‘Death of an evil man’. The title of Seán MacBride's obituary in the Sunday Telegraph, on 17 January 1988, was breathtakingly direct. The article itself was equally hard-hitting, describing MacBride as a ‘murderer … [with] a psychopathic inability to understand those with whom he disagreed’, and claiming that two principles ‘guided his entire political life. The first was hatred of Great Britain; the second a worship of violence.’ The following day, a cardinal, seven bishops and a papal nuncio concelebrated MacBride's funeral mass at Dublin's Pro-Cathedral. Among the congregation were the President of Ireland, the Taoiseach, leaders of all Irish political parties, and members of the diplomatic corps. There were also representatives of a vast number of organisations that had reason to remember Seán MacBride: the African National Congress, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the 1916–1921 Club, Fianna Éireann, Sinn Féin, Republican Sinn Féin, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Irish Anti- Apartheid Movement, Trócaire, Amnesty International, and the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Completing the attendance were members of the Irish judiciary and bar, writers and journalists, and the rock group U2.

In the years after his death, MacBride – who had in his lifetime earned the notable distinction of winning both the Nobel and the Lenin Peace Prizes – received further accolades. The International Peace Bureau created the Seán MacBride Peace Prize in his honour; the Irish section headquarters of Amnesty International was renamed Seán MacBride House; and there was created Seán MacBride Square in Wexford Town, Sean MacBridestraat in Amsterdam, and Seán MacBride Street in Windhoek, Namibia, bisecting Robert Mugabe Avenue.

MacBride in Scholarly Literature

The binary nature of responses to MacBride's death mirrored the duality of his life: French-born but fervently Irish nationalist in identity; an internationally renowned humanitarian activist but wedded to his militant Irish republican roots; Nobel Peace Laureate but Chief-of-Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Despite his international fame, including the dubious honour of lending his name to the ill-advised MacBride Principles, Seán MacBride remains best known in Irish political history for his leadership of the political party Clann na Poblachta and his period as Minister for External Affairs in the inter-party government of 1948 to 1951.