THE HANDSTAND

SEPTEMBER 2006

Century of Endeavour

A Father and Son Overview of the 20th Century

Dr Roy H W Johnston

This book was piloted in the US, with a limited edition, in November 2003 by Academica/Maunsel.

A revised edition with an extended index has been published in Ireland in April 2006. For orders in Ireland, in the UK and in continental Europe of the new Irish edition, see Tyndall Publications, or Lilliput Press, e-mail info@lilliputpress.ie

Enquiries re orders in the US: should go by fax to Robert Redfern-West at +1-202-296-7490, or e-mail him at Academicapress@aol.com.

As reviews become available, we will reproduce them here.


What my father and I did, or tried to do, in Ireland.

My father Joe Johnston (1890-1972) ('JJ') was a radical intellectual from a small-farmer schoolteacher Presbyterian family in Tyrone, who went from Dungannon Royal School to Trinity College Dublin and then to Oxford, where he heard Carson address the Union, and recognised the threat to Home Rule of the Tories' Blenheim call to arms.

After becoming a Fellow of TCD in 1913, JJ published his Civil War in Ulster in an attempt to mobilise Protestant Liberal Home Rule support against the process that led to the Larne gun-running of April 1914, which was the introduction of the gun into Irish politics in the 20th century by the Tory-Orange conspiracy; the 1916 Rising was partly a response to this, and to the World War. Subsequently JJ worked for an all-Ireland constitutional settlement on the Canadian model, via the 1917 Convention, exposing the dangers of Partition.

JJ was supportive of the Free State as it emerged, while being critical of its economics, especially as it subsequently developed under de Valera. He worked to keep alive north-south links, and used his position from 1938 in the Senate to advocate constructive all-Ireland agricultural policies in response to the war emergency.

Post-war he worked critically in the development economics domain, identifying Bishop Berkeley as the classical source of wisdom in this field. Latterly he was critical of the Common Agricultural Policy of the EEC, predicting its crisis which is now acutely upon us.

In his latter decades JJ interacted with the present writer RJ, his son, who in the 1940s, while a science undergraduate in TCD, helped develop a student Left, and in the 1950s, after a time in France, attempted to radicalise the Labour movement with continental Marxist ideas.

In the 1960s RJ was more successful in helping to politicise the republican movement, steering it towards the non-violent campaign for civil rights in Northern Ireland, and towards democratising the economic system via the co-operative movement. This attempt was frustrated by armed Orange pogroms, stimulating the reversion of the movement to arms, under the influence of the 'Provisional' process led by Sean Mac Stiofain. In this context the present writer resigned.

The 70s, 80s and 90s were spent by the present writer in various development projects having a science and technology orientation, while contributing to politics as and when possible from the sidelines.

The importance of this as a historical record.

The foregoing history is important because it demonstrates that it was possible for radical-minded Protestants to survive and influence the course of events (despite the hostile right-wing political and Catholic cultural environment of the Free State) with the aid of the cultural traditions of the Enlightenment and the United Irishmen. The role of the Wolfe Tone bicentenary in 1963 was crucial in enabling a political left-republican approach to be adumbrated by Cathal Goulding and others, enlisting the aid of the present writer. This process came close to achieving in 1968 political reforms in Northern Ireland which would have rendered the subsequent 30 years of mayhem unnecessary. It failed because the movement was unable politically to handle a response to the armed Orange pogroms of 1969.

Relevance to Irish studies

The Irish Studies community needs to extend its scope from literature, history and politics to include economics, innovation, science, technology and cultural diversity, with particular reference to the Protestant contribution to Irish identity, and to the importance of the practical arts in the culture. It is impossible to convey the complexity of the interaction between these factors in a brief outline. The author can be contacted at rjtechne@iol.ie and will be pleased to convey by e-mail an extended outline to a prospective reviewer or purchaser.


***

We give below a version of the title page, which in the hypertext support system itself is hotlinked into the chapters and appendices. These are in turn hotlinked into a substantial amount of source material. In the version below the hotlinks are mostly dud, but we have indicated one live one with an *, which links to the Introductory Overview, and in this Overview we indicate with other *s which hotlinked notes enable some sample source material to be accessed. The hypertext may eventually be purchased from the author, possibly in CD-ROM mode, by a procedure and at a price which has yet to be agreed, but in the meantime the author is prepared to respond to enquiries from purchasers of the book, and is considering also various modes of restricted access to the hypertext on the Internet.

Century of Endeavour

A Father and Son Overview of the 20th Century

Dr Roy H W Johnston

(comments to rjtechne at iol dot ie)

TABLE of CONTENTS

Introduction: an *Overview* of the Century

Decade by Decade:

  • Chapter 1: 1900s: Joe Johnston's early background
  • Chapter 2: 1910s: Oxford, TCD, 1916 etc
  • Chapter 3: 1920s: Co-operative crusading, family pressures...
  • Chapter 4: 1930s: slump, economic war....
  • Chapter 5:
  • Chapter 6: 1950s: economic critiques; politics at two levels...
  • Chapter 7:
  • Chapter 8: 1970s: Last Days of JJ; RJ as science critic...
  • Chapter 9: 1980s: the innovation process...
  • Chapter 10: 1990s: politics and the Internet...

Conclusion: Reflections on the Century

Theme Threads (each spanning several decades):

Bibliography: published and unpublished JJ sources and RJ sources.

Source material relating to the *republican politicising attempt* which commenced in the 1960s and was aborted subsequent to the 1969 crisis.

Acknowledgments

[To Techne Home Page]

Some navigational notes:

The foregoing gives an initial listing of the works covered in this hypertext work. In any of the modules, a highlighted word on its own brings up a related piece of text. If the word is accompanied by a number, it brings up a footnote or a reference in a related reference-page. In most browsers, if you click on the 'Back' button, it will bring to to the point of departure in the document from which you came.

Copyright (c)Dr Roy Johnston 2003

A question of Israel

The Australian journalist Antony Lowenstein has finally had his book, My Israel Question, published.

'I can think of few books about Israel and Palestine, written by an Australian, as important as Antony Loewenstein's brave j'accuse. In challenging the propagandists to give up their addiction, he is a truth-teller bar none.' --John Pilger.

'This is one of the best treatises which presents in the most lucid way possible why anti-Zionism can not be equated with anti-Semitism. Interweaving personal trips, most valuable information and clear analysis, My Israel Question will serve as an essential guide for those who dare to criticise Zionist wrongdoing in the past and Israeli policies in the present, without being deterred by false allegations of Anti-Semitism.' --Dr Ilan Pappe, Senior Lecturer at the University of Haifa, Israel, and author of A History of Modern Palestine


Blood on his hands
John Kampfner
Monday 7th August 2006

Blair knew the attack on Lebanon was coming but he didn't try to stop it, because he didn't want to. He has made this country an accomplice, destroying what remained of our influence abroad while putting us all at greater risk of attack.


At a Downing Street reception not long ago, a guest had the temerity to ask Tony Blair: "How do you sleep at night, knowing that you've been responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis?" The Prime Minister is said to have retorted: "I think you'll find it's closer to 50,000."

No British leader since Winston Churchill has dealt in war with such alacrity as the present one. Back then, it was in the cause of saving the nation from Nazism. Now, it is in the cause of putting into practice the foreign policy of the simpleton. During his nine years in power, Blair - and in this government it is he, and he alone - has managed to ensure that the UK has become both reviled and stripped of influence across vast stretches of the world. In so doing, he has increased the danger of terrorism to Britain itself.

Israel's assault on Lebanon is, in many respects, as disastrous as the war in Iraq. But at least then the pre-war hubris and deceit were played out in parliament and at the UN. This latest act of folly took place suddenly, with only the barest of attempts to justify it to global public opinion. And it stems from the core Middle East problem: the decades-old conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians.

I am told that the Israelis informed George W Bush in advance of their plans to "destroy" Hezbollah by bombing villages in southern Lebanon. The Americans duly informed the British. So Blair knew. This exposes as a fraud the debate of the past week about calling for a ceasefire. Indeed, one of the reasons why negotiations failed in Rome was British obduracy. This has been a case not of turning a blind eye and failing to halt the onslaught, but of providing active support.

Blair, like Bush, had no intention of urging the Israelis to slow down their bombardment, believing somehow that this struggle was winnable. Israel has a right to self-defence, but it could have responded to the seizure of its soldiers, and to the rocket attacks, by the diplomatic route. That would have ensured greater sympathy. Now, growing numbers in Israel itself realise that military action will bring no long-term solution.

Even if the guns fall silent for a while, the damage has been done. This is the score sheet so far: roughly 800 deaths; shocking images of the slaughter of children in Qana; no clear Israeli military advance. And the transformation of Hezbollah from an organisation on the periphery of Lebanese politics into an object of admiration across the Arab world. But it is even worse than that. Is the assumption that civilians are legitimate targets if they do not flee certain areas any different from the principles that underlay the US war in Vietnam? Blair and Bush have given their blessing to the forced displacement of a large population, in violation of the guiding principles of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

Lebanon will now provide a rich source of inspiration to radical Islamists in their distorted quest for martyrdom. Senior Whitehall sources involved in the fight against terrorism are gravely concerned about the consequences of the Prime Minister's failure to condemn Israel's actions. The intelligence services say it is too early to tell whether Lebanon has already contributed to radicalisation in the UK; they work from the assumption that it will, like Iraq and Afghan istan. This is not in any way to justify or suggest equivalence, but it is surely the duty of a leader to produce a risk assessment of his actions. If Blair is prepared to put Britain in greater danger, he has to persuade its citizens that he is doing so for good reason.

Blair, at his rhetorical best in front of friends in California, appears in no mood for self-doubt. "I have many opponents on the subject," he told Rupert Murdoch's elite gathering at Pebble Beach on 30 July. "But I have complete inner confidence in the analysis of the struggle we face." Either he is delusional, or he has no choice but to say what he says. One close aide recalls that when the Prime Minister was preparing a foreign-policy speech in his Sedgefield constituency in 2004, a year after the invasion of Iraq, he considered a mea culpa of sorts, but changed his mind, asking his team: "Do we want headlines of 'Blair: I was wrong' or 'Blair: I was right'?"

Whatever he may think alone at night, the Prime Minister is locked in a spiral of self-justification for his actions in Iraq, his broader Middle East policy and his unstinting support of Bush. His speech in Los Angeles on 1 August was spun as a rethink. If so, it is too little, too late. Historians reflecting on the Blair-Bush "war on terror" that followed the attacks of 11 September 2001 would be right to see it as a joint venture. Ultimately, his US policy is his foreign policy. It has, by his own admission, underpinned his every action.

But one part of the jigsaw that Blair claimed to be vital was never put in place. The "road map", drawn up in 2002 by the quartet of the US, EU, United Nations and Russia, has remained the best hope for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, yet it was never implemented, because Bush didn't really believe in it. If Blair felt so passionately about it, and if his public silence did win him the influence inside the White House that he claims to have, he could and should have stood up and been counted on that issue, if on no other. Instead, he meekly accepted American inaction. The horrific events of the past three weeks can be traced in large part to that failure. Blair's exhortations to his American audience at least to consider the Palestinian issue were lamentable.

Before taking office in 1997, Blair travelled light on foreign policy. Saddam Hussein's chemical gassing of 5,000 Kurds at Halabja in 1988 passed him by: unlike dozens of other MPs, he didn't bother to sign a motion condemning it. Once in power, and frustrated at the pace of reform in domestic politics, Blair seized upon the theory of "humanitarian interventionism" that grew out of anger over inaction, first in Bosnia and then Rwanda. His decision to back military action in Kosovo reflected that thinking, and led to tension with Bill Clinton over America's reluctance to commit ground forces.

Banalities of "good and evil"

Having spent a month in Rwanda in 1994, seeing attacks take place, I need no persuading that inaction can be as hideous as action. Sometimes it is right to fight, but - as Blair should know from his Chicago speech of 1999, in which he set out the principles of humanitarian intervention - the outcome is what matters. When I began work on my book Blair's Wars, I tried to give the Prime Minister the benefit of the doubt, until I realised, on speaking to many people who worked closely with him, how simplistic and impressionable he was.

Now, as Blair hides behind banalities about "good and evil" and the familiar, crude definitions of "terrorism", his ministers look on helplessly. They talk openly to journalists - in the "you can print it, but just don't name me" deal that is the coward's life at Westminster - of Blair's "Bush problem". Shortly before MPs left for their summer break, one senior member of the cabinet accosted me in the corridors of the Commons, and asked: "How much further up their arses do you think we can go?" I suggested that this was more up to him than to me.

At least over Iraq someone resigned. This time, ministers do nothing. Their private complaints have no moral or political value, because they will not stop Blair. Under cabinet rules of collective responsibility, they are endorsing the Israeli assault.

Blair's survival in power is no longer a game of cat-and-mouse with Gordon Brown; it is no longer a question of Labour's ability to stave off the Conservatives. It is far more serious than that.



A record of conflict: the death toll from wars Britain has fought under three prime ministers

Tony Blair
71,617 deaths
9 years in power

Iraq war (2003-)

115 UK troop deaths 30,000 Iraqi troop deaths (estimate by Gen Tommy Franks in Oct 2003) 39,460-43,927 civilian deaths (Iraq Body Count)

Afghanistan (2001-)

16 UK troop deaths (as of 1 August 2006)

1,300-8,000 direct civilian deaths (Guardian estimate). Unknown Taliban deaths

Sierra Leone (2000-2002)

1 UK troop death 25 foreign troop deaths (at least)

Nato bombing of Serbia (1999)

No UK troop deaths. Unknown Serbian troop deaths 500-1,500 civilian deaths (according to Human Rights Watch/Nato estimates)

Operation Desert Fox (1998)

200-300 Iraqi deaths (based on UN estimate)

John Major
22,316 deaths
7 years in power

Gulf war (1991)

16 UK troop deaths 20,000-22,000 Iraqi troop deaths 2,300 civilian deaths (according to the Iraqi government)

Margaret Thatcher
1,013 deaths
11 years in power

US bombing of Libya from UK bases (1986)

100 Libyan deaths

Falklands war (1982)

255 UK troop deaths 655 Argentinian troop deaths 3 Civilian deaths



The figures do not take into account the estimated 350,000 Iraqis who died as a result of sanctions between 1991 and 2003 - under John Major and Tony Blair.

Blair's body count is probably underestimated here because there are no figures for Taliban and Serbian military deaths.

Estimates for Iraqi deaths range between 30,000 and 300,000. The official Bush estimate is 30,000 deaths. Iraq Body Count estimates between 39,460 and 43,927, although it admits this is far below the real total, as the database counts only reported deaths. A Lancet report in 2004 estimated 100,000 deaths, although one of the authors says the total could be 300,000.

Research: Daniel Trilling

The New Inquisitions: Heretic-hunting and the Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (Oxford UP, 2006),


Carl Schmitt , peremptory justice....

By ARTHUR VERSLUIS

Arthur Versluis is author of The New Inquisitions: Heretic-hunting and the Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (Oxford UP, 2006). He is professor of American Studies at Michigan State University and can be reached at versluis@msu.edu  

At the insistence of the White House, the Pentagon publicly asserted in 2006 what has already become self-evident, that the United States would not observe the protocols of the Geneva Conventions concerning some prisoners.  Coming as the announcement did on the heels of revelations about the prisons at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and various secret locations to which the CIA had prisoners flown for interrogation and torture, it would seem that American citizens had lost their capacity for outrage or even indignation.  But the fact remains that the selective abrogation of the Geneva Conventions, the George W. Bush administration's attempts to assert "unitary executive" power, has an instructive precedent.

As is well known, the White House has been eager to assert what is claimed to be the power of the "unitary executive," that is, the asserted power of the executive branch to override those provisions of laws with which it does not agree.  This theory of the "unitary executive" meant, in practice, that the White House attached "signing statements" to hundreds of pieces of legislation enacted by Congress.  Instead of vetoing bills, the Bush Jr. administration issues these statements asserting the administration's unilateral rejection of or re-interpretation of the legislation. 

This asserted "unitary executive power" is not only a rationale for "signing statements.” It underlies nearly everything that the George W. Bush administration has done. To take the most historically important example, the invasion and occupation of Iraq took place without the authorization of Congress (that is, without any official Declaration of War, and of course without the imprimatur of the United Nations).  A violation of both American and international law, the invasion of Iraq was, in fact, the unilateral abrogation of law by the American executive power.

The invasion of Iraq is, of course, not the only example, just the one with the most far-reaching and visible consequences. There are others. Consider the abrogation of FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, whose purpose was to limit the abuse of federal uses of wiretaps or other forms of surveillance after the abuses of the 1960s and 1970s had been revealed. The scope of the wiretapping and other invasions of American citizens' privacy is not yet fully known, but no doubt eventually many abuses will be revealed.  Only long after the election shenanigans of November, 2004, did Americans even learn that the Bush Jr. administration once again had unilaterally abrogated American law, asserting here too the "power of the unitary executive." What very few people have realized is that this notional "unitary executive" power has an instructive precedent, which is outlined in the works of the German legal theorist, Carl Schmitt. In the 1920s, Schmitt sharply criticized the parliamentary system of the Weimar Republic, in an analysis that has a striking resonance with the contemporary American Congress's morass of ineptness, paralysis, and manifest corruption. When National Socialism came to power in the 1930s, Schmitt defended the Third Reich and its right to peremptory justice by reference to the juridical example of the Inquisition.

According to Schmitt, the ultimate power of government is not to be found in legislation, but in the executive power to abrogate or suspend legislation. What matters is not the rule, but the exception, and "sovereign is he who decides the exception."  Schmitt's aphorism describes how Hitler in fact took power, with the unilateral abrogation of civil liberties in Germany. Hitler imposed a "state of exception" on those whom he deemed alien to or a danger to the regime, and those in such a state of exception no longer have the rights of citizens. This state of exception, willed by the German unitary executive power, was the juridical basis for the Nazi death camps. The assertion of notional "unitary executive power" in part results from officials' prior disgust at the inherent weakness of a parliamentary system to forcefully address long-term problems facing society, like a weak fiat currency, economic crisis, or terrorism.  A "unitary executive power" appeals to the "Right," to which Schmitt and purportedly the Bush Jr. administration belong, but, one has to note, it also could have appeal for the "Left."  Such executive powers no doubt appeal to all who are certain of their own rectitude, certain that they are guided by destiny or by God to act, to be decisive.  Thus one characteristic of fascism is said to be "decisionism."  "At least we're doing something," a decisionist says - even if what "we're" doing is in fact despotic and destructive.  George W. Bush is, he tells us, "the decider."

In The New Inquisitions: Heretic-hunting and the Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (Oxford UP, 2006), I detail inquisitional pathologies that have haunted the West for a very long time. These pathologies are clearly visible today - and not only in various Bush Jr. administration policies - but especially in the attempted abrogation, by executive fiat, of the Geneva Conventions. It surprises me that there is comparatively little written about such attempts, let alone about their historical precedents in National Socialism, but perhaps that is only to be expected in what a growing number of observers from across the political spectrum recognize as the proto-fascist ambience of the contemporary United States.

Arthur Versluis is author of The New Inquisitions: Heretic-hunting and the Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (Oxford UP, 2006). He is professor of American Studies at Michigan State University and can be reached at versluis@msu.edu

  
Back in Print
The Palestine Diary
by Robert John and Sami Hadawi, in two volumes
Foreword by Arnold Toynbee 

Order now from Amazon.com:

Vol 1: Britain's Involvement 1914-1945

Vol 2: United States, United Nations
Intervention 1945-1948

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The Palestine Diary is indispensable to understanding the 9/11 attacks on the
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Through The Palestine Diary in two volumes—Britain's Involvement 1914-1945
and United States, United Nations Intervention 1945-1948—secrets behind the
phenomenal achievement of a Jewish state in Palestine, and Palestinian losses, are
placed in the context of national and international politics and the two
World Wars—with facsimile of the secret British document promising independence
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Some comments on The Palestine Diary:

In his foreword to The Palestine Diary, Arnold Toynbee, the outstanding
historian of the 20th century, wrote, "I hope this book will be widely read in the
United States, and this by Jewish and non-Jewish Americans. If the American
Government were constrained by American public opinion to take a non-partisan
line in Palestine, the situation in Palestine might quickly change for the
better."
   
------------------------------------------------------------------------

William Yale, Special Agent of the Department of State in World War I,
Adviser to the Department on the Near East in World War II and to the United Nations
Organization:

"This book will make history."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

David W. Littlefield, Library of Congress, The Library Journal:

"This is not a personal diary, but the most detailed history available of the
Palestine problem . . .the book is so detailed, and the quotations and
footnoting of the sources is so extensive that it is a valuable aid to researchers."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

John K. Cooley, Middle East Bureau, the Christian Science Monitor:

"It is a most illuminating and useful book. It should be in universities and
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------------------------------------------------------------------------