In November 1960, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, prohibited former Fianna Fáil minister, Patrick J. Little, from disseminating information about Moral Re-Armament (M.R.A.), a transnational pacifist organisation, within his diocese. Three weeks later Apostolic Nuncio Antonio Riberi strongly advised Little against publicising the organisation ‘elsewhere’ in Ireland.Footnote 2 McQuaid had been in office since 1947 and by 1960 his influence over religious and social affairs in Ireland was decisive. Successive governments had deferred to him on some political issues too.Footnote 3 This raises the question why had Little approached the prelates in the first place, only to receive a rebuke. Against the Cold War background, why were the de facto leaders of Roman Catholicism in Ireland so concerned about M.R.A.? Why did its messages have such wide appeal to some in Ireland despite persistent criticism of the movement? Why did M.R.A. generally claim credit for campaigns around pacifism, European unification, nuclear disarmament, civil rights and conflict resolution along with personal salvation programmes such as Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) conducted internationally?
From its founding in the 1920s, during the peak of moral revivalism in the 1930s, its Cold War work after 1945 and its reinvention as a secular, multi-faith, reconciliation organisation in the 1960s, this article examines M.R.A's structural and ideological origins and its evolution in Ireland north and south, the U.S. and Britain. It argues that Ireland, characterised by two ideologically narrow cultural and political monoliths, was not immune to external spiritual and quasi-political influences and that M.R.A.'s activities in Ireland confirm these distinctive religious and political cultures while also revealing similarities. Non-governmental individuals, north and south, were in advance of governments in their desire for peaceful solutions to the Irish partition issue and the Cold War more generally. A further interpretative framework should be the Cold War context and whether M.R.A.'s justification for its anti-communist work elsewhere ― the simplistic trope that it was a defense of ‘God and country’ ― found resonance in Ireland.Footnote 4 But it is argued here that this is less applicable to the two parts of Ireland because from the early 1920s onwards the respective civil and political societies already believed that communism was a ‘Godless’ ideology.Footnote 5 The article, therefore, examines an international movement which had personal, national and global significance. It considers transnational religious, political and foreign policy studies as well as the national narratives of Northern Ireland and Ireland.
I
M.R.A. originated in a movement founded by an American evangelist and former Lutheran pastor, Frank Buchman, in the early 1920s when it was known as ‘A First Century Christian Fellowship’. It was renamed the Oxford Group (O.G.) after Buchman travelled to Britain in the 1930s; it became M.R.A. in 1938. It spawned theatre and performance groups such as ‘Up with People’ in the 1960s, and in 2001 it adopted its current title, ‘Initiatives of Change’.Footnote 6 M.R.A.'s longevity, its regular reconstruction of its external profile and strategy, and its subsequent re-interpretation of Buchman's mission have resulted in a limited critical literature. In an Irish context, except for a biography of Gordon Hannon, a Church of Ireland priest who was active in the movement between 1939 and 1953, the historiography is absent. The wider scholarship has focused on revivalism, anti-communism ― particularly its exercise of soft power through its work in former European colonies ― and its influence in the establishment of Amnesty International, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Alcoholics Anonymous.Footnote 7 Throughout its existence some regarded M.R.A. as a non-sectarian ecumenical or revivalist movement, which operated within churches, while others criticised what they perceived as right-wing, ‘sect-like’ fervour.Footnote 8 Its apparent proselytising, misuse of personal and corporate donations, and its role in a ‘rehabilitation’ programme in the Mau Mau detention camps during the Kenyan independence revolt brought criticism also.Footnote 9 The first critical account of Buchman's ideas is Philip Boobbyer's 2013 book which concluded that M.R.A. was a spiritual response to globalism.Footnote 10 Garth Lean, an M.R.A. member and biographer of Buchman, agreed that the founder was ‘controversial’. Recurring criticism of Buchman arose from his contact with Heinrich Himmler and his attempts to meet Hitler. In 1936 he allegedly stated ‘I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a frontline of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism’.Footnote 11 A constant critic, the English journalist and Labour member of parliament, Tom Driberg, contended that the movement became a weapon of United States foreign policy after 1945. Subsequently, Frances Stonor Saunders identified M.R.A. as part of the Central Intelligence Agency's (C.I.A.) psychological warfare programme to win back influential figures from communism.Footnote 12 Even Belden, raised in M.R.A., agreed in his Oxford D.Phil. that it converted itself from an evangelical, Christian group into a ‘secular, conservative, political weapon’.Footnote 13
What was ‘Buchmanism’, a term used by his critics? Lean, a believer, argued that the starting point is that Frank Buchman had been called by God ‘to remake the world’.Footnote 14 In April 1919 Buchman became convinced that a ‘radical reawakening of faith’ was necessary and that students were well placed to become its harbingers.Footnote 15 His message centred on four ‘absolutes’ ― honesty, purity, unselfishness and love. Personal conversion, or ‘changing’, would be accomplished through ‘house parties’, a form of social retreat where people gathered in a relaxed setting where they might take decisions that would profoundly affect their lives.Footnote 16 These meetings became part of the modus operandi of the movement.Footnote 17 They also revealed its predominately middle-class composition, which prompted criticisms of Buchman for ‘hobnobbing with the nabobs’.Footnote 18
Buchman's ideas were not original. He drew inspiration from the American Presbyterian minister Robert E. Speer's summary of Christ's teachings and derived the notion of the ‘quiet time’ from F. B. Meyer, a British evangelist. The Swedish socialist writer Harry Blomberg influenced the central idea of the individual's spiritual and moral re-armament.Footnote 19
Having been ‘awakened’ in 1921 while attending a Christian evangelical meeting in Cambridge, Buchman visited Oxford where he convened a house party in August.Footnote 20 This initiated a series of world-wide missionary tours that continued until he suffered a stroke in 1961, after which he divided his time between M.R.A.'s headquarters at the Palace Hotel, Caux-sur-Montreux, Switzerland, and Mackinac Island, Michigan.Footnote 21 The fellowship groups and house parties sometimes attracted thousands of people who believed that God had a plan for each person's life and for the world. Back in their everyday circumstances they practised daily ‘quiet times’ of contemplation while remaining within their usual church. By 1939 the Oxford Group had been renamed Moral Re-Armament and its more political message of moral and spiritual ‘re-armament’ as an alternative to militarism, appealed to many others.Footnote 22 It was financed by contributions from supporters and well-wishers, while volunteers organised events and provided a secretariat. Books, posters, newspapers, cinema and radio were deployed to disseminate a message of ‘change’ amongst political, civil and business leaders who in turn would promote ‘change’ in others.Footnote 23 By the eve of the Second World War, Buchman maintained that he had ‘millions’ of followers in branches throughout America and Europe, including Britain, Northern Ireland and Éire.Footnote 24
The movement evolved in Northern Ireland through the initiative of Gordon Hannon, the Athy-born Church of Ireland archdeacon of Dromore, and his wife, Hilda, following their participation in a ‘house party’ in Cumbria in 1932.Footnote 25 Subsequently, the Hannons began to form teams prepared to put their lives under God's control.Footnote 26 Soon, their team of sixty people began to travel to other neighbourhoods to witness a ‘new and vital experience of Jesus Christ’. The Hannons were energised in their work after joining an Oxford Group visit to Canada in March 1934 where they experienced ‘a Church really militant on the march … through ordinary men and women … breaking down strongholds and bringing order out of chaos’.Footnote 27 In Canada, the Oxford Group's strategy of targeting élites bore fruit when Prime Minister R. B. Bennett hosted luncheons at which the Oxford Group would meet members of his cabinet.Footnote 28 Writing in the Methodist newsletter Irish Christian Advocate, R. A. Perry asked ‘And if Canada, why not Ulster?’ This broadening of its message from one of personal redemption to that of national salvation differentiated the O.G. from other revival movements.Footnote 29
After the Hannons returned from Canada ‘openings came everywhere’ and with them came a growth in the number of individuals ‘changing’. Preparations for the visit to Belfast of a 200-strong Oxford Group party led by Buchman in September 1934 gave Hannon and his followers a common purpose.Footnote 30 The strategy of large public meetings, often in hotels and cafés, private lunches and one-to-one meetings was adopted. Invitations to ‘Ulster House Part[ies]’ were issued along with explanatory notes and personal statements. The prominent British Conservative member of parliament, Eustace Percy, sent a supportive message while Carl Hambro, president of the Norwegian parliament, wrote ‘I see more hope for world reconstruction and peace in the Oxford Group than anywhere else in the world to-day’.Footnote 31 Other events included a mayoral reception at City Hall and a ‘service of commissioning’ in St Anne's Church of Ireland cathedral led by Charles Grierson, bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore, Thomas M. Johnstone, moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, and J. Walton, president of the Methodist Church of Ireland.Footnote 32 The Belfast Telegraph commented on 4 October that a ‘very large audience thronged the Assembly Hall last evening when the Oxford Group gave their “blue-print” for a new world order’.Footnote 33 The visiting team had become the ‘most talked of body’ in Belfast.Footnote 34
Government ministers, unionist, nationalist, Labout and independent politicians and Éamon de Valera of Fianna Fáil, president of the Executive Council of Irish Free State, were invited to political meetings.Footnote 35 Women were considered central to breaking down local ‘distrust’ and the O.G. exploited their roles as mothers and household managers to reach other social groups and ‘the youth’. ‘Changing’ a female teacher might result in an effective conduit to her young pupils. Tabs Culme-Seymour and Erica Conner, who had both been ‘changed’, used their contacts with the Girl Guides to organise a conference in Belfast during the first week in October. Mrs Basil Stewart, wife of one of the leaders of the Diocesan Youth Movement, ‘changed’ at least two people and with her husband became ‘a real power in their own circle’. At a gathering of leaders of women's and civic organisations organised by Countess Clanwilliam, Buchman gave a speech on ‘Women as field marshalls for God's plan for world reconstruction’. Among other significant individuals ‘changed’ was Jessie Andrews, wife of the Northern Ireland minister for labour, John Andrews. Women were also used to enlist members of Rotary clubs and their wives. Janie Fullerton, member of the Queen's University Girls’ Auxiliary, a Presbyterian affiliate, was ‘changed’ and in turn set out to ‘change’ the ‘pagans amongst the medical faculty’. ‘Business girls’ were also a target.Footnote 36
A high point was reached when R. J. Pollock M.P., minister for finance in the Northern parliament, D. C. Marshall, president of the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, James G. Newell, president of the Chamber of Trade and Sir Frederick Cleaver, a linen manufacturer, assembled 300 fellow businessmen to hear Buchman lecture on ‘God as Managing Director’.Footnote 37 Others were alerted through overseas family members. For example, Walter Duff in Milwaukee, Oregon, wrote to his uncle, Robert Spence, a doctor in Omagh, County Tyrone, enquiring whether his sons might become ‘interested’ in the O.G.Footnote 38
Various factors explain the growing appeal of the Oxford Group in late-1930s Ulster. Buchman emerged from a Protestant evangelist tradition. Supporters such as Brigadier David Forster, commanding officer of the 13th Infantry Brigade (which included the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers) and member of the O.G. international team, believed that ‘probably no part of the British Empire (or the world for that matter)’ more than Ulster ‘has a greater tradition of revival especially perhaps in the last 100 years’.Footnote 39 But Buchmanism also incorporated revivalism involving personal responsibility for salvation which would then ‘change’ the wider society.Footnote 40 Evangelism and revivalism equally emphasised religious witness, something deeply embedded in the religious landscape of Northern Ireland. Evangelical revivalism was present in the mainly Anglican community of south Ulster in the 1790s followed by the ‘great revival’ in 1859 among north Ulster Presbyterians and within the Orange Order by the 1920s. Mitchel argues that in the years after the founding of Northern Ireland in 1920, evangelical Protestantism was the ‘most influential and historically significant sector of Christianity’. As Ian McBride has suggested, after 1920 evangelical ‘confidence in the moral superiority of Protestantism’ underpinned the new, Protestant state with its ‘bourgeois core’.Footnote 41 It was not until the 1940s and 1950s when perceived threats, particularly the danger of communism, meant that M.R.A. became preoccupied with the poorer classes. Essentially for a variety of pre-existing religious and political reasons the Oxford Group's methods and messages offered another way for Protestants to define their northern identity even though the O.G.'s mission also included Roman Catholics. While annual reports to O.G./M.R.A. headquarters used the term ‘Ireland’, thereby emphasising an all-Ireland mission, northern members generally acknowledged the reality of partition and their own sense of identity with frequent use of the oppositional terms, ‘Ulster’ and ‘Free State or Éire’.
Buchman's aim to create ‘a national spiritual awakening’ in Ireland was interrupted when he left Belfast to attend a house party organised by Carl Hambro to initiate a ‘national revival’ in Norway. Belden suggests that the Irish work was thereby suspended but this was not the case.Footnote 42 From a base at ‘Kingscourt’, Wellington Place, Belfast, the Hannons and later Billy Alexander, Will Davey, Kathleen Montgomery and Bill Page among others, continued to lead the mission, focusing on ‘changing’ leaders in business, industry and media, as well as in clubs, élite schools and the university. Workers and students would follow, as audiences were told of ‘lives changed from Donegal to county Down’; Ulster was ‘catching a vision of its place in the world’.Footnote 43
Interest in the Oxford Group emerged more slowly in the south.Footnote 44 In May 1933, R. L. Steward informed the Theological Society in Trinity College Dublin (T.C.D.) that the O.G. was neither an ‘organisation nor sect, but just a movement of the Spirit of God in close contact with the Churches’.Footnote 45 Soon Eric Turpin, Dr Roddy Evans, Muriel Barrett, Bill Porter, Dr Ken Stewart and Tom Shillington from T.C.D. were changed.Footnote 46 On Sunday 4 February 1934, an Oxford meeting was held in Carlow Methodist Church.Footnote 47 Southern Roman Catholics may also have responded. In autumn 1934, a businessman reported that a Roman Catholic former member of the Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.) who had fought in the 1916 Rising was ‘recently changed’ by his employer in Dublin. According to the O.G., the man informed the de Valera-led Fianna Fáil government of an I.R.A. arms dump and he attempted to ‘change’ other I.R.A. supporters who were disillusioned with de Valera.Footnote 48 In November 1934, the southern group was being led by Dubliner David Telford, a former First World War pilot and accountant, and his wife Penny, while Sydney Gibson, a senior partner in the Dublin printing firm Bailey, Son and Gibson, donated 8 Leinster Street in central Dublin for use as headquarters.Footnote 49 Despite north-south religious and cultural differences, the Telfords employed similar approaches and methods. Leadership cadres in political, civil, and business life and men and women from all churches were invited to public meetings and to house parties.Footnote 50
By November Telford reported that the Irish Free State was ‘opening up well’. A Dublin ‘inner’ leadership team was in place and another would soon be created to include ‘republicans’ as well as First World War veterans. Other groups began to emerge in Dundalk, Drogheda and Cobh. Telford also planned ‘closer co-operation’ with Ulster because the ‘spiritual revolution recognises no border’.Footnote 51 By 1936 the T.C.D. team seemed to be the largest in the south and included Irish speakers, which Telford believed was ‘valuable for political situations’ due to the increasing use of Irish in public life. A lunch and dinner were held in Dublin for 132 business men of ‘all creeds’ which was sponsored by the Quaker Charles Jacob, of the biscuit manufacturing firm W. & R. Jacob. A ‘packed’ event was held in a Dublin city-centre Methodist church and teams sought conversions in country towns such as Baltinglass, county Wicklow.Footnote 52 Among those ‘changed’ were Frederick Bertram (Derek) Barton of Straffan House, and the Anglo-Irish peer, Lord Hugh Beresford.Footnote 53 Telford deemed that ‘speed’ was ‘vital’, not least because the ‘watered down Christianity’ of the various churches was ‘pathetic’.Footnote 54 Soon, Telford gave up his job as his employers were not ‘changed’.Footnote 55
By 1936 there were sufficient southern members to hold a special training ‘house party’ in Bray, County Wicklow, with a ‘good cross section’ of Irish life including women and men, clergymen of different denominations, employers and workers attending.Footnote 56 An Irish team also attended a national assembly of the O.G. in Birmingham in July.Footnote 57 Despite giving the impression of a healthy mission, Telford admitted to Buchman in early August that the northern and southern leadership teams had not been planning the ‘first steps to a really united Ireland’. He asked Buchman for ‘new troops’ particularly from America because an ‘American accent in these circumstances goes down better than an Oxford one’. If this would happen ‘quite a few Roman Catholics and quite a few people who have hatred for England’ would attend events.Footnote 58 Buchman did not respond.
Large groups attended meetings at the Mansion House and the Molesworth Hall, Dublin in September 1936.Footnote 59 The most important event though was held on 19 and 20 October 1936 in Ross's Hotel, Dun Laoghaire, outside Dublin. Telford was delighted that Dublin's lord mayor, Alfie Byrne, attended because he was a ‘man of outstanding popularity’, had a ‘colossal following’ among the Irish in America, was popular with all ‘shades of political thought’ and was Roman Catholic. Byrne, who had attended a previous O.G. dinner, greeted attendees but Telford may have exaggerated the significance of Byrne's participation as he accepted many invitations.Footnote 60 Telford believed that he was now accessing the majority religious group in the south and while statistics are not extant, other evidence may support him. In December 1936 Rev. M. J. Browne writing in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, a prestigious periodical directed at the Roman Catholic diocesan clergy, warned against involvement in the O.G. because it was a ‘hierarchical’ organisation. Telford decided that the only way forward was to get ‘more and more Catholics changed’ so that the Vatican ‘got a positive picture from Ireland instead of Ireland waiting for a lead from the Vatican’.Footnote 61 Browne's piece received even wider currency when the [Catholic] Standard newspaper on 22 January 1937 warned Catholics, particularly ‘women and workmen’, to ‘beware’ of the O.G. Telford accepted that the Catholic authorities in Ireland were now openly hostile.Footnote 62 A planned showing of an O.G. film, Bridge Builders, in a Dublin cinema was cancelled. The southern O.G. managed to send only one Catholic to a meeting in Lurgan, County Armagh.Footnote 63 At the end of January 1937 the ‘nine day fuss’ influenced Telford to again change his strategy and focus on individual work rather than on large meetings which might draw the attention of the Catholic authorities.Footnote 64
By February 1937 Telford was relieved that the public criticism had ‘died down’.Footnote 65 But during the following weeks, Our Lady of Dolours Catholic parish authorities in Dublin uncovered an alleged O.G. attempt ‘to win the allegiance’ of about fifty parishioners and prevented forty-five people from going to Oxford for ‘initiation’.Footnote 66 What actually happened remains unclear. There is no evidence of a protest to or comment by the Roman Catholic archbishop of Dublin, Edward Byrne.Footnote 67 Nonetheless, more condemnation of the movement followed in The Irish Rosary, a monthly magazine published by the Dominican Order, which criticised ‘several Irish innocents’, particularly Catholics employed by Protestants, who were ‘misled’ by the O.G. and given free travel and accommodation to attend an event in Liverpool. Telford interpreted the criticism as evidence of the Irish public's greater awareness of the Oxford Group and a raising of awareness in the minds of ‘thinking men’.Footnote 68 He applied the same logic to the disapproval from Protestant sources in Britain where Margaret Rawlings, the actor daughter of a Church of England minister, stated that ‘All that is good in it [Oxford Group] is already to be found in orthodox Christianity, and all that is bad is dangerously bad’. Telford commented that the churches’ ‘persecution’ would lead to the O.G. becoming a ‘world force’, similar to the Society of Friends, or Quakers.Footnote 69 At the end of 1937 Telford reported that the churches were ‘friendly’ and though the Church of Ireland archbishop of Dublin, John Allen Fitzgerald Gregg, was ‘very friendly’ he was not ‘revolutionary’. The ‘revolution’ in southern Ireland would come through ‘men with guts’.Footnote 70 During 1938, however, work slowed and Telford appealed to Buchman for any guidance to ‘accelerate’ recruitment in southern Ireland.Footnote 71
Against the background of continuing economic depression and growing international tensions, Buchman began to refashion the O.G. and its message.Footnote 72 On 29 May 1938, he stated at a reception in London that ‘The crisis is fundamentally a moral one. The nations must rearm morally. Moral recovery is essentially the forerunner of economic recovery.’Footnote 73 Buchman wanted to transform M.R.A. into a ‘mass movement’ and began to organise large public spectacles including outdoor rallies and Broadway musicals. Sack argues that language less explicitly Christian, and more militaristic, became evident from 1938–9 onwards. It was at this point that Buchman and his movement were charged with being fascists. Some fascist characteristics were evident; a regimented structure, ‘strong authority’, creation of a ‘new humanity’, anti-communism, anti-liberalism, millennialism, the importance of personal and spiritual ‘discipline’, and the use of images of young, strong males. But, as many who were attracted to it knew, it was strongly pacifist and internationalist, and was neither racist nor nationalist. Instead Sack describes M.R.A. as ‘soft fascist’ working to build a ‘well-ordered organic and united society through non-violent’ methods. Buchman was not seen as a dictator but more of a spiritual oligarch, though his 1938 words of praise for Hitler would continue to haunt him and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) continued to monitor Moral Re-Armament.Footnote 74 Defenders of M.R.A. maintained, however, that the Gestapo ‘feared and hated’ it and regarded it as an arm of British war-time intelligence.Footnote 75 The Irish branch seems not to have had ties to either of the Irish versions of political authoritarianism ― the ‘Blueshirts’, which was defunct by 1938–9, or the diminutive Irish Nazi party.Footnote 76 In order to carry on M.R.A.'s new mission of evolving from a religious into a political movement, Gordon Hannon became less active within the Church of Ireland.Footnote 77
The high point of the O.G./M.R.A.'s inter-war Irish and international activity came in summer 1939. In June major meetings were held in Europe and throughout the U.S. to which President Roosevelt issued a message: ‘A programme of Moral Re-Armament for the world cannot fail to lessen the dangers of armed conflict.’Footnote 78 Other endorsements came from sixty-five American state governors and city mayors, the lord mayors of Dublin and Belfast, more than half the members of the Northern Ireland parliament and northern trade unions. Messages of support came from well-wishers and people from ‘every walk of life’ in Donegal, Roscommon, Londonderry, Sligo, Antrim and Fermanagh.Footnote 79 In July the Rev. Hallen Viney, an English minister and friend of Telford's, wrote from New York that M.R.A. was ‘gripping the US’. The Los Angeles Times noted ‘M.R.A. Rally Draws 30,000 to [Hollywood] Bowl. Estimated 10,000 turned away from meeting’, alongside a heading ‘Nazis prepare for Fall Crisis’.Footnote 80 Representatives from twenty-five countries attended the California meeting on 19 July, including parties from ‘Éire’ and ‘Northern Ireland’.Footnote 81 Belfast and Dublin newspapers published regular news of the meetings and cited Roosevelt's approval. Radio Éireann reported on the meetings in Washington D.C. and New York city.Footnote 82 The Irish organisers proclaimed that ‘hundreds of thousands’ in Ireland had heard M.R.A. messages and received copies of Buchman's San Francisco broadcast.Footnote 83 There is no evidence of discussion about M.R.A. by Éamon de Valera or William T. Cosgrave, leader of the opposition, or within parliamentary circles.Footnote 84 However, the Irish M.R.A. leadership represented the involvement of an inter-party Irish delegation in a vote of support for M.R.A. at the Inter-Parliamentary Union conference in Oslo in August 1939 as further evidence of its progress in Ireland.Footnote 85
II
When war broke out on 3 September 1939, M.R.A.'s leadership abandoned pacifism to mobilise in favour of the Allies. Immediately the question of whether the movement was secular or religious emerged in the context of military service. Many members joined the war effort.Footnote 86 Others in Britain obtained exemption until 1940. In the U.S. some local draft boards, such as that in New York, decided that M.R.A. was not a service which was ‘essential’ to the national interest or war production.Footnote 87 Gordon Hannon, who always described himself as an ‘Irishman’, supported the Allied war effort and based himself in ‘Wolfhill’ in Belfast which became the headquarters in the north.Footnote 88 In neutral Éire, 12 Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin, became ‘the home of quiet time and listening to God’ until 1944 when the Telfords moved to ‘Wolfhill’.Footnote 89
M.R.A.'s wartime work in Ireland focused first on propaganda. Over 13,000 copies of the text of a radio broadcast by Buchman in October 1939, together with speeches by U.S. Senator Harry S. Truman and Admiral Richard E. Byrd, were distributed in Ireland, more were sold through newsagents in Dublin and Belfast, and newspapers carried reviews and reports.Footnote 90 The period between 1 and 3 December was declared a ‘week-end of world listening to God’, and ‘listening services’ were held in Dublin and Belfast. Then M.R.A. circulated 100,000 copies of a ‘Morale Card’ titled ‘A Call to Our Citizens’, sanctioned by Belfast lord mayor, Sir Crawford McCullagh, the respective chairmen of the Ballmoney, Banbridge and Portadown urban district councils, the high sheriff of Londonderry, and Robin McElderry of Queen's University Students’ Representative Council.Footnote 91 No southern representatives were included in the list of signatories.Footnote 92 The second focus of M.R.A. work in Ireland was to strengthen ‘national morale’ by deepening local engagement through team-building, promoting industrial peace and creating a network of ‘God-developed homes’ to provide hospitality for the armed forces and evacuated children.Footnote 93 While the practical work proceeded apace in Belfast, there was just one case where an English M.R.A. member living in Dublin provided a home for an evacuee, her niece. The southern team had launched the ‘Howth and Sutton’ campaign which included sending over 900 Christmas cards to homes in the area. They had also sufficient support to hold a meeting in the Hibernian Hotel, in Dawson Street, Dublin on 11 December 1940.Footnote 94 Other work for which M.R.A. claimed credit included maintaining peace on the factory floor and preventing profiteering, while a Church of Ireland rector mobilised his parishioners to bring turf to Dublin's poor and to provide over 100 unemployed men with work on a nine-acre allotment. In Belfast over 200 unemployed men tilled a fifty-acre allotment. Such efforts were represented as evidence of M.R.A. principles of ‘self-help … fellowship … co-operation’ and the ‘Call to the Home Front’ pledge.Footnote 95 But a group of M.R.A. members failed in summer 1940 to change residents of Connemara, County Galway, due to the strength of their Catholicism.Footnote 96 When they attempted to recruit John Henning, an intellectual German refugee, he dismissed their principles as ‘trite’.Footnote 97
After spring 1941 and the occurrence of the German bombing raids on Belfast and Dublin, M.R.A., north and south, continued to focus on practical work to help the war effort. The recruitment of service personnel expanded to target any Allied men visiting Ireland. In Belfast, the film, Youth Marches On, was shown to Belgian, Norwegians and Free French sailors who might ‘change’ their colleagues.Footnote 98 In Dublin ‘many’ visitors, including an Australian airman, were welcomed in Fitzwilliam Square ‘for a meal, a night or a month’ and house parties continued to be frequent. Between 13 and 16 March 1942, a ‘house party’ was held in Greystones, County Wicklow. Attendees were urged to become ‘modern St Patricks capable of bringing the Holy Spirit so fully into the lives of men’.Footnote 99 Despite lingering suspicions, M.R.A. seems not to have attracted attention from the Irish or British security service, presumably because of its pro-Allied stance.Footnote 100 As the war progressed, Buchman emphasised the battle against communism which drew the group even closer to the Allies’ side. The Belfast and Dublin leaders focused on developing ‘ideological training seminars’ to combat a feared rise of communism, a ‘force of evil’, within the trade union and labour movements.Footnote 101
III
In summer 1945 Gordon Hannon travelled to the U.S. to take part in the World Conference in Mackinac Island where he heard Buchman's reinvigorated plan to rebuild the ‘moral structure’ of western Europe in order to defeat communism. Hannon noted that this aligned with President Truman's foreign policy goals. If Truman had distanced himself from M.R.A. because of Buchman's pro-Nazi views, John R. Steelman, one of Truman's personal advisers, regarded it ‘as the greatest single force in the nation for reconciliation’. When Gordon returned home, he repeated the message: ‘democracy must capture and live its inspired Christian ideology or it will become a dead No-Man's land between the Isms of Left and Right.’Footnote 102 By this time, among Gordon's close advisers were two members of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, Bob Getgood and Saidie Patterson. Both were senior members of the Transport and General Workers’ Union and believers in Christian-based socialism, and became vital in publicising M.R.A.'s anti-communist message to workers.Footnote 103
By 1946, David Telford admitted to Buchman that he had made a ‘mess’ of Dublin and he wanted to leave.Footnote 104 Much of Telford's work in Éire had centred on his own personal links which, he said, included de Valera, head of government until 1948, Richard Mulcahy, leader of the opposition party Fine Gael, and various government ministers, senators and bank directors. He maintained that exchanging Christmas greetings with one Catholic and two Anglican archbishops and regular clergymen was further evidence of his success.Footnote 105 Such ties seem weak when compared to Gordon Hannon's ability to arrange meetings with de Valera and with John A. Costello, who became leader of the new government in February 1948.Footnote 106 Costello even considered Hannon's request to dispatch Seán MacBride, minister for external affairs, to attend M.R.A.'s tenth anniversary gathering in Los Angeles on 6 June and to send a message of good will. Hannon skilfully linked the event to the anti-communist, pro-American themes in Irish foreign policy while also trying to assuage any concerns about the Vatican's equivocal view of M.R.A. The event, Hannon wrote, was supported in the U.S. by the Roman Catholic organisation of laymen, the Knights of St Columbus, which had also been influential during the congressional debates on the Marshall Plan. In other words, he aligned M.R.A. and the U.S. government's anti-communist agenda with American Catholicism.Footnote 107 This invitation, and another from U.S. Senator Styles Bridges representing other American politicians, required replies. External Affairs assistant secretary Leo T. McCauley noted that it would be ‘well’ for Costello to know that while the Irish hierarchy had not pronounced on M.R.A., its English counterpart had condemned the movement because it was ‘tainted’ and ‘no Catholic can take any active part in such a movement or formally co-operate’. Costello, he advised, should decline the invitation and not express a ‘wish for the success of the functions’.Footnote 108 After three drafts, the letter no longer hinted that MacBride might send a message of support and instead stated bluntly that neither he nor Costello could attend.Footnote 109
Irish M.R.A. members, however, were included in Irish political life. It is unclear whether de Valera or MacBride invited Gordon Hannon to be part of an Irish delegation to attend the Congress of Europe in The Hague in May 1948. Subsequently, Hannon represented ‘Northern Ireland’ and not ‘Éire’ at the event.Footnote 110 The aim of the non-governmental congress was to demonstrate support for European unity which led to the creation of the Council of Europe in 1949.Footnote 111 By 1950 Costello's private secretary, Patrick Lynch, cautioned against government involvement with M.R.A. which he believed was inclined to exaggerate its role in the European project.Footnote 112
During the 1950s M.R.A. concentrated on its anti-communist project. Neither part of Ireland was included in an M.R.A. 1950 survey of ‘danger areas of Europe’, presumably because neither met the main criteria for the presence of ‘deep communist penetration’.Footnote 113 However, individual Irish members engaged in this work abroad. Senator Eleanor Butler struck up a friendship with Hannon in The Hague, met Buchman in London on 7 December 1948 and soon joined M.R.A.Footnote 114 After her senate term ended in 1951, she attended a ten-day conference of M.R.A.'s national assembly in Washington D.C., to plan an ‘ideological challenge’ to combat communism. She also joined Buchman and a team in India.Footnote 115 ‘Wolfhill’ closed in 1952 and the leadership dispersed to work abroad. Writing from Lusaka in northern Rhodesia on 8 May 1953, Hannon informed de Valera that M.R.A. was helping with the birth of a new ‘national, racial and continental unity’. He also looked ‘forward very much’ to meeting de Valera.Footnote 116 De Valera reciprocated the personal sentiment. Through the offices of Fianna Fáil deputy and former minister Patrick J. Little, Hannon met de Valera on 24 July 1953.Footnote 117
Within a year, Gordon's failing health and his remoteness from the international M.R.A. leadership prompted a return to ministry in the Church of Ireland parish of Kilbroney, County Down.Footnote 118 His ally, Saidie Patterson, assumed a greater leadership role. In June 1957 she addressed an audience of ‘over 2,000’ in Dublin and chaired a meeting in Belfast of an M.R.A. international team, local workers and managers.Footnote 119 Despite M.R.A.'s focus on winning over trade unionists to anti-communism, in 1953 the non-communist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, to which Irish unions were affiliated, condemned its interference in industrial disputes.Footnote 120 A greater threat to M.R.A.'s activities in Ireland came from the Vatican, which in 1951, 1955 and 1957 issued condemnations of its religious ambiguity and forbade Catholic clergy and lay people from association with the movement.Footnote 121 At the same time a Church of England investigation concluded that M.R.A. was psychologically ‘dangerous’ and ‘gravely defective’ in its social thinking.Footnote 122
Notwithstanding this criticism, M.R.A. continued to appeal to those who regarded it as a potential peacemaker and agent of reconciliation in a society of deep political and cultural difference. Since 1956 the I.R.A. had carried out a military campaign in Northern Ireland aimed at ending British rule in the state and unifying the island.Footnote 123 After a series of I.R.A. bombings in or near Newry, a border town, on 12 August and the imposition of a curfew on the area, the chairman of the Belfast district Methodist synod opined that ‘M.R.A. may well be the answer to the I.R.A.’. Soon, the M.R.A. leadership identified a ‘growing’ interest in M.R.A. in Newry and in Belfast. The basis for the claim was slight: a few newspaper references and increased attendance at an M.R.A. film, Freedom, about independence-seeking nationalist movements in Africa.Footnote 124 But Saidie Patterson believed that ‘Through M.R.A. bridges are being built between us in Ireland’.Footnote 125
Patrick J. Little saw a similar role for M.R.A. A Roman Catholic, he had served as de Valera's parliamentary secretary prior to assuming various cabinet posts and then directorship of the Arts Council.Footnote 126 His interest in M.R.A. seems to have manifested during the 1950s, perhaps through his friendship with Hannon, and in the context of increasing Cold War tensions and recrudescence of I.R.A. violence. In 1959 Little was interested in M.R.A. as a way of ‘finding hope in a world where two wars had shattered all hope’. Ireland, he accepted, was on the ‘side line’ against the ‘onward attack’ of communism but M.R.A. could ‘make our land a Nation Once Again’.Footnote 127 He wanted greater official and lay Irish engagement with M.R.A.
In 1959 Antonio Riberi, Vatican nuncio to Ireland, had ‘very clearly’ told Little of his disapproval of M.R.A.Footnote 128 But Little may have been emboldened by statements from two Catholic missionary congregations ― the White Fathers and the Oblates ― and by cardinals in Italy and the U.S. who valued M.R.A's anti-communism.Footnote 129 Furthermore, in September 1960, while staying in St Gallen in Switzerland, Little discussed M.R.A. with some Capuchin friars and sent a copy of an address by Dom Bernardo Kaelin, O.S.B., former abbot primate of the Benedictine Order, praising moral rearmament to the secretary of the Irish Department of External Affairs, Con Cremin.Footnote 130 Until then the respective offices of President de Valera and Taoiseach Seán Lemass usually acknowledged M.R.A. propaganda with a pro forma reply. But Cremin asked Leo McCauley, now Irish ambassador to the Vatican, to enquire whether Kaelin's statements fairly represented the Vatican's position. McCauley was assured that M.R.A. had ‘unacceptable’ features which made Catholic participation ‘undesirable’.Footnote 131 There was no further official correspondence with Little.
On 12 November Little asked the Roman Catholic archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, if he could promote M.R.A. in his diocese. He explained to McQuaid that his interest in M.R.A. was ‘political’, as a means to combat ‘Orange bigotry and Partition … communism’.Footnote 132 McQuaid replied on 2 November, ‘I am sure that your intentions are nothing but most worthy … [but] I must ask you to desist from all attempts to promote M.R.A. in my Diocese’.Footnote 133 Unfortunately for Little, prior to receiving the reply he had sent McQuaid a copy of Ideology and co-existence published by M.R.A. Four days later McQuaid wrote again to Little: ‘I profoundly regret your having assisted in the distribution of Moral Re-Armament propaganda … desist from all such distribution in my diocese. I regret the prohibition for the second time.’Footnote 134 McQuaid disingenuously told Riberi that Little was M.R.A.'s ‘agent in Dublin’ even though he was also a ‘very devout Catholic … intelligent but ineffective in all the offices in which he was placed.’Footnote 135
Little's naiveté emerged again in his reply to McQuaid. He insisted that the Vatican had ‘modified’ its attitude towards M.R.A., allowing Catholics to participate but not accept ‘posts of authority’, he knew of Catholics brought back to their religion by M.R.A. and its leaders were ‘yearning’ for the help of the Catholic Church. But he was ‘very distressed … that I should have … caused you such annoyance … I would not wittingly disobey any ordinance or rule of the Church.’ He agreed to desist from publically writing about M.R.A. in future. McQuaid minuted ‘No answer needed’.Footnote 136 Little did not quite give up yet. He asked Riberi whether McQuaid's ban applied ‘outside of the archdiocese’. Riberi emphasised that ‘it would be unbecoming for a good Catholic as you are to ignore His Grace's directive in your activities elsewhere’.Footnote 137 McQuaid was ‘grateful’ for Riberi's support.Footnote 138 Unsurprisingly, Little accepted these hierarchical reprimands but he hoped M.R.A. work would continue in Northern Ireland.Footnote 139
After Buchman died in Germany in 1961, M.R.A.'s mission changed as it encountered financial difficulties, recruitment problems, poor attendance at its meetings and events and competition from evangelical groups in the U.S. From then onwards its recruits came mainly from Asia and Africa, and youth recruitment was promoted through participation in touring musical events.Footnote 140 During the 1960s and 1970s the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ engaged M.R.A. members in various ways. From 1954 onwards even though Gordon Hannon was no longer a driving force behind M.R.A., he became chairman of the Churches Industrial Council, an inter-church group in Northern Ireland that included Dr Cahal Daly, lecturer in Scholastic Philosophy (1946–67) in Queen's University and later Roman Catholic archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland and cardinal.Footnote 141 When Gordon died in 1977, Daly commented on his ecumenical work, ‘Thank God for such people’.Footnote 142 Saidie Patterson expanded her work to bring cross-community groups together in Northern Ireland in the 1970s through Women Together and the Peace People.Footnote 143 During the 1980s a ‘small’ evangelical group from north and south led by a Presbyterian, George Dallas, were inspired by M.R.A. ideals. Dallas gave evidence to the New Ireland Forum, a nationalist consultative body, and with other M.R.A. members, engaged with Fr. Christopher McCarthy in Clonard Monastery in Catholic west Belfast.Footnote 144
In the south, successive taoisigh continued to acknowledge receipt of M.R.A. literature. But in September 1970 Fianna Fáil Taoiseach Jack Lynch looked ‘forward’ to reading an M.R.A. booklet, Our rightful revolution.Footnote 145 On 12 July 1971 he received representatives of a M.R.A. South African inter-racial group en route to the M.R.A. 25th anniversary World Assembly at Caux in Switzerland.Footnote 146 This was the first time official Ireland engaged with M.R.A. and Lynch went further. After the meeting he asked minister for foreign affairs, Patrick Hillery, whether Ireland should send an observer to the assembly.Footnote 147 Once again, M.R.A.'s non-conflict messages seemed relevant to internal Irish problems. July and August 1971 saw the worst violence in Northern Ireland since August 1969, and internment was re-introduced followed by a campaign of civil disobedience.Footnote 148 In August Dr W. F. Nkomo, a South African who helped found the African National Congress Youth League and one of those who had met Lynch in July, again urged him to send a representative to Switzerland.Footnote 149 Hillery declined, citing inadequate staffing in the Geneva embassy.Footnote 150 Even though McQuaid was still archbishop, it seems as if Lynch gave M.R.A. reason to believe that Ireland might send a delegation to the Caux conference. Thereafter, the sole southern M.R.A. member who remained active was Eleanor Butler, by then Lady Wicklow, who participated in the peace movement in Northern Ireland and in 1974 was a founding member of the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in County Wicklow whose mission statement displays similarities in approach to M.R.A.Footnote 151
IV
During the twentieth century, Ireland, north and south, was penetrated to varying degrees by this transnational quasi-religious and political movement. However, M.R.A. never evolved in southern Ireland as it did in the north. The various churches in each state influenced its progress, limiting it in the south while partly facilitating it in the north. Notwithstanding M.R.A.'s capacity to face communist and fascist threats, from the 1930s to the early 1960s, the Roman Catholic authorities sought to prevent public or political engagement with the movement. But in the early 1970s when the southern state was threatened by northern political instability M.R.A.'s promotion of reconciliation rendered it more acceptable.
In the north, M.R.A. provided individuals ― most of whom remained loyal to their respective churches ― with another way of defining identity within a British state facing a hostile south. From the 1950s onwards northern M.R.A. members engaged increasingly with its potential to mend class and religious divides. The context of the northern ‘Troubles’ reveals a further difference between M.R.A. north and south: generational continuity. Not only did Gordon and Hilda's son, Peter, carry on M.R.A. work in South Africa and Northern Ireland but Bill and Muriel Porter, George Dallas and others continued to draw inspiration from M.R.A. as they sought to engage in conflict resolution.Footnote 152
This study confirms that M.R.A.'s appeal to an individual's sense of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love could be attractive to people from almost every religion ‘or none’.Footnote 153 It is less conclusive about accusations that M.R.A. was cultish, authoritarian, non-Christian and anti-democratic. But socially committed individuals such as Gordon and Hilda Hannon and Saidie Patterson in the north, and Patrick J. Little and Eleanor Butler in the south, were influenced by M.R.A.'s utopianism. Ultimately, however, it could not provide a panacea for all personal, national and international problems, as its founders had wished.Footnote 154
