Patrick Comerford
Last week’s visit to Paris had been long arranged before an invitation arrived for a book launch in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick. Dr Seán William Gannon and Dr Brian Hughes have edited Histories of Protestant Limerick, 1912–1923, which was published shortly before Christmas, but which was launched officially last Thursday (8 February 2024).
I am one of the contributors to this new book, with a chapter on ‘Church-goers in Limerick During War and Revolution’ (Chapter 6, pp 83-89).
This was the second time in a matter of weeks that I have missed the launch of a book to which I have contributed papers … and all because of travel arrangements. Shortly before Christmas, I missed the launch in the Royal Irish Academy of Professor Salvador Ryan’s new collection, Christmas and the Irish (Dublin: Wordwell), in which I have three papers. I was at Luton Airport early one morning about to check-in for a flight to Dublin when I realised I had left my passport back in Stony Stratford.
Missing both book launches, and an unexpected exchange of Facebook messages in recent weeks, both reminded me that it is 40 years since my first book was published and launched in Dublin in 1984.
At the time, I was managing to do more than burn the candle at both ends. I was 32 and I was working as a journalist on the Foreign Desk of The Irish Times. But I was also chairing both the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Christian CND, and I was writing a post-graduate theology thesis at the Irish School of Ecumenics and Trinity College Dublin, comparing different attitudes in the Roman Catholic Church on nuclear weapons and nuclear disarmament.
As a consequence of a late night meeting in Sean MacBride’s home, Roebuck House, with Todd Andrews and Captain John Feehan, I was also commissioned to write my first book, which was published by Mercier Press in 1984 with a title that now seems very twee to me, Do You Want to Die for NATO?
Ten years earlier, Seán MacBride received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974. In 1984, he was the President of Irish CND and the International Peace Bureau, and he was a former Minister for Foreign Affairs and a founder of Amnesty International.
Todd Andrews had chaired both CIÉ and RTÉ, although he is often remembered for closing down many railway lines. He is father of David Andrews and Niall Andrews and the grandfather of Ryan Tubridy and David MacSavage. Captain John Feehan founded Mercier Press 80 years ago in 1944 and was its managing director.
The book was part of a series co-ordinated by Dr Carol Coulter, asking searching questions relevant in the mid-1980s. It was launched in Buswell’s Hotel, close to Dáil Éireann, by Senator Brendan Ryan, along with two other books in the series, Andrew Boyd’s Have the Trade Unions Failed the North? and Carol Coulter’s Are Religious Cults Dangerous?
In January or February 1984, The Irish Times generously gave me a few weeks paid leave to write that book. At the time, The Irish Times often serialised large excerpts from books by its own writers. But it decided not to do so with my book, in a decision I believed was taken by a then deputy editor Dennis Kennedy. Perhaps I was too radical in my views even then, and my book also received a poor review on the book pages by a retired army officer who seemed never to have read the full book.
Much of the book was read into the record of the Bundestag by the late Petra Kelly, a leading German Green politician. At the end of the year, Seán MacBride nominated Do You Want to Die for NATO? in the Sunday Tribune as the ‘Book of the Year’, and recommended it should be on the reading list in every school in Ireland.
I truly was burning the candle at more than two ends. I embarked on another degree in theology at Maynooth, and stepped down as chair of Irish CND, although years later I was invited to be President, an honour held by Seán MacBride until he died in 1988.
Some years ago, the Belfast Telegraph published a ‘chilling map’ that shows how Northern Ireland was marked for a nuclear Armageddon during the Cold War. The report said the targets were pinpointed in Northern Ireland in 1980 in case the Kremlin decided to conquer the UK, and cited as its source my book Do You Want to Die for NATO?
The report said: ‘Comerford said that at the same time the Soviets drew their map, British defence experts held secret maps in Belfast during the 1980s showing the spots they thought were likely to be hit by doomsday attacks. Belfast was first on the Soviet hit-list — with the city and international airports marked for attack.’
Ballykelly army barracks and the former US naval facilities at Lishally, both around Co Derry, were also marked down, and an airfield at St Angelo near Enniskillen, regularly used by the US air force in World War II, was marked for destruction by Russians. ‘To top it off, the Sperrin mountains that span Derry and Tyrone were primed for atomic holocaust because they were home to US Navy transmitters.’
The report went on to say: ‘In British intelligence maps, Comerford says RAF facilities in Bishopscourt, Downpatrick, were open to attack, along with army transmission hotspots in Antrim and Derry. A sea strike at Inishtrahull off the Donegal coast was also predicted, as was the bombing of military headquarters in Lisburn. And, with its military communications facilities, Omagh was regarded as a top target for the Reds in the event of nuclear war.’
The Belfast Telegraph said: ‘Comerford revealed the Soviets were most likely to have used the one-megaton SS-4 missile or an SS-11 intercontinental ballistic torpedo. Both warheads have a terrifying nuclear payload 50 times worse than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.’
It quoted me as saying: ‘The strategic position of Ireland, the facilities offered by ports and airports, and the fuel stocks make it highly likely that Ireland will be a target.’ He said the Republic was just as much at risk as Northern Ireland. The reporter pointed out that I wrote this book in 1984, ‘but his warnings are now more relevant than ever.’
The late Andy Boyd’s daughter recently came across his copy of Do You Want to Die for NATO?, which I had signed for him. He had given it to her to read when she was a teenager and he told me: ‘I remember him speaking of you on many occasions.’
I wrote that book 40 years ago in 1984, when I was 32. I have since written, co-authored or contributed to three dozen or more other books … and, hopefully, there are more to come. But the fears I raised and the questions I asked in Do You Want to Die for NATO? are still relevant 40 years later in 2024.
The war in Russia and Ukraine, the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House, his jingoistic language and his willingness to contemplate a Russian atack on NATO members in the Europe, conflicts in the Middle East, and the war-mongering language of Vladimir Putin, all mean world tensions are as threatening today as they were at the height of the Cold War.
Perhaps we need an up-to-date version of my book from 1984. If Mercier Press should ask me to update it 40 years later, I might consider changing the tone of the book and renaming it: Do You Want to Die for Trump and Putin?
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