The general election of 1987 is precipitated by the withdrawal of the Labour Party from the Fine Gael-led government on January 20, 1987. The reason is a disagreement over budget proposals. Rather than attempt to press on with the government’s agenda, the Taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael, Garret FitzGerald, decides to dissolve the Dáil. An unusually long period of four weeks is set for the campaign. It is hoped that the electorate will warm to Fine Gael’s budget proposals during the campaign.
Fianna Fáil‘s campaign involves a refusal to make any definite commitments. However, it attempts to convince the electorate that the country will be better under Fianna Fáil. Charles Haughey‘s attitudes toward Northern Ireland and the Anglo-Irish Agreement are both attacked. However, the campaign is mostly fought on economic issues.
The Labour Party decides against any pre-election pact, particularly with Fine Gael. The Progressive Democrats (PD), founded only two years earlier, surpass Labour as the third-biggest political party in the Dáil. Although the majority of the PD party consists of Fianna Fáil defectors, it mainly takes seats from Fine Gael. The Labour Party fails to make any impact with its leader, Dick Spring, almost losing his seat.
In spite of the opinion polls suggesting otherwise, Fianna Fáil once again fails to win an overall majority. However, it is able to form a minority government and Charles Haughey is back for his third and final term as Taoiseach. The Fianna Fáil government of 1987 to 1989 is the last time to date that a government composed only of members of one party has been formed in Ireland.
The newly elected 166 members of the 25th Dáil assemble at Leinster House on March 10, 1987, when a new Taoiseach and a Fianna Fáil minority government are appointed.
Once when confronted with black men being thrown out of a white railroad car by the conductor, Busteed pulls his pistol and defends the black men allowing them to stay.
Alabamians generally consider Busteed corrupt and pro-Northern. In December 1867, he is shot on the street in Mobile, Alabama by United States Attorney Lucien V. B. Martin, who fires two more shots into him after he falls. Martin goes to Texas and is never prosecuted, while Busteed recovers rapidly.
Busteed is nominated by President Ulysses S. Grant to the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia (now the United States District Court for the District of Columbia) on January 13, 1873. At the same time, President Grant nominates Judge David Campbell Humphreys, an Alabama native serving on the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, to assume Busteed’s seat, each nomination made contingent on the other’s resignation. The Senate returns the nominations to the President as irregular in form on February 13, 1873.
In 1873, Busteed is the subject of an impeachment inquiry by the United States House of RepresentativesJudiciary Committee. The Committee recommends his impeachment on charges of failing to maintain a residence in his judicial district, failing to hold scheduled terms of court, and using his official position to promote his personal interests, specifically, by remitting a fine due to the Federal government in order to obtain release from a personal judgment against him in a State court. He resigns before the full House can vote on the recommendation.
Following his resignation from the federal bench, Busteed resumes private practice in New York City starting in 1874. He dies on September 14, 1898, in New York City and is interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.
By this time access to institutional power in Ireland was restricted to a small minority, the Anglo-Irish of the Protestant Ascendancy, and frustration at the lack of reform among the Catholic majority eventually led, along with other reasons, to the Irish Rebellion in 1798, involving a French invasion of Ireland and the seeking of complete independence from Great Britain. This rebellion was crushed with much bloodshed, and the subsequent drive for union between Great Britain and Ireland that passes in 1800 is motivated at least in part by the belief that the rebellion was caused as much by reactionary loyalist brutality as by the Society of United Irishmen.
Furthermore, Catholic emancipation is being discussed in Great Britain, and fears that a newly enfranchised Catholic majority will drastically change the character of the Irish government and parliament also contributes to a desire from London to merge the Parliaments.
Complementary acts have to be passed in the Parliament of Great Britain and in the Parliament of Ireland. The Parliament of Ireland had recently gained a large measure of legislative independence under the Constitution of 1782. Many members of the Irish Parliament jealously guard this autonomy and a motion for union is legally rejected in 1799.
Only Anglicans are permitted to become members of the Parliament of Ireland, though the great majority of the Irish population are Roman Catholic, with many Presbyterians in Ulster. In 1793 Roman Catholics regain the right to vote if they own or rent property worth £2 per acre. The Catholic hierarchy is strongly in favour of union, hoping for rapid emancipation and the right to sit as MPs, which is delayed after the passage of the acts until the passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829.
From the perspective of Great Britain, the union is desirable because of the uncertainty that followed the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and the French Revolution of 1789. If Ireland adopted Catholic Emancipation, willingly or not, a Roman Catholic Parliament could break away from Britain and ally with the French. Also the Irish and British Parliaments, when creating a regency during King George III‘s “madness”, gave the Prince Regent different powers. These considerations lead Great Britain to decide to attempt merger of the two kingdoms and their Parliaments.
The final passage of the Act in the Irish Parliament is achieved with substantial majorities, in part according to contemporary documents through bribery, namely the awarding of peerages and honours to critics to get their votes. Whereas the first attempt had been defeated in the Irish House of Commons by 109 votes against to 104 for, the second vote in 1800 produces a result of 158 to 115.
In the first Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the members of the House of Commons are not elected afresh. By royal proclamation authorised by the Act, all the members of the last House of Commons from Great Britain take seats in the new House, and from Ireland 100 members are chosen from the last Irish House of Commons: two members from each of the 32 counties and from the two largest boroughs, and one from each of the next 31 boroughs (chosen by lot) and from the University of Dublin. The other 84 Irish parliamentary boroughs are disfranchised, all being pocket boroughs, whose patrons receive £15,000 compensation for the loss of what is considered their property.
(Pictured: Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1952 used by Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII and George VI)
Drennan is born on May 23, 1754, in Belfast, the son the son of ReverendThomas Drennan (1696–1768), minister of Belfast’s First Presbyterian Church on Rosemary Street. Thomas Drennan is an educated man from the University of Glasgow and is ordained to the congregation of Holywood, County Down in 1731. Drennan is heavily influenced by his father, whose religious convictions serve as the foundation for his own radical political ideas. His sister, Martha, marries fellow future United Irishman Samuel McTier in 1773.
In 1769 Drennan follows in his father’s footsteps by enrolling in the University of Glasgow where he becomes interested in the study of philosophy. In 1772 he graduates in arts and then in 1773 he commences the study of medicine at Edinburgh. After graduating in 1778 he sets up practice in Belfast, specialising in obstetrics. He is credited with being one of the earliest advocates of inoculation against smallpox and of hand washing to prevent the spread of infection. He also writes much poetry, coining the phrase “Emerald Isle” and is the founder and editor of a literary periodical, Belfast Magazine. He moves to Newry in 1783 but eventually moves to Dublin in 1789 where he quickly becomes involved in nationalist circles.
Like many other UlsterPresbyterians, Drennan is an early supporter of the American Colonies in the American Revolution and joins the Volunteers who had been formed to defend Ireland for Britain in the event of French invasion. The Volunteer movement soon becomes a powerful political force and a forum for Protestant nationalists to press for political reform in Ireland eventually assisting Henry Grattan to achieve legislative independence for the Irish parliament in 1782. However, Drennan, like many other reformers, quickly becomes dismayed by the conservative and sectarian nature of the Irish parliament and in 1791 he co-founds the Society of United Irishmen with Wolfe Tone and Thomas Russell.
Drennan writes many political pamphlets for the United Irishmen and is arrested in 1794 for seditious libel, a political charge that is a major factor in driving the United Irishmen underground and into becoming a radical revolutionary party. Although he is eventually acquitted, he gradually withdraws from the United Irishmen but continues to campaign for Catholic Emancipation.
On February 8, 1800, Drennan marries Sarah Swanwick, “an English lady of some wealth” from Shropshire. They have one daughter and four sons.
Drennan settles in Belfast in 1807. In 1810 he co-founds the non-denominational Royal Belfast Academical Institution. As a poet, he is best remembered for his poem The Wake of William Orr, written in memory of a United Irishman executed by the British. Despite his links with revolutionary republicans, he gradually becomes alienated from the post-Union nationalism of the period. His abiding concern for Liberalism and post union realities make him contemplate his political ideas anew.
Drennan dies in Belfast on February 5, 1820. He directs that his coffin be carried by an equal number of Catholics and Protestants with clergy from different denominations in attendance.
The Provisional Congress of the Confederate States is a congress of deputies and delegates called together from the Southern States which become the governing body of the Provisional Government of the Confederate States from February 4, 1861, to February 17, 1862. It sits in Montgomery until May 21, 1861, when it adjourns to meet in Richmond, Virginia, on July 20, 1861. It adds new members as other states secede from the Union and directs the election on November 6, 1861, at which a permanent government is elected.
The Second Session of the Provisional Congress is held at Montgomery from April 29, 1861, to May 21, 1861. It includes the members of the First Session with the additions of Virginia and Arkansas. John Tyler, the tenth president of the United States (1841–1845), serves as a delegate from Virginia in the Provisional Confederate States Congress until his death in 1862.
North Carolina and Tennessee join the Third Session of the Provisional Congress, which is held at Richmond from July 20, 1861, to August 31, 1861. Membership remains unchanged for the Fourth Session on September 3, 1861.
The Fifth Session of the Provisional Congress is held at Richmond from November 18, 1861, to February 17, 1862. All previous members are present with the additions of Missouri and Kentucky. One non-voting member is present from the Arizona Territory.
While Martin is Minister for Health and Children in 2004, he introduces a ban on tobacco smoking in all Irish workplaces and establishes the Health Service Executive (HSE). Ireland is the first country to introduce a full workplace smoking ban. As Foreign Minister, in 2009, he travels to Latin America for the first time and makes the first official visit to Cuba by an Irish Minister. That same year, he travels to Khartoum following the kidnapping of Sharon Commins and Hilda Kawuki. In 2010, he becomes the first Western foreign minister to visit Gaza since Hamas took control there in 2007.
In January 2011, Martin resigns as Minister for Foreign Affairs and is subsequently elected as the eighth leader of Fianna Fáil following Cowen’s resignation as party leader. In the 2011 Irish general election, he leads the party to its worst showing in its 85-year history, with a loss of 57 seats and a drop in its share of the popular vote to 17.4%. In the 2016 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil’s performance improves significantly, more than doubling their Dáil representation from 20 to 44 seats. In the 2020 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil becomes the largest party, attaining the most seats at 38, one seat ahead of Sinn Féin with 37 seats. He is appointed Taoiseach on June 27, 2020, leading a grand coalition with longtime rival Fine Gael and the Green Party as part of a historic deal. Under the terms of the agreement, Martin’s predecessor, Leo Varadkar, becomes Tánaiste, and will swap roles with Martin in December 2022.
After months of negotiations and two special delegate conferences, Democratic Left merges with the Labour Party on January 24, 1999.
Democratic Left is formed after a split in the Workers’ Party of Ireland, which in turn has its origins in the 1970 split in Sinn Féin and, after seven years in existence, it is incorporated into the Labour Party in 1999. Although never formally styled as a communist party, the Workers’ Party has an internal organisation based on democratic centralism, strong links with the Soviet Union, and campaigns for socialist policies. However, between 1989 and 1992 the Workers’ Party is beset by a number of problems.
On February 15, 1992, a special conference is held in Dún Laoghaire to reconstitute the party. A motion proposed by Proinsias De Rossa and general secretary Des Geraghty seek to stand down the existing membership, elect an 11-member provisional executive council and make several other significant changes in party structures but it is defeated by nine votes.
After the conference it is clear a split is inevitable. At an Ard Chomhairle meeting held on February 22, 1992, in Wynn’s Hotel in Dublin, six of the party’s TDs resign from the party along with more than half of the Ard Chomhairle. The new breakaway party is provisionally named New Agenda with De Rossa becoming leader of the party.
In the 1997 Irish general election Democratic Left loses two of its six seats, both of its by-election victors, Eric Byrne in Dublin South-Central and Kathleen Lynch in Cork North-Central, being unseated. The party wins 2.5% of the vote. The party also is in significant financial debt because of a lack of access to public funds, due to its size. Between 1998 and 1999 the party enters discussions with the Labour Party which culminates in the parties’ merger in 1999, keeping the name of the larger partner but excluding members in Northern Ireland from organising. This leaves Gerry Cullen, their councillor in Dungannon Borough Council, in a state of limbo, representing a party for whom he can no longer seek election.
The launch of the merged party is in the Pillar Room of the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin on January 24, 1999. Labour Party leader Ruairi Quinn remains leader of the unified party, while De Rossa takes up the largely titular position of party president. Only 10% of Democratic Left delegates at the special conference had voted against the merger. De Rossa successfully contests the 1999 European Parliament election in Dublin. He holds his Dáil seat until he stands down at the 2002 Irish general election. He holds his European Parliament seat in the 2004 election and 2009 election.
In 2002, former Democratic Left TDs Pat Rabbitte and Liz McManus are elected as Labour Party leader and deputy leader respectively. When Rabbite steps down as Labour leader after the 2007 Irish general election, Eamon Gilmore is elected unopposed as his successor.
The party archives are donated to the National Library of Ireland by the Labour Party in 2014. The records can be accessed by means of the call number: MS 49,807.
Crotty grows up in Kilkenny and, while a student at St. Kieran’s College, Kilkenny, he begins breeding pigs in his spare time. Rather than move on to university, he pursues his interest in agriculture by going to work for a farmer relative in 1942. A year later he undertakes a 12-month course at the Albert Agricultural College in Glasnevin, Dublin. In 1945, he purchases a 204-acre farm in Dunbell, not far from Kilkenny, and spends the next two decades putting into practice his developing knowledge of agricultural production.
Crotty’s knowledge and experience of agricultural economics shapes his attitude to Ireland’s participation in the European Economic Community. His years as a farmer teaches him that Irish agriculture is structured so as to discourage efficient use of the land.
Crotty grows to believe that agricultural efficiency can best be achieved by the imposition of an annual land tax. This would allow taxes on inputs and outputs to be removed or reduced and would encourage only those prepared to maximise the potential of their land to remain in farming. In putting forward this proposal, he is reflecting the influence of American economist Henry George, who held that land owned by private individuals should be subject to a tax on the land because of the advantage bestowed on the owner. He believes that Irish agriculture would be damaged if Ireland joined the European Economic Community (EEC) as, instead of becoming more efficient, farmers would grow to depend on external subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
Furthermore, Crotty maintains that Ireland’s status as an ex-colony makes it unsuited for membership of a bloc of nations that include former colonial powers. In 1962, in the early stages of the public debate on whether Ireland should join the EEC, he expresses his concerns about the possible loss of Ireland’s national identity within what he termed a “European super state.”
In 1972, Crotty joins Trinity College academic Anthony Coughlan in opposing Ireland’s accession to the EEC. Over the next twenty years he campaigns against further integration of Ireland into the EEC, most notably during the attempts to ratify the Single European Act in the mid-1980s. He stands for election in the 1989 European Parliament election as a candidate in the Dublin constituency. He receives 25,525 votes (5.69% of the valid votes cast), not enough to elect him. In 1992, he once again allies himself with Coughlan in urging Irish voters to reject the Maastricht Treaty in the referendum held on June 18.
Despite failing to win majority support for his views in elections and referendums, Crotty continues until the end of his life his campaign against Ireland’s membership of the European Union.
Crotty is a prolific writer, producing books, pamphlets, articles, and letters on subjects such as economics, history, and Ireland’s involvement with Europe. His final work, When Histories Collide: The Development and Impact of Individualistic Capitalism, is edited by his son Raymond and published posthumously in 2001. It is an economic history of mankind from the earliest stages of human development to the present day. Reviewing it on behalf of the American Sociological Association, Professor Michael Mann of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) describes it as “an extraordinary book by an extraordinary man” and “a must-read.”
Raymond Crotty dies at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, at the age of 68, on January 1, 1994, and is buried in Tulla Cemetery outside Kilkenny.
Stronge (86) and his son, James (48), are watching television in the library of Tynan Abbey when members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, armed with machine guns, use grenades to break down the locked heavy doors to the home.
The Stronge family home is then burned to the ground as a result of two bomb explosions. On seeing the explosions at the house, as well as a flare Stronge lit in an attempt to alert the authorities, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and British Army troops arrive at the scene and establish a roadblock at the gate lodge. They encounter at least eight fleeing gunmen. A twenty-minute gunfight ensues in which at least two hundred shots are fired. There are no casualties among the security forces but the gunmen escape. The bodies of the father and son are later discovered in the library of their burning home, each with gunshot wounds in the head. It is not known who died first, Norman or James. Under the legal fiction known as the doctrine of survival, James is still listed as succeeding to the baronetcy.
The village of Tynan is crowded for the joint funeral of Stronge and his son. Mourners come from throughout the province and from England, including lords, politicians, policemen, judges and church leaders. The coffin is carried by the 5th Battalion the Royal Irish Rangers, the successors to his old regiment. The sword and cap of the Lord Lieutenant of Tyrone, Major John Hamilton-Stubber, are placed on his coffin in lieu of his own, which had been destroyed with his other possessions in the fire. During the service, a telegram sent from Queen Elizabeth II to one of Sir Norman’s daughters, is read. After the service, the chief mourners move out into the churchyard where the “Last Post” is sounded, and a Royal British Legion farewell is given. The two coffins are laid in the family plot, where Lady Stronge, Sir Norman’s wife and mother of James, was buried a year previously.
The IRA releases a statement in Belfast, quoted in The Times, claiming that “This deliberate attack on the symbols of hated unionism was a direct reprisal for a whole series of loyalist assassinations and murder attacks on nationalist peoples and nationalist activities.” This follows the loyalist attempted murder of Bernadette McAliskey and her husband Michael McAliskey on January 16, and the loyalist assassinations of four republican activists (Miriam Daly, John Turnley, Noel Lyttle and Ronnie Bunting) which had taken place since May 1980.
Stronge is described at the time of his death by Social Democratic and Labour Party politician Austin Currie as having been “even at 86 years of age … still incomparably more of a man than the cowardly dregs of humanity who ended his life in this barbaric way.”
The ruins of Tynan Abbey are demolished in 1998, having stood for 249 years.
A supporter of Benjamin Disraeli‘s one-nation conservatism, Guinness’s politics are typical of “constructive unionism,” the belief that the union between Ireland and Britain should be more beneficial to the people of Ireland after centuries of difficulties. In 1872 he is a sponsor of the “Irish Exhibition” at Earlsfort Terrace in Dublin, which is arranged to promote Irish trade. Correcting a mistake about the exhibition in the Freeman’s Journal leads to a death threat from a religious extremist, which he does not report to the police. In the 1890s he supports the Irish Unionist Alliance.
After withdrawing from the Guinness company in 1876, when he sells his half-share to his brother Edward for £600,000, Guinness is in 1880 raised to the peerage as Baron Ardilaun, of Ashford in County Galway. His home there is at Ashford Castle on Lough Corrib, and his title derives from the GaelicArd Oileáin, a ‘high island’ on the lake.
Between 1852 and 1859, Guinness’s father acquires several large Connacht estates that are up for sale. With these purchases, he becomes landlord to 670 tenants. With his father’s death in 1868, Guinness continues in his father’s footsteps, purchasing vast swaths of Galway. When his acquisitions are combined with those of his father, total acreage for the Ashford estate is 33,298 acres, with Guinness owning most of County Galway between Maam (Maum) Bridge and Lough Mask.
Like many in the Guinness family, Guinness is a generous philanthropist, devoting himself to a number of public causes, including the restoration of Marsh’s Library in Dublin and the extension of the city’s Coombe Lying-in Hospital. In buying and keeping intact the estate around Muckross House in 1899, he assists the movement to preserve the lake and mountain landscape around Killarney, now a major tourist destination.
In his best-known achievement, Guinness purchases, landscapes, and donates to the capital, the central public park of St. Stephen’s Green, where his statue commissioned by the city can be seen opposite the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. To do so he sponsors a private bill that is passed as the Saint Stephen’s Green (Dublin) Act 1877, and after the landscaping it is formally opened to the public on July 27, 1880. It has been maintained since then by the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland, now the Office of Public Works.
Guinness dies on January 20, 1915 at his home at St. Anne’s, Raheny, and is buried at All Saints Church, Raheny, whose construction he had sponsored. Those present at the funeral include representatives of the Royal Dublin Society, of which he is president for many years, the Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland, the Irish Unionist Alliance, and the Primrose League. His barony becomes extinct at his death, but the baronetcy devolves upon his nephew Algernon.
seamus dubhghaill 