Some Background:

So wrote Major General Hugh Montgomery, in a letter to the Belfast Newsletter in October 1937. With the help of notable members of the unionist and nationalist communities throughout the island, Montgomery went on to found the Irish Association in 1938.

Since then, the Irish Association for Cultural, Economic and Social Relations has been working "to make reason and goodwill take the place of passion and prejudice in Ireland, North and South."

The following is the list of Past Presidents who have been implementing the policies and objectives of the Association.

(Outline CV information is in preparation; I will insert as it comes in. I have done one draft as a suggested indication of a suitable level of detail. Some more have come in, RJ 22/12/00.)

1938-1946: The Rt Hon The Lord Charlemont PC (NI)

1946-1954: Professor Joseph Johnston FTCD;
b. 1890 Castlecaulfield, Co Tyrone; educated Dugannon Royal School (1902-1906), Trinity College Dublin (1906-1910) and Oxford University (1910-1912); Fellow of Trinity College 1913; author of 'Civil War in Ulster' 1913 (republished 1999); Albert Kahn Travelling Fellow 1914-1915; Barrington lecturer 1921-1932; author of The Nemesis of Economic Nationalism (1934); represented TCD in the Seanad on several occasions between 1938 and 1954; foundation member of Irish Association; Professor of Applied Economics in TCD 1939; elected to membership of Royal Irish Academy 1943; author of Bishop Berkeley's Querist in Historical Perspective (1970); died 1972.

1954-1963: Sir Graham Larmor

1963-1966: J F Dempsey BComm, LLD, FCA

1967-1973: Edmond Grace FCA

1973-1976: William Marshall
William Marshall, b. 1928, Barrister-at-Law, was educated at Campbell College Belfast, Trinity College Dublin and Middle Temple London. He served as a company director with several concerns including a family milling and compounding business in Belfast, and for a period in the 1970s with an innovative firm in Dundalk which manufactured an analogue computing system which met the needs of animal-feed compounders. From 1966 to 1969 he was Chairman of the Fisheries Conservancy Board (NI). and Coordinating Director of the Equal Opportunities Commission (NI) from 1976 to 1981. He served as a member of the Scarman Tribunal, 1969-72, of the Committee of Inquiry into the Veterinary Profession (UK), 1971-71, and of the Royal Commission on Legal Services (UK), 1976. He was Chairman of the Strangford Lough Committee of the National Trust from 1984 to 1987.

1976-1978: Donal Barrington SC

1978-1980: A S J O'Neill
Berrie O'Neill, b. Eyrecourt, County Galway, 1930. After secondary education at Wilson's Hospital, Multyfarnham, county Westmeath, and at Mountjoy School in Dublin,. He joined the Bank of Ireland at College Green, Dublin in 1948. In 1960 he moved to the Bank's main Northern Ireland office at Donegall Place, Belfast, where he managed the International Department, and later, the Branch. He retired as a Regional Manager in 1990, after which he enrolled at Queen's University, Belfast, graduating with a BA. He had joined The Irish Association in the mid 1960s, with a strong believe in the need for greater north/south understanding as a pre-requisite for political stability in the island of Ireland.

1980-1982: Senator Trevor West

1982-1984: Lewis Semple

1984-1986: Una O'Higgins O'Malley

1986-1988: Brian Garrett
Brian Garrett, b. Belfast, 1937, educated at Methodist College and Queen's University Belfast. Long term partner in leading Belfast firm of solicitors, now senior legal consultant and Deputy County Court Judge. Chairman, Northern Ireland Labour Party, 1972-74.Visiting Fellow (1977-78) Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. Has served as a member of the Northern Ireland Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights, and on various committees of the Law Society of Northern Ireland. Joint Deputy Chairman, Northern Ireland Independent Commission for Police Complaints (198891). Member of the Council of the International Bar Association.

1988-1991: Professor Enda McDonagh

1991-1993: Professor Paul Bew
Paul Bew, b. Belfast 1950, educated at Campbell College and Cambridge University. He has been Professor of Irish Politics at Queen's University, Belfast since 1991. Parnell Fellow, Magdalene College, Cambridge, 1995-96, and Burns Visiting Scholar, Boston College, 1999-2000. He has published extensively on Irish history and politics and in particular on the Northern Ireland problem. Books include Ideology and the Irish Question: Ulster Unionism and Irish Nationalism 1912-1916 (1994), Land and the National Question in Ireland 1858-82 (1978), John Redmond (1996), Charles Stewart Parnell (1980), Sean Lemass and the Making of Modern Ireland 1945-66 (co-author, 1982), The Dynamics of Irish Politics (co-author, 1989), Northern Ireland 1921-96: Political Forces and Social Classes (co-author, 1997), Northern Ireland: A Chronology of the Troubles 1968-1999 (co-author, 1999), Between War and Peace: the Political Future of Northern Ireland (co-author 1997). He also co-edited Passion and Prejudice: Nationalist/Unionist Conflict in the 1930s and the Origins of the Irish Association (1993), based on letters and papers of the founders of the Association.

1994-1996: Dr John Bowman

1996-1998: Professor Bernard Cullen
Bernard Cullen, b.1950, was educated at Queen's University, Belfast, the Sorbonne in Paris and the University of Michigan. He is Professor of Philosophy at Queen's University, and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. He has also been Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany), since 1987, and, since 1988, Research Project Assessor, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Woodrow Wilson Center for Advanced Research, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C. He .was Philosophy Consultant to the European Science Foundation interdisciplinary research project on the Nature and Administration of Justice (1988-1992) He has served as Secretary of the National Committee for Philosophy of the Royal Irish Academy (1985-87), and as secretary and President (1989-1992) of the Irish Philosophical Society. He chairs the Ethics Committee of the British Confederation of Psychotherapists, and is a Member of the Northern Ireland Fair Employment Tribunal. His publications include works on Hegel. He edited Discriminations Old and New, published by Queen's Institute of Irish Studies in 1992., and based on an Irish Association conference.

1998-1999: Senator Mary Henry

1999-2000: Dr Dennis Kennedy
Dennis Kennedy, b, Lisburn County Antrim,1936, was educated at Wallace High School, Queen's University, Belfast, and later at Trinity College, Dublin. He subsequently worked in the news media in the United States and in Ethiopia before returning to Ireland in 1968 and joining the Irish Times. His seventeen years with The Irish Times included successively the positions of European Editor, Assistant Editor and, finally, Deputy Editor. In 1985 he joined the staff of the European Commission where he served as head of its Northern Ireland Office until 1991. Since 1993 he has been on the staff of Queen's University, Belfast, as a lecturer in the Institute of European Studies. Publications include The Widening Gulf, (Blackstaff Press, 1988) and Living with the European Union; the Northern Ireland Experience, (Macmillan, 2000). ). He edited Forging an Identity. Ireland at the Millennium: the Evolution of a Concept, published by the Irish Association, 2000, based on its 1999 annual conference.