Liam Kennedy writes: Sociologists, unlike historians, have long memories. My evidence for this – historians like evidence – is a sample of one, the former president of Ireland, Michael D Higgins. Recently, from retirement, he criticised the Department of Foreign Affairs for ‘briefing’ against him during his fourteen-year reign in the Áras (The Irish Times, May 4th, 2026).
I have another example. Many years ago, almost in old god’s time, an article by a young sociologist by the name of Higgins caught my eye. At the time I was a student at the University of York, a long-haired weirdo some of my relatives might have added, and an aspiring historian. My primary degree had been in the sciences.
The article in question, published in the Economic & Social Review (1974), dealt with a notoriously obnoxious figure on the Irish historical landscape, the ‘gombeenman’ and was co-authored by Peter Gibbon and Michael D Higgins.
Depending on temporal context, the gombeenman might assume the shape of a moneylender, a mealmonger exploiting scarcity in times of hunger, or more typically in the twentieth century a shopkeeper charging usurious rates of interest to hapless customers trapped in ‘debt bondage’. I thought it was a bit of a stretch to assert that the gombeenman had been quite so ubiquitous in the past and that the ogre was still squeezing victims in the later twentieth century, at least on any scale.
My take, admittedly written in the space of a few days, was published in the Review in the spring of 1977. The clue was in the title: ‘A sceptical view on the reincarnation of the Irish gombeenman.’ A refutation or counterchallenge by the authors came swiftly, in the following issue, under an even more arresting heading: ‘The Irish “gombeenman”: reincarnation or rehabilitation?’
The reaction took me by surprise but being young and foolish a part of me was delighted that a mere graduate student was being taken seriously by established academics. The authors of the critique of my critique were not amused, however. In their discussion, buttressed by some valuable additional material, Gibbon and Higgins made me aware of my historical, ideological and possibly even personal shortcomings.
Leaving to one side the substantive arguments on both sides – it is for others to form a judgement on the controversy – I learned that I suffered from a ‘slavish adherence to vulgar economics’. I presume this was a reference to neoclassical economic analysis, which I had indeed invoked. Worse still, I was part of a revisionist tendency in the writing of Irish history that served the ‘reactionary rehabilitation of a number of historical enemies of the Irish masses’. These included Irish landlords who were now being portrayed as victims rather than exploiters and, the most unlikely turn of all, even gombeenmen were allegedly being rehabilitated. Hardly surprisingly, in view of all this, ‘the world of social science would have been better served had Kennedy’s argument contained a shred of logic’.
The riposte ended with an almost poetical flourish (no doubt due to Higgins wide reading in Irish literature): ‘Irish intellectuals have come far since Liam O’Flaherty’s description of this figure [the gombeenman] as a “fat faced sweaty-headed swine”’. On a loose reading I wondered if, Zelig-like (from Woody Allen’s film of that name), I too had been transformed into a sweaty-headed swine.
It was good knockabout stuff, a minor debate on the margins of Irish historiography, and the exchange soon receded from consciousness. That was 1977. More than three decades later I found myself part of a delegation of northern left-wing thinkers invited to Áras an Uachtaráin. The group included Brian Garrett, former chair of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, Erskine Holmes, chair of Labour Party Northern Ireland, the writer and journalist Dennis Kennedy, and a prominent member of the Irish Labour Party who had made the arrangements.
After an eventful journey from Belfast to Dublin, we were ushered into a grand reception room where we awaited the company of the president, Michael D Higgins. Some subdued conversations as we stood about. Then a door I hadn’t paid much attention to opened suddenly and the president strode into the room, head tilted backwards. To my surprise, he took an arrow-like path across the room towards me. Without a word of greeting, he charged: ‘You were wrong about the Irish gombeenman.’
Caught off guard and forgetting formality, I mumbled: ‘But Michael, it was all a long time ago.’ I was aware that my colleagues were mystified as to what this might be about. Nor did this seem the right moment to explain that the gombeen man was a hated figure in Irish folk memory, one who was sometimes a money lender but more usually a credit retailer who charged usurious rates of interest to customers. I tried to turn the conversation back to the matters in hand but the president was not to be deflected. The exchanges went on for an excruciating minute or two and then someone, probably Garrett, the leader of the group, got us back on track.
I might have largely forgotten but Higgins, former sociologist, had not. Nonetheless, despite the awkward start, the meeting turned out to be a brilliant exchange that ranged constructively over contemporary Northern Irish politics and culture. I left feeling even greater respect for Higgins, his formidable intellect and the range of his interests.
Afterwards, on the way back to Belfast, I couldn’t help reflecting on those far-off, carefree student times when I had been writing my critique. Little did I realise that one day I would be held to account in person for my deviations, and by no less than the president of Ireland himself. The long memory of the social scientist, it would seem. Perhaps Higgins might have been placated, even amused, or perhaps not, had he known that at the time of the controversy we had both been members of the same political party, Irish Labour.
Liam Kennedy is emeritus professor of history, Queen’s University Belfast. His books include Who Was Responsible for the Troubles? The Northern Ireland Conflict and Unhappy the Land: The Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish?