The Radical Thinking of Desmond Fennell
Edited by Toner Quinn and Jerry White
Dublin: Boluisce Press, 2025
ISBN: 978‑1‑739577‑44‑5
Nobody can doubt how prolific the late Desmond Fennell’s literary output was, given that he authored more than thirty books and pamphlets during his long life.
From the grave he now strikes again, with the publication of The Radical Thinking of Desmond Fennell, an assemblage of some of his work edited by Toner Quinn and Jerry White. Those without any strong familiarity with Fennell’s work will find essays of great value, drawn both from well-known books and other sources. Even a passionate Fennellite will benefit from re-examining the author’s arguments afresh.
Fennell was, above all else, a serious thinker. In his introduction, Professor Jerry White rightly suggests that Fennell’s writing “serves as an antidote to the flighty, insubstantial chitter-chatter that too often defines discourse in twenty-first-century Ireland.”
Until very recently, there was indeed a sense that the great questions had been settled in Ireland. The Church had been vanquished, abortion was legal, nationalism was naff, and Ireland’s self-image internationally involved a constant effort to be a living embodiment of Woke values.
Fennell’s influential role as a participant in the great moral debates of 1980s Ireland contrasts sharply with the pervasive atmosphere of chitter-chatter in media and politics today, which is one reason for his enduring appeal, particularly among younger readers.
Fennell’s intellectual honesty could easily offend, and were he still among us, he would surely be controversial in all circles. A committed Gaeilgeoir, he documented the true geographical extent of the Gaeltacht in the 1970s (showing that it was much smaller than previously thought), and he also had little time for those who sentimentally used “Irish as a shibboleth… much as Marxist-Leninist language was employed in Soviet Russia.”
Similarly, although he deeply yearned for a unified thirty-two-county nation including his northern birthplace, he did what few other Irish nationalists were willing to do and faced difficult realities about what Irish unity would actually mean.
When this writer first encountered Fennell while reading his obituary in July 2021, questions immediately sprang to mind.
Why was I not aware of him previously? Why had I not seen him on RTÉ One or heard his voice on the radio?
Where had this magnificent Gaelic ghost been banished to, and why? Delving into his writing, it eventually became clearer what had happened.
Fennell’s brilliantly accurate and brutally honest assessment of the denizens of Dublin 4 is of particular importance given the chasm that has developed between Ireland’s elite and the rest of the country.
As Fennell first explained in his description of the cultural impact of 1960s prosperity on the Irish establishment, the Celtic Tiger era resulted in much of Ireland’s population being drawn more deeply into the American liberal consumerist orbit, which had lasting ramifications, including when it came to changing social mores.
When he was at the peak of his powers in the 1980s, Fennell had played a key role as an articulate spokesperson for the views of the conservative majority on issues like the right to life. As he wrote, the division between the “Nice People” of Dublin 4 and the “Rednecks” outside it had less to do with the resentments of aggrieved outsiders, and more to do with the elite’s view of themselves as being a class apart: in Ireland, but not quite of Ireland, as he eloquently described:
“On the one hand there is the great ordinary mass: fans of the Gaelic Athletic Association or GAA (the largest sports organisation by far), xenophobic, painfully religious, Victorian in matters sexual, rurally traditional, and enthusiasts for the Irish language. On the other hand there are themselves, Dublin 4 people, who are proud to have none of those things.”
Unfortunately, he was not able to document the subsequent changes in the Celtic Tiger era and afterwards to the same extent. By the 1990s, a narrow-minded national media was showing much less interest in his work, and Fennell showed less of an interest in Irish discourse as well, choosing to emigrate to Italy.
Much earlier, he had been a victim of an actual cancellation—long before this concept became well known. In 1977, an Irish-American group was pressured by the Fine Gael–Labour government to cancel a US speaking tour that Fennell had been due to undertake. This was done because he had criticised the Cosgrave government’s heavy-handed approach to dealing with Republicanism, calling them “tyrannous” over drinks with an official and not suspecting that his remarks would be recorded and shared.
While the circumstances differ, many can surely relate to this in an Ireland where the policing of public debate and social discussions can be incredibly stifling. People know the social and professional costs of speaking their minds in even gentle terms—for instance, saying “children cannot change their gender” or “recent immigration has been excessive”—and so they do not speak at all.
A Fennell would be invaluable today, but he could also be crucified in the court of public opinion very quickly. Though many things have changed in Ireland in recent decades, one fact remains true: we do not treat dissenters well.
The prevailing social environment would probably not suit him either. With rates of religious practice vastly lower than in the era of “Nice People and Rednecks,” there is far less of a moral or philosophical challenge to the new-fangled ideologies latched upon by the ruling class.
Ireland in the 1980s was still fairly evenly divided between rural and urban, but now only around 30 per cent of Irish people live in rural areas. In Fennell’s day, referenda on abortion (1983) and divorce (1986) showed how out of touch South Dublin was, but the referenda in 2015 and 2018 served as a counterpoint in demonstrating the strength of the new liberal hegemony.
What happened in the referenda on family and care in 2024 was perhaps a turning point, but it is too soon to say.
Writing about Ireland’s increasing European integration in 1993, Fennell wrote presciently that the future could resemble that of Luxembourg, another small country with no clear sense of itself—a “full member of the EC (sic); gets its slice of the cake and its share of the freebies; hosts the Presidency regularly; has a high standard of living and no unemployment; has divorce and abortion; no muck savages to contend with.”
Three decades on, are we not already there—and by public demand?
True, there is growing dissent bubbling under the surface. Fennell was an ardent Irish nationalist, and of a type that today’s Tricolour wavers would do well to learn from as they seek to alter Ireland’s direction. Like the best of European patriots, his national feeling was broadened and tempered by a deep Christian faith. It was not born of hate, but was, in his own words, a “humanist nationalism” concerned with the flourishing of man.
It was communitarian rather than centralising, and he consistently highlighted the importance of valuing all parts of the national “community of communities.”
“People without a nation are homeless in the world,” he wrote in 1972. “They do not know where they stand and are worried about their very identity. So they find their life together unsatisfactory and meaningless, feel alienated from it, cannot find community together in it… The collapse of our nation frustrates us all as human beings.”
In this regard, his defence of the rights of the Ulster Protestants to be recognised as a unique people was remarkable at the time. Indeed, what Fennell wrote about the threats to Ireland’s identity and distinctiveness has a universal relevance in today’s globalised world.
In 2008, the writer Paul Kingsnorth came to widespread prominence after the release of Real England, in which he detailed the struggles of small English pubs, farmers and shopkeepers in a country that was seeing its historical traditions and identity replaced by an oppressive corporate blandness.
Whether he knew it at the time of writing or not, Kingsnorth’s argument was positively Fennellesque. Far from being dead, national identity—and its relationship to social identity—is going to be at the forefront of Irish politics in the coming decades.
Those who are concerned at the pace of recent change should view Fennell’s work as essential reading, particularly if we are to prevent the rise of an ugly, secular, and ethnicity-based nationalism, which cares neither for the democracy of the dead nor the dignity of the living.
The shortest of this book’s three sections is the last, which deals with Fennell’s later writings focusing on global or civilisational developments. This is the least impressive component of Fennell’s overall work, and partially explains—but by no means excuses—the editorial decisions that caused him to become marginalised in Irish public life. Simply put, his writing deteriorated from the early 1990s onwards, even though there were still flashes of brilliance.
A key reason for this was the subject matter that was occupying the mind of this exile. Ireland needed Desmond Fennell: his voice, his wisdom, his insights. But Desmond Fennell also needed Ireland. The philosopher of Irishness was at his most perceptive when writing about his nation and using his vast worldly knowledge to explain that segment of humanity which finds itself at home on this island.
This book is an interesting collection of important work, and it will hopefully assist in an ongoing intellectual revival relating to the author and the country he loved so well.