The Key Role of Irish America

THE Irish American dimension to the peace process was curiously absent from the American commentaries on the incredible breakthrough in the North.

While the names of Bill and Hillary Clinton and Senator Edward Kennedy and his sister, former U.S. ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, not to mention special envoy George Mitchell, are rightly known and praised, there were others who played their part.

Time to set the record straight then on who exactly deserves the credit for first involving the U.S. in the Northern Ireland peace process.

The names of two businessmen, Bill Flynn, then chairman of Mutual of America, and billionaire philanthropist Chuck Feeney should be writ large, along with labor leader Joe Jamison.

They and former Congressman Bruce Morrison and Irish Voice publisher Niall O’Dowd (who sometimes writes this column) were the “Connolly House Group,” a bunch of private individuals who went to Belfast soon after Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992.

They negotiated a temporary ceasefire with the IRA to show that Sinn Fein were serious about engaging America in their new project. They used Senator Kennedy and his Irish advisor Trina Vargo as their conduit to the White House, which quickly became interested in the notion of playing a large part in bringing peace to Ireland.

Their initiative and their subsequent decision to seek a visa for Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to come to America and win a visa were the key breakthroughs in creating the U.S. dimension and the Clinton involvement.

Flynn’s organization, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, was the group which invited Adams to come to New York and provided the pretext for the visa.

Feeeny, who gives all his billions away, funded the Sinn Fein office in America in the critical first few years after the IRA ceasefire. His selfless role was all the more notable for the abuse he took in much of the media in Ireland and Britain who resented his role.

A book by former Irish Times American editor Conor O’Clery entitled Daring Diplomacy, available on Amazon.com, relates the story very well.

Other Key Figures

ANOTHER key figure in the earliest days was former New York Assemblyman John Dearie, who created a presidential forum which Bill Clinton appeared at and made his first Irish promises. Those promises were subsequently taken to the bank by the committed Irish American community.

Other key figures from this period in America are Ciaran Staunton, proprietor of O’Neill’s bar in Manhattan who set up the first contacts between the leadership of Sinn Fein and the Connolly House delegation and played a major role in the creation of the visa for Adams strategy, and Tom Moran, who later succeeded Bill Flynn as chairman of Mutual of America.

Moran, like Flynn, is a tireless worker for peace in the North and has developed great contacts on both sides of the sectarian divide. Truly, the history of Mutual of America on this peace project is quite an amazing one.

Quinn’s Mistake?

DID New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn make a major error on her return to New York last week and call for the end to the MacBride Principles, the set of fair hiring guidelines for Northern Ireland?

Quinn’s office is denying she ever called for that after meeting with British officials in the North and discussing investment there — she also met with Ian Paisley but there appears to be considerable evidence to the contrary.

It is not in doubt that Quinn was in contact with several city wide office holders when she returned, and that it appears that she may have put forward the ending of the MacBride Principles as a consequence of the imminent breakthrough in the North.

If she did it was a mistake that she may have been lured into while in the North. The British have long sought to get rid of the tiresome (for them) principles which were hugely successful in ensuring that American investment did not go to companies who discriminated against the minority in the North.

They may have seen the opportunity with the inexperienced Quinn to get her to push that agenda.

There may come a day when it is possible to do away with MacBride, but it is highly premature until the lay of the land is clearer and if the new joint administration is actually seen to work.