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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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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.


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Birth of John Hume, Northern Ireland Nationalist Politician

John Hume KCSG, Irish nationalist politician from Northern Ireland, is born into a working-class Catholic family in Derry, County Londonderry, on January 18, 1937. He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the recent political history of Ireland and is credited as being the thinker behind many political developments in Northern Ireland, from the power sharing Sunningdale Agreement to the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the Good Friday Agreement. He wins the Nobel Peace Prize in 1998 alongside the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), David Trimble.

Hume is the eldest of seven children of Samuel Hume, a former soldier and shipyard worker, and Anne “Annie” (née Doherty), a seamstress. He has a mostly Irish Catholic background, though his surname derives from one of his great-grandfathers, a Scottish Presbyterian who migrated to County Donegal. He attends St. Columb’s College and goes on to St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, the leading Catholic seminary in Ireland and a recognised college of the National University of Ireland, where he intends to study for the priesthood. Among his teachers is Tomás Ó Fiaich, the future cardinal and Primate of All Ireland.

Hume does not complete his clerical studies but does obtain an M.A. degree in French and history from the college in 1958. He then returns home to his native Derry, where he becomes a teacher at his alma mater, St. Columb’s College. He is a founding member of the Credit Union movement in the city and is chair of the University for Derry Committee in 1965, an unsuccessful fight to have Northern Ireland’s second university established in Derry in the mid-1960s.

Hume becomes the youngest ever President of the Irish League of Credit Unions at age 27. He serves in the role from 1964 to 1968. He once says that “all the things I’ve been doing, it’s the thing I’m proudest of because no movement has done more good for the people of Ireland, north and south, than the credit union movement.”

Hume becomes a leading figure in the civil rights movement in the late 1960s along with people such as Hugh Logue. He is a prominent figure in the Derry Citizens’ Action Committee. The DCAC is set up in the wake of the October 5, 1968, march through Derry which had caused much attention to be drawn towards the situation in Northern Ireland. The purpose of the DCAC is to make use of the publicity surrounding recent events to bring to light grievances in Derry that had been suppressed by the Unionist Government for years. The DCAC, unlike the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), is aimed specifically at a local campaign, improving the situation in Derry for everyone, and maintaining a peaceful stance. The committee also has a Stewards Association that is there to prevent any violence at marches or sit-downs.

Hume becomes an Independent Nationalist member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in 1969 at the height of the civil rights campaign. He is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1973 and serves as Minister of Commerce in the short-lived power-sharing Executive in 1974. He stands unsuccessfully for the Westminster Parliament for the Londonderry constituency in October 1974, and is elected for Foyle in 1983.

In October 1971, Hume joins four Westminster MPs in a 48-hour hunger strike to protest at the internment without trial of hundreds of suspected Irish republicans. State papers that have been released under the 30-year rule that an Irish diplomat eight years later in 1979 believes Hume supported the return of internment.

In 1977, Hume challenges a regulation under the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland) 1922 which allows any soldier to disperse an assembly of three or more people. The Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Robert Lowry, holds that the regulation is ultra vires under Section 4 of the Government of Ireland Act 1920 which forbids the Parliament of Northern Ireland to make laws in respect of the army.

A founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), Hume succeeds Gerry Fitt as its leader in 1979. He also serves as one of Northern Ireland’s three Members of the European Parliament and serves on the faculty of Boston College, from which he receives an honorary degree in 1995.

Hume is directly involved in secret talks with the British government and Sinn Féin, in an effort to bring Sinn Féin to the discussion table openly. The talks are speculated to lead directly to the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985.

The vast majority of unionists reject the agreement and stage a massive and peaceful public rally in Belfast City Centre to demonstrate their distaste. Many Republicans and nationalists also reject it, as they see it as not going far enough. Hume, however, continues dialogue with both governments and Sinn Féin. The “Hume–Adams process” eventually delivers the 1994 Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire which ultimately provides the relatively peaceful backdrop against which the Good Friday agreement is brokered.

On February 4, 2004, Hume announces his complete retirement from politics and is succeeded by Mark Durkan as SDLP leader. He does not contest the 2004 European Parliament election where his seat is won by Bairbre de Brún of Sinn Féin, nor does he run in the 2005 United Kingdom general election, in which Mark Durkan retains the Foyle constituency for the SDLP.

Hume and his wife, Pat, continue to be active in promoting European integration, issues around global poverty and the Credit Union movement. He is also a supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for democratic reformation of the United Nations.

In 2015, Hume is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, of which he had first displayed symptoms in the late 1990s. He dies in the early hours of August 3, 2020, at a nursing home in Derry, at the age of 83. On his death, former Labour Party leader and prime minister Tony Blair says, “John Hume was a political titan; a visionary who refused to believe the future had to be the same as the past.” The Dalai Lama says on Twitter, “John Hume’s deep conviction in the power of dialogue and negotiations to resolve conflict was unwavering… It was his leadership and his faith in the power of negotiations that enabled the 1998 Good Friday Agreement to be reached. His steady persistence set an example for us all to follow.”

(Pictured: John Hume with U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1995)


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Death of Arthur Armstrong, Northern Irish Painter

Arthur Armstrong, painter who often works in a Cubist style and produces landscape and still life works, dies in Dublin on January 13, 1996.

Armstrong is born on January 12, 1924, at Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, one of three sons among six children of James Charlton Armstrong, housepainter and decorator, and his wife Margaret (née Howard). Soon after his birth the family moves to Belfast. He attends Strandtown Primary School. He attends Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in the early 1940s, where he initially studies political science and later architecture. Having an interest in art, which had been fostered by his father, he takes classes for a short time in the early 1940s at the Belfast School of Art. It is there he meets Gerard Dillon, who introduces him to George Campbell and Daniel O’Neill. He is largely self-taught as an artist. It is his close association with Dillon and Campbell, both some years his senior, that proves to be the most important factor in his development. In Belfast in the early 1940s they associate with the Russian artist Daniel Nietzche, who emphasises to them the importance of personal expression.

After leaving university Armstrong works at the Belfast Gas Office. At this point he is the main support for his widowed mother. Having saved some money, he leaves his job in 1946 to attempt to fulfil his ambition to paint full-time, producing a set of etchings with George Campbell, which are published by Walsh Studios. The following year he takes work as a designer for Ulster Laces in Portadown, County Armagh. In 1957, he leaves for London in the hopes of finding greater opportunities as an artist. His friends Campbell and Dillon are already living there, and he takes lodgings with Dillon’s sister at Abbey Road, north London. Though he continues to paint, he is unable to earn a living and so again has to take other work, this time in a Labour Exchange office. However, he is beginning to gain recognition. In 1957, he is awarded a traveling scholarship by the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA), which enables him to travel to Spain. He continues to visit Spain throughout the 1960s, often to see Campbell, who spends much time there.

In 1961 he has his first solo exhibition at the CEMA gallery in Belfast. He comes to live in Dublin in 1962, his work having already been exhibited there at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1957 and 1958. He continues to exhibit there annually from 1961 to 1965. During the 1960s and early 1970s his work is regularly included in the Oireachtas exhibition, at which he is awarded the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal in 1968. He also shows his work with the Ritchie Hendriks Gallery and the Tom Caldwell Gallery in Dublin. Ultimately, he is to have over seventy solo exhibitions throughout his career. By 1969, when he is elected an associate member of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), he has established himself as one of the leading landscape painters in Ireland. In 1972 he becomes a full member of the RHA. He exhibits there regularly until 1977.

It is during this period that some of Armstrong’s best work is produced. While landscape is his predominant theme, he never sees himself as a painter of particular views, rather he responds to the abstract qualities of a scene. He sees elements such as the sea, rocks or sky as a series of interlocking textures to be rendered expressively in oil paint. The western coastline of Ireland is a vital source of inspiration for him. Roundstone, County Galway, is a favoured base for painting trips in the company of Dillon and Campbell, who by this time are also living in Dublin.

In 1981, a retrospective exhibition of Armstrong’s work is organised by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. He is represented in many major public and corporate collections in Ireland. From 1971 he lives at 28 Chelmsford Avenue, Ranelagh, Dublin, in a house he shares with Gerard Dillon.

Armstrong dies unmarried on January 13, 1996, in Dublin. The contents of his studio are sold on February 3, 1998.

(From: “Armstrong, Arthur” by Rebecca Minch, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009, revised November 2013 | Pictured: “Near Ballyhubbock,” oil on board by Arthur Armstrong RHA)


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Death of Seán MacEntee, Fianna Fáil Politician

Seán Francis MacEntee (Irish: Seán Mac an tSaoi), Fianna Fáil politician, dies on January 9, 1984, in Booterstown, Dublin. He serves as Tánaiste (1959-65), Minister for Social Welfare (1957-61), Minister for Health (1957-65), Minister for Local Government and Public Health (1941-48), Minister for Industry and Commerce (1939-41), and Minister for Finance (1932-39 and 1951-54). He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1918 to 1969. At the time of his death, he is the last surviving member of the First Dáil.

MacEntee is born as John McEntee at 47 King Street, Belfast, on August 23, 1889, the son of James McEntee, a publican, and his wife, Mary Owens, both of whom are from Monaghan. James McEntee is a prominent Nationalist member of Belfast Corporation and a close friend of Joseph Devlin MP.

MacEntee is educated at St. Mary’s Christian Brothers’ Grammar School, St. Malachy’s College and the Belfast Municipal College of Technology where he qualifies as an electrical engineer. His early political involvement is with the Irish Socialist Republican Party in Belfast. He quickly rises through the ranks of the trade union movement becoming junior representative in the city’s shipyards. Following his education, he works as an engineer in Dundalk, County Louth, and is involved in the establishment of a local corps of the Irish Volunteers in the town. He mobilises in Dundalk and fights in the General Post Office garrison in the Easter Rising in 1916. He is sentenced to death for his part in the rising. This sentence is later commuted to life imprisonment. He is released in the general amnesty in 1917 and is later elected a member of the National Executives of both Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers in October 1917. He is later elected Sinn Féin Member of Parliament (MP) for South Monaghan at the 1918 Irish general election.

An attempt to develop MacEntee’s career as a consulting engineer in Belfast is interrupted by the Irish War of Independence in 1919. He serves as Vice-Commandant of the Belfast Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is also a member of the Volunteer Executive, a sort of Cabinet and Directory for the Minister for Defence and the HQ Staff, however, he remains one of the few Sinn Féiners from the north. On August 6, 1920, he presents ‘a Memorial’ lecture to the Dáil from the Belfast Corporation. He tells the Dáil it is the only custodian of public order, that a Nationalist pogrom is taking place, and he advises them to fight Belfast. The Dáil government’s policy is dubbed Hibernia Irredenta or “Greening Ireland.” He is asked to resign his South Monaghan seat after voting against a bunting celebration in Lurgan to mark the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

In April 1921 MacEntee is transferred to Dublin to direct a special anti-partition campaign in connection with the May general election. It remains Michael Collins‘s policy, he declares, that the largely Protestant shipyard workers of Belfast are being directed by the British, urging all Irishmen to rejoin the Republic. Correspondingly the Ulster Unionist Council rejects the call for a review of the boundary commission decision made on Northern Ireland. But when Ulstermen choose James Craig as Premier, Collins denounces democracy in the north as a sham. It is on the partition of Ireland issue that MacEntee votes against the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. During the subsequent Irish Civil War, he commands the IRA unit in Marlboro Street Post Office in Dublin. He later fights with Cathal Brugha in the Hamman Hotel and is subsequently interned in Kilmainham and Gormanstown until December 1923.

After his release from prison, MacEntee devotes himself more fully to his engineering practice, although he unsuccessfully contests the Dublin County by-election of 1924. He becomes a founder-member of Fianna Fáil in 1926 and is eventually elected a TD for Dublin County at the June 1927 Irish general election.

MacEntee founds the Association of Patent Agents in 1929, having gained his interest in Patents when he worked as an assistant engineer in Dundalk Urban District Council. He values his status as a Patent Agent as he maintains his name on the Register for over 30 years while he holds Ministerial rank in the Irish Government, although he is not believed to have taken any active part in the patent business, which is carried on by his business partners.

In 1932, Fianna Fáil comes to power for the very first time, with MacEntee becoming Minister for Finance. In keeping with the party’s protectionist economic policies his first budget in March of that year sees the introduction of new duties on 43 imports, many of them coming from Britain. This sees retaliation from the British government, which in turn provokes a response from the Irish government. This is the beginning of the Anglo-Irish Trade War between the two nations, however, a treaty in 1938, signed by MacEntee and other senior members brings an end to the issue.

In 1939, World War II breaks out and a cabinet reshuffle results in MacEntee being appointed as Minister for Industry and Commerce, taking over from his rival Seán Lemass. During his tenure at this department, he introduces the important Trade Union Act (1941). In 1941, another reshuffle of ministers takes place, with him becoming Minister for Local Government and Public Health. The Health portfolio is transferred to a new Department of Health in 1947. Following the 1948 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil returns to the opposition benches for the first time in sixteen years.

In 1951, Fianna Fáil are back in government, although in minority status, depending on independent deputies for survival. MacEntee once again returns to the position of Minister for Finance where he feels it is vital to deal with the balance of payments deficit. He brings in a harsh budget in 1951 which raises income tax and tariffs on imports. His chief aim is to cut spending and reduce imports, however, this comes at a cost as unemployment increases sharply. The increases are retained in his next two budgets in 1952 and 1953. It is often said that it is his performance during this period that costs Fianna Fáil the general election in 1954. The poor grasp on economics also does his political career tremendous damage as up to that point he is seen as a likely successor as Taoiseach. Seán Lemass, however, is now firmly seen as the “heir apparent.”

In 1957, Fianna Fáil returns to power with an overall majority with MacEntee being appointed Minister for Health. The financial and economic portfolios are dominated by Lemass and other like-minded ministers who want to move away from protection to free trade. He is credited during this period with the reorganisation of the health services, the establishment of separate departments of health and social welfare, and the fluoridation of water supplies in Ireland. In 1959, he becomes Tánaiste when Seán Lemass is elected Taoiseach.

Following the 1965 Irish general election, MacEntee is 76 years old and retires from the government. He re-emerges in 1966 to launch a verbal attack on Seán Lemass for deciding to step down as party leader and Taoiseach. The two men, however, patch up their differences shortly afterwards. MacEntee retires from Dáil Éireann in 1969 at the age of 80, making him the oldest TD in Irish history.

MacEntee dies in Dublin on January 9, 1984, at the age of 94. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.


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Birth of Irish Broadcaster George Hamilton

Irish broadcaster George Hamilton is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on January 2, 1950. He is best known as the chief football commentator for RTÉ, for which he also commentates on other sporting events, such as the Olympic Games. He presents a classical music programme on RTÉ lyric fm on Saturdays and Sundays called The Hamilton Scores.

Hamilton is christened in the same Presbyterian church as George Best. His father Jimmy plays for Cliftonville F.C., but he is a Glentoran F.C. “superfan.”

While a student at Methodist College Belfast, Hamilton is, for a time, principal cellist with the school orchestra. He then studies German and French at Queen’s University Belfast.

Hamilton begins his commentary career with BBC Sport, before joining RTÉ eight years later in 1984. He had previously worked for RTÉ during the 1978 FIFA World Cup. Since 2003, he works for RTÉ lyric fm, Ireland’s classical radio station, on Saturday mornings. For many years, he fronts a popular weekly quiz show on RTÉ, Know Your Sport, alongside fellow commentator Jimmy Magee.

Hamilton is chief commentator for RTÉ Sport‘s coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the ninth one in which he has been involved. He is RTÉ’s chief commentator at UEFA Euro 2012 and commentates on all of Ireland’s matches in the competition. He is involved in the coverage of the Olympic Games since the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow.

Hamilton is known for his use of colourful phrases and memorable quotes when commentating on games, his phrase describing David O’Leary‘s penalty against Romania in the 1990 FIFA World Cup, “The nation holds its breath,” is used for a book of Irish football quotations, compiled by Eoghan Corry, for which Hamilton writes the foreword.

The sports humour website, DangerHere.com, takes its title from another quote by Hamilton: “And Bonner has gone 165 minutes of these championships without conceding a goal. Oh, danger here…”

On August 16, 2011, Hamilton feels unwell and has a suspected heart attack. He later has several hours of emergency bypass surgery at the Blackrock Clinic in Dublin after being transferred from St. Vincent’s University Hospital. He recovers and resumes both his commentating and radio show.


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Birth of Composer Ian Wilson

Irish composer Ian Wilson is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on December 26, 1964. He has written over one hundred and fifty works, including chamber operas, concertos, string quartets, a range of orchestral and chamber music and multi-media pieces.

Wilson studies violin and piano, graduating with a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in composition from Ulster University at Jordanstown in 1990, where he is a research fellow from 2000 to 2003. He is a composer-in-residence with Leitrim County Council and is music director of the Sligo New Music Festival from 2003 to 2011. He receives the Macaulay Fellowship from the Arts Council of Ireland in 1992. In 1998, he is elected to Aosdána, Ireland’s academy of creative artists. Since 2009, he has been a post-doctoral research fellow at Dundalk Institute of Technology, investigating aspects of traditional (ethnic) Irish performance practice as basis for new works of art music.

Wilson’s compositions have been performed and broadcast on six continents, and presented at festivals including the BBC Proms, Venice Biennale, ISCM World Music Days, Frankfort Book Fair and the Ultima Oslo Contemporary Music Festival and at venues such as New York City’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Royal Albert Hall and Wigmore Hall, Amsterdam’s Royal Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ, Vienna’s Wiener Musikverein and Tokyo’s Suntory Hall. His music has been performed by such diverse groups as the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra, the London Mozart Players, the Irish Chamber Orchestra (ICO), the pianist Hugh Tinney and many others.

There are commercially available recordings of over fifty of Wilson’s works on labels including Diatribe Records, Riverrun, RTÉ Lyric fm, Black Box, Timbre, Guild, Meridian and Chandos Records. His music is published by Ricordi (London) and Universal Edition.


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Birth of Dolours Price, Provisional Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Dolours Price, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, is born in Belfast on December 16, 1950.

Price and her sister, Marian, also an IRA member, are the daughters of Albert Price, a prominent Irish republican and former IRA member from Belfast. Their aunt, Bridie Dolan, is blinded and loses both hands in an accident while handling IRA explosives. 

Price becomes involved in Irish republicanism in the late 1960s and she and Marian participate in the Belfast to Derry civil rights march in January 1969 and are attacked in the Burntollet Bridge incident.

In 1971 Price and her sister join the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). In 1972 she joins an elite group within the IRA called “The Unknowns” commanded by Pat McClure.  The Unknowns are tasked with various secretive activities and transport several accused traitors across the border into the Republic of Ireland where they are “disappeared.” She personally states that she had driven Joe Lynskey across the border to face trial. In addition, she states that she, Pat McClure and a third Unknown were tasked with killing Jean McConville, with the third Unknown actually shooting her.

Price leads the car bombing attacks in London on March 8, 1973, which injure over 200 people and is believed to have contributed to the death of one person who suffers a fatal heart attack. The two sisters are arrested, along with Gerry Kelly, Hugh Feeney and six others, on the day of the bombing as they are boarding a flight to Ireland. They are tried and convicted at the Great Hall in Winchester Castle on November 14, 1973. Although originally sentenced to life imprisonment, which is to run concurrently for each criminal charge, their sentence is eventually reduced to 20 years. She serves seven years for her part in the bombing. She immediately goes on a hunger strike demanding to be moved to a prison in Northern Ireland. The hunger strike lasts for 208 days because the hunger strikers are force-fed by prison authorities to keep them alive.

On the back of the hunger-striking campaign, Price’s father contests Belfast West at the February 1974 United Kingdom general election, receiving 5,662 votes (11.9%). The Price sisters, Hugh Feeney, and Gerry Kelly are moved to Northern Ireland prisons in 1975 as a result of an IRA truce. In 1980 she receives the royal prerogative of mercy and is freed on humanitarian grounds in 1981, purportedly suffering from anorexia nervosa due to the invasive trauma of daily force feedings.

After her release in 1980, Price marries Irish actor Stephen Rea, with whom she has two sons, Danny and Oscar. They divorce in 2003.

The Price sisters remain active politically. In the late 1990s, Price and her sister claim that they have been threatened by their former colleagues in the IRA and Sinn Féin for publicly opposing the Good Friday Agreement (i.e. the cessation of the IRA’s military campaign). she is a contributor to The Blanket, an online journal, edited by former Provisional IRA member Anthony McIntyre, until it ceases publication in 2008.

In 2001, Price is arrested in Dublin and charged with possession of stolen prescription pads and forged prescriptions. She pleads guilty and is fined £200 and ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

In February 2010, it is reported by The Irish News that Price had offered help to the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains in locating graves of three men, Joe Lynskey, Seamus Wright, and Kevin McKee. The bodies of Wright and McKee are recovered from a singular grave in County Meath in August 2015. It is unclear if Price played a role in their recovery. The remains of Joe Lynskey have not been recovered as of April 2021.

Price is the subject of the 2018 feature-length documentary I, Dolours in which she gives an extensive filmed interview.

In 2010, Price claims Gerry Adams had been her officer commanding (OC) when she was active in the IRA. Adams, who has always denied being a member of the IRA, denies her allegation. She admits taking part in the murder of Jean McConville, as part of an IRA action in 1972. She claims the murder of McConville, a mother of ten, was ordered by Adams when he was an IRA leader in West Belfast. Adams subsequently publicly further denies Price’s allegations, stating that the reason for them is that she is opposed to the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s abandonment of paramilitary warfare in favour of politics in 1994, in the facilitation of which Adams has been a key figure.

Oral historians at Boston College interview both Price and her fellow IRA paramilitary Brendan Hughes between 2001 and 2006. The two give detailed interviews for the historical record of the activities in the IRA, which are recorded on condition that the content of the interviews is not to be released during their lifetimes. Prior to her death in May 2011, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) subpoena the material, possibly as part of an investigation into the disappearance of a number of people in Northern Ireland during the 1970s. In June 2011, the college files a motion to quash the subpoena. A spokesman for the college states that “our position is that the premature release of the tapes could threaten the safety of the participants, the enterprise of oral history, and the ongoing peace and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland.” In June 2011, U.S. federal prosecutors ask a judge to require the college to release the tapes to comply with treaty obligations with the United Kingdom. On July 6, 2012, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit agrees with the government’s position that the subpoena should stand. On October 17, 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States temporarily blocks the college from handing over the interview tapes. In April 2013, after Price’s death, the Supreme Court turns away an appeal that seeks to keep the interviews from being supplied to the PSNI. The order leaves in place a lower court ruling that orders Boston College to give the Justice Department portions of recorded interviews with Price. Federal officials want to forward the recordings to police investigating the murder of Jean McConville.

Price dies in her Malahide, County Dublin, home on January 23, 2013, from a toxic effect of mixing prescribed sedative and anti-depressant medication. Her body is found the following day. The inquest returns a verdict of death by misadventure. She is buried at Milltown Cemetery in West Belfast.


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Birth of Naomi Long, Northern Irish Politician

Naomi Rachel Long MLA (née Johnston), a Northern Irish politician who serves as Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Executive from January 2020 to October 2022, is born in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, on December 13, 1971. She has served as leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI) since 2016 and a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Belfast East since 2020.

Long attends Mersey Street Primary and Bloomfield Collegiate School. She graduates from Queen’s University Belfast with a degree in civil engineering in 1994, works in a structural engineering consultancy for two years, holds a research and training post at Queen’s University for three years, and then goes back into environmental and hydraulic engineering consultancy for four years.

Long first takes political office in 2001 when she is elected to Belfast City Council for the Victoria ward. In 2003, she is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast East, succeeding her fellow party member John Alderdice. In 2006, she is named deputy leader of her party. In the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election, she more than doubles the party’s vote in the constituency, being placed second ahead of the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). The overall UUP vote, however, is 22%. At 18.8%, her vote share is higher than that for Alderdice in 1998.

On June 1, 2009, Long is elected as Lord Mayor of Belfast, defeating Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) candidate William Humphrey by 26 votes to 24 in a vote at a council meeting. She becomes the second woman to hold the post, after Grace Bannister (1981–82).

On May 6, 2010, Long defeats Peter Robinson, First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the DUP, to become Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast East in the House of Commons. She becomes the first MP elected to Westminster for the Alliance Party (previously, Stratton Mills, a former Ulster Unionist Party MP, had changed parties to Alliance). She also becomes the first Liberal-affiliated MP elected to Westminster in Northern Ireland since James Brown Dougherty in Londonderry City in 1914. Despite the close relationship between the Alliance Party and the Liberal Democrats, she does not sit with the coalition government nor take the coalition whip and is not a member of the Liberal Democrats.

On December 10, 2012, Long receives a number of death threats, and a petrol bomb is thrown inside an unmarked police car guarding her constituency office. This violence erupts as a reaction by Ulster loyalists to the decision by Alliance Party members of Belfast City Council to vote in favour of restricting the flying of the Union flag at Belfast City Hall to designated days throughout the year, which at the time constitutes 18 specific days.

In 2015, Long loses her seat in the Commons to Gavin Robinson of the DUP, as a result of a five-party unionist pact in the constituency which sees the UUP, UK Independence Party (UKIP), Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) and Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) all stand aside in favour of Robinson.

In January 2016, Long announces that she will return as an Assembly candidate in the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election having been nominated in place of incumbent Judith Cochrane. She is subsequently elected on the first count with 14.7% of first-preference votes. Following her return to the Assembly, she assumes positions on the Committee for Communities, the All-Party Group on Fairtrade, the All-Party Group for Housing, and chairs the All-Party Group on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

In August 2016, Long calls for Sinn Féin‘s Máirtín Ó Muilleoir to stand aside as Minister of Finance during an investigation of the Stormont Finance Committee’s handling of its Nama inquiry, while Ó Muilleoir is a committee member. This follows allegations that his party had “coached” loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson prior to his appearance before the committee.

In November 2016, Long criticises Sinn Féin and the DUP for delaying the publication of a working group report on abortion, which recommends legislative changes in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, calling on the Executive “to act without further delay to help women who decide to seek a termination in these very difficult circumstances.”

On October 26, 2016, Long is elected Alliance leader unopposed following the resignation of David Ford. In the first manifesto released under her leadership, she affirms her commitment to building a “united, open, liberal and progressive” society. Her party’s legislative priorities are revealed to include the harmonisation and strengthening of equality and anti-discrimination measures, the introduction of civil marriage equality, development of integrated education and a Northern Ireland framework to tackle climate change.

In the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election, Long tops the poll in Belfast East and is returned to the Assembly with 18.9% of first-preference votes. The election is widely viewed as a success for Alliance, with the party increasing its vote share by 2 percentage points and retaining all of its seats in a smaller Assembly. The party subsequently holds the balance of power at Stormont.

Alliance targets two seats in Belfast South and Belfast East in the 2017 United Kingdom general election. During the campaign, Long reaffirms her support for a People’s Vote, marriage equality, Votes at 16 and greater transparency surrounding political donations. She also pledges to oppose any rollback of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Following the collapse of talks to restore devolution in February 2018, Long reiterates her view that the pay of MLAs should be cut in the absence of a functioning Executive. In March 2018, Alliance launches its “Next Steps Forward” paper, outlining a number of proposals aimed at breaking the deadlock and Stormont. At the 2019 Alliance Party Conference, she accuses Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Karen Bradley of an “appalling dereliction of duty” over the ongoing stalemate, saying that she had made “no concerted effort to end this interminable drift despite it allegedly being her top priority.”

In the 2019 Northern Ireland local elections, Alliance sees a 65% rise in its representation on councils. Long hails the “incredible result” as a watershed moment for politics in Northern Ireland.

Long is elected to the European Parliament as a representative for Northern Ireland in May 2019 with 18.5% of first-preference votes, the best ever result for Alliance. She is subsequently replaced in the Assembly by Máire Hendron, a founding member of the party and former deputy lord mayor of Belfast. She then replaces Hendron in the Assembly with effect from January 9, 2020.

In 2019, Long becomes the first Northern Ireland politician to have served at every level of government.

On January 11, 2020, following the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly after three years of stalemate, Long is elected Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Executive. On January 28, she announces that she will progress new domestic abuse legislation through the Assembly which will make coercive control a criminal offence in Northern Ireland. In June 2020, she commissions a review into the support available for prison officers following concerns about absence rates. That same month, she announces her intention to introduce unexplained wealth orders in Northern Ireland to target paramilitary and criminal finances.

In November 2020, Long says she is seriously reconsidering her position within the Executive following the DUP’s deployment of a cross-community vote to prevent an extension of COVID-19 regulations. She tells BBC News, “I have asked people to desist from this abuse of power because it will make my position in the executive unsustainable.”

In March 2022, Long tells the Alliance Party Conference that “some politicians are addicted to crisis and conflict and simply not up to the job of actually governing.” Long leads Alliance into the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election on a platform of integrated education, health reform, a Green New Deal, tackling paramilitarism and reform of the Stormont institutions.

Long is a member of Bloomfield Presbyterian Church. Following the Church’s decision to exclude those in same-sex relationships from being full members, she expresses “great concern” and states that she “didn’t know” if she would remain a member herself. She is married to Michael Long, an Alliance councillor on Belfast City Council and former Lord Mayor of Belfast, and son of the engineer Professor Adrian Long. Long and her husband are the first husband and wife to have both served as Lord Mayors of Belfast.