I just came across this on Google Books. There’s a detailed section on Irish political groups. The publication was compiled by Peter Barberis, John McHugh and Mike Tyldesley.
The permanent link to the publication is here. It is also slightly more user-friendly than the embedded version below.
This is the third programme in the series, and hosted by Donagh of this blog and Irish Left Review.
There were ten issues of Gralton published from 1982-83, and three issues of Z Magazine, all in 1989.
Looking Left 003 from DCTV on Vimeo.
For online copies of Z Magazine, and issue one of Gralton, see below.
[This is an edited version of an article I wrote which first appeared in Football Studies 11, 1 (2008). The article itself is based on a paper I presented at the 2005 Irish Sport History Conference.]
In 1955 the Irish political, cultural, and religious establishment found itself challenged by an unusual and reluctant opponent: The Football Association of Ireland (FAI). The clash arose over a friendly soccer game between the Republic of Ireland and Yugoslavia, which was played at Dalymount Park on 19 October of that year. The Catholic archbishop of Dublin, Dr. John Charles McQuaid, one of the dominant figures in Irish 20th century life, called for the cancellation of the game. This was echoed by various government ministers, senior civil servants, and Catholic lay organisations. The Irish national broadcasting service Radio Televis Éireann (RTE) declined to cover the game after its main sports commentator, Phil Greene, pulled out of the broadcast.
The protests arose out of the continued persecution of the Catholic Church in communist Yugoslavia, and were similar in tone to other protests held in Ireland over the previous seven years. The fact that the game went ahead with an attendance of around 21,400 has been read by some as a counter-protest against the forces of conservative Ireland, especially the public influence of archbishop McQuaid. Indeed, the archbishop’s biographer, John Cooney, wrote that the Yugoslavia game was ‘a populist revolt against McQuaid’s iron rule; the first of his reign.’ (Cooney, p.309.)
This article will argue that the controversy reveals a clash of culture in 1950s Ireland, rather than one over politics or ideology. This is not to say that 1950s Ireland was bereft of clashes over politics or ideology, but that the Ireland v Yugoslavia game became a protest against an attempt by the dominant Irish conservative forces to interfere with the most popular cultural activity of working class Dublin, rather than one energised by a desire on the part of the working class to confront the government, the Catholic Church, or the permanent secretaries of the Irish civil service. The game also provides an entry into Irish working class life – an area often neglected by Irish historians, and one with a culture that, on this occasion at least, found itself in uneasy conflict with the Irish establishment.
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