GERARD HENDERSON’S MEDIA WATCH DOG – ISSUE NO. 61
9 JULY 2010
IN THIS ISSUE
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STOP PRESS
Miracle on Mount Street (North Sydney)
Friends of St Mary MacKillop Speak From Their Graves
On Wednesday the Herald Sun ran a feature on the musical MacKillop, written by composer Xavier Brouwer. According to the AAP report:
The composer of MacKillop, Xavier Brouwer, said he was struck by the complexity of her life. “She was a remarkable woman with a remarkable story,” he said yesterday. He interviewed people who had known Mary MacKillop. “She was a Scottish, which is quite interesting because Scottish people are often quite hot-headed,” Mr Brouwer said. “She was a very withdrawn, reserved, humble woman, so we’re looking for someone who can bring the strength of her character across through.”
Quite an achievement, to be sure. Especially since Mary MacKillop died in 1909 – over a century ago. Anyone alive today who met MacKillop at, say, 15 years of age would now be around 115 years old. And yet some of this lot have been interviewed by Xavier Brouwer. By the way, Mary MacKillop was born in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, which is south of Scotland.
NANCY’S PICKS OF THE WEEK
In a highly competitive field, Nancy could not choose between two highly competitive entrants. Well done Maxine McKew. And well done Phillip Adams.
This is the very same Ms McKew who was offered pre-selection for a safe Labor seat in 2004 but remained as the ABC Lateline’s co-presenter until she was offered ALP pre-selection in a marginal seat in 2007. And this is the very same Man-in-Black whose ABC Radio National Late Night Live program declined to cover the very live Labor leadership change of recent memory (see Issues 59 and 60) and whose program has gone into repeat mode this week while the LNL presenter wings it to New Orleans. [Doesn’t the ABC have lotsa correspondents based in the United States already? – Ed.] And now for the winners.
Maxine McKew – Political Humiliation and the Noose
Last week’s Sunday Telegraph published a story by Claire Harvey about Ms McKew’s campaign to retain her seat of Bennelong in Sydney and which reported that McKew had supported Kevin Rudd in the Labor leadership changeover. McKew dressed down the Labor “factional heavies” who had supported Julia Gillard and then threw the switch to history. As Claire Harvey reported:
On Ms Gillard’s ascendancy, Ms McKew said having a female PM would not make politics kinder or gentler. “I think it’s self-evident that we have actually a brutish political landscape and that’s something that crosses gender,” she said. “There are gentle male souls in the federal parliament and gentle female souls.”
Little had changed since the days of Henry VIII, when failed politicians were hanged, drawn and quartered, she said. “I’m reading Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which is about Thomas Cromwell, set in Tudor England – if you want to read about brutish politics,” Ms McKew said. “What’s changed is the penalty for political failure is a different kind of humiliation – in those days it was shocking things that would tear your body apart.”
So there you have it. All politics is brutal. In Henry VIII’s day, politicians were hanged, drawn and quartered – and humiliated in the process. These days, politicians experience “a different kind of humiliation”. For the record Nancy would take the humiliation without the hanging/drawing/’quartering option.
Shock Horror Mr Adams Quits The Labor Party
Phillip Adams is the world expert on Phillip Adams. His columns in The Weekend Australian invariably include reference to the Adams Self and LNL listeners can invariably hear the Man-in-Black banging on about how he was a teenage Stalinist, his ASIO file and so on. Ad nauseum.
So last Saturday, in The Weekend Australian Magazine, Adams reverted to type. This time the Adams story was about how, following Rudd’s replacement by Gillard, he had decided to resign from the Labor Party. Fancy that. Adams declared:
For over a month my membership renewal has been languishing on my desk. Paying to remain in the NSW branch seemed problematic. The assassination of Rudd makes a final decision all too easy. After 50 years of membership, through thick and thin – mainly thin – I’m resigning.
How many journalists does it take to write an article on the Labor leadership change for the “Inquirer” section of The Weekend Australian? Ten, it seems. Last Saturday Helen Trinca, and nine others, wrote a piece on the Rudd/Gillard changeover which mentioned Adams’ claim that the former prime minister was so annoyed with the coverage of his government in The Australian that he urged Adams to quit his role as a columnist. Which should serve as a reminder to politicians not to have personal conversations with the Man-in-Black unless you want them reported in The Australian.
MWD was reminded of past Adams’ declarations on the ALP and all that when reading Lucy Baker’s piece in last Saturday’s Canberra Times about the books which Ms Gillard had placed in her prime ministerial office in Canberra. They included Paul Strangio’s Keeper of the Faith: A Biography of Jim Cairns.
Turn to Page 175 and it is revealed that in April 1968 Adams supported the attempt of left-wing nutter Jim (“call me Doctor”) Cairns to roll Gough Whitlam as Labor leader. Adams even drafted Cairns’ letter in which he announced this challenge. Good judgment, eh?
GREAT MEDIA U-TURNS OF OUR TIME (CONTINUED)
Michelle Grattan On Why Julia Gillard’s East Timor Solution Is Oh, So clever.
Julia Gillard is devilishly clever. Her asylum seeker policy is a masterstroke of improvisation. And she’s tapping into community hostility to boat people with an empathy driven by Labor’s focus groups, while keeping her tone oh-so reasonable, scolding Tony Abbott on the way through. No wonder some refugee advocates initially weren’t sure whether to like or hate it…. The core of Gillard’s policy is a proposed regional processing centre in East Timor. – The Age, 7 July 2010
Michelle Grattan On Why Julia Gillard’s East Timor Solution Is Not So Clever After All
Julia Gillard is dancing an election jig atop a tightrope. Her bold pitch on boat people shows how much she is willing to dare for the sake of votes. It has also raised wider issues of what she stands for, the way she goes about things, and even whether she will be up to the job… Gillard might have been deputy PM for the best part of a term, but how she would go as a long-term leader is anybody’s guess – and, arguably, becoming harder to predict as she shifts position to get rid of problems and then to deal with subsequent consequences. – The Age, 9 July 2010
So there you have it. Or not.
BEAT UP OF THE WEEK
Read All About It – Top Cop Gives After-Dinner Speech
In MWD’s home town of Melbourne it is usually The Age – aka “The Guardian on the Yarra” – which is beating up on the Catholic Church and all its works and all its pomps.
However, it seems that the Herald Sun is now challenging for this position. The front page of yesterday’s edition was split between news of Danni Minogue’s off-spring (yes, it was a birthing drama) and the news that Victoria Police chief commissioner, Simon Overland, had agreed to give a speech at a $100 a head fundraiser for the Catholic school Xavier College.
Apparently, Mr Overland’s son attended this Catholic private school – which was set up by the Jesuit Order in the late 19th Century – and his old man is returning a favour. Yawn – you would think. But the powers that be at the Herald Sun reckon this is a big story.
According to MWD’s calculations, a $100 a head dinner at the Kooyong Tennis Club is not going to net a fortune for Xavier College. But the Herald Sun believes that this story is of the hold-the-front-page genre. So much so that it commissioned Padraic Murphy to obtain a few quotable quotes to give the story a bit of a life.
How did he go? Well, Mr Murphy came up with Nicholas Abbey (president of the Victorian Council of School Organisations) and recent Greens candidate Clive Hamilton (well known media tart).
Mr Abbey whinged about inequality but overlooked the fact that the schools he represents get all their funding from the taxpayer. And what about Dr Hamilton? He alleged that the Overland talk could be seen as “an entrenchment of privilege”. Really.
According to MWD’s memory, not so long ago Xavier College put on a fund raiser addressed by, wait for it, Herald Sun star columnist Andrew Bolt. This was not mentioned in Padraic Murphy’s piece. Alas. Nor was Clive Hamilton – or even his alter ego “Jacob” (see Issues 34 and 48) – invited to pontificate in the pages of the Herald Sun about the matter at the time.
AND NOW FOR SOME CORRECTIONS
Julian Burnside (QC, AO) and Paul Barclay Inflate Refugee Figures
MWD was surprised to hear Paul Barclay proclaiming on the ABC Radio National Australia Talks program last Wednesday that, when Malcolm Fraser was prime minister, 25,000 Vietnamese refugees arrived “by boat” in Australia each year. Since the Fraser Government was in office for just over seven years, this means that Malcolm Fraser took some 175,000 refugees from Vietnam alone – not counting the intake for the other two Indochinese nations – Cambodia and Laos. All of them came, unauthorised, by boat.
What was Paul Barclay’s evidence for this assertion? It seems that Mr Barclay had relied on an article in The Age on Wednesday by Julian Burnside. Wrote Burnside:
It is easy to forget that the Fraser government received about 25,000 Indochinese “boat people” each year, without a murmur from the Australian people.
Yeah it is easy to forget this – primarily because it’s not true. Certainly Mr Burnside did not claim that all the refugees came by boat. Even so, he got the total number of refugees who arrived by air and boat quite wrong.
MWD is supportive of the Fraser Government’s policy on Indochinese refugees. But it also favours accuracy. According to Tran My-Van’s entry in James Jupp’s The Australian People: An Encyclopaedia of the Nation, Its People and Their Origin (CUP, 2001), there were a total of 2427 Vietnamese born who were resident in Australia in 1976. By 1981, towards the end of the Fraser Government, the number had grown to 85,056. Also, all but some 2000 Indochinese refugees in Australia in 1981 arrived by air under a United Nations sanctioned program.
Moreover, it is a myth to maintain that there was not a “murmur” about the entry of Vietnamese refugees to Australia during the Fraser Government. In late 1977, on the eve of the election, ALP national president Bob Hawke attempted to make political capital out of Vietnamese boat people arriving in Darwin.
By the way, “The-Guardian-on-the-Yarra” was true to form last Wednesday. On the Opinion Page, Burnside’s piece was accompanied by another article by Adrienne Millbank criticising the Gillard Government’s policy on asylum seekers. There was also a piece by leftist David McKnight criticising the Gillard Government’s policy on the mining tax. In other words, virtually an entire page of leftie-luvvies.
Amanda Tattersall’s Siev X Myth
It seems that Greg O’Mahoney wants to be an interviewer in the style of Kerry O’Brien (ABC’s 7.30 Report) and Virginia Trioli (ABC2’s News Breakfast). On Friday 2 July, O’Brien seemed more interested in proclaiming his own views than hearing those of his guest Tony Abbott. [But didn’t Red Kerry give a really soft interview to Greens leader Bob Brown on Monday? – Ed] The same is true of La Trioli’s interview of Michael Keenan (the Opposition’s shadow minister for border protection) on Wednesday.
On Sky News’ The Contrarians on 2 July, O’Mahoney spoke to community organiser and left-wing Getup! fan Amanda Tattersall – and Menzies Centre director Julian Leeser.
Greg O’Mahoney said nothing when Ms Tattersall made the following comment during her criticism of both the Coalition and Labor over border protection.
Turing the boats around. I mean, last time when that happened we saw hundreds of people die in our oceans, 350 people on the Siev X. That’s not a policy solution that a first-world impassionate country can be proud of.
There is no evidence that any asylum seekers died consequent upon a decision to turn any boat around. What’s more, the fate of the Siev X is unknown. The Siev X was never interdicted by the Australian Navy and there was no evidence of any Australian involvement in its tragic sinking. Ms Tattersall seems to be suggesting – with the support of Mr O’Mahoney – that the Australian Navy had taken action which has led to deaths at sea. There is no evidence whatsoever to support this serious assertion.
NANCY’S FIVE PAWS AWARD
Jack Waterford and Bob Carr on the Aarons Family, Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin and All That
This week’s award is shared between the Canberra Times editor-at-large Jack Waterford and former New South Wales Labor premier Bob Carr. Both have commented on Mark Aarons’ book The Family File, which was serialised in The Weekend Australian, 3-4 July 2010.
This is Mark Aarons’s take on his family and its long association with the Communist Party of Australia. Mark’s old man was Laurie Aarons who was the CPA’s general secretary and his uncle was Eric Aarons, the CPA’s ideologue-in-chief.
MWD will return to the history of the Bolshie/Aarons lot in future weeks. [I just can’t wait – Ed.] And MWD will remind readers how kind old Uncle Eric wrote in his book What’s Left (Penguin, 1993) that if the Aarons’ clan had come to power in Australia they would “have executed people”.
But for now it’s appropriate to acknowledge two reviewers who have understood young Mark’s essential message.
Jack Waterford, writing in the Canberra Times on 19 June 2010, understood that if Laurie, Uncle Eric and the like had had their way, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis would have won the Second Wrold War circa 1940 – in the middle of the Nazi Soviet Pact. Wrote Waterford:
In early days the family, as much as the party, had followed every twist and turn of directions from Moscow. This led to the confusion caused when, after a militant anti-fascist crusade of the 1930s, the Soviet Union’s leader suddenly made a pact with Adolf Hitler …
Then Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union, and the war became a great patriotic struggle for survival, with all communists honour-bound to promote victory, by the wicked West as much as the USSR. Then, after victory and Stalin’s takeover of Eastern Europe, communist parties in the West went through an ultra-leftist phase. Here in Australia this involved promoting strikes on the coalfields and epic battles against Labor and Catholic groups for control of unions. The Aaronses were there, as prime conduits of the latest thinking at the Kremlin.
Writing in The Australian on 5 July 2010, Bob Carr commented:
…the bombshell revelation is the system of dual membership of the ALP and the CPA, something long suspected but now spelt out by the ASIO documents and Mark Aarons’s family familiarity with Australian communism. The implications are huge. As a teenage Whitlam-ite I sat in the gallery of Sydney Town Hall and watched factional debates at the annual state ALP conference. I now know, courtesy of this book, the Left leaders carried Communist Party tickets. Their real loyalty was to the CPA, a party still loyal to Moscow…
The revelation of dual membership is rich in implications. They recast the political history of Australia from the 1950s to the 70s.
First, they vindicate the decision of a large part of Catholic Australia to veto the election of federal Labor governments by voting for the breakaway Democratic Labor Party after the Labor split of 1955. Still something of a Labor romantic, I find it painful to squeeze this out, but it strikes me the DLP indictment of the ramshackle Labor Party led by H.V. Evatt and Arthur Calwell was mostly right.
Five Paws x 2 = 10 Paws all up.
HISTORY CORNER
Brenda Niall and Gerard Henderson on Fr. Hackett, Dr Mannix, Michael Collins, Bob Santamaria – and More Besides
Brenda Niall’s book The Riddle of Father Hackett (National Library of Australia, 2009) has been short-listed for the Magarey Medal for Biography 2010. The prize is awarded to the female author who has published the work assessed to be the best biographical writing on an Australian subject in the previous two years. It is judged by a panel set up by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature and the Australian Historical Association.
In view of the interest in Dr Niall’s book – which involves such characters as Fr. William Hackett, S.J., Archbishop Daniel Mannix, B.A. Santamaria and the Irish leader Michael Collins – along with such institutions as the Society of Jesus and the Irish Republican Army – MWD has published the recent correspondence between Gerard Henderson and Brenda Niall. The correspondence discusses whether or not Fr Hackett was really a supporter of the Irish republican cause and examines his relationship with Dr Mannix, Mr Santamaria and Michael Collins.
The Henderson/Niall correspondence is printed in full – except for the deletion of some brief comments on a matter unrelated to The Riddle of Father Hackett – in the interest of debate and discussion.
Email from Gerard Henderson to Brenda Niall – 7 January 2010
Dear Brenda
During our recent conversation, I said that I had read a third of The Riddle of Father Hackett. I completed the biography over Christmas and found it a most enjoyable read. I was particularly interested in W.P. Hackett’s insights into Archbishop Daniel Mannix – along with Fr Hackett’s relationships with his fellow Jesuits.
As discussed, I would have liked you to talk about your book at The Sydney Institute in February. Since this was not possible, I will see whether a talk on Fr Hackett will still work around April/May. I will be back in touch about this. The only possible problem is that the Institute’s program is already busy around this time…
Some Corrections
In case The Riddle of Father Hackett reprints, you may be interested in a couple of corrections.
● At Page 220 you write that “Labor MP Hugh Mahon…was expelled from the Hughes government in 1920 for a ferocious speech denouncing the British for Terence MacSwiney’s death in Brixton Prison”. In fact, Hugh Mahon was expelled from the House of Representatives – while a member of the Labor Opposition – following a majority vote initiated by W.M. Hughes who was prime minister of the Nationalist Government. Following his expulsion, Mahon contested the resultant by-election in December 1920, losing narrowly to the Nationalist Party candidate G.J. Foley. Labor’s A.E. Green won the seat at the 1922 Federal election.
● At Page 222 you write that “a Catholic peace rally in May 1939 brought Menzies, Evatt and Santamaria together on the same platform”. In the footnote supporting this claim at Page 297, you refer to “Opposition Leader Evatt” being on the platform with Bob Menzies and Bob Santamaria.
In 1939 Bert Evatt was still on the High Court – he did not become a Labor MP until 1940 and he did not become Labor leader until 1951. The ALP representative at the May 1939 Peace Rally in Melbourne was the Victorian Labor MLA Bert Cremean. This is a common myth which stems from an error in James Murtagh’s Australia: The Catholic Chapter.
● At Page 272 you write that “the label of ‘meddling priest’ was bestowed on Jesuit Frank Brennan by an exasperated Prime Minister Paul Keating, during the 1998 debate on Aboriginal land rights”. This is an obvious error – since John Howard was prime minister in 1998.
I trust the above is useful – and I hope that The Riddle of Father Hackett reprints.
Daniel Mannix’s Papers – A Request For Information
I plan to finish my proposed biography of Bob Santamaria in the not too distant future. In my draft I devote some pages – but not too many – to Daniel Mannix. It would be appreciated if you could inform me of your evidence for the following assertions in The Riddle of Father Hackett concerning Dr Mannix:
At Page 136, you write that “Mannix had all his papers burned, so as to frustrate biographers”. And at Page 269 you write that Mannix had “all his private papers burned”.
My question is this – when did this act, or acts, of burning take place? Who burned the papers and where did the incineration occur?
As you may or may not know, I worked for B.A. Santamaria part-time in 1970 and 1971. In this position, on occasions I worked on the Mannix material which you had accumulated when you were Santamaria’s research assistant about a decade earlier. As you are aware, some of Mannix’s papers did survive and were subsequently used by B.A. Santamaria in his biography Daniel Mannix: The Quality of Leadership (1984).
It seems to me that if Daniel Mannix had taken a conscious decision to have all his papers burned, then the material which ended up in Santamaria’s files would not have survived.
An alternative scenario is that Mannix did not collect much correspondence in the first place. During his latter years – and perhaps even earlier – Mannix was anything but a hard worker. He handed business matters to his vicar-general for attention and preferred to deal with individual members of the laity. Such dealings would not necessarily have created a paper trail. Also, Mannix had few friends and it is unlikely that he received – or responded to – much personal correspondence. Moreover, apart from his mother who died in the early 1920s, Mannix did not keep in contact with family members. He was very much an aloof loner – as you depict in The Riddle of Father Hackett.
In view of this, it is not clear to me that Mannix ever had a discrete body of correspondence which he ordered to be destroyed. As a sloppy administrator, he may well have not collected much correspondence in the first place. This would explain why some correspondence survived – perhaps by accident.
However, I accept that my theory could be wrong. This is why I am interested in the evidence you relied on to support your claim that Mannix had all his papers burned.
The Riddle Of Fr. Hackett, What Riddle?
In my 1982 book Mr Santamaria and the Bishops, I reported that “it was said that he [Hackett] had been sent out to Australia from Ireland” on account of his support for Sinn Fein and Eamon de Valera’s opposition to the 1921 Treaty. Having read your book, I am less certain about this claim.
The Riddle of Father Hackett mentioned some eleven Jesuits who were sent from Ireland to Australia in the first half of the 20th Century – including W. P. Hackett. There were some Jesuits who were sent from Ireland to other Jesuit provinces during the same period. The Jesuits you cited in your book, who were posted from Ireland to Australia, are Eustice Boylen, John Fahy, James Farrell, Edmund Frost, Austin Kelly, Thomas Montague, Jeremiah Murphy, Francis O’Brien, James O’Dwyer, Patrick Stephenson and, of course, William Hackett.
In view of this, is Father Hackett’s case so different from that of his colleagues? In other words, why should it have been expected that W.P. Hackett would remain in Ireland when so many of his fellow Jesuits were being sent out of Ireland to the Australian and other Jesuit provinces?
Jesuits of that generation accepted their lot in life. W. P. Hackett accepted his posting to Australia – as did Patrick Stephenson. That was what Jesuits born in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century did. Moreover, as you mention in your footnotes, in his book To the Greater Glory: A History of the Irish Jesuits, Louis McRedmond names only two Jesuits who are known to have publicly supported de Valera and opposed the Treaty – namely Timothy Corcoran and John McErlean. If Fr. Hackett had been exiled to Australia, on account of his support for de Valera and his opposition to the Treaty, it is likely that McRedmond would have been aware of this.
Just a thought.
Best wishes
Yours sincerely
Gerard Henderson
Email from Brenda Niall to Gerard Henderson – 8 January 2010
Dear Gerard
Thank you for your letter. I’m pleased you enjoyed The Riddle. As to the corrections, mea culpa. The reprint was ordered in Sept, so as to have supplies for Christmas, so unless there is a third printing I won’t have a chance to fix anything ( I got 2 days notice of the reprint and made two corrections) But I will keep yours in mind.
I’d be happy to talk to the Sydney Institute, but please don’t worry if a date can’t be found. I have done lots of talks and radio interviews and the book is selling so well that I don’t feel any great need to do more for it…
The Mannix Papers. It is a story widely told, but my immediate source was Frank Little whom I interviewed a few months before his death ( you will see the interview quoted in The Riddle) He said that the burning was done by May Saunders, housekeeper to Bishop Fox, and that she told him ( Little) that she was unhappy about it but she was following instructions from Mannix which Fox had been told to carry out. ‘It was vandalism”, Frank Little said.
I would need to look at BAS on Mannix to see exactly what was quoted there. It seems likely that Mannix, having given permission for the biography, would have lent him papers. As you know the work was still incomplete (unwritten?) at the time of Mannix’s death. The diocesan archivist, Rachel Naughton, told me that the Santamaria family had returned some papers after Bob’s death. Paddy Morgan said in an interview ( Phillip Adams?) that many late Mannix letters were written by BAS and that the typed copies are in the SLV [State Library of Victoria] collection. But you should ask Paddy about this.
In speaking of ‘his papers’ I was thinking of the ones written from Raheen, or received there, not the diocesan correspondence. No doubt he signed many letters which were drafted by his staff.
I agree with you that there might not be much late correspondence.
But in 50 years? What about letters from Irish leaders and churchmen in the 1920s? Family members may have been estranged, but someone must have told him of his mother’s death. I have seen ( e..g ) a Mannix letter replying to Hackett- where is Hackett’s to Mannix? I know that Robert Barton sent him a long personal account of the Treaty negotiations- where is that? Father Coyne, whom I interviewed c. 1959, said that Mannix could write 100 letters in a night. ( see my Life Class, p.88) Allowing for exaggeration that does suggest an accumulation at Raheen of the incoming letters – what one might call his non-official correspondence, which no doubt dwindled over the years. At any rate, that is what Frank Little believed when he spoke of the vandalism of Bishop Fox and the unhappy compliance of May Saunders..
No Riddle? Of course there were dozens of Irish Jesuits sent here in the course of duty. But there is ample evidence that Fr H’s case was different. My sources include his letters to the Childers family and their replies. Among the SJ.s , an article by Fr Dennett in Jesuit Life ( see my Bibliog) is pretty conclusive. Fr Daniel O’ Connell who travelled on the Ormonde with Fr H, told Doug Boyd that he believed the Provincial asked Fr H to ‘volunteer’ for the mission because his activities were embarrassing the order.
Father Hackett told my father ( c.1951) that he had been in ‘difficulties’ in Ireland because of giving absolution to the rebels. At the time, knowing no Irish history beyond a few Yeats poems) I thought this meant Easter1916, but it made perfect sense when I read his 1922 Journal of the civil war period, when the bishops had aready signalled excommunication for the anti-treaty forces.
I could give you more evidence. But to my mind the riddle was not so much why Fr H was sent away from Ireland, but why he wasn’t sent earlier.And the related one: how did his political experience in Ireland influence his Australian activities?
McRedmond may have missed out on Hackett because there was no paper trail in Ireland. If you volunteered for the mission, there was automatic acceptance; no discussion would appear in the Irish province records. This was checked, and there is none.
Hope this helps.
Best wishes
Brenda
Email from Gerard Henderson to Brenda Niall – 28 May 2010
Dear Brenda
Thanks for your email of 8 January 2010. I found the comments in your note very interesting, important and challenging. So I delayed responding to you until I could collect the available material and provide a considered and documented response.
For reasons of clarity, I have focused on Daniel Mannix’s papers and the “riddle” of Father Hackett – but have added one extra comment about the relationship between Fr. Hackett and the late B.A. Santamaria. It may be that you might choose to take these comments into account if there is a third print run of The Riddle of Father Hackett.
Daniel Mannix’s Papers (Continued)
I note from your email that it was Archbishop Frank Little who told you that Archbishop Daniel Mannix had all his papers burned so as to frustrate biographers. According to Little’s account, he was informed of this by May Saunders – Bishop Arthur Fox’s housekeeper – who undertook the burning. It is not clear whether any such destruction of this material took place before or after Dr Mannix’s death.
I do not doubt that May Saunders may have burned some of Dr Mannix’s papers. This was a common occurrence with respect to many deceased persons in the 1960s and earlier – not only clerics. However, the fact is that not all of Daniel Mannix’s papers were burned. I understand that you worked as B.A. Santamaria’s research assistant from 1954 until around 1960 – and, in this capacity, you worked on those papers of Dr Mannix which were collected by Santamaria both before and after the Archbishop’s death.
This material was quoted by Santamaria in his book Daniel Mannix: The Quality of Leadership (MUP, 1984) and it is this material which you refer to as being returned to Rachel Naughton at the Melbourne Diocesan Historical Commission after BAS’s death. There are many examples of Mannix’s papers referred to in Santamaria’s book – including Cardinal Van Rossum’s 1918 letter to Mannix, Mannix’s handwritten notes circa 1919, Archbishop Duhig’s letter to Mannix – and more besides. As I recall, Mannix’s papers also used to contain a letter written to him by Billy Hughes shortly before the latter’s death.
Clearly, then, May Saunders did not burn all of Mannix’s papers at Arthur Fox’s – or anyone else’s – request. Moreover, as you know, Fox was close to Santamaria and it is likely that Santamaria would have opposed any such burning – if only because he would have wanted such papers for the biography which Santamaria was already planning when Mannix died in November 1963.
What is being discussed here are Daniel Mannix’s personal papers. In my 1982 book Mr Santamaria and the Bishops, I referred to the fact that in the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s Santamaria wrote much of Mannix’s official correspondence. This was confirmed by Patrick Morgan in his edited collections Your Most Obedient Servant and Running The Show. A copy of all the material which Santamaria wrote for Mannix remained in Santamaria’s files – as did some original documents in Mannix’s handwriting.
The question is not so much what happened to the personal correspondence which Mannix received during his time in Australia – but, rather, whether there was a discrete collection of correspondence which was consciously burned shortly before or immediately after Mannix’s death.
In my view the following scenario is more plausible than the “bonfire” explanation.
° Mannix was a sloppy administrator who did not rigorously maintain files and was in the habit of not retaining letters.
° Mannix’s letters – which he drafted himself – were invariably very brief and would not necessarily engender detailed correspondence. For example, Mannix’s letter to Hackett in March 1923 – which you reproduce in your book – is of this genre.
° Mannix had virtually no contact with his (distant) family and few – if any – personal friends. It is unlikely that Mannix ever engaged in detailed correspondence with family and friends so it should not be expected that he ever held such letters.
I worked part-time for B.A. Santamaria in 1970 and 1971. During this time I did some research on Santamaria’s (then proposed) Mannix biography. Santamaria discussed with me the preliminary work which you did with him on the Mannix book. BAS told me that he was disappointed that Mannix left so few papers. But BAS never said to me that Mannix’s papers had been consciously destroyed – or that such destruction had been undertaken at the direction of Bishop Fox. Santamaria just regretted that Mannix had not maintained a filing system.
In view of all the above, I remain unconvinced that your comment in The Riddle of Father Hackett that “Mannix had all his papers burned so as to frustrate biographers” is accurate. At the very least, such as assertion should be qualified.
The Riddle of Fr. Hackett, What Riddle? (Continued)
In your letter you wrote that to your mind “the riddle was not so much why Fr H was sent away from Ireland, but why he wasn’t send earlier”.
This is a matter of opinion. The fact remains that there is no documented evidence of any kind that William Hackett S.J. was sent to Australia from Ireland on account of his support for Sinn Fein, Irish Republican Army and Eamon de Valera’s and Liam Lynch’s opposition to the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty (which was signed in London on 6 December 1921). Hackett never said or wrote this. And no one else who was in a position to know ever said or wrote this. It’s all a matter of speculation.
In the first edition of his memoirs, published in 1981, B.A. Santamaria claimed that Fr Hackett had been sent to Australia on account of his “close association with Michael Collins during the Civil War”. Collins – as you know – supported the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. Liam Lynch and Eamon de Valera, as you also know, opposed the Treaty – and in so doing, effectively initiated the Civil War in Ireland. Santamaria withdrew the reference to Collins in the 1997 edition of his memoirs – but he did not claim that Hackett had supported de Valera. Rather, Santamaria was ambivalent about whether Hackett supported Collins or de Valera.
Santamaria knew Hackett well – they first met no later than the mid 1930s and remained in contact until Hackett’s death in July 1954. The fact that, circa 1981, Santamaria believed that Hackett was in the Collins camp during the Civil War indicates that Hackett never spoke to Santamaria of his support for de Valera during this period.
The key revelation in The Riddle of Father Hackett turns on that section of your book where you document that, on 21 August 1922, Collins wrote to Hackett regretting that a planned meeting between them had not taken place. As you know, Collins was killed on 22 August 1922 while on active duty during the Civil War. Collins’ letter reproduced in your book is on paper headed: “Command Headquarters, Cork”.
This revelation is consistent with the reference in Tim Pat Coogan’s Michael Collins: A Biography (Hutchinson, 1990) where the theory is expressed that Collins may have travelled to Cork in August 1922 to meet “some intermediaries” including “a well known priest Fr W.P. Hackett”.
In my view, the new material in your book is important evidence against your view that Hackett was sent to Australia on account of his involvement with de Valera. It is most unlikely that – in the midst of the Irish Civil War – Michael Collins would have been willing to meet with someone who was regarded as a Sinn Fein and IRA supporter and an agent of de Valera – rather than an intermediary. It is also most unlikely that, if Collins knew Hackett’s allegiance to Sinn Fein and the IRA, he would have written such a friendly note to him – even if he had agreed to meet with Hackett as part of some negotiation process.
I have recently read F.J. Dennett S.J.’s article titled: “’Tis Sixty Years Since: Fr William Hackett and the Irish Troubles” which was published in the Summer 1984 issue of Jesuit Life – and which you cite in support of your thesis. Certainly Fr Dennett believed that Hackett was sent out to Australia due to his support for Sinn Fein, the IRA and de Valera. But Dennett produced no documentary evidence to back his thesis. Rather, Dennett’s article is replete with such words as “might”, “probable”, “one can only suppose”, “one presumes”, “must have been”, “most likely conjecture” and “this is only my impression”. In view of this, I fail to understand how you can describe Fr Bennett’s article as “pretty conclusive”. It is anything but.
The other pieces of evidence in your email which you cite for your claim are commented on below.
First there is your claim:
Fr Daniel O’Connell who travelled on the Ormonde with Fr. H, told Doug Boyd that he believed the Provincial asked Fr. H to “volunteer” for the mission because his activities were embarrassing the [Jesuit] order.
This is hearsay upon hearsay. It’s an interesting story – but no more than that. Moreover, as you document in your “Notes” section at page 290 of your book, O’Connell told Douglas Boyd S.J. that he could not speak with authority on the reason why Hackett came to Australia and that he could not recall the name of the priest who told him this story in the first instance. In other words, O’Connell’s recall does not amount to much. In view of this, his theory is not at all conclusive.
Second, there is your claim:
Father Hackett told my father (c.1951) that he had been in “difficulties” in Ireland because of giving absolution to the rebels. At the time, knowing no Irish history (beyond a few Yeats poems) I thought this meant Easter 1916, but it made perfect sense when I read his 1922 Journal of the civil war period, when the bishops had already signalled excommunication for the anti-treaty forces.
If, circa 1922, Fr Hackett was as a supporter of Sinn Fein, IRA and de Valera it is most unlikely that he would have referred to de Valera and his colleagues as “the rebels”. If you are knowledgeable in the history of modern Ireland, you would know that de Valera regarded Sinn Fein and the IRA as the legitimate government of Ireland – or what he termed the government of “the Republic” –and certainly did not regard himself as a “rebel”.
In any event, what your father told you about what Hackett said to him is hearsay. Moreover, this hearsay does not necessarily mean what you assert it means. It is accepted that William Hackett would have been willing to minister the sacraments to those Irish Catholics who were imprisoned by the British authorities after the failed Easter Uprising of 1916. At Footnote 24 on Page 289 of The Riddle of Father Hackett, you quote Hackett as referring to visiting a number of condemned men during the Anglo-Irish War (which took place between January 1919 and July 1921). You cite such visits as taking place in 1920 and 1921 – i.e. before the outbreak of the Civil War. Clearly these men were “rebels” – in the view of both the British authorities and those Irish who supported them – since they were involved on the Irish side of the Anglo-Irish War.
The evidence suggests that the time-line of Ireland in the early 1920s is not consistent with your thesis about why Hackett moved to Australia.
° The Irish Civil War commenced on 22 June 1922 and there was a cease-fire on 30 April 1923 – but the war never ended formally.
° It was decided that Fr Hackett would be appointed to Australia around early June 1922 – i.e. before the outbreak of the Irish Civil War.
° The Catholic Hierarchy in Ireland pronounced a general excommunication on those who were involved in insurrection against the Free State Government in October 1922 – this had the effect of instructing Catholic priests not to administer the sacraments (including absolution, confession) to supporters of Sinn Fein and the IRA. Fr Hackett departed Ireland on 2 September 1922 – i.e. before priests were prevented giving the sacraments to members of Sinn Fein/IRA.
As you document in your book, Fr Hackett gave absolution to supporters of Sinn Fein/IRA around mid 1922. This would not have been unusual priestly activity at the time – for Jesuits or anyone else. That is why the Hierarchy chose to forbid such activity some months later.
° The Irish Free State government introduced the death penalty for supporters of Sinn Fein/IRA in September 1922. By then Fr Hackett was already at sea bound for Australia. Consequently, there were no condemned men – as a consequence of their support for the Sinn Fein/IRA and de Valera – to whom Fr Hackett could have given the sacraments Hackett’s friend Erskine Childers was executed on 24 November 1922. However, as you record on Footnote 24 on Page 289, Hackett did visit a number of condemned men in 1920 and 1921 – who were executed by the British on account of their activities in the Anglo-Irish War.
So it would seem that when Hackett spoke to your father about administering the sacraments to the rebels, he was referring to those Irish Catholics who had rebelled against British rule – initially at the time of the Easter Uprising and later during the Anglo-Irish War. Such an action would not have warranted Hackett’s effective expulsion from Ireland by the Irish Provincial of the Society of Jesus.
Thanks for drawing my attention to Louis McRedmond’s To the Greater Glory: A History Of The Irish Jesuits (Gill and Macmillan, 1991). When I wrote to you on 7 January 2010 I had not read this – I recently purchased a copy. As you will be aware, McRedmond comments that the Irish Jesuit Province did not get involved in politics. Rather the Jesuits administered the sacraments to Irish Catholics who fought with the British Army during the First World War as well as to those who were involved in – or supported – the 1916 Easter Uprising and the Irish side of the Anglo-Irish War. It seems that Fr. Hackett acted in much the same way as his fellow Jesuits during this period.
The evidence indicates that the Jesuit Order in Ireland played no role whatsoever in the Irish Civil War. The event is not even referred to in McRedmond’s history. In your book you refer to McRedmond as naming “two Jesuits known to have supported de Valera, Fathers Timothy Corcoran and John McErlean” (Footnote 34, Page 290). But McRedmond’s actual reference is to these two priests – along with Fr Cahill – as helping “draft a historical case for Mr de Valera to be presented to the Peace Conference at Versailles in 1919”. This is well before the outbreak of the Irish Civil War – and it is likely that the drafting took place before the outbreak of the Anglo-Irish War.
As you know, McRedmond does not even mention Hackett. Yet if Fr. Hackett had been sent to Australia on account of his support for de Valera – it is likely that McRedmond would have been aware of this. For the record, Frs. Cahill, Corcoran and McErlean remained in Ireland during their priestly careers – none were sent to overseas Jesuit provinces.
Theories aside, these are the established facts. A reading of David Strong S.J.’s The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography: 1848-1998 (Halstead Press, 1999) lists no fewer than 33 Jesuits who are said to have been “sent” from Ireland to Australia. Namely Kevin Bracken, Joseph Brennan, Noel Burke-Gaffney, Kevin Carroll, Daniel Clancy, James Corboy, Michael Dooley, David Gallary, Thomas Gartlan, Joseph Gates, William Gwynn, William Hackett, Dominic Kelly, Tim Kenny, James Kirwan, Francis Lyons, Denis Manning, Edward Masterton, Patrick McCurtain, William Moloney, John Monahan, Valentine Moran, Jeremiah Murphy, Richard Murphy, Dan O’Brien, Morgan O’Brien, Robert O’Dempsey, William O’Keefe, William O’Leary, Joseph O’Malley, Thomas Perrott, Edward Riodoran and Patrick Stephenson.
The Australian Dictionary of Jesuit Biography lists two Irish Jesuits who are said to have volunteered to be posted to Australia. Namely Patrick Duffy and Thomas Fleming. There are also a few Jesuits who came to Australia from Ireland without reference as to whether they were sent to – or volunteered for – the appointment.
As Ursula Bygott points out in Pen And Tongue: The Jesuits in Australia 1865-1939 (MUP, 1980), the Irish Jesuits exhibited a missionary zeal with respect to Australia. It seems that Fr Hackett went along with this sentiment.
In other words, Hackett was just one out of more than three score of Irish Jesuits sent to Australia in the second half of the 19th Century and the first half of the 20th Century. At this time, there would have been a fine line between volunteering for an overseas posting and being sent to places like Australia. In view of this, the question remains as to why his case was different to that of his colleagues.
There is another possible explanation for Hackett’s posting to Australia. According to a rumour within the Jesuit Order, there existed a view that William Hackett (born 1878) was too close to Molly Childers (born 1878). Such an infatuation on Hackett’s behalf was capable of causing scandal to both the Jesuits and the Catholic Church. This possibility might explain Hackett’s constant visits to Erskine and Molly Childers’ homes in Wicklow and Dublin. There is some evidence for this theory on Page 79 of The Riddle of Father Hackett, where you write:
Revealingly, Hackett called Molly Childers by her first name: a break of etiquette unless she asked for the formality of “Mrs Childers” to be dropped.
Revealing, indeed. It would be almost unheard of in Ireland, circa 1922, for a Catholic priest in his mid-forties to address a woman in her mid-forties (whether Catholic or Protestant) by her first name. It is just speculation, of course. However, it is a more plausible theory than your own. The posting of Hackett to Australia would have ended any such scandalous relationship.
To you, the riddle of Fr. Hackett turns on not why he was sent away from Ireland but why he was not sent earlier. To me, the relevant question should be – if Fr. Hackett was embarrassing the Jesuit Order on account of his political activity in support of Sinn Fein and the IRA, why did it take the Irish Jesuits so long to dispatch him to Australia? The decision that Hackett would join the Jesuits in Australia was made around early June 1922. But Hackett did not depart Ireland until 2 September 1922.
Fr. Hackett and B.A. Santamaria – A Question of Evidence
As previously indicated, I very much enjoyed reading The Riddle of Father Hackett. It’s just that, on occasions, the evidence does not support the argument. Similar problems emerge with your coverage about the relationship between William Hackett and B.A. Santamaria.
At Page 246 you refer to “evidence of strained relations between Hackett and Santamaria” which (allegedly) “appeared in April 1949”. You write that the Jesuit Provincial in Australia – Austin Kelly S.J. – “was asked, presumably by Santamaria, to replace Hackett with someone more suited to the work”. The reference is to Hackett’s position as chaplin of the Australian National Secretariat of Catholic Action (ANSCA).
So, at Page 246 you state that the request to remove Hackett from this position came “presumably” from Santamaria. However, by the middle of Page 247 any presumption has been discarded and you refer to “Santamaria’s request to replace Hackett” – as if this is an established fact. Moreover at the end of Page 247 you refer to “Santamaria’s appeal to the Jesuit Provincial for his [Hackett’s] removal” – likewise as if this is an established fact. So what starts off as your presumption quickly becomes a “fact”.
There is a reference to Footnote 28 which provides the only evidence with respect to your claim about Santamaria’s (alleged) attempt to remove Hackett. This is as follows: “Minutes of meeting, 29 April 1949. Jesuit Provincial Consults’ Meetings 1947-1979, ASJASL”. I have checked this reference and it reads, in full, as follows:
Ecclesiastical Assistant: It was reported that dissatisfaction was being caused by Fr W.P.H.’s holding the post of Ecclesiastical Assistant to the National Secretariat of Catholic Action, since he was not suited for the task and his retention of the post was preventing the appointment of someone more competent. Fr Provincial said he would suggest to the Archbishop of Melbourne the retirement of W.P.H. from this post.
As you are aware, this report does not contain any reference to B.A. Santamaria. Yet this is your only evidence for the assertion that Santamaria asked Fr Kelly to replace Fr Hackett.
As Patrick Morgan documented in his review of The Riddle of Father Hackett, which was published in the December 2009 issue of Tintean, Fr. Hackett remained a firm supporter of Santamaria up to the time of his death – contrary to the implication in your book.
The only evidence proffered in The Riddle of Father Hackett for your assertion that, towards the end of his life, Hackett supported Santamaria’s opponents who gathered around The Catholic Worker is the undocumented recollection of Max Charlesworth. Dr Charlesworth, when interviewed by you in November 2008, was recalling events of over half a century previously. There is no documentary evidence to support Dr Charlesworth’s recollections decades after Hackett’s death. It is likely that Fr Hackett was friendly to Max Charlesworth and some other supporters of The Catholic Worker as he was in his priestly way, with virtually everyone whom he came across. But this is not evidence to support the implication that he sided with the Catholic Worker against Mr Santamaria.
Conclusion
In view of the historical significance of The Riddle of Father Hackett, I thought it worth responding to your letter at some length. I know you are busy – and there is no need to reply to this.
If you are planning to be in Sydney with an hour or so to spare, let me know. I would like you to talk about William Hackett if this can work for both you and the Institute.
In view of the importance of The Riddle of Father Hackett, I have forwarded a copy of this correspondence to the Melbourne Diocesan Historical Commission and the Australian Jesuit Archive.
Best wishes
Yours sincerely
Gerard Henderson
Email from Brenda Niall to Gerard Henderson – 6 June 2010
Gerard
Just a quick reply to your letter. I will look through it again before expressing my scepticism about several of your points, and clarifying one of my own.
As to Sydney, I really can’t plan anything. I may be there in Sept, for a talk at the State Library, but it comes straight after the Melb Writers’ Festival, and even if it happened to suit the Sydney Institute I feel that’s more than enough for one week.
Thank you for the invitation, and I am pleased that you enjoyed The Riddle on the whole.
Brenda
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Until next time then.