In 1918, a system called plural voting is in place in both Britain and Ireland. Plural voting is a practice whereby one person might be able to vote multiple times in an election. Property and business owners can vote both in the constituency where their property lay and that in which they live, if the two are different. In the newly formed Irish Free State this system is ended by the Electoral Act 1923 and is abolished in the United Kingdom by the Representation of the People Act 1948. Plural voting remains in effect in Northern Ireland until 1969.
Sinn Féin is founded by Arthur Griffith in 1905. He believes that Irish nationalists should emulate the Ausgleich of Hungarian nationalists who, in the 19th century under Ferenc Deák, had chosen to boycott the imperial parliament in Vienna and unilaterally establish their own legislature in Budapest.
Griffith initially favours a peaceful solution based on “dual monarchy” with Britain, that is two separate states with a single head of state and a limited central government to control matters of common concern only. However, by 1918, under its new leader, Éamon de Valera, Sinn Féin has come to favour achieving separation from Britain by means of an armed uprising if necessary and the establishment of an independent republic.
In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising, the party’s ranks are swelled by participants and supporters of the rebellion as they are freed from British gaols and internment camps. At its 1917 Ardfheis (annual conference) de Valera is elected leader, and the new, more radical policy is adopted.
Prior to 1916, Sinn Féin had been a fringe movement having a limited cooperative alliance with William O’Brien‘s All-for-Ireland League and enjoyed little electoral success. However, between the Easter Rising of that year and the 1918 general election, the party’s popularity increases dramatically. This is due to the failure to have the Home Rule Bill implemented when the IPP resists the partition of Ireland demanded by Ulster Unionists in 1914, 1916 and 1917, but also popular antagonism towards the British authorities created by the execution of most of the leaders of the 1916 rebels and by their botched attempt to introduce Home Rule on the conclusion of the Irish Convention linked with military conscription in Ireland (see Conscription Crisis of 1918).
Sinn Féin demonstrates its new electoral capability in four by-election successes in 1917 in which George Noble Plunkett, Joseph McGuinness, de Valera and W. T. Cosgrave are each elected, although it loses three by-elections in early 1918 before winning two more with Patrick McCartan and Arthur Griffith. In one case there are unproven allegations of electoral fraud. The party benefits from a number of factors in the 1918 elections, including demographic changes and political factors.
Corish’s father, Richard Corish, a well-known trade union official and Sinn Féin member, had been elected to the Second Dáil shortly after the birth of his son and later joins the Labour Party, serving as a local and national politician until his death in 1945. His mother is Catherine Bergin. He is educated locally at Wexford CBS and, in his youth, is a member of the 1st Wexford Scout troop (Scouting Ireland). At the age of nineteen, he joins the clerical staff of Wexford County Council. He spends several years playing Gaelic football for the Wexford county team. He was married to Phyllis Donohoe, and they have three sons.
Corish is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Labour Party candidate in the Wexford by-election in 1945, necessitated by the death of his father who was the sitting TD. He takes a seat on the fractured opposition benches, as Fianna Fáil‘s grip on power continues.
In 1960, Corish succeeds William Norton as Labour Party leader. He introduces new policies which make the party more socialist in outlook and describes the party program as Christian socialist. He considers that the party principles are those endorsed by Pope John XXIII and greatly admires the Pope who he says is “one of the greatest contributors of all changes in Irish attitudes.” However, the party moves carefully because “socialism” is still considered a dirty word in 1960s Ireland. He claims that Ireland will be “Socialist in the Seventies.” To a certain extent he is right because Fine Gael and the Labour Party form a coalition government between 1973 and 1977.
Corish becomes Tánaiste and Minister for Health and Social Welfare. A wide range of social security benefits are introduced during his time as a government minister, including a Deserted Wife’s Benefit and Unmarried Mother’s Allowance, Prisoner’s Wife’s Allowance, Single Woman’s Allowance, and the Supplementary Welfare Allowance, providing supplementary income to individuals and families with low incomes. In 1974, compulsory social insurance is extended to virtually all employees, and that same year short-term social insurance benefits (occupational injury, maternity, unemployment and sickness benefits) become partially index-linked. According to one study, this signals “an extension in the function of the income maintenance system from basic income support to proportional replacement of market earnings for some groups.” The replacement of the existing flat-rate unemployment benefit with an earnings-related benefit means that the average unemployment replacement rate goes up from about 30% to 60%.
Corish is deeply religious, telling the Dáil in 1953 that “I am an Irishman second, I am a Catholic first…if the hierarchy give me any direction with regard to Catholic social teaching or Catholic moral teaching, I accept without qualification in all respects the teaching of the hierarchy and the church to which I belong.”
In 1977, the TaoiseachLiam Cosgrave calls a general election, and Fianna Fáil is returned to power in a landslide victory. Corish resigns as leader of the Labour Party, having signaled his intent to do so before the election. He is succeeded as party leader by Frank Cluskey. He retires from politics completely at the February 1982 Irish general election.
Corish dies in Wexford at the age of 71 on February 17, 1990.
In April 1919, Terence MacSwiney proposes the establishment of a daily paper by the Dáil for the purpose of publicity. His suggestion is not implemented until November, when Desmond FitzGerald decides that some form of printed counterpropaganda is vital to republican aims and to take advantage of the success of Sinn Féin and the increasing international interest in Ireland. Fitzgerald succeeds Laurence Ginnell in the Ministry following the latter’s arrest in April 1919, though he does not take up the position until July. At a Cabinet meeting held on November 7, there is agreement that there should be “A scheme for daily news bulletin to foreign correspondents, weekly lists of atrocities; entertainment of friendly journalists approved, and £500 voted for expenses under Mr. Griffith’s personal supervision.” Four days later the Irish Bulletin makes its debut, in a run consisting of just thirty copies. Five issues of the bulletin are issued each week for the next two years, despite efforts by the British authorities to suppress it.
The Irish Bulletin‘s offices are originally located at No. 6 Harcourt Street, Dublin. FitzGerald is the paper’s first editor, until his arrest and replacement by Erskine Childers. In the early days, the paper is produced mainly by Frank Gallagher and Robert Brennan. Brennan, as Sinn Féin’s Director of Publicity since April 1918, had played a leading role in that party’s success in the 1918 Irish General Election.
Following FitzGerald’s arrest in 1921, Childers is appointed Director of Propaganda taking charge of publicity and thus becoming the paper’s new editor. On May 9, 1921, both Childers and Gallagher are arrested and taken to Dublin Castle. Following the intervention of Sir Alfred Cope, both are released that night and go on the run. The hasty release of the two leads to speculation between Art O’Brien and Michael Collins that there is a rift developing between the British military authorities and the civil administration. Despite the arrests, the Irish Bulletin continues to appear on schedule. Alan J. Ellis, a journalist with The Cork Examiner makes occasional contributions to the paper. Kathleen Napoli McKenna is “a key force behind the daily newssheet.”
In the early days, the Irish Bulletin consists mainly of lists of raids by the security forces and the arrests of suspects. In order to stimulate interest, this is expanded in 1921 at the behest of the Irish President, Éamon de Valera, in his direction to Childers to give more detailed accounts of events. Extracts from foreign publications, particularly sympathetic English papers, are frequently included. A regular feature is accounts from the Dáil Courts, which are reported in detail.
The Irish Bulletin is more graphic in its coverage of violence than is usual for its time. An example is its reporting on the deaths of two prominent Sinn Féin leaders, Henry and Patrick Loughnane, from Shanaglish, Gort, County Galway. The men had been handed over by the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) to local members of the Auxiliary Division. On December 6, the bodies are found in a pond. The skulls had been battered in and the flesh was hanging loose on both bodies.The two men were evidently tied by the neck to a motor lorry and dragged behind it until they were dead. Before the bodies were hidden in a pond an effort was made to burn them.
On the night of March 26-27, 1921, the offices of the Irish Bulletin are discovered by the British authorities. Captured typewriters and duplicators are used to fabricate bogus issues of the paper. These are distributed to the usual subscribers using lists found at the office. Lord Henry Cavendish-BentinckMP on receiving some of the counterfeit papers through the post, asks in the House that those responsible “not (to) waste their money in sending me any more of their forgeries.” The initial efforts of the forgers, Captains Hugh Pollard and William Darling, are of poor quality and easily identified as counterfeit.
(Pictured: The “Irish Bulletin” issue of October 12, 1920, National Museum of Ireland)
Greacen is the only child of Henry Greacen and his wife Elizabeth (née McCrea). His father comes from a Presbyterian farming background in County Monaghan and, at one time, holds a position as a creamery manager, but is a heavy drinker and fails in several businesses. Most of his childhood is spent with his maternal grandmother and aunts when his parents temporarily separate. He briefly attends two local primary schools in Belfast, but when his father receives insurance compensation after his Belfast business burned down, he takes his family to the Castleblayney area in County Monaghan and for a short time goes back to farming. He goes to a national school there, but after another fire destroys the farmhouse, the Greacens return to Belfast to run the Kenilworth, a tobacconist’s shop on the Newtownards Road. He attends Templemore primary school and then enters Methodist College Belfast in 1933.
Greacen mostly enjoys school, though he is too short-sighted to participate with success in any sport, and sometimes, because of his background, feels out of his depth among middle-class children. He is always ashamed of his father’s drunken outbursts and is terrified of the violent temper which accompanies them. Literature provides both a temporary escape and the promise of future success. His first poems are published in school magazines, and he decides at a young age to try to make a career as a writer. He fails examinations and interviews for positions in a bank and an insurance company and instead starts studying history and English at Queen’s University Belfast.
At Queen’s, as earlier at Methodist College, the interests which characterise Greacen’s later career are apparent. Largely thanks to meeting John Boyd, he develops sympathies with left-wing political ideas, as well as a deepened commitment to poetry. His youthful 1930s enthusiasm for Marxism disappears after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but up to his later years he describes himself as a socialist. The formation of enduring friendships and mutually supportive coteries, a phenomenon particularly characteristic of the Ulster literary scene of the period, continues to be of great importance throughout his life. He makes friends with almost all the significant figures in Belfast, especially Roy McFadden, John Hewitt and Sam Hanna Bell. At Queen’s, he and a friend take over in 1940 the editing of a student magazine, The Northman. They try with short-lived, limited success to make it a literary journal for the whole region, so as to enable aspiring poets to get work into print. His own early poems appear in The Bell, and he writes some pieces for the left-wing Irish Democrat newspaper. His poem The Bird (1941) is well reviewed and later appears in anthologies. In 1942 he publishes Poems from Ulster, a small anthology including work by his friends.
For several months, Greacen worships from afar a fellow student named Irene. When he fails to form a relationship with her, he stops going to lectures so that he does not have to see her and does not finish his degree. His McCrea relatives pay for him to go to Trinity College Dublin in 1943 to take a diploma in social work. He is glad to get away from wartime Belfast and never lives there again. At first, he enjoys Dublin, and again makes many friends, among them Brendan and Beatrice Behan, Blanaid Salkeld, Cecil ffrench Salkeld, Joseph and Mary O’Neill, Douglas Gageby, Arland Ussher and Hubert Butler. He and Patrick Kavanagh live in the same boarding house on Raglan Road for several months in 1945, but Kavanagh takes offence at a review in Horizon by Greacen of his poem The Great Hunger and calls him a “Protestant bastard.” Greacen is upset, as he had thought the review favourable, and is disappointed but not surprised when Kavanagh refuses to allow any of his poems to appear in the prestigious Faber and Faber book Contemporary Irish Poetry, edited by Greacen and Valentin Iremonger in 1949.
The collaborative compilation of anthologies of poetry is Greacen’s characteristic way of working. In 1942, he and Alex Comfort edit Lyra: An Anthology of New Lyric. With Roy McFadden, he edits Ulster Voices in 1943. He is sole editor of Northern Harvest in 1944 and, in the same year, he, Bruce Williamson and Valentin Iremonger publish their own work in On the Barricades. His own first solo collection, One Recent Evening, is also a 1944 imprint. In 1946, with support from Maurice Fridberg, a Jewish Dublin and London bookseller, his publishing company, New Frontiers Press, produces Irish Harvest, which, though designed on more ambitious lines, still consists chiefly of poems by his friends. He feels much more affinity with the modernism and social protest that he finds in contemporary English poetry, especially in the “new apocalypse” movement associated with Herbert Read, and later the “new romantics,” than with what he regards as the outmoded Celtic nationalism of W. B. Yeats and his followers. Like others of his contemporaries, he comes to resent the unquestioned shibboleths of life in Ireland, and particularly objects to the censorship of literature and film.
Consequently, when Greacen’s second small volume of poems, The Undying Day (1948), sells badly, and other avenues seem unpromising, he and his wife give up on Dublin and move to London. He finds a job with the United Nations Association, which suits his outlook and ideals. However, when he is made redundant, he has to take various jobs in adult education, in creative-writing courses, and in teaching English as a foreign language, in the City of London College, the City Literary Institute, and West London College. He retires in 1986. His involvement with the London literary world continues throughout his career, as he gets to know many of the leading figures, including Stephen Spender and T. S. Eliot, and he organises poetry readings and other projects, though he himself writes no poetry for more than twenty years. At one time he considers taking up journalism and continues to produce book reviews and articles in journals, as well as many letters to newspapers. He writes several, well-received short works of criticism, in particular, The Art of Noël Coward (1953) and The World of C. P. Snow (1962). After returning to Dublin in 1986, he writes an interesting memoir about his many friends and acquaintances, Brief Encounters: Literary Dublin and Belfast in the 1940s (1991) and Rooted in Ulster: Nine Northern Writers (2000).
Greacen marries Patricia Hutchins in Fisherwick Presbyterian Church in Belfast on April 10, 1946. She is from a Protestant family who has a small estate at Ardnagashel, near Bantry, County Cork, and is related to the botanist Ellen Hutchins. They have one daughter, Arethusa, but, after four years of separation, the marriage ends in divorce in 1966. He resents his wife’s conversion to vegetarianism and seems also to disapprove of her desire to achieve her own career goals. Probably also the depression he experiences throughout the 1950s contributes to the breakdown of the marriage, but he feels that twelve experiences in the early 1960s with the hallucinogenic drug LSD, under the guidance of a psychiatrist, had cured him. After the LSD treatments he feels that he is ready to begin working on an autobiography, Even Without Irene, published several years later in 1969. This comes out again in an enlarged version in 1995, and, still further augmented, as The Sash My Father Wore (1997).
Greacen begins to publish poetry again in his fifties, in A Garland for Captain Fox (1975). Poems about the career and friends of an imaginary, sophisticated adventurer do not always strike the exactly right note but are popular and mark a new beginning for him, who increasingly writes elegiacally about personalities, real and fictional, in more restrained diction and with careful irony. In interviews, he denies that Captain Fox is his own alter ego, but the interplay between the character of Fox and elements of his creator’s own life suggests a metaphor for the poet’s creative process, as well as reminding the reader of the poet friends whose support means much to his writing in real life. At the very least, Captain Fox becomes what could be called a character of virtual reality for his creator.
Greacen’s later poetry collections include Young Mr. Gibbon (1979), A Bright Mask (1985), Carnival at the River (1990), Collected Poems 1944–1994 (1995; awarded The Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry in that year), Protestant Without a Horse (1997), Captain Fox: A Life (2000), Lunch at the Ivy (2002), Shelley Plain (2002), and Selected and New Poems (2006).
On his return to Dublin in 1986, Greacen for a time shares a flat on Anglesea Road with Beatrice Behan, until he finds her dead in her bed in 1993. In later years he lives in a flat in Sandymount. He is elected to membership of Aosdána in 1986, and during his later years in Dublin enjoys the status of a senior figure in the world of literature. He gives readings in the United States, appears often on RTÉ radio programmes, and has poems republished in anthologies. There was even one poem displayed on the Dublin Dart suburban rail network, St. Andrew’s Day: An Elegy for Patricia Hutchins, perhaps his best work. Perhaps only a few of his poems have been lodged in the public memory, but it is appropriate, given the themes of his career, that his work will be read with most attention by poets and by scholars, and that his reputation in the future may largely be based on his friendships with other poets.
The Tooreen ambush (also known as the Toureen ambush or Ballinhassig ambush) is an ambush carried out by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) on October 22, 1920, during the Irish War of Independence. It takes place near Roberts Farm, Tooreen, near Ballinhassig in County Cork. The IRA ambushes two lorries of British soldiers, killing three and wounding four others. The British surrender and their weapons and ammunition are seized by the IRA. Later that night, British soldiers go on a rampage in nearby Bandon.
Up until the Tooreen ambush, the 3rd Cork Brigade had finished its training, but had not previously engaged in battle with British troops stationed in County Cork. The Tooreen ambush is one of the first major ambushes carried out by the West Cork Brigade under Tom Barry.
The Essex Regiment of the British Army is deployed to West Cork and has a reputation for violently raiding houses throughout the countryside and arresting people believed to be IRA volunteers. They are also alleged to torture their prisoners in order to get information on the whereabouts of the flying columns, so this makes them a despised enemy to the West Cork IRA.
The Essex Regiment is known to travel on the road from Bandon to Cork City every morning and return in the evenings. The road goes through the hamlet of Toureen which the Third West Cork Brigade is stationed at nearby and it is decided to ambush this column of the Essex Regiment as it makes its way to Cork city.
Thirty-two ambushers, twenty-one being riflemen of the Third West Cork Brigade, occupy ambush positions outside Toureen and lay in wait for the approaching Essex Regiment. The Regiment normally goes in two or three lorries to Cork City so the IRA places a homemade mine on the road for use against them.
Scouts signal the approach of two lorries which are coming down the road toward the ambush site. As the first lorry passes, the order to fire is given and a homemade three-pound bomb is thrown. The bomb lands inside the lorry but does not explode. The mine that is placed on the road also fails to detonate. As the volunteers open fire, the second lorry stops and the soldiers inside leap out and return fire, but the volunteers are hidden behind a large timber gate which gives them cover. The first lorry continues on to Cork Barracks. As the fight goes on, the officer in command of the British troops, Captain Dixon, is shot in the head and killed as is one of his men.
The remaining British soldiers surrender soon after, and the IRA men cease firing. The British soldiers are relieved of their weapons and ammunition, but otherwise unharmed. Fourteen rifles, bayonets, equipment, several Mills bombs, around 1,400 rounds of ammunition and a couple of revolvers are taken from them.
Two British soldiers, Lt. Dixon MC of the Suffolk Regiment and Pte. Charles William Reid of the Essex Regiment, are killed in the ambush. Five are wounded, including Sergeant Thomas Bennett RASC who dies in Cork on the following day. Six are unhurt except for shock. None of the IRA volunteers are killed or wounded during the ambush and aid is given to the wounded soldiers, while the dead are pulled away from the lorry and it is then set on fire by the volunteers. The two soldiers who are not hurt during the ambush are released along with their wounded and they return to their barracks.
Later that night, members of the Essex Regiment go on a violent rampage through Bandon, destroying property and seeking out anyone they believe to be connected to the ambush. It is believed that at least some of the rampaging soldiers are those released unharmed by the IRA earlier in the day. The reprisal attacks are indiscriminate and include attacks on homes and properties of business owners with “establishment” connections – including the Brennan family of Kilbrogan House.
A Military Court of Inquiry into the soldiers killed, is conducted on October 28, 1920. There are mixed references to these proceedings in The Irish Times and the Irish Independent, both of which contain errors.
Lt. Dixon is buried with full military honours in St. Paul’s Church in Dover, Kent, England. Sergeant Bennett is buried in St. Peter & St. Paul Church in his home village of Shorne, near Gravesend in Kent.
(Pictured: Plaque on a farm wall marking the location of the Tooreen ambush)
Patrick Anthony HennessyRHA, Irish realist painter known for his highly finished still lifes, landscapes and trompe-l’œil paintings, is born in Cork, County Cork, on August 28, 1915. The hallmark of his style is his carefully observed realism and his highly finished surfaces, the result of a virtuoso painting technique.
Hennessy is the son of John Hennessy an army sergeant major from County Kerry and Bridget Hennessy from Cork. His father is killed in World War I at the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917. In 1921, when he is five years old, his mother remarries in Cork. Her second husband is a Scot named John Duncan and shortly afterwards the whole family moves to Arbroath, Scotland, where Duncan has relatives.
Hennessy is educated in Arbroath at St. Thomas RC Primary School followed by secondary education at Arbroath High School, where he begins to show an aptitude for art, leaving in 1933 with the Dux for Art and an accompanying medal. In the autumn of 1933 he enrolls at the Dundee of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, for a four-year Diploma course in Drawing and Painting under James McIntosh Patrick and Edward Baird. Here he meets Harry Robertson Craig who becomes his lifelong companion. He plays a full part in the social activities of the college, winning a fancy-dress award at the Christmas revels in 1935 and producing a ballet “Paradise Lost” the following year. He gains a First-Class Pass in each year of the course along with winning first prize in 1934 and 1936 for work done during the summer vacation. He graduates with a First-Class Distinction in 1937.
Having gained a scholarship, Hennessy continues his studies at the Dundee of Jordanstone College of Art & Design for a further year by doing a Post-Graduate Diploma course in Drawing and Painting. Within a month of gaining his Post-Graduate Diploma he holds his first joint exhibition at the Art Galleries in Arbroath. In June 1938 he is awarded the Annual Travelling Scholarship for further studies in Paris and Italy. In Paris he meets up with the artists Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde, whom he had met the previous year, the three travelling south together to Marseilles towards the end of that year. On his return to Scotland he is selected for the residential summer school course at Hospitalfield House near Arbroath under James Cowie. Two of his paintings, a still life and a self-portrait, are accepted that year by the Royal Scottish Academy for their Annual Exhibition. However, by the autumn of 1939 with war looming and feeling somewhat disenchanted on his return to Scotland, he decides to return to Ireland.
On arrival in Dublin Hennessy is offered an exhibition in December 1939 at the Country Shop on St. Stephen’s Green which is opened by Mainie Jellett. This attracts favourable attention. During the early 1940s he lives at various addresses in and around Dublin with frequent trips to Cork. In 1940 he is invited to join the Society of Dublin Painters and holds regular annual exhibitions of his work there during the 1940s and early 1950s. These exhibitions are supplemented by an eclectic mix of commissions, mostly portraits which he undertakes during this period. In 1941 he has three of his paintings accepted by the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) for their annual exhibition. This is the beginning of a long relationship with the RHA. He exhibits there virtually every year from 1941 until 1979, the year before his death.
From the early 1940s onwards, Hennessey’s work sometimes incorporates a homosexual visual subtext. He re-unites with Harry Robertson Craig in 1946 and soon after they move to Crosshaven, County Cork, and later to Cobh. In 1947, Time magazine selects him as one of Ireland’s outstanding painters, in recognition of the important position he has then attained in the art world. In 1948 he has an exhibition at the Victor Waddington Gallery, Dublin, and that same year is elected an associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy and a full member the following year. In 1950 his painting De Profundis is selected for the Contemporary Irish Painting exhibition that tours North America. As a result of this tour, the American public and critics begin to take notice of his work. In 1951 he visits Italy, taking in Venice and Sicily and returning to Dublin with many of his canvases painted abroad. One of these paintings, Bronze Horses of St. Marks, is exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1954.
In 1956, a friend of Hennessy, David Hendriks, opens the Ritchie Hendriks Gallery on St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin and it is this gallery that is to be the main outlet for his work over the following 22 years. In October 1956 the Thomas Agnew Gallery in London holds an exhibition of his work comprising 38 of his paintings. However, during the winter of 1959 he becomes seriously ill with pneumonia. As a consequence of this, in the autumn of that year he and Craig decide to winter in Morocco. This is the beginning of a new era in both their lives. They would never again spend a full year in Ireland. His exhibitions at the Ritchie Hendriks Gallery had for many years enjoyed favourable reviews from the art critics but in the 1960s this changes with critics claiming his paintings to be dull, repetitive and suggest he needs to explore new areas. Despite the barrage of criticism, in 1965 the Guildhall Gallery in Chicago offers him a major exhibition. Shortly after this exhibition takes place in 1966, he becomes one of the artists on permanent display at the gallery with an annual exhibition. The North American market is extremely lucrative for him and by the end of the decade he is selling more of his work in the United States than in Ireland. In 1968 he finally moves to Tangier, Morocco on a permanent basis and in 1970 sells his studio on Raglan Lane, Dublin.
In Morocco, Hennessy paints prolifically for nine years to keep up with demand from the Hendriks Gallery and Guildhall Gallery along with the RHA. In 1975 the Guildhall Gallery mounts a highly successful Retrospective of his work. In 1978 he has his last exhibition in Dublin at the Hendriks Gallery. By this time he has moved to the Algarve, Portugal and is beginning to have health problems.
In November 1980, with his health deteriorating, Craig brings Hennessy to a hospital in London for treatment. However, on December 30, 1980 he dies from cancer. Following cremation his ashes are buried in nearby Golders Green Crematorium. He leaves his entire estate to Harry Robertson Craig with the proviso that on Craig’s death the Royal Hibernian Academy should be the beneficiary. This legacy has been used to set up the annual Hennessy Craig Scholarship for aspiring artists.
Hennessy falls into the category of painter who develops a distinctive personal style, labelled at various times in his life as a Traditional Realist, Romantic, Photo Realist, Illusionary and Surrealist. However, he always remains intrinsically himself. His subjects range from still life and interiors to landscapes and portraits.
From 1969 to 1973, during the 12th Seanad, Yeats serves as Cathaoirleach (chair).
While a senator, Yeats serves as a Member of the European Parliament from 1973 to 1979, being appointed to Ireland’s first, second and third delegations. He stands at the first direct elections in 1979 for the Dublin constituency but is not elected. He is Director General of the EEC Council of Ministers in Brussels in the 1980s.
Yeats marries Gráinne Ni hEigeartaigh, a singer and Irish harpist. They have four children – three daughters and a son.
A large lorry transporting petrol which is part of a British military convoy travelling from Claremorris towards Ballyhaunis comes off the road on the Claremorris-Ballyhaunis road near Holywell on Saturday, July 31, 1920. The driver of the lorry loses control and crashes off the road into the bog below. The lorry sinks somewhat and is stuck in the bog. A military guard of between 12-20 British soldiers from the 2nd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, who are garrisoned in the old workhouse in Claremorris, is placed on the lorry while the rest of the convoy continues on their journey.
The soldiers set up camp in a little old, abandoned house nearby, throwing a large tarpaulin over the roof of the house for shelter. They place two sentries on the road while the rest of the guard retires to the abandoned house where they light a fire in the ruin’s fireplace. Martin Forkhan, a local IRA volunteer, happens upon the scene of the crashed lorry and immediately notifies the Ballyhaunis Battalion Commandant, Patrick Kenny, of the situation. Kenny issues instructions to mobilise all officers in the Ballyhaunis Battalion area.
On that same night, a train leaving Ballyhaunis towards Westport is held up by armed and masked men not far from the military encampment. A unit of 25 IRA men under the command of Capt. Martin Forde take control of the train after firing a number of warning shots. The IRA then removes steel shutters destined for Westport Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) Barracks and bury them in the bog nearby. The steel shutters are part of a program of fortification of RIC Barracks country-wide. Some of these men then mobilise with the other IRA officers gathering at Holywell Wood, where arrangements are made for an attempt to overpower and disarm the soldiers guarding the crashed lorry.
The assembled IRA, approximately 40 strong, march to the site of the military encampment where they take up positions. The volunteers are unsure of the size of the British force guarding the lorry, as all they can see is one sentry. An IRA officer approaches the sentry and asks for a light for a cigarette. The sentry sends him into the camp. As he lights his cigarette from the camp fire he looks around and counts 18 rifles present. It is then presumed that there are roughly 18 soldiers at the encampment. Cmdt. Kenny mades a plan and orders an attack, but as the IRA volunteers are crawling through the fields toward their assigned positions to surround the encampment, a line of motorcars appears on the Claremorris road. The headlights from the motorcars would have exposed the positions taken up by the IRA, so due to their poor positions, the delay in organising a plan and the coming dawn, it is decided that the attack is to be postponed until the following night.
The next day, Sunday, August 1, 1920, a section of men under the command of Capt. Patrick McNieve is positioned near the site of the encampment to keep it under observation while the officers mobilise the entire battalion. On this day, there are sports taking place in Aghamore and many of the battalions volunteers gather in that area so are easily located. Back at Holywell, scouts are posted on the surrounding roads to notify of any advancing British reinforcements and a trench has been dug across the road to delay any traffic from getting by. During the day, members of Cumann na mBán assist in transferring ammunition from arms dumps to the ambush site. That night, with all available men in the battalion area mobilised, the IRA assembles once more and organises a plan of attack. Orders are issued, they manoeuvre into their assigned positions and wait. D Coy (Brackloon) proceeds to their positions between Ballyhaunis and Holywell where they are on outpost duty guarding the road about half a mile from the ambush site. The IRA officers decide that while the soldiers in the camp sleep, some volunteers will attempt to sneak into the camp and take their weapons. Cmdt. Patrick Kenny leads a small ambush party of about 20 men and creeps into the camp at approximately 3:00 a.m. They are armed with shotguns and revolvers. A further 188 IRA men, many of them unarmed, from the Battalion are on scouting, road trenching, sentry and outpost duties in the surrounding district.
The ambush party successfully infiltrates the camp without alerting the sentries and Cmdt. Kenny manages to gather up five or six rifles that are stacked together. But as he is leaving the camp, the alarm is raised and the British soldiers begin to awaken. The IRA shouts a demand for the British military guard to surrender but when no surrender comes, the IRA opens fire. Three British soldiers are badly wounded in the opening salvo. One takes a full shotgun blast to his back, another has a portion of his arm blown off and the third is badly wounded in the leg. With three of their men knocked out, the British soldiers organise their defence and return fire on the IRA. The IRA ambush party retreats to positions behind a fence where they maintain constant fire on the camp. A fierce gun battle ensues. In the darkness, as Cmdt. Kenny retreats with the rifles in his arms, he is caught in the crossfire and severely wounded in the left arm and face by a shotgun blast from one of his own men. He falls from his wounds and drops the rifles he had been carrying. Capt. Martin Forde and several other officers run to Kenny’s aid. Forde and his comrades are able to carry Kenny to safety. The battle continues on for about an hour and before dawn, just as the military guard seems about to surrender, two lorries of British reinforcements come from Claremorris to their assistance. The British reinforcements open fire from their lorries on the outposts as they encounter those who return fire with their shotguns. With the IRA running low on ammunition and now out-gunned, Cmdt. Kenny issues an order for the IRA to retreat under fire. There are varied accounts of the length of time the ambush lasts. Some accounts state the attack on the camp lasts 15 minutes, with other accounts indicating that from beginning to end, the ambush lasts for between one and two hours. Dawn is breaking just as the engagement ends.
The IRA operation is deemed unsuccessful as they did not achieved their primary objective of disarming the British soldiers and their commanding officer is badly wounded in the attack. The inability to capture the British soldiers’ weapons will hamper the battalion and the wider East Mayo Brigade’s ability to conduct large ambushes in an area that is already in very short supply of rifles and ammunition. There are varying accounts of casualties from both sides. The IRA inflicts a minimum of three casualties on the British side and the ambush gives many volunteers their first experience of battle. Some of the volunteers who take part in the ambush claim that five and upwards of ten on the British side are wounded. The British claim that they killed one IRA man and wounded several others. They also admit that three of their soldiers are wounded. The following day, British police and military carry out an exhaustive search in the intervening districts. It is reported in the Western People, that in the search that follows, the police and military from Claremorris and Ballyhaunis find blood stains over the ground covered by the IRA and two shotguns, a loaded revolver and two overcoats. In reality the IRA suffers only one casualty, that of their Cmdt. Patrick Kenny. In the military drive that follows, the number of private houses raided totals one hundred and fifty, however nothing incriminating is found.
After Cmdt. Kenny is safely extracted from the engagement; he is carried by Volunteers Jack and William Caulfield along with others to a house nearby and then on to Pat Healy’s house. The British military’s account reports that the soldiers witness a body being carried into a house nearby. From there he is taken to be treated first by Dr. A Smyth, Ballyhaunis, who is the battalion’s Medical Officer. He is moved to Mayo County infirmary and treated by Dr. McBride, however, it is deemed unsafe for him to stay there so after 24 hours he has to leave and is treated by Dr. Hopkins Castlebar in Union hospital for ten days. Members of Cumann na mBan employed in the Union hospital had established an IRA ward in a disused portion of the hospital where numerous wounded volunteers are treated throughout the war. When Kenny has recovered sufficiently, he is taken to Surgeon M Ó Máille in Galway, where he receives treatment for five weeks. He then goes on to recuperate in the home of Pádraic Ó MáilleTD near Maum in Connemara for four months. Ó Máille’s home is used as a safe house by the West Connemara, West Mayo and South Mayo IRA Brigades. Kenny returns to the Ballyhaunis area in April 1921.
(Pictured: Ballyhaunis IRA September 1921: Back L-R:Capt. Pat McNieve (Logboy Coy), Capt Austin Tarpey (Holywell Coy), Bn Cmdt. Patrick Kenny, Vol Joe Taylor (Aghamore Coy), Vol John Forde (Bekan Coy), Capt. Luke Taylor (Aghamore Coy), Vol Sonny Biesty (Holywell Coy), Bn Vice Cmdt. Dom Byrne, Front L-R: Vol Jack Kilduff (Bekan Coy), Bn Adjt. Austin Kenny, Capt. Michael Devaney (Brackloon Coy), Capt. Jim Kilkenny (Crossard Coy), Lt Michael Nolan (Knock Coy). Nearly all of the men photographed played some part in the Holywell Ambush)
On July 30, 1920, Brooke is killed, at the age of 69, at his offices in Dublin, by Paddy Daly, Tom Keogh and Jim Slattery, members of Michael Collins‘s Squad of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is killed in view of a colleague, who is spared. He is marked out for his activities as a judge, anti-republican activities, and his friendship with Sir John French. As an Irish Privy Counsellor, he is a signatory of the order proclaiming Dáil Éireann illegal.
The inquest following the assassination finds that Brooke had a pistol in his jacket pocket. His killing has been termed the only outright political assassination of the Irish War of Independence.
Campbell’s books, mostly collections of humorous pieces that were originally published in newspapers and magazines, include A Long Drink of Cold Water (1949), A Short Trot with a Cultured Mind (1950), An Irishman’s Diary (1950), Life in Thin Slices (1951), Patrick Campbell’s Omnibus (1954), Come Here Till I Tell You (1960), Constantly in Pursuit (1962), How to Become a Scratch Golfer (1963), Brewing Up in the Basement (1963), Rough Husbandry (1965), The P-P-Penguin Patrick Campbell (1965), All Ways on Sundays (1966), A Bunch of New Roses (1967), an autobiography My Life and Easy Times (1967), The Coarse of Events (1968), Gullible Travels (1969), The High Speed Gasworks (1970), Waving All Excuses (1971), Patrick Campbell’s Golfing Book (1972), Fat Tuesday Tails (1972), 35 Years on the Job (1973), and The Campbell Companion (1987). Many of his books are illustrated by Quentin Blake.
Campbell is married three times, first in 1941 to Sylvia Alfreda Willoughby Lee, whom he divorces in 1947. He then marries Chery Louise Munro in 1947. The two divorce in 1966, the year he marries Vivienne Orme.
Campbell speaks with a stammer, but nevertheless delights television audiences with his wit, notably as a regular team captain on the long-running show Call My Bluff, opposite his longtime friend, Frank Muir. Muir notes that “When he was locked solid by a troublesome initial letter he would show his frustration by banging his knee and muttering ‘Come along! Come along!'” Some of his funniest short stories describe incidents involving his stammer. He stands six feet five inches tall, and several of his funniest pieces deal with the problems faced by a man of his build in merely finding shoes or clothes that fit him. He also makes regular appearances in That Was The Week That Was.
Campbell lives for many years in the South of France, commuting to England for his television work and continuing to produce his weekly column in The Sunday Times, which he drops in 1978.
In 1972 a period of illness leads to the discovery that Campbell had suffered an undetected heart attack some years previously and has a permanent heart weakness. An attack of viral pneumonia in 1980 exacerbates this condition, and he dies suddenly on November 9, 1980 while talking to a nurse at University College Hospital, London. He is succeeded as the 4th and last Lord Glenavy by his novelist brother Michael.
seamus dubhghaill 