Hot Press Books has announced the publication of Power To The People: The Hot Press Years by Michael D. Higgins. The author's royalties for the book – which is dedicated to the late Sally O’Neill Sanchez – will go to the Irish aid agency Trócaire, with whom Sally worked. Michael D. Higgins was elected President of Ireland in 2011 and again, for a second term, in 2018.

The book will be published in Hardback and Trade Paperback. However, the Hardback edition, will be a limited edition, available exclusively from the Hot Press online shop. No copies will be available from any other online or retail outlet.

The Hardback limited edition – a special collector's item – will be signed by the author, and features an exclusive eight additional pages of pictures and visuals.

Purchasing the Hardback edition will also mean higher author's royalties going to Trócaire – and customers will also be able to save 10% off any other item on the Hot Press online shop.

You can purchase the exclusive Hardback edition or the Trade Paperback, HERE.

"May I thank Niall Stokes and all at Hot Press for the extraordinary commitment the putting together of this book represents," comments President Michael D. Higgins. "My time writing a regular column for the magazine, for over a decade, from 1983 to 1993 was for me, and remains, a period where issues and events would be engaged with truth and passion. There are many episodes of which Hot Press is the only record.

"The discipline of writing that fortnightly piece for Hot Press required me, regularly, to stand back and reflect deeply on the history and context of what I was doing – and why," he continues. "I put my heart and soul into the writing, developing and refining what I hoped to be a sense of immediate, human urgency. The full interaction of my work as a concerned politician and activist was informed by what I was writing. I am so glad to have had that opportunity – and it moves me greatly to have that work brought together now for everyone to see and read – and hopefully to enjoy."

Michael D. Higgins meeting orphans with two Somali aid workers at Garissa Camp in Northern Mogadishu

In the future President's 'farewell article' for Hot Press – which was published as he was appointed Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht in 1993 – he wrote that, for him, the column had been 'a kind of intellectual, political and spiritual diary'.

"It was that – and lots more besides," he says. "My most fervent hope now is that a new generation of young writers and political activists will rush past me to take up the challenges that face us in so many different ways, and help to create the genuinely equal, just, peaceful and compassionate society that is, I believe, possible.

"It is to be celebrated that an account of what was happening in the cruellest circumstances found its record in a music journal, Hot Press," he adds. "Hot Press is to be celebrated for all the vital and passionate work over the years both in promoting Irish music and contributing to a public discourse on global issues. My association with it is among my brightest memories of recall for me."

Hot Press editor Niall Stokes describes publishing Power To The People as "a great privilege".

"It was such a boost for all of us in Hot Press when the future President – then a Senator – agreed to write a column for the magazine, in 1983," he recalls. "We had such a marvellous adventure over the following ten years, during which the column played a major part in shaping, and re-shaping, the way young Irish people thought about politics – and in particular the way they thought about Ireland.

“Michael D's column was wide-ranging and free of conventional media constraints," he continues. "It could be devastatingly critical on the one hand, and open-minded, warm and inspiring on the other – but it always reflected the deeply-felt commitment to human rights and to the equality agenda that would ultimately see Ireland modernise in the most impressive way socially and culturally. That makes it an essential document of modern Ireland in-the-making.”

Caoimhe de Barra, the CEO of Trócaire, has also commented on the upcoming publication.

“We are incredibly grateful to President Higgins and Hot Press for their generosity, and are humbled by the desire to support Trócaire through this book," she says. "The President’s dedication of the book to Sally O’Neill is a fitting reflection of their friendship and the esteem in which she is held. We know that there are many people who have been connected with Trócaire, and the President, over the decades who will be eager to read this book, which promises to reflect the President’s lifelong commitment to social justice."

Sally O’Neill Sanchez joined Trócaire in 1978, dedicating her life to working with the poor, the marginalised and victims of human rights abuses on behalf of the charity. She died in a tragic road accident in Guatemala in 2019, at the age of 68. She was described as “the heartbeat of Trócaire” by the current CEO of the Irish charity, Caoimhe de Barra. Trócaire supported 1.58 million people in 23 countries in 2022/23. Trócaire is active in Gaza, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Ukraine, among other war-torn places.

Power To The People (Hot Press Books) will be published in November, 2024. The Hardback edition of Power to The People is available only (€28.95) from hotpress.com/shop; the large-format paperback (€15.95) is also available from hotpress.com/shop and booksellers nationwide.

Michael D. Higgins, photographed in 1983

THE BACKGROUND TO POWER TO THE PEOPLE

Michael D. Higgins was first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Labour Party TD for Galway West, in February 1981. However, in what was one of the most volatile periods in Irish political history, he lost his seat in the third general election within a frantic 21-month period, which took place in November 1982.

Michael D. was a Senator, representing the National University constituency, when Hot Press invited him to write a regular column for the then-fortnightly magazine in 1983. One of the most radical ever voices in Irish politics, he was given a platform to expound on his political views without fear or favour – and thus to speak to a young audience that would ultimately take him, and his powerful, humanitarian worldview, to heart.

He was re-elected to the Dáil in 1987, and remained writing his column for the magazine, for another six years, until he was appointed Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, in the Fianna Fáil-Labour coalition government which took the reins of power in 1993. This was the first time that the arts – and culture – had been given its own Department and he decided then that it was essential to concentrate fully on his Ministerial duties to ensure that he made the most of the unique opportunity he had carved out in the coalition discussions and negotiations.

Power To The People is a collection of the opinion pieces, reports, ideas and reflections expanded on in a groundbreaking column that helped to shape the course of Irish history afterwards.

THE COLUMN WAS FULL OF DYNAMIC VIEWS AND POWERFUL WRITING

During those ten years on the frontline with Hot Press, the future President wrote brilliantly and passionately about many of the most important issues affecting Ireland – and also the world at large – then… and now.

– He travelled widely, reporting for Hot Press from Chile, Libya, El Salvador, and Gaza among other global hotspots.
– He was an unapologetic and forthright critic of US foreign policy under Ronald Reagan, and of the excesses of the Margaret Thatcher years in the UK.
– He wrote about the divorce and abortion referendums that were bitterly fought in Ireland during the 1980s.
– He argued persuasively for women’s rights, for equality for Travellers, for the legalisation of LGBTQI+ relationships, for humanitarian causes and against apartheid.
– He waxed eloquent about the arts, and about culture, in a style and tone that was irreverent and iconoclastic, fitting perfectly with the overall ethos of the magazine.

It was visionary, often provocative, egalitarian stuff that pulled no punches. His work made inspiring reading then. Even more so now, as it underlines the exhilarating reality that it really is possible to make positive changes, even in the most monolithic, conservative societies.

THE WORK OF A VISIONARY AND AN OUTSTANDING INTELLECTUAL

In the column, over a decade, Michael D. Higgins had the opportunity to develop and flesh out the radical, human-rights based, culturally-rooted agenda that he would take into his role, first as Minister for the Arts, and later as President of Ireland.

To read these brilliantly written, sometimes apocalyptic dispatches now is to see a major politician and globally acclaimed intellectual being afforded the freedom to flex his visionary muscles and sharpen his idealism in the most extraordinary way.

Not only that. Through his writing for the magazine, he built friendships and support among the music and artistic community, and rose in popularity with the magazine’s young, politically engaged audience. It was the audience that, in a large part, would support him and ultimately sweep him into office as the President of Ireland not once but twice.

To paraphrase Bob Dylan in ’Tangled Up In Blue', all of these words rang true and glowed like burning coal. They still do, as they come pouring off of every page, like they were written in his soul. Which they were. There is no mistaking that.

Power To The People by Michael D. Higgins is far more than a historical document. It was history in the making then. It still is.

Power To The People will be available in all good bookshops in the final week of November 2024. The Hardback edition, and the large-format paperback, are available to pre-order now.