seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Category Archives: Irish History


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Death of Esther Johnson, Close Friend of Jonathan Swift

Esther Johnson, an Englishwoman known as “Stella” and known to be a close friend of Jonathan Swift, dies on January 28, 1728. Whether or not she and Swift are secretly married, and if so, why the marriage is never made public, is a subject of debate.

Johnson is born in Richmond, Surrey, England, on March 13, 1681, and spends her early years at Moor Park, Farnham, home of Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet. Here, when she is about eight, she meets Swift, who is Temple’s secretary. He takes a friendly interest in her from the beginning and apparently supervises her education.

Johnson’s parentage has been the subject of much speculation. The weight of evidence is that her mother acts as companion to Temple’s widowed sister, Martha, Lady Giffard, and that Johnson, her mother and her sister Anne are regarded as part of the family. Her father is said to have been a merchant who died young. Gossip that she is Temple’s illegitimate daughter seems to rest on nothing more solid than the friendly interest he shows in her. There are similar rumours about his supposed relationship with Swift.

When Swift sees Johnson again in 1696, he considers that she has grown into the “most beautiful, graceful and agreeable young woman in London.” Temple, at his death in 1699, leaves her some property in Ireland, and it is at Swift’s suggestion that she move to Ireland in 1702 to protect her interests, but her long residence there is probably due to a desire to be close to Swift. She generally lives in Swift’s house, though always with female companions like Rebecca Dingley, a cousin of Temple whom she has known since childhood. She becomes extremely popular in Dublin and an intellectual circle grows up around her, although it was said that she finds the company of other women tedious and only enjoys the conversation of men.

In 1704, their mutual friend, the Reverend William Tisdall, tells Swift that he wishes to marry Johnson, much to Swift’s private disgust, although his letter to Tisdall, which outlines his objections to the marriage, is courteous enough, making the practical point that Tisdall is not in a position to support a wife financially. Little is known about this episode, other than Swift’s letter to Tisdall. It is unclear if Tisdall actually proposes to her. If he does, he seems to have been met with a firm rejection, and he marries Eleanor Morgan two years later. He and Swift, after a long estrangement, become friends once more after Johnson’s death.

Johnson’s friendship with Swift becomes fraught after 1707 when he meets Esther Vanhomrigh, daughter of the Dutch-born Lord Mayor of Dublin, Bartholomew Van Homrigh. Swift becomes deeply attached to her and invents for her the name “Vanessa.” She in turn becomes infatuated with him and after his return to Ireland follows him there. The uneasy relationship between the three of them continues until 1723 when Vanessa, who is by now seriously ill from tuberculosis, apparently asks Swift not to see Johnson again. This leads to a violent quarrel between them, and Vanessa, before her death in June 1723, destroys the will she had made in Swift’s favour, leaving her property to two men, George Berkeley and Robert Marshall, who though eminent in their respective callings are almost strangers to her.

Whether Swift and Johnson are married has always been a subject of intense debate. The marriage ceremony is allegedly performed in 1716 by St. George Ashe, Bishop of Clogher, with no witnesses present, and it is said that the parties agree to keep it secret and live apart. Johnson always describes herself as a “spinster” and Swift always refers to himself as unmarried. Rebecca Dingley, who lives with Johnson throughout her years in Ireland, says that Johnson and Swift were never alone together. Those who know the couple best are divided on whether a marriage ever took place. Some, like Mrs. Dingley and Swift’s housekeeper Mrs. Brent laugh at the idea as “absurd.” On the other hand, Thomas Sheridan, one of Swift’s oldest friends, believes that the story of the marriage is true. He reportedly gives Johnson herself as his source. Historians have been unable to reach a definite conclusion on the truth of the matter. Bishop Ashe dies before the story first becomes public, and there are no other witnesses to the supposed marriage.

A collection of Johnson’s witticisms is published by Swift under the titles of “Bon Mots de Stella” as an appendix to some editions of Gulliver’s Travels. A Journal to Stella, a collection of 65 letters from Swift to Johnson, is published posthumously.

In 1722, Martha, Lady Giffard, dies and leaves money to Johnson and Swift’s sister, Mrs. Fenton, who had been her companion in 1711.

Johnson’s health begins to fail in her mid-forties. In 1726, she is thought to be dying and Swift rushes back from London to be with her but finds her better. The following year it becomes clear that she is gravely ill. After sinking slowly for months, she dies on January 28, 1728, and is buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. Swift is inconsolable at her death and writes The Death of Mrs. Johnson in tribute to her. When Swift dies in October 1745, he is buried beside her at his own request. A ward in St. Patrick’s University Hospital is named “Stella” in her memory.

In the 1994 film Words Upon the Window Pane, based on the play by William Butler Yeats, Johnson is played by Bríd Brennan. The plot turns on a séance in Dublin in the 1920s, where the ghosts of Swift, Johnson and Vanessa appear to resume their ancient quarrel.

In the 1982 Soviet film The House That Swift Built, Johnson is played by Aleksandra Zakharova.


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Birth of Mervyn Archdale, High Sheriff & Member of Parliament

Mervyn Edward Archdale DL, Irish soldier, High Sheriff and Member of Parliament (MP) known as Mervyn Edward Archdall until 1875, is born in Dublin on January 27, 1812.

Archdale is the eldest son of Edward Archdall of Riversdale, County Fermanagh, who serves as Sheriff of Fermanagh in 1813, and his wife Matilda, daughter of William Humphrys of Ballyhaise, County Cavan. He is educated at private schools in England at the expense of his uncle, General Mervyn Archdall, MP for Fermanagh (1801–34), and Brasenose College, Oxford, where he matriculates in 1830 but does not graduate.

Archdale joins the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons, becoming a cornet in 1832, a lieutenant in 1835 and a captain in 1841. He retires on half pay in 1847.

In June 1834, Archdale is elected the Member of Parliament for Fermanagh following the retirement of his uncle Mervyn Archdall. He is returned unopposed in the succeeding nine elections. From 1836, he is a noted member of the Orange Order and becomes treasurer of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. He votes in 1856 to disendow Maynooth College. When in 1868 he is asked to support a plea for the reprieve of Michael Barrett, a local Fenian under sentence of death in London, he refuses. He does not stand at the election of January 1874.

On the death of another uncle, Lt. Col. William Archdall, on January 1, 1857, Archdale inherits the family estates of Castle Archdale and Trillick in County Tyrone. He is appointed High Sheriff of Fermanagh in 1879.

Archdale has an interest in and also keeps racehorses. Other pursuits in which he is prominent are coursing and boating. He is a Freemason and member of five clubs.

Archdale marries Emma Inez, the daughter of Jacob Goulding of Kew, Surrey, with whom he has two sons, Mervyn Henry and Hugh James, and three daughters.

Archdale dies on December 22, 1895, at Cannes in the south of France. His estates pass to his brother, William Humphrys Archdale, who also takes over the representation of Fermanagh in Parliament.


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Birth of Thomas Charles Wright, Founder of the Ecuadorian Navy

Thomas Charles Wright, founding father of the Ecuadorian Navy and a general in Simón Bolívar‘s army, is born in Queensborough, Drogheda, County Louth, on January 26, 1799. He is regarded as a leading militarist in Ecuador‘s and other South American countries’ struggle for independence.

Wright is born to Joseph Wright and Mary Montgomery. At the age of eleven, he is sent to the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth, regarded at the time as the finest in the world, where he is educated to become an officer.

At the age of fourteen, following his junior officer training, Wright embarks on a sea voyage on board HMS Newcastle under the captaincy of Lord George Stuart. On this vessel he sails to the east coast of the United States where he is engaged in blockading activities in the squadron of Admiral John Borlase Warren. In 1817 he returns to England, having attained the junior officer’s rank of midshipman.

Although Wright passes the lieutenant‘s examination, promotional opportunities are diminishing in the Royal Navy, and he is not given a commission like many young junior officers in Britain. Collectively, he and others decide to enlist in Simón Bolívar’s revolutionary army and sail for South America in support of the uprisings against Spanish colonial rule. In November 1817, he enlists as an officer in the British Legions of Simón Bolívar, under the patronage of Luis Lopez Mendez, Bolivar’s agent in London. Originally setting off from the River Thames in November 1817, several snags delay the departure until January 2, 1818. They depart from Fowey harbor and sail on a brigantine named Dowson, under naval commander Captain Dormer, with 200 other volunteers armed with valuable weapons and ammunition. They land in the Saint Thomas Island after several weeks. Admiral Luis Brión arrives with his squadron on the Island of St Thomas and Pigott and the Rifle Corps are shipped on Patriot vessels to Margarita Island off the coast of Venezuela, arriving on April 21, 1818.

They are sent to Guayana and then to Angostura, beginning the campaign in the Apure. At Angostura (present-day Ciudad Bolívar), Wright first meets Simón Bolívar, for whom he develops a deep admiration. Bolívar opens the liberating campaign in Apure. During 1818–1819, one of the earliest battles with Wright partaking as an officer is at Trapiche de Gamarra on March 27, 1819. These encounters inspire Bolívar to begin his New Granada campaign and the march 1,500 miles over the Andes Mountains. Wright accompanies Bolívar on the legendary crossing on which 25% of the British/Irish troops die.

Wright takes part in the entire land campaign to liberate the northern countries of South America, and fights in numerous land battles with Bolívar’s army. He plays leading roles in the Battle of Vargas Swamp, and later in the victory at the Battle of Boyacá in August 1819, after which he is promoted to captain. In 1820, he returns with his Rifles regiment to the coastal plains to campaign in the jungles east of the Magdalena against the Spanish based on Santa Marta. The Rifles Corp are then transported by sea to Maracaibo, and on June 21, 1821, take part in Simon Bolívar’s decisive victory in the Battle of Carabobo. Cartagena is also seized, and the Rifles are brought in boats up the Magdalena River en route to Popayán. They form part of the forces led by Bolívar in the second of his famed Andean campaigns. After the successful battle at Bomboná on 7 April 7, 1822, Wright is twice mentioned in Bolívar’s order of the day for his exceptional skill and courage. Again, he is promoted and from February 1822 he is an acting lieutenant colonel.

In early 1824, Bolívar realizes that, despite the Patriot Army success on land, unless the South American revolutionary armies can control the seas off their coasts, they will forever be under sea blockade from imperial Spain. He appoints Wright to the newly fledged United Pacific Naval Squadron.

After Guayaquil seizes independence, John Illingworth Hunt is appointed as Commanding General of the Maritime Department. Immediately he takes care of organizing everything concerning the Navy. Thus, in 1823, the first Ecuadorian naval force is formed.

Wright, who in February 1824 is promoted to captain, becomes Commodore of the South Squadron, and embarks on the brig Chimborazo, and conducts patrols along the Peruvian coast with seven transports properly equipped and ready to assist in the transfer of troops, when Bolívar’s army would require it. Following Bolivar’s defeat of the royalist forces at the Battle of Junín on August 6, 1824, Wright is instructed to proceed to Callao with a squadron of five ships and is placed under the orders of Admiral Martin Guisse, head of the United Squadron. The Gran Colombian units, forming this squadron, participate in some naval actions against the royalists and also in the blockade of Callao, the last Spanish stronghold in South America.

Bolívar installs Wright as a Commodore of the Pacific Southern Squadron. He is appointed to command a small fleet of ships in support of Admiral Martin Guisse and joins the Patriotic naval force blockading off Callao. Along with Admiral Guisse and a handful of other former Royal Navy officers, they spearhead the blockade of Callao that successfully fights the Spanish naval squadron sent to lift the blockade of the besieged city. The blockade holds and Callao capitulates in early 1826, ending Spanish rule in South America.

The revolutionary independence struggles end with the unfolding liberation of South America countries, and Wright settles in Ecuador where he helps establish the Ecuadorian Navy and helps create the Ecuadorian naval school that is named in his honor.

The downfall and expulsion of the Spanish colonial power leads to land disputes and new wars among the South American home nations that once were united against Spain. In 1827, Peruvian President José de la Mar invades Bolivia and then invades Ecuador. Wright takes up the cause of defending his new adopted homeland. His navy fights two battles with the Peruvians in the Gulf of Guayaquil.

In 1829, Wright returns to the army as a Colonel and is appointed General Antonio José de Sucre‘s aide-de-camp at the Battle of Tarqui.

Ecuador declares itself a republic in 1830, though the region is completely unsettled with Peru and Colombia both claiming parts of Ecuador as part of their territory. At this time Wright goes back in the Navy with his own flag officer’s pendant. He is also appointed to the army with the rank of General of Brigade in 1830. Two unconstitutional presidents, Vincente Rocafuerte and Valdivieso, declare themselves in office. Wright and Flores lead Rocafuerte’s army into a decisive battle that takes place at Minarica in 1835. This action is decisive, and they defeat General Barriga, who is Valdivieso’s appointed General. The victory guarantees the stability and future of Ecuador, with Rocafuerte becoming Ecuador’s president.

In 1835, Wright is Comandante del Apostadero, later changed to Comandancia General de la Marina (Commander-in-Chief of the Navy) for many years. He does not found the Ecuadorian Naval School, as often incorrectly cited. The college is named in his honor. He is the commanding officer of the Ecuadorian Naval Squadron before Ecuador becomes a Republic, as such he is considered a founding father of the Ecuadorian Navy. In this year he is also promoted to Army General of Division.

In 1843, Wright becomes the Governor of Guayaquil. This is the premier military position in the city.

In 1845, a military coup plot overthrows the liberal government supported by Wright and he goes into exile for fifteen years in Chile and Peru. In Chorrillos, Peru, he befriends the Ecuadorian exile Eloy Alfaro and exerts a massive influence on him as a mentor. Alfaro later becomes President of Ecuador from 1897 to 1913. Wright returns from exile in 1860 and opposes Gabriel García Moreno until his death in 1868.


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Birth of Joseph O’Sullivan, Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Joseph O’Sullivan, Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, is born in London on January 25, 1897. Along with fellow IRA (London Battalion) volunteer Reginald Dunne, shoot dead Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson outside Wilson’s home at 36 Eaton Place, Belgravia, London on June 22, 1922. Convicted by a jury, he is sentenced to death by Justice Montague Shearman. Despite a petition of 45,000 signatures, and a plea for clemency from many prominent figures at the time, including playwright George Bernard Shaw, O’Sullivan and Dunne are hanged for the murder on August 10, 1922, at Wandsworth Prison. The event provides the inspiration for the 1947 film Odd Man Out.

O’Sullivan’s father, John, is originally from Bantry, County Cork, and moves to London as a young man where he eventually becomes a successful tailor. His mother, Mary Ann O’Sullivan (née Murphy), is born in Inniscarra, County Cork. He is the youngest of thirteen children, all born in London, although only eleven survive to adulthood. As a boy he attends St. Edmund’s College, Ware. On January 25, 1915, his eighteenth birthday, he enlists into the Royal Munster Fusiliers, and later transfers to the London Regiment and serves with the rank of lance corporal during World War I, losing a leg at Ypres in 1917.

Upon being discharged from the army in 1918, O’Sullivan is employed by the Ministry of Munitions and, when the war ends, is transferred to the Ministry of Labour where he works as a messenger. The Ministry of Labour is located in Montagu House, adjacent to Scotland Yard, and later demolished and replaced by the present-day Ministry of Defence.

O’Sullivan becomes a member of the IRA detachment in London and is named by Rex Taylor as being responsible for the execution of Vincent Fovargue as a British spy at the Ashford Golf Links, Middlesex, on April 2, 1921. Fovargue is left with a label pinned to his body stating, “Let spies and traitors beware, IRA.” Fovargue had been an officer in the Dublin brigade of the IRA.

O’Sullivan’s brother, Patrick, is the first Vice-Commandant of the London IRA during its early days in 1919 but is seconded to the Cork No. 1 Brigade during the Irish War of Independence. Patrick also serves in the London Regiment during World War I, along with another brother, Aloysius, who is discharged from the army in 1916 suffering from shell shock. Patrick is also wounded in a gas attack during World War I. He fights with the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War and is wounded ten days after his brother is executed. Shortly before that, he crosses over to England to participate in an abortive attempt to rescue Dunne and his brother.

In 1923, John O’Sullivan tries to have the remains of his son and Dunne released for a funeral Mass. But it is not until after the abolition of capital punishment in the United Kingdom that Patrick O’Sullivan, with the assistance of the Irish Republican National Graves Association, is able to arrange for the bodies of O’Sullivan and Dunne to be sent to Ireland for burial. In mid-August 1929, Irish Republicans in London unveil a plaque commemorating Dunne and O’Sullivan. In 1967, after some political and diplomatic debate by the British and Irish governments, the British Government allows the bodies of Dunne and O’Sullivan to be exhumed. They are subsequently reburied in Dean’s Grange Cemetery, County Dublin.

(Pictured: Photograph of IRA member Joseph O’Sullivan taken before his 1922 execution)


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Death of St. John Greer Ervine, Playwright & Author

St. John Greer Ervine, unionist playwright, author, critic, and manager of the Abbey Theatre from 1915 to 1916, dies in a nursing home at Fitzhall, Ipling, Sussex, England, on January 24, 1971.

Ervine is born in Ballymacarrett, Belfast on December 28, 1883. He is considered to be the founding father of modern Northern Irish drama.

Although accepted to study at Trinity College, Dublin, circumstances force Ervine to leave school at the age of 15 to begin working in an insurance office.

Two years later, Ervine immigrates to London, where he discovers a love for the theatre. He begins his writing career with Mixed Marriage (1911), an Ulster tragedy, and produces three plays between 1911 and 1915. In 1915, after a meeting with William Butler Yeats in London, he becomes the director of the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. It is, however, not a happy appointment as his personality and politics clash with the management of the theatre.

Ervine then joins the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and fights in Flanders, losing a leg in the conflict. Returning home, he feels increasingly alienated by nationalism and more attracted to the unionism of his family background. He becomes a vehement detractor of the south, describing Ireland in a letter to George Bernard Shaw as brimming with “bleating Celtic Twilighters, sex-starved Daughters of the Gael, gangsters and gombeen men.”

Ervine is a distinctively Ulster orientated writer, focusing on a naturalistic portrayal of rural and urban life. His most famous and popular work amongst his Northern Irish audience is Boyd’s Shop (1936), which becomes one of the Ulster Group Theatre’s stalwart productions. The play is a classic of the homely yet sincere Ulster genre and centres around the struggles of the folk that Ervine grew up with in his grandmother’s shop on the Albertbridge Road. Ervine creates in Boyd’s Shop a template for Ulster theatre that is to dominate until the advent of Samuel Thompson‘s Over the Bridge.

Ervine’s reactionary unionism and anti-southern hatred becomes more pronounced as he ages and eclipses his more subtle characteristics and abilities as a writer. Although many of his novels and plays are at times clouded by his prejudices, they are also very often capable of tremendous feeling and humanity showing he is a writer of note.

St. John Greer Ervine dies at the age of 87 at Fitzhall, Ipling, Sussex on January 24, 1971.


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Birth of Hugh Logue, Economist & SDLP Politician

Hugh Anthony Logue, former Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) politician and economist who now works as a commentator on political and economic issues, is born on January 23, 1949, in Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. He is also a director of two renewable energy companies in Europe and the United States. He is the father of author Antonia Logue.

Logue grows up outside the village of Claudy in County Londonderry, the eldest of nine children born to Denis Logue, a bricklayer, and Kathleen (née Devine). He gains a scholarship to St. Columb’s College which he attends from 1961 to 1967. In 1967, he commences at St. Joseph’s Teacher Training college (Queen’s University) in Belfast from which he qualifies as a teacher of Mathematics in 1970. He first comes to prominence as a member of the executive of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), the only SDLP member of the executive. He stands as a candidate in elections to the new Northern Ireland Assembly in 1973 and is elected for Londonderry, at the age of 24, the youngest candidate elected that year. With John Hume and Ivan Cooper, he is arrested by the British Army during a peaceful demonstration in Londonderry in August 1971. Their conviction is ultimately overturned by the Law Lords R. (Hume) v Londonderry Justices (972, N.I.91) requiring the then British Government to introduce retrospective legislation to render legal previous British Army actions in Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland State Papers of 1980 show that together with John Hume and Austin Currie, Logue plays a key role in presenting the SDLP’S ‘Three Strands’ approach to the Thatcher Government’s Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Humphrey Atkins in April 1980. The “Three Strands” approach eventually becomes the basis for the Good Friday Agreement. The Irish State papers from 1980 reveal that he is a confidante of the Irish Government of that time, briefing it regularly on the SDLP’s outlook.

Logue is also known for his controversial comments at Trinity College Dublin at the time of the power sharing Sunningdale Agreement, which many blame for helping to contribute to the Agreement’s defeat, to wit, that: [Sunningdale was] “the vehicle that would trundle Unionists into a united Ireland.” The next line of the controversial speech says, “the speed the vehicle moved at was dependent on the Unionist community.” In an article in The Irish Times in 1997 he claims that this implies that unity is always based on consent and acknowledged by Unionist Spokesman John Laird in the NI Assembly in 1973.

Logue unsuccessfully contests the Londonderry seat in the February 1974 and 1979 Westminster Elections. He is elected to the 1975 Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention and the 1982 Northern Ireland Assembly. He is a member of the New Ireland Forum in 1983. In the 1980s he is a member of the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace and plays a prominent part in its efforts to resolve the 1981 Irish hunger strike. His role is credited in Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike by David Beresford, Biting the Grave by P. O’Malley and, more recently, in Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-block Hunger Strike (New Island Books, 2016) and Afterlives: The Hunger Strike and the Secret Offer that Changed Irish History (Lilliput Press, 2011) by former Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer Richard O’Rawe. Following the New Ireland Forum in 1984 and John Hume’s decision to represent the redrawn Londonderry constituency as Foyle and a safe seat, Logue leaves the Dublin-based, National Board for Science and Technology and joins the European Commission in 1984 in Brussels.

Following the 1994 Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire, Logue, along with two EU colleagues, is asked by EU President Jacques Delors to consult widely throughout Northern Ireland and the Border regions and prepare recommendations for a Peace and Reconciliation Fund to underpin the peace process. Their community-based approach becomes the blueprint for the Peace Programme. In 1997, then EU President Jacques Santer asks the team, led by Logue, to return to review the programme and advise for a renewed Peace II programme. Papers published by National University Galway in 2016 from Logue’s archives indicate that he is the originator of the Peace Fund concept within the European Commission.

At the European Commission from 1984 to 1998, Logue creates Science and Technology for Regional Innovation and Development in Europe (STRIDE). In 1992, he is joint author with Giovanni de Gaetano, of RTD potential in the Mezzogiorno of Italy: the role of science parks in a European perspective and, with A. Zabaniotou and University of Thessaloniki, Structural Support For RTD.

Further publications by Logue follow: Research and Rural Regions (1996) and RTD potential in the Objective 1 regions (1997). With the fall of the Berlin Wall, his attention turns to Eastern Europe and in March 1998 publishes a set of studies Impact of the enlargement of the European Union towards central central and Eastern European countries on RTD- Innovation and Structural policies.

Logue convenes the first EU seminar on “Women in Science” in 1993 and jointly publishes with LM Telapessy Women in Scientific and Technological Research in the European Community, highlighting the barriers to women’s advancement in the Research world.

As the former vice-chairman of the North Derry Civil Rights Association, Logue gives evidence at the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday. He is special adviser to the Office of First and Deputy First Minister from 1998 to 2002 and as an official of the European Commission. In 2002–03, he is a fellow of the Institute for British – Irish Studies at University College Dublin (UCD). In July 2006, he is appointed as a board member of the Irish Peace Institute, based at the University of Limerick and in 2009 is appointed Vice Chairman. He is a Life Member of the Institute of International and European Affairs.

On December 17, 2007, Logue is appointed as a director to InterTradeIreland (ITI), the North-South Body established under the Good Friday Agreement to promote economic development in Ireland. There he chairs the ITI’s Fusion programme, bringing north–south industrial development in Innovation and Research. Integrating Ireland economically is a theme of his writing throughout his career, most recently in The Irish Times and in earlier publications as economic spokesman for the SDLP. He is economist at the Dublin-based National Board for Science and Technology from 1981 to 1984.

Logue, after leaving the European Commission in 2005, becomes involved in Renewable Energy and is chairman of Priority Resources as well as a director of two companies, one in solar energy, the other in wind energy. In November 2011, he is elected to the main board of European Association of Energy (EAE).

In November 2023, Logue is awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Galway in recognition of “a lifetime dedicated to civil rights, human rights, equality and peace in Northern Ireland, Ireland and Europe.” He donates an archive of material, more than 20 boxes of manuscripts, documents, photographs and political ephemera, on the development of the SDLP from the early 1970s to the University of Galway.


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Brian Cowen Resigns as Fianna Fáil Leader

Taoiseach Brian Cowen resigns as leader of the ruling Fianna Fáil party on January 22, 2011. Having won a secret leadership ballot on Tuesday, January 18, during a week of political turmoil, he says he will remain at the head of government until the upcoming election on March 11, 2011.

Cowen has seen his ratings plummet amid Ireland’s economic crisis and its bailout by the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“I’m concerned that renewed internal criticism of Fianna Fáil is deflecting attention from this important debate,” Cowen says. “Therefore, taking everything into account after discussing the matter with my family I have taken on my own counsel, the decision to step down.”

Cowen says he spoke to John Gormley, leader of the junior coalition party, the Green Party, before making the announcement. He says his resignation will not affect government business.

“My political assessment is that this is the right thing to do for the party,” Cowen says at a press conference at the Merrion Hotel in central Dublin. “But it’s about me directing my attention to the country.”

During the past week, six ministers resigned, and Cowen’s cabinet reshuffle collapsed, prompting a Green Party threat to pull out of the coalition government.

“I believe that it was my duty to put in place the best possible team we could to fight this election to put them on the frontbench and into position,” Cowen says. “It was not a cynical view by me, it was a political act.”

Opposition parties demand Cowen set a new date for the general election. The Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny, says he would move a motion of no confidence in Cowen as Taoiseach in the Dáil on Tuesday, January 25, unless he goes to the president to seek a dissolution of parliament. He says his party will also vote against the government in upcoming motion of confidence previously put forward by the Labour Party.

The Labour Party leader, Eamon Gilmore, says the Irish people do not want the government to remain in office another day. “It is simply not tenable for Cowen to remain on as Taoiseach as his colleagues in Fianna Fáil squabble over the remnants of their party,” he says.

The Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, says Cowen’s decision will lead to further instability. “The government and Fianna Fáil are in chaos. Their focus is not on the problems facing the country,” he says.

(From: “Irish prime minister Brian Cowen resigns as party leader” by David Batty, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com, January 22, 2011)


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Sinn Féin MPs Enter the House of Commons

On January 21, 2002, Sinn Féin‘s four MPs take the historic step of signing up to use the facilities of the House of Commons, whose authority over Northern Ireland republicans have been fighting for almost a century. Party policy is also changed to allow MPs to sit in the Irish Parliament, the Dáil.

Amid concern among some republicans that the move comes close to recognising British rule, Sinn Féin president and Belfast West MP, Gerry Adams, insists that his party will never take its seats at Westminster. “There will never ever be Sinn Féin MPs sitting in the British houses of parliament,” he tells a Westminster press conference.

David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Northern Ireland First Minister, predicts this controversial move is a first step towards the same situation in Westminster.

However, flanked by his three fellow Sinn Féin MPs, Martin McGuinness (Mid Ulster), Pat Doherty (West Tyrone) and Michelle Gildernew (Fermanagh and South Tyrone), Adams says taking up seats in the Dáil is a very different proposition from doing so the Commons. No Sinn Féin member would take the loyalty oath to the Queen, needed to take up a seat in Parliament, but that was a mere side issue to the key question of sovereignty, he says. Even if the oath were amended, the party would still refuse to take its seats because republicans do not recognise parliament’s jurisdiction over Northern Ireland.

“There are lots of things which there can be no certainty of and there are some things of which we can be certain,” Adams says. “There will never, ever be Sinn Féin MPs sitting in the British Houses of Parliament. The transfer of power by London and Dublin to the Assembly in the north … is all proof of where we see the political centre of gravity on the island of Ireland and that is in the island of Ireland.”

Adams insists his party’s presence in the Commons is a “temporary” measure until they can join the parliament of a united Ireland.

A ban on MPs using Commons facilities without taking the loyalty oath was lifted in December 2001 to Conservative fury. Tories end three decades of cross-party cooperation over the move, which also entitles Sinn Féin’s four MPs to allowances of £107,000 a year each.

Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Quentin Davies claims Adams plans to use the cash for party political campaigning – something forbidden by Westminster rules. He accuses British Prime Minister Tony Blair of “deliberately contributing to a great propaganda coup in which … the British Government are licking their boots.” The Prime Minister’s spokesman says Blair acknowledges “many victims do feel very strongly about what has happened, but the Prime Minister’s view is that this peace process has saved many lives.”

Sitting alongside a giant Irish tricolour inside his new office, Adams likens his presence there to that of MPs who had served in the British Army and intelligence services – suggesting some of them still do. He also dismisses concerns about the misuse of the money, accusing those “complaining loudest” of being from parties “indicted for corruption and sleaze.”

Sinn Féin’s move into their new offices coincides with a “routine” meeting with the Prime Minister in Downing Street to discuss the peace process. The Sinn Féin president uses publicity surrounding the controversial move to issue a new challenge to Blair to tackle the loyalist “killing campaign.” Adams is joined in Downing Street by his three fellow Sinn Féin MPs.

“There have been 300 bombs over the last nine or ten months,” Adams says. “The British Prime Minister has to face up to the reality that the threat to the peace process within Northern Ireland comes from within loyalism.”

Adams blames Betty Boothroyd‘s decision to bar Sinn Féin MPs from using Commons facilities for the current controversy. “We are here, elected, with our mandate renewed and increased,” he adds.

Adams is asked how he would react if he met former Cabinet minister Lord Tebbit and his wife, who was badly injured by the 1984 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb attack at the Tories conference at the Grand Brighton Hotel in Brighton, at the Commons. “I don’t ignore anyone. As someone who has been wounded and shot and someone whose house has been bombed, I understand precisely how others who have suffered more than me feel about all of this,” Adams replies. “I would like to think that as part of building a peace process that all of us agree there must be dialogue.”

(Pictured: from left, Sinn Fein MPs Michelle Gildernew, Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams and Pat Doherty)


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The January 1973 Sackville Place Bombing

The fourth of four paramilitary bombings in the centre of Dublin takes place in Sackville Place on January 20, 1973.

The first bombing takes place in Burgh Quay on November 26, 1972. The next two bombings take place on December 1, 1972, in Eden Quay and Sackville Place. Three civilians are killed and 185 people are injured in the four bombings. No group has ever claimed responsibility for the attacks, and nobody has ever been charged in connection with the bombings.

On Saturday, January 20, 1973, at 3:08 p.m., a male caller with an English accent calls the telephone exchange in Exchequer Street, Dublin, with the following bomb warning: “Listen love, there is a bomb in O’Connell Street at the Bridge.” Although the call is placed from a coin box in the Dublin area, the exact location is never determined. The receiver of the call immediately contacts the Garda Síochána. The streets of central Dublin are more crowded than usual as Ireland is playing the All Blacks at an international rugby match being held that afternoon in Lansdowne Road.

At 3:18 p.m., a man leaving Kilmartin’s betting shop in Sackville Place notices smoke or steam emanating from the boot of a red Vauxhall Victor car parked outside Egan’s pub facing the direction of O’Connell Street. Its registration number was EOI 1229. About five seconds later the bomb inside the red car’s boot explodes, scattering sections of the vehicle and throwing the man off his feet. The explosion is so powerful that it hurls the car’s roof over adjacent Abbey Street where it lands in Harbour Place. The right-hand rear hub and axle sections are blasted through a metal grill on a shop window.

A CIÉ bus conductor, 21-year-old Thomas Douglas, originally from Stirling, Scotland, is passing the betting shop just as the bomb goes off and the force of the blast hurls him through a shop front window where he dies minutes later of shock and hemorrhage from the multiple injuries he received in the explosion. The entire shop front is devastated and spattered with blood. Fourteen people are badly injured in the bombing which causes bedlam as hysterical Saturday afternoon shoppers seek to flee the area in panic and confusion. The car bomb detonates at almost the exact location of the December 1 bomb. Later eyewitness accounts suggest that the car had been parked at the curb several hours before it exploded. According to journalists Jim Cusack and Henry McDonald in their book UVF: The Endgame (Poolbeg Press, 2008), the bomb is designed to cause widespread chaos and alarm throughout the city, and to inflict massive injuries upon shoppers and pedestrians as Saturday is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the week for Dubliners.

Suspicion initially falls on the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and other republican groups. Shortly afterwards, however the blame shifts to loyalist paramilitary organisations, in particular, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). Gardaí receives a telephone call from a male caller in Belfast who gives the names of five men who he claims are responsible for January 20 car bombing. The caller says that the five men were originally from Belfast’s Sailortown area but had since relocated to new housing estates in the city. It is not known what action, if any, was ever undertaken by the Garda Síochána to follow up this telephone call. The UVF has never admitted responsibility for the bombing.

Irish Supreme Court Justice Henry Barron commissions an official inquiry into the four bombings. The findings are published in a report in November 2004. The Inquiry concludes that it “seemed more likely than not” that the bombing of the Film Centre Cinema on November 26, 1972, was “carried out by Republican subversives as a response to a Government ‘crackdown’ on the IRA and their associates” and to influence the outcome of the voting in the Dáil regarding the passage of the controversial amendment to the Offences Against the State Acts. Regarding December 1, 1972, and January 20, 1973, car bombings, the Inquiry concludes that confidential information obtained by the Gardaí indicates the three attacks were perpetrated by the UVF, “but no evidence was ever found to confirm this. Nor was there any evidence to suggest the involvement of members of the security forces in the attacks.”


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Birth of Ciaran McKeown, Northern Irish Peace Activist

Ciaran McKeown, Northern Irish peace activist, is born into a Roman Catholic family in Derry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on January 19, 1943.

McKeown is born to Sean and Mary (née Shevlin) McKeown. His father is a school principal. He serves as a Dominican novice for eight months in his youth. He attends Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), where he studies philosophy, becoming the first Catholic to be elected president of the university’s student council. He is also elected chair of the National Democrats, a ginger group linked with the National Democratic Party. He becomes president of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) in 1969, based in Dublin, and stands in Dublin South-West at the 1969 Irish general election, taking last place, with only 154 votes.

In 1970, McKeown becomes a reporter for The Irish Times, then later works for The Irish Press, as their Belfast correspondent. Given his experience of reporting on the emergence of The Troubles, he supports the 1976 creation of “Women for Peace,” a Northern Ireland-based movement, by Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan. When his involvement becomes more widely known, the movement changes its name to “Community of Peace People,” or simply “Peace People.” After the events of 1976-77, he finds it difficult to return to full-time journalism.

Although McKeown becomes known as a thoughtful and calm presence in the leadership of the organisation, his criticisms of the reluctance of church authorities to speak out on sectarian issues causes some tensions. Corrigan and Williams win the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize, but he is not made a party to it. However, the Ford Foundation makes a grant to the group, which includes a salary for him, enabling him to become full-time editor of Peace by Peace, the group’s newspaper, also completing a year as editor of Fortnight in 1977.

McKeown, Corrigan and Williams all step down from the leadership posts in 1978, although he continues to edit Peace by Peace. His articles bring him into conflict with the group’s new leadership, while financial disagreements massively reduce the group’s membership. Ultimately, his belief that the group should call for special status for paramilitary prisoners leads to a split, with Williams and her leading supporter, Peter McLachlan, resigning in February 1980. He can no longer survive on the group’s salary, nor can he find work as a journalist, so he retrains as a typesetter.

In 1984, McKeown publishes his autobiography, The Passion of Peace. This is almost immediately withdrawn following a claim that it libels a journalist, although it is later reissued with an additional note.

In addition to his activism and his work in journalism, McKeown is deeply involved in the Belfast theater scene. He serves in a number of offices, including executive secretary and chairman, at the city’s renowned Lyric Theatre.

McKeown dies peacefully at his home in Belfast on September 1, 2019, following a battle with cancer.