But then, typically, he went over the top again, pouring ungenerous, bitter scorn on all talk of joint institutions, peace processes, reconciliation or even hard-headed compromise.Somehow, he found timeto be managing editor of the Observer, director of Amnesty International, an Irish cabinet minister and then holder of distinguished American chairs. So much to set down: but, so often, what began in high hopes and cheers ended in recriminations and tears. O’Brien has every pagan virtue but temperance and prudence.Four years ago, a biography appeared by a Canadian historian, Donald Harman Akenson, together with an anthology of writings. To put it tactfully, the imprint of “the Cruiser” on both works was as plain as the elephant’s foot in the butter. Akenson quoted Paul Johnson, calling O’Brien “the greatest living Irishman”. Some Irishmen, even if finding it hard to differ, may at least regret that.Certainly, O’Brien is larger than life, and knows it.
He must have been dissatisfied with Akenson’s biography, so now comes his own account in even more glistening varnish. Almost all memoirs of great men are like this to some degree, except those designed to shock by true confessions. But O’Brien shocks by polemical boldness on the “themes” of the subtitle, echoing Yeats on Edmund Burke’s “Four great melodies”, or public causes. O’Brien has written well on Yeats, able to speak truly of the poet’s flirtation with Irish Fascism while defending the greatness of his poetry.
“Good strong blows are a delight to the mind”: indeed, they are.O’Brien began writing after recovering from a stroke, to set it all down in time. He sadly tells us in the Preface that he had nearly finished when, this March, his daughter Kate died. “Sadly” in a double sense: for it is sad to feel the need to begin an essentially public and polemical memoir by telling us so movingly of private grief.The book is at times a fascinating but also irritating and confusing mixture of autobiography and argument, sometimes reasonable, occasionally humorous, but too often hectoring, bullying, self-justificatory and pompous. He has the last word on all who have differed with him: British diplomats, Irish bishops, John Hume, the IRA, the ANC, anti-Zionists or even theatre critics.Not for O’Brien the tranquillity of old age, assured reputation and quiet pride of achievement. The book ends with the argument that the peace process in Northern Ireland is failing. His hopes for a final, sensible acceptance of the justice and inevitability of partition, are dashed.
So the Unionists, whom he has so boldly supported, should now make “a deal with constitutional nationalism to avert British surrender of Northern Ireland to violent republicanism”.O’Brien says of himself, in Katanga days, that arguments from “Pride and anger are not necessarily always unsound” True, but so is the converse.. YESTERDAY, the Russian democrats – old Soviet dissidents, the intelligentsia, pro-Western market economists and more – turned and, aided by the ordinary folk of St Petersburg, showed that they were no longer willing to take lying down what has been going on in the former Soviet Union. Twenty thousand people queued in freezing cold for four hours to lay flowers by the coffin of Galina Starovoitova, a heroine of perestroika and now a martyr of the democrats of the post-Soviet era. Ms Starovoitova, an outspoken parliamentarian and human rights activist from St Petersburg, who fought to get Boris Yeltsin in power but who – unlike him – remained one of the few unsullied champions of liberal democracy – was murdered last weekend.
For several years, the democrats have been so divided, their ranks corroded by their failure to adequately protest the Chechen war, internal bickering, and political scandals, that there were times when it was hard to call them liberals at all.
They seemed to belong to a grimy political landscape in which the only defining feature was the general venality of the post- Soviet years.But the murder changed that. Yesterday brought together their leaders: former prime ministers Yegor Gaidar and Sergei Kiriyenko; Anatoly Chubais, the privatisation guru; and Boris Nemtsov, the liberal from Nizhny Novgorod. As they stood shoulder-to-shoulder to honour Galina Starovoitova, a red- eyed Chubais stood over the coffin and said: “Our people are being killed, but we are not going to be deterred or frightened. We will make it in the end.”Will they, though? After several years of calling the shots, the democrats are barely represented in the two-month-old government of Yevgeny Primakov. Yesterday – by contrast – Communists, nationalists and old Soviet apparatchiks are riding high.
