THE RECENT HYSTERICAL outbursts about Maoism in Ireland suggest that an influential and large group of Chinese Communists are on the brink of a power take-overleading to this country's ensnarement inside the bamboo enclave. A cooler appraisal of the strength of Maoism here suggests a less optimistic or pessimistic (depending on your viewpoint) situation.
About six months ago a small group of Maoists decided to begin activities in the Shannon Industrial Estate. They came mainly from their strongest base in Trinity College. Their leader in Limerick, Arthur Allen, was formerly the Maoist Irish Student Movement's expert on the war in Vietnam. Like most Irish Maoists he comes from a wealthy background, his family owns the OdIum Company and are dis¬tinguished and wealthy Quakers. Obviously such a group were not an immediate threat to the "status quo" in Limerick. They took jobs in the Estate and gradually grew to about eight members.
Photographs show her always smiling, her eyes alive under the magnificent hats which appeared in so many pictures. The image is of warmth and easy friendliness.
Mrs. Kathleen Lemass has contributed immeasurably to her husband's happiness and peace of mind and thereby to his success in public life. Unintellectual and placid by temperament, she balances his drive and dedication.
"He was always very serious-minded," she remembers. "But I was fond of dancing and the gay life." She laughs. "But they say opposites attract, don't they? "
Sean Lemass was the dominant personality of the Sixties. In december 1969, Nusight undertook a comprehensive and in-depth profile on the man and his career.
THERE have only been two significant surveys on the beliefs and cultic practices of Catholics in Dublin initiated in the last decade. The first was commissioned by Dr. John Charles McQuaid in a working-class housing estate. The findings of this report were repressed, it is said, because of the gloomy picture it painted of current religious practice among young working-class Dubliners. The second report was conceived and drawn up by Brian Power, C.C., who until mid-1968, was a highly popular Chaplain in U.C.D.
AT ABOUT 7 p.m. on October 23, a few hours after the announcement that the 1969 Nobel Prize for literature had been awarded to the Irish writer Samuel Barclay Beckett, the Irish Times received a call for help from the literary editor of a leading Norwegian paper. "Beckett," he said, "is in Tunisia.
WHEN GENERAL DE GAULLE left power, the world did not end: but something more than a lamp-rather, a great, illuminating searchlight-was suddenly dimmed. His enemies and critics-with as much generosity as condescension and vice versa at that moment heaped praise on his head: he was, they said, a great man and so unique. The earlier attacks-that he had been a bloody-minded anachronism, forcing his will on a would-be enlightened world-were softened and muted.
WHEN WE SAY a person in India is poverty-stricken, we do not use the word in exactly the same sense that we apply it here. In India, the poverty stricken are by definition starving to death. In Ireland, the term" poverty " begins before the starvation line, and is based on a qualitative assessment of conditions relative to our environment. By John Feeney, Dan Ruddy and Vincent Browne. Published in Nusight, November 1969.
THE CLEANING WOMEN in UCD earn £6 5s. Od. for a five day week. There are 25 of them. They work from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and from 2.30 p.m. until 5.30 p.m. This is a thirty hour week, but they have no recognised breaks which makes their week's work equivalent to a normal employee's. On their £6 they pay 9s. 6d. in insurance and up to £1 in income tax. This lowers their weekly salary to £4£4 10s. a week. By John Feeney, Dan Ruddy and Vincent Browne. Published in Nusight, November 1969.
SHE IS 23. She suffers from acute anxiety and chronic depression. Her nerves are so bad that she cannot go out alone, cannot take a bus or go into a crowded shop. Intelligent and articulate she understands her condition, and understands too that it is aggravated by the frightening insecurity of her situation.