Seán MacBride (26 January 1904 – 15 January 1988) was an Irish Clann na Poblachta politician
who served as Minister for External Affairs from 1948 to 1951, Leader of Clann na Poblachta
from 1946 to 1965 and Chief of Staff of the IRA from 1936 to 1939.
He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1947 to 1957.Rising from a domestic Irish political
career, he founded or participated in many international organisations of the 20th century,
including the United Nations, the Council of Europe and Amnesty International.
He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974, the Lenin Peace Prize for 1975–1976 and
the UNESCO Silver Medal for Service in 1980.
== Early years == MacBride was born in Paris in 1904, the son
of Major John MacBride and Maud Gonne.
His first language was French, and he retained a French accent in the English language for
the rest of his life.
He first studied at the Lycée Saint-Louis-de-Gonzague.
He remained in Paris until his father's execution after the Easter Rising of 1916, when he was
sent to school at Mount St Benedict's, Gorey, County Wexford in Ireland.
In 1919, aged 15, he joined the Irish Volunteers, which fought as part of the Irish Republican
Army, and took part in the Irish War of Independence.
He opposed the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and was imprisoned by the Irish Free State during
the Civil War.On his release in 1924, MacBride studied law at University College Dublin and
resumed his IRA activities.
He worked briefly for Éamon de Valera as his personal secretary, travelling with him
to Rome to meet various dignitaries.
In January 1925, on his twenty-first birthday, MacBride married Catalina "Kid" Bulfin, a
woman four years his senior who shared his political views.
Bulfin was the daughter of the Irish nationalist publisher and travel-writer William Bulfin.
Before returning to Dublin in 1927, where he became the IRA's Director of Intelligence,
MacBride worked as a journalist in Paris and London.
Soon after his return, he was arrested and charged with the murder of politician Kevin
O'Higgins, who had been assassinated near his home in Booterstown, County Dublin.
MacBride was able to prove, however, that he was on his way back to Ireland at the time,
as he was able to call unionist-turned-Cumann na nGaedheal politician Bryan Cooper, whom
he had met on the boat travelling home, as a witness.
He was then charged with being a subversive and interned in Mountjoy Prison.Towards the
end of the 1920s, after many supporters had left to join Fianna Fáil, some members of
the IRA started pushing for a more left-wing agenda.
After the IRA Army Council voted down the idea, MacBride launched a new movement, Saor
Éire ("Free Ireland"), in 1931.
Although it was a non-military organisation, Saor Éire was declared unlawful along with
the IRA, Cumann na mBan and nine other bodies.
MacBride, meanwhile, became the security services' number-one target.In 1936, the IRA's chief
of staff Moss Twomey was sent to prison for three years; he was replaced by MacBride.
At the time, the movement was in a state of disarray, with conflicts between several factions
and personalities.
Tom Barry was appointed chief of staff to head up a military operation against the British,
an action with which MacBride did not agree.In 1937, MacBride was called to the bar.
He then resigned from the IRA when the Constitution of Ireland was enacted later that year.
As a barrister, MacBride frequently defended IRA political prisoners, but was unsuccessful
in stopping the execution in 1944 of Charlie Kerins, convicted of killing Garda Detective
Denis O'Brien in 1942.
In 1946, during the inquest into the death of Seán McCaughey, MacBride embarrassed the
authorities by forcing them to admit that the conditions in Portlaoise Prison were inhumane.
== Clann na Poblachta ==
In 1946, MacBride founded the republican/socialist party Clann na Poblachta.
He hoped it would replace Fianna Fáil as Ireland's major political party.
In October 1947, he won a seat in Dáil Éireann at a by-election in the Dublin County constituency.
On the same day, Patrick Kinane also won the Tipperary by-election for Clann na Poblachta.However,
at the 1948 general election Clann na Poblachta won only ten seats.
The party joined with Fine Gael, the Labour Party, the National Labour Party, Clann na
Talmhan and several independents to form the First Inter-Party Government with Fine Gael
TD John A. Costello as Taoiseach.
Richard Mulcahy was the Leader of Fine Gael, but MacBride and many other Irish Republicans
had never forgiven Mulcahy for his role in carrying out 77 executions under the government
of the Irish Free State in the 1920s during the Irish Civil War.
To gain the support of Clann na Poblachta, Mulcahy stepped aside in favour of Costello.
Two Clann na Poblachta TDs joined the cabinet; MacBride became Minister for External Affairs
while Noël Browne became Minister for Health.
On his ministerial accession, McBride sent a telegram to Pope Pius XII offering:
"...to repose at the feet of Your Holiness the assurance of our filial loyalty and our
devotion to Your August Person, as well as our firm resolve to be guided in all our work
by the teaching of Christ and to strive for the attainment of a social order in Ireland
based on Christian principles".MacBride was Minister of External Affairs when the Council
of Europe was drafting the European Convention on Human Rights.
He served as President of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe from 1949
to 1950 and is credited with being a key force in securing the acceptance of this convention,
which was finally signed in Rome on 4 November 1950.
In 1950, he was president of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Council of Europe,
and he was vice-president of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC,
later OECD) in 1948–51.
He was responsible for Ireland not joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).He
was instrumental in the implementation of the Repeal of the External Relations Act and
the Declaration of the Republic of Ireland in 1949.
On Easter Monday, 18 April 1949, the state left the Commonwealth of Nations.
In 1951, MacBride controversially ordered Noël Browne to resign as a minister over
the Mother and Child Scheme after it was attacked by the Irish Catholic hierarchy and the Irish
medical establishment.
Whatever the merits of the scheme, or of Browne, MacBride concluded in a Cabinet memorandum:
"Even if, as Catholics, we were prepared to take the responsibility of disregarding [the
Hierarchy's] views, which I do not think we can do, it would be politically impossible
to do so . . . We are dealing with the considered views of the leaders of the Catholic Church
to which the vast majority of our people belong; these views cannot be ignored."Also in 1951,
Clann na Poblachta was reduced to two seats after the general election.
MacBride kept his seat and was re-elected again in 1954.
Opposing the internment of IRA suspects during the Border Campaign (1956–62), he contested
both the 1957 and 1961 general elections but failed to be elected both times.
He then retired from politics and continued practising as a barrister.
He expressed an interest in running as an independent candidate for the 1983 Irish presidential
election, but he did not receive sufficient backing and ultimately did not contest.
== International politics ==
MacBride was a founding member of Amnesty International and served as its International
chairman.
He was Secretary-General of the International Commission of Jurists from 1963 to 1971.
Following this, he was also elected Chair (1968–1974) and later President (1974–1985)
of the International Peace Bureau in Geneva.
He was Vice-President of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation and President
of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe.He drafted the constitution of the
Organisation of African Unity (OAU); and also the first constitution of Ghana (the first
UK African colony to achieve independence) which lasted for nine years until the coup
of 1966.
Some of MacBride's appointments to the United Nations System included:
Assistant Secretary-General President of the General Assembly
High Commissioner for Refugees High Commissioner for Namibia
President of UNESCO's International Commission for the Study of Communications Problems,
which produced the controversial 1980 MacBride report.
== Human rights == Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, MacBride
worked for human rights worldwide.
He took an Irish case to the European Court of Human Rights after hundreds of suspected
IRA members were interned without trial in the Republic of Ireland in 1958.
He was among a group of lawyers who founded JUSTICE—the UK-based human rights and law
reform organisation—initially to monitor the show trials after the 1956 Budapest uprising,
but which later became the UK section of the International Commission of Jurists.
He was active in a number of international organisations concerned with human rights,
among them the Prisoners of Conscience Appeal Fund (trustee).
In 1973, he was elected by the General Assembly to the post of High Commissioner for Namibia,
with the rank of Assistant Secretary-General.
The actions of his father John MacBride in leading the Irish Transvaal Brigade (known
as MacBride's Brigade) for the Boers against the British Army, in the Boer War, gave Seán
MacBride a unique access to South Africa's apartheid government.
In 1977, he was appointed president of the International Commission for the Study of
Communication Problems, set up by UNESCO.
In 1980 he was appointed Chairman of UNESCO.
MacBride's work was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (1974) as a man who "mobilised the conscience
of the world in the fight against injustice".
He later received the Lenin Peace Prize (1975–76) and the UNESCO Silver Medal for Service (1980).
During the 1980s, he initiated the Appeal by Lawyers against Nuclear War which was jointly
sponsored by the International Peace Bureau and the International Progress Organization.
In close co-operation with Francis Boyle and Hans Köchler of the International Progress
Organization he lobbied the General Assembly for a resolution demanding an Advisory Opinion
from the International Court of Justice on the legality of nuclear arms.
The Advisory Opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons was eventually
handed down by the ICJ in 1996.
In 1982, MacBride was chairman of the International Commission to enquire into reported violations
of International Law by Israel during its invasion of the Lebanon.
The other members were Richard Falk, Kader Asmal, Brian Bercusson, Géraud de la Pradelle,
and Stefan Wild.
The commission's report, which concluded that "the government of Israel has committed acts
of aggression contrary to international law", was published in 1983 under the title Israel
in Lebanon.He proposed a plan in 1984, known as the MacBride Principles, which he argued
would eliminate discrimination against Roman Catholics by employers in Northern Ireland
and received widespread support for it in the United States and from Sinn Féin.
However the MacBride Principles were criticised by the Irish and British Governments and most
Northern Ireland parties, including the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP),
as unworkable and counterproductive.
He was also a keen pan-Celticist.
In his later years, MacBride lived in his mother's home, Roebuck House, that served
as a meeting place for many years for Irish nationalists, as well as in the Parisian arrondissement
where he grew up with his mother, and enjoyed strolling along boyhood paths.
He maintained a soft-spoken, unassuming demeanor despite his fame.
While strolling through the Centre Pompidou Museum in 1979, and happening upon an exhibit
for Amnesty International, he whispered to a colleague "Amnesty, you know, was one of
my children."Seán MacBride died in Dublin on 15 January 1988, eleven days before his
84th birthday.
He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in a grave with his mother, and wife who died in 1976.
== Career summary == 1946–1965 Leader of Clann na Poblachta
1947–1958 Member of Dáil Éireann 1948–1951 Minister for External Affairs
of Ireland in Inter-Party Government 1948–1951 Vice-President of the Organization
for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) 1950 President, Committee of Ministers of
Council of Europe 1954 Offered but declined, Ministerial office
in Irish Government 1963–1971 Secretary-General, International
Commission of Jurists 1966 Consultant to the Pontifical Commission
on Justice and Peace 1961–1975 chairman Amnesty International
Executive 1968–1974 Chairman of the Executive International
Peace Bureau 1975–1985 President of the Executive International
Peace Bureau 1968–1974 chairman Special Committee of
International NGOs on Human Rights (Geneva) 1973 vice-chairman, Congress of World Peace
Forces (Moscow, October 1973) 1973 Vice-President, World Federation of United
Nations Associations 1973–1977 Elected by the General Assembly
of the United Nations to the post of United Nations Commissioner for Namibia with rank
of Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations
1977–1980 chairman, Commission on International Communication for UNESCO
1982 Chairman of the International Commission to enquire into reported violations of International
Law by Israel during its invasion of the Lebanon
== Further reading == Keane, Elizabeth (2006).
An Irish Statesman and Revolutionary: The Nationalist and Internationalist Politics
of Seán MacBride.
Tauris.
== References ==
== External links == Appearances on C-SPAN