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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 May 2021
This article argues that the career and writings of the Ulster unionist propagandist and man of letters Hugh Shearman (1915–99) were influenced by his commitment to theosophy, which he saw as a logical extension of Protestant belief in private judgement. His work as a publicist echoed theosophist preoccupation with illusion and the perceptions accessible to initiates. Many of his writings displayed theosophist in-jokes, esoteric references and mental reservations. His apologias reflected theosophist belief in the breaking down of personality compartmentalisation in order to merge with the world-soul. Shearman saw the Irish republic as the ‘Pakistan of the West’, represented by him as embodying self-destructive insularity shaped by Catholic authoritarianism. In response to the 1940s anti-partition campaign, Shearman developed an apologia for the Stormont government as an essentially progressive technocracy, which he saw as culminating in the regime of Terence O'Neill. This article uses previously unexplored writings to track Shearman's life and career into the 1990s, when he is shown to have combined a view of the Irish question formed in the 1940s with a semi-conspiratorial unionist narrative of British betrayal.
1 Lee, J. J., Ireland 1912–1985: politics and society (Cambridge, 1989), pp 1–24Google Scholar, 411–57, 675–87; Farrell, Michael, Northern Ireland: the Orange state (London, 1976)Google Scholar.
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5 Gillian McIntosh, The force of culture: Unionist identities in twentieth-century Ireland (Cork, 1999).
6 R. F. Foster, ‘Protestant magic: W. B. Yeats and the spell of Irish history’ in idem, Paddy and Mr Punch: connections in Irish and English history (London, 1993), pp 212–32.
7 Gregory Tillett, The elder brother: a biography of Charles Webster Leadbeater (London, 1982), pp 68–9, 261–2; Hajo Düchting, Wassily Kandinsky, 1866–1934: a revolution in painting (London, 2000), pp 26–38; Susanne Deicher, Piet Mondrian, 1872–1944: structures in space (London, 2004), pp 24–9; Leonhard Emmerling, Jackson Pollock, 1912–1956 (London, 2003), pp 10–11.
8 Hugh Shearman, Ulster (London, 1949), p. 317.
9 Ibid., pp 160–1.
10 Ibid., pp 160–2; Irish Independent, 27 May 1950.
11 Belfast News Letter, 24 June 1949.
12 Shearman, Ulster, pp 339–47.
13 Northern Whig, 29 Dec. 1944, 5, 8, 10 Jan. 1945.
14 Irish Times, 1 Sept. 1952; Ballymena Observer, 5 Sept. 1952.
15 Edward McCamley, Belfast Royal Academy: the second century, 1885–1985 (Belfast, 1986).
16 Ballymena Observer, 5 Sept. 1952.
17 Belfast Telegraph, 6 Aug. 1953.
18 Hugh Shearman, ‘Assessing psychicism’ in The Theosophist (Feb. 1977), accessed at http://www.katinkahesselink.net/other/shearman9.html (13 June 2018).
19 McCamley, Belfast Royal Academy, pp vii, 47–8, 123.
20 Belfast News Letter, 24 Apr. 1972.
21 Ibid.,1 Nov. 1935; L. A. Clarkson ‘James Eadie Todd and the school of history at the Queen's University of Belfast’ in I.H.S., xli, no. 159 (May 2017), pp 22–40.
22 Belfast News Letter, 25 Oct. 1949.
23 Ibid., 16 Oct. 1935; Hugh Shearman, Belfast Royal Academy, 1785–1935 (Belfast, 1935). I thank the B.R.A. archivist for supplying a copy.
24 Irish Times, 5 Feb. 1937: Belfast News Letter, 10, 12, 13 Feb. 1937.
25 Belfast News Letter, 30 Nov. 1936, 11 Nov. 1937, 5 Mar. 1938, 25 Jan. 1940.
26 Ibid., 25 Jan. 1940.
27 Northern Whig, 7 Feb. 1938.
28 Ibid., 14 Nov. 1938.
29 Ibid., 15, 17 May, 4 Sept. 1940.
30 Hugh Shearman, How the Church of Ireland was disestablished (Dublin, 1970); idem, Privatising a church: the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of Ireland (Lurgan, 1995).
31 Shearman, Ulster, pp 158, 170, 365–6.
32 Ibid., pp 249–51; idem, Anglo-Irish relations (London, 1948), p. 236.
33 Hugh Shearman ‘The citation of British and Irish parliamentary papers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ in I.H.S., iv, no. 13 (Mar. 1944), pp 33–7; idem, ‘State-aided land purchase under the Disestablishment Act of 1869’ in ibid., pp 58–80.
34 Belfast News Letter, 18 Feb. 1946.
35 Private information. I have not discovered his wife's forename or maiden name, nor the forenames of his children.
36 Hugh Shearman. The passionate necessity: a view of human purpose (London, 1962), p. 49; idem, An approach to the occult (Adyar, 1959), pp 80–1.
37 Douglas Gageby, ‘Hugh Shearman: a recollection’ in The Owl (Christmas 1999), p. 9. I thank the B.R.A. archivist for providing a copy.
38 Hugh Shearman, The bishop's confession (London, 1943), pp 180–4 (assuming that this was Shearman's own experience).
39 Hugh Shearman ‘Our objects’ in The Theosophist (Nov. 1996), accessed at http://www.katinkahesselink.net/other/shearman35.html (13 June 2018). This claims ‘fifty-six years of membership’.
40 Tillett, The elder brother; idem, Charles Webster Leadbeater, 1854–1934: a biographical study, revised 2008 online ed. at www.leadbeater.org (14 June 2018), pp 230–1. The latter source, also cited below, is no longer available online (30 Dec. 2020).
41 Tillett, The elder brother, p. 294, n. 11; idem, Charles Webster Leadbeater, 1854–1934, pp 17, 987, n. 39 (14 June 2018).
42 Tillett, The elder brother, pp 77–102, 140–2, 180–2, 196–204, 279–85; idem, Charles Webster Leadbeater, 1854–1934, pp 899–929 (accessed 14 June 2018) names the sources but is no longer available online.
43 Peter F. Anson, Bishops at large (London, 1964) pp 193–205, 342–67; Tillett, The elder brother, pp 69–70, 169–79, 260; idem, Charles Webster Leadbeater, 1854–1934, pp 590–628; Shearman, An approach to the occult, pp 102–03.
44 Anson, Bishops at large, p. 351.
45 Irish Times, 12 Jan. 1957, 14 Dec. 1981.
46 For the influence of Arundale see, Shearman, An approach to the occult, p. 56; idem, Modern theosophy (Aydar, 1954), pp 64–5. On Jinarajadasa see, Hugh Shearman ‘C. Jinarajadasa: some memories and impressions’ in The Theosophist (Dec. 1975), accessed at http://www.katinkahesselink.net/his/raja.htm (13 June 2018).
47 Tillett, The elder brother, p. 289, n. 17; idem, Charles Webster Leadbeater, 1854–1934, pp 40–4 (14 June 2018) note Shearman's evasions. For the significance of St Alban, see Anson Bishops at large, p. 357, n. 2. For a critique, see Citydesert [pseud.], ‘Hugh Shearman’, 11 Jan. 2017 (https://cwleadbeater.wordpress.com/2017/01/11/4493/) (18 Dec. 2019).
48 Hugh Shearman, A bomb and a girl (London, 1944), pp 65–6, 133; McIntosh Force of culture, p. 192.
49 Shearman, The passionate necessity, p. 109.
50 Shearman, The bishop's confession, pp 157–9, 166–7, 184.
51 Shearman, Ulster, pp 161–2.
52 Shearman, Anglo-Irish relations, p. 237.
53 Shearman, An approach to the occult, pp 55–7, 62–76.
54 Shearman, Modern theosophy, pp 80–1, 84–93, 99–103, 151–64.
55 Articles available online at http://www.katinkahesselink.net/other/c/c_hshear.html (30 Dec. 2020).
56 Shearman, An approach to the occult, pp 30–3, 45–88; idem, Modern theosophy, pp 1–7; Tillett The elder brother, pp 269, 272, 276–7.
57 Northern Whig, 7 June 1948; Belfast News Letter, 25 June 1949; Tillett, The elder brother, pp 230–3, 257, 306, n. 1, 309–10, n. 28, 311, n. 8.
58 Belfast News Letter, 20 Mar. 1954; Tillett, The elder brother, pp 249, 259.
59 Belfast News Letter, 30 July 1956; cf. Shearman, Modern theosophy, pp 56–7.
60 Shearman, The Ulster cover-up (Lurgan, 1993), p. 59.
61 Belfast Telegraph, 27 Feb. 1942; Edward Majoribanks and Ian Colvin, The life of Edward Carson (3 vols, London, 1932–6).
62 Belfast News Letter, 24 Nov. 1945.
63 Northern Whig, 18 June 1949 (rev. of St John Ervine Craigavon, Ulsterman (London, 1949)).
64 Shearman, A bomb and a girl, pp 185–8.
65 McIntosh, Force of culture, p. 185; information from Paul Bew.
66 Belfast News Letter, 9 Dec. 1954; Northern Whig, 9 Dec. 1954.
67 Shearman, Anglo-Irish relations, pp 234–6. Irish diplomats confirmed the advantages of Stormont industrial policy, while highlighting — as Shearman does not — that it was funded by Britain: Confidential report from Frederick H. Boland to Sean Nunan, 29 Nov. 1954 (Michael Kennedy, Catriona Crowe, Ronan Fanning, Dermot Keogh, Eunan O'Halpin and Kate O'Malley (eds), Documents in Irish foreign policy, x: 1951–1957 (Dublin, 2016), pp 436–7 (document 322)). Northern Ireland attracted more foreign investment than the republic until the outbreak of the Troubles in 1969: Mary E. Daly, Sixties Ireland: reshaping the economy, state and society, 1957–1973 (Cambridge, 2016), pp 71–2.
68 Shearman, Anglo-Irish Relations, pp 184–5, 206–09, 233–6, 261–72.
69 Ibid., pp 234–6.
70 Ibid., pp 229–30, 237–46.
71 McIntosh, Force of culture, pp 185, 189, 212; R. M. Henry rev. of Not an inch in I.H.S., v, no. 15 (Mar. 1945), pp 281–3. The quotation is from Henry's review.
72 McIntosh, Force of culture, p. 212, n. 91.
73 Irish Times, 13 Mar. 1943.
74 Shearman, A bomb and a girl, pp 156–7.
75 Shearman, The passionate necessity, p. 11.
76 Ibid., p. 238; idem, Modern theosophy, pp 52–6.
77 Irish Press, 22 Apr. 1943, responding to a review by Francis McManus in ibid., 31 Mar. 1943.
78 Shearman, The bishop's confession, pp 112–13.
79 McIntosh, Force of culture, pp 192–3.
80 Shearman, The bishop's confession, pp 129–36, 143–50.
81 Hugh Shearman ‘A problem of our time’ in The Theosophist (Nov. 1990), accessed at http://www.katinkahesselink.net/other/shearman7.html (13 June 2018).
82 Shearman, The bishop's confession, pp 229–33.
83 Shearman, The passionate necessity, pp 98–9; idem, An approach to the occult, pp 118–31; cf. Leadbeater on isolation as part of symbolic crucifixion for aspiring initiates (Tillett, The elder brother, pp 100–01).
84 Northern Whig, 18 June 1949. The Unionist Party headquarters were in Glengall Street, in Belfast city centre.
85 Londonderry Sentinel, 11 Oct. 1947; Belfast News Letter, 12 Apr. 1948.
86 Northern Whig, 11 Dec. 1947; Ballymena Weekly Telegraph, 8 Oct. 1948.
87 Hugh Shearman, Finland: the adventures of a small power (London, 1950).
88 McIntosh (Force of culture, pp 192–3) notes the favourable first impression of this character, but not how the character fails miserably to translate his stern rhetoric into action (Shearman, A bomb and a girl, pp 73, 76–81, 102, 152–4). See also Carolyn Pearl Augsperger, ‘Unionism, faith and minorities: a political biographical study of Sir Douglas Savory, M.P.’ (Ph.D. thesis, Queen's University Belfast, 2016).
89 Belfast News Letter, 19 June 1950.
90 McIntosh, Force of culture, pp 188–90.
91 Irish Times, 27 May 1948.
92 Belfast News Letter, 23 July 1945.
93 McIntosh, Force of culture, p. 190.
94 Belfast News Letter, 14 Nov. 1956.
95 Ibid., 10 Jan. 1948.
96 Irish Independent, 9 Mar. 1946; Derry Journal, 31 Oct. 1952; Belfast News Letter, 26 July, 9 Dec. 1954; Irish Times, 8 June 1955.
97 McIntosh, Force of culture, p. 186.
98 Irish Press, 29 Jan. 1948.
99 Irish Independent, 9 Mar. 1946.
100 Shearman, Ulster, pp 263–4.
101 Ibid., pp 359–60.
102 Ibid., p. 343.
103 Ibid., p. 293.
104 Ibid., pp 352–3.
105 Ibid., pp 342–3.
106 Ibid., pp 386–7.
107 Irish Press, 10 Apr., 8, 23 May 1950. On Gallagher, see: Graham Walker ‘“The Irish Dr Goebbels”: Frank Gallagher and Irish republican propaganda’ in Journal of Contemporary History, xxvii, no. 1 (Jan. 1992), pp 149–65. Deirdre McMahon informs me ‘David O'Neill’ was a pseudonym used by Gallagher; see also Alan McCarthy Newspapers and journalism in Cork, 1910–23: press, politics and revolution (Dublin, 2020), p. 262.
108 Irish Independent, 27 May 1950; Shearman, Ulster, pp 360–1.
109 Irish Press, 23 May 1950.
110 Ibid.
111 Northern Whig, 23 May 1949, 17 July 1950.
112 Belfast Telegraph, 8 Feb. 1962.
113 Ibid., 27 May 1954.
114 Irish Press, 29 May 1961.
115 Irish Times, 8 Apr. 1971.
116 Hugh Shearman, Northern Ireland, 1921–1971 (Belfast, 1971).
117 [Hugh Shearman], Northern Ireland: the hidden truth (Belfast, [1972?]), pp 14–16 (ascribed to Shearman by the catalogue of the Linenhall Library, Belfast).
118 Belfast News Letter, 5 Apr. 1972.
119 Hugh Shearman, News Letter, 1737–1987: a history of the oldest British daily newspaper (Belfast, 1987), p. 54.
120 S. C. Aveyard, No solution: the Labour government and the Northern Ireland conflict, 1974–1979 (Manchester, 2016), pp 173–96.
121 Irish Times, 27 Apr. 1974.
122 Information on Shearman's authorship provided by Gordon Lucy, former president of the Ulster Society, and confirmed by internal evidence. The present writer is a former Ulster Society member.
123 Shearman, The Ulster cover-up, pp 98, 129; see also idem, News Letter, p. 54.
124 Shearman, The Ulster cover-up, pp 54–9, 130, 133.
125 Ibid., p. 50.
126 Ibid., p. 41.
127 Ibid., pp 63–75.
128 Ibid., pp 1–10. For the (genuinely successful) record of the Housing Trust, see Marianne Elliott, Hearthlands: a memoir of the White City housing estate in Belfast (Belfast, 2017).
129 J. H. Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford, 1990), pp 166–9, 247; Shearman, The Ulster cover-up, p. 38.
130 Patrick Buckland, The factory of grievances: devolved government in Northern Ireland, 1921–39 (Dublin, 1979).
131 Shearman, The Ulster cover-up, pp 49–53, 61–2.
132 Ibid., pp 97–8, 105–08, 113–24, 152–3.
133 Ibid., pp 156–7.
134 Ibid., pp 128, 145.
135 Ibid., pp 124–6. Cf. Lindsay, Kennedy, The British Intelligence services in action (Dundalk, 1980)Google Scholar; Foot, Paul, Who framed Colin Wallace? (London, 1980)Google Scholar.
136 Shearman, The Ulster cover-up, pp 144–5.
137 Shearman, The Ulster cover-up, pp 156–8.
138 Hugh Shearman, ‘Karma and cancer’ in The Theosophist (Dec. 1997), accessed at http://www.katinkahesselink.net/other/shearman14.html (13 June 2018).
139 Tidrick, Kathryn, Empire and the English character: the illusion of authority (London, 1990)Google Scholar. Versions of this article were read as papers at the Contemporary Irish History Seminar, T.C.D. (Apr. 2018) and the American Conference for Irish Studies, Cork (June 2018). A much shorter version was published as Patrick Maume, ‘Shearman, Hugh (1915–99)’ in D.I.B. in Dec. 2017.
