Wexford had been relatively quiet during the Irish War of Independence, but the Treaty split in 1921 creates deep divisions. The South Wexford Brigade under Thomas O’Sullivan is overwhelmingly anti-Treaty, while the North Wexford Brigade under Joseph Cummins is nominally pro-Treaty but contains a significant anti-Treaty minority. This division means that when the Irish Civil War breaks out on June 28, 1922, Wexford becomes one of the most violent counties, with Republican forces rapidly moving to secure strategic towns.
On July 4, anti-Treaty IRA units, including Tipperary volunteers and escaped Four Courts fighters, move into Enniscorthy, take over key positions and force the surrender of Free State troops. In the opening fighting, three combatants are killed — two IRA and one National Army — marking the first major Republican gains in the county. James Roche, an IRA member, is fatally wounded in an accident outside Newtownbarry (now Bunclody) on the same day, one of several accidental deaths among IRA personnel in Wexford during the Irish Civil War.
The capture of Enniscorthy is part of a broader Republican offensive in County Wexford in early July 1922. However, the balance of power shifts quickly. By July 6, a large relief force of government troops sets out from Dublin to retake the town. This marks the beginning of a protracted and bloody campaign in County Wexford, which sees the county become one of the most violent in the Irish Civil War.
In summary, the capture of Enniscorthy on July 4, 1922, is a significant Republican victory in County Wexford, driven by the Treaty split and reinforced by external IRA units. It reflects the rapid escalation of violence in the county and sets the stage for a prolonged and destructive phase of the Irish Civil War in County Wexford.
(Pictured: Enniscorthy at the turn of the last century, National Library of Ireland collections)
Barry returns to Bandon in early 1919. He describes in his guerilla days in Ireland a Damascus-like conversion to Irish nationalism on hearing of the Easter Rising while with the Mesopotamian expeditionary force, but he is only accepted into the IRA with considerable caution. Initially tested in intelligence and training work, in mid-1920 he takes charge of the new brigade flying column, which is used both to train officers and to stage offensive actions.
Barry adapts his military experience successfully to the demands of guerrilla warfare, becoming the most famed of column leaders during the Irish War of Independence. In his memoirs, he pours scorn on the obsession of many with military titles and orthodox procedure, complaining of a “paper army.” He stresses the need for spontaneity, initiative, and knowledge of local conditions. “The reality,” he writes, “was a group of fellows, mostly in caps and not-too-expensive clothing, wondering how to tackle their job and where they would sleep that night or get their supper.” (The Reality of the Anglo–Irish War (1974)). He well realises that the war’s character does not permit any close control from the IRA’s GHQ in Dublin, hence increasing the importance of local leaders. His tactics put strong emphasis on speed of movement and on the need to attack the enemy at his weakest point. The column’s ambush successes are small in number but among the best-remembered of the war. He admits, however, that his own and his column’s lack of experience with mines frequently weakened their offensives.
The column’s first successful ambush is at Tooreen on October 22, 1920, followed on November 28 by the dramatic ambushing of a patrol of auxiliaries at Kilmichael while traveling from their Macroom base. A column of thirty-six men, divided into three sections, kill sixteen auxiliaries, with one captured and later shot, suffering two fatalities of their own. Controversy has raged since over whether a false surrender by the British force caused the brutality of some of the deaths. Together with the Bloody Sunday killings of a week earlier in Dublin, Kilmichael has a profound effect on the British military and political establishment, with the declaration in December of martial law for much of Munster and the implementation of wide-ranging internment, together with the authorisation of official reprisals.
After a short period in hospital with a heart condition, in early 1921 Barry leads unsuccessful attacks on Kilbrittain, Innishannon, Drimoleague, and Bandon barracks. The seizure of Burgatia House, outside Rosscarbery, in early February, and the successful resistance made there to British troops, wins much publicity but has little military significance. He is a leading figure in the brutal final stage of the war in the first six months of 1921, which sees widespread shooting of suspected spies and destruction of loyalist property. By March 1921, his flying column, with 104 men, is easily the largest in Ireland, and an explosives expert, Capt. McCarthy, has joined them.
The protracted engagement between Barry’s column and encircling British forces at Crossbarry on March 19, 1921, comes at a time when large-scale sweeps are making life increasingly difficult for the IRA. It consists of a daring and courageous breakout. Crossbarry is the largest action of the war, and Barry is to regard it as even more important than Kilmichael. Soon afterwards, Rosscarbery barracks is successfully attacked by a Barry-led party, representing one of the few successful such initiatives in 1921. Isolated triumphs, however, cannot hide the fact that pressure is increasing on the column, and he becomes increasingly critical of inactive regions. He is later to say that all County Kerry does during the war is to shoot one decent police inspector at Listowel Racecourse and a colleague of his. He is strongly critical also of the lack of assistance from GHQ and of the divisionalisation policy. He visits Dublin in May, travels around with Michael Collins, and is present when two American officers demonstrate the Thompson submachine gun. He is more aware than most of his 1st Southern Division colleagues of the scarcity of arms and ammunition at the war’s end.
During the truce, Barry becomes liaison officer for Munster, riling the British by insisting on his military rank, and criticising the IRA liaison men in Dublin for being overly deferential. He joins the overwhelming majority of the Cork IRA in opposing the Anglo–Irish Treaty but plays a characteristically maverick role throughout the treaty split. His independent attitude is heightened by his dislike of Liam Lynch, the republican IRA’s Chief of Staff, and his continuing respect for Michael Collins. He shows impatience at the long-drawn-out peace initiatives. In March 1922, therefore, he advocates armed confrontation with pro-treaty units over the occupation of barracks in Limerick, and on June 18 he submits a resolution, which only narrowly fails, at the army convention, giving British troops seventy-two hours to leave Dublin.
At the beginning of the Irish Civil War, Barry is arrested entering the Four Courts disguised as a woman. He escapes from an internment camp at Gormanston in early September 1922. For the rest of the war his actions mirror its confused nature. In late October 1922, he leads successful raids on the small towns of Ballineen and Enniskean, and later on Inchigeelagh and Ballyvourney. In December his column takes Carrick-on-Suir, demonstrating the weakness of the Free State army, but his talk of advancing on the Curragh and of large-scale actions does not materialise. There is no evidence that he is acting in accordance with any coordinated plan. By February 1923, he realises that the Republican IRA cause is hopeless and he is involved with Fr. Tom Duggan in efforts to get 1st Southern Division to declare a ceasefire. He journeys to Dublin to put pressure on the intransigent Lynch in this connection, telling Lynch, “I did more fighting in one week than you did in your whole life.”
Barry avoids capture in roundups after the war, remaining on the run until 1924. Unlike many republicans, he does not turn to constitutionalism, remaining strongly militaristic. He is always an unreconstructed republican, though by no means a naive one. In 1924 he becomes attached to Cleeves Milk Co., based in Limerick and Clonmel, and from 1927 to retirement in 1965 is general superintendent with the Cork harbour commissioners. He strongly advocates preserving the independence of the IRA army executive during the republican split of 1925–27. He is instrumental in continuing the drilling of IRA members and is a strong supporter of armed opposition to the Blueshirts.
During the 1930s Barry is arrested at various times for possession of arms and seditious utterances. He promotes an attack against a Freemasons’ meeting in Cork in 1936 and gives the orders for the killing on March 4 of that year of Vice-AdmiralHenry Boyle Somerville. He is opposed to the use by Frank Ryan of IRA volunteers to support the republican cause in the Spanish Civil War and to the proposals of Seán Russell for a bombing campaign in England. To maintain the link with traditional republicanism, he is elected IRA chief of staff in 1937. His plan, however, for the seizure of Armagh city, as part of a direct northern offensive, quickly collapses due to a leak of information, and he soon resigns his position. He forcefully attacks the bombing of English cities in 1938, regarding attacks on innocent civilians as immoral and counterproductive. He enlists in the National Army on July 12, 1940, only to be demobilised a month later. In 1946, he stands as an independent candidate in a by-election in the Cork Borough constituency, finishing at the bottom of the poll. He is more comfortable the following year touring the United States on an anti-partition platform.
In 1949 his Guerilla Days in Ireland is published. It proves a best-seller and has frequently been reprinted. It is well written in a forceful and direct style, one memoir needing no assistance from a ghost writer. Age does not mellow him: lawyers and bank managers are threatened by him over matters relating to his own column, and in 1974 he publishes a fierce pamphlet, angry at perceived slights in the Irish War of Independence memoir of Liam Deasy. He does strive to achieve a public reconciliation with Collins’s memory by unveiling the memorial to Collins at Sam’s Cross in 1966. On the outbreak of the Northern Ireland crisis in the late 1960s, he takes a militant line, castigating the argument that the Six Counties can be brought into the Republic by peaceful means, and asking when had peaceful means existed there. At the memorial meeting in Carrowkennedy, County Mayo, in 1971, he claims that there is a perfect right at the opportune time to take the Six Counties by force. He remains opposed to IRA bombing of civilian targets.
Barry dies in Cork on July 2, 1980. He is buried in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork. Early in the truce of 1921 he marries Leslie Price, one of the most active of Cumann na mBan members during and after the rising. They have no children.
While Barry always remains an influential figure in republican circles, he will be remembered best as the pioneer of guerrilla warfare, the hero of Kilmichael and Crossbarry. His military flair, individualism, and ruthlessness are well suited to the 1919–21 conflict. After that, his strained relations with colleagues and his lack of flexibility reduce his importance. While his life after the revolutionary era appears anti-climactic, he retains much of his charisma. In later years, he is ever willing to remind politicians and historians how far Ireland has retreated from republican ideals. He is often prickly and autocratic yet could be generous to old colleagues of either side of the treaty split. He is arguably the most intelligent but also the most intolerant of the revolutionary leaders.
(From: “Barry, Thomas Bernadine (‘Tom’)” by M. A. Hopkinson, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Born at Hillside Terrace in Howth, County Dublin, on May 5, 1898, Gilmore is the second son of Philip Gilmore, an accountant originally from County Antrim, and Fanny Angus. Despite his father primarily working for Unionist landlords, and being educated at home, George and his brothers Harry and Charlie all turn toward Irish republicanism. By 1916, Gilmore has become a member of Fianna Éireann, the Republican boy scouts, and later a member of the South County Dublin battalion of the Irish Volunteers.
Gilmore fights in the Irish Republican Army in the Irish War of Independence and in the Irish Civil War on the Anti-Treaty IRA side. During the civil war he is captured and imprisoned, but manages to escape custody in August 1923, the aftermath of which causes riots as the remaining prisoners are placed in solitary confinement.
Following the end of the civil war, Gilmore serves as the secretary of future TaoiseachSeán Lemass, as well alongside Frank Aiken. During the early 1920s, he, Lemass and Aiken regularly meet with the IRA army council to represent the emerging political leadership of Irish republicanism that coalesces as Fianna Fáil in 1926. The trio regularly sits opposite IRA leaders Frank Ryan, Peadar O’Donnell, and Seán Russell.
In October 1925, Gilmore and Lemass organise the escape of nineteen IRA prisoners from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. As part of the jailbreak, Gilmore impersonates a member of Garda Síochána. None of the nineteen escapees are subsequently recaptured, and their escape serves as a major propaganda coup. However, the following month, Gilmore is involved in a riot that takes place on Armistice Day and he is subsequently arrested and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. He resists the entire duration; first resisting the arrest and then, once imprisoned, refusing to wear a prison uniform and going on hunger strike. Early in 1928, members of the IRA attack Mountjoy Prison where he is being held and shoot the warden after a story emerges that Gilmore had previously been the victim of a vicious beating by the guards. He is released in 1929 but re-arrested and re-imprisoned almost immediately, resulting in a retaliatory beating by the guards that leaves him unconscious.
Sometime between 1929 and 1930, Gilmore is sent by the IRA to Russia to receive military training and to seek aid.
Gilmore is arrested yet again upon his return to Ireland in April 1931, charged with having resisted arrest ten months previously. In October he tries to escape with the help of his brother Charlie and almost succeeds, using a plot involving mock pistols wrapped in silver to intimidate the guards. In the aftermath of the failed escape, his treatment in Arbour Hill Prison from 1931-32 is abysmal. He once again refuses to wear prison clothing because of his political status and remains naked in a windowless cell from October 1931 until February 1932. In June 1931, of a cache of weapons are discovered near his home at Killakee in the Dublin Mountains, which results in him and his brother Charlie being placed before a military tribunal which sentences him to five years in prison and Charlie to three (in 1932 Fianna Fail comes to power and the brothers are released). Neither recognises the authority of the court, with George stating, “I do not want anybody to think I excuse myself for such a charge as having arms, I am admittedly hostile to British imperialism and international capitalism.”
Gilmore’s fortunes are dramatically altered when Fianna Fáil emerges victorious in the 1932 Irish general election. In the aftermath, Frank Aiken, former Chief of Staff of the IRA and new Minister for Defence goes to see Gilmore on March 9 and on the next day all republican prisoners are released as part of a general amnesty. Thirty thousand supporters greet the prisoners at College Green, Dublin.
Finally out of long-term imprisonment, Gilmore is eager to resume working toward a socialist Ireland. He has supported Peadar O’Donnell’s shortlived socialist republican group Saor Éire from prison, but in the aftermath of its demise, he concludes that the group has spent too much time imagining what it might do if in government, and not enough time considering what the immediate aims of the IRA should be. With his close personal ties to their leadership, Gilmore has a positive view of Fianna Fáil, and at this point in time believes their goals differ little from his own and those of the IRA. Nevertheless, He encourages the IRA to not become too closely associated with Fianna Fáil, fearing the IRA will become a subservient body. He himself has ascended to the IRA’s army council upon his release, and in March 1932 is among representatives of the Army Council that liaises with Éamon de Valera about a possible partnership between the IRA and Fianna Fáil.
On August 14, 1932, Gilmore and fellow Irish republican T. J. Ryan are beaten badly, shot and wounded by plain-clothes members the Garda Síochána (Criminal Investigation Department) in Kilrush, County Clare. This incident is blamed on the police by an official Tribunal of Inquiry report one month later.
In March 1934, Gilmore, alongside Frank Ryan and Peadar O’Donnell, refuse to continue on as members of the IRA executive as part of a deepening rift over the direction of the IRA. Left-wing members of the IRA such as Gilmore, Ryan and O’Donnell insist that the IRA needs to tie their activity to social agitation in addition to their military aims, but this is a minority viewpoint, with the majority believing the IRA should have a “strictly military” outlook. The rift ultimately spirals into Gilmore, Ryan and O’Donnell being court-martialed and expelled in April.
In the aftermath, Gilmore works with Roddy Connolly, Nora Connolly O’Brien and Peadar O’Donnell to found the Republican Congress, a left-wing socialist Irish republican group. The group breaks up in 1935 over internal differences. Gilmore, Ryan and O’Donnell believe that the Republican Congress should be a united front, an alliance of all republican groups in Ireland. Roddy Connolly and other members of the Communist Party of Ireland believe that the Congress should be a vanguard party. A conference is held by the Republican Congress in Rathmines, Dublin, in September 1934 to vote on the issue. Before the vote is taken, Gilmore gives a speech in which he accuses Fianna Fáil of using republicanism as a means to promote Irish capitalism. When the votes are taken on whether the Republican Congress should be a united front or a vanguard party, Gilmore’s united front faction wins. However, supporters of the vanguard party concept such as Roddy Connolly immediately resign from the Congress in protest and walk out on the group. It proves to be a blow that the Congress never recovers from and the group is defunct by 1936. Gilmore makes a last-ditch effort to save the Congress by traveling to the United States to seek funds from Irish American groups but is not successful.
Upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, Gilmore and O’Donnell become supporters of the International Brigades. Both men travel to Spain personally, during which they are involved in a plane crash and Gilmore’s leg is broken.
Following the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Gilmore writes an appeal pleading with the IRA to dump arms until the war in Europe is over and denounces them for flirting with fascism by seeking aid from Germany.
During the 1960s, when the republican movement once again moves to the left, Gilmore and O’Donnell are once again in demand as speakers and as writers in republican publications. In 1966, for the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, Gilmore releases a pamphlet entitled “Labour and the republican movement” in which he espouses the principles of James Connolly. Additionally, he appeals to young republicans not to repeat the mistake older republicans had made in being too rigid in their views and too short on policy.
Gilmore dies on June 29, 1985, at the age of 87, in a nursing home in Howth, County Dublin.
MacCormack (sometimes spelled McCormack) is born in 1892, the daughter of Constance MacCormack, and niece of Evelyn Gleeson. Following the death of her father in 1902, the family lives with Gleeson at her home, at Runnemede, Sandyford Road, Dublin, with her mother and siblings, Grace (1898–1982) and Edward (1889–1906). With her sister, she works in the Dun Emer Guild from a young age, particularly after the Yeats sisters, Lily and Elizabeth, leave Dun Emer to form Cuala Industries.
MacCormack also does some acting, theatre set design and is an author. She appears in Joseph Plunkett‘s 1912 play The Dance of Osiris at the Hardwicke Theatre, and designs the sets. She often acts under the name Catia or Caitia Nic Cormac. She also designs sets for the Irish National Theatre Society, Theatre Company of Ireland and the Dublin Drama League.[5]
Some of MacCormack’s most notable works are the tapestries for the Honan Chapel, Cork, in 1917, the vestments for St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, San Francisco in 1923, and a carpet presented to Pope Pius XI in 1931. The carpet is commissioned in an effort by Ireland’s ambassador to the Vatican, Charles Bewley, to secure Ireland as the host of the 31st International Eucharistic Congress. It is designed by MacCormack and takes workers in the Guild almost four months to hand weave at a cost of £450. As “The Pope’s Carpet” it is exhibited in Clerys department store on O’Connell Street in Dublin from January 19 to 30, 1931.
MacCormack designs the poster for the 1927 “Grand Pageant of Dublin History.” She also develops a set of designs for judicial robes for W. T. Cosgrave in 1924, drawing on the Brehon style sketches of which are held in University College Dublin Archives. In 1911 and 1920, she exhibits at the Oireachtas Art Exhibitions, and with the Water Colour Society of Ireland throughout the 1920s. She is also an illustrator, beginning with Christmas card designs for Dun Emer in the 1910s. She illustrates John Hackett Pollock’s 1919 The wisdom of the world: A book of wonder-tales, published by Colm Ó Lochlainn‘s Candle Press under Pollock’s pseudonym An Philibín. She edits a volume for Ó Lochlainn in 1920, The Book of St Ultan; a collection of pictures and poems by Irish artists and writers, proceeds of which go to Saint Ultan’s Hospital. As well as editing, she contributes illustrations and two poems to the volume.
After her aunt’s death in 1944, MacCormack continues to run Dun Emer Guild until its store on Harcourt Street closes around 1964.
MacCormack dies on June 26, 1975. A large collection of theatre ephemera collected by MacCormack is sold in 2008. The Kitty MacCormack Archive is held by the Jackie Clarke Archive, and the National Library of Ireland also holds a collection of her theatre ephemera and letters. A dress designed by MacCormack for Clare Kennedy, the wife of Hugh Kennedy, is on display as part of The Way We Wore, an exhibition in National Museum of Ireland at Collins Barracks, Dublin.
Born Helen Ruth Gifford on November 9, 1880, in Phibsborough, Dublin, to Frederick Gifford, a solicitor, and Isabella Julia Gifford (née Burton), Gifford is the fifth child and second eldest daughter of the family of six daughters and six sons. Her father is a Catholic while her mother, a niece of the painter Frederic Burton, is rigorously Protestant. All the children are brought up in the Church of Ireland. The men, emigrate and remain unionist while the women are active nationalists. Most famous are the two youngest, the artistGrace Gifford, and the journalist and broadcaster Sidney Czira.
Gifford grows up in Rathmines and goes to school at Alexandra College. She trains as a domestic economy teacher and works for seven years at a series of positions in County Meath.
Gifford experiences the living conditions of the landless rural poor while lodging in labourers’ cottages during this time. As a result, she becomes a supporter of the campaigns of the land agitator and nationalist MPLaurence Ginnell.
During the 1913 Dublin lock-out Gifford assists James Larkin enter the Imperial Hotel, on August 31 to address the crowd. He enters in disguise, that of an elderly and infirm clergyman. She poses as his niece. She speaks to the hotel staff to prevent Larkin’s strong Liverpool accent giving away his identify. This is the speech which precipitates the “Bloody Sunday” police baton charge. Gifford goes on to be a founding member of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA). This group is attractive to many women due to the feminist beliefs of James Connolly.
Gifford gives lessons on camp cookery in Liberty Hall and finds jobs for recruits coming in from abroad. As a result of this work she, very fatefully, introduces Michael Collins to her future brother-in-law Joseph Plunkett who go on to serve together in the 1916 Easter Rising. Collins is Plunkett’s aide-de-camp.
Gifford is the only one of her sisters to actively participate in the rising itself. She is with the ICA’s St. Stephen’s Green contingent alongside Countess Markievicz. Throughout the week she supervises the garrison’s provisions in the Royal College of Surgeons building, commandeering food from shops and bread vans, and by courier from other garrisons. She also ensures the delivery of provisions to troops both in the college with her and in outlying posts. She is one of the women arrested at the surrender and jailed in Kilmainham Gaol. At the same time, in the same prison her sister Grace marries Joseph Plunkett hours before his execution. Only twelve women are detained after the main release of women prisoners on May 8, 1916. Gifford is one of those transferred to Mountjoy Prison until her release on June 4, 1916. Afterward she continues to be as involved in the campaigns.
After her time in prison, Gifford travels through England to the United States where she and other women veterans of Easter week lecture throughout America. While there she marries Joseph Donnelly, of Omagh, County Tyrone in 1918. In 1921 she and their year-old daughter Maeve leave him to return to Ireland.
Frederick Gifford dies in September 1917 and leaves Gifford £800. However, she is was not well off. She becomes a broadcaster and journalist for the national radio and the Irish press. Holding to her upbringing, she remains a staunch Protestant, unlike four of her sisters, who had married Catholics.
Gifford becomes devoted to preserving the historical record of the independence movement. Noticing the huge number of visitors for the 1932 Eucharistic Congress, she organises a small exhibition there of 1916 memorabilia for the National Museum of Ireland. She is irritated by the display of Catholic religious artifacts there. She campaigns for a permanent exhibition of recent Irish nationalist history. She coordinates a substantial body of material pertinent to nationalist organisations, the Easter Rising, and the Irish War of Independence, which now forms the core of the present collection.
Over the years Gifford is secretary of the Old IRA Association, a member of the Old Dublin Society, and a founder of the Kilmainham Gaol Restoration Society. She also looks after stray and neglected dogs and cats. She dies at the age of 90 on June 23, 1971, at the Gascoigne nursing home in Rathmines, Dublin.
(Pictured: Irish nationalist Nellie Gifford taken in Boston in 1917)
On an 1880 trip through the Colony of Victoria, Gibney is traveling by train between Benalla and Albury when at Glenrowan, he disembarks to offer assistance during the Siege of Glenrowan. Ned Kelly and his gang have been cornered by the police in a local hotel, which the police set afire in order to draw out the remaining bushrangers. Gibney enters the burning building in an attempt to rescue anyone inside, and finds the bodies of gang members Joe Byrne, Dan Kelly and Steve Hart, as well as the mortally wounded hostage Martin Cherry, who he helps retrieve and to whom he gives the last rites. He also tends to the injured Ned Kelly following his capture, hears his confession and gives him the last rites.
In January 1887, Gibney is consecrated as Bishop of Perth. His episcopate is marked by a number of poor investment decisions as the diocese purchases shops, offices, houses, and a hotel in Perth as well as a newspaper, exerting editorial influence by banning the publication of horse racing information, which leads to the paper’s eventual demise. As the diocese’s debts mount, he is forced to resign in May 1910. During his episcopate he is closely involved with the founding of the Beagle BayAboriginal community north of Broome, along with what eventually becomes St. John of God Health Care.
During restoration work in the cathedral from 2003 to 2006, the brick and plaster crypt containing the coffins of Gibney and Bishop Martin Griver are discovered by archaeologists under the floorboards of the cathedral.
Murphy is born on June 19, 1914, at Lisheen, Gneeveguilla, County Kerry, part of an area in west Munster known as Sliabh Luachra. Her father Bill plays flute, fife and fiddle, and has a fife and drum band. Both she and her brother Denis Murphy, also a musician, are taught the fiddle by the noted traveling fiddler and fiddle teacher from the same area, Padraig O’Keeffe.
Clifford, her brother, O’Keeffe, and other musicians from the Sliabh Luachra area are regarded as a significant influence on Irish traditional music and have given rise to the term Sliabh Luachra style.
In the late 1930s Murphy emigrates to Scotland and then to London where she works as a hotel maid before marrying John Clifford in 1941. He is an accordion player, also from Kerry, and they had two sons, John and Billy. In the 1940s they play the Irish dance halls in London. In the 1950s they return to Ireland for a time, living in Newcastle West in County Limerick. They perform in the Star of Munster Ceili Band with which they make radio recordings.
Back in London, Clifford enjoys greater popularity with the onset of the 1960s folk boom. In 1968, Claddagh Records records her and brother Denis on an album of Kerry music, The Star Above the Garter.
Rediscovered by the British folk club scene of the 1970s, Topic Records in 1977 issues an earlier recording of Clifford with her brother and Padraig O’Keeffe, Kerry Fiddles (Music from Sliabh Luachra). This is followed by two LPs featuring a range of music from various periods played by her, her husband and her son Billy, a flute player.
The wider appreciation of the music of Sliabh Luachra – particularly its Kerry slides and polkas – come late in life for Clifford. The Cliffords live in a small council flat in Hackney in East London before being rehoused in Thetford, Norfolk in the late 1970s.
In the 1980s and 1990s Clifford’s reputation grows, being invited to perform at folk clubs and festivals. She performs on trips back to Ireland and is introduced to television audiences. She also visits the United States. Many young players who seek her out to learn tunes and styles from her Kerry repertoire find her generous and encouraging.
Clifford’s husband John dies in 1981. She dies on June 18, 1997, one day before her 84th birthday, and is buried in Norfolk.
As part of the 2008 Cork Midsummer Festival, 1,100 volunteers gather on the grounds of Blarney Castle in the early hours of Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and strip naked to have their picture taken at the famous location.
The occasion is the first shoot in Ireland by the American photographic artist Spencer Tunick, who has already made quite a name for himself shooting large groups of naked people in public spaces in New York City, Montreal, London and Amsterdam.
Like many of Tunick’s projects, the event in Cork comes about by invitation. “It was Mary McCarthy, the art curator at Dublin Docklands, who contacted me first,” says Tunick, via Zoom from his office in New York, of the organiser who is director of the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. “Mary thought to make it a two-city project, in Cork and Dublin, and brought Cork Midsummer Festival on board. People think I can choose where I want to work, but it’s not as if I can get up and say, ‘hmm, I want to photograph 1,000 people in a volcanic crater in Hawaii.’ In reality, I need a team on the other side, helping me. And it was Mary who established that team in Ireland.”
McCarthy’s crew works with Tunick on selecting locations for his shoots. Blarney Castle appeals to Tunick. “When you think of a castle, you think of swords, you think of dreams, you think of battle and war,” he says. “But you might also think of the rose. I tried to combine a lot of different ideas or fantasies about the castle and connect them to the body. But there were also a lot of grounds around the castle, so I could have different set-ups and positions to shoot in.”
When Cork Midsummer Festival puts out a call for volunteers, it is inundated with applications. Those chosen are of all ages, and from all walks of life. “I think sometimes people associate my live works with young people. But there’s often a lot of people over 50, and into their 80s, at this great unifying event that touches on the idea of group photo gatherings from the 1920s. When you see a big haul of people lined up, undressed of course, it combines group portraiture with abstraction and the naked body.”
At Blarney Castle, beginning around 5:30 a.m., he shoots the crowd in a variety of poses on the castle lawns, facing toward and away from the camera, then lying on their backs as they each held a single rose aloft (pictured above), red for the women and white for the men. He then photographs a small number on their knees in the river that runs through the grounds, and a smaller number again kissing the Blarney Stone. Some participants see the photo shoot as an opportunity to challenge the general disapproval of nakedness that prevails in the Ireland of their youth. Others see it as a way to make peace with their body image.
Later that morning, Tunick photographs about 50 naked volunteers covered in foam at White Street Carpark in Cork city centre. “As a kid, I was always fascinated by the bubble scene in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the film,” says Tunick. “So, I wanted, in a whimsical and surreal way, to amplify my memories of that. But I also wanted to work with the history of the area, so I infused Murphy’s beer into four bubble machines and created a snow globe effect with the nudes. That was beautiful.”
Looking back on the photographs, one is struck by how most of the bodies are white. If it is true that Cork has become far more ethnically diverse city since that day in 2008, one must also wonder if Tunick’s call for volunteers appealed to a certain demographic. “I always ask the organisers to do community outreach in different areas, so we can get more colour and ethnicities into the work,” he says. “But sometimes it doesn’t really resonate, and sometimes the population is not there, you know. And often, where that population exists, it might not be connected to the body in contemporary art. But I’ve always tried, and now I insist that the organisers make an extra effort.”
Tunick’s shoots at Blarney Castle and White Street attract lavish coverage in the media, a reflection perhaps on how they coincide with a change in the public perception of nudity. The project would almost certainly have caused an uproar even twenty years previously. Participants describe a sense of joy and liberation. “This was definitely pre-Instagram, right? And now when we’re on Instagram, we think the whole world is accepting of nudity in public, but back then, there was not that same outlet for my images. But there was that documentation by the press, and through that, I think people realised that something had happened that went against the grain in a positive way.”
Four days later, Tunick photographs 2,500 naked volunteers on the South Wall in Dublin. Again, the event attracts headlines, but already, it seems, the culture has moved on, and there is not quite that same element of surprise and delight as there had been in Cork.
Tunick has done many projects since. Some of his favourites include those in Kingston upon Hull in 2016 and on the Dead Sea in 2011 and again in 2021. “I like working with props. In Cork, I used roses and beer foam. But now I like working with body paint. In Hull, we covered around 4,000 people in four shades of blue. The blues were those of the water I saw in a number of paintings in the Maritime Museum in the city. I asked Pantone to replicate the colours, and those were the blues we used. Not many people know that.”
“My projects in the Dead Sea were partly about showing how the salt in the water could elevate the body. That created a very interesting, otherworldly effect in the photographs. But they also aimed to raise awareness of how the Dead Sea is disappearing because of irrigation to serve the need for drinking water by adjoining countries such as Israel and Jordan. It’s a very difficult situation.”
Many photographers find their work curtailed by pandemic restrictions of the early 2020s. Tunick too is forced to postpone photographing groups of people on location, but he does find a way to go on creating. “An art collective called Studio 333 in Mexico asked me if I wanted to do group works on video chats, and offered to manage it technically. So we started making group works with people from all walks of life, all around the world. We had someone in Saudi Arabia posing with someone in Israel. We had people in Australia, people in Europe, people all over the world. I think the only place we weren’t able to work with was Antarctica, but who knows? Maybe that’s in the future.” The resulting images are published online, on Tunick and Studio 333’s websites and social media accounts, under the collective title ”Stay Apart Together.”
As for the future, Tunick would love to work in Ireland again, he says. “It’s always been my dream to do a work in Northern Ireland, maybe with 100 or 200 people on the Giant’s Causeway? I can’t have too many, because then you wouldn’t see the rocks. Northern Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway… that project’s been on my mind for a long time, so hopefully some museum or curator will invite me to do it.”
(From: “Cork in 50 Artworks, No 49: Spencer Tunick’s nude installation at Blarney Castle” by Marc O’Sullivan, Irish Examiner, http://www.irishexaminer.com, April 11, 2022 | Pictured: Blarney Castle with the crowd assembled by Spencer Tunick)
Downey’s tenure sees the construction and dedication of the crypt of Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, built to a design by Sir Edwin Lutyens, although the Cathedral itself is never completed as he had envisaged. A picture of Lutyens proposed cathedral is printed on postcards sold to raise funds.
In 1929, before the actual construction begins, Downey states, “Hitherto all cathedrals have been dedicated to saints. I hope this one will be dedicated to Christ himself with a great figure surmounted on the cathedral, visible for many a mile out at sea.” He also declares that while the Cathedral will not be medieval and Gothic, neither will it be as modern as the works of Jacob Epstein, a statement somewhat at odds with the design that is finally realised after his death.
Downey dies in Liverpool at the age of 72 on June 16, 1953, having served as Liverpool’s archbishop for twenty-four years. His remains are interred in a crypt at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool.
McNamara and Newman are particularly outspoken on the issue of a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution of Ireland. While other bishops advocate people vote with their conscience in the referendum on the issue, McNamara and Newman instruct Catholics that they have a duty to “vote yes” to the referendum.
In 1984, the Archdiocese of Dublin becomes vacant when Archbishop Ryan is given a senior appointment in the Roman Curia. Ryan is expected to be made a cardinal as a result of the appointment but dies suddenly in office before a consistory can be held. McNamara’s selection to replace the more liberal Ryan in Dublin creates media reports linking his appointment to the ongoing tensions between the papal nuncio in Ireland, Archbishop Gaetano Alibrandi, and the liberal Fine Gael–Labour Partycoalition under Garret FitzGerald. Relations between Alibrandi and the coalition break down, with the government requesting that Alibrandi be removed because of his suspected closeness to Irish republicans in Sinn Féin and to the opposition Fianna Fáil party and in particular its leader, Charles Haughey. Critics accused Alibrandi of engineering McNamara’s appointment in the belief that the outspoken McNamara can help derail the coalition’s liberal policies on divorce and contraception.
McNamara, as expected, takes a far more outspoken stance of issues than had Ryan previously. While the coalition succeeds in liberalising the law on contraception, its efforts to amend the constitution on divorce are defeated.
McNamara’s service in Dublin is short-lived. Already suffering from what proves to be terminal cancer, he dies on April 8, 1987 after a three year battle with the disease, months after the Fine Gael minority government is defeated in the 1987 Irish general election. He is succeeded as archbishop by a university lecturer, Desmond Connell.
In the early 2000s, amid growing scandals within the Catholic Church in Ireland about clerical sex abuse, it is revealed that as archbishop McNamara had sought legal advice as to the Church’s liability arising from such abuse.
seamus dubhghaill 