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Category Archives: Politics & Government


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Founding of the Catholic Association by Daniel O’Connell

The Catholic Association, an Irish Roman Catholic political organization, is founded by Daniel O’Connell on May 12, 1823, to campaign for Catholic emancipation within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It is one of the first mass-membership political movements in Europe. It organizes large-scale public protests in Ireland.

The Catholic Association is the latest in a series of similar associations formed over the previous ten years or so, none of which had prospered. Like the other associations, this new association is composed mainly of the middle class elite: an annual subscription amounting to a guinea, an amount equivalent to what an average farmer would pay for six months’ rent. In 1824, the Catholic Association begins to use the money that it has raised to campaign for Catholic emancipation.

In 1824, the association creates a new category of associate members at the cost of a penny per month, the so-called Catholic Rent. The reasoning behind the creation of this new membership category is to stimulate a swelling in association numbers. This new, cheaper category ensures Catholics from a poorer background can join, and thus the association’s initial class-based entry barriers are removed. The Catholic rent transforms the association and Catholic political advocacy more broadly. In terms of the association, the rent catalyzes a transformation in a number of ways. Firstly, as previously mentioned, it gives the Catholic Association a constant source of money, which enables O’Connell to run a consistent campaign. Secondly, it facilitates easy calculation of total association membership numbers so that O’Connell can say with confidence that he has the support of so many people. This is important as it can be used to apply pressure against the British government. Third, and perhaps most importantly, however, it announces the arrival of mass mobilization politics, being the first such populist movement in Europe. O’Connell decides to add this additional membership level, at a reduced price of a penny a month, deliberately. The benefits are clear. With the membership subscription set at a relatively cheap price, a large number of the peasant and working classes can join. Affordability ensures large numbers. In effect, it becomes a universal Catholic organization that is transparent and populist. The fact that each member contributes financially to the association also ensures that they are more deeply involved in pushing the cause of Catholic emancipation. People want value for their money. Thus, this ensures a cheap method for O’Connell to get the message of Catholic emancipation spread throughout Ireland.

The Catholic Association’s funds are diffused widely in a variety of areas. Some is spent campaigning for Catholic emancipation, defraying the costs of sending petitions to Westminster, and training of priests. Following the 1826 election campaign, funds are used to support the members of the organization who had voted against their landlords. The money is used for those who have been evicted from land by the landlords because of their connection to the Catholic organization or for those who were boycotting absentee landlord. For the Catholic peasants that are in this situation, the future would be grim as they would be unable to continue the boycott without food and money, and they would be unable to lease land from any landlord as the peasants would be boycotted against in return. The Catholic Association’s funds are used to support these boycotts so that they can continue and live well enough to have enough food to survive.

The Catholic Association is originally aristocratic in its composition, and some of the gentry (such as Richard Lalor Sheil) hold relatively conservative views. However, O’Connell holds an enormous influence over society and largely dictates the policies it pursues. It is radical in nature but also extremely loyal to the Crown in appearance. This had been the strategy of the previous major Catholic group, the Catholic Committee of the 1790s, which achieved major Catholic Relief in 1793.

Since the aims of the Catholic Association are fairly moderate and the organization remains loyal to the monarch, British MPs are conceptually more willing to pass Catholic emancipation. The matter had been discussed in London since the Acts of Union 1800, when Prime Minister William Pitt and most of his colleagues resign from the cabinet when emancipation is denied by the king. Henry Grattan continues to support the cause, and Catholic emancipation had been passed by the House of Commons previously by a majority of six, but it is rejected in the House of Lords and generally by King George III, who reigns until 1820.

The biggest strength of the Catholic Association is that the Catholic Church helps in the collection of the Catholic rent. Catholic priests also hold sermons in favor of Catholic emancipation. This means that it is easy for the members to pay the Catholic rent, and it will attract more members as the message of Catholic emancipation is being spread throughout Ireland. Sir Robert Peel believes the alliance of the Catholic Association and the Catholic Church is a “powerful combination.”

In 1826, the Catholic Association begins to use its funds to support pro-emancipation MPs in elections. They use their money and manpower to campaign for the candidate to be elected into parliament to pressure the government from within to pass Catholic emancipation.

The turning point comes in 1828, when two factors come into play. The first is that the Catholic Church takes over the collection of the Catholic Rent and effectively the Catholic Association itself. The other is that by 1828, O’Connell’s reputation has increased dramatically. He is an internationally recognized figure and is seen as one of the leading figures in liberal thinking. This successful campaign leads on to, but is distinguished from, his later efforts to end the union with Britain, to increase the franchise, and to end the payment of tithes. His particular talent is to push the emancipation process along in an organized way.

In May 1828, the Sacramental Test Act 1828 repeals the Test Acts 1673 & 1678 against non-Anglican Protestants. This gives non-Catholic non-conformists greater political freedom and equality in Britain. The repeal has two effects: it gives Catholics hope that a similar act will be passed that will include Catholics; it also alienates Catholics, as they have become the only Christians not to have political freedom and equality.

In May 1828, William Huskisson resigns from the cabinet, and William Vesey-Fitzgerald is chosen as the President of the Board of Trade. According to the law, there is to be a by-election in his constituency of Clare. O’Connell decides to exploit a loophole in the Acts of Union 1800. It requires MPs to take the Oath of Allegiance, but the oath is not required of candidates for election. He stands in the by-election and wins. Since he is a Catholic, he cannot take his seat in parliament. Demand rises to allow him to become an MP for Clare, as it does not have representation.

Sir Robert Peel and Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, see that if O’Connell is not allowed to take his seat, then there could be a revolution in Ireland. While using non-violent methods, O’Connell hints that he will get more Catholics elected to force the situation. In an emotive speech, he says, “They must crush us or conciliate us.”

Peel decides to change the government’s approach and submits the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 in February 1829. The bill is passed. It is a momentous victory for O’Connell and the Catholic middle class, and he becomes known as “the liberator” and the “uncrowned king of Ireland.” However, the simultaneous enactment of the Parliamentary Elections (Ireland) Act 1829 restricts the franchise in the county constituencies in Ireland. The archive of the Catholic Association is housed with the archives of Dublin Diocese in Holy Cross College, Dublin.

(Pictured: “Daniel O’Connell: The Champion of Liberty” poster published in Pennsylvania, 1847)


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Death of John William Nixon, Politician & N.I. Police Leader

John William Nixon, MBE, a unionist politician and police leader in Northern Ireland, dies on May 11, 1949, at his home in Woodvale House, Ballygomartin Road, Belfast. He is allegedly responsible for several sectarian atrocities, including the McMahon killings and the Arnon Street killings. Eyewitnesses to the Arnon street killings claim they can identify the police involved and allege that their leader is District Inspector Nixon. It is widely believed that Nixon’s “murder gang” within the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) hunted down and murdered Catholics as reprisals for the killing of police.

Nixon is born on June 1, 1877, in Graddum, a townland located between the village of Kilnaleck and the hamlet of Crosskeys in County Cavan. He becomes a district inspector in the RIC, and transfers to its successor in the newly created region of Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). By 1922, he is responsible for controlling access to the Roman Catholic Ardoyne and Marrowbone areas of Belfast, and works closely with the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC).

Irish nationalist writer and activist Michael Farrell alleges that during this period Nixon leads the Cromwell Club, an unofficial organisation of security officials responsible for killing several Catholic civilians. These allegations are not independently confirmed and during his lifetime Nixon successfully sues the Derry Journal and a book publisher for libel. He is appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1923 “… for services rendered by him during the troubled period.”

In 1924, Nixon, long a member of the Orange Order, makes a political speech at an Orange lodge. This contravenes RUC regulations, and he is dismissed on the orders of Sir James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

Nixon is elected to Belfast Corporation as an Independent Unionist, but at the 1925 Northern Ireland general election, he stands unsuccessfully as an Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) candidate in Belfast North. At the 1929 Northern Ireland general election, running once again as an Independent Unionist, he is narrowly elected as the MP for Belfast Woodvale. From September 1932 until the 1933 Northern Ireland general election, he is the only opposition MP attending the Parliament of Northern Ireland. He is founder in 1931 of the Ulster Protestant League (UPL), whose object is to safeguard Protestant jobs, and is also connected with the Ulster Protestant Association (UPA), which includes a hard core of loyalist gunmen who carried out assassinations on Catholics during the mid-1930s. Until the end of his life, fearful that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) would catch up with him, he carries a revolver in the glove compartment of his car.

Nixon holds his seat until his death on May 11, 1949, at home in Woodvale House, Ballygomartin Road, Belfast. He denies the murder allegations against him until the end of his life.

(Pictured: Captain John William Nixon (right) with Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Craig and Colonel Spencer, attending a conference with Michael Collins at City Hall, Dublin in February 1922)


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Birth of Mannix Flynn, Politician, Author & Playwright

Gerard Mannix Flynn, an Irish Independent politician, author and playwright, is born in Dublin on May 4, 1957. He is serving as a Dublin City Councillor since May 2009. In addition to his work on Dublin City Council, he has also written the novel Nothing To Say in 1983 and the play James X in 2002.

At the age of eleven, Flynn is sent to St. Joseph’s Industrial School in Letterfrack, County Galway, for eighteen months. He is subjected to sexual and physical abuse there. He also spends time in Marlborough House Detention Centre, Daingean, County Offaly, St. Patrick’s Institution, Dublin, and is given five years at the age of fifteen and sent to Mountjoy Prison.

Flynn publishes the novel Nothing To Say in 1983. It is subsequently translated into German, Italian, and Polish. He founds his arts company, Farcry Productions, in 2004, which produces visual art, performance and installation work around taboo issues such as child sexual abuse, violence, and addiction.

In 2004, James X performed by Flynn wins The Irish Times Irish Theatre Award. An earlier version of this play entitled Talking to the Wall previously wins the Edinburgh Fringe award.

Flynn appears in the films Cal, When the Sky Falls and Excalibur and works as an actor in Scotland, London, Austria, and Dublin for twenty years.

Flynn is first elected to Dublin City Council in the 2009 Irish local elections as an independent candidate representing the South-East Inner City electoral area. He is re-elected to the revised Pembroke-South Dock electoral area in the 2014 Irish local elections.

Flynn tables a motion to move the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, a State company set up in 1991 as a regeneration agency for Temple Bar, under the direct control of Dublin City Council. The trust is subsequently found to be in breach of corporate governance and accountability in a number of public reports. He also expresses critical views of the way public money is spent as part of a Grafton Street regeneration project in Dublin.

Flynn supports tougher regulation around the amplification of busking on public streets, which leads to his office being vandalised in February 2015. He is involved in a number of challenges to cycle lane provision, with a High Court challenge against the Strand Road cycle lane COVID-19 mobility trial and is a spokesperson for a group opposed to this cycle lane trial. Critics accuse him of consistently voting against policies that would provide more active travel infrastructure and in favour of policies which negatively impact pedestrians and cyclists. His legal challenges to cycling provision have the potential to revert a number of cycle lanes which have been created back to servicing predominantly cars.

In 2015, Flynn resigns from the Dublin City Council Arts SPC over what he perceives as a lack of cohesive overall policy, strategy, and vision.

In 2016, Flynn protests against the Artane Band, due to its association with the Artane Industrial School. The band responds saying it has had no association with the former industrial school. His peaceful protest, which includes him protesting on a window sill in his Dublin City Council office, is criticised by some as “attention seeking” and a “publicity stunt full stop.”

In 2019, Flynn is involved in a protest march against plans to open the state’s largest homeless shelter in his ward. Protesters march northbound on Aungier Street blocking traffic and shouting slogans against the Peter McVerry trust for providing the services in conjunction with Dublin City Council. In 2020, he takes further legal action against the council, who are working in conjunction with the Peter McVerry Trust, so that he can ensure the homeless facilities will not be built in the area.

Flynn contests the 2011, 2016 and 2020 Irish general elections to Dáil Éireann unsuccessfully. He stands unsuccessfully as an independent candidate at the 2021 Dublin Bay South by-election, getting 879 first-preference votes (3.3%).

A 2019 documentary by Flynn, Land Without God, about the effects of clerical abuse on Flynn and his family, receives special mention for the Dublin Human Rights Film Award at the Dublin International Film Festival.


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Birth of Malcolm Byrne, Fianna Fáil Politician

Malcolm Byrne, an Irish Fianna Fáil politician, is born in Gorey, County Wexford, on April 25, 1974. He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Wicklow–Wexford constituency since the 2024 Irish general election. He previously serves as a Senator for the Cultural and Educational Panel from 2020 to 2024. He represents the Wexford constituency from 2019 to 2020.

Byrne is the eldest child from a family of five. He attends St. Joseph’s CBS secondary school in Gorey, later studying law at University College Dublin (UCD). He is secretary of the Kevin Barry Cumann while at UCD. He Is involved in student politics, serving as education officer for both UCD Students’ Union and the Union of Students in Ireland, and as an executive member of the European Students’ Union.

Byrne describes the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre and the fall of the Berlin Wall as influencing his decision to enter politics.

Byrne is Head of Communications with the Higher Education Authority (HEA) until 2019, and has been Vice-President of the National Youth Council of Ireland. In 2014, he is named as one of the European 40 Under 40, in the European Young Leaders Programme.

When first elected to Gorey Town Council on the first count in the 1999 Irish local elections, he is its youngest member at the age of 25. He tops the poll again at the 2004 Irish local elections. He is first elected to Wexford County Council in the 2009 Irish local elections for the Gorey local electoral area, and elected Chairman following his 2014 re-election.

In January 2006, The Sun includes Byrne’s picture on the cover of its Irish edition beneath the headline “Bertie‘s FF Man in Gay Web Shame,” revealing that Byrne has a profile on the dating website Gaydar. He responds at the time, “I have not, nor have I ever, done anything illegal and I am not a hypocrite in any way. My views on gay rights issues are well known. I am not married with four children or anything like that, so there is no suggestion of hypocrisy.” His family and political career suffer as a result and he is not selected for candidacy in the 2007 Irish general election following this incident. He later describes how a journalist from The Gorey Echo first approaches him, “The first few questions were about roads. Then the journalist said, ‘Are you aware you have a profile on this dating website?'” When he confirms that the profile is his, he experiences a sleepless night before The Gorey Echo outs him locally: “I was ringing around people I knew and my parents were ringing around people … my grandmother didn’t know and a lot of my extended family and my friends didn’t know.” Gorey Echo group editor Tom Mooney defends the publication by saying he believes Byrne’s behaviour to be “unfitting of a public representative.”

Byrne is a candidate for Fianna Fáil in the 2016 Irish general election in the Wexford constituency, but does not win a seat.

Byrne contests the 2019 European Parliament election for Fianna Fail in the South constituency, having unexpectedly beaten Cork TD Billy Kelleher in the vote for the party’s nomination. However, Kelleher is later added to the ticket. Fianna Fáil then divides the constituency geographically, asking people in counties Carlow, Kilkenny, Laois, Offaly, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow to vote for Byrne, and those in counties Cork, Kerry, Clare and Limerick to vote for Kelleher. Kelleher wins 11.69% of the first-preference votes (FPV) and is elected on the 17th count. Byrne wins 9.62% of the FPV, and is eliminated on the 16th count.

Byrne is elected as a TD at the 2019 Wexford by-election. Andrew Bolger is co-opted to Byrne’s seat on Wexford County Council following his election to the Dáil. His maiden speech is about housing solutions and the need to address the challenges facing Generation Rent. In an interview he says he can envisage a United Ireland where the 12th of July and Saint Patrick’s Day are public holidays and speaks about how Ireland needs to ensure Unionists feel at home in a new agreed state and that may mean addressing issues such as Ireland joining the Commonwealth.

Byrne loses his Dáil seat at the 2020 Irish general election, following what he calls “a dirty campaign.” His defeat after only 71 days makes him the TD with the second-shortest term of service, after the Anti H-Block TD Kieran Doherty, who dies on hunger strike in August 1981, only 52 days after his election.

On March 31, 2020, Byrne is elected to Seanad Éireann at the 2020 Seanad election. He is named as Fianna Fáil spokesperson on Higher Education, Innovation and Science by Taoiseach Micheál Martin in July 2020.

As a senator, Byrne is a vocal critic of human rights abuses in China. In February 2021, he becomes co-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, along with Senator Barry Ward of Fine Gael. Byrne is a member of the cross-party Oireachtas Friends of Israel in the Oireachtas.

At the 2024 Irish general election, Byrne is elected to the Dáil. He is subsequently appointed Cathaoirleach of the Joint Committee on Artificial Intelligence.

Byrne is openly gay. As of 2020, he is single and describes politics as “almost like an addiction,” which makes relationships difficult. He lives in Gorey.

In March 2025, Byrne is injured during the theft of his phone in London.


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Birth of Bernadette Devlin, Civil Rights Leader & Politician

Bernadette Devlin, Irish civil rights leader and former politician, is born in Cookstown, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, on April 23, 1947. She serves as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Ulster in Northern Ireland from the 1969 Mid Ulster by-election on April 17, 1969 until February 1974.

Devlin is born into a Roman Catholic family and attends St. Patrick’s Girls Academy in Dungannon. She is studying Psychology at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in 1968 when she takes a prominent role in a student-led civil rights organisation, People’s Democracy. She is subsequently excluded from the university.

Devlin stands unsuccessfully against James Chichester-Clark in the 1969 Northern Ireland general election. When George Forrest, the MP for Mid Ulster, dies, she fights the subsequent by-election on the “Unity” ticket, defeating Forrest’s widow Anna, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) candidate, and is elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. At age 21, she is the youngest MP at the time, and remains the youngest woman ever elected to Westminster until the 2015 United Kingdom general election when 20-year-old Mhairi Black succeeds to the title.

After engaging on the side of the residents in the Battle of the Bogside, Devlin is convicted of incitement to riot in December 1969, for which she serves a short jail term.

Having witnessed the events of Bloody Sunday, Devlin is infuriated that she is consistently denied the floor in the House of Commons by the Speaker Selwyn Lloyd, despite the fact that parliamentary convention decrees that any MP witnessing an incident under discussion would be granted an opportunity to speak about it. She slaps Reginald Maudling, the Home Secretary in the Conservative government, across the face when he states in the House of Commons that the paratroopers had fired in self-defence on Bloody Sunday.

Devlin helps to form the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), a revolutionary socialist breakaway from Official Sinn Féin, with Seamus Costello in 1974. She serves on the party’s national executive in 1975 but resigns when a proposal that the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) become subordinate to the party executive is defeated. In 1977, she joins the Independent Socialist Party, but it disbands the following year.

In 1971, Devlin gives birth to a daughter, Róisín, which costs her some political support because she is unmarried. She later marries Róisín’s father, Michael McAliskey, on her 26th birthday on April 23, 1973.

McAliskey stands as an independent candidate in support of the prisoners at Long Kesh prison in the 1979 European Parliament elections in Northern Ireland and wins 5.9% of the vote. She is a leading spokesperson for the Smash H-Block Campaign, which supports the hunger strikes of 1980 and 1981.

On January 16, 1981, McAliskey and her husband are shot by members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), who break into their home near Coalisland, County Tyrone. She is shot fourteen times in front of her children. British soldiers are watching the McAliskey home at the time but fail to prevent the assassination attempt. The couple are taken by helicopter to a hospital in nearby Dungannon for emergency treatment and then transported to the Musgrave Park Hospital, Military Wing, in Belfast, under intensive care. The attackers, all three members of the South Belfast UDA, are captured by the army patrol and subsequently jailed.

In 1982, McAliskey twice fails in an attempt to be elected to the Dublin North–Central constituency of Dáil Éireann. In 2003, she is barred from entering the United States and is deported on the grounds that the United States Department of State has declared that she “poses a serious threat to the security of the United States,” apparently referring to her conviction for incitement to riot in 1969.

On May 12, 2007, McAliskey is the guest speaker at Éirígí‘s first Annual James Connolly commemoration in Arbour Hill, Dublin. She currently co-ordinates a not-for-profit community development organisation based in Dungannon, the South Tyrone Empowerment Programme, and works with migrant workers to improve their treatment in Northern Ireland.

During the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election, McAliskey is an election agent for People before Profit‘s candidate in Foyle, Eamonn McCann. McCann is successfully elected.

During the campaigning for the 2024 European Parliament election in Ireland, McAliskey endorses Clare Daly in the Dublin constituency.


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Death of T. J. Maher, Irish Politician & Farmers’ Leader

Thomas Joseph “T. J.” Maher, farmers’ leader and public representative, dies on April 19, 2002, at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, following a short illness.

Maher is born on April 29, 1922, at Castlemoyle, Boherlahan, Cashel, County Tipperary, the seventh child of Thomas Maher, farmer, and his wife Julianne Maher. Raised on the family’s forty-five-acre holding and educated locally at Ardmayle national school and at the Christian Brothers school and VEC school in Cashel, he takes over the farm in 1948 when ill health forces his father into retirement. He subsequently enlarges it to 120 acres. Mechanically adept, a talented sportsman, and a member of Cashel Dramatic Society, he joins Macra na Feirme and is a founder member of the National Farmers’ Association (NFA) in January 1955.

Maher is a member and chairman of the dairy committee of the NFA before coming to national attention through his participation in the historic farmers’ rights march to Dublin led by Rickard Deasy (October 7-19, 1966), part of the militant campaign for fairer agricultural prices and for reform of taxation and rates on farmland. His part in the subsequent three-week sit-down protest and meeting with incoming minister Neil Blaney, at the Department of Agriculture, confirms his reputation as a tenacious campaigner for agricultural causes. In August 1967, shortly after 100 farmers have served prison sentences for withholding rates, he succeeds Deasy as NFA president. Charismatic, articulate, and decisive, he also has a strong sense of personal responsibility, which governs his expectations of colleagues and associates. With exhausting rounds of travel and meetings, he is impossible to ignore and grist to the media mill, with his apparently impromptu but, in reality, carefully rehearsed speeches criticising politicians, parties, bureaucracy, and tardy national policy. He warns of national economic failure unless government and public services take radical modernising initiatives. He is at once nationalist, internationalist, and a revolutionary campaigner for change, an idealistic firebrand who is essentially conservative in social matters.

Maher’s campaign for agriculture is tempered by a wider interest in the social and economic future of Ireland ahead of crucial negotiations for membership of the European Economic Community (EEC). He becomes a household name, gadfly of bureaucrats and hero of farmers. In November 1967 he attends the European Congress of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers in Rome as an advance action prior to taking part in the subsequent negotiations leading to Ireland’s “entry to Europe” in January 1973. He is re-elected president of the NFA in 1970.

Amalgamating the NFA with several of the agricultural producers’ organisations, Maher oversees its reemergence as the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) in January 1971 and remains president until 1976. Strengthened by his pro-European leadership, the IFA withstands the counter-propaganda which, in the referendum of May 1972, urges rejection of the EEC on economic, social, and religious grounds. Despite his own moderately conservative social views and unequivocal opposition to abortion in Ireland, his commitment to European integration is not in question.

Maher is a director of prestigious state-sponsored bodies including Bord Bainne, the Irish Sugar Company, and the B & I shipping line. He also serves six terms between 1976 and 1983 as president of the Irish Co-operative Organisation Society (ICOS). Such relative sinecures are balanced by adherence to humanitarian causes that occupy most of his subsequent life. Passionate about practical support for developing countries, he becomes a founder and chairman of Bóthar, the Irish self-help relief agency for supply of livestock overseas. He urges prison reform and supports Amnesty International in its prisoners’ rights campaigns. Running as an independent candidate, he is elected Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for Munster in 1979, beating the strong Fine Gael candidate Alan Dukes. Describing himself as a public representative rather than a politician, he sits in the Liberal and Democratic parliamentary group and continues to fly agricultural and other kites as a non-party deputy. Typically, he criticises the scale of Irish embassies abroad, suggesting alternative teams of trade and tourism personnel. He advocates fairer agricultural policies towards developing countries in spite of prevailing European attitudes of self-interest, and urges the transfer of Northern Ireland from British jurisdiction to European protectorate status. At home he seeks all-party consensus on economic recovery from the depressed condition of the mid 1980s, well intentioned and lonely causes that fail to draw significant political support.

Maher’s habit of traveling with tools to unlock sealed hotel windows is an example of his sometimes eccentric practicality. His unsuccessful attempt to win a Dáil seat for Tipperary South in the 1981 Irish general election postpones his return to Ireland, although he is twice reelected an MEP before retiring in 1994. During his time in Strasbourg he is a quaestor of the European Parliament and a member of its committees on rural development, regions and petitions. He advocates decentralisation of power in Ireland while also criticising local authorities for laxity in their commitment to environmental protection.

For all his outspokenness, Maher is widely respected for the courageous positions he adopts. When time permits, he is an avid reader of history. He maintains his rural pastimes, especially attendance at Gaelic sports, where he can test the political pulse of his constituents. Following a short illness, he dies on April 19, 2002, aged 79, at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin. He is buried at Boherlahan cemetery following a Requiem Mass, celebrated by his surviving brother, the Rev. Michael Maher CSSp (a former veterinary surgeon), and his cousin Denis.

Maher marries Elizabeth (Betty) Kennedy from Bansha, near Cashel, on January 8, 1958. They live at Castlemoyle and have one daughter, Julianne, and two sons, Thomas and Denis. His brother James (Jamesie), who predeceases him in October 1975, had been a medical consultant at St. Vincent’s and consultant surgeon to the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU).

(From: “Maher, Thomas Joseph” by Patrick Long, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Death of Laurence Ginnell, Politician, Lawyer & Member of Parliament

Laurence Ginnell, Irish nationalist politician, lawyer and Member of Parliament (MP) of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, dies in the United States on April 17, 1923. He serves as member of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) for North Westmeath at the 1906 United Kingdom general election. From 1910 he sits as an Independent Nationalist and at the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland he is elected for Sinn Féin.

Ginnell is born in Delvin, County Westmeath, in 1852, (baptised April 9, 1852) the son of Laurence Ginnell and Mary Monaghan and twin to Michael Ginnell. He is self-educated and is called to the Irish bar as well as the Bar of England and Wales. In his youth, he is involved with the Land War and acts as private secretary to John Dillon.

The last great social and agrarian campaign of the Irish home rule movement, the Ranch War (1906 and 1909), is largely led and organised by Ginnell from the central office of the United Irish League. He is elected an MP in 1906, takes his seat at Westminster and swears allegiance to Edward VII. On October 14, 1906, he launches the “war” at Downs, County Westmeath.

The purpose of the war is to bring relief to the large numbers of landless and smallholders, particularly in the West, who are relatively untouched by the Wyndham Land Act (1903) and by the larger policy of purchase. The strategy that Ginnell pursues is the Down’s Policy, or cattle driving, a proceeding designed to harass the prosperous grazier interests, whose “ranches” occupy large, under populated and under worked tracts. The Down’s Policy is also meant to draw public attention to the scandalous inequalities that survive in the Irish countryside. The conservatives within the home rule leadership are understandably suspicious about the revival of agrarian disturbances, but the mood of the party organisation is hardening in the aftermath of a disappointing devolution bill in May 1907, from the new Liberal government, so that it seems logical to turn to the traditional mechanism for reactivating the national question: agrarian agitation.

Ginnell’s cattle drives begin to tail off after the summer of 1908, and the agitation is finally dissolved with the passage of a 1909 Act by the Liberal Chief Secretary Augustine Birrell that allows the transfer to the Irish Land Commission of farmland by compulsory purchase, which is hailed by the national movement as an historic victory. In reality, the Ranch War involves an implosion within sectors of the Irish Parliamentary Party, as its leadership has not facilitated the working of the Wyndham Land Act in the first place because John Dillon and his like want conflict above victory.

In 1909, Ginnell is expelled from the Irish Parliamentary Party for the offence of asking to see the party accounts after which he sits as an Independent Nationalist. During this time, he is addressed frequently as “The MP for Ireland.” At Westminster, he is highly critical of the British government‘s war policy and its holding of executions of certain participants in the Easter Rising of 1916. On May 9, he accuses British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith, of “Murder” and is forcibly ejected from the Chamber. He visits many of the prisoners who are interned in various prisons in Wales and England.

In 1917, Ginnell campaigns to try to ensure the election of George Noble Plunkett in the North Roscommon by-election in which he defeats the IPP candidate on an abstentionist platform. Following the victory of Éamon de Valera in East Clare, while he is standing for Sinn Féin, on July 10, 1917, Ginnell joins Sinn Féin.

At the Sinn Féin ardfheis in 1917, at which the party is reconstituted as a republican party with de Valera as president, Ginnell and W. T. Cosgrave are elected Honorary Treasurers. He is imprisoned in March 1918 for encouraging land agitation and later deported to Reading Gaol. In the 1918 United Kingdom general election, he is elected as a Sinn Féin MP for the Westmeath constituency by comfortably defeating his IPP challenger. After his release from prison, he attends the proceedings of the First Dáil. Along with fellow TD James O’Mara, he is one of the only TDs to serve as a member in both the House of Commons and Dáil Éireann.

He is one of the few people to have served in the House of Commons and in the Oireachtas. He is appointed Director of Propaganda in the Second Ministry of the Irish Republic. After spending a year as a republican campaigner in Chicago, he is appointed the Representative of the Irish Republic in Argentina and South America by de Valera. He carries out his propaganda work here to distribute copies of the Irish Bulletin and to provide the Sinn Féin version of the conflict during the Irish War of Independence. On August 16, 1921, he returns home to attend the first meeting of the Second Dáil. He travels back to Argentina some months later to serve as the Representative of the Republic there.

Ginnell opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty that is ratified by the Dáil in January 1922, and is elected as an anti-Treaty Sinn Féin TD at the 1922 Irish general election on the eve of the Irish Civil War.

On September 9, 1922, Ginnell is the only anti-Treaty TD to attend the inaugural meeting of the Provisional Parliament or Third Dáil. Before signing the roll, he says, “I want some explanation before I sign. I have been elected in pursuance of a decree by Dáil Éireann, which decree embodies the decree of May 20, 1922. I have heard nothing read in reference to that decree, nothing but an Act of a foreign Parliament. I have been elected as a member of Dáil Éireann. I have not been elected to attend any such Parliament. Will anyone tell me with authority whether it is…”.

Ginnell is at this point interrupted but resumes by saying that he will sign the roll and take his seat in the Assembly if the Assembly is Dáil Éireann. He is informed he is not allowed raise any such question until a Ceann Comhairle has been elected. He continues to ask questions regardless to which he gets no answer including his question: “Will any member of the Six Counties be allowed to sit in this Dáil?” W. T. Cosgrave moves at this point that he be excluded from the House. Ginnell protests, and he is dragged out by force.

De Valera later appoints Ginnell a member of his “Council of State,” a twelve-member body set up to advise him on the deteriorating situation in the civil war. He returns to the United States soon afterward to serve as the Republic‘s envoy in the country. He orders Robert Briscoe and some of his friends to take possession of the Consular Offices in Nassau Street, New York City, then in the hands of the Irish Free State Government, to obtain the list of the subscribers to the bond drive organized to aid the struggle in the War of Independence. At the time, a court case is ongoing to decide on who has the right to the funds: the newly installed Provisional Government or de Valera, as one of the three trustees among the anti-Treatyites.

Ginnell dies in Washington, D.C. on April 17, 1923, at the age of 71, still campaigning against the Anglo-Irish Treaty.


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Founding of the Repeal Association

On April 15, 1840, Daniel O’Connell forms the Loyal National Repeal Association (commonly referred to as the Repeal Association), an Irish political party formed to campaign for the repeal of the Acts of Union of 1800 between Great Britain and Ireland.

The Association seeks to restore the Parliament of Ireland and achieve the level of legislative independence briefly attained in the 1780s under Henry Grattan and his Irish Patriot Party, with the addition of Catholic emancipation, made possible by the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, and the expanded franchise of the Representation of the People (Ireland) Act 1832, in addition to responsible government, making Ireland a separate kingdom in a personal union with Great Britain on equal footing. It advocates a peaceful and constitutional path to repeal while maintaining loyalty to the British Crown.

Although O’Connell begins calling for repeal in the early 1830s, the formal Association is only established in 1840. Prior to this, candidates supporting repeal contest the 1832 United Kingdom general election and between 1835 and 1841, form an electoral pact with the Whigs. Repealer candidates, unaffiliated with the Whigs also contest the 1841 and 1847 general elections. 

Following the movement’s decline in the late 1840s, nationalists, including members of the Young Ireland movement, emerge from its ranks.


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Hunger Striker Bobby Sands Wins Seat in the British Parliament

On April 9, 1981, imprisoned Irish Republican Army (IRA) hunger striker Bobby Sands is elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom as the MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

Sands stands as a candidate of the “Anti-H Block” campaign – the section of the Maze prison in Maze, County Down, Northern Ireland, reserved for republicans and loyalists convicted of terrorist offences. He wins just over 52% of the vote in the Northern Ireland by-election compared to 49% for the candidate of the Official Unionist party, Harry West. His winning margin is 1,400 but over 3,000 ballot papers are spoiled.

Recriminations over his victory begin almost immediately. Unionist parties come under fire for not mounting an effective challenge. There is also sharp criticism of the failure of the moderate Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) to contest the seat. Many believe the absence of an alternative Catholic candidate ensures victory for Sands in a seat with a Catholic majority.

Sands’ election agent, Owen Carron, says the British Government has been sent a message. “The nationalist people have voted against Unionism and against the H-blocks. It is time Britain got out of Ireland and put an end to the torture of this country,” he says.

At the time of his election, Sands, 27, has served four years of a fourteen-year sentence for firearms possession. He began his hunger strike 41 days earlier to press the republican prisoners’ claim to be treated as prisoners of war.

The government has to decide how to respond to Sands’ victory.  It can try to have him expelled on the grounds that he is an “unacceptable member.” However, unless he starts to eat again, he is not expected to live for more than another few weeks. He has already lost two stone and is too weak to leave his bed in the prison’s hospital wing.

Sand’s victory is the second time the voters of Fermanagh and South Tyrone have elected a republican prisoner as their MP. The first, Philip Clarke, in 1955, is disqualified because the law then does not allow convicts to take up political office.

In spite of attempts by the European Commission of Human Rights to mediate, Sands dies on May 5, 1981. He is the first of ten republican prisoners to die after hunger strikes. They attract international media attention and sympathy for the republicans.

The hunger strikes come to an end in October 1981. However, the Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher grants the republicans only a few minor concessions.

(From: “1981: Hunger striker elected MP” on “On The Day 1950-2005,” BBC, news.bbc.co.uk)


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Death of Jonah Barrington, Lawyer, Judge & Politician

Sir Jonah Barrington, KC, Irish lawyer, judge and politician, dies at Versailles, France, on April 8, 1834. He is most notable for his amusing and popular memoirs of life in late 18th-century Ireland, for his opposition to the Act of Union 1800, and for his removal from the judiciary by both Houses of Parliament in 1830, still a unique event.

Barrington is born in 1756 or 1757 in Knapton, Abbeyleix, Queen’s County (now County Laois), the third son of John Barrington, an impoverished Protestant gentleman landowner in Queens’s County and his wife Sibella French of Peterswell, County Galway. He is raised and schooled by his grandparents in Dublin and enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1773, aged 16, but leaves TCD without a degree.

Barrington joins the Irish Volunteers and supports the Irish Patriot Party in the early 1780s. His father raises and commands two Corps: the Cullenagh Rangers and the Ballyroan Light Infantry.

Barrington’s elder brother commands both the Kilkenny Horse and the Durrow Light Dragoons. Through his correspondence with General Hunt Walsh, Barrington’s father secures him a commission in Walsh’s regiment. Upon learning that the regiment is to be sent to America to fight in the American Revolution, and fearful of dying on some foreign battlefield, he writes to Walsh asking him to present the commission to another candidate instead, claiming that he himself is too tender to be of any real use. His fears prove well founded when his replacement, the only child of one of Walsh’s friends, is killed in his first engagement.

Barrington is called to the Irish bar in 1788 and in 1789 he marries Catherine, daughter of Dublin mercer, Edward Grogan. They ultimately have seven children. The following year he enters by the purchase of the seat the pre-1801 Parliament of Ireland as MP for Tuam. He accepts a sinecure post in 1793 at the Dublin customhouse worth £1,000 p.a. generally supporting Henry Grattan and he takes silk the same year. He is a member of the Kildare Street Club in Dublin. Appointed an Admiralty court judge in 1798, he re-enters parliament the same year as member for Clogher and votes against the Act of Union in 1799–1800, rejecting John FitzGibbon, 1st Earl of Clare‘s offer of the solicitor-generalship in 1799. In 1802, he unsuccessfully contests a seat for Dublin City in the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

Barrington’s comments on the Act of Union has a continuing resonance with the Young Ireland, Fenian and Irish Parliamentary Party movements, which hope to re-establish “Grattan’s Parliament” in some way. In particular, his Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation (1833) provides the basis for this romantic idealisation of Grattan’s Parliament adopted by the Irish Parliamentary Party from the 1880s.

Appointed an Admiralty court judge in 1798 at a salary of £500, Barrington finds there is little work to be done and his lack of a degree restricts other opportunities to support extravagant tastes. His award of a knighthood in 1807 brings no increased income. His court orders the sale of two derelict vessels and he gives instructions that the proceeds are to go to his own bank account. In 1810 or 1811 he takes his wife and family to England and from that time on his work in Ireland is carried out by surrogates. Still retaining his judgeship and salary, he moves to France in 1814 to escape his creditors and never returns to Ireland.

In 1828, commissioners learn of Barrington’s financial irregularities. He crosses the channel to London and protests that he is innocent but does not answer the charges based on the documentary evidence produced by the commissioners. In 1830, a parliamentary commission recommends that he be removed from office, finding misappropriations of court funds in 1805, 1806 and 1810. Pursuant to a provision of the Act of Settlement 1701, which seeks to protect the independence of the judiciary, both Houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom vote for an Address to King William IV praying for his removal, and the King duly dismisses Barrington from office. By then, Barrington’s first 1827 volume of memoirs has sold successfully, and they are republished and expanded. He is the first judge removed from office under the Act of Settlement, and to this day, is the only judge in the United Kingdom to be so removed.

According to one of Barrington’s sometimes spurious personal memoirs, on March 20, 1780, he travels to Donnybrook, Dublin, to duel with Richard Daly. Daly has fought 16 duels in three years – three with swords and thirteen with pistols. Remarkably, he, and his opponents, have always escaped serious injury. Barrington has no pistols so he and his second, Richard Crosbie, spend the previous night constructing a pair “from old locks, stocks and barrels.” At Donnybrook, Daly’s second, Jack Patterson, a nephew of the Chief Justice, approaches Crosbie, explains that it is all a mistake and asks that the two shake hands. Barrington is in favour, but Crosbie has none of it. Taking out a duelling handbook, he points to rule No.7 – “No apology can be received after the parties meet, without a fire.”

Taking up their positions, Barrington loses no time in pressing the trigger and Daly staggers back, puts his hand to his chest, and cries, “I’m hit, Sir.” The ball does not penetrate but does drive part of a brooch slightly into his breastbone. Barrington only then thinks to inquire why the duel is even taking place. This time the rule book notes: “If a party challenged accepts the challenge without asking the reason for it, the challenger is never bound to divulge it afterwards.”

Barrington is most notable today for his memoirs which include scathing but humorous thumbnail portraits of contemporary Irish lawyers, judges and politicians during the last years of the Protestant Ascendancy. Personal sketches also includes vignettes on Irish people from every background. His works are reprinted with frequent additions and renamings.

Since his death, Barrington’s work has been quoted by a wide selection of editors, primarily following two themes: the political drama surrounding the Act of Union and the colourful nature of life in 1700s Ireland.