtly and serves only to highlight the development of Ireland into the country we know today.
O’Toole was born in 1958, a year when, he suggests, Ireland very slowly began its pitifully slow emergence from what, frankly, can only be described as the tyranny of the Roman Catholic church and its allies in political circles.
This book is thoroughly recommended to everyone who, like me, wants a balanced, detailed, informative and interesting account of how modern Ireland developed. NB The chapter on, and other mentions of, ‘The Troubles’ in the north of the island are also very useful and once again O’Toole deals an even hand.
In cahoots with the RC church was an equally cynical Irish establishment led by the ‘elder statesman’ Éamon de Valera who was hell-bent on snuffing out any hint of progress and enlightenment which might have led to the amelioration of the circumstances of the Irish people.’
You were ‘shocked’, you ask? I certainly was shocked: by draw-dropping figures and statistics quoted by O’Toole. Until the mid-20th century a huge percentage of rural Irish had to live in appalling conditions, with no electricity and internal sanitation, and after WWII the total population of the Republic fell by around three million to just over two million.
De Valera and his essentially right-wing nationalistic cronies were so intent on keeping Irish life and culture ‘pure’ that, essentially, they would not allow any foreign investment in Ireland, not that the pitiful educational standards under de Valera’s regime made such investment at all attractive to foreign firms. In short, there were hardly any jobs for anyone.
The upshot was that young Irish men and women were in despair as to what to do with themselves and saw no future in their home country and were forced to emigrate, most usually to Great Britain - oh, the irony! - to find work where all they were offered was manual labour. This was for many years the era of signs in English households looking to rent out rooms proclaiming ‘No blacks, no Irish, no dogs’.
It would be futile here to repeat what O’Toole writes except to say that the emergence of the Republic from a backward economic basket-case to the reasonably successful self-respecting nation we know now took many, many years and there were severe setbacks along the way.
Not least of these was the crookery of men such as Charles Haughey, common knowledge throughout Ireland - a man who was paid comparatively modest salary as PM owned his own Ireland and lived well beyond his mean - and others which damaged the Republic a great deal.
Even the apparent economic success of the Republic to this day, as reflected in its official GDP figures, is pretty much a chimera. Rather too much of the GDP income is not at all Irish: although the money made by the many foreign firms who partly settled in Ireland and who employ a great many Irish and is thus counted as part of ‘Ireland’s GDP’, most of it flows out of Ireland.
Even Ireland’s membership of the EU (the EEC, then EC as were) was not as straightforward as it might seem: for several years Ireland was keen to join up, aware of the benefits of membership, but Brussels was certainly not half as keen: what, the thinking was, did a backward backwater west of Britain in the Atlantic have to offer the EEC / EC in return? Would it be a healthy market for European goods? Didn’t much look like it.
But anyway many in Ireland felt that the nation’s future would be better served by allying with the United States, though others also warned that such an alliance would certainly not be a relationship of equals.
To conclude, it is important too stress that O’Toole is exceptionally even-keeled: he does not (or certainly does not seem to have) and axe to grind.
One attraction of his book is that in a very informative and effective way he leavens his account of recent Irish history with details of his own life. But note: this is done quietly, subtly and serves only to highlight the development of Ireland into the country we know today.
O’Toole was born in 1958, a year when, he suggests, Ireland very slowly began its pitifully slow emergence from what, frankly, can only be described as the tyranny of the Roman Catholic church and its allies in political circles.
This book is thoroughly recommended to everyone who, like me, wants a balanced, detailed, informative and interesting account of how modern Ireland developed. NB The chapter on, and other mentions of, ‘The Troubles’ in the north of the island are also very useful and once again O’Toole deals an even hand.
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