In Dublin, where he argued economic policy had failed to "see independence through," he entered Seanad Éireann, the Irish Senate, in 1948 for the republican and social-democratic Clann na Poblachta.
The opportunity this accorded him for travel in Europe and in North America provoked a writing talent that Ireland began to apply in earnest from 1930 working freelance and as a writer for the BBC.
[4] At the BBC in Belfast Ireland joined John Boyd and Sam Hanna Bell who "struggled, often successfully, to challenge the quietist conservatism of the institution and the resultant refusal to engage with the Irish dimension.
"[5] While he allowed that it might be "easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a son of the Ulster Protestant industrial ascendancy to orient himself in relation to his country's history,"[6] Ireland believed that for his co-religionists the task held the promise of a "renaissance."
"[7] Yet, in "a town which, paradoxically enough, regularly reared (and then promptly expelled) writers, artists, and unpractical 'dreamers' of all kinds,"[8] Ireland believed that, if only he would abandon his "present attitude of life-negation," the Ulster Presbyterian could prove "the real juggler with metaphysical subtleties, the dreamer, and the potential liberator of Irish art and literature.
"[9] This debilitating "attitude", in Ireland's view, expressed itself not least in the Ulsterman's determination to centre his patriotic enthusiasm on London, a city where the "first rule" in the reception of things Irish is the obliteration of historical record.
[13] It advertised a range of activities including weekly discussions and lectures on current affairs, economics, history and the Irish language, as well as dancing and music classes.
UUC meetings were being attended by John Graham, a Church of Ireland devout who at the time of his arrest in 1942 was leading a "Protestant squad", an intelligence unit, that was preparing the armed organisation for a new "northern campaign.
"[16] When, in April 1942, an RUC officer, Patrick Murphy, a Catholic father of nine,[17] was shot in an exchange (the battle of Cawnpore Street), six members of the IRA's Belfast Brigade were sentenced to hang.
The club's premises, and the homes of Ireland and other prominent members (among them Presbyterian clergymen, teachers and university lecturers) were raided by RUC Special Branch.
[23] In June 1947, it was still as "President of the Ulster Union Club" that "Captain Ireland" was introduced to an Anti-Partition meeting in New York by the city's Mayo-born Mayor William O'Dwyer.
After being denied access to the city centre, they rallied 30,000 in Corrigan Park in nationalist west Belfast, paraded up Cavehill to McArt's Fort[26] where in 1795 Wolfe Tone and members of the United Irish northern executive took their celebrated oath "never to desist in our efforts until we had subverted the authority of England over our country".
"[28] The Irish pound, and consequently the monetary policy effective within the state, continued to be regulated by the Bank of England ("the witch-doctors of Threadneedle Street") and the "City" of London.
As had Keynes in his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), Ireland dismissed as "totally fallacious" the conventional analogy between individual and national budgets.
A "State" or national sovereignty, on the other hand, had at one time the power of "making" and putting into circulation as much money as was necessary for the health and prosperity of its citizens, and even nowadays, when this power of economic life and death has been handed to a race of (presumably) Supermen know as "bankers," the State is still occasionally allowed to print off any hypothetical number of millions required for the purposes of war and destruction, or any other activity which happens to consolidate the position of the bankers--but never for the purpose of providing its citizens with vulgar matters like food, boots, and clothing.
[36] However, while he participated on the council, Ireland disclaimed being that "type of 'progressive' calling himself as 'internationalist,'" and still less as a proponent of federal union--"the curious belief that a problem is solved by enlarging it."
Since its foundation in 1792 as the Belfast Society for Promoting Knowledge, membership of the library was "de rigueur for lay scholars and apprentice artists in the city.