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Life
1935-1978; b. Surrey; Irish mother and Welsh father who met as revenue civil servants in Ireland, 1910; moved to Sandymount, Co. Dublin, in childhood; grad. TCD (BA History); presenter on 7 Days (RTE news programme), noted for gently style and searching questions at interviews; published his PhD as Isaac Butt and Home Rule (1964), arguing that Butt was converted to Home Rule by his defence of the Fenians; and appt. lecturer in political economy at TCD, 1968; contrib. a historical introduction to Basil Chubb’s, Government of Ireland (1966);
joined the Irish Labour Party and won a Dáil seat for North-West Dublin, 1969; called for the release of Sean Mac Stiofain (Provo Chief of Staff), then on hunger strike, Dec. 1972; re-elected in 1973; opposed the Special Criminal Court (Green St.) but reluctantly voted for Criminal Jurisdiction Bill with his party, 1976; lost the Labour Whip for appearing on a Sinn Féin platform that year, but readmitted in time for the 1977 General Election in which he failed to retain his seat; joined Socialist Labour Party formed by Noel Browne, 1978; died of alcoholism. FDA
Works
Monograph, Isaac Butt and Home Rule (London: MacGibbon & Kee 1964), and Do. [facs. rep.] (Conn: Greenwood Press 1976), 413pp. Pamphs., Ireland: The End of an Era? [Tuairim pamphlet, 12] (Dublin: Dublin Branch of Tuairim 1965), 17pp. [prev. in Studies, Spring 1964]; with Basil Chubb, Irish Government Observed [Irish Times ser.] (Dublin: The Irish Times [1965]), 36pp. Also published occas. short stories.
Criticism
Yseult Thornley, ed., Unquiet Spirit: Essays in Memory of David Thornley (Dublin: Liberties Press 2008), 288pp. [prev. noticed as Radical, Republican, Socialist [...; &c.] (Dublin: Liberties Press 2008), 224pp.; Edward Thornley, Lone Crusader: David Thornley and the Intellectuals (Dublin: Ashfield Press 2012), 176pp.[reviewed by Ruan O’Donnell in History Ireland, May/June 2013]
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Commentary
R. F. Foster, ‘Varieties of Irishness’ [inaugural lecture], in Maurna Crozier, ed., Cultural Traditions in Northern Ireland [Proceedings of the Cultural Traditions Group Conference (Belfast: IIS 1989), pp.5-24: "David Thornley’s supposedly definitive study of Butt assumes throughout that he was somehow destined to miss the nationalist boat; however well-meaning, his background left him stranded on the shore. I’d rather see him as someone with a Protestant, even Orange, pedigree who shared in and helped create a sense of Irishness that accepted historic English influence while claiming realistic autonomy, and required no apology for its credentials at all’. (p.10.)
Bibl., Foster’s references incl. PhD. thesis by Joseph Spence, ‘The Philosophy of Irish Toryism, 1833-1852’ [due for publication by OUP].
Quotations
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 3, remarks and quotes: ‘As David Thornley wrote in the optimistic atmosphere of the 1960s, “It seems certain that our island will become affected increasingly by the spread of European social and philosophical ideas, strongly tinged with Catholicism [...] and that our social habits and our politics will take on the flavour that is ever more urban and, as a consequence, ever more cosmopolitan. And this in turn will sound the death-knell of the attempt to preserve any kind of indigenous Gaelic folk culture in these islands”.’ (From Ireland, The End of an Era?, Tuairum Pamphlet No. 12, 1965, p.12; cited in Terence Brown, A Social and Cultural History, 1922-79 [1980], p.243).
References
Belfast Public Library holds Isaac Butt and Home Rule (1964).
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