Edward S Walsh, the US ambassador to Ireland, hosted an event at the American embassy in the Phoenix Park yesterday to celebrate the life and legacy of Margaret Heckler, who was appointed the first female American ambassador to Ireland in 1985.
Heckler, a daughter of Irish immigrants, had left the US amid controversy over her ousting as secretary of health and human services in the Ronald Reagan administration. Also remembered for representing Massachusetts in the House of Representatives for 16 years for the Republican Party, Heckler supported the Equal Rights Amendment and took the lead in sponsoring the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which prohibited banks and other lenders from discriminating against women based on their gender or marital status. She was also a co-founder of the Congressional Women’s Caucus in 1977, which prioritised legislation relating to pension entitlements, family leave and domestic and sexual violence.
Walsh, hosting yesterday’s reception under the Freedom250 banner marking the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence, recently attended Conor McGregor’s Black Forge pub, and posed for a photograph with McGregor’s UFC championship-winning belt.
Last year, McGregor was found liable for the sexual assault of Nikita Hand in December 2018, who was awarded nearly €250,000 in damages by a civil jury . The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre responded to Walsh’s pub sojourn by stating it trivialised sexual violence; its chief executive, Rachel Morrogh, also suggested it would add fuel to protests already planned if US president Donald Trump visits Ireland in September. I wonder is Heckler turning in her grave. Walsh has rightly faced opprobrium for his grossly offensive gesture, but he has nothing to fear from the Irish Government.
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For its semiquincentennial, much is rightly being made of the Irish contribution to the making of the modern United States, but the Irish Government’s preferred approach is to be supine. Its own America250 commemorative programme includes “The American Presidents’ Trail”, a series of commemorative trees and panels “highlighting the deep ancestral and historical connections between Ireland and a significant number of American Presidents”. It was launched by Minister for Culture Patrick O’Donovan earlier this month with the words: “Almost half of all American presidents can trace their roots back to the towns, villages, and communities of Ireland. This project is recognition of that deep, enduring bond, mapping out a unique heritage trail that connects our local communities directly to the history of the White House.”
Whether Trump visits Ireland later this year remains to be seen. If such a visit transpires, it is likely to be choreographed to avoid mass protests, but it will be interesting to see if those disgusted at his monstrous rule and the egregious behaviour of his representatives will manage to make their voices heard. The archive of president Reagan’s visit to Ireland in June 1984 may provide some inspiration. He was here to visit his ancestral homeland in Ballyporeen in Tipperary, address the Dáil, be awarded an honorary doctorate in Galway and attend a state banquet in his honour. Thousands protested, their opposition driven by American foreign policy, especially in Central America.
Reagan, recalled the historian and anti-war activist Van Gosse, “wanted a warm emotional bath in Ballyporeen, like so many American prodigals, and a bully pulpit from which to reassure both American and European audiences about America’s fundamentally peaceful intentions”. Reagan’s biographer Richard Reeves wrote that “there were anti-Reagan demonstrators wherever the president went, including thousands in the streets of Dublin marching under the banner ‘Reagan’s policies Spell Death for Millions’”.
The protesters, also vocal in Galway and Tipperary, included nuns, priests, socialists, trade unionists and students, while a handful of TDs walked out of the Dáil to protest his address. Journalist Frank Kilfeather witnessed two student protesters in Dublin violently assaulted by a special branch detective. At least taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, while courteous, criticised Reagan’s foreign policy in his speech at the state banquet because, as he recalled in his autobiography, “I would be expected by many people in Ireland to make some references to our unhappiness with American policy”.
Some of the American media were also attuned to the tensions. On the eve of Reagan’s arrival, NBC Nightly News broadcast footage of Irish priest Fr Pat O’Brien, a missionary returned from El Salvador, who said from his pulpit: “We respect and indeed love the American nation but respect the truth somewhat more, and the truth of this situation, I believe, is that American power is oppressing, torturing and destroying the hopes of the poor over much of the earth.”
These are words that could just as fittingly be spoken now. Freedom250 indeed.
