Donal Conor David Dermot Donat Cruise O'Brien (3 November 1917 – 18 December 2008[1]), often nicknamed "The Cruiser",[2] was an Irish diplomat, politician, writer, historian and academic, who served as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs from 1973 to 1977, a Senator for Dublin University from 1977 to 1979, a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin North-East constituency from 1969 to 1977, and a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from January 1973 to March 1973.

[3] Internationally, though a long-standing member of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement, he opposed in person the African National Congress's academic boycott of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

Hanna's husband, the well-known pacifist and supporter of women's suffrage Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, was executed by firing squad on the orders of Captain J.C Bowen Colthurst during the 1916 Easter Rising.

Her parents, Alexander (Alec) Roulston Foster and Anne (Annie) Lynd, were, in Cruise O'Brien's description, "Home Rulers; a very advanced position for any Protestants in the period".

[14] Alec Foster was at the time headmaster of Belfast Royal Academy; he was later a founding member of the Wolfe Tone Society,[15] and was a strong supporter of the Irish Anti-Apartheid movement.

Cruise O'Brien speculated that de Valera's Catholicism may have been conditioned by his excommunication during the Civil War of 1922/3, that he may have felt that Walshe had been too close to the previous government, and that he may have been conscious of the nationalist credentials of the Sheehy family, notably Cruise O'Brien's great-uncle, Father Eugene Sheehy, who had been parish priest of Bruree during de Valera's formative years.

Cruise O'Brien accused a combination of British, French and white Rhodesian elements of attempting to partition off Katanga as a pro-Western client state.

Cruise O'Brien arrived in Élisabethville (modern Lubumbashi) on 14 June 1961, making him the UN's point man for dealing with Moïse Tshombe, the leader of the self-proclaimed independent État du Katanga.

[21] On 11 September, Mahmoud Khiary, the chief of the UN mission, gave O'Brien orders to arrest several leading figures within the Etat du Katanga.

[21] On 13 September 1961, Operation Morthor was launched, which led Cruise O'Brien to assert prematurely at a press conference that the secession of Katanga was at an end.

After their surrender, they spent just over one month in captivity unsure of their fate, and when they arrived back in Ireland, were dismayed and deeply hurt to learn that the UN and their own government were anxious to sweep the episode under the carpet to protect the reputation and to conceal the failures of the UN in preparing for combat and liberating Company A.

He went public immediately with his version of events, writing simultaneously in The Observer (London) and the New York Times that, "My resignation from the United Nations and from the Irish foreign service is a result of British government policy".

[citation needed] Faced with the complexities of the political situation of the United Nations in the Congo, O'Brien had failed to understand and in turn exceeded the authority granted to ONUC by the Secretary-General and the Security Council.

He was initially sympathetic towards Nkrumah, who won Ghana's independence from the British empire in 1957, but fell out with him due to his authoritarianism and his promotion of the ideology of 'Nkrumahism', in which all Ghanaians were expected to believe.

At a 1967 Vietnam War symposium O'Brien clashed with Hannah Arendt, who had remarked, "As to the Viet Cong terror, we cannot possibly agree with it".

[26][27] Between January and March 1969, he offered refuge at his home in Howth to German socialist student leader, and anti-Vietnam War activist, Rudi Dutschke and his wife Gretchen.

In April the previous year Dutschke had been shot and badly injured by a right-wing assassin in West Berlin, but was subsequently denied visas by a number of European countries, including Britain.

During their stay, the Dutschkes were visited by their lawyer Horst Mahler, who tried and failed to persuade them to support him underground in the group that was to become the Red Army Faction (the "Baader Meinhof Gang").

After the 1973 general election, Fine Gael and Labour formed a coalition government under Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave, in which Cruise O'Brien was appointed as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs.

[citation needed] At the same time, he unsuccessfully attempted to have Britain's BBC 1 broadcast on Ireland's proposed second television channel, instead of allowing RTÉ to run it.

[38] In Memoir: My Life and Themes, Cruise O'Brien recalled a conversation with a detective who told him how the Gardaí had found out from a suspect the location of businessman Tiede Herrema, who had been kidnapped by group of maverick republicans in October 1975: "the escort started asking him questions and when at first he refused to answer, they beat the shit out of him.

"/ Cruise O'Brien explained, "I refrained from telling this story to [ministerial colleagues] Garret [FitzGerald] or Justin [Keating], because I thought it would worry them.

[40][41] Cruise O'Brien's constituency was re-drawn as part of his Labour colleague James Tully's attempt as Minister for Local Government to design boundaries in the electoral interests of the coalition partners.

Cruise O'Brien objected and sent Holland a memo stating that the "killing strain" of Irish republicanism "has a very high propensity to run in families and the mother is most often the carrier".

He wrote that he was "glad to be an ally ... in defence of the Union" with the Reverend Ian Paisley, leader of the Free Presbyterian Church and of the Democratic Unionist Party.

[48] O'Brien later resigned from the UKUP after his book Memoir: My Life and Themes called on Unionists to consider the benefits of a united Ireland in order to thwart Sinn Féin.

[50] Cruise O'Brien's books include: States of Ireland (1972), where he first indicated his revised view of Irish nationalism, The Great Melody (1992), his 'thematic' biography of Edmund Burke, and his autobiography Memoir: My Life and Themes (1999).

His books, particularly those on Irish issues, tend to be personalised, for example States of Ireland, where he made the link between the political success of the republican Easter Rising and the consequent demise of his Home Rule family's position in society.

[citation needed] Cruise O'Brien held visiting professorships and lectureships throughout the world, particularly in the United States, and in apartheid South Africa, openly breaking the academic boycott.

According to Roy Foster, Colm Tóibín wrote that Seamus Heaney "was so popular that he could even survive being endorsed by Conor Cruise O'Brien, which normally meant 'the kiss of death' in Ireland.