| Based on an interview with Irish journalist Owen Bennett, this profile covers Coughlan’s involvement in student politics at University College Cork in the 1950s. This was followed by his emigration to Britain in 1958 and his participation in the Connolly Association there. During the early 1960’s he returned to Ireland to work as a lecturer at Trinity College Dublin. From then on he concentrated on pressure group politics through participation in the Dublin Wolfe Tone Society in the 1960s and subsequently in various organisations which were opposed to European integration and favoured a No vote in successive Irish referendums on the EU from the 1970s until 2009. He was also involved in the Crotty, McKenna and Coughlan court actions relating to fair referendum practice. |
