Exploring the Zionist evolution of Robert Briscoe: History and memory

Robert Briscoe was the Dublin born son of Lithuanian and German-Jewish immigrants. As a young man he joined Sinn Féin and was an important figure in the War of Independence due to a role as one of the IRA’s main gun-procuring agents. He took the anti-Treaty side during an internecine Civil War, mainly due to the influence of Eamon de Valera and retained a filial devotion towards him for the rest of his life. In 1926 he was a founding member of Fianna Fáil, de Valera’s breakaway republican party, which would dominate twentieth-century Irish politics. He was first elected as a Fianna Fáil T.D. (Teachta Dála, Deputy to the Dáil) in 1927, and successfully defended his seat eleven times becoming the first Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1956, an honour that was repeated in 1961. On this basis alone, it can be argued that Briscoe was a significant presence in an embryonic Irish political culture; however, when his role in the 1930s Jewish immigration endeavor is acknowledged, it is clear that he played a unique part in one of the most contentious political and social discourses of the pre-war years. This was reinforced when Briscoe embraced Zionism in a belated realisation that the survival of his European co-religionists could only be guaranteed if an independent Jewish state existed. This information is to a certain degree public knowledge; however, the full extent of his involvement as an immigration advocate for potential Jewish refugees, and the seniority he achieved in the New Zionist Organisation (Revisionists) has not been fully recognised. This is partly explicable because researchers have based their assessment of Briscoe on an incomplete political archive in the National Library of Ireland (NLI). The vast majority of documentation pertaining to his involvement in the immigration endeavor has not been available to scholars and remains the private property of Robert Briscoe’s son, Ben Briscoe. The lack of immigration files in the NLI was reinforced by the fact that information about Briscoe’s Revisionist engagement was donated to the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv and can only be accessed physically by visiting Israel. Therefore, even though these twin endeavors have been commented on by a number of academics, their assessments have tended to be based on an incomplete archive, which was supplemented by Briscoe’s autobiographical memoir published in 1958. This study will attempt to fill in the missing gaps in Briscoe’s complex political narrative by incorporating the rarely used private papers of Robert Briscoe, and the difficult to access Briscoe files in Tel Aviv. This undertaking was only possible when Mr.Ben Briscoe graciously granted me full and unrestricted access to his father’s papers, and after a month-long research trip to the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv. Access to this rarely used documentation facilitated a holistic examination of Briscoe’s complex and multifaceted political reality. It revealed the full extent of Briscoe’s political and social evolution as the Nazi instigated Jewish emigration crisis reached catastrophic proportions. He was by turn Fianna Fáil nationalist, Jewish immigration advocate and senior Revisionist actor on a global stage. The study will examine the contrasting political and social forces that initiated each stage of Briscoe’s Zionist awakening, and in the process will fill a major gap in Irish-Jewish historiography by revealing the full extent of his Revisionist engagement.

Towards a new model of criminal justice system in the era of globalised criminality: the biggest challenges for criminal process legislation

The main objective of this thesis is the critical analysis of the evolution of the criminal justice systems throughout the past decade, with special attention to the fight against transnational terrorism. It is evident – for any observer - that such threats and the associated risk that terrorism entails, has changed significantly throughout the past decade. This perception has generated answers – many times radical ones – by States, as they have committed themselves to warrant the safety of their populations and to ease a growing sentiment of social panic. This thesis seeks to analyse the characteristics of this new threat and the responses that States have developed in the fight against terrorism since 9/11, which have questioned some of the essential principles and values in place in their own legal systems. In such sense, freedom and security are placed into perspective throughout the analysis of the specific antiterrorist legal reforms of five different States: Israel, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. On the other hand, in light of those antiterrorist reforms, it will be questioned if it is possible to speak of the emergence of a new system of criminal justice (and of a process of a convergence between common law and civil law systems), built upon a control and preventive security framework, significantly different from traditional models. Finally, this research project has the fundamental objective to contribute to a better understanding on the economic, social and civilization costs of those legal reforms regarding human rights, the rule of law and democracy in modern States.

Monitoring and modelling the morphodynamic evolution of a breached barrier beach system

Predicting the evolution of a coastal cell requires the identification of the key drivers of morphology. Soft coastlines are naturally dynamic but severe storm events and even human intervention can accelerate any changes that are occurring. However, when erosive events such as barrier breaching occur with no obvious contributory factors, a deeper understanding of the underlying coastal processes is required. Ideally conclusions on morphological drivers should be drawn from field data collection and remote sensing over a long period of time. Unfortunately, when the Rossbeigh barrier beach in Dingle Bay, County Kerry, began to erode rapidly in the early 2000’s, eventually leading to it breaching in 2008, no such baseline data existed. This thesis presents a study of the morphodynamic evolution of the Inner Dingle Bay coastal system. The study combines existing coastal zone analysis approaches with experimental field data collection techniques and a novel approach to long term morphodynamic modelling to predict the evolution of the barrier beach inlet system. A conceptual model describing the long term evolution of Inner Dingle Bay in 5 stages post breaching was developed. The dominant coastal processes driving the evolution of the coastal system were identified and quantified. A new methodology of long term process based numerical modelling approach to coastal evolution was developed. This method was used to predict over 20 years of coastal evolution in Inner Dingle Bay. On a broader context this thesis utilised several experimental coastal zone data collection and analysis methods such as ocean radar and grain size trend analysis. These were applied during the study and their suitability to a dynamic coastal system was assessed.

Energy harvesting for monitoring bridges over their operational life

The use of energy harvesting materials for large infrastructure is a promising and growing field. In this regard, the use of such harvesters for the purpose of structural health monitoring of bridges has been proposed in recent times as one of the feasible options since the deployment of them can remove the necessity of an external power source. This paper addresses the performance issue of such monitors over the life-cycle of a bridge as it deteriorates and the live load on the structure increases. In this regard, a Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) material is considered as the energy harvesting material and a comparison is carried out over the operational life of a reinforced concrete bridge. The evolution of annual average daily traffic (AADT) is taken into consideration, as is the degradation of the structure over time, due to the effects of corrosion. Evolution of such harvested energy is estimated over the life-cycle of the bridge and the sensitivity of harvested energy is investigated for varying rates of degradation and changes in AADT. The study allows for designing and understanding the potential of energy harvesters as a health monitor for bridges. This paper also illustrates how the natural growth of traffic on a bridge over time can accentuate the identification of damage, which is desirable for an ageing structure. The paper also assesses the impact and effects of deployment of harvesters in a bridge as a part of its design process, considering performance over the entire life-cycle versus a deployment at a certain age of the structure.