February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
If any people in the world seemed lucky, it was not the Irish but the Americans, who were living in a period of unbridled prosperity, seemingly endless promise and increasingly ambitious global leadership.
Meanwhile, Connolly?s beloved Ireland and Ulster lay partitioned. In 1921, 26 Irish counties were semiliberated from British rule, yet six counties of nine-county Ulster languished still under ascendant Ulster Unionism. The hurt for a Monaghan-born nationalist like Connolly must have been palpable.
These two snapshots of the world?s scene contained all the lessons a newspaperman like Connolly would have needed as the years of the 20th century and the Irish Echo unfolded.
First, there was some hope among nationalists, even though the Boundary Commission in 1925 confirmed that all six counties would stay separate from the South. They felt still, in 1928, that the artificially created six-county Northern statelet, as they saw it, would collapse under its own seeming contradictions. Yet Northern Ireland exists to this day.
And if Connolly needed a lesson in how viciously swift things could collapse, he only had to wait less than a year, when the Wall Street Crash swept away a decade of American growth and confidence in a day, on Oct. 29, 1929.
Then freedom fell across the world under the onslaught of totalitarianism. Already Italy?s Mussolini had strengthened his grip on power by the late 1920s, but Germany soon saw the collapse of the Weimer Republic, and the rise of Nazism, perhaps the most evil and destructive force in human history. Stalin perverted the ideals of the October Revolution, finally destroying all opposition within the ruling Communist Party. Democracy was overthrown in Spain, which descended into a brutal and bloody civil war. In the East, Japanese imperialist militarism became increasingly aggressive as the ?30s progressed. The world was only rescued from barbarism by the combined efforts of the Allies, which included Stalin?s Russia and was led by the military might of the U.S.
The Soviets? Red Army occupied larges parts of Eastern and Central Europe, as the Americans marched across France and up through Italy.
Meanwhile, reporting on the war effort in Europe in March 1945, future Irish Echo publisher Patrick Grimes wrote that the 200,000 Irish-American soldiers who had fought against the Axis would not stand for the continued ?dismemberment? of Ireland.
Such optimism was misplaced. And it is the duty of newspapers to reflect those moments when the wrong call is made or predictions turn out to be mistaken. As the century advanced, the Echo faithfully reported on the endurance of the Northern Irish border while recording the fortunes of the Irish at home and around the world.
In January 1958, Charlie Connolly died, taking to the grave his unfulfilled nickname, ?Smash the Border.? He had not been without achievement, however: Connolly supported the start of a transatlantic air service from Ireland to the U.S., though he didn?t live to see its inauguration in May 1958. And he had established a newspaper that would endure.
Within a few years, Irish America had its most thrilling moment — the election of a descendant of Famine immigrants to the globe?s most powerful office. A high point of the 1,000-day reign of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was his visit to Ireland in June 1963. He promised to return in the spring, but was dead within the year.
Lows tripped on the heels of highs — five years later, the Irish world reeled as a second Kennedy died from an assassin?s bullets. Patrick Grimes said in the Echo?s 50th anniversary edition in 1978 that the Kennedys? all-too-brief careers were ?like shooting stars . . . ?
The ?60s, opined the Echo, were years when ?cracks appeared in America?s foundations.?
Cracks were appearing elsewhere in the world. The Echo?s headline of Oct. 12, 1968 was to be the first in a series of grim tidings from the homeland that continued for more than 30 years: ?Nationalists, police clash in Derry weekend of protest.? The Troubles had begun.
As the years rolled by, the Echo chronicled the two great stories of the Irish world: continuing immigration from Ireland to the U.S. and the conflict in the North. Bernadette Devlin visited America. British troops slaughtered 13 unarmed protestors in Derry. Bombs continued to go off all around the North, there were tit-for-tat sectarian killings; the Republic, relatively untouched, suffered the worst single day of violence when car bombs killed 34 in Dublin and Monaghan. De Valera died in retirement, at age 92; Mountbatten was killed; the Irish Republic joined what was then quaintly called the Common Market; hunger strikers thrust Northern Ireland?s running sores on to the cover of newspapers worldwide. And the violence went on.
Not all news is bad, of course. In 1978, Patrick Grimes noted the quietening of the Echo?s offices after the newspaper switched from noisy linotype machines to typewriters and different methods of production.
Today, the Echo has adapted again, using state-of-the-art computers and Quark Express to produce its pages every week. And the world has turned again: the peace process in Northern Ireland, rocky though it may be at times, has seen violence reduced to a minimum and the possibility of an internal settlement that, while leaving the border intact, would surely meet the approval of Charles Connolly. For the first time in decades, a measure of true peace, cooperation and respect has been achieved between the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and the UK.
Throughout these years the Echo reported on the weekly sportsmanship at Gaelic Park, though here too, time proved that all must change eventually: we look forward to the opening of the new Gaelic Park at Randalls Island in the near future.
Social issues too, have dominated the headlines, as at times it seems that Ireland?s mores have moved in directions away from Irish America?s. Divorce came to Ireland and in the last decade church attendance has been slipping precipitously. While many Irish Americans have been galvanized this year to oppose gay marriage in the U.S., St. Patrick?s Day celebrations in Ireland have been more about celebrating diversity than about commemorating St. Patrick?s gift of Christianity to Ireland.
In the arts, too, there have been highs and lows — from Hollywood and Riverdance and U2 to Michael Flatley?s million-dollar legs, Bono?s pronouncements on the fate of the world and Sinead O?Connor?s oft-changing beliefs. Interest in the Irish language has strengthened too, as witnessed by the dozens of classes in Gaelic available in the tristate area alone.
Charles Connolly saw a grim new era born in 1929 as American confidence and prosperity collapsed into the Great Depression. In 2001, Sept. 11 brought another era of fear to these shores, with the terror attacks in New York and Washington. As with so many other world events, there has been a direct impact on Irish affairs. The catastrophic attacks led to the war on Iraq by the Bush administration — supported by many in Irish America but vigorously opposed by many in Ireland.
A new century has brought new challenges to the world, not least in the world of science. Stem cell research promises to provide new cures to old diseases — with Irish biotech companies at the cutting edge -? but it is research that also opens new fronts on established moral arguments.
There can be no doubt that the years ahead will place even greater demands on our making sense of the world around us and that two constants that can be relied upon: things can remain stubbornly the same — or change in an instant. The Irish Echo will continue to connect the dots in the Irish world for its readers, while holding up a mirror to the Irish community.
And while Charles Connolly never did get to see the border smashed, we may yet live to report on its final irrelevance.