This article examines John Bruton's political career, particularly his lifelong interest in history and his perceived 'John Unionist' stance. It also explores his role in the peace process during the 1990s, highlighting his visit to John Hume in 1996.
Once dismissed as 'John Unionist ' in the Dáil, Bruton’s lifelong interest in history served him in key 1990s talks. Much of it may have been his own fault. He was a man who had taken a keen interest in Irish history throughout his life and was stubbornly “his own man”. Why else would he have risked continuing to champion the Irish Parliamentary Party, a century after their tide had gone out? And he even liked to argue that Irish independence could have been won without a resort to violence.
That line of argument seemed suited to a student debating society – but as leader of a nationalist party in Dáil Éireann in the 1990s it seemed gratuitously reckless. And when, at last, he found himself in the Taoiseach’s office in 1994 his choice of the portrait he would hang behind his desk was of John Redmond, the last leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party. State Papers: Five things we learned, from details of Boris Yeltsin’s Shannon no-show to blocking Mary Robinson’s UN roleIrish government feared retaliation over decision not to prosecute Dessie O’HareHe would not have been faulted had he chosen 19th century giants of constitutional nationalism such as Parnell or O’Connell: but he insisted on the deeply unfashionable Redmond. Reynolds indeed had famously mocked Bruton in the Dáil as “John Unionist”, faulting him for invariably remembering to consider unionist sensibilities, in any consideration of policy. With Bruton, this was a caste of mind; it had, of course, been all too absent from the traditional nationalist approach to partition. And was it not implicit inIn the recently released tranche of State Papers to be released in 2025, there are a few important traces of Bruton’s handling of the peace process. On March 31st, 1996, Bruton paid a visit to Greencastle, to what is termed John Hume’s residence in Donega
John Bruton Irish History Peace Process Unionist Irish Politics
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