The Press Gang
ON 25 May 1995, a mandatory meeting of the National Union of Journalists branch (or ‘chapel’, as they are called in newspapers) was called for all those working on the Irish Press, Evening Press and Sunday Press. The group finance editor Colm Rapple had been fired for writing a piece in the rival Irish Times about the perilous state of the company’s finances and the union decided to back him. None of the titles ever appeared again – after a sit-in by some of the staff and the loss of a court case against former investor Ralph Ingersoll, management closed the papers, and one of the great institutions of Irish life disappeared forever.
Twenty years later, a former journalist at the paper, David Kenny, has edited the recollections of 55 of the staff, charting the history of the Irish Press group from its foundation by Eamon de Valera to its ignominious end. Here I must declare an interest. I worked in Burgh Quay, as a features sub-editor in the Evening Press, and then as deputy features editor of the Sunday Press, from 1991 until the closure and was one of the 18 people who occupied the building to the bitter end.
Naturally, then, this book offered a very real and warm pleasure as I was reminded of the madness and fun that prevailed there. I was unusual in that I had previously worked for Independent Newspapers and the Sunday Tribune before joining; thanks to low wages and the frequent disdain of management for the talent in the building, most of the traffic in Burgh Quay had been outbound.
What I found when I arrived there is a theme central to the book. The paper was slow to accept new technology, new work practices and new ideas. Deprived of investment and caught in the crossfire between Eamon de Valera Jr (whose grandfather, the former taoiseach and president, founded it in 1931) and the imperious Vincent Jennings on one side, and the brash Americans introduced by Ralph Ingersoll on the other, the journalism suffered and circulation plummeted.
There were, of course, moments of levity and gallows humour, and they are amply charted, but so too are the paper’s many successes, and the people who became its star names. Mary Kenny writes of her time as a subversive women’s editor of the Irish Press; Liam Mackey recalls the great Con Houlihan with huge affection; RTÉ Prime Time’s David McCullagh reveals the chance meeting that earned him a job as a cub reporter in what was known as the Irish Creche; and Kate Shanahan charts the challenges facing women in what traditionally had been a macho environment.
Inevitably, pubs feature a lot. Indeed, they arguably feature too much, and might make it seem that all everyone did was drink – which was far from the case.
On the machinations of the cruel endgame, there is a particularly strong contribution from Ronan Quinlan, who was head of the union branch – or ‘father of the chapel’, in one of newspapers’ oddly ecclesiastical nomenclatures that dates from the religious origins of printing – and from David Kenny himself. As for the occupation, Louise Ní Chríodáin offers a funny account of life inside the building and our reliance on the outside world to supply us with food and, yes, OK, drink..
Inevitably, there is a rose-tinted hue to the book from those who spent their whole working lives there. But interlopers like me often felt frustrated by the paper’s pro-Fianna Fáil, Republican and generally conservative ethos. As a columnist, I was warned not to express any support for the plight of the girl in the X Case because the paper ‘always was, is, and always will be against abortion in all circumstances’. In my own minor act of defiance, I wrote a letter to the Irish Times as a private citizen, and faced rebuke when it was printed.
But I met many great writers and wonderful people there – and you have only to look at the list of contributors to realise that the seeds scattered by the demise of the Press took robust root across many other media outlets after the closure – exPressers now work for this newspaper and others, and in radio and television too, and more than few have become novelists and authors of non-fiction.
For anyone interested in social history and the role of the Irish Press and its stable mates in the cultural life of the country, The Press Gang is a must.
‘As a columnist, I was warned not to express any support for the plight of the girl in the
X case’