Seán MacBride

Seán MacBride (born Jan. 26, 1904, Paris, France—died Jan. 15, 1988, Dublin, Ire.) was an Irish statesman who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1974 for his efforts on behalf of human rights.

MacBride was the son of the Irish actress and patriot Maud Gonne and her husband, Maj. John MacBride, who was executed in 1916 for his part in the Easter Rising of that year against the British. Educated in Paris and Ireland, MacBride always spoke English with a strong French accent. He joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Anglo-Irish war (Irish War of Independence,1919–21). He denied the legitimacy of the Irish Free State established in 1922, and he remained a member of the IRA during and after the civil war of 1922–23 and became its chief of staff in 1936–37, severing his formal ties because he believed the 1937 constitution met republican objectives.

MacBride then became a barrister and specialized in defending his former IRA associates. He founded a new political party, Clann na Poblachta (“Party of the Republic”), in 1946, entered Dáil Éireann (the lower house of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament) in 1947, and became minister for external affairs in the first interparty government (1948–51). An ardent Francophile and Anglophobe, he was president of the Council of Foreign Ministers of the Council of Europe in 1950, and he was vice president of the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation in 1948–51. He caused the collapse of the second interparty government in 1957 because he opposed its response to a new IRA campaign against Northern Ireland. He lost his seat in the ensuing election and never returned to the Dáil.

Thereafter, MacBride was active in a number of international organizations concerned with human rights, among them the International Prisoners of Conscience Fund (trustee) and Amnesty International (chairman, 1961–75), and he served as secretary-general of the International Commission of Jurists (1963–70). In 1973 he became United Nations assistant secretary-general and commissioner for South West Africa/Namibia, posts he held until 1977. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974 and the Lenin Peace Prize in 1977; also in that year he was appointed president of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, established by UNESCO.