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Historian Tim Pat Coogan on his book The GAA And The War Of Independence

Tim Pat Coogan's latest book is called The GAA And The War Of Independence but its scope is wider than that title suggests, taking in the association’s influence and involvement in Irish society before and since. Kenny Archer spoke to the respected historian and former newspaper man

Tim Pat Coogan, right, author of The GAA And The War Of Independence, with RTÉ broadcaster Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh at Croke Park 
Tim Pat Coogan, right, author of The GAA And The War Of Independence, with RTÉ broadcaster Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh at Croke Park  Tim Pat Coogan, right, author of The GAA And The War Of Independence, with RTÉ broadcaster Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh at Croke Park 

AMONG the various venues used to launch Tim Pat Coogan’s latest book The GAA And The War Of Independence’ was, understandably enough, Croke Park.

Although to a large degree this is an outsider’s perspective, with its opening words being ‘Coming from outside the GAA…’, the well-known historian and former journalist might well have been a GAA man himself, a Cuala clubman, had his life taken a different turn – or his father’s death come later.

Eamonn ‘Ned’ Coogan passed away in early 1952, leaving a widow and three young children, among them a 12-year-old Tim Pat.

“My father was a Kilkenny man, he brought me to Croke Park,” the now 83-year-old Dubliner recalled of his childhood. “Even though my father died when I was 12, I used to go to family relations down there [in Castlecomer], and my summer evenings were hurling.

“My life took a very different turn then. It was very short commons, you did what you had to do, you went to school where you had to go.”

TPC went to Dublin’s Blackrock College, famed for rugby, but appreciates he was fortunate there: “I was very lucky with the education I had. I’d a very good interlude in Blackrock; they were very kind to me, extremely good to me there.”

With a bibliography dating back to 1966 and his Ireland Since The Rising, his latest publication might perhaps be more accurately, albeit less snappily, called ‘The GAA and the ongoing cultural/political struggle for independence’.

Coogan considers not just the turbulent decade from before the outbreak of the First World War, which witnessed the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, the first Bloody Sunday – in Croke Park itself – partition and the Civil War. He also brings the association’s influence and involvement in Irish society on both sides of the border right up to date, with mention of Arlene Foster’s attendance at this year’s Ulster SFC Final and the debate over holding the Liam Miller memorial soccer match at Pairc Ui Chaoimh.

In between, with his usual erudition and readability, he considers the border campaign of the 50s, the Troubles, and the Hunger Strikes.

He admits that he probably wasn’t suited to the GAA anyway, certainly not hurling, recalling of those teenage times in Castlecomer: “I really got an early inkling of the ferocity of it.

“I was very put out when they told me I could join the ‘hurlers in’ as they called them, the kids who scrambled for the ball when it went over the sideline and pucked it back in with hurling sticks.

“I wanted to be out on the pitch – but Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, when I saw what they were doing to each other out on the pitch I was afraid to go near the puckers in! It made a memorable impact on me.”

His writing career commenced when the Evening Press emerged: “I remember one of the priests, Fr O’Carroll – he didn’t tell me, but he rang up Vivion de Valera [managing director of the Irish Press and eldest son of Éamon de Valera] in the summer of 1954 and said ‘I hear you’re founding an evening paper there. Well, I’ve a lad here who’ll either break your heart or turn out to be a genius’. I’m afraid I never did either.”

Looking back to ‘the Celtic Dawn’ towards the end of the 19th century, Coogan – who went on to edit The Irish Press for nearly 20 years – believes that “the GAA was the most visible sign of that…

“The ‘Khaki Election’ in December 1918 when Sinn Fein swept the boards – the ‘opinion poll’ that showed that was going to happen was conducted on ‘Gaelic Sunday’.”

Coogan contends that GAA involvement in the Easter Rising of 1916 was greater than some younger historians have recently suggested.

At least a sixth, perhaps a fifth of those involved in the Rising were GAA members, and there would have been more only for Eoin MacNeill’s countermanding order, urging Irish Volunteers not to take part.

“That statistic is not mine, it’s historians’, but they use that to show that ‘Oh, they were only a tiny fraction of the Volunteers – but the number that took part in the Rising, it was a huge fraction.

“I make the comparison, if it’s true that ‘the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton’ then there were a damn sight more, in percentage terms, GAA men out in that [Easter] week than there were Old Etonians in the officer corps at Waterloo field that day.”

Indeed Coogan also makes the case for significant IRB (Irish Republican Brotherhood) influence on the GAA, pointing to long-serving President James Nowlan and Secretary-General Luke O’Toole as prime examples.

“From the moment the GAA was founded, very correctly the RIC [Royal Irish Constabulary] saw it as a potential source of recruits for the Fenian tradition. It was founded in 1884, and you had the Fenian Rising less than 20 years earlier, and before that you had the Famine.

“So it would have been impossible not to, it would have been like swimming and not getting wet. Some of the mentors would have been bound to have the ‘physical force’ and the ‘Irish Ireland’ traditions to the fore.

Although the GAA was not ‘the IRA at play’, Coogan notes a certain ‘mental reservation’ towards the Association’s ‘no politics’ rule, from Archbishop Croke to O’Toole to the time of the H-Block protests.

Some GAA members paid the ultimate price for the association’s avowed desire for a reunified, 32-county Ireland, especially in the north: “The link was underscored by the number of GAA people and players, innocents, who were murdered because of their involvement in the GAA, fellas being shot because they were seen with a hurl.”

Coogan does acknowledge that ‘The Ban’ culture, denying membership to RUC and British army members up until 1971, made the GAA “the coldest of homes” for Protestants.

However, he also points out that Protestant/unionist involvement with 'the Sunday game' was always set to be unlikely: “Sabbatarianism had a lot to do with it. That’s where the two cultures separate, apart from the political allegiances.

“Do you remember [the Rev Ian] Paisley making great play of not giving interviews on Sundays, ‘the Sabbath day, the Lord’s Day’?”

“A game played with 'Tipperary rifle's [hurleys] and on a Sunday was always going to be suspect.”

Although GAA experts will spot some slight errors, that’s to be expected from an acknowledged outsider. However, Coogan feels that writing this book has almost brought him back home.

“We’d a wonderful launch [at Croke Park]. I was waiting for my turn to speak and I was sitting under the Sam Maguire Cup – it’s much bigger than I realised. I was listening to Micheal O Muircheartaigh introducing me and I really felt at home.

“I had launches in Dublin Castle, in Kilmainham Gaol, another one in [the Department of] Foreign Affairs, Iveagh House.

“But they were built by the others; we took them over and were very happy to do so – but Croke was built by ourselves, out of our own resources, our own hopes and aspirations and I really felt at home there."

:: The GAA And The War Of Independence by Tim Pat Coogan is published by Head of Zeus, priced £20.