Patrick Pollen, a British stained glass artist who spends most of his life working in Ireland, is born Patrick La Primaudaye Pollen in London on January 12, 1928.
In 1952, Pollen’s father takes him to see Evie Hone‘s “Crucifixion and Last Supper” window in Eton College Chapel. Upon seeing it he announces, “That’s what I want to do.” He moves to Dublin to study with the stained glass cooperative Evie Hone is a member of, An Túr Gloine, which is run by Catherine O’Brien and she and Hone become his mentors. When Hone dies in 1955, she leaves him her brushes.
Following the Second Vatican Council, newly designed churches feature less stained glass, and Pollen finds he is receiving less commissions. As a consequence he and his family move to the United States in 1981. They settle in Winston-Salem, North Carolina but there is very little work there and in 1997 they return in Ireland, living in his wife’s native County Wexford.
Pollen marries sculptor Nell Murphy in 1963, with the couple buying a house in Dublin in which Pollen had his studio. Murphy works in plaster, clay and stone, her works often featured in churches with those of her husband. They hav four sons, Peter, Ciaran, Laurence and Christopher, and a daughter, Brid.
Pollen dies on November 30, 2010, in Enniscorthy, County Wexford. His remains are cremated and the location of his ashes is unknown.
European Movement Ireland (EM Ireland) (Irish: Gluaiseacht na hEorpa in Éirinn) is founded in Dublin on January 11, 1954. EM Ireland is an independent not-for-profit organisation that campaigns for every Irish person to get involved in the European Union (EU) and by doing so, help shape it. It is the oldest Irish organisation dealing with the EU, pre-dating Ireland’s membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 by almost twenty years. The organisation is headed by Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Noelle Connell. Julie Sinnamon acts as Chair of the EM Ireland Board.
These seven signatories lay the first stone paving Ireland’s way to full membership of the EU. The aim of the Irish Council is to inform Irish individuals and organisations about the EU. One of its primary objectives is for Ireland to gain membership of the European Communities (EC) (principally the European Economic Community (EEC), as the EU is then known). Former TaoisighGarret FitzGerald and Jack Lynch, and former PresidentMary Robinson back the initiative. After a referendum is held on the Third Amendment of the Irish Constitution, which is overwhelmingly approved by voters in May 1972, Ireland joins the European Communities as a full member state on January 1, 1973.
The Irish Council later becomes European Movement Ireland. Today the organisation claims to act as source of information for Irish citizens regarding the work of the EU and its stated aim is to promote reasoned robust and fair debate about EU in Ireland.
EM Ireland is part of a pan-European network. European Movement International is a lobbying association that coordinates the efforts of associations and national councils with the goal of promoting European integration, and disseminating information about it. It seeks to encourage and facilitate the active participation of citizens and civil society organisations in the European Union as it develops. The European Movement network is represented in over 41 countries and has over 20 international organisations as members. The current President of European Movement is the former MEP from Belgium, Guy Verhofstadt. For a full list of all European Movement offices, and an outline of the history of the international network visit the EM International website at http://www.europeanmovement.eu/
Callan is born on December 22, 1799, in Darver, County Louth. He attends school at an academy in Dundalk. His local parish priest, Father Andrew Levins, then takes him in hand as an altar boy and Mass server and sees him start the priesthood at Navanseminary. He enters Maynooth College in 1816. In his third year at Maynooth, he studies natural and experimental philosophy under Dr. Cornelius Denvir. He introduces the experimental method into his teaching and has an interest in electricity and magnetism.
Callan is ordained a priest in 1823 and goes to Rome to study at Sapienza University, obtaining a doctorate in divinity in 1826. While in Rome he becomes acquainted with the work of the pioneers in electricity such as Luigi Galvani (1737–98), who is a pioneer in bioelectricity, and Alessandro Volta (1745–1827), who is known especially for the development of the electric battery. In 1826, he returns to Maynooth as the new Professor of Natural Philosophy (now called physics), where he also begins working with electricity in his basement laboratory at the college.
Influenced by William Sturgeon and Michael Faraday, Callan begins work on the idea of the induction coil in 1834. He invents the first induction coil in 1836. An induction coil produces an intermittent high voltagealternating current from a low voltage direct current supply. It has a primary coil consisting of a few turns of thick wire wound around an iron core and subjected to a low voltage (usually from a battery). Wound on top of this is a secondary coil made up of many turns of thin wire. An iron armature and make-and-break mechanism repeatedly interrupts the current to the primary coil, producing a high voltage, rapidly alternating current in the secondary circuit.
Callan invents the induction coil because he needs to generate a higher level of electricity than currently available. He takes a bar of soft iron, about 2 feet long, and wraps it around with two lengths of copper wire, each about 200 feet long. He connects the beginning of the first coil to the beginning of the second. Finally, he connects a battery, much smaller than the enormous contrivance just described, to the beginning and end of winding one. He finds that when the battery contact is broken, a shock can be felt between the first terminal of the first coil and the second terminal of the second coil.
Further experimentation shows how the coil device can bring the shock from a small battery up the strength level of a big battery. So Callan tries making a bigger coil. With a battery of only 14 seven-inch plates, the device produces power enough for an electric shock “so strong that a person who took it felt the effects of it for several days.” He thinks of his creation as a kind of electromagnet, but what he actually makes is a primitive induction transformer.
Callan’s induction coil also uses an interrupter that consists of a rocking wire that repeatedly dips into a small cup of mercury (similar to the interrupters used by Charles Grafton Page). Because of the action of the interrupter, which can make and break the current going into the coil, he calls his device the “repeater.” Actually, this device is the world’s first transformer. He induces a high voltage in the second wire, starting with a low voltage in the adjacent first wire. The faster he interrupts the current, the bigger the spark. In 1837 he produces his giant induction machine using a mechanism from a clock to interrupt the current 20 times a second. It generates 15-inch sparks, an estimated 60,000 volts and the largest artificial bolt of electricity then seen.
Callan experiments with designing batteries after he finds the models available to him at the time to be insufficient for research in electromagnetism. Some previous batteries had used rare metals such as platinum or unresponsive materials like carbon and zinc. He finds that he can use inexpensive cast iron instead of platinum or carbon. For his Maynooth battery he uses iron casting for the outer casing and places a zinc plate in a porous pot (a pot that had an inside and outside chamber for holding two different types of acid) in the centre. Using a single fluid cell, he disposes of the porous pot and two different fluids. He is able to build a battery with just a single solution.
While experimenting with batteries, Callan also builds the world’s largest battery at that time. To construct this battery, he joins together 577 individual batteries (“cells“), which use over 30 gallons of acid. Since instruments for measuring current or voltages have not yet been invented, he measures the strength of a battery by measuring how much weight his electromagnet can lift when powered by the battery. Using his giant battery, his electromagnet lifts 2 tons. The Maynooth battery goes into commercial production in London. He also discovers an early form of galvanisation to protect iron from rusting when he is experimenting on battery design, and he patents the idea.
Callan dies at the age of 64 in Maynooth, County Kildare, on January 10, 1864. He is buried in the cemetery in St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.
The Callan Building on the north campus of Maynooth University, a university which is part of St. Patrick’s College until 1997, is named in his honour. In addition, Callan Hall in the south campus, is used through the 1990s for first year science lectures including experimental & mathematical physics, chemistry and biology. The Nicholas Callan Memorial Prize is an annual prize awarded to the best final year student in Experimental Physics.
In 1956, Whitaker is appointed Secretary of the Department of Finance, at the age of thirty-nine. His appointment takes place at a time when Ireland’s economy is in deep depression. Economic growth is non-existent, inflation apparently insoluble, unemployment rife, living standards low and emigration at a figure not far below the birth rate. He believes that free trade, with increased competition and the end of protectionism, will become inevitable and that jobs will have to be created by a shift from agriculture to industry and services. He forms a team of officials within the department which produce a detailed study of the economy, culminating in a plan recommending policies for improvement. The plan is accepted by the government and is transformed into a white paper which becomes known as the First Programme for Economic Expansion, and quite unusually is published with his name attached in November 1958. The programme becomes known as the “Grey Book” which many argue brings the stimulus of foreign investment into the Irish economy. However, other reforms such as the Department of Industry and Commerce‘s export profits tax relief introduced in 1956, are opposed by Whitaker.
In 1977, Taoiseach Jack Lynch nominates Whitaker as a member of the 14th Seanad. He serves as a Senator from 1977 to 1981, where he sits as an independent member.
In 1981, Whitaker is nominated to the 15th Seanad by Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, where he serves until 1982. FitzGerald also appoints him to chair a Committee of Inquiry into the Irish penal system, and he chairs a Parole Board or Sentence Review Group for several years.
Whitaker also serves as Chancellor of the National University of Ireland (NUI) from 1976 to 1996. He was also President of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and as such, a member of the Board of Governors and Guardians of the National Gallery of Ireland, from 1985 to 1987. He has a very strong love for the Irish language throughout his career and the collection of Irish poetry, An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed 1600–1900, edited by Seán Ó Tuama and Thomas Kinsella is dedicated to Whitaker. From 1995 to 1996 he chairs the Constitution Review Group, an independent expert group established by the government, which publishes its report in July 1996.
Whitaker receives many national and international honours and tributes for his achievements during his lifetime, most notably the conferral of “Irishman of the 20th Century” in 2001 and Greatest Living Irish Person in 2002. In November 2014, the Institute of Banking confers an Honorary Fellowship on him and creates an annual T. K. Whitaker Scholarship in his name. In April 2015, he is presented with a lifetime achievement award by University College Dublin‘s Economics Society for his outstanding contribution to Ireland’s economic policy.
In November 2016, to mark his centenary year, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council acknowledges Whitaker’s “outstanding and progressive contribution to Irish public service and to society.” The Cathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Cormac Devlin, presents a special award to Whitaker which is accepted by Ken Whitaker on behalf of his father.
Whitaker marries Nora Fogarty in 1941 and they have six children. After his wife’s death in 1994, he remarries, to Mary Moore in 2005. The couple is invited to Áras an Uachtaráin in 2006 for his 90th birthday by the President of IrelandMary McAleese. Mary Moore Whitaker dies in 2008. T. K. Whitaker turns 100 in December 2016 and dies a month later on January 9, 2017, having survived both of his wives. He is buried at Shanganagh Cemetery, Shankill, Dublin.
The official statement at the end of the four-hour meeting states that progress has been made in “areas of consultation and co-operation.” The Taoiseach says they discussed industry, tourism, electricity supply, and trade, as well as tariff concessions, and “measures taken by both governments to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease from Britain.”
Afterward, O’Neill returns to Northern Ireland by a different route in order to avoid any possible demonstration. Paisley has been developing a high profile for himself with his attacks on O’Neill in recent months. But he misses the opportunity to protest on this occasion. The next day he issues a statement regretting O’Neill’s return home. “I would advise Mr. Lynch to keep him,” Paisley announces.
Five years earlier, in 1963, O’Neill becomes Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. From very early on, he tries to break down sectarian barriers between the two Northern communities. He also seeks to improve relations with the Republic of Ireland by eradicating the impasse in relations that has existed since the 1920s. He invites then-Taoiseach Seán Lemass to meet him at Stormont on January 14, 1965. Lemass courageously accepts the invitation. At their initial meeting, when they are briefly alone, Lemass says to O’Neill, ”I shall get into terrible trouble for this!” The Northern premier replies, ”No, Mr. Lemass, it is I who will get into terrible trouble.”
O’Neill makes his return visit to Dublin on February 9, 1965, and the two leaders agree to co-operate on tourism and electricity. It is Lemass who makes the most significant concessions, because the Constitution of Ireland does not recognise the existence of the North. Article 2 of the Constitution actually claims sovereignty over the whole island. Thus, by formally meeting the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, O’Neill claims that Lemass accorded him “a de facto recognition.”
The Taoiseach then bolsters this at their follow-up meeting in Iveagh House, Dublin, three weeks later. ”The place card in front of me at Iveagh House bore the inscription, Prime Minister of Northern Ireland,” O’Neill proudly explains. Surely this is tantamount to formal recognition. But many Unionists still have grave reservations about dealing with the Republic of Ireland.
In 1966, Ian Paisley establishes the Protestant Unionist Party (PUP) to oppose O’Neill. He rouses sectarian tension by holding mass demonstrations at which he brands O’Neill as the “Ally of Popery.” Nevertheless, public opinion polls indicate support for O’Neill’s leadership from both communities in the North.
After Jack Lynch replaced Lemass as Taoiseach in late 1966, O’Neill continues with his efforts to improve relations with the Dublin government by inviting Lynch to Stormont Castle. The Taoiseach travels to Belfast by car on December 11, 1967. There is no formal announcement of his visit, but word is leaked to Paisley after the Taoiseach’s car crosses the border.
Paisley arrives at Stormont with his wife and a handful of supporters, just minutes before the Taoiseach. With snow on the ground, two of Paisley’s church ministers, Rev. Ivan Foster and Rev. William McCrea, begin throwing snowballs at Lynch’s car. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) promptly grabs the two ministers. While they are being bundled into a police car, Paisley is bellowing, “No Pope here!” Lynch asks his traveling companion, T. K. Whitaker, “Which one of us does he think is the Pope?”
Paisley demands to be arrested by the RUC, and actually tries to get into the police car with his two colleagues, but he is pulled away. The two clergymen are taken to an RUC station and quickly released. Lynch ridicules the protest. “It was a seasonal touch,” he says. “It reminds me of what happens when I go through a village at home and the boys come and throw snowballs.”
Paisley says he had come to protest against “the smuggling” of Lynch into Stormont. If he had known about the visit earlier, he says that he would have brought along 10,000 people to protest. Denouncing O’Neill, as a “snake in the grass,” he goes on to accuse Lynch of being “a murderer of our kith and kin.” In an editorial, the Unionist Newsletter proclaims that ”there is no doubt that Capt. O’Neill has the full support of his colleagues and of the country.”
O’Neill’s four formal meetings with Lynch and his predecessor contribute to a thaw in relations at the summit between Belfast and Dublin, but the whole process is exploited by others to fan the flames of Northern sectarianism.
People do not realise it in early 1968, but Northern Ireland is about to explode. On October 5, 1968, people gather in Derry for a civil rights march that has been banned by Stormont. When the march begins, it is viciously attacked by the RUC. This ignites a series of further protests, which ultimately leads to Bloody Sunday, and the eruption of the Troubles for the next quarter of a century.
(From: “Meetings helped thaw relations before the North exploded,” Irish Examiner, http://www.irishexaminer.com, January 8, 2018)
Louisa (Louie) Bennett, suffragette, trade unionist, and peace activist, is born on January 7, 1870, in Garville Avenue, Rathgar, Dublin, the eldest daughter of James Cavendish Bennett, a prosperous auctioneer, and his wife Susan (née Bolger). She is brought up at Temple Hill, Blackrock, and educated at Alexandra College, and at an academy for young ladies in London, where she and her sisters form an Irish League. She goes on to study singing in Bonn, Germany. Already as a teenager she shows an interest in writing, her first literary effort being Memoirs of the Temple Road in the 80s. Afterward she publishes two unsuccessful romantic novels, The Proving of Priscilla (1902) and A Prisoner of His Word (1908), the latter set in County Down in the aftermath of the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
Bennett turns her attention to women’s issues and by 1910 has become involved in the suffrage movement, initially through her reading of the suffrage monthly TheIrish Citizen. In 1911, she co-founds, with her life-long friend and colleague Helen Chenevix, the Irish Women’s Suffrage Federation, an umbrella organisation, which by 1913 has connected fifteen Irish suffrage societies and has established links with Europe and the United States. She and Chenevix are the organisation’s first honorary secretaries. She is also associated with the Irish Women’s Franchise League, for which she runs public speaking classes. However, as the divide between militants and opponents of the use of violence become more pronounced, Bennett, as a confirmed pacifist, who endorses what she calls “constructive, rather than destructive action,” distances herself from the league, and through her involvement in the production of TheIrish Citizen seeks to sideline the militants.
Bennett’s concerns are not limited to the question of women’s franchise. As founder of the Irish Women’s Reform League, she not only addressea the suffrage question, but examines many social issues concerning women. The league focuses on working conditions, monitors court cases involving women, and demands school meals and better education. She is among those who assist in the relief effort at Liberty Hall during the 1913 strike and lockout in Dublin, and she appeals for funds for strikers’ families through TheIrish Citizen. In the period that follows she maintains her links with the labour movement. She often opposes the direct, uncompromising approach of both James Connolly and Helena Molony, and argues that labour and women’s issues can only be hampered by any affiliation with nationalist politics. The aftermath of the Easter Rising, and in particular, the murder of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, causes her to revise some of her views on nationalism. In late 1916 she accepts an invitation to reorganise the Irish Women Workers’ Union (IWWU), on the understanding that she would have complete independence from Liberty Hall. Assisted by Chenevix and Father John Flanagan, she re-creates the union along professional lines, and by 1918 its membership has risen dramatically from a few hundred to 5,300. She consistently defends its separatist stance, arguing that women’s concerns in a male-dominated union will always be of secondary importance.
Throughout World War I Bennett campaigns for peace, and she is selected as the Irish representative to the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She leads the IWWU in its opposition to the attempted introduction of conscription in 1918, and in 1920 she travels to the United States to highlight Black and Tan atrocities (she later meets David Lloyd George and demands the removal of the Black and Tans from Ireland). As a member of the Women’s Peace Committee, she acts as a mediator during the Irish Civil War.
In 1925, Bennett is appointed to an Irish Trades Union Congress (ITUC) committee to promote a scheme of working class education with the assistance of the labour movement. Her interest in adult education later leads to her involvement with The People’s College. A member of the national executive of the ITUC (1927–32, 1944–50), she becomes the first female president of the congress in 1932. She serves a second presidential term in 1947. Her knowledge of labour issues is officially acknowledged by the Irish government in 1932, when she is sent as a representative to Geneva to put forward the case of Irish women workers. In 1938 she delivers a paper entitled Industrialism in an Agrarian Country to the International Relations Institute in the Netherlands.
Despite the depth of Bennett’s involvement with the union movement, she has ambitions outside trade unionism, and in 1938 she lets her name be put forward by the IWWU as a congress candidate for election to the senate, but this comes to nothing. In that year she is appointed to the government commission on vocational organisation (1938–43). In 1943, she is elected as a Labour Party member of the Dún Laoghaire borough council. As a councillor she consistently lobbies for improved housing and is instrumental in the establishment of Dún Laoghaire’s housing council in 1949. She had refused a labour nomination in the 1918 general election, but she stands for Dublin County Council and Dáil Éireann in 1944, in both cases unsuccessfully. She is the only Labour Party member to criticise the party’s support for the Fianna Fáil minority government of 1932, arguing that it is “never right or wise to co-operate with another party with fundamentally different principles.” As an elected member of the Labour Party executive, she represents Ireland at the International Labour Organization in Europe. She is also a representative at the League of Nations.
Throughout her public career Bennett consistently condemns colonialism, fascism, and armaments expenditure. She is possibly best remembered for her leadership in the laundry workers’ strike of 1945, during which IWWU members successfully fight for a fortnight‘s paid holiday. Her management of the IWWU, which lasts until 1955, is marked by determination and diplomacy, though she often uses threatened resignations as a means of controlling her colleagues. She died, unmarried, on November 25, 1956, in Killiney, County Dublin.
(From: “Bennett, Louisa (‘Louie’)” by Frances Clarke, Dictionary of Irish Biography, October 2009)
Bowman works mostly as a freelance journalist. He co-presents a radio show, The Rude Awakening, on Dublin’s FM104 with Scott Williams, George Hellis and Margaret Callanan for two years between 1993 and 1994 before joining the Sunday Independent newspaper as a columnist. He later presents television programmes on RTÉ, such as the quiz show Dodge the Question.
Bowman dies in a fall at his home on Fitzgerald Street in Harold’s Cross, Dublin, on March 6, 2000. He is found lying in the kitchen near the foot of the stairs. His death is believed to be the result of a fall down the stairs or from a stool, which is found nearby. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Glasnevin, County Dublin. Tributes are paid to him by party political leaders. He is survived by his parents, his sister Emma, his brothers Abie and Daniel and his only son Saul Philbin Bowman.
TaoiseachBertie Ahern says that he is deeply saddened on learning the news of Bowman’s death. His thoughts and prayers he says are with his family at this very sad time.
The leader of the Labour Party, Ruairi QuinnTD, expresses his shock and sadness on hearing of the death. He says that Bowman was without doubt one of the bright lights of Irish journalism. He extends his deepest sympathies to Bowman’s son, Saul, and to his parents John and Eimer.
The Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, says that few people he knew brought a smile to the face of anyone they met more readily. He says that his infectious good humour and iconoclastic attitude to life conveyed itself to all with whom he came into contact. He adds that Bowman will be missed for many years to come.
The editor of the Sunday Independent, Aengus Fanning, says that Bowman was one of the most brilliant journalists of his generation.
The Kingsmill massacre, also referred to as the Whitecross massacre, is a mass shooting that takes place on January 5, 1976, near the village of Whitecross in south County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Gunmen stop a minibus carrying eleven Protestant workmen, line them up alongside it and shoot them. Only one victim survives, despite having been shot 18 times. A Catholic man on the minibus is allowed to go free. A group calling itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force claims responsibility. It says the shooting is retaliation for a string of attacks on Catholic civilians in the area by Loyalists, particularly the killing of six Catholics the night before. The Kingsmill massacre is the climax of a string of tit for tat killings in the area during the mid-1970s, and is one of the deadliest mass shootings of the Troubles.
On January 5, 1976, just after 5:30 p.m., a red Ford Transit minibus is carrying sixteen textile workers home from their workplace in Glenanne. Five are Catholics and eleven are Protestants. Four of the Catholics get out at Whitecross and the bus continues along the rural road to Bessbrook. As the bus clears the rise of a hill, it is stopped by a man in combat uniform standing on the road and flashing a torch. The workers assume they are being stopped and searched by the British Army. As the bus stops, eleven gunmen in combat uniform and with blackened faces emerge from the hedges. A man “with a pronounced English accent” begins talking. He orders the workers to get out of the bus and to line up facing it with their hands on the roof. He then asks, “Who is the Catholic?” The only Catholic is Richard Hughes. His workmates, now fearing that the gunmen are loyalists who have come to kill him, try to stop him from identifying himself. However, when Hughes steps forward the gunman tell him to “get down the road and don’t look back.”
The lead gunman then says, “Right,” and the others immediately open fire on the workers. The eleven men are shot at very close range with automatic rifles, which includes Armalites, an M1 carbine and an M1 Garand. A total of 136 rounds are fired in less than a minute. The men are shot at waist height and fall to the ground, some falling on top of each other, either dead or wounded. When the initial burst of gunfire stops, the gunmen reload their weapons. The order is given to “Finish them off,” and another burst of gunfire is fired into the heaped bodies of the workmen. One of the gunmen also walks among the dying men and shoots them each in the head with a pistol as they lay on the ground. Ten of them die at the scene: John Bryans (46), Robert Chambers (19), Reginald Chapman (25), Walter Chapman (23), Robert Freeburn (50), Joseph Lemmon (46), John McConville (20), James McWhirter (58), Robert Walker (46) and Kenneth Worton (24). Alan Black (32) is the only one who survives. He had been shot eighteen times and one of the bullets had grazed his head. He says, “I didn’t even flinch because I knew if I moved there would be another one.”
After carrying out the shooting, the gunmen calmly walk away. Shortly after, a married couple comes upon the scene of the killings and begin praying beside the victims. They find the badly wounded Alan Black lying in a ditch. When an ambulance arrives, Black is taken to a hospital in Newry, where he is operated on and survives. The Catholic worker, Richard Hughes, manages to stop a car and is driven to Bessbrook Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) station, where he raises the alarm. One of the first police officers on the scene is Billy McCaughey, who had taken part in the Reavey killings. He says, “When we arrived it was utter carnage. Men were lying two or three together. Blood was flowing, mixed with water from the rain.” Some of the Reavey family also come upon the scene of the Kingsmill massacre while driving to hospital to collect the bodies of their relatives. Johnston Chapman, the uncle of victims Reginald and Walter Chapman, says the dead workmen were “just lying there like dogs, blood everywhere”. At least two of the victims are so badly mutilated by gunfire that immediate relatives are prevented from identifying them. One relative says the hospital mortuary “was like a butcher’s shop with bodies lying on the floor like slabs of meat.”
Nine of the dead are from the village of Bessbrook, while the bus driver, Robert Walker, is from Mountnorris. Four of the men are members of the Orange Order and two are former members of the security forces: Kenneth Worton is a former Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier while Joseph Lemmon is a former Ulster Special Constabulary (USC) officer. Alan Black is appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours, for his cross-community work since the massacre.
The next day, a telephone caller claims responsibility for the attack on behalf of the “South Armagh Republican Action Force” or “South Armagh Reaction Force.” He says that it was retaliation for the Reavey–O’Dowd killings the night before, and that there will be “no further action on our part” if loyalists stop their attacks. He adds that the group has no connection with the Irish Republican Army (IRA). The IRA denies responsibility for the killings as it is on a ceasefire at the time.
However, a 2011 report by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) concludes that Provisional IRA members were responsible and that the event was planned before the Reavey and O’Dowd killings which had taken place the previous day, and that “South Armagh Republican Action Force” was a cover name. Responding to the report, Sinn Féin spokesman Mitchel McLaughlin says that he does “not dispute the sectarian nature of the killings” but continues to believe “the denials by the IRA that they were involved”. Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) Assemblyman Dominic Bradley calls on Sinn Féin to “publicly accept that the HET’s forensic evidence on the firearms used puts Provisional responsibility beyond question” and to stop “deny[ing] that the Provisional IRA was in the business of organising sectarian killings on a large scale.”
The massacre is condemned by the British and Irish governments, the main political parties and Catholic and Protestant church leaders. Merlyn Rees, the British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, condemns the massacre and forecasts that the violence will escalate, saying “This is the way it will go on unless someone in their right senses stops it, it will go on.”
The British government immediately declares County Armagh a “Special Emergency Area” and deploys hundreds of extra troops and police in the area. A battalion of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) is called out and the Spearhead Battalion is sent into the area. Two days after the massacre, the British Prime MinisterHarold Wilson announces that the Special Air Service (SAS) is being sent into South Armagh. This is the first time that SAS operations in Northern Ireland are officially acknowledged. It is believed that some SAS personnel had already been in Northern Ireland for a few years. Units and personnel under SAS control are alleged to be involved in loyalist attacks.
The Kingsmill massacre is the last in the series of sectarian killings in South Armagh during the mid-1970s. According to Willie Frazer of Families Acting for Innocent Relatives (FAIR), this is a result of a deal between the local UVF and IRA groups.
(Pictured: The minibus carrying the textile factory workers is left peppered with bullet holes and blood stains the ground after the massacre, as detectives patrol the scene of the murders)
Campbell is born on February 1, 1763, in County Down, Ireland (now Northern Ireland), and is raised as an Anglican. He is ordained a minister in the Scottish Seceder Presbyterian Church sometime after graduating from the University of Glasgow in 1786. He leaves Ireland for the United States in April 1807. This move is prompted by the advice of his physician. Once in America, disagreement arises between him and other Presbyterians over certain points related to Calvinist doctrine and the administration of the Eucharist.
When their study of the New Testament leads the reformers to begin to practice baptism by immersion, the nearby Redstone Baptist Association invites Brush Run Church to join with them for the purpose of fellowship. The reformers agree, provided that they will be “allowed to preach and to teach whatever they learned from the Scriptures.”
Thomas and his son, Alexander, work within the Redstone Baptist Association during the period 1815 through 1824. While both the Campbells and the Baptists share practices of baptism by immersion and congregational polity, it is soon clear that the Campbells and their associates are not traditional Baptists. Within the Redstone Baptist Association, some of the Baptist leaders consider the differences intolerable when Alexander Campbell begins publishing a journal, Christian Baptist, which promotes reform. The Campbells anticipated the conflict and move their membership to a congregation of the Mahoning Baptist Association in 1824.
Campbell is a student of the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke. While he does not explicitly use the term “essentials,” in the Declaration and Address, Campbell proposes the same solution to religious division as had been advanced earlier by Herbert and Locke: “[R]educe religion to a set of essentials upon which all reasonable persons might agree.” The essentials he identifies are those practices for which the Bible provides “a ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ either in express terms or by approved precedent.” Unlike Locke, who sees the earlier efforts by Puritans as inherently divisive, he argues for “a complete restoration of apostolic Christianity.” He believes that creeds serve to divide Christians. He also believes that the Bible is clear enough that anyone can understand it and, thus, creeds are unnecessary.
Campbell combines the Enlightenment approach to unity with the Reformed and Puritan traditions of restoration. The Enlightenment affects the Campbell movement in two ways. First, it provides the idea that Christian unity can be achieved by finding a set of essentials that all reasonable people can agree on. The second is the concept of a rational faith that is formulated and defended on the basis of a set of facts derived from the Bible.
Thomas dies on January 4, 1854, in Bethany, West Virginia, and is buried next to his wife in the Campbell family cemetery.
O’Connell is selected by Fine Gael for the 2016 Irish general election to “recapture” their seat in Dublin Bay South from Lucinda Creighton, who had left the party in 2013 over her objection to the party’s position on abortion and in 2015 founded Renua, an anti-abortion party. During the campaign, O’Connell called Creighton’s anti-abortion views “incredibly sanctimonious” and suggests that Creighton is an “out of touch career politician” whose views on abortion are borne out of a lack of connection with the real world. The Irish Independent refers to these comments as O’Connell “tearing strips off” of Creighton. In the election, O’Connell is elected, while Creighton loses her seat.
In her time in the Dáil, O’Connell campaigns in favour of abortion rights as well as pushing for more funding for healthcare services in Ireland.
In October 2016, O’Connell responds to comments by the Archbishop of DublinDiarmuid Martin that TDs should remember their faith when legislating for abortion in Ireland by stating, “I don’t see why the archbishop’s views are in any way relevant. I don’t see why Archbishop Martin should be getting involved in women’s health issues. It is the same as asking my four-year-old. They [the Church] are entitled to their opinion, but I don’t put any weight in them. I don’t see what involvement the Catholic Church should have in women’s health issues”.
In November 2017, O’Connell confronts Barry Walsh, a member of Fine Gael’s executive council, with a dossier of tweets documenting that he repeatedly and frequently derogates women politicians, often calling them bitches, including fellow members of Fine Gael. After the leader of Fine Gael and TaoiseachLeo Varadkar comments that Walsh should resign, he does so.
O’Connell loses her seat at the 2020 Irish general election, placing 5th in the 4-seat constituency. In an August 2020 interview, she attributes her loss, in part, to being the running mate of the Minister for Housing, Eoghan Murphy, in an election fought over an ongoing housing crisis in Ireland.
On May 7, 2021, O’Connell declares she will not seek to be the Fine Gael candidate for the 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election. She suggests she will not be able to win a party selection again due to her relationship with the Fine Gael leadership souring in the meantime, partially because of her vocal support of Simon Coveney over Leo Varadkar in the 2017 Fine Gael leadership election. She also suggests many local Fine Gael branch members in Dublin South Bay regard her as an outsider and a “parachute candidate” due to the fact she is originally from County Westmeath, and have turned against her over this. The Phoenix offers the view that O’Connell would not be nominated because she has turned the Fine Gael leadership against her while lobbying for her sister, Mary Newman Julian, to be the party’s candidate in a 2018 Seanad by-election. In particular, a meeting between her and Simon Coveney in which her expectations are read as entitled is cited as hurting her relationships. Fine Gael’s candidate in the by-election is James Geoghegan, who had previously left the party to join Lucinda Creighton in Renua, but returns to Fine Gael after that party collapsed. He loses the by-election to Labour‘s Ivana Bacik, a senator for Dublin University and veteran pro-choice campaigner.
In October 2024, O’Connell leaves Fine Gael to contest the next general election in Dublin Bay South as an independent candidate. She fails to be elected or to achieve the one-quarter of the quota necessary to recoup her election expenses.
O’Connell states her family, the Newmans, have been “involved in Fine Gael since the 1960s,” starting when her maternal grandfather ran for Fine Gael as a councillor. Her father, Michael Newman, is also a Fine Gael councillor while Fine Gael minister Patrick Cooney is considered a family friend. O’Connell states that growing up, she and her family were greatly influenced by the progressive politics of Fine Gael leader Garret FitzGerald. Her sister, Mary Newman Julian, is also active in politics and contests elections for the Dáil in Tipperary and for Seanad Éireann, while another sister, Theresa Newman, works for a period as O’Connell’s political adviser in Leinster House. Her brother-in-law, Hugh O’Connell, is a prominent political journalist and editor who has worked for several Irish publications.
In 2018, during debates in the Dáil regarding abortion, O’Connell discloses personal details of a traumatic pregnancy she herself had experienced. During the pregnancy, she is told her child has only a 10% chance of survival. This prompts her to consider terminating the pregnancy. Ultimately, she decides to continue the pregnancy. The child is born with organs outside of the body but survives the birth. She cites the difficult decisions made during that pregnancy as having greatly informed her views on abortion.
seamus dubhghaill 