Brendan Clifford

Brendan Clifford (born 1936) is an Irish historian and political activist.

Career

Clifford was born in the Sliabh Luachra

Sliabh Luachra

Sliabh Luachra is a region in Munster, Ireland, located around the River Blackwater, on the County Cork/County Kerry/County Limerick borderland.-Music and literature:...

 area of Ireland. As a young man, he emigrated to
Britain and became involved in left-wing politics. Initially, Clifford was an associate
of the Maoist Michael McCreery

Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity

Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity was a small British Marxist-Leninist group, that had left the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1963. CDRCU was led by Michael McCreery. CDRCU was sympathetic towards the Communist Party of China and the Party of Labour of Albania...

;
later
he joined the Irish Communist Group. The ICG soon split into two factions, and
Clifford sided with the Maoist faction, which named itself the
Irish Communist Organisation.

In the early 1970s, Clifford joined the other ICO members in advocating the "Two Nations Theory

Two Nations Theory (Ireland)

The Two Nations Theory holds that the Ulster Protestants are a distinct Irish nation.According to S J Connolly's Oxford Companion to Irish History The Two Nations Theory holds that the Ulster Protestants are a distinct Irish nation.According to S J Connolly's Oxford Companion to Irish History The...

"-
that the Ulster Protestants formed a separate nation and the Republic of Ireland had no right to
force them into a United Ireland

United Ireland

A united Ireland is the term used to refer to the idea of a sovereign state which covers all of the thirty-two traditional counties of Ireland. The island of Ireland includes the territory of two independent sovereign states: the Republic of Ireland, which covers 26 counties of the island, and the...

 against their wishes. Clifford
soon became a prolific publisher of material advocating the group's viewpoint. The ICO later
changed its name to the British and Irish Communist Organisation.

Clifford was an active campaigner against Irish nationalism

Irish nationalism

Irish nationalism manifests itself in political and social movements and in sentiment inspired by a love for Irish culture, language and history, and as a sense of pride in Ireland and in the Irish people...

 alongside other B&ICO members
such as Angela Clifford, Jack Lane, and Manus O'Riordan.

In the 1980s, Clifford began campaigning for the organisation of British mainland political
parties in Northern Ireland. Clifford was an active member of the
Campaign for Equal Citizenship

Campaign for Equal Citizenship

The Campaign for Equal Citizenship was a political advocacy group that supported the integration of Northern Ireland into the United Kingdom and called for the full participation of mainland political parties in Northern Irish politics....

 group which advocated this aim. Clifford
was strongly against the Anglo-Irish Agreement

Anglo-Irish Agreement

The Anglo-Irish Agreement was an agreement between the United Kingdom and Ireland which aimed to help bring an end to the Troubles in Northern Ireland...

 and wrote several pamphlets attacking the
agreement and especially John Hume

John Hume

John Hume is a former Irish politician from Derry, Northern Ireland. He was a founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, and was co-recipient of the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize, with David Trimble....

, whom Clifford regarded as a reactionary
Irish Nationalist, and
Queen's University Belfast,
which Clifford claimed was biased against the Ulster Unionists.
As the B&ICO became inactive in the mid-1980s, Clifford began working through several
new groups, included the Aubane Historical Society and the Ernest Bevin Society.
Clifford opposed the first Gulf War

Gulf War

The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...

; he was dismayed at Fred Halliday

Fred Halliday

Frederick Halliday, FBA was an Irish writer and academic specialising in International Relations and the Middle East, with particular reference to the Cold War, Iran, and the Arabian peninsula.-Biography:Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1946 to an English father, businessman Arthur Halliday, and an...

's support for the conflict and wrote
a Bevin Society pamphlet, The New Left Imperialist,that was strongly antagonistic
toward Halliday.

In the 1990s Clifford and his associate Jack Lane published several books
on Irish history, including an account of Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen, CBE was an Irish novelist and short story writer.-Life:Elizabeth Bowen was born on 7 June 1899 at 15 Herbert Place in Dublin, Ireland and was baptized in the nearby St Stephen's Church on Upper Mount Street...

's
World War Two intelligence reports to Britain, Notes On Eire. The book
marked an abandonment of the opposition to Irish nationalism that had characterised
Clifford's earlier work.

This book provoked some controversy because Clifford argued the Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish was a term used primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries to identify a privileged social class in Ireland, whose members were the descendants and successors of the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly belonging to the Church of Ireland, which was the established church of Ireland until...

Bowen was not in any way an Irish writer.