Last week, Donna chatted with Michael Tubridy, who with Robert Polner is the author of An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer. In this brief interview Michael talks about the venerable attorney and activist, how the world of journalism led Michael to write about O’Dwyer, and how the Troubles have eased but not disappeared.
Donna:
Tell us a little about Paul O’Dwyer.
Michael:
O’Dwyer was an Irish-born New York lawyer, politician, and activist who, as a New Deal Democrat concerned with economic issues, served in effect as the godfather of the city reform movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s that overthrew the Tammany Hall political machine and supported the civil rights and anti-war movements. Born in 1907 and dying in 1998, he remained a consistent firebrand defender over decades for scapegoats and outcasts of all types. He reached his greatest national prominence with a 1968 underdog Senate race against Jacob Javits, highlighted by his passionate opposition to the Vietnam War. Though not as successful a politician as his brother Bill (17 years older), the first postwar mayor of New York, he became, in the courtroom and in countless marches, what one of our sources called “the conscience of his city and, at times, his country.” In the last third of his life, he crusaded against the British-dominated security, legal, and political apparatus that oppressed the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland.
Donna:
And what lit a fire under you to write O’Dwyer’s biography?
Michael:
The initial impetus for this came from co-author Rob Polner, my friend since we were freshmen on our college newspaper. After graduating, as a reporter for New York Newsday, Rob heard from older hands at City Hall about Paul O’Dwyer, who’d been City Council President during the bankruptcy crisis of the mid-Seventies, as well as Bill (who, like Eric Adams, left Gracie Mansion under a cloud of scandal). Fascinated by their story, he asked me around 2013 to collaborate on their joint biography (which, for marketing considerations, we eventually narrowed to covering only Paul). Rob’s decision to bring me aboard was largely due to two reasons, I’m sure. One, it is difficult for one person to research and write something this comprehensive while holding down a full-time job (as he had). And two, he could use a writer with an Irish-American background who would understand the boyhood environment that shaped the O’Dwyers’ lives. As for me: as a teenager in the 1970s, I saw Paul O’Dwyer constantly in the news, not just for his political career but for his tireless efforts to involve America in brokering a solution to “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. So when Rob contacted me, I agreed immediately to work with him. I hope we have focused a new generation’s attention on a figure who demonstrates how to act in an age of backlash and polarization.
Donna:
You featured Oscar Wilde talking about the "problem of the Irish" in a recent blog post: “There are some who will welcome with delight the idea of solving the Irish question by doing away with the Irish people. There are others who will remember that Ireland has extended her boundaries, and that we have now to reckon with her not merely in the Old World but in the New.” How would you frame the problem today—solved? Changed?
Michael:
The situation has changed, and for the better, without being solved. When Wilde wrote those lines in 1889, Britain had not extended self-government to Ireland, which had not recovered from the material and psychological wounds of its potato famine of four decades before. Now, of course, 26 of the 32 counties on the island form part of the Republic of Ireland, in no small part due to what Wilde noticed in the second part of his quote: the Irish presence “not merely in the Old World but in the New.” As one of these immigrants [to the United States], part of a worldwide Irish Diaspora, Paul O’Dwyer and the network of activists he mobilized played a part in convincing Bill Clinton to kickstart the negotiations that produced the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended Ulster’s Troubles. Since then, though progress has occurred in areas like employment and representation in those six counties, some problems remain, including Catholic underrepresentation on the police force, post-Brexit border and commerce issues, and, of course, lingering prejudices and suspicions between Protestants and Catholics.
Michael Tubridy
. . . is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Daily News, USA Today, The Irish Echo, Irish America, City and State NY, Vital City, L.A. Progressive, and The Recorder. A lifelong resident of Bergen County, NJ, he also frequently writes about Irish and Irish American history in his blog "A Boat Against the Current."