Kevin O'Sullivan

No. 33 NA 2000/6/657 Minute from H.J. Dowd to Jack Lynch (Dublin) DUBLIN, 14 August 1969 The Garda on duty at Government Buildings took a phone message (at 2.30 a.m. today) conveying a request from Mr. Frank Gogarty,91 Chairman of the Civil Rights Association in Belfast, for an early interview with you. His telephone number is Belfast 79899. Mr. Gogarty telephoned again at 10.30 a.m. to inquire if you could see him anytime today or tomorrow. When I said that I did not think that this would be possible, Mr. Gogarty said that he hoped that you understood how serious the position is. I said that this should be evident from the statement you made last night. Mr. Gogarty asked me to say how much he and his colleagues appreciated your statement but he said that the North is facing 'a blood-bath' in the next few days and that the people under attack are utterly defenceless. I undertook to convey his message to you.

Yeah, the juxtaposition of the flat diplomatic language, punctuated by moments of emotion makes it all the more striking. If you can find a copy of vol XIV (1969-73), we tried to include as much as possible for Aug 1969 - to convey the sense of hopelessness in escalating violence. Here's a sample.

We're making our way through documents for the 1973-77 volume at the moment (to be published in 2027) and it's not getting any rosier...

The callousness was what floored me when we worked on the last volume of Documents on Irish Foreign Policy (1969-73) - we left in the notes of frightened phone calls, the warnings to the Bt govt, etc, from Aug 1969, for example, to try and show just how frightening things were for communities.

Call for papers: International Affairs Conference 2026 - Royal Irish Academy Paper proposals addressing the theme of “Ireland’s role in an era of Conflict and Uncertainty: International Law, Human Rights, and Global Security” are requested by the 20 of February 2026.

CFP: "Ireland’s role in an era of Conflict and Uncertainty: International Law, Human Rights, and Global Security"

Next year's International Affairs Conference @ria.ie .

CFP deadline = 20 Feb 2026

Full details are available here: www.ria.ie/2025/12/09/c... 🗃️

Between Thompson and the Global: Reflections on Labour History Today We invite papers for a workshop entitled “Between Thompson and the Global: Rethinking Labour History Today”, to be held at the University of Warwick on 26-27 June 2026. This workshop will seek to bring together historians of labour to collectively reflect on a large historiographical shift that has taken place over the last two decades, from the social history of labour (in national contexts) to global and trans-national labour history. The social history of labour “from below” is a tradition initiated by E.P Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class (1963), and extended over several decades by a robust tradition of politically engaged left-wing historical studies of the working classes: a tradition most powerfully entrenched in British historiography (but with many imprints elsewhere, ranging from the United States to Brazil to South Africa to India). The global history of labour, which revised and questioned many of the features of “Thompsonian” history-writing, has sought to overcome “methodological nationalism” in the writing of labour history, to investigate specific labour histories within a global frame, and to enable trans-national histories of workers and work. It has emerged as an increasingly dominant frame of reference for contemporary studies of labour around the world. This workshop seeks to place these two historiographical traditions in conversation with each other, to examine the stakes of the passage from the older, “Thompsonian” tradition to the “global turn”, and to think about the changed meanings of “doing labour history” today. Participants are urged to explicitly reflect on the methodological and conceptual issues at stake in the practice of labour history.

We would like to invite submissions that address (but are not necessarily limited to) the following themes: 1. To what extent has the global labour history tradition that has flourished over the last 20 years drawn upon or rejected the methodological and conceptual approaches of Thompsonian social/labour history? What other methodologies and concepts have been deployed and proven fruitful? 2. How do we address the burgeoning critique of Thompsonian social/labour history as parochial and Anglocentric (Bressey, 2015; Satia, 2020), and how have historians responded to this challenge and reshaped British labour history accordingly? What can historians of British labour learn from broader global trajectories of workforce formation and labour movements? 3. How might integrating histories of consumption, environment, and reproduction enrich our understanding of labour and its global entanglements? 4. In what ways can collaboration between historians of Britain and the global south generate new analytical frameworks or unsettle established narratives of class, race, and empire? 5. What kinds of politically-engaged global social and labour history can best respond to the contemporary challenges of rising global inequality and the appropriation of class politics by some sections of the populist right? 6. The legitimacy of 'radical' forms of labour-history writing initially arose from politics, from the apparently established centrality of the industrial working class both in society and in projects of social emancipation. That centrality has now been in precipitous decline for a long time. In this context, how might we think about what the ‘politics of doing labour history’ actually implies today? 7. What has been gained and what has been lost in the shift from a labour history dominated by “history from below” to one dominated by global history? Please send abstracts to globalhistory@warwick.ac.uk

#CfP Call for Papers

Organised by Global History and Culture Centre, University of Warwick:

Between Thompson and the Global: Reflections on Labour History Today

Workshop: 26-27 June 2026, University of Warwick

Deadline for abstracts: 30 January 2026

Submit to globalhistory@warwick.ac.uk

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The most basic resources are food and healthcare. Every player in the squad had been born during apartheid. Half the starters against Mexico were 1.75m tall or shorter - a freakishly undersized team by international standards.

If anyone argues with you that sport is not political, you should roll out this remarkable statistic, from Simon Kuper's piece about the 2010 World Cup in the latest issue of @theblizzard.bsky.social. The legacy of apartheid was still visible in the bodies of South African footballers decades later.

I suppose I'm referring to the US commentary that I can see online. I agree with your summation that most of football knows and doesn't care.

Expecting the football world to care about the politics of this tournament shows a lack of historical awareness. We've already had a Club World Cup in the US that was paid for by the Saudis, ffs - a country that is bankrolling tennis and golf, too, and will host the World Cup in 2034. 3/3

And on it went from there... 1978 (Argentina), 2018 (Russia) and 2022 (Qatar) were all obvious examples of strong-arm sportswashing. And don't forget the protests in the run-up to Brazil 2014. Outside those tournaments, the bidding process has been notoriously dodgy for decades. 2/3

What I find more remarkable than the peace award is how little knowledge seems to exist about how FIFA has *always* operated. The first World Cup in 1930 was tied to Uruguayan nationalism (the final was in the newly-built Centenario stadium). 1934 was in Italy (no explanation needed). 1/3

Ah, I'm very jealous! There's such a fantastic cheeky swagger to this album. Would love to have seen it live.

YouTube video by Baxter Dury Baxter Dury - Allbarone (Official Video)

Unwanted opinion: Baxter Dury's album, Allbarone, might just be the best thing I've heard this year. The title track is what I think the kids would call a "banger". And his dancing in the video is 👌 youtu.be/Q0JAy4Fa9HA?...

Nah. Manchester is the only place on Earth where it rains almost as much as Galway.

RTÉ to boycott Eurovision Song Contest over Israel Ireland will not participate in next year's Eurovision Song Contest, and it will not be broadcast by RTÉ, after the European Broadcasting Union confirmed today that Israel will be allowed to take part...

Well done @rte.ie!

"Ireland will not participate in next year's Eurovision Song Contest, and it will not be broadcast by RTÉ, after the European Broadcasting Union confirmed today that Israel will be allowed to take part."

www.rte.ie/entertainmen...

Well, you weren't lying about your copy being well-worn!!

Photograph of the River Liffey, facing west from the Ha'penny Bridge. The sun is setting and the street lights are reflecting on the water.

Photograph of the River Liffey, facing east from the Ha'penny Bridge. The sun is setting and the street lights are reflecting on the water.

The big smoke, from the Ha'penny Bridge.

Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

has narrowed the range of possible options for social and economic organisation since at least the 1950s. Whether that's through the 'magic' of the market, or a weak regulatory system that ends up privileging industry over communities, that narrative has been repeated endlessly since Whitaker. (2/2)

Agreed, although, as with most elements of our present moment, there is also a cohort of present-day historians who are happy to point to our current failings and link them to the long-term foundations on which they are built. In the Irish case, it's a 'modernisation'/'progress' discourse that (1/2)

AI:OK AI:OK is a pioneering initiative dedicated to promoting the responsible use of AI in the music industry.

It was great. There's a little more here: ai-ok.org

Photo of three men sitting on stage in front of a screen that reads "AI:OK".

Then, later in the afternoon, I had the good fortune to be asked to kick-off the Institute for Creativity's event with Martin Clancy, which was a tour de force on AI, music, and his plans for an AI:OK mark for artists and labels. 3/3

Photograph of six people sitting on chairs in a seminar room setting. They are, left to right: Kevin O'Sullivan, Féidhlim McGowan, Ann J O'Brien, Frances Fahy, Gerry Molloy, and Molly Byrne.

Today's event featured a brilliant discussion on 'People, Place & Wellbeing' with Féidhlim McGowan, Anne O'Brien, Frances Fahy, Gerry Molloy & Molly Byrne - a wonderfully inter-disciplinary panel from Geography, Economics, Psychology and the Engagement Office. 2/3

Some days as vice-dean I get to chair really cool conversations. We had two today. First up was the inaugural event in our "Research Dialogues" series, through which we're trying to bring together colleagues from a range of disciplines to talk about their research and to seek out connections. 1/3

"I want to know what it was like to live in those multicultural societies at different points in time."

@kieranconnell.bsky.social on his approach to writing 'Multicultural Britain: A People’s History' #WolfsonHistoryPrize. @hurstpublishers.bsky.social

Yes - very true. And when you account for reclaimed land too, the eyes open to how much the city is built on and around water. The maps in the Historic Towns Atlas for Galway are a very good visual on this.

Photograph of the Corrib river, taken at night. The light from streetlights is reflecting off rapidly moving water.

The Corrib by night.

Still from the film, Wayne's World, in which a man is trying to cut Garth's hair with a hoover-like hair trimmers. Garth is having a good time ... not.

Is it a Suck Kut?

"Thomas Clarke is my name, and I served in the IRB."

One for the #speirgorm community.