Eoghan Harris

Senator Eoghan Harris
Senator
Incumbent
Assumed office 3 August 2007
Constituency	Taoiseach's Nominee
Personal details
Born	successor Tallow,County Waterford Ireland
Died	successor
Resting place	successor
Political party	Nominal Independent
Parent	successor

Eoghan Harris is an Irish journalist and latter day politician and a sometimes controversial and outspoken newspaper columnist and polemicist. He was appointed to Seanad Eireann as a nominee of the Taoiseach on 3 August 2007. He currently contributes to the Sunday Independent newspaper. He has variously been the chief Marxist ideologue of the Workers Party and its predecessor, Official Sinn Féin, a short-lived advisor to Fine Gael leader John Bruton, an advisor to the Ulster Unionist Party , and most recently a supporter of the Fianna Fail-Progressive Democrats government of Bertie Ahern. At one stage, an Irish republican he is now a bitter critic of modern day Sinn Féin, expressing his political views in trenchant terms in the Sunday Independent. An unpredictable figure, Harris' critics accuse him of demonstrating ideological malleability, and of being inconsistent.[1] Harris is also noted for his screenwriting work: he lectures at IADT the Irish National film school and teaches a comprehensive screenwriting workshop. Harris is also a current judge on a Irish language talent show entitled Glas Vegas on TG4.

Early career

Harris was educated at University College, Cork where he studied History, achieving a first class honours degree. He later worked at RTÉ, the Irish television broadcaster, on current affairs programmes such as 7 Days and Féach. He also made a documentary on mental illness called "Darkness Visible" .

In 1975, Harris won a Jacob's Award for his 7 Days documentary on the Dublin Bay oil refinery. He had refused a previous award in 1970 for his work on Féach, citing his objection to the involvement in the awards of a commercial sponsor. [2]

As a writer Harris is the author of Souper Sullivan which was performed at the Abbey Theatre for the Dublin Theatre Festival 1987, and of the Sharpe television series. He lectures on screenwriting in the National Film School, in the Centre for Film Studies in UCD, and at Moonstone Labs in Europe.

Leading Marxist

Harris was a leading Irish republican in Official Sinn Féin in the 1960s, and was an important influence in the party's move from Irish nationalism to Marxism, a political ideology which Harris currently claims to abhor. He was close to leading Official Sinn Féin members Eamonn Smullen and Cathal Goulding, the latter of whom was at the time Chief of Staff of the paramilitary Official IRA, an organisation the demonisation of which Harris has built his recent journalistic career upon.

According to Patterson in the Politics of Illusion, Harris's pamphlet the "Irish Industrial Revolution" (1975) was influential in shifting the party away from nationalism. However, Swan, in Official Irish Republicanism, 1962 to 1972 (2007), maintains that Harris' powers of persuasion are over rated, arguing that the only political conversions that Harris was responsible for were his own politically opportunistic conversions to different political postures. He also implies that the Official IRA leadership's attitude to Harris was basically functional.[3]

In 1990 Harris published a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Social Democracy in which he surmised that socialism would not survive its East European crisis. Harris called for a shift to social democracy and that the party should seek an historic alliance with the social democratic wing of Fine Gael. The document was initially submitted by Eamonn Smullen on Harris's behalf for publication in the party's theoretical magazine "Making Sense" but when this was refused Harris and Smullen published it themselves as a publication of the party's Economic Affairs Department of which Smullen was head. When the pamphlet began to circulate it was banned by the Workers Party and Smullen was suspended from his position on the committee. Harris resigned in protest and Smullen resigned subsequent with many of the members of the Research Section of the party, a move which was the prelude to a bigger split in the party in 1992, when senior members of the party alleged that the supposedly moribund Official IRA still existed and was implicated in criminality and sought to move to some extent in the direction proposed earlier by Harris.

RTÉ

Harris was for a time a central figure in shaping the current affairs output of Radio Telifis Éireann. He pushed the organisation towards a heavily critical perspective on Sinn Féin and the IRA. It was stated in Magill (November 1997) that he set up a branch of the Worker's Party called the "Ned Stapleton Cumann". This gave the party considerable influence within RTE. Michael O'Leary, then leader of the Irish Labour Party commented that RTÉ current affairs coverage was "Stickie orientated". (This was a reference to the Official IRA, from whom the Provisional IRA had split in the 1970's.) Those who supported Harris within RTÉ became known as "the brood of Harris".[4] The tensions within the organisation between traditional nationalists such as Mary McAleese and Marxists led to major disagreements within the station, and criticism of what was perceived as the station's left wing political agenda. Harris recruited Charlie Bird and Marian Finucane to RTÉ in the 1970s.[5]

Working with Robinson

In 1990 the Labour Party and the worker's party jointly nominated former senator Mary Robinson to be its candidate for President of Ireland. Harris's boisterous attitude led him to be kept at arms length by the Robinson campaign. While his strategy proposal is thought, by some, to have been significant in the rebranding of Robinson, just how influential Harris was remains a matter of much controversy, with her campaign team and the President herself blaming him for a crucial and fatal change in tactics - having previously been non-combative in dealing with the controversies that had engulfed dismissed Tanaiste Brian Lenihan, Harris pressured Robinson into going on the offence on a Tonight Tonight live debate, an action which was generally seen to have backfired horribly. Harris made three election videos, and claims to have been responsible for the memorable line from Robinson's acceptance speech "the hand that rocked the cradle rocked the system." Robinson won the election, becoming Ireland's first female president.

Working with Bruton

After the Robinson campaign, Harris was asked to work for Fine Gael by its leader John Bruton. However, he received universal criticism from both within and outside the party in April 1991 when he wrote the script for a sketch for the Fine Gael Ard Fheis in which a cleaner (played by the comedy actress Twink), interrupted the leader's speech by Bruton. The sketch was universally criticised as being in bad taste and tacky, particularly in its references to a controversial incident that had made the news, whereby a female reporter from RTÉ had allegedly been groped by an inebriated Fianna Fáil TD. The catchphrase "Úna gan gúna" (Úna without her dress, in Irish) was deemed sexist and demeaning of a victim of alleged improper conduct.)

Attacking McAleese

In 1997 Harris denounced Fianna Fáil presidential candidate Mary McAleese, calling her a "tribal time bomb" and writing "if she wins not on a technicality but because so many people gave her their number one, then I am living in a country I no longer understand." Instructively, he never left.

Attacking John Hume

Harris, along with fellow Sunday Independent columnist Eamon Dunphy, became an outspoken critic of Social Democratic and Labour Party leader John Hume over Hume's decision to hold talks with Sinn Féin prior to an IRA ceasefire. Harris urged the Irish Government, then led by his friend John Bruton to end all support for Hume's peace efforts. He wrote, "If we persist with the peace process it will end with sectarian slaughter in the North, with bombs in Dublin, Cork and Galway, and with the ruthless reign by provisional gangs over the ghettos of Dublin. The only way to avoid this abyss is to cut the cord to John Hume".[6] Hume argued that he was seeking to convince republicans to abandon violence. The resulting Belfast Agreement was strongly praised by Harris. Hume won the Nobel Peace Prize,along with David Trimble, in 1998 for his efforts. In the late 1990s he became the first Roman Catholic political advisor (and the first ex-Marxist advisor), to David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. He wrote some of his speeches, one of which included the infamous line that Northern Ireland had been "a cold house for Catholics." He was invited to address the UUP annual conference in 1999 where he described the Belfast Agreement as "an Amazing Grace" and urged the UUP to make a leap of faith in Sinn Féin. The UUP subsequently imploded and is no longer a significant force in Northern Irish politics.

Supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq

Harris strongly supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and unlike many other neo-conservatives is unrepentant about the morality of removing Saddam Hussein, declaring in the Sunday Independent that "hindsight history has no moral status." In May 2003 he wrote "Already, as I predicted in the lead up to the war, the neoconservative hawks have done much better than the liberals in getting down to the dynamics of opening up the gulf to democracy. Already, and this I predicted too, there is substantial hope for an Israeli- Palestinian settlement now that Saddam no longer scowls at Israel". He has been bitterly critical of Middle East journalist Robert Fisk. In November 2003 Harris wrote, "Far from wanting to pour venom on Fisk, I think he does us a favour by being so forthright. For my money his analysis of Middle East politics is a first cousin to believing that aliens take away people in flying saucers." Fisk's books on the Middle Eastern conflict have topped international best-seller lists. Harris himself is soon to publish a book on the Middle East.

Endorsing Fianna Fáil

Harris, a one-time Marxist republican, then an advisor to Fine Gael and the Ulster Unionists, in the mid 2000s began endorsing the centrist, populist Fianna Fáil, which was in a coalition government with the neo-liberal Progressive Democrats. Harris was one of a minority of journalists to support Bertie Ahern during the "Bertiegate I" crisis, during which questions were raised over Ahern's financial propriety. Harris heavily supported Ahern and Fianna Fáil in the 2007 general election. Some alleged that the Sunday Independent's editorial stance prior to the election amounted to a u-turn from previous criticism of the government, but Harris explicitly denied there had been any u-turn or that the attitude of journalists at the paper was influenced by an alleged meeting between the deputy leader of Fianna Fáil, Brian Cowen and the owner of Independent News & Media, Tony O'Reilly.

Shortly before the election, Harris appeared on The Late Late Show on RTÉ, in which he praised Ahern and poured scorn on those criticising him over his personal finances. Harris' Late Late Show appearance led to a significant rise in support for the Government.[7] Harris also claimed that other newspapers, namely The Irish Times and The Irish Mail waged an anti-Ahern campaign.[8] All other news outlets dismissed the claim, with most accusing Harris and the Sunday Independent of doing its own u-turn following a Cowen-O'Reilly meeting. (The paper had previously been highly critical of one of Ahern's failure to reform stamp duty, but after the meeting this criticism stopped. Soon thereafter Fianna Fáil promised to carry such reform, if re-elected. This is what later transpired.)

During a live radio debate on Today FM's The Last Word with Matt Cooper (Election special 26 May 2007), when an Irish Times columnist, Fintan O'Toole denied Harris's claims of an Irish Times campaign against Ahern, and accused the Sunday Independent of having its own political agenda, Harris stormed out of the studio mid-debate. During the debate Harris had admitted that the decision to support the Government was taken because "we got what we wanted on stamp duty".[9]

Eoghan Harris's ex-wife, Anne Harris, is deputy editor of the Sunday Independent. She lives with the paper's editor, Aengus Fanning. In December 2007, Senator Harris married Ms. Gwendoline Halley, from Waterford, Ireland.

Harris has written about Wikipedia in the Sunday Independent.

He was appointed Taoiseach's nominee to the Seanad on the 3 August 2007.

Recent Controversies

In 2006, during an RTÉ Television debate Harris stated that the leaders of the Easter Rising were "suicide bombers, I mean suicide terrorists".[10]

Irish Examiner opinion columnist and close friend of Harris, Steven King, has criticised this wikipedia biography, stating that in his opinion, it was biased and inaccurate. He cited one inaccuracy (which has since been corrected).

Harris was featured on the front cover of the August 2007 edition of Village (magazine). Inside, Harris was the subject of a number of mildly critical articles written by Vincent Browne.

It was reported in the Sunday Times (Irish edition) that Senator Harris is at the centre of an internal investigation at the National Film School in Dún Laoghaire, where he lectures. Adrienne Quinn alleged that she had been verbally abused by Sen. Harris when she interrupted him during a lecture. He allegedly called her, among other things, a "Platonist".

Senator Harris has also incorrectly claimed to have received a Silver Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in his entry in 'Who's Who' in Ireland, for his documentary 'Darkness Visible'. Sen. Harris insisted that he did win the award, saying that the Berlin Film Festival "mustn't keep proper records". The award he actually received is the Prix Futura, awarded at the Berlin Television Festival.

On the RTÉ radio programme News At One on December 3, 2007, Senator Harris strongly defended Bertie Ahern, saying that the Irish Daily Mail was a 'lying newspaper', which practised 'sensationalist, sick journalism' and which had a 'record of fascist appeasement in the 1930s'. He also said that the Mahon Tribunal should be shut down because "there is no natural justice available", and that in ten years time "people will look back and say that the Tribunal time was scoundrel time". The Irish Daily Mail denied his allegations.[11]. In a debate with Fintan O'Toole on the RTÉ TV Primetime programme on December 4, 2007, Harris further alleged that "the entire (Mahon) Tribunal is a fantasy of (Tom) Gilmartin".[12]

During a heated interview on the TV3 programme The Political Party with Ursula Halligan broadcast on December 9,2007, Senator Harris threatened to walk out because he didn't wish to discuss Bertie Ahern's appearances at the Mahon Tribunal any further. He then changed his mind and demanded that the programme be re-recorded, but Ms. Halligan informed him that this was impossible.[13]

Mr. Harris also belives that the Provos are out to get him.

References

• Irish Daily Mail - May 7 2007
• Magill - November 1997
• Sunday Independent - May 11 2003
• Sunday Independent - November 23 2003
• Sunday Times(Irish edition) - August 26 2007

External links

• Eoghan Harris at IMDb