The Irish Times: Past and Present

national | history and heritage | event notice Friday April 11, 2008 21:18 by IPR Group

Book Launch, Friday 18th April 2008, 7.30 p.m., Liberty Hall, Dublin. Author: JOHN MARTIN

Main speaker: Conor Lenihan T.D., Minister for Integration

“…a very fine journalist, an excellent man, but on Northern questions a renegade or white nigger”
Those were the words from a conversation with the British Ambassador to Ireland at a lunch meeting in 1969, which he duly reported without delay to his masters at the British Foreign Office. But who said them and to whom did they refer?

The author lays bare the power structure of the newspaper which insists on transparency and openness for all other institutions in Irish life, but draws a discreet veil over its own activities. The Directors of the Irish Times, along with the Editor, have to swear an Oath of Secrecy before a Commissioner for Oaths each year. This book is essential for understanding one of the most important institutions in Irish life and therefore the dynamics of Irish society itself.

This book is a comprehensive review of the history of The Irish Times since its foundation in 1859, drawing on archival records, interviews and other primary sources – including the British Public Record Office. It covers the early development of the newspaper as the organ of Anglo-Ireland, and examines the positions it adopted throughout the turbulent century and a half that followed.

It reveals for the first time the strange legal and financial structures of the newspaper and examines conflicts involving some of its leading personalities.

The recent dramatic resignation of Bertie Ahern makes an analysis of the role of The Irish Times in the democratic life of the country all the more opportune. The newspaper which has insisted on openness and transparency for everyone else appears to keep a discreet veil over its own activities.

Who, for example, is Major McDowell, the former British Army intelligence officer who was Chief Executive of the newspaper from 1963 to 1997 and chairman of The Irish Times Trust from its foundation in 1974 to 2001? Why was he accorded extraordinary powers within the Irish Times Group? Why are the board of Directors required to swear an oath of secrecy? Why did McDowell contact Downing Street in 1969 with the outbreak of war in Northern Ireland?

The resignation of Ahern is only the latest coup inflicted by the newspaper on democratically elected Irish leaders. Ahern was prevented from succeeding Albert Reynolds in 1994. As far back as 1927 The Irish Times played a role in the collapse of a prospective Labour Party/Fianna Fail/National League coalition when its future editor R.M. Smyllie got a National League Deputy, John Jinks, drunk.

For many concerned at the apparently unchallengeable position of The Irish Times in political life, this book will provide a democratic riposte.

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