Re: Query Ireland

["Richard Fidler" <rfidler@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>> I'm looking for some good history books on Ireland, preferably ones from
a Marxist  and/or Republican point of view. Aside from Marx/Engels who
are the good names in Irish historiography and political writing?

Sam <<

I made a similar request off-list to Phil Ferguson last year. He's busy with
his election campaign at present, but I don't think he would mind if I
posted his reply to me at that time:

Marx and Engels, "Marx and Engels on Ireland and the Irish Question",
London, Lawrence and Wishart (can't recall the date, early 70s I think, but
I can look it up).

Peter Berresford  Ellis, "A history of the Irish working class", London:
Gollancz, 1972.  (There is an updated edition published by Pluto, some time
in the 1980s)

Liz Curtis, "The cause of Ireland: from the United Irishmen to partition",
Belfast, Beyond the Pale Publications, 1994.

T.A. Jackson, "Ireland her own: an outline history of the Irish struggle
for national freedom and independence", London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1971

Connolly's "Collected Works" (2 vols, Dublin, New Books, 1987-8) are
indispensable.  His "Labour In Irish History", which is in vol 2, but is
also published in earlier forms, going back to about 1910, is excellent for
the class dynamics of struggles in Ireland before 1916.

C. Desmond Greaves, "Liam Mellows and the Irish Revolution", London,
Lawrence and Wishart, can't recall or find what year, but I think it was in
the 1970s.

The best book on the IRA is not the more well-known Tim Pat Coogan 'The
IRA', but J. Bowyer Bell's 'The Secret Army'.

On women, the best starting point is
Margaret Ward, "Unmanageable revolutionaries", London, Pluto Press, early
1980s, but there is a new edition published by them 1995.

There are loads of biographies of Irish republican women, especially of the
Countess Markievicz (the women have fared better in the bio stakes than the
men, actually).

On the north, after partition, the classic is
Michael Farrell, "Northern Ireland: The Orange State", Pluto, (late 70s).

There is also a new book of unpublished Connolly stuff, called
'Connolly: the Lost Writings', which came out a couple of years ago.

Roddy Connolly's stuff in the early years of the Third International is
very good - just a couple of reports.  One of them appears under the
name Roddy Darragh in various editions of the proceedings of the Third
International (1st or 2nd Congress, I think).

-- Richard Fidler


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