Big causes and small nations: Michael Sayers, writing, fascism, communism and Jewish-Irishness.

This article begins by examining a series of 1944 articles by Michael Sayers published in the New York newspaper PM and the official response denying the existence of anti-Semitism in Ireland they prompted. The content of the articles and the character of the official response to them are evaluated and the career of their author is then outlined. A Dublin-born Jewish writer, Sayers became politically active in the USA during the 1940s and, having been "blacklisted" as the Cold War intensified, returned to Europe to continue working mainly as a pseudonymous writer of television scripts. He was eventually able to return to New York where he died in 2010 aged 98. While "blacklisted" during the 1950s Sayers had a play staged under his real name in Dublin without controversy despite the repeated attacks being made in the city at that time on authors and actors whose alleged left-wing leanings rendered them objectionable to Catholic vigilantes. The paper concludes with an examination of this episode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]