A proud past to guide our future
Although Queen Victoria had been on her throne for four years, Maguire wanted to champion an Ireland free, viable and at ease with all its traditions.
He realised that to sustain such a project, one supported by the great majority of Irish people but suppressed by their English rulers, he needed commercial success — a deep war-chest — to fund his campaigns.
In so many ways, he faced the challenges Ireland faces today — Ireland was not sovereign and our economic situation was precarious. He needed to find commercial success through innovative and determined leadership.
He believed in the power of popular persuasion, of organised, peaceful agitation and challenge. He believed that informed people motivated by selfless ideals were — are — a powerful, undeniable force for progress and unity. As so many Arab despots have discovered today, these are timeless, irrepressible ideas.
But most of all he believed that the idea of an Ireland free, and as one, was so utterly right that if he, and all others involved in trying to establish an active and participatory democracy on this island, had the means to express their philosophy it would prevail. They were right.
Every revolution needs a good communications’ policy and Maguire and this newspaper were central to incubating the one that eventually brought us freedom and stability.
That he had embraced, 170 years ago, ideas that still seem modern in some parts of the world makes his achievements all the more impressive.
Sometimes we find ourselves fumbling in the dark when we try to make sense of the past, unaware of how it resonates or where its fingerprints rest today, but in John Francis Maguire’s case it is not at all difficult.
Though he and his contemporaries did not live to see their hopes realised, his successors did. His legacy contributed to that process because he articulated a plausible vision centred on ideas and phrases current today — inclusion, parity of esteem and representation. Ideas that underpin our society and the peace we all now cherish.
He, and all Irish nationalists who rejected English rule or Irish violence in favour of democracy, have won the day. Their belief in the moral truth and justice of their cause has prevailed.
Although it took longer than even the most pessimistic of Maguire’s contemporaries might have imagined, their philosophy has endured and succeeded. This island, though still an incomplete political entity, is at peace with itself and its neighbours. The 2007 resolution of the North’s Peace Process is, among many other things, a victory for the core polices advanced by Maguire and others like him 170 years ago.
This is a reality, chilling and frustrating. Chilling, in that it took so very, very long to achieve that which seems so obviously right and that so many lives were destroyed and wasted in the intervening century-and-a-half and more.
Frustrating, because even today we still seem so conservative, so unsure of our own potential that we remain at least neutral about embracing positive change. Maybe we should be as courageous as Maguire was in 1841 as we confront today’s terrible problems.
Every one who supported those ideals, even when they were in danger of being swamped by men of violence, by producing or supporting this newspaper through a famine, two world wars, a series of revolutions — one of our own — a terrible civil war, the birth and death of communism, crushing shortages, cathartic emigration, the creation of this Republic and, later, a modernising Ireland, can be proud of the valuable contribution they made to holding the centre.
Consistently a voice for moderation and the kind of steadiness that excludes no one who wishes to make a positive contribution to this society, The Cork Examiner, The Examiner and, as it is today, the Irish Examiner has consistently recognised the importance of human dignity, social equity and honesty, no matter how painful, in our affairs.
These were some of the core beliefs that inspired Maguire to establish this newspaper and they remain so today as the sixth generation of the Crosbie family presides as proprietors and publishers.
We belive that the truth and full depth of human achievement and happiness are not created at extremes but at the mid-point where everyone recognises the value of the other and where we all work to help the other reach his or her full potential. We believe that reaching this potential should not depend on fate, but that it is a right and one worth defending even in the most difficult circumstances.
Everyone involved in this enterprise — proprietor, employee, supporter or reader — can be proud that this recognition of the innate humanity of these ideals is our roadmap, that they inform our arguments and shape our beliefs. We instinctively celebrate unity of purpose and solidarity rather than division and acrimony.
As ever, in history’s turning wheel, there are parallels between Ireland today and Ireland on that August evening in 1841.
Just as Maguire tried to redefine our relationship with our biggest neighbour and trading partner, we are trying to work out our place in Europe and Europe’s place in our affairs. Sovereignty and economic independence are again among the foremost and most pressing issues of the day.
And, as in Maguire’s time, a fully informed and alert society is best placed to reach conclusions that accurately represent its best interests. Newspapers have an important role in facilitating that debate, even as the parameters of the conversation are redefined by the immediacy and flexibility of the great social media revolution. Once a readership was lectured to, now it participates as an equal voice in the debate.
This is as it should be and is no more than an inevitable and logical extension of the principles that shaped Maguire’s ambitions and informs ours. Though he could not have imagined today’s technology or its reach, he would have exploited it to achieve his aims, political, social or commercial. Just as it is today, the control of education was a vibrant subject for Maguire. He considered it an affront that all Irishmen could not attend Trinity College because Catholics were banned from doing so without the permission of the Catholic hierarchy until 1970. The past is indeed a strange place.
However, his proposed solution might not find universal favour today. He suggested that all third-level education be under the control of the Catholic church.
This has parallels with today’s debate about the patronage of 90% our national schools by the Catholic church and shows too that loyalties once unquestioning have been critically weakened. This newspaper, and many others, has been forced to question the age-old role of the Catholic hierarchy in our public affairs. It seems impossible that Maguire would have dared to do so, even in 1941 much less 1841.
Another constant is the way newspapers mix the light with the heavy. Despite his strident opposition to English rule in Ireland Maguire felt obliged, for commercial or social reasons, to report on the celebrations marking the birthday of Prince Albert on the very first page of The Cork Examiner.
“The birthday of his Royal Highness Prince Albert was celebrated by the band of the Royal Regiment of Horse Guards performing a serenade under his Royal Highness’s window, and soon afterwards a royal salute was fired in the Bachelor’s-acre the peals of bells ringing merrily ...
That undoubtedly happy occasion was as relevant to the lives being lived in Munster in 1841 as was the wedding of William and Kate last April was to the lives lived here today, but each event was recorded with the kind of prominence public interest demands. It points though to the ambiguity that still surrounds our relationship with our most influential neighbour.
Although newspapers’ place in the topography of mass communication is shifting — as it always has — the principles of the business retain a force that should help them respond to tomorrow’s demands.
Even as revelations of illegal phone-tapping eat away at the already-shaken edifice of the industry, its core currencies — credibility, absolute, unflinching honesty and a determination to ask the right, hard questions, sustained by circulation and advertising — remain the gold-standard to judge everything else by.
If newspapers observe those principles, as this one and the great majority of others do, then reports of their imminent demise may prove greatly exaggerated.
It would be foolish though to pretend that we are not at a defining crossroads about how information is gathered, filtered, prioritised, packaged, shared and then delivered — and how all of this is paid for. Maguire faced a one-dimensional media landscape; today it is far more sophisticated and diverse.
This evolution, this refining is stimulating, hugely interesting and hugely important in the life of any democratic society. Newspapers sometimes succumb to the ever-present temptation to take themselves too seriously, but any society without an easy access to the information needed to function is vulnerable. Our present difficulties are a chastening testimony to that.
This society has not enjoyed the benefits of transparency and the first great attempt to confront our culture of secrecy — the Freedom of Information Act — was emasculated by Fianna Fáil ministers who felt threatened by questioning intrusion. And recent history shows why.
Neither have we the assurances brought by real accountability. Less than a month from the third anniversary of our banking collapse, not even one court action has been initiated by the State against those who swung the wrecking ball through this economy.
Just as it was in Maguire’s day, a newspaper’s function is to question, to reveal, to expose and to hold to account; to ensure that what we imagine as reality is in fact real.
If the principles that served Maguire, and all of the other campaigning journalists whose work enriched their society, are observed, cherished and made alive, then newspapers have no need to fear the future.
Truth is a timeless idea and it has a permanent place and function in any society worthy of the name. How it is delivered is far less important than the fact that it is recognised and then delivered. It is our intention to continue the work begun by John Francis Maguire 170 years ago today. To do anything else would be a betrayal of a great legacy and a not inconsiderable force for the betterment of Ireland and Irish people of all traditions and backgrounds.
It is, as it always was, a great challenge and a great privilege.
*Jack Power is the Irish Examiner’s Chief Leader Writer.
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