Ó Gadhra, Nollaig

by James Quinn

Ó Gadhra, Nollaig (1943–2008), journalist, historian and Irish-language activist, was born 16 December 1943 on the family farm at Kilmurry, Feenagh, Co. Limerick, the eldest son of David Geary of Feenagh and his wife Hannah (née Flynn) of Fieries, Co. Kerry. His parents met after emigrating to America but returned to Ireland where they married in 1936. After attending Feenagh national school, Nollaig went to St Mary's secondary school in Dromcolliher, Co. Limerick (1957–60), and then boarded at the De La Salle College, Waterford (1960–62). He graduated from UCC in 1965 with a BA in Irish and history, and with the H.Dip.Ed. in the following year. While at UCC he was elected president of the inter-university Irish-language body, An Comhchaidreamh (1965–8). From his student days onwards, he was a regular contributor to the letters' pages of the national press, usually on topics related to the Irish language. After graduation he began working in Dublin for the weekly newspaper Inniu, and in 1967 became a presenter and producer for RTÉ's Irish-language current affairs programmes. He won an essay award from the Irish Council of the European Movement in 1968, and the following year visited EEC institutions in Brussels, Luxembourg and Paris. In 1969 he won an Oireachtas award for an essay on the history of proportional representation in Ireland and attended the international seminar at Harvard University, where he was influenced by some of the ideas of the linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky. He also studied for a time in Salzburg in 1971.

On his return to Ireland from Harvard, he worked for some months with RTÉ, presenting Léargas, a current affairs programme on radio, before taking up the post of information officer with Gaeltarra Éireann (1970–72), a state agency set up to promote industrial development in Gaeltacht regions. In 1970 he married Mairín, daughter of the writer Seán Ó Conghaile (1903–95) of Inverin, Co. Galway; they set up home in Furbo, in the Connemara Gaeltacht, and had four children. After working as publicity manager for Ireland West Tourism (1972–4), Ó Gadhra became a lecturer in journalism, communications, the Irish language, European studies and modern history at Galway Regional Technical College. He established Ireland's first ever third-level communications course at the college, and continued to lecture there until his retirement in 2002. Combining lecturing with freelance journalism and regular appearances on RTÉ television and radio, he presented programmes in Irish, including Léargas and Agallamh, a series of televisions interviews. He was a regular contributor to Irish-language publications such as An tUltach, Feasta and Comhar, and wrote, mostly in Irish, for several newspapers and journals such as the Irish Press, the Irish Times, the Limerick Leader and Éire/Ireland. A passionate advocate for the Irish language, he was a member of several Irish-language bodies, including Cuideachta Gael Linn, An Conradh Ceilteach, and Conradh na Gaeilge. He was chairman of Conradh na Gaeilge's Gaeltacht committee that wrote the report Polasaí Gaeltachtí (1976), which called for democratic elections to Údaras na Gaeilge and increased powers of self-government for Gaeltacht regions. He regularly berated the government and all institutions from the churches to the media for not doing enough to promote the language, and maintained that the difficulties of doing business in Irish with official bodies amounted to a denial of the civil rights of Irish-language speakers. Ó Gadhra particularly maintained that RTÉ had failed to fulfil its brief on Irish-language broadcasting. Always ready to promote the use of Irish, in 1966 he assisted the Monarchs showband with their album Fifty years after, commemorating the 1916 rising, which featured two poems by Patrick Pearse (qv), 'Mise Éire' and 'Fornocht do chonac thú', and a recording of Pearse's version of 'Óro sé do bheatha abhaile'.

Ó Gadhra relished public debate and never shirked from controversy. Despite suffering from diabetes for most of his life, he took every available opportunity in the media and at commemorative lectures and summer schools to expound his views. His zeal for the Irish language could, however, at times lead him to be regarded as dogmatic and repetitive. Although keenly interested in politics, he kept his distance from established political parties, and stood unsuccessfully as an independent candidate in the senate election for the NUI constituency in January 1983. He opposed Irish membership of the European Community, claiming that it had eroded Ireland's political and cultural independence. He was conservative on most social issues and spoke out against the introduction to Ireland of divorce, abortion and the freer availability of contraceptives.

Strongly nationalist, he was critical of the acceptance of partition by the mainstream parties in the south. He believed that a British withdrawal from Northern Ireland was the essential prerequisite to allow nationalists and unionists to work out their differences and, especially during the 1970s, often claimed that such a withdrawal was imminent. He dismissed the Sunningdale agreement of 1973 as an unworkable compromise and instead favoured an arrangement on the lines of the Provisional IRA's 'Éire Nua' policy of the 1970s, which advocated a federation of four self-governing provinces with limited central government based in Athlone. Ó Gadhra had many personal contacts in the republican movement, helped draft policy documents and publicity material for Provisional Sinn Féin in the 1970s, and occasionally wrote for Saoirse, the newspaper of Republican Sinn Féin. He was very critical of the Irish media, especially RTÉ, claiming it had a strong anti-national bias in its coverage of events in Northern Ireland, and that the section 31 ministerial order, which prevented RTÉ from interviewing members of Sinn Féin or the IRA, resulted in a distorted view of the conflict.

Ó Gadhra was an indefatigable researcher and one of the most prolific writers in the Irish language. He wrote biographies in Irish of Mahatma Gandhi (1969), John Boyle O'Reilly (qv) (1976), Edmund Ignatius Rice (qv) (1977), and Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago (1979); the last is regarded as one of the most comprehensive biographical works ever written in Irish. He also wrote widely on Irish history and politics in works such as Guth an phobail (1984), which claimed that democracy had failed in Northern Ireland and that partition was an injustice not only to Irish nationalism but a betrayal of the democratic tradition of Westminster; Ríocht roinnte (1985), a detailed work on elections and political divisions in Northern Ireland; Éire agus polaitíocht na hEorpa (1986), which argued against Ireland's membership of the EC; Margáil na saoirse (1988), which dealt with negotiations between British and Irish governments and the IRA since 1969; An chéad Dáil Éireann (1919–1921) (1989), a history of the first dáil; An Ghaeltacht (oifigiúil) agus 1992? (1989), which condemned the inadequate support given by successive Irish governments to Gaeltacht regions and predicted a bleak future for the Gaeltacht unless this policy changed. From the oral account of two sisters from Donegal, Ann and Eileen Gillespie, who served nine years in prison (1974–83) for conspiracy to cause explosions in Manchester, he wrote Girseacha i ngéibheann (1986) (later translated as Sisters in cells (1987)). The polemical nature of some of his historical writings could detract from their scholarly value. The historian Eunan O'Halpin described Ó Gadhra's Civil war in Connacht (1999) as belonging to 'a recognisable genre in which individual memory, republican folklore and circular arguments about the illegitimacy and inadequacy of the 1921 settlement are presented in a self-sustaining jumble' (Ir. Times, 18 September 1999).

Ó Gadhra accumulated many awards for his writing, with his essays regularly winning Oireachtas na Gaeilge prizes. He won the Piaras Béaslaí commemorative prize presented by Comhdháil Naisiúnta na Gaeilge in 1977, the Butler Prize for Literature from the Irish American Cultural Institute in 1982 for his Irish-language journalism, the 1983 L. M. Ericsson award for his then unpublished Ríocht roinnte, and an Oireachtas award for Guth an phobail in 1984. At the Oireachtas na Gaeilge communications awards on 28 March 2008, he was given a career award for his lifetime contribution to Irish-language communication. Despite his poor health, he enjoyed travel, and was a regular visitor to Boston and New York, where he lectured to Irish cultural organisations and contributed regularly to the New York-based republican radio station Radio Free Eireann. He visited the Soviet Union in 1989 to observe the elections taking place as the Communist Party gave up its monopoly on power and took the opportunity to present some of his books to the Irish department in Moscow State University. In the early 1990s he was appointed to the board of Teilifís na Gaeilge to oversee its establishment, and after the station was founded in 1994 he regularly contributed to its news and current affairs programmes such as Seacht lá. As president of Conradh na Gaeilge (2004–05) he played a leading role in the campaign for the recognition of Irish as an official language of the EU. In April 2007 he was presented with Gradam an Phiarsaigh for upholding the values and ideals of Patrick Pearse in his work. By this stage his worsening diabetes necessitated long spells in hospital and eventually led to the amputation of both his legs. After suffering a heart attack, he died on 13 August 2008 at his home in Furbo, and was buried in Knock cemetery, Inverin, Co. Galway. Among many tributes was one from Taoiseach Brian Cowen, who described him as 'a proud Irishman who always stood strong on behalf of Irish culture. He was also an eminent historian who contributed much to our understanding of modern Ireland' (Ir. Times, 15 August 2008).