Ted Smyth

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JANUARY 9, 2025 By Ted Smyth

JIMMY CARTER SAW ROLE FOR IRISH GOVERNMENT


The photo above shows Smyth shaking hands with President Carter
during the visit of Taoiseach Jack Lynch to the White House in November 1979. Lynch is to the left of the photo

Despite being one of the few U.S. presidents without any Irish ancestry, Jimmy Carter was the first president to recognize that the Irish government must have a role to play in a solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland. What became known as the Carter Statement was issued in August 1977. In addition to the routine rejection of violence in Northern Ireland, Carter called for “a just solution that involves both parts of the community in Northern Ireland… a solution that the people in Northern Ireland, as well as the Governments of Great Britain and Ireland can support.”

In addition, Carter added, “In the event of such a settlement, the US Government would be prepared to join with others to see how additional job-creating investment could be encouraged, to the benefit of all the people of Northern Ireland.” In the words of former Irish Ambassador to the U.S., Sean Donlon, “Every subsequent U.S. president derives his interest in Ireland through the Carter Statement.” The Statement was a shot in the arm for politics in Northern Ireland which, by 1977, had become paralyzed as the British army, the IRA, and the Loyalists fought a vicious battle for military superiority.

One of the politicians to recognize the futility of this “eye for an eye” cycle, John Hume, realized that only Irish Americans could provide Irish nationalists crucial leverage against the centuries-old problem of the overwhelming power of Britain. Hume focused on two of the most powerful men in America, Speaker Tip O’Neill and Senator Ted Kennedy. Unlike previous Irish visitors he did not ask them to support Irish unity, a proposition that had failed since the partition of Ireland in 1920. Instead, he had a new proposal for them: support political and economic equality between nationalists and unionists within Northern Ireland.

The Speaker and Senator were persuaded by Hume’s ideas and his credibility as a fearless civil rights campaigner in Ireland. They in turn formed the Four Horsemen with Senator Pat Moynihan and New York Governor Hugh Carey and approached President Carter, who had been elected the previous November. Irish diplomats played a key role in advancing this campaign in Washington, particularly Irish embassy counselor Michael Lillis, backed by Anglo-Irish director in Dublin, Sean Donlon.

Lillis forged friendships with the Big Four, and the powerful Speaker was often a guest with his wife at Michael’s small Georgetown townhouse, joining happily in singing Irish songs. Lillis also forged a strong friendship with Bob Hunter, the Director of European Affairs in the White House. Hunter, who later became U.S. ambassador to NATO, helped show President Carter that the conflict in Northern Ireland-related to human rights abuses. Carter, who had a sincere lifelong commitment to human rights arounnd the world, agreed that he should support

reform. He also needed Speaker O’Neill to pass his legislative agenda and Tip kept telling him how important the Irish issue was to him personally. The British government and the State Department fought relentlessly to prevent Carter from both ending the non-involvement of the U.S. in Northern Ireland and the recognition of a role for Dublin in any solution.

Carter, in a remarkable interview with Maurice Fitzpatrick for his 2017 documentary, "John Hume in America," said, “Well, the State Department was not in favor of what I did, as you may know. But I didn’t really consult with them too thoroughly. I had a lot of confidence in Pat Moynihan, and Tip O’Neill was visiting me every day. Hugh Carey was very important to me as a politician, so was Ted Kennedy. So these four people who had connections directly with Ireland, were good.”

Later in the interview, Carter said, “I let it be known to the British leaders and also to the general public
and to my Irish supporters in the U.S., that I had one policy toward Ireland.
That was peace, human rights, and an absence of violence.”

Jimmy Carter was faced by many difficult issues in his presidency, but Irish Americans and people in Ireland will gratefully remember him for being the first U.S. president to recognize the equal rights of nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland, together with a role for Dublin in any solution.

Carter was deservedly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2002 for his work in diplomacy and advocacy, both during and after his presidency. His work for peace in Ireland was part of that lasting achievement. Ní Bheidh A Leithéid Arís Ann.

Ted Smyth was the Irish Government’s Head of Press and Information in the U.S. from 1976 to 1981

 

 

May 30, 2024

Tony O’Reilly Was a Giant in Many Fields

Tony O'Reilly,
Rolling News.ie photo


By Ted Smyth

How and where to sum up a life as varied and rich as that of Tony O’Reilly?
I think of Walt Whitman’s “I am large. I contain multitudes .

” As Taoiseach Simon Harris said, “Tony was a giant of sport, business and media. ” Tony was also a giant in philanthropy supporting peace, culture and charity in Ireland, inspiring hundreds of others, including Chuck Feeney and Loretta Brennan Glucksman. When I was appointed Press Officer in 1976 for the Irish Government in the United States, I came to appreciate Tony O’Reilly’s talents and commitment to Ireland .

Back then, our diplomatic priorities were twofold: First, seek American support for the peaceful and non-violent unification of Ireland, and second, encourage inward investment to create much needed jobs in Ireland. O’Reilly was a vital and a hugely generous and influential ally in achieving both goals.

A determined supporter of constitutional Irish nationalism, his vision of an agreed Ireland echoed that advocated by John Hume. Tony had the vision to realize that Irish Americans, very angry about the discriminatory attacks on Catholics in Northern Ireland, needed an alternative way to help instead of funding the IRA

Together with Dan Rooney, he created the American Ireland Fund to channel the extraordinary generosity and dedication of Irish Americans towards peace projects.

This forged a new era in Irish-American relations, changing, as the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheal Martin said, "the global narrative on peace and reconciliation on this island." Irish diplomats arranged for Hume and Government Ministers to speak at Ireland Fund dinners around the U.S. where they were joined by Irish American politicians like Speaker Tip O’Neill, whose daughter Susan has been a longtime organizer of the national Washington Ireland Fund Gala.

Together they raised much needed funds for peace projects in Northern Ireland that had been vetted by Senator Maurice Hayes and a dedicated committee of local community leaders.

Three giants in their fields: Actor Paul Newman, then Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and Independent News and Media Chairman Tony O'Reilly
at Barretstown Castle in Kildare, April 30, 1994. Newman had signed a 99 year lease with the Irish government
at a pound per year. It would be a home for sick children.
RolligNews.ie photo.
“The Irish,” wrote the British historian Macaulay, “were distinguished by qualities which tend to make men interesting rather than prosperous.”
Tony broke that stereotype in dazzling ways. He helped achieve our second diplomatic goal by mobilizing his contacts on many boards such as Exxon Mobil and the Washington Post to open doors for the IDA to demonstrate that Ireland was open for business.

O’Reilly also encouraged American investors to go to Northern Ireland. For many years he lobbied the British government, without success, to create a low corporate tax rate in Northern Ireland similar to that in the Republic. Like many other people who came from an island where millions had emigrated to build a new life, Tony was at home in the furthest corners of the world.

Whether it was establishing new businesses for the Heinz food company in South Africa, China or India, he fervently believed that globalization would be a benign force for global peace and shared prosperity. 

Sadly, 50 years later, globalization has not worked out for the world as China, India and the United States become more protectionist and free trade’s benefits are widely questioned amidst growing inequality in America and Europe. In 1988, under a blaring headline, “Tony O’Reilly Astride Two Worlds,” the New York Times explained that O’Reilly was a manager in America and an investor in Ireland.

This was my experience with Tony as we worked closely together at Heinz for ten years from the late 1980s. (I had taken leave of absence from the Department of Foreign Affairs to experience business from the inside and to enable my American wife to returnto her country.)

As CEO Of Heinz, Tony believed that his first duty was to put the right people in the right seats on the bus. He gave top managers wide autonomy, but if they did not perform, they were managed out.

''Tony is very competitive, and his scorecard is the bottom line,” said one senior Heinz colleague. “But he is also motivated by friendship. He'll go that extra mile for people, so we'll go that extra mile for him.'' Tony used humor and charm to lighten up business meetings and to motivate managers .

Like Noel Coward, he believed that work was much more fun than fun. Ever since the Lions rugby tour of South Africa in 1955, O’Reilly was drawn to that country. Along with Ted Sorensen and Andrew Young

Tony organized, decades later, the South Africa Free Elections Fund to support Nelson Mandela and the ANC in 1993. Two years earlier, Mandela had announced the end of sanctions at the Heinz distinguished lecture in Pittsburgh.

Addressing the audience, Mandela greeted O’Reilly as “Rooikop Tony,” or Red Tony, the nickname he had earned in the sports pages during the Lions rugby tour. When Tony retired from Heinz and went back to Ireland, I stayed in the United States where my wife and family had put down roots.

Everybody knows the story of how the digital revolution destroyed the profits of his newspaper empire, a fate tragically shared by other newspapers. But it was his attempting to save Waterford Glass rather than offshore it to Asia that dealt O’Reilly the final financial blow.

The Irish banks have seen fit to give many other business leaders a break but Tony faced the crisis with his characteristic fortitude, recalling the Kipling advice to treat the two imposters of triumph and disaster just the same. It is now heartening to see that Tony, after enduring such a hard time, is finally receiving the plaudits he so long deserved for his service to Ireland. 

Ni bheidh a leitheid aris ann.

Among his multiple roles in life, Ted Smyth is a former Irish diplomat and Chief Administrative Officer at the HJ Heinz Company.

 

May 2, 2024

Eamonn Malley

An Eyewitness to War and Peace Community Features & Events
by Ted Smyth

Eamonn Malley and President Clinton

While we are all heartened by the productive cooperation in Northern Ireland between the Sinn Fein First Minister Michele O’Neill and the DUP Deputy First Minister Emma Little Pengelly, many younger people have no understanding of the long struggle by so many to achieve peace and equality after years of repression and discrimination.

Eamonn Mallie, a superb and fearless radio journalist for 40 years, has written a new fast-paced book which tells this story in a new fast-paced book in an exiting and very readable style.

"Eyewitness to War and Peace," which has now been published in the U.S., reveals the secret and relentless talks over decades that ultimately ended the bloodshed to create a society that recognized the equal rights of nationalists and unionists.

From the 1970s onwards, Mallie was the voice of Downtown Radio Belfast as it broke the mold with news headlines every half hour and news on the hour. At a time when people were being regularly bombed and murdered, Mallie regularly risked his life by personally covering the atrocities, always seeking the truth and sticking his microphone up the noses of everyone from royalty to prime ministers, from paramilitary leaders to police chiefs and army generals.

I recall seeing Mallie in action at the signing of the historic Anglo-Irish Agreement by Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Hillsborough Castle in 1985.

Ian Paisley and his violent followers were trying to break in to stop the signing of the Agreement because it gave Dublin a role in the running of Northern Ireland for the first time.


Eamonn Malley

Mallie asked Thatcher the key question: Was she willing to defeat these loyalist thugs when previous British Prime Ministers had caved in to them?

Thatcher did not reply to the question, but over subsequent months she and the RUC and British Army defended the Agreement against loyalist attacks, the first time a British government successfully defeated widespread loyalist resistance in the history of Northern Ireland.

Mallie, who was born and raised in South Armagh, says he was “always an admirer of Hume’s anti-violence and pro-European stance.” But he did not see this as a reason “to shun those who chose to take up arms” because he wanted to understand why they felt the need to use violence.

Mallie describes in vivid detail how John Hume, despite all the setbacks and criticism, persevered in the secret Hume Adams talks which set the scene for the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Hume told Mallie that he believed Gerry Adams was looking for a way to move to an exclusively political campaign for nationalist rights and a united Ireland.

Mallie recalls how the IRA had reached the conclusion, as had British General Jimmy Glover, that neither side could win, that the British could not be bombed out of Northern Ireland, and that the IRA could not militarily be defeated.

Nevertheless, Mallie muses, “what continues to baffle me is how the Sinn Fein leadership, Adams and McGuinness, ever managed to convince the IRA to call a cessation of violence given the endless turmoil in its ranks.”

Undoubtedly, the skilled leadership and ultimate vision for a new Ireland that these two men shared was a significant factor, but another was that Sinn Fein realized it could succeed in electoral politics when ailing hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected to the British parliament in 1981.

The election of Tony Blair as Prime Minister and Bertie Ahern as Taoiseach in the late 1990s gave the slow peace process some fresh impetus. They, along with President Clinton, decided to use their immense political capital to go all out for an agreement.

As Blair said at the Queen’s University GFA 25 events last year when the three old pols had reconvened: “We were too young to be cynical about the prospects of peace.”

As Mallie writes, the Good Friday Agreement almost didn’t happen but the political leaders made sacrifices and took risks for the sake of peace. As Senator George Mitchell has said, everyone had to have the courage to make compromises to reach peace.

"Eyewitness to War and Peace" is essential reading for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of Northern Ireland’s divided and violent past and its hopeful future today. "Eyewitness to War and Peace" is published by Merrion Press and is available on Amazon. Ted Smyth, a former Irish diplomat and business executive who lives in the United States, is a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Protect the Good Friday Agreement.

May 2, 2024 by By Ted Smyth

 

 

Congressman John Lewis,
whose funeral was taking place in Atlanta today.


by Irish Echo staff July 30, 2020

Over sixty leaders of the Irish American community have signed on to a letter mourning the death of Congressman John Lewis and have called on Irish America not to sit on the sidelines as America seeks to end racial discrimination.

The letter also calls for boycott of “Irish Lives Matter” t-shirts 

The community leaders, according to a release, represent Irish America’s broad civil, political and educational community and have banded together to mourn the passing of Congressman John Lewis. 

They also announced “a call to action” to support the Black Lives Matter movement in its quest for racial justice.

The letter calls on all Irish Americans to support new racial justice initiatives from removing Confederate names at American military bases to supporting new efforts to expand voting rights, and urges Irish Americans to boycott the sale of “Irish Lives Matters” t-shirts. 

The letter, stated the release, ”is explicit in supporting non-violent peaceful protest to achieve racial justice.” 

Former Congressman Joe Crowley, an organizer of the letter commented: “John Lewis believed in good trouble, smart trouble, the type of trouble that opens up people’s hearts and minds.

“We are in challenging times and there is great division in the country. We stand with John Lewis when it comes to smart, creative peaceful protest. We ask all Irish Americans to follow in his example.” 

The letter is being sent to Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-CA), the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Eleven members of Congress have signed on to the letter in a show of respect for their former colleague. 

Former Congressman Crowley, the spokesperson for the initiative, continued: “It was an honor to call John Lewis a mentor and friend. I was proud to walk many miles with him, crossing E. Pettus Bridge for his annual pilgrimage to Selma, protesting in the streets of D.C. for the rights of immigrants, sitting-in on the House Floor for gun safety. But I cannot claim to have walked in his shoes and no Irish American can.

“There continues to be dramatic racial inequality in America, and the Black Lives Matter movement is at the forefront of advocating for change. I support BLM, I support the fight for racial justice, and I oppose the sale of these tee shirts because they dilute and diminish the efforts of Black Lives Matter.” 

Among those signing on to the letter are former Governor of Maryland Martin O’Malley, Congressman Richard Neal (D-Mass) Chair of the Friends of Ireland Caucus, Loretta Brennan Glucksman, former Chair of the American Ireland Fund, former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Kevin O’Malley, and Ambassador Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, both of whom served under President Obama, noted author Colm Tobin, Niall O’Dowd, publisher of the Irish Voice, Brian J. O’Dwyer, Grand Marshal of the 2019 New York Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, and former U.S Senator Gary Hart. 

The letter urges a boycott of “Irish Lives Matters” t-shirts now on sale on Amazon, Walmart and other retailers “protesting the wrongheaded, commercial decision”

In this context the letter states: “we believe the sale of these T-shirts is at best tone deaf and insensitive and at worst a deliberate, cynical attempt to trivialize, diminish or denigrate the BLM.” 

The call to action also urges the “great institutions of Irish America, particularly our colleges and universities, as well as our civic and fraternal organizations, to address their role in maintaining the institutional racism that has plagued this nation. The work being done by Georgetown University Slavery Project in acknowledging the university’s links to slavery is a clear example of what can be done.” 

Ted Smyth, who helped to formulate the letter, stated: “We are very pleased that seven Irish Studies Programs at leading universities across the country have signed on to the letter. They can take a leadership role in continuing a growing and honest conversation between Irish America and Black America. They can also inspire a younger generation of Irish Americans to actively support racial justice and equality.” 

Miriam Nyhan Grey, Director Graduate Studies and Associate Director Glucksman Ireland House at NYU, a signer of the letter said: “The Black, Brown and Green Voices initiative represents a documentation strategy to give voice to the diversity of the Irish diaspora by recording life histories with Black and Brown Irish Americans. 

“The interviews unpack how hierarchies of race and ethnicity have framed Irishness, and the imperative to amplify the diversity of Ireland and her diaspora in the 21st century.” 

The letter, added the accompanying release, developed out of lengthy conversations by a small group of Irish American leaders in the immediate aftermath of the death of Congressman Lewis. 

Brian O’Dwyer, a participant in the conversations, commented: “As a young man I worked to register Black voters in Mississippi. I am gratified that Irish American leadership has come together to reject racism and support the BLM movement.” 

Added Joe Crowley: “We felt we had to do something tangible and specific in response to John’s death and the urgent demands for social justice. Over a century ago the great Irish Liberator Daniel O’Connell would tell the Irish to ‘agitate, agitate, agitate’ for their voting rights. John Lewis urged Americans to make “good trouble” to secure their rights. John set the example on how peaceful, creative non-violent protest leads to great changes. We intend to follow John’s example.” 

Crowley continued: “You can make a lot of good trouble to get things done. This is no time for Irish America to be sitting on the sidelines when it comes to racial justice. America will be a better place if we are willing to support African Americans in their quest to overcome the long and intolerable legacy of racial discrimination. Now is the time.”

 

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