American tourists visiting Trinity College Dublin on September 13th were less than pleased when blocked by students from viewing the Book of Kells. The Americans could not understand the purpose of this disruption. The protesters, angry at an on-campus rent increase, wanted to hit Trinity in the pocket – the Book of Kells is an important revenue stream. They also wanted to make a point about the overall shortage of affordable housing: “Homes for All”.
This is not the first time Americans in Dublin have been unable to understand the political opinions of university students. Richard Nixon’s ambassador to Ireland, John Moore, found what he described as “shocking ignorance” in relation to the US, not least the prosecution of its war in Vietnam. He became increasingly concerned at the activities of “extremist” left-wing groups who wanted to exploit what he believed to be student restlessness, fanned by the civil rights campaign in the North. In Trinity College, Moore saw that the adherents of Chairman Mao were more in evidence than supporters of President Nixon, who did not receive the ecstatic welcome on his visit to Ireland that John F Kennedy enjoyed. Irritants had crept into Irish feelings for America, the ambassador explained to the State Department in 1970, as “the old family ties between the two countries weaken with the passage of time”. Moore’s own family in the US had a long-standing engagement with Ireland. His father had been secretary of the Friends of Irish Freedom, set up in 1916 by John Devoy, and his grandfather had actively supported Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt. Parnell and Davitt had championed tenant rights during the Land War, but the ambassador, seemingly, did not see any irony in the fact that the Dublin “demo fringe” – a phrase employed by his colleagues in the British embassy – also pointed an accusing finger at landlords and their agents.
The Dublin Housing Action Committee could muster big numbers on the streets, including radical students. The housing activists wanted more homes to be provided in the city, and argued that office block construction should cease in favour of family accommodation. Some of the committee’s leading lights – Máirín de Burca, for example – became well-known media figures following various clashes with gardaí. In December 1969, Kevin Boland, the Fianna Fáil minister responsible for housing, labelled them “habitual agitators”.
Boland made this dismissive remark as houses were occupied in St Stephen’s Green, and then around the corner in Hume Street, to save them from destruction by office developers. The young idealists who intervened in this way did not meet the minister’s description – they were architecture students in UCD and Bolton Street, who had taken time out of their demanding schedule. The students’ spokeswoman, Marian Finucane, pointed out that their attempt to save that part of Georgian Dublin was illegal, but morally necessary. And many eminent people, she added, supported their action. Senator Owen Sheehy Skeffington, for example, congratulated them for standing up to “the vandals and yahoos” who would destroy the beauty of the city.
Life was tough for Dublin’s architectural protectors during their winter occupation: slates and gutter pipes had been removed and floorboards taken up. A meeting with the well-heeled minister for finance, Charlie Haughey, yielded little but, never one to miss a publicity opportunity, he sent over a Christmas hamper to make them less uncomfortable. While the students were still holding out, Boland lashed out at the “Georgians”, as he called them: conservationists were “belted earls and their ladies”, and “left-wing intellectuals’, who had the time “to stand and contemplate in ecstasy the unparalleled man-made beauty of the two corners of Hume Street and St Stephen’s Green”.
To Boland’s disappointment, perhaps, no landowning aristocrats addressed the students’ supporters on what turned out to be the final day of the occupation – instead, echoing Michael Davitt, “foreign landlordism” was condemned, as was the “brute power” of the “yahoos”. Having guarded the threatened houses from the demolition squads for six months – up to the very last day – the occupiers moved out in the early hours of June 10th when they were satisfied that the houses would not be knocked down.
Hume Street still stands today, thanks to the brave students and their many supporters who prevented office developers from having their way. Sadly, however, other fine streets did not get the same loving protection. Five decades on, derelict Georgian houses – in North Frederick Street for instance – remind us that we are still unable to tackle the “yahoos”.