Work Like a Woman: A Manifesto For Change

The arms crisis of 1970 came about when two Irish cabinet ministers, Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, alongside an army officer and other figures, were accused by Taoiseach Jack Lynch of smuggling arms to the IRA in Northern Ireland. The criminal prosecution that followed, the Arms Trial, was a cause celebre at the time; while it resulted in the acquittal of all the accused, the political crisis it generated was one of the major events of late twentieth-century Irish history. In the fifty years since, myth and controversy has surrounded the trial and its aftermath. Was the country really on the brink of a bloody civil war involving North and South? Did the two Ministers sacked by Lynch help generate the bloody campaign of the Provisional IRA or were they set up by the Taoiseach as fall guys for an arms plot that was unofficially authorized but always deniable by Lynch? Was there, as is often claimed, a kind of coup in preparation that Lynch’s prompt action foiled? A great deal of astonishing new evidence has been uncovered by Michael Heney in his research for this book, raising serious questions about Lynch and his relationship with future Taoiseach Charles Haughey. The book also contains the first comprehensive investigation into how the arms trial prosecution was mounted, and how the jury came to their verdict of acquittal. Heney’s meticulous scholarship challenges much of the conventional wisdom about these sensational events. The Arms Crisis of 1970 is a major contribution to our understanding of a pivotal moment in postwar Irish history.

Electricity has shaped the modern world. But how has it affected our health and environment? Over the last 220 years, society has evolved a universal belief that electricity is ‘safe’ for humanity and the planet. Scientist and journalist Arthur Firstenberg disrupts this conviction by telling the story of electricity in a way it has never been told before – from an environmental point of view – by detailing the effects that this fundamental societal building block has had on our health and our planet. In The Invisible Rainbow, Firstenberg traces the history of electricity from the early eighteenth century to the present, making a compelling case that many environmental problems, as well as the major diseases of industrialised civilisation – heart disease, diabetes, and cancer – are related to electrical pollution.