The Storm is Here by Luke Mogelson:
Beautiful America, where are you?

Ted Smyth on a New Yorker journalist’s book on the threat to American democracy

Former Trump advisers Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino were held in contempt of Congress for their month-long
refusal to comply with subpoenas from the investigation into the January 6th attack on the US Capitol.
Photograph: Jose Luis Magana/AP

Ted Smyth, September 17, 2022

The Storm is Here: America on the Brink
Author: Luke Mogelson ISBN-13: 978-1529418712
Publisher: riverrun Guideline Price: £25

Much of the recent commentary about the US has focused on the growing threat to democracy and rule of law caused by the rise of far-right white Christian nationalists and the continued leadership of the Republican Party by Donald Trump

Candidate Trump, accurately denounced in 2016 by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham as a “race-baiting xenophobic religious bigot”, continues to dominate the Republican Party despite falsely claiming he won the 2020 Presidential election and despite inciting a mob to invade the US Capitol on January 6th last year to overthrow the vote of the American people.

Candidate Trump, accurately denounced in 2016 by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham as a “race-baiting xenophobic religious bigot”, continues to dominate the Republican Party despite falsely claiming he won the 2020 Presidential election and despite inciting a mob to invade the US Capitol on January 6th last year to overthrow the vote of the American people.

How did the US come to this? How did John Winthrop’s City upon a Hill sink to the level where millions of ordinary Americans believe the Big Lie that Biden stole the election and that Hillary Clinton and Democrats are running a juvenile sex-trafficking ring out of the basement of a DC pizzeria?

Many explanations have been advanced for the willingness of millions of Americans to be duped on a large scale. These include resistance to enforced Covid lockdowns and resentment of the diminished circumstances of low-skilled white Americans who have seen good wages and pensions eroded by globalisation and offshoring. This makes them ripe for a menu of lies, anger and fear served up by clever, cynical Republican operatives like Karl Rove, Steve Bannon, Newt Gingrich, Lee Atwater and Roger Stone.

White racist reaction to Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights legislation that ended the Jim Crow
discrimination against Black people was eagerly exploited by Republicans

Such propaganda is now enhanced by the echo chamber of social media where algorithms, designed to increase eyeballs and sell more advertising, reinforce lies and false conspiracy theories. This, plus the daily falsehoods perpetuated on hate radio and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox TV, mean that millions of Americans live in a land of imagined assault by Black people, immigrant gangs and the dark state.

Luke Mogelson’s The Storm is Here is a lively, well-written and authoritative account of how the US got to this sorry state, verging on civil war. Mogelson, a staff writer with The New Yorker who has covered wars in Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine and Iraq, embedded himself for a year with Trump’s white Christian nationalist allies, providing a vivid and disturbing eyewitness account of what motivates ordinary people to believe in “alternative” facts, to join violent militias, and to foment Civil War.

From months spent with these heavily-armed Americans, Mogelson says that “they all seemed to be practising the same kind of magical thinking that had become a staple of Trump’s presidency — the belief that if you insisted something was true with adequate conviction and persistence, you could will its reality.”

Mogelson documents how Trump and the Republican Party manipulated white nationalists to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, and again in 2021 to attempt to hold on to power despite losing the election to Biden. Mogelson, reminding us that racism is not new in American politics, documents previous nativist racist movements. Far from being that mythical City on a Hill, the US grew to be an economic power through the two original sins of dispossessing/eradicating native Americans and the slavery of forcibly imported Africans and their descendants.

White racist reaction to Lyndon Johnson’s civil rights legislation that ended the Jim Crow discrimination against Black people was eagerly exploited by Republicans. Mogelson says that after Johnson, “Nixon won the presidency, and the Southern Strategy — ceding the Black vote to Democrats while exploiting racial polarisation to consolidate the white vote,” created a blueprint for Republican victories in subsequent elections.”

Former president Obama (who was himself vilified by right-wing racists) has argued that Trump “is not an outlier; he is a culmination, a logical conclusion of the rhetoric and tactics of the Republican party”. In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party perfected the new normal of lying about opponents and inciting their followers by weaponising “identity issues,” focusing on the three Gs of “Guns, Gays and God”.

Republicans, financed and directed by billionaires such as the Koch brothers, have deployed “celebrity” candidates (Reagan and Trump) to help secure majority votes from voters for policies that harm those voters’ economic interests, such as the $2 trillion tax giveaway by Trump to the ultra-rich, and perennial attacks on key social safety measures like Social Security and Medicare. Reagan’s motto that “government is not the solution, it is the problem,” is still quoted by people depending for survival on government social security checks and Medicaid.

Mogelson says what is most alarming is the Republican lawmakers’ stupefying cave-in to
Trump’s wish to overturn the election in spite of the fact that they were threatened by the
violent mob on January 6th

Roger Stone, Trump’s adviser, pushed the Great Replacement theory, the belief that white Christians in the US and Europe were being supplanted by populations incompatible with Western culture and identity.

Mogelson’s book is not all doom and gloom; he notes how independent judges stood for the truth this year and threw out the 80 lawsuits by Trump’s lawyers claiming widespread voter fraud without any evidence, despite Trump’s appointment of many conservative judges during his presidency, no doubt hoping to emulate the subjugation of judges in Poland and Hungary. Even the Supreme Court, packed with Trump conservatives, considered it a step too far to overthrow a free election.

What about January 6th? Was it an attempted insurrection or what the Republican National Committee ludicrously described as “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse”?

Mogelson shows that most of the people who violently stormed the Capitol did indeed hope to forestall the peaceful transition of power. Some intended to harm lawmakers as confirmed by the House Select Committee on the January 6th attack. The author documents Trump’s incitement of rebellion, claiming that “a crooked and vicious foe” was on the verge of installing an illegitimate and corrupt regime; that this was tantamount to “an act of war”; and that Republicans should be “up in arms” and “fight to the death.” On the morning of January 6th, Trump shouted at the protesters, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more”. Mogelson also says, “Trump could have calmed the crowd or revved it up. He chose the latter”.

Mogelson, who had successfully infiltrated the various militias, provides a searing and chilling account of the mob violence directed at police officers, 180 of whom were wounded, one died and four later committed suicide.

Mogelson says what is most alarming is the Republican lawmakers’ stupefying cave-in to Trump’s wish to overturn the election in spite of the fact that they were threatened by the violent mob on January 6th: “One hundred forty-seven — still a substantial majority of the Republican caucus — sided with the Proud Boys, the Groypers, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, QAnon, the man in the camp Auschwitz sweatshirt, the sieg-heiling woman who stole Nancy Pelosi’s laptop to sell to the Russians, and the mob that brutalised and tried to kill the police officers protecting them.”

Vice-president Mike Pence’s finest moment was refusing to bend to Trump’s threats on January 6th to prevent the overthrow of a free and fair election. Pence said, “To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, you did not win. Violence never wins.”

Mogelson says: “The second claim is demonstrably false; the first looks increasingly doubtful.” Indeed, it was a sad day when the two Republican leaders who had been critical of Trump immediately after the insurrection, Senator Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, voted against the Congressional investigation of the attack.

The extent to which the liars and conspiracy spinners can capture the souls of so many with blatant falsehoods is really shocking. In retrospect, January 6th seems to have been a pathetic enactment of political fantasy that in mid-stride turned into brutal reality without shattering the spell of the Fox-fired fantasy that propelled it. One wonders what schemes the cynical money men behind the Republican Party might be dreaming up now that they’ve seen what their lies can provoke. What rough beast will they want to send into Washington next time?

There are, nevertheless, grounds for guarded optimism. This book went to print before president Biden succeeded in securing support from some moderate (remember them) Republicans for the first major gun safety law in 30 years. Second, Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes lower healthcare costs and the most significant initiative on Climate Change in the US, accelerating the transition to non-polluting renewable energy. Third, Republicans did not cave to Putin, with Congress remaining united in support of Ukraine.

In addition, following the US supreme court’s decision to overthrow Roe v Wade, enabling states to jail anyone who mails an abortion pill to end a pregnancy, a majority of registered voters (56 per cent) say the issue of abortion will be important in their November midterm vote.

Those Americans who say they don’t want to be partisan clearly have to make a choice this November and in 2024. Do they support the rule of law, science, and women’s rights as advocated by president Biden and the Democratic Party? Or do they support the lies, greed, and lawlessness of what has become Trump’s Republican Party?

Perhaps Ulysses S Grant said it best many years ago: “The dividing line will not be between Masons and Dixons, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.”

 

Ted Smyth is chair of the advisory board of the Clinton Institute for American Studies

Homecoming by Rana Foroohar:
Is the decline of globalization a disaster for Ireland?

Ted Smyth reviews the Financial Times
global business columnists new book

 

Rana Foroohar of the Financial Times and US secretary of the treasury Janet Yellen.
Photograph: Brendan Smialowski / AFP 

 

By  Ted Smyth Wed Nov 30 2022

Many people wonder why right-wing populism and autocracy have become so successful in the developed world, from Trump’s shock election in 2016 and Brexit in the same year, to Orban’s and Meloni’s victories in Hungary and Italy.

Financial Times and CNN journalist Rana Foroohar’s third book, Homecoming: The Path to Prosperity in a Post-Global World, provides a compelling answer, showing how globalisation has concentrated wealth largely “at the very top, among financial and managerial elites who own the most assets, and to a certain extent at the very bottom ... huge areas in many nations have been hollowed out economically, or environmentally degraded or left behind politically by globalisation.”It’s no wonder then, that American rural communities voted for Trump and his false promises when “globalised, very fragile, highly ‘efficient’ supply chains are enriching Wall Street but starving Main Street and driving small farmers out of business”. Notably, Joe Biden carried the election in 2020 by convincing enough working-class men and women in the midwest that he would reverse the forces of unlimited globalisation. Globalisation emerged from neoliberalism, a vague term that encompasses the efforts to create multilateral institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to govern global finance and trade. The so-called neoliberal order received global impetus with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Margaret Thatcher in 1979, resulting in privatisation, deregulation, free trade, trickle-down economics and austerity.

Foroohar is not arguing for an end to all offshore
manufacturing, but for a rebalancing: away from the intense
globalisation of the past 40 years and towards the interests of local communities

While Ireland has undoubtedly benefited from globalisation and the massive manufacturing investment designed to exploit our membership of the EU market, not to speak of our tax advantages, we have also suffered from the severe effects of austerity imposed by the IMF and EU from 2010 to 2013 following the global financial crisis, aka the bank bust. The neoliberal or “Washington Consensus” formula to address financial crises around the world is to cut benefits and increase taxes even if it causes widespread unemployment and economic distress, as it did in Ireland and elsewhere. It has been well argued that Ireland’s subsequent economic recovery owed less to austerity than to the export performance of multinational firms, ironically part of the same global system that insists on austerity punishments.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) was founded by George Soros in 2009 to encourage those economists prepared to take on the orthodoxies of neoliberalism, advocating post-Keynesian theory. Foroohar, whose previous books exposed the threats of unregulated big tech and the undue financialisation of our societies, draws on many of these economists including Michael Sandel, offering a new form of political economy. For example, her chapter on Companies versus Countries states that “it’s a question of values, really,” arguing that the United States and EU should co-operate on digital privacy, creating a “digital bill of rights, and principles for regulating artificial intelligence and genomic research”.

Yellen links trade to value in bid to reset global framework

When the economic and social shocks following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Covid and intensified competition with China and Russia are fully priced, deglobalisation makes economic sense. However, Foroohar is not arguing for an end to all offshore manufacturing, but for a rebalancing: away from the intense globalisation of the past 40 years and towards the interests of local communities. US president Joe Biden’s treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, has proposed “friend-shoring” as a means to insulate global supply chains from external disruption or economic coercion. Such a policy would benefit Indo-Pacific countries such as Malaysia and Vietnam which are considered trustworthy by the US and its allies. It would also benefit Ireland, which continued to be a trusted supplier of healthcare products to the US during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Rana Foroohar's book shows how the Biden administration is contributing enormously to localisation.
Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA

Indeed, the chapter Chip Wars shows that multilateralism is still required to tackle “seemingly disparate issues (climate change, supply chain disruption, inflation, financial stability, inequality and nationalism) which are in fact intricately linked”.

In a journalistic tour de force, Foroohar takes the reader on a fascinating journey through America, showing how entrepreneurs are using innovation and local skills to create new jobs and prosperity. My favourite is Jason Ballard, the founder of the Austin-based 3D printing company ICON. Ballard’s goal is to make housing more affordable by using a new form of concrete to pour into a custom design that creates not only the frame and wall structure of a home, but space for other components, such as insulation, plumbing etc. Instead of a single home taking months to build and costing a small fortune, an ICON home can be printed in eight days at a fraction of the time, cost and emissions of building a regular home.

Foroohar’s concluding words are optimistic in the pursuit of
bottom-up, locally driven growth

Foroohar also visits vertical and modular farms which require only 5 per cent of the water and 1 per cent of the land needed by conventional farms, a major opportunity for the water-starved world. Her book shows how the Biden administration is contributing enormously to localisation by “using the purchasing power of the Federal government to drive private sector investment into four key areas: semiconductors, large capacity batteries, rare earth minerals and key pharmaceutical ingredients”.

Having read Foroohar’s hopeful and very readable book about complex economic and political issues, the question arises: will the innovative economic policies survive if Trump and Maga Republicans take back the Congress and the White House in 2024, opposing federal spending to combat climate change and supporting their financial allies in those businesses that benefit from unfettered global casino capitalism, a capitalism never envisioned by Adam Smith? The recent midterm elections suggest, however, that Democrats may be rewarded by voters as inflation eases and Biden’s economic policies begin to show tangible benefits for the middle-class.

Stakeholder investors are blind to the realities of monopoly power

Foroohar’s concluding words are optimistic in the pursuit of bottom-up, locally driven growth: “If we’re lucky, the result may be a world that is fairer, stabler, more varied and a lot more interesting than what came before.”

Amen to that.

 

	Homecoming: The Path to Prosperity in a Post-Global World Author: Rana Foroohar ISBN-13: 978-0593444382 Publisher: Crown Guideline

 

Irish Times Op-Ed

Irish diaspora should be allowed a voice in the Oireachtas

Seanad seats would provide limited but meaningful engagement without upsetting the domestic status quo

June 20, 2022
By Ted Smyth and Hilary Beirne

One generally accepted truth is that the Irish abroad are very important economically, culturally and politically to Ireland, contributing immensely to a two-way exchange of culture, tourism, investment and trade. The support of Irish America has been critical in protecting the Belfast Agreement and ensuring there is no hard border on the island of Ireland. However, an alarming fact for Irish America and other members of the Irish diaspora is that it is entering a late stage of ethnicity, and many are losing touch with Ireland, other than to celebrate St Patrick’s Day.

In addition, we need to find a way to give expression to the Shared Island goals, which seek to improve co-operation and mutual understanding on the island, perhaps by giving Irish citizens in Northern Ireland an enhanced voice in their affairs in an Irish political arena.

In 2020, the Irish Government, seeking to enhance Ireland’s engagement with Irish citizens living outside the State, agreed to hold a referendum granting voting rights in presidential elections to such citizens, bringing Ireland more in line with France and other European countries. But many in Ireland seem somewhat ambivalent about this. For example, in a poll last year by Ireland Thinks, some 52 per cent of people living in Ireland agreed that all Irish citizens abroad should be entitled to vote, but 39 per cent were opposed to the idea.

Since we know too well from the Brexit fiasco that the outcomes of referendums can be unpredictable, it might be wise to look at how some other countries give a voice to the citizens beyond their borders.

French model

Consideration should be given to a version of the French system, where French citizens living outside France directly elect assembly members to advocate and advise on issues affecting French nationals abroad, as well as to give voice to their experience with the diaspora in national debates. Such a model in Ireland could and would provide some limited but structured diaspora engagement within the Irish Senate, without threatening the Irish domestic political and economic status quo.

Even though a slim majority in the Ireland Thinks survey (51 per cent) were opposed to giving all Irish citizens living outside the State the right to vote in Seanad elections, the adapted French model, which gives candidates only limited rights to address issues in their regions outside the State, may prove acceptable to a larger group of domestic Irish voters.

This limited but structured engagement would certainly help to strengthen the ties with recent emigrants and also alleviate one of the key concerns expressed in the polling, namely the so-called “swamping” effect of votes from millions of Irish citizens living outside the State.

It is estimated by the Global Irish organisation that three million Irish passport holders live outside the Irish jurisdiction, with the vast majority living in Northern Ireland where a third of the population hold Irish passports, although some of these do so for travel convenience.

Domestic fear

Some fear that the 34 million US citizens who identify as Irish-American in the US census would tip the scale for hardline republican candidates. But that is unlikely given that most Irish-Americans would be ineligible to obtain Irish citizenship because they do not have a grandparent born in Ireland, the minimum requirement for Irish citizenship.

While limiting Senators elected beyond our borders to policy matters affecting their regions, this option still gives an important voice to the Irish abroad in formulating policy that directly affects them. It also helps to remove the Irish domestic fear of representation in Irish affairs without taxation. Moreover, such voting rights for the Seanad might seem more meaningful to many emigrants than voting in an election every seven years.

In this model, Irish citizens overseas would proportionately elect Senators to represent key Irish diaspora areas of the world, such as Northern Ireland, Britain, Europe, the Americas and the rest of the world. The number elected from these global regions could equal those elected by Irish citizen graduates (worldwide) of Trinity College Dublin and the National University of Ireland (NUI) — that is, six in total.

We believe that if properly explained to Irish voters, this proposal would be approved in a referendum without the risk and embarrassment of rejection to the diaspora.

Most importantly, adoption of the model would give Irish citizens in Northern Ireland an enhanced voice in their own affairs in the Seanad for the first time and make our Global Ireland ambitions more tangible and credible to our worldwide diaspora.

Hilary Beirne is founding chairman NYC St Patrick’s Day Foundation and an executive board member of VotingRights.ie.
Ted Smyth is president of the advisory board of Glucksman Ireland House, New York University

Can Joe Biden unite America? The answer is Yes
The president-elect can enact policies
that manifestly help working Americans

December 24, 2020, Ted Smyth

US president-elect Joe Biden: his campaign pitch, ‘heartland Scranton versus rich Wall Street’,will continue to attract Americans who voted for Trump but realise he was only out for himself.
Photograph: Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images

Joe Biden, having won the US presidential popular vote by more than seven million and the electoral college by 306 to 232, will become president on January 20th. The pressing question now is whether president Biden will be able to deliver on his promise to end the divisions in America. Can he actually unite his 81 million supporters with at least some of the 74 million who voted for Donald Trump?

The answer is yes, provided Biden enacts policies that manifestly benefit working Americans, especially in the midwest, where the economy has been devastated by years of globalisation and neglect by both parties. It will not be easy, however, with only a quarter of Republicans in recent polls believing that Biden’s victory was legitimate.

Despite the nasty, divisive lies spewing from Donald Trump, most Americans, regardless of political party, want the same things: good, secure jobs that enable them to support a family, affordable healthcare and education, social security and Medicare, clean air and water, taxes on the ultra-rich, and personal security. Democrats fight for these goals consistently, and Trump attracted widespread support by pretending to support some of them. However, Republicans in the Senate and the House, funded by billionaires such as the Koch brothers, consistently block legislation to achieve these reforms. For the past four years, Trump has been the celebrity front man for these rich interests, just as the Bushes were before him and Ronald Reagan was in the 1980s, when he tore massive holes in the social safety net.

Republican strategists created not one big lie, but Big Lies, aided and abetted by unregulated social media and a snake oil conman

Robert Reich estimates that if America’s distribution of income had remained the same from 1975 as it was in the three decades following the second World War, the bottom 90 per cent of Americans would now be $47 trillion richer. In recent elections that $47 trillion heist has fuelled much of the middle-class resentment and “populism” that ironically votes for the Republican leadership responsible for the rip-off.

Undermined

In the last four years alone, the Republican White House and senate undermined affordable healthcare, reduced taxes on the rich by $2 trillion, opposed minimum wages of $15 per hour, gutted environmental laws, and sought to privatise for profit public goods, from healthcare to social security to education and public housing.

So why do millions of Americans vote for Republicans generally opposed to their economic interests? Many books have been written about identity politics, but the simple truth is that Republican strategists created not one big lie, but Big Lies, aided and abetted by unregulated social media and a snake oil conman.

Their Big Lies scare millions of Americans, portraying Democrats as godless socialists who will take away your hard-earned money, weaken police protections, undermine Christian religion, regulate you out of business and open up the borders to aliens who will steal your jobs. These scare tactics build on Richard Nixon’s infamous southern strategy, which stirred up racial fears amongst white southerners.

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In contrast with previous decades, when there was some semblance of a common political and media discourse, Republican leaders successfully avail of largely unregulated social media platforms and algorithms to create parallel universes disconnected from truth and reality. These are reinforced by Lachlan Murdoch’s “media” and thousands of local radio and TV stations, plus regional newspapers bought by wealthy Republicans.

What can president-elect Biden and the Democrats do to win back some of those who voted for Trump and who are not white racists opposed to racial and sexual equality? How does Biden reach folks manipulated by a cyber-curtain that has descended across America and the world, promoting falsehoods, plutocracy and oligarchy?

For starters, Biden’s campaign pitch, “heartland Scranton versus rich Wall Street”, will continue to attract Americans who voted for Trump but realise he was only out for himself.

Palpable decency

Biden will also help heal divisions because of his palpable decency, working-class Irish-American background and personal faith, which make him “relatable” to voters, especially to non-college educated white Americans in the crucial “blue wall” states.

Furthermore, Biden’s “build back better” plans will offset the impact of globalisation and technology on lower-skilled working people with a massive trillion-dollar infrastructure investment plan for new jobs. This includes reforming the financial and fiscal system, which is rigged against working people, and creating millions of new jobs, including union jobs, in building broadband and infrastructure to replace America’s crumbling infrastructure. Just as important are affordable healthcare and education. For example, congressman Conor Lamb in Pittsburgh and senator Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire adopted these kitchen-table policies and won in battleground states.

Biden’s “made in America” plan to revitalise manufacturing and industrial activity will resonate with ordinary Americans whether they voted for him or for Trump. With an electoral college and senate where geography is destiny, Biden recently said, “We have got to rebuild the middle class, especially in rural America.”

President Biden can sign these orders on January 21st, sending a strong message that he is on the side of working Americans, whatever their race, party or creed Many Democrat and Republican voters are united on the need to rein in free-trade agreements, including standing up to China, which has exploited unfair trade rules for many years. The best way that Biden can fight for democracy around the world is to prove it works for everyone in America. President Biden can also straddle the political divide by joining the European Union in reforming US antitrust legislation to rein in Big Tech (which was basically given a free pass by the Obama administration). As Rana Foroohar has noted in the Financial Times, “The perception that the Democrats sold out to corporate interests is one of the reasons we got Mr Trump.”

Senate seats

Finally, if Democrats do not win the two highly contested Georgia senate seats on January 5th, will a senate Republican majority block every legislative proposal from president Biden, seeking to portray him as a do-nothing president? If that were to happen, Biden does have another option. Senator Elizabeth Warren has outlined a series of changes to improve lives of Americans that can be achieved by presidential executive order. They include cancelling billions of dollars in student loan debt, lowering prescription drug prices, raising the minimum wage for federal contractors to $15 per hour, and enforcing anti-monopoly protections.

President Biden can sign these orders on January 21st, sending a strong message that he is on the side of working Americans, whatever their race, party or creed. In so doing, he will attract more support from people who have felt forgotten by the Democratic party and he will differentiate himself from Donald Trump, whose one major policy achievement in four years was a $2 trillion tax break for the very rich, his real bosses in the Republican party.

Ted Smyth, president of the advisory board of Glucksman Ireland House at NYU, is a member of the Irish Americans for Biden committee

 

Irish-America must remain in step with political realities
on island of Ireland America Letter:
As Brexit talks intensify, the US should contribute to the Irish unity debate

Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Féin at the time, walking in a St Patrick’s Day parade in New York.
Photograph: James Leynse/Corbis via Getty Images

     As Brexit threatens to raise its head again as negotiations intensify between British and EU officials, the impact on Northern Irelandwill be keenly watched in the US. Senior figures on Capitol Hill and in Irish-America are keeping a close eye on Brexit negotiations, and in particular any attempt by Britain to row back on commitments to preserve an open border on the island of Ireland.
     Any move to jeopardise the Border arrangements prescribed by the Good Friday Agreement could see Irish-Americans in Congress veto a UK-US trade deal currently under negotiation. New research published in the Journal of American Ethnic History sheds a light on the role played by Irish-America during a previous period in Northern Irish history.
     The previously unpublished documents uncovered by Ted Smyth, chairman of the UCD Clinton Institute, include a confidential report from the Irish embassy in Washington during the 1980s, a decade that was critical to the emergence of peace in the North. The report on Irish-American organisations was commissioned in 1980 by the Irish ambassador to the US Seán Donlon. With violence at a height in the North, its aim was to outline ways to channel Irish-American concern and anger away from support for the IRA towards a peaceful solution.

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     There was already a growing awareness of the potential of the Irish-American lobby to influence the British government, helped by the formation of a powerful coalition of Irish-Americans at the top of American political life including House speaker Tip O’Neill, senators Ted Kennedy and Patrick Moynihan, and New York governor Hugh Carey.
     The embassy report reveals a major effort to influence Irish-America through the hundreds of Irish-American organisations dotted throughout the country. Irish officials attended parades, GAA matches, pubs and functions, delivering the message of the Irish government – that Irish unity should be achieved by peaceful means and not through fundraising for Noraid, the hardline organisation which openly supported the IRA. Engagement with US media was also a central strand of the strategy.

Shifting direction
     By the mid-80s, Sinn Féin was embarking on its own effort to persuade the Irish-American community that Republican politics was shifting direction and moving towards finding a political solution to the conflict. The second unpublished report documented by Smyth is a report on Irish-America commissioned by Gerry Adams and compiled by Declan Kearney and Oistin MacBride.
     As Smyth details, the 180-page report contained scathing criticisms of Noraid. Sinn Féin was undoubtedly aware that Noraid was losing legitimacy in the US, underscored by the cool response by the US and Irish government establishment to the selection of Noraid leader Michael Flannery as the New York St Patrick’s Day parade grand marshal in 1983. The US department of justice had also registered the group – which had an estimated 5,000 members, according to one study – as an agent of the Provisional IRA in 1981.
     In December 1988, Adams, armed with the report, had a meeting with the Noraid national executive in Dublin, and told it the organisation would have to align with more “progressive” movements in the US. While many in Noraid saw this as a betrayal, Adams successfully sidelined the hardliners in the organisation, and the separate Friends of Irish Freedom group was formed. Ultimately, Noraid was brought into line and supported the 1994 IRA ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement.
     Those efforts to ensure Northern Ireland’s most influential supporters were on board ahead of the seismic events of the 1990s are an interesting reminder of the role played by Irish-America at a crucial stage in the peace process. Twenty-two years later, the threat posed by Brexit has reawakened interest in the issue.

Diaspora
     Sinn Féin, newly resurgent in the Republic after its very strong performance in February’s election, is acutely aware of the continuing power of Irish-America. Adams, the former Sinn Féin president, took part in a virtual Irish Unity conference earlier this month, where he urged the diaspora to support a referendum on Irish unity.
     The public expressions of solidarity with former INLA prisoner Malachy McAllister, who was deported to Ireland this month, from senior US figures is an indication of the support former participants in the armed struggle still command in the US.
     As Northern Ireland looks ahead to the next stage in its history, ensuring that Irish-America remains in step with the views and political realities on the island of Ireland is essential if the US is to contribute constructively to the debate on Irish unity.

© 2020 irishtimes.com

Untold histories of peace negotiations in the North New books include in-depth interviews with protagonists in 1998

By Diarmaid Ferriter

February 3, 2020

Former British prime minister Tony Blair, former US Senator George Mitchell and former taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
Photograph: Dan Chung/AFP/Getty

October 8, 2019

By Ted Smyth

US President Donald J. Trump takes questions from the press after the US-Japan Trade Agreement
and US-Japan Digital Trade Agreement were signed in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, USA
07 October 2019. EPA/Ron Sachs / POOL

      It is striking that President Trump’s campaign to pressure Ukraine to find dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden, his potential 2020 political opponent, began in earnest following the publication of the Mueller Report in March. The decision by former Special Counsel Robert Mueller not to apply an approach that could have potentially resulted in a judgment that the President committed crimes in seeking Russian interference in the 2016 election, combined with a Bill Clinton-era Department of Justice opinion that a sitting president cannot be indicted for crimes, seem to have convinced Mr Trump that he is untouchable.

      Mr Trump has not only sought to justify the Ukraine shakedown but doubled down by publicly calling for China to investigate Biden for baseless allegations, a request already raised with President Xi in a June telephone call.

      House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had been resisting impeachment investigations due to concerns over a negative impact on public opinion, concluded that the President, having crossed a Constitutional line, left her with no choice but to launch an impeachment enquiry. The Speaker would have been familiar with Founding Father John Adams’ belief that a republic is “a government of laws, not of men,” where checks and balances were intended to tame the wealthy new American aristocracy and prevent the abuse of power.

      The Chair of the independent Federal Election Commission confirmed that it is illegal for anyone running for public office to solicit help from a foreign national. Even one Fox News senior judicial analyst, Andrew Napolitano, asserted that the summary of the July 25 call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky demonstrates “both criminal and impeachable behavior” by the President.

      While Mr.Trump is now publicly defending his campaign to pressure Ukraine to invent dirt on Biden in return for the US providing Javelin anti-tank missiles in the fight against Russian separatists, his efforts might have been successfully covered up were it not for one brave whistle-blower and a Trump-appointed Inspector General who found the complaint credible.

     The gravity of the whistle-blower’s assertions is deeply shocking: “I have received information from multiple US Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 US election.” A second official with first-hand knowledge of the events is reported by his attorney to have come forward.

      Last week’s House impeachment hearings produced corroborating texts, including from acting ambassador to Ukraine, William Taylor, a career diplomat, who expressed concerns regarding the apparent quid pro quo, “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH (White House) meeting are conditioned on investigations?” The US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, another career diplomat, who had been pressing for investigations of real corruption, was fired by Mr Trump following dishonest accusations against her. This week President Trump is defying the House subpoenas for documents, effectively undermining the separation of powers in the US. The House Chairman leading the impeachment enquiry, Adam Schiff said, “If a president can thwart congressional oversight that means any future president can be as corrupt as they choose and there’s no recourse.”

     Why has Ukraine come to play such a critical role in American politics and the subject of Mr Trump’s calls with many foreign leaders? In a recent New Yorker magazine article, Jane Mayer documents how a conservative dark-money group, which falsely convinced many Americans in 2016 that Hillary Clinton had risked national security by facilitating the sale of American uranium to Russia in exchange for more than two million dollars in contribution to the Clinton Foundation, is now equally falsely claiming that Vice President Biden corruptly intervened on behalf of his son Hunter’s Ukrainian business interests.

     This new conspiracy theory aggressively supported by President Trump includes the evidence-free assertion that Paul Manafort - Mr. Trump’s former campaign manager, who has been convicted in the United States of fraud and tax evasion in connection with his work as a consultant in Ukraine (and sentenced to four years in jail) - had been set up by supporters of Hillary Clinton. The White House disinformation campaign also advances the absurd notion that Ukraine masterminded 2016 presidential election interference, despite the fact that US intelligence found that Russia was to blame.

     While the White House corruption assertions are untrue, a lobby group funded by major Trump supporters in the Mercer family succeeded in manipulating American media organizations to give publicity to the bogus “Clinton Cash” story in the 2016 election and is demonstrating similar success with the “Biden Corruption” nonsense. In a sad commentary on the failure of social media platforms like Facebook to police falsehoods, Mayer quotes Paul Barrett from NYU’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights that “There’s no effective mechanism in the country for weeding disinformation out.”

      Even in a New York Times story this week on former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, the alleged source for baseless charges against the Bidens, the Times carelessly buries in its last paragraph Mr Lutsenko’s comment that he told Mr Trump’s personal lawyer Rudi Giuliani from the start that there was no basis for a case against Mr. Biden or his son.

      Nevertheless, Speaker Pelosi must be somewhat reassured by new polls which have swung from being against impeachment proceedings a few weeks ago to being in favor as new details emerged. A Washington Post-Schar School poll found that by a margin of 58 to 38 percent Americans say the House was correct to undertake the enquiry. Since a July poll by The Post and ABC, support for the enquiry has risen by 25 points among Democrats, 21 points among Republicans and 20 points among independents. There is now a greater level of support for impeaching President Trump than at similar points in the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon.

     Many independent voters say they want Congress to improve their lives and not be distracted by partisan fights. Democratic leaders respond by saying they can walk and chew gum; they can hold the President accountable and they can pass laws to help ordinary Americans. The problem they say, is that while the House has passed numerous bills on such matters as lower prescription charges, infrastructure, net neutrality, climate change, equal pay for women and gun control, the Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, has refused to take them up.

      In the coming election, the Midwest will be the real battleground. In 2016, if Hillary Clinton had won 107,000 more votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (0.09 percent of the 120 million votes cast) she would be President Clinton today. Notably, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the core of the Democratic “Blue Wall,” had not voted for a Republican president since the 1980s.

      A prominent Democratic politician in Pennsylvania thinks one third of the voters in his district who voted for Trump in 2016 could be persuaded to vote Democrat next year if convinced that a Democrat would fix the soaring cost of healthcare, student debt ($1.6 trillion) and retirement insecurity (less than half of American employees have a company pension fund).

     This reasoning may explain why new polls at national and state level show Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has long championed greater equality for working Americans, narrowing the distance between her and Biden in the Democratic Primary race. Another white septuagenarian, Senator Bernie Sanders, who last week suffered a heart attack, is in third place. Biden, who is widely liked for his character and decency, has struggled to convincingly defend himself against the baseless corruption charges by Mr Trump.

      If Biden’s poll numbers decline, what could Democratic leaders do who favor a less leftwing candidate than Warren or Sanders? Some are wishing they could draft the Ohio populist Democrat, Senator Sherrod Brown. Brown is 66 and won a third Senate term in 2018 with 53.4 percent of the vote in a state that Trump won in 2016. While Brown decided not to run for President last March, Mr Trump would have much less success in tarnishing him as either corrupt or socialist.

      Meanwhile, between now and the Thanksgiving holiday, much will depend on Chairman Schiff, who characterized Mr Trump’s call with Mr Zelensky as a “classic organized crime shakedown.” Mr Schiff will need to similarly dramatize any new evidence regarding the Ukraine extortion and cover-up in order to break through the mountains of disinformation and lies that confront Americans every day. We will soon know if the Government of Laws will prevail in America.

Ted Smyth is a former Irish diplomat and public affairs consultant based in New York

 

Freedom and liberal democracy must return to States
Trinity’s honouring of Hillary Clinton taps into desire to turn tide on Trump

By Ted Smyth, June 22, 2018

Hillary Clinton: won the popular vote in the American presidential election by three million votes but failed to carry the electoral college.
Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty

   Liberal democracy and freedom are under assault in America to an extent not seen since the 1930s. Prof Timothy Snyder reminds us in his book, On Tyranny, that both fascism and communism “were responses to globalisation, to the real and perceived inequality it created, and the apparent helplessness of the democracies in addressing them”. Snyder believes “it could happen here” and that independent judges and journalists are our main defence against tyranny in America as President Donald Trump tramples on human rights and freedom supported by a Republican-controlled Congress.

    Many of us in America spent the past year saddened and outraged by the American president’s collusion and cruelty, compounded by his lies and attacks on our media, judges and allies. Now there is a growing determination to fight for liberal democracy and to defend its institutions and values. We are moving beyond protest to organising at local level, registering voters and selecting talented candidates for coming elections at municipal, state and federal levels.

Many of us in America spent the past year saddened
and outraged by the American president’s collusion and cruelty,
compounded by his lies and attacks on our media, judges and allies

    This is also a good time to honour the champions of liberal democracy which is why I applaud Trinity College for awarding an honorary degree to Hillary Clinton, a consistent champion of human rights around the world and of equal rights in Northern Ireland. Nearly two long years ago, Clinton won the popular vote in the American presidential election by three million votes but failed to carry the electoral college. Her loss was in part due to Russian manipulation of voters through social media and, as the recent inspector general’s report from the US department of justice confirms, to former FBI director James Comey twice breaking with protocols to disclose internal investigations of her emails. It is clear that Comey owes Clinton an apology for double standards in publicising her investigation but not that of Trump for potential Russian collusion.

New Deal
    Hillary’s policies in the 2016 presidential campaign enshrined the same values of liberal democracy as those espoused by Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal which helped keep America free from fascism. Speaking at the Democratic national convention in July 2016, she said, “If you believe that companies should share profits with their workers, not pad executive bonuses, join us. If you believe the minimum wage should be a living wage . . . and no one working full time should have to raise their children in poverty . . . join us. If you believe that every man, woman, and child in America has the right to affordable healthcare . . . join us.”

    She promised “to make college tuition-free for the middle class and debt-free for all” a crucial contribution to social fairness when 44 million American Millennials and Gen Z’s are suffering under $1.5 trillion (yes trillion) in student debt.

    I saw Hillary in Pittsburgh two days after that convention when she attracted large audiences with her message that something radical needed to be done for ordinary Americans. This was the same Hillary who had hung out with the Latina housekeepers in Las Vegas hotels at 1am during the primary against Bernie Sanders, the same Hillary who stood up for racial and sexual equality all her life.

    And Hillary’s warnings about Trump were prescient: “He wants to divide us – from the rest of the world, and from each other. He’s taken the Republican Party a long way . . . from Morning in America to Midnight in America.”

    America’s political and social woes stem largely from the productivity-pay gap. For 25 years from the late 1940s to the 1970s, the wages and benefits of workers rose in tandem with productivity. According to the Economic Policy Institute, this changed drastically in the 1970s; from 1973 to 2016 productivity rose by 73.7 per cent while hourly pay essentially stagnated, rising by 12 per cent. For example, when I was at the Heinz company in the late 1980s, low-skilled hourly workers earned $40 an hour in pay and benefits. Today such workers are lucky to earn $20 an hour, with direct-benefit pensions ended. The result is that the median savings account balance is $5,200, not enough to pay for a health emergency and totally inadequate in a society where the safety net has been ripped apart.

Rogue capitalism
    The system has become rigged in favour of capital at a time when workers have largely lost strike power due to labour competition from Asia and robotics.

    This is not democratic capitalism, it is rogue capitalism where, as Warren Buffett famously complained, his secretary pays a higher percentage of her income in taxes than he does. Jack Bogle, founder of the $5 trillion index fund Vanguard likens Wall Street to a casino where the croupiers during the past decade “have raked in something like $565 billion each year from you and your fellow investors.” That’s half a trillion dollars that should instead have gone to the pension funds of teachers, nurses and other hard-working Americans.

    Bogle believes that free market capitalism has failed, that “Adam Smith’s invisible hand in which pursuing our own self-interests leads to the good of society no longer works in an age of giant global corporations”.

Bogle believes free market capitalism has failed, that 'Adam Smith’s
invisible hand...no longer works in an age of giant global corporations'

    Who will fight for liberal democracy in America in 2018 and beyond? The good news is that this year thousands of young people have become active in Democratic party politics and labour unions at local and national level. One of them is Conor Lamb who was elected to the House of Representatives last March in a special election in a Pittsburgh district that Trump had won by 19 points. Lamb, a former marine whose uncle is honorary consul for Ireland, won by focusing the voters on his opponent’s record of undermining pensions and unions, not becoming distracted by wedge issues like race, abortion and gun laws.

    The immediate goal of those who would protect liberal democracy in America is to win the House for Democrats in November, a tough task given Trump’s gift for promoting racist fears and divisions and the millions of dollars in dark money pumped into negative advertising and social media. A Democratic House would hold hearings on White House corruption and provide a platform for advocating progressive reforms.

    As for the presidential election in 2020, in light of the fact that, nearly two years after the election, Trump’s tax legislation and failure to introduce an infrastructure plan or address low wages has made millions of Americans even poorer and angrier, a successful Democratic candidate for president in 2020 better look like he/she is going to restore the American dream of fair wages, security in retirement and affordable education and healthcare. And defend the institutions of freedom and liberal democracy.

Ted Smyth is a former Irish diplomat, business executive and a public affairs consultant based in New York City

© 2018 irishtimes.com

 

Time to tackle the emerging crisis in Irish American identity
The effective absence of a new generation of Irish immigrants
has raised important new questions

by Ted Smyth

July 4,, 2017

© 2017 irishtimes.com

 

    The death of Ronan Fanning, a member of the Royal Irish Academy, professor emeritus of Modern History at University College Dublin and former president of Irish Historical Sciences, is a serious blow to Irish historiography, to Irish political analysis and a tragic loss to his many friends. The son of an Irish doctor and English Montessori teacher, Prof Fanning received his undergraduate degree from UCD and his doctoral thesis on “Balfour and Unionism” from Cambridge University. He was not only a brilliant scholar, but also a stylish writer who brought to his research a critical and independent judgment and an understanding of the intrigue and power struggles that characterize politics.

    Possessed of a quick wit and a low tolerance for mediocrity, he took a special pleasure in understanding the personalities of politicians, generals and civil servants as they managed profound and unexpected challenges. Those who were lucky to be his friends or colleagues will remember his lively curiosity, his relish for good political gossip, his vivacious energy and love for being in the thick of things.

    These qualities enabled Prof Fanning to provide invaluable context when he wrote on current or historical affairs. Last June, for example, he wrote in the Irish Times, “Brexit is Ireland’s biggest policy test since the second World War . . . the only global crisis since the establishment of the Republic in 1937-38 that has seriously threatened our pursuit of an independent foreign policy.”

Seminal work

    In 1978, he wrote the outstanding book, The Irish Department of Finance, (1922-1958), hailed as a pioneering work on the transfer of power from the British government to the Irish administration of William Cosgrave and later to that of Éamon de Valera. The book describes the perennial struggle by politicians and civil servants to balance the budgets while also trying to fulfil the developmental promises of the Irish revolution. Sadly, it would not be until the 1960s that Ireland would escape the economic disadvantages of being a small, agricultural economy subject to the cheap food policy of Britain and beset by the Great Depression, the second World War and the recession of the 1950s.

    Perhaps Prof Fanning’s most arresting book was Fatal Path, British Government and Irish Revolution, 1910-1922, published in 2013. The book illustrates how Ireland was a pawn in the efforts by Asquith and Lloyd George to preserve their prime ministerial careers.

    As Prof Joe Lee wrote in the Irish Times’ review of the book, “Both (Prime Ministers) had to spend more time calculating the consequences of their policies for internal British politics, and their own positions, than for Anglo-Irish relations.” Prof Lee continues: “All this Fanning delineates with superb command of his material, not least in decoding the significance of what is not said as well as what is said in the innumerable documents he fillets, making it a joy to savour the brushwork of a master of his craft at the top of his form.”

    Prof Fanning had a keen understanding of the importance of Irish American nationalism on Irish politics in the 20th century. This is well illustrated in chapter seven of Fatal Path, “Blood in their Eyes: The American Dimension”, a reference by the British ambassador to the US regarding Irish American attitudes to Britain.

Fulbright Professor

    On a personal level I had the privilege of getting to know Professor Fanning and his late wife Virginia (and young toddler, Timothy) when he was Fulbright Professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC in 1976-1977, researching the triangular relationship between Britain, Ireland and the US.

    Prof Fanning’s timing was particularly good as he received a unique insight into the diplomatic manoeuvring that led to the August 1977 groundbreaking statement by then US president Carter (strongly resisted by the British government and state department), which recognised an official role for Ireland in a solution to the Northern Ireland conflict. Prof Fanning later documented the enormously positive role that then US presidents Reagan and Clinton made to the peace process as it developed following the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.

    In a review in the Guardian, Diarmaid Ferriter described Professor Fanning’s most recent book, Éamon de Valera: A Will to Power, as “stylishly written, accessible, full of clarity and mature assessments”.

    Roy Foster in a review in the London Spectator described it as a “crisp, economical but deeply thought-provoking biography”. In an earlier entry on “Dev” in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, Fanning gives De Valera credit for protecting the security of the State.

    However, he does not shrink from describing how De Valera inflamed the Civil War: “De Valera, in other words, was largely responsible for the dimensions, if not for the fact, of the civil war. By allowing those who took up arms against the treaty to draw on his authority, he conferred respectability on their cause it could never have otherwise attained. His behaviour in the immediate aftermath of the Treaty, in sum, was petulant, inflammatory, ill judged, and profoundly undemocratic.”

Journalism

    Anyone who wants to read a short but brilliant account of Ireland since 1922 should obtain Prof Fanning’s Independent Ireland published in 1983 in the Hellicon series of Irish History. The book cover depicts a cartoon in Dublin Opinion from July 1948 showing the removal of the statue of Queen Victoria from the front of the Irish parliament building. She is looking down at an enigmatic De Valera saying, “Begob, Eamon, there’s great changes around here.”

    For many years Prof Fanning wrote on current affairs in the Sunday Independent and in 2009 co-wrote with former diplomat, Michael Lillis, a biography of Eliza Lynch. The book uses primary sources to rescue the Cork-born “Queen of Paraguay” from her notorious reputation invented by Paraguay’s enemies in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

    As the relationship between Ireland and Britain changes post Brexit, and as US president-elect Donald Trump takes office in the United States, it remains to be seen what international role Ireland can play as the sole English-speaking member of the EU.

    It is our loss that Ronan Fanning will not be writing authoritatively and incisively on these challenging times.

Ted Smyth is a former Irish diplomat and chairman of the Advisory Board of UCD Clinton Institute

 

by John Bowman

December 31, 2016,

British Cabinet secretary Sir Robert Armstrong in 1986.

In September 1986, Armstrong confided to Irish ambassador to London Noel Dorr that the agreement had resulted in “a fundamental change”, adding that “nothing will ever be the same again in Northern Ireland”. Although it was taking a long time for the Unionists “to adjust to that and accept it”, he thought it right that this process “be allowed to work itself through fully”, counselling patience until this happened. But within days , Armstrong was telling Dorr that a cornerstone of Dublin’s policy, the proposal for three-judge courts in Northern Ireland, had been denounced at the special Cabinet sub-committee by Viscount Hailsham, who as lord chancellor, had responsibility for the judiciary.

It was, said Armstrong, “a case of all the guns and the battleship blazing”. Richard Ryan of the London embassy staff had already been given a more detailed account “in strictest confidence” by John Houston, political adviser to foreign secretary Geoffrey Howe. Hailsham had made an “extraordinary, impassioned and emotional” appeal, arguing that the Northern Ireland judiciary, “these brave men”, were “owed something”, Houston reported.

Yet the introduction of three-judge courts would be to “impugn their integrity and to insult them”. Were they to be “given the back of the hand by the Government just to give a sop to Dublin?” Attorney general Sir Michael Havers “unexpectedly” agreed. Although it was felt he “had no good reason to go crusading on this issue”, Houston felt Havers, “who wants Hailsham’s job more than anything on earth, was doing Hailsham’s work for him.” And Whitelaw, who had been “vacillating back and forth on this issue”, also came down against. Northern Ireland secretary Tom King, “to the surprise of everyone”, had submitted a paper supporting three-judge courts. Howe had agreed, as had Hurd, “very strongly”. Thatcher, in Houston’s judgement, was “very affected by the wily Hailsham’s argument”; and this meant taoiseach Garret FitzGerald’s prospects of carrying his argument on this question were “grim”.

‘Friendly tip-off’

Dorr gleaned further detail from Tom King when he met him at the Conservative Party conference some days later. King professed to be giving Dorr “a friendly tip-off about some measure of resentment aroused in certain quarters on the British side, by the remarkable extent [his words] to which we have now penetrated the British decision-making system.”

Dorr reminded Iveagh House of the accepted convention in Britain that the mere existence of Cabinet sub-committees, still less their subject matter or conclusions, should not be publicly referred to.

The question for Dorr was whether King was “giving vent to his own suspicious disgruntlement” or whether he was “echoing to me” the resentment of other committee members.

Dorr’s interpretation was that King was “suspicious of our easy access and slightly resentful of it”. Dorr was inclined to put this down “largely to King’s own character”.

And Dorr reported that Havers was also “a bit taken aback” about how much the Irish knew of the British decision-making process.

But Dorr did not think his embassy staff should be “frightened off” from their endeavours as there was “nothing in the manner of our lobbying” which should cause any resentment.

The 1986 files are replete with reassurances from Thatcher that the Anglo-Irish Agreement would be implemented.

This was as much her insistence that she would not be intimidated by Unionist or Loyalist blackmail as by any indication on her part she thought it was delivering what she had been promised.

But after a year of the agreement, Ted Smyth of the London embassy offered his personal observations of the prospects for the agreement for the short-term future.

He believed Thatcher could not be taken for granted.

“For even with Mrs Thatcher none of the old certainties prevail: the lady who was ‘not for turning’ now shows distinct rudder problems on sacrosanct public expenditure policies because of growing public criticism.”

Smyth added that if the British public saw no major improvement in security “that too will affect her commitment”.

And this was another reason why the Irish government would have to demonstrate “again and again to either a sceptical or indifferent British audience that it is able to deliver handsomely on its side of the bargain”.

In a paper The Political Situation in Northern Ireland – one year on to mark the anniversary of the Hillsborough signing, the Anglo-Irish Section of the DFA stated that the majority of Unionists were still opposed to the agreement and believed it could be destroyed.

That it amounted to joint authority had initially taken hold amongst them and had “not yet been dispelled”. as delivering what she had been promised.

Shock to ordinary Unionists

The agreement had come as a shock to most ordinary Unionists “for whom political beliefs and expectations had frozen in 1920”.

And because they had always seen politics as a zero-sum game, they could not appreciate how, if both sides operated from the basis of equality, they could all move forward together.

When Thatcher and Garret FitzGerald met in London on December 6th for their final meeting of the year, the taoiseach expressed concern as to whether he could deliver the revised extradition legislation shortly to come before the Dáil. “If we do not get this, it would be disastrous.”

FitzGerald told Thatcher that Charles Haughey, if elected taoiseach, would not “disturb the agreement”; nor would he disturb any extradition legislation if it was already on the statute book, “though he himself could not, politically, introduce it”.

If passed, the new legislation would come into force in June, without Haughey being required “to take any positive action”, that is, added FitzGerald, “if he is in my position then”.

They later went on to discuss cross-border security, with FitzGerald at one point claiming that forces, north and south, had “a next to impossible border to watch”. To which Thatcher responded: “Yes, we got it wrong in 1921.”

They concluded by reviewing the agreement. Thatcher was relieved the first anniversary had passed “without more trouble”. But it was now “like an open wound”.

When she had first signed it, she believed the Unionists would take reassurance from its guarantees. But now they would “have to settle down with it”.

Nally’s note of the meeting added the observation that Thatcher concluded the exchanges with “rather a wistful reference to whether she could continue, in all seriousness, to send young men to their death in Northern Ireland”.

Dr John Bowman is a broadcaster and historian. His most recent book is Ireland: the Autobiography, published by Penguin any extradition legislation if it was already on the statute book, “though he himself could not, politically, introduce it”.

© 2016 irishtimes.com

 

“Many working people voted for the guy who said he would change the rigged system.” Photograph: Getty Images

    As Democrats in the US plan a new campaign to win back the White House and Congress, a few lessons can be learned from the recent election. First, Donald Trump’s win was not a decisive victory for Republicans, given that the billionaire TV star, a one-time Democrat, ran as an outsider, shunned by nearly every official in the Republican party. Hillary Clinton would have triumphed if she had not lost by a tiny margin in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. She actually won the popular poll by 2.8 million votes, a bigger margin than any other presidential election. Ironically, the electoral college, designed by the founding fathers to limit the “mischiefs of faction”, officially elected the candidate who stoked the fears of a once-dominant racial majority. Most important, Clinton lost because she allowed Trump to run to her left with working people, those who are facing a growing crisis of low wages and suffocating debt. A more nimble campaign would have said: “Obama deserves the credit for rescuing us from the Republican recession, but working men and women are still getting stiffed. We’ve got to fix the system, which is rigged against ordinary people.” Instead, the campaign seemed to think it could win by building a targeted coalition of women, Hispanics and blacks. This alienated many whites who still represent 70 per cent of the electorate. Many blacks and Hispanics did not vote, and more than half of white women voted for Trump.

Economy, stupid

    It’s still the economy, stupid. Twenty-four years after James Carville coined the term, Clinton and her staff forgot this wisdom. Manufacturing wages and benefits have been in decline since the 1980s; in Michigan, hourly pay has fallen from $28 (€26.8) in 2003 to $20 in 2016. Most low-skilled workers in banks and retail stores across the country earn about $10 per hour. The challenge for Democrats is to restore growth and equality to a system that has left more than two-thirds of Americans with flat and declining incomes for the past decade. Since the 1990s, presidential candidates from both parties have promised various fixes to low wages and unemployment, including worker retraining. While business has benefited enormously from trade agreements and technology, the wealth has not been shared. Training programmes have been underfunded and jobs and wages continue to be cut. According to one study, if trends continue, a quarter of American men aged 25-54 will be out of work by mid-century. When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008 and 2012, he represented enough novelty and hope for change that many white working people voted for him. But by the time Clinton ran in 2016, she represented more of the same (even hesitant to support a $15 minimum wage) and many voted for the guy who said he would change the rigged system.

Political theatrics

    Trump is quite prepared to say anything it takes to smooth a deal, whether you are a low-wage white guy or the government of Taiwan. You will be literally advised by the Trump people not to believe everything. As we know from his television hit The Apprentice, Trump does have a gift for popular theatre. His “saving” of 800 jobs in Indiana in return for tax rebates was a political win, all the more so when it was criticised by the free market zealots of the Republican Party. Neither Obama, who has saved/created millions of jobs, nor Clinton, who had excellent economic policies, have that sense of theatre. For example, where were the Boss Springsteen concerts in working class Youngstown, Ohio and, Flint, Michigan? Democratic party volunteers wanted them last August, but that was the month Clinton devoted to fundraising among the very rich. Jeb Bush’s defeat in the Republican primary, despite spending $100 million, had already shown that you needed more than money to beat Trump. Trump and Bernie Sanders connected with voters by criticising the corporate system of global elites, which have created rules that benefit capital at the expense of labour. In absence of collective bargaining and strikes, American companies fulfil their fiduciary duty to maximise returns to shareholders at the expense of workers. Many of these shareholders are short-term corporate raiders, who attack corporations possessing strong balance sheets and intimidate management and directors into being more “shareholder-friendly”. This usually results in companies leveraging their balance sheet and going into debt to pay out millions in special dividends to these shareholders.

Disgruntled workers

     In return for this munificence, the raiders move on to the next prospect, leaving the company in debt and management forced to cut labour and other costs. The limited power left to disgruntled workers is to stick it to someone every four years in a presidential election. Against this background, here are eight proposals to help Democrats retake the White House in 2020 and win the 10 Senate seats up for re-election in 2018 (in states won by Trump).
1.     Accept the economic system is rigged against working people and campaign for solutions, including rebuilding a modern labour movement. Support living wages and portable benefits, which will stimulate demand. Explore novel proposals, such as allowing corporations to capitalise on their human capital (the present value of future compensation) and claim accelerated amortisation of it, just as they can claim accelerated depreciation on physical capital. This will correct the tax bias in favour of investing in automation rather than in people.
2.     Be the champion of all working people. Fight for every vote; do not be misled into thinking you can manipulate segments with algorithms and big data.
3.     Nominate younger candidates: Nancy Pelosi (76) has been a great liberal House leader, but Tim Ryan, a bright 43-year-old congressman from a working class district in Ohio, represents the future, with New York’s Joe Crowley, chair of the House Democratic Caucus.
4.     Challenge the “shareholder first” model of business and join those, including editors at Fortune-Time, attempting to create a model that challenges the domination of unfettered globalised capitalism and offshore finance.
5.     Increase gross domestic product growth and create millions of jobs by rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure through legislation that will repatriate billions in overseas earnings, provided it is invested in infrastructure.
6.     Ensure there is a competitive presidential primary process in three years’ time, which elects a telegenic, inspirational candidate who represents real change and hope for American working families. Names being floated include senators Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Tim Kaine, as well as John Hickenlooper, governor of Colorado.
7.     Rebuild the Democratic National Committee with a full-time leader who uses social media to unite a broad Democratic coalition. Fight back against bigotry and hold Facebook accountable for ensuring its algorithm does not give fake news an advantage over truthful news.
8.      Finally, at a time when inequality is growing, embrace the Democratic party’s proud history of progressive achievements from Roosevelt to Johnson, which created decades of strong and inclusive prosperity for all Americans. A majority of Americans want a fairer society with well-paying jobs and affordable healthcare, housing and education. This is the majority that Democrats must lead.

Ted Smyth, a former Irish diplomat, is a public affairs consultant in New York City

Irish Times