Proinsias Mac Aonghusa
Proinsias Mac Aonghusa was an Irish journalist, writer, TV presenter and campaigner.
Mac Aonghusa was a broadcaster for Radio Éireann in 1952, and for RTÉ, UTV and BBC television from the 1960s. In 1962, he won a Jacob's Award for his Irish language broadcasting on RTÉ television.
He ran for election as a candidate of the Irish Labour Party, and became vice-chairman of the party. He encouraged the formation of the Young Labour League and edited and wrote an introduction to Corish Speaks, a collection of speeches by Brendan Corish, who was then leader of the party. He became involved in the republican Wolfe Tone Society in late 1966, and he was expelled from the Labour Party on 12 January 1967 for "activities injurious" to the party. He ran as an independent candidate in 1969, but thereafter became more concerned with the revival of the Irish language and with nationalist politics. His wife, Catherine McGuinness, also left the party at this time, and later became a justice of the Supreme Court of Ireland.
During 1974 and 1975, Mac Aonghusa worked as a United Nations Special Representative to southern Africa with Seán MacBride. He was an admirer of Charles Haughey whom he regularly praised in his column in the Sunday Press written under the pseudonym "Gulliver". He wrote several books, most in the Irish language and was a member of the Arts Council of Ireland for many years. He was chairman of Bord na Gaeilge, and president of Conradh na Gaeilge between 1989 and 1994.
