Daniel Finn

From The Blog

Garret FitzGerald

20 May 2011

For a country that appears to show no great regard for highbrows, Ireland has had its fair share of intellectuals in government office, from Justin Keating and Conor Cruise O’Brien in the 1970s to Michael D. Higgins and Martin Mansergh more recently. Yet none rose as far as Garret FitzGerald, the two-term taoiseach who died yesterday. FitzGerald began his career as an academic economist before entering the Dáil and assuming leadership of Fine Gael, and never quite lost his donnish air.

Diary: Ireland’s Election

Daniel Finn, 17 March 2011

Four years ago, when Fianna Fáil was returned for a third consecutive stint in office, electoral pundits could barely find enough superlatives for the role played by Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen in the party’s triumph. Ahern, they said, was a ‘political tsunami’, and Cowen, if anything, even more formidable. This time around, neither Ahern nor Cowen was standing,...

From The Blog

Bolivian Graffiti

1 November 2010

In his History of Contemporary Italy 1943-80, Paul Ginsborg quotes an American officer based in the peninsula after the war who found the skewed priorities of the natives rather disturbing: ‘The Italians can tell you the names of the ministers in the government but not the names of the favourite products of the celebrities of their country. In addition, the walls of the Italian cities are plastered more with political slogans than with commercial ones.’ In contemporary Bolivia the ratio of political slogans to commercial ones is at least ten to one, and that’s being generous to the ad hoardings.

Ahead of the Game: The Official IRA

Daniel Finn, 7 October 2010

In May 1977, Ian Paisley was in a television studio in Belfast when he bumped into Malachy McGurran, a leader of the Official IRA in Northern Ireland. At that time, Paisley was attempting to orchestrate a repeat of the loyalist workers’ strike that had defeated the Sunningdale power-sharing agreement three years earlier. Paisley was demanding a return to unfettered Orange rule and...

Community Relations: In Belfast

Daniel Finn, 27 August 2009

‘Get out of our Queen’s country before our bonfire night and parade day, other than that your building will be blown up.’ The message was sent to Muslim, Polish and Indian community centres in Belfast at the start of July. Having driven more than a hundred Romanians from the Queen’s country the previous month, Belfast’s Aryan fraternity must have felt they were...

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