Coincidance - Principia Discordia

178 COINCIDANCE
could be President of Ireland anytime he wanted," I was recently told in a
pub, "but his interests are more international now."
Americans—even Irish-Americans—often find it impossible to understand
Irish politics in the years when MacBride was an officer of the I.R.A.,
1919-1937. Eamon DeValera {often called "the George Washington of
Ireland") was, for instance, MacBride's superior officer in the I.R.A. in the
early 1920s; the two were military enemies after DeValera entered the Free
State government in 1927; they became political enemies after 1937, when
MacBride, having become a lawyer, secured the release of hundreds of
I.R.A. members and alleged I.R.A members imprisoned by DeValera.
Today, MacBride speaks of DeValera with respect tinged with reverence.
"Dev lost the civil war of 1922-27," he says, "but in the first five years he
served as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) he won everything back that had been
lost in the civil war." It was the accomplishments of those first five DeValera
years 1932-37, that convinced MacBride that DeValera's nonviolent but
constant pressure on England that led MacBride to resign from the
paramilitary organization. When asked about some of DeValera's more
intolerant policies, which were decidedly unfair to Protestants, MacBride
says simply, "He was wrong then." When pressed for further comment, he
repeats woodenly, "He was wrong, I said," and waits impatiently for the
next question. Dev was wrong, his tone implies, but haven't all the rest of us been
wrong sometimes?
It was as Minister of External Affairs, 1948-51, that MacBride developed
what has been dubbed his "sore thumb policy": any international tribunal on
which he serves is sure to find that the question of the partition of Ireland
has become part of the agenda, officially or otherwise—much to the
embarrassment of the British delegates. And although separated from the
old I.R.A. since 1937, and having denounced the terrorist tactics of the new,
Provisional I.R.A. often, MacBride wrote an introduction to the autobiography
of Bobby Sands, the Provisional who starved himself to death in protest
against British occupation of the Six Counties, a non-violent tactic Gandhi
would have approved. Although Margaret Thatcher denounced Sands after
his death as a "man of violence," everywhere one travels in Ireland one sees
graffiti, stark in their simplicity, saying only BOBBY SANDS R.I.P.
Sean MacBride lives in Roebuck House, a rambling old Georgian mansion
southwest of Dublin. Despite all 1 knew of his active life, I was astonished at
the youthfulness of his complexion and the bouyancy of his walk. He
dressed casually, as the Irish generally do, and looked mildly embarrassed
when I said it was an honor to meet him. His secretary announced that,
although I had been promised an hour and a half for the interview, the time
would have to be cut to an hour due to another urgent appointment that