Conor Cruise O'Brien II

During his career in the Civil service, Conor became increasingly sceptical about the position taken on the North by the Dublin governments. He was involved in producing propaganda to try and persuade the British government to hand over the 6 Northern counties to the Irish state. This was referred to as the "Policy of the Sore thumb", ie raising the partition question all the time. Conro realised however that most Southern Irish knew little of the north and did not really want partition to end.. as it would mean that a large number of ferociously anti Irish, anti Catholic Protestant Unionists would become Irish citizens. They mostly did not want a change in the culture of the southern Irish state. So while the public claimed to want an end to partition, the truth was that they were very ambivalent about it. He had married a girl from Northern Ireland and he made an effort to get to know Unionists, and he could see their point of view. While they were bigoted and treated Catholics in the North harshly, there was some truth in their belief that "Home Rule would be Rome Rule" as Southern Ireland was very much dominated by the Catholic church. Conor's first marriage ended in divorce which was almost unheard of in Ireland. When he left the Civil service, after the Katanga issue, he became a lecturer at various universities abroad, in Africa and in the USA. He became a Labour party activist and stood for election in the 1970s. He became a minister in the Coalition government in 1973. He returned to Ireland to live, and used his time as a minister to attack the IRA and to try to persuade the public to re evaluate their attitudes to Northern Ireland and Partition. Conor lost his seat at the General Election in 1977, and got a job as Editor of the Observer, in London. He commuted for a few years and then gave up party politics in Ireland entirely. He worked as a journalist and wrote books including one on Israel, The Siege, and one on Edmund Burke. He was not always popular in Ireland due to his dislike of extreme nationalism and his sympathy with Unionism. He and his wife went on writing for many years, and he died at the age of 90.