seamus dubhghaill

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Final Rally of the Peace People’s Campaign

A rally of twelve to fifteen thousand Peace People from both north and south takes place at the new bridge over the River Boyne at Drogheda, County Louth, on December 5, 1976. In general, the Peace People’s goals are the dissolution of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and an end to violence in Northern Ireland. The implicit goals of the Peace People rallies are delegitimization of violence, increasing solidarity, and gaining momentum for peace.

In the 1960s, Northern Ireland begins a period of ethno-political conflict called the Troubles. Through a series of social and political injustices, Northern Ireland has become a religiously divided society between historically mainland Protestants and Irish Catholics. Furthermore, the Irish people have become a fragmented body over a range of issues, identities, circumstances and loyalties. The conflict between Protestants and Catholics spills over into violence, marked by riots and targeted killings between the groups beginning in 1968. In addition, paramilitary groups, including the prominent IRA, launch attacks to advance their political agendas.

The violence continues to escalate. On August 10, 1976, Anne Maguire and her children are walking along Finaghy Road North in Belfast. Suddenly, a Ford Cortina slams into them. The car is being driven by Danny Lennon, who moments before had been shot dead by pursuing soldiers.  The mother is the only survivor. The collision kills three of her four children, Joanne (8), John (2), and Andrew (6 months). Joanne and Andrew die instantly while John is injured critically.

The next day, immediately following John’s death, fifty women from the Republican neighborhoods of Andersonstown and Stewartstown protest Republican violence by marching with baby carriages. That evening, Mairead Corrigan, Anne Maguire’s sister, appears on television pleading for an end to the violence. She becomes the first leader of the Peace People to speak publicly.

However, she was not the only one to initiate action. As soon as she hears Mairead speak on the television, Betty Williams begins petitioning door-to-door for an end to sectarian violence. She garners 6,000 signatures of support within a few days.  This support leads directly into the first unofficial action of the Peace People. On 14 August, only four days after the incident, 10,000 women, both Protestant and Catholic, march with banners along Finaghy Road North, the place of the children’s death, to Milltown Cemetery, their burial site.  This march mostly includes women along with a few public figures and men. The marchers proceed in almost utter silence, only broken by short bouts of singing from the nuns in the crowd and verbal and physical attacks by Republican opposition.

The following day, the three who become leaders of the Peace People – Mairead Corrigan, Betty Williams, and journalist Ciaran McKeown – come together for their first official meeting.  During these initial meetings they establish the ideological basis of nonviolence and goals for the campaign.  The essential goals for the movement are the dissolution of the IRA and an end to the violence in Northern Ireland.  The goals of the campaign implicit in their declaration are awareness, solidarity, and momentum. 
Peace People’s declaration:

“We have a simple message to the world from this movement for Peace. We want to live and love and build a just and peaceful society. We want for our children, as we want for ourselves, our lives at home, at work, and at play to be lives of joy and peace. We recognise that to build such a society demands dedication, hard work, and courage. We recognise that there are many problems in our society which are a source of conflict and violence. We recognise that every bullet fired, and every exploding bomb make that work more difficult. We reject the use of the bomb and the bullet and all the techniques of violence. We dedicate ourselves to working with our neighbours, near and far, day in and day out, to build that peaceful society in which the tragedies we have known are a bad memory and a continuing warning.”

During the four-month campaign, Peace People and partners organize and participate in 26 marches in Northern Ireland, Britain, and the Republic of Ireland. In order to organize these marches effectively they establish their main headquarters in Belfast.

After the initial Finaghy Road March, the Peace People, both Protestants and Catholics, rally in Ormeau Park on August 21. The official Declaration of the Peace People is first read at this rally, the largest rally of the entire campaign.   The group numbers over 50,000. The rally even includes some activists from the Republic of Ireland, most notably Judy Hayes from the Glencree Centre of Reconciliation near Dublin. After the rally, she and her colleagues return to the south to organize solidarity demonstrations.     

In the few days before the next march, the organization “Women Together” request Peace People to call off the march, disapproving of Catholics and Protestants participating in a joint march. The Peace People are not dissuaded. The next Saturday, 27,000 people march along Shankill Road, the loyalist/Protestant neighborhood.

In the next three months, Peace People organize and participate in a rally every Saturday; some weeks even have two. Some of the most notable marches include the Derry/Londonderry double-march, the Falls march, the London march, and the Boyne march.

The Saturday following the Shankill march marks the Derry/Londonderry double-march. At this march, Catholics march on one side of the River Foyle and Protestants on the other.  The groups meet on the Craigavon Bridge.  Simultaneously, 50,000 people march in solidarity in Dublin.

On October 23, marchers meet in the Falls, Belfast, in the pouring rain on the same Northumberland street corner where the Shankill March had started.  The Falls Road rally is memorable for the fear and violence that ensues. During this rally Sinn Féin supporters throw stones and bottles at the marchers.  The attackers escalate the violence as the marchers near Falls Park. The marchers are informed by others that more attackers await them at the entrance to the park, inciting fear within the body of the rally.  The leaders decide that this is an important moment of conflict in the rally and that they must push on.  They continue verbally encouraging the marchers through the cloud of bottles, bricks, and stones.

The leaders plan to escalate the campaign momentum for the last two major symbolic rallies in London and Boyne, Drogheda.  A week before the rallies, on November 20-21, they plan a membership drive. Over 105,000 people sign within two days.

The symbolic week of the culminating rallies begins on November 27 at the glamorous London Rally. They begin to march at Hyde Park, cut through Westminster Abbey, and end at Trafalgar Square. Some groups sing “Troops Out,” and others resound with civil rights songs.  

On December 5, Peace People holds its final march of the campaign, along the River Boyne. The Northern and Southern Ireland contingents met at the Peace Bridge. This is an important point in the legacy of the Peace People movement. Now that the enthusiastic rallies are over, the people are responsible for the tedious local work and continuing the momentum and solidarity that the rallies have inspired. The shape of the Peace People is changing.

After the planned marches are over, the rally portion of the campaign fades and the Peace People take a new shape. Corrigan, Williams, and McKeown stop planning marches, but continue to be involved in action that takes the form of conferences and traveling overseas. However, the leaders begin doing more separated work. Ciaran McKeown increases his focus on radical political restructuring.

In 1977, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan receive the Nobel Peace Prize.  Issues regarding the use of the monetary award impact the two leaders’ relationships in an irreconcilable manner.  

Due to the fact that many people, unlike McKeown, are less interested in the political side of the equation, the People continue actions along the lines of rallies and social work. Actions continue through the People’s initiative in the form of Peace Committees that each does separate work in local areas.

The Peace People makes a substantial impact.  They help to de-legitimize violence, increase solidarity across sectarian lines, and develop momentum for peace.  Although the violence does not fully subside until 1998 with the negotiation of political change, Ireland sees in 1976 one of its most dramatic decreases in political violence, accompanying the Peace People’s marches and rallies. The campaign dramatizes how tired the people are of bloodshed, their desperate desire for peace, and the clear possibility of alternatives.

(From: “Peace People march against violence in Northern Ireland, 1976” by Hannah Lehmann, Global Nonviolent Action Database, https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/, 2011 | Pictured: The Peace People organisation rally in Drogheda, County Louth, December 5, 1976)


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Death of Sir James Craig, First Prime Minister of Northern Ireland

James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon PC PC (NI) DL, prominent Irish unionist politician, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from 1921 until his death, dies peacefully at his home at Glencraig, County Down, at the age of 69 on November 24, 1940.

Craig is born at Sydenham, Belfast, on January 8, 1871, the seventh of nine children of James Craig (1828–1900), a wealthy whiskey distiller who had entered the firm of Dunville & Co. as a clerk and by age 40 is a millionaire and a partner in the firm. Craig Snr. owns a large house called Craigavon, overlooking Belfast Lough. His mother, Eleanor Gilmore Browne, is the daughter of Robert Browne, a prosperous man who owned property in Belfast and a farm outside Lisburn. Craig is educated at Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh, Scotland. After school he begins work as a stockbroker, eventually opening his own firm in Belfast.

Craig enlists in the 3rd (Militia) battalion of the Royal Irish Rifles on January 17, 1900, to serve in the Second Boer War. He is seconded to the Imperial Yeomanry, a cavalry force created for service during the war, as a lieutenant in the 13th battalion on February 24, 1900, and leaves Liverpool for South Africa on the SS Cymric in March 1900. After arrival he is soon sent to the front and is taken prisoner in May 1900, but released by the Boers because of a perforated colon. On his recovery he becomes deputy assistant director of the Imperial Military Railways, showing the qualities of organisation that are to mark his involvement in both British and Ulster politics. In June 1901 he is sent home suffering from dysentery, and by the time he is fit for service again the war is over. He is promoted to captain in the 3rd Royal Irish Rifles on September 20, 1902, while still seconded to South Africa.

On his return to Ireland, having received a £100,000 legacy from his father’s will, Craig turns to politics, serving as Member of the British Parliament for East Down from 1906 to 1918. From 1918 to 1921 he represents Mid Down and serves in the British government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Pensions (1919–20) and Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty (1920–21).

Craig rallies Ulster loyalist opposition to Irish Home Rule in Ulster before World War I, organising the paramilitary Ulster Volunteers (UVF) and buying arms from Imperial Germany. The UVF becomes the nucleus of the 36th (Ulster) Division during World War I. He succeeds Edward Carson as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party in February 1921.

In the 1921 Northern Ireland general election, the first ever, Craig is elected to the newly created House of Commons of Northern Ireland as one of the members for Down.

On June 7, 1921, Craig is appointed the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The House of Commons of Northern Ireland assembles for the first time later that day.

Craig is made a baronet in 1918, and in 1927 is created Viscount Craigavon, of Stormont in the County of Down. He is also the recipient of honorary degrees from Queen’s University Belfast (1922) and the University of Oxford (1926).

Craig had made his career in British as well as Northern Irish politics, but his premiership shows little sign of his earlier close acquaintance with the British political world. He becomes intensely parochial and suffers from his loss of intimacy with British politicians in 1938, when the British government concludes agreements with Dublin to end the Anglo-Irish trade war between the two countries. He never tries to persuade Westminster to protect Northern Ireland‘s industries, especially the linen industry, which is central to its economy. He is anxious not to provoke Westminster, given the precarious state of Northern Ireland’s position. In April 1939, and again in May 1940 during World War II, he calls for conscription to be introduced in Northern Ireland (which the British government, fearing a backlash from nationalists, refuses). He also calls for Winston Churchill to invade Ireland using Scottish and Welsh troops in order to seize the valuable ports and install a Governor-General at Dublin.

While still prime minister, Craig dies peacefully at his home at Glencraig, County Down at the age of 69 on November 24, 1940. He is buried on the Stormont Estate on December 5, 1940, and is succeeded as the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland by the Minister of Finance, J. M. Andrews.

(Pictured: James Craig, 1st Viscount Craigavon, bromide print by Olive Edis, National Portrait Gallery, London)


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Birth of John Cole, Northern Irish Journalist & BBC Broadcaster

John Morrison Cole, Northern Irish journalist and broadcaster best known for his work with the BBC, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on November 23, 1927. He serves as deputy editor of The Guardian and The Observer and, from 1981 to 1992, is the BBC’s political editor. Donald Macintyre, in an obituary in The Independent, describes him as “the most recognisable and respected broadcast political journalist since World War II.”

Cole is the son of George Cole, an electrical engineer, and his wife Alice. The family is Ulster Protestant, and he identifies himself as British. He receives his formal education at the Belfast Royal Academy.

Cole starts his career in print journalism in 1945, joining the Belfast Telegraph as a reporter and industrial correspondent. He subsequently works as a political reporter for the paper. He gains a scoop when he interviews the then Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, who is holidaying in Ireland.

Cole joins The Guardian, then The Manchester Guardian, in 1956, reporting on industrial issues. He transfers to the London office in 1957 as the paper’s labour correspondent. Appointed news editor in 1963, succeeding Nesta Roberts, he takes on the task of reorganising the paper’s “amateurish” system for gathering news. He heads opposition to a proposed merger with The Times in the mid-1960s, and later serves as deputy editor under Alastair Hetherington. When Hetherington leaves in 1975, Cole is in the running for the editorship, but fails to secure the post, for reasons which may include his commitment to the cause of unionism in Northern Ireland, as well as what is seen by some as inflexibility and a lack of flair. Unwilling to continue at The Guardian, he then joins The Observer as deputy editor under Donald Trelford, remaining there for six years.

After Tiny Rowland takes over as proprietor of The Observer in 1981, Cole gives evidence against him at the Monopolies Commission. The following day he receives a call from the BBC offering him the job of political editor, succeeding John Simpson. He has little previous television experience but proves a “natural broadcaster.” Reporting through most of the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, he becomes a familiar figure on television and radio.

Cole’s health is put under strain by the workload, and he suffers a heart attack in February 1984. Returning to report on that year’s conference season, he covers the Brighton hotel bombing, getting a “memorable” interview with Thatcher on the pavement in its immediate aftermath, in which she declares that the Tory conference will take place as normal. An astute observer of the political scene, he is one of the earliest to forecast Thatcher’s resignation as Prime Minister in 1990, in what colleague David McKie refers to as “perhaps his greatest exclusive.”

Cole establishes a strong reputation for his “gentle but probing” interviewing style, for his political assessments, and for presenting analysis rather than “bland reporting.” Held in enormous affection by viewers, he is trusted by both politicians and the public. He is known for speaking in the language used by ordinary people rather than so-called Westminster experts. His distinctive Northern Irish accent leads the way for BBC broadcasters with regional accents.

Cole retires as political editor in 1992 at the age of 65, compulsory at the time, but continues to appear on television, including making programmes on golf and travel. He also continues to appear on the BBC programme Westminster Live for several years after he retired as political editor.

In addition to his journalistic writing, Cole authors several books. The earliest are The Poor of the Earth, on developing countries, and The Thatcher Years (1987). After his retirement as BBC political editor, he spends more time writing. His political memoir, As It Seemed to Me, appears in 1995 and becomes a best-seller. He also publishes a novel, A Clouded Peace (2001), set in his birthplace of Belfast in 1977.

In 2007, Cole writes an article for the British Journalism Review, blaming both politicians and the media for the fact that parliamentarians are held in such low esteem, being particularly scathing of Alastair Campbell‘s influence during Tony Blair‘s premiership.

In 1966, the Eisenhower Fellowships selects Cole to represent Great Britain. He receives the Royal Television Society‘s Journalist of the Year award in 1991. After his retirement in 1992, he is awarded an honorary degree from the Open University as Doctor of the University and receives the Richard Dimbleby Award from BAFTA in 1993. He turns down a CBE in 1993, citing the former The Guardian newspaper rule that journalists can only accept gifts which can be consumed within 24 hours.

In his private life Cole is a supporter of the Labour Party and is a believer in the trades union movement. He considers that the combating of unemployment is one of the most important political issues. He is a British Republican and a committed Christian, associating in the latter part of his life with the United Reformed Church at Kingston upon Thames.

Cole suffers health problems in retirement including heart problems and two minor strokes. In 2009, he is diagnosed with cancer. He subsequently develops aphasia. He dies at his home at Claygate in the county of Surrey on November 7, 2013.

Tributes are paid by journalists, broadcasters and politicians across the political spectrum. Prime Minister David Cameron calls Cole a “titan at the BBC” and an “extraordinary broadcaster.” Labour Party leader Ed Miliband says that “my generation grew up watching John Cole. He conveyed the drama and importance of politics.” The Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond says that Cole is “an extremely able journalist but also extraordinarily helpful and generous to a young politician.” The BBC’s political editor at the time, Nick Robinson, writes that Cole “shaped the way all in my trade do our jobs.”


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The Darkley Killings

The Darkley killings or Darkley massacre is a gun attack carried out on November 20, 1983, near the village of Darkley, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Three gunmen attack worshippers attending a church service at Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church, killing three Protestant civilians and wounding seven. The attackers are rogue members of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). They claim responsibility using the cover name “Catholic Reaction Force,” saying it is retaliation for recent sectarian attacks on Catholics by the loyalist Protestant Action Force (PAF). The attack is condemned by INLA leadership.

In the months before the Darkley killings, several Catholic civilians are killed by loyalists. On October 29, 1983, a Catholic civilian member of the Workers’ Party, David Nocher (26), is shot dead in Belfast. On November 8, Catholic civilian Adrian Carroll (24) is shot dead in Armagh. Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) personnel are later convicted but the convictions are cleared on appeal for three of them (see UDR Four case). Carroll is the brother of an INLA member who was killed a year earlier. These attacks are claimed by the Protestant Action Force, a cover name used mostly by members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). It is believed the Darkley killings are primarily a retaliation for the killing of Carroll.

On the evening of Sunday, November 20, about sixty people are attending a church service at Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church. The small, isolated wooden church is outside the village of Darkley, near the border with the Republic of Ireland and several miles from Armagh. As the service begins, three masked gunmen arrive, at least one of whom is armed with a Ruger semi-automatic rifle, and open fire on those standing in the entrance. Three church elders are killed: Harold Browne (59), Victor Cunningham (39) and David Wilson (44). The fatally wounded Wilson staggers into the service, where he collapses and dies. The gunmen then stand outside the building and spray it with bullets, wounding an additional seven people before fleeing in a car. The service is being tape-recorded when the attack takes place. On the tape, the congregation can be heard singing the hymn “Are You Washed in the Blood of the Lamb,” followed by the sound of gunfire. All of the victims are Protestant civilians.

In a telephone call to a journalist, a caller claims responsibility for the attack on behalf of the “Catholic Reaction Force.” He says it is “retaliation for the murderous sectarian campaign carried out by the Protestant Action Force” and adds, “By this token retaliation we could easily have taken the lives of at least 20 more innocent Protestants. We serve notice on the PAF to call an immediate halt to their vicious indiscriminate campaign against innocent Catholics, or we will make the Darkley killings look like a picnic.” The caller names nine Catholics who had been attacked.

The name “Catholic Reaction Force” had never been used before and police say they believe the attack is carried out by members of the INLA. The INLA condemn the attack and deny direct involvement, but say it is investigating the involvement of INLA members or weapons. A week later, INLA leader Dominic McGlinchey admits that one of the gunmen had been an INLA member and admits supplying him with the gun but says there is no justification for the attack. The INLA member’s brother had been killed by loyalists. McGlinchey explains that the INLA member had asked him for a gun to shoot a known loyalist who had been involved in sectarian killings. However, “clearly deranged by the death of his brother,” he “used it instead to attack the Darkley Gospel Hall.” McGlinchey says, “he must have been unbalanced or something to have gone and organised this killing. We are conducting an inquiry.”

There are reprisal sectarian attacks on Catholics in North Belfast, Lisburn, and Portadown within 24 hours of the Darkley massacre. On December 5, fifteen days after the Darkley attack, the PAF shoot dead INLA member Joseph Craven (26) in Newtownabbey.

The name “Catholic Reaction Force” is used several other times. In August 1984, it is used to issue a threat to newspapers against the families of Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers, after Sean Downes, a Catholic man, dies after the RUC shot him with a plastic bullet during an anti-internment march on the Andersontown Road, Belfast. In May 1986, it is used to claim the killing of Protestant civilian David Wilson (39), who is shot while driving his firm’s van in Donaghmore. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) also claims responsibility, saying Wilson was a member of the UDR. The “Catholic Reaction Force” declares a ceasefire on October 28, 1994. In 2001, the name is used to claim two attacks on homes in which there are no injuries, and in 2002 is used to issue a threat to hospital workers suspected of links to the security forces.

(Pictured: The Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church at Aughnagurgan outside Darkley, County Armagh, Northern Ireland)


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Death of Gerry Adams, Sr., Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Gerard Adams Sr., a Belfast Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer who takes part in its Northern Campaign in the 1940s, dies on November 17, 2003, at Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has also been described as “important in the emergence of the Provisional IRA in 1970.”

Adams is born in 1926. He marries Anne Hannaway, also a Republican from an established republican family, by whom he has thirteen children, three of whom die in infancy. His children include Gerry Adams, a former abstentionist MP for Belfast West and former TD who becomes a leading figure in Sinn Féin and serves as its president until 2018, as well as Liam Adams, who dies serving a prison sentence in Northern Ireland for raping his daughter.

Adams is captured after being shot and wounded during an IRA operation in 1942 after he shot a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officer in the foot. He is sentenced to eight years in prison and serves five. He is interned in 1971 along with his son, Gerry Adams.

Adams dies “a lonely old man” on November 17, 2003. He is buried with the Irish tricolour, despite the private reservations of family members over alleged abuse that would only be made public some years later. His son, Gerry, says that he felt his father had “besmirched” the flag.

In December 2009, six years after Adams’s death, his family claims that he had subjected some members of his family to emotional, physical and sexual abuse over many years. The family says that this abuse “had a devastating impact” on the family, with which they are still then coming to terms. The family decides to go public about the abuse in order to help other families in similar circumstances.

(Pictured: Gerry Adams, Sr. (L) pictured with his son, Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams)


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Birth of Liam Tobin, Irish Army Officer

Liam Tobin, officer in the Irish Army and the instigator of the Irish Army Mutiny in March 1924, is born William Joseph Tobin at 13 Great Georges Street in Cork, County Cork, on November 15, 1895. During the Irish War of Independence, he serves as an Irish Republican Army (IRA) intelligence officer for Michael Collins‘ Squad.

Tobin is the eldest son of Mary Agnes (nee Butler) and David Tobin, a hardware clerk. He has two younger siblings, Katherine and Nicholas Augustine Tobin, also born in Cork. His family moves to John Street in Kilkenny and then to Dublin. He goes to school in Kilkenny and is an apprentice in a hardware shop at the time of the 1916 Easter Rising. As a participant in the Rising, he fights in the Four Courts garrison under Edward Daly. He is arrested, court martialed, and sentenced to death but his sentence is commuted to life imprisonment. He is a prisoner in Kilmainham, Mountjoy, Lewes, Dartmoor, Broadmoor and Pentonville prisons. He is released in June 1917.

In early 1919 Tobin becomes Collins’ chief executive in the Intelligence Directorate handling the many spies in Dublin Castle, including double agent David Neligan. Nancy O’Brien works for Under-Secretary for Ireland James Macmahon, decoding messages sent from London. Each day between 2:30 and 3:30 she passes any information acquired to either Tobin, Joseph McGrath, or Desmond FitzGerald. Tobin is involved in planning the assassinations of British soldiers, informants, members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the Dublin Metropolitan Police, and operatives of MI5. He constructs detailed profiles of everyone remotely connected to the British government, often using Who’s Who, The Morning Post, and The Times, a newspaper that describes him as “one of the most formidable of [the] Twelve Apostles.”

In October 1921, Tobin travels with the Irish Treaty Delegation as part of Collins’ personal staff.

Tim Pat Coogan and James Mackay have examined Tobin’s involvement in the assassination of British Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. Wilson’s public tirades about Collins is evidence of mutual personal dislike between the two men. In May 1922 Collins tells Tobin “We’ll kill a member of that bunch” to the news of “bloody pogroms” in Belfast. Wilson is intimately involved with the Ulster loyalist cause, including the Curragh Mutiny and the establishment of the Ulster Special Constabulary. Just before the shooting, Coogan places Tobin in London. He meets courier Peig Ni Braonain at Euston Station collecting a document that has been sent from Dublin. Returning to Dublin before the incident, he is jubilant when he tells defence minister Richard Mulcahy about Wilson’s death. Mulcahy is appalled and threatens to resign.

Following the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Tobin is appointed deputy director of intelligence in the new state and assigned to the Criminal Investigation Department based at Oriel House. However Collins soon replaces him with Joseph McGrath. Tobin is placed on the Army Council and is Director of Intelligence from September 1922 until his appointment as Senior Aide-de-Camp to the new Governor–General of the Irish Free State, Tim Healy, in November 1922. The position provides an apartment in Viceregal Lodge.

In October 1922, Tobin’s brother Nicholas, a Free State captain, is accidentally shot dead by his own troops during the raid and capture of a bomb making factory at number 8 Gardiner’s Place, Dublin.

Tobin believes in the steppingstone doctrine which sees the Treaty as a stage towards full independence. With the outbreak of the Irish Civil War he remains loyal to Collins and takes the Pro-Treaty side. He leads in the fight against the Anti-Treaty IRA in the south. Disillusioned with the continuing hostilities and in the aftermath of the death of Collins, he forms an association called the IRA Organisation (IRAO) or “Old Irish Republican Army” to distinguish themselves from the anti-treaty insurgents.

Richard Mulcahy, the new Irish defence minister, proposes to reduce the army from 55,000 to 18,000 men in the immediate post- Civil-War period. Tobin knows his own position is to be affected and shares the perception that the Irish Army treats former British officers better than former IRA officers. On March 7, 1924, Tobin, together with Colonel Charlie Dalton, sends an ultimatum to President of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State W. T. Cosgrave demanding an end to the army demobilisation. The immediate response is an order for the arrest of the two men on a charge of mutiny. The cabinet, already wary of the Irish Army, orders an inquiry and appoints Garda Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy to the army command.

On March 18, the mutineers assemble with hostile intent at a Dublin pub. An order is made to arrest the mutineers and the cabinet demands the resignation of the army council. The generals resign, affirming the subservience of the military to the civilian government of the new state.

In later years, Tobin rebuilds relations with his Civil War foes and joins Éamon de Valera‘s Anti-Treaty Fianna Fáil party. He joins up with Joseph McGrath to form the Irish Hospitals’ Sweepstake in the 1930s. Many other former army comrades find work in this lottery. He leaves the Sweep in 1938. After World War II, he becomes Superintendent of the Oireachtas for the Irish Dáil.

On October 14, 1929, Tobin marries Monica “Mona” Higgins at the Church of the Holy Family, Aughrim Street, Dublin. They have two daughters, Máire and Anne Tobin. Following the death of his father, David, in 1956, Tobin’s health declines, resulting in his death in Dublin on April 30, 1963.

Tobin is portrayed by actor Brendan Gleeson in Neil Jordan‘s biopic Michael Collins.


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Birth of Joe Hendron, Northern Ireland Politician

Joseph Gerard Hendron, Northern Ireland politician and a member of the centre-left Irish nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), is born on November 12, 1932, in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Hendron, also a local GP physician for forty years, is first elected as a political representative of Belfast West in 1975 to the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention. He is later elected to Belfast City Council in 1981 and in 1982 to the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Hendron is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast West between April 1992 and May 1997 in the UK Parliament in London. He takes the seat from Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams at his third attempt with a majority of one percent. He becomes the only nationalist MP to defeat Adams. The seat had previously been held for the SDLP by Gerry Fitt, later Lord Fitt, until 1983. He attracts unprecedented cross-community support from Nationalists and Unionists in the constituency. This is the only example where an SDLP candidate receives a high enough number of Unionist votes in Belfast West to help unseat a Sinn Féin candidate. Adams regains the seat at the 1997 United Kingdom general election.

In 1996, Hendron is elected to the Northern Ireland Forum and in 1998 to the newly reconvened Northern Ireland Assembly. However, he loses his seat in the 2003 Northern Ireland Assembly election to a member of Ian Paisley‘s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

Hendron is appointed a member of the Northern Ireland Parades Commission in 2005. He retires from this role in December 2010.

On June 11, 2019, Hendron escapes with just bruising and a damaged collarbone after he is struck by a van and thrown up into the air while crossing Balmoral Avenue. He says he is probably partly to blame for the accident as he decided to cross the street in front of a van that was trying to pull out onto the main road. Apparently, the driver of the van did not see Hendron and began to pull out, striking him.

(Photo by Mark Pearce/Pacemaker)


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Birth of Robert Greacen, Poet & Critic

Robert Henry Greacen, poet and critic, is born on October 24, 1920, in Bennett Street, Derry, County Londonderry.

Greacen is the only child of Henry Greacen and his wife Elizabeth (née McCrea). His father comes from a Presbyterian farming background in County Monaghan and, at one time, holds a position as a creamery manager, but is a heavy drinker and fails in several businesses. Most of his childhood is spent with his maternal grandmother and aunts when his parents temporarily separate. He briefly attends two local primary schools in Belfast, but when his father receives insurance compensation after his Belfast business burned down, he takes his family to the Castleblayney area in County Monaghan and for a short time goes back to farming. He goes to a national school there, but after another fire destroys the farmhouse, the Greacens return to Belfast to run the Kenilworth, a tobacconist’s shop on the Newtownards Road. He attends Templemore primary school and then enters Methodist College Belfast in 1933.

Greacen mostly enjoys school, though he is too short-sighted to participate with success in any sport, and sometimes, because of his background, feels out of his depth among middle-class children. He is always ashamed of his father’s drunken outbursts and is terrified of the violent temper which accompanies them. Literature provides both a temporary escape and the promise of future success. His first poems are published in school magazines, and he decides at a young age to try to make a career as a writer. He fails examinations and interviews for positions in a bank and an insurance company and instead starts studying history and English at Queen’s University Belfast.

At Queen’s, as earlier at Methodist College, the interests which characterise Greacen’s later career are apparent. Largely thanks to meeting John Boyd, he develops sympathies with left-wing political ideas, as well as a deepened commitment to poetry. His youthful 1930s enthusiasm for Marxism disappears after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but up to his later years he describes himself as a socialist. The formation of enduring friendships and mutually supportive coteries, a phenomenon particularly characteristic of the Ulster literary scene of the period, continues to be of great importance throughout his life. He makes friends with almost all the significant figures in Belfast, especially Roy McFadden, John Hewitt and Sam Hanna Bell. At Queen’s, he and a friend take over in 1940 the editing of a student magazine, The Northman. They try with short-lived, limited success to make it a literary journal for the whole region, so as to enable aspiring poets to get work into print. His own early poems appear in The Bell, and he writes some pieces for the left-wing Irish Democrat newspaper. His poem The Bird (1941) is well reviewed and later appears in anthologies. In 1942 he publishes Poems from Ulster, a small anthology including work by his friends.

For several months, Greacen worships from afar a fellow student named Irene. When he fails to form a relationship with her, he stops going to lectures so that he does not have to see her and does not finish his degree. His McCrea relatives pay for him to go to Trinity College Dublin in 1943 to take a diploma in social work. He is glad to get away from wartime Belfast and never lives there again. At first, he enjoys Dublin, and again makes many friends, among them Brendan and Beatrice Behan, Blanaid Salkeld, Cecil ffrench Salkeld, Joseph and Mary O’Neill, Douglas Gageby, Arland Ussher and Hubert Butler. He and Patrick Kavanagh live in the same boarding house on Raglan Road for several months in 1945, but Kavanagh takes offence at a review in Horizon by Greacen of his poem The Great Hunger and calls him a “Protestant bastard.” Greacen is upset, as he had thought the review favourable, and is disappointed but not surprised when Kavanagh refuses to allow any of his poems to appear in the prestigious Faber and Faber book Contemporary Irish Poetry, edited by Greacen and Valentin Iremonger in 1949.

The collaborative compilation of anthologies of poetry is Greacen’s characteristic way of working. In 1942, he and Alex Comfort edit Lyra: An Anthology of New Lyric. With Roy McFadden, he edits Ulster Voices in 1943. He is sole editor of Northern Harvest in 1944 and, in the same year, he, Bruce Williamson and Valentin Iremonger publish their own work in On the Barricades. His own first solo collection, One Recent Evening, is also a 1944 imprint. In 1946, with support from Maurice Fridberg, a Jewish Dublin and London bookseller, his publishing company, New Frontiers Press, produces Irish Harvest, which, though designed on more ambitious lines, still consists chiefly of poems by his friends. He feels much more affinity with the modernism and social protest that he finds in contemporary English poetry, especially in the “new apocalypse” movement associated with Herbert Read, and later the “new romantics,” than with what he regards as the outmoded Celtic nationalism of W. B. Yeats and his followers. Like others of his contemporaries, he comes to resent the unquestioned shibboleths of life in Ireland, and particularly objects to the censorship of literature and film.

Consequently, when Greacen’s second small volume of poems, The Undying Day (1948), sells badly, and other avenues seem unpromising, he and his wife give up on Dublin and move to London. He finds a job with the United Nations Association, which suits his outlook and ideals. However, when he is made redundant, he has to take various jobs in adult education, in creative-writing courses, and in teaching English as a foreign language, in the City of London College, the City Literary Institute, and West London College. He retires in 1986. His involvement with the London literary world continues throughout his career, as he gets to know many of the leading figures, including Stephen Spender and T. S. Eliot, and he organises poetry readings and other projects, though he himself writes no poetry for more than twenty years. At one time he considers taking up journalism and continues to produce book reviews and articles in journals, as well as many letters to newspapers. He writes several, well-received short works of criticism, in particular, The Art of Noël Coward (1953) and The World of C. P. Snow (1962). After returning to Dublin in 1986, he writes an interesting memoir about his many friends and acquaintances, Brief Encounters: Literary Dublin and Belfast in the 1940s (1991) and Rooted in Ulster: Nine Northern Writers (2000).

Greacen marries Patricia Hutchins in Fisherwick Presbyterian Church in Belfast on April 10, 1946. She is from a Protestant family who has a small estate at Ardnagashel, near Bantry, County Cork, and is related to the botanist Ellen Hutchins. They have one daughter, Arethusa, but, after four years of separation, the marriage ends in divorce in 1966. He resents his wife’s conversion to vegetarianism and seems also to disapprove of her desire to achieve her own career goals. Probably also the depression he experiences throughout the 1950s contributes to the breakdown of the marriage, but he feels that twelve experiences in the early 1960s with the hallucinogenic drug LSD, under the guidance of a psychiatrist, had cured him. After the LSD treatments he feels that he is ready to begin working on an autobiography, Even Without Irene, published several years later in 1969. This comes out again in an enlarged version in 1995, and, still further augmented, as The Sash My Father Wore (1997).

Greacen begins to publish poetry again in his fifties, in A Garland for Captain Fox (1975). Poems about the career and friends of an imaginary, sophisticated adventurer do not always strike the exactly right note but are popular and mark a new beginning for him, who increasingly writes elegiacally about personalities, real and fictional, in more restrained diction and with careful irony. In interviews, he denies that Captain Fox is his own alter ego, but the interplay between the character of Fox and elements of his creator’s own life suggests a metaphor for the poet’s creative process, as well as reminding the reader of the poet friends whose support means much to his writing in real life. At the very least, Captain Fox becomes what could be called a character of virtual reality for his creator.

Greacen’s later poetry collections include Young Mr. Gibbon (1979), A Bright Mask (1985), Carnival at the River (1990), Collected Poems 1944–1994 (1995; awarded The Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry in that year), Protestant Without a Horse (1997), Captain Fox: A Life (2000), Lunch at the Ivy (2002), Shelley Plain (2002), and Selected and New Poems (2006).

On his return to Dublin in 1986, Greacen for a time shares a flat on Anglesea Road with Beatrice Behan, until he finds her dead in her bed in 1993. In later years he lives in a flat in Sandymount. He is elected to membership of Aosdána in 1986, and during his later years in Dublin enjoys the status of a senior figure in the world of literature. He gives readings in the United States, appears often on RTÉ radio programmes, and has poems republished in anthologies. There was even one poem displayed on the Dublin Dart suburban rail network, St. Andrew’s Day: An Elegy for Patricia Hutchins, perhaps his best work. Perhaps only a few of his poems have been lodged in the public memory, but it is appropriate, given the themes of his career, that his work will be read with most attention by poets and by scholars, and that his reputation in the future may largely be based on his friendships with other poets.

Greacen dies in St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, on April 13, 2008. His body is cremated. His papers are in the library of Ulster University at Coleraine.

(From” “Greacen, Robert Henry” by Linde Lunney, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, December 2014)


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Death of Robert Holmes, Lawyer & Nationalist

Robert Holmes, Irish lawyer and nationalist, dies in London on October 7, 1859.

Holmes, the son of parents who are natives of Antrim, County Antrim, and settled in Belfast, is born during a visit by his parents to Dublin in 1765. He enters Trinity College, Dublin in 1782, and graduates B.A. in 1787. He at first devotes himself to medicine, but he soon turns his attention to the law. In 1795, he is called to the bar. He spends a substantial period of his professional life travelling the northeast circuit in Ireland, where he gains a reputation for great ability and legal skill.

Holmes studies law and becomes one of the best-known defenders of the Nationalist leaders in Ireland. He speaks in 1846 in defence of Charles Gavan Duffy, editor of The Nation. Duffy had been indicted over an article written by John Mitchel, which comes to be known as the “Railway Article.” His defence proves successful and his speech on behalf of his client is described by Lord Chief Justice Edward Pennefather as “the most eloquent ever heard in a court of Justice.”

In 1798, during a parade of the lawyer’s corps of yeomanry, of which he is a member, Holmes throws down his arms on learning that the corps is to be placed under the military authorities, dreading that he might have to act against the populace. To one Joy, a barrister, who had used insulting language to him respecting this circumstance, he sends a challenge, for which he suffers three months’ imprisonment. In 1799, he publishes a satirical pamphlet on the projected Acts of Union, entitled A Demonstration of the Necessity of the Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland. With the rising of his brother-in-law, Robert Emmet, on July 23, 1803, he has no connection, although he is arrested on suspicion and imprisoned for some months. This retards his advancement. He declines to receive any favours from the government, refusing in succession the offices of Crown prosecutor, King’s Counsel, and Solicitor-General, and to the last he remains a member of the outer bar.

Holmes has for many years the largest practice of any member of the Irish courts, and is listened to with attention by judges, although he is not always very civil to them. His law arguments form an important set of articles in the Irish Law Reports, and he is an impressive advocate, notably in his speeches in Watson v. Dill, in defence of The Nation newspaper, and his oration on behalf of John Mitchel, tried for treason-felony on May 24, 1848. During the course of his practice he makes over £100,000.

Holmes marries, firstly, Mary Anne Emmet, daughter of Dr. Robert Emmet. She is the sister of Robert Emmet, who leads an unsuccessful rebellion in 1803, and whose brother, Thomas Addis Emmet, is a leading member, with Theobald Wolfe Tone, of the Society of United Irishmen. Both take part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798. The marriage produces one surviving child, a daughter, who later marries George William Lenox-Conyngham, chief clerk of the Foreign Office, and in turn has an only daughter who in 1861 marries Viscount Doneraile.

Holmes marries in 1810 at Childwall, Liverpool, as his second wife, the English educator and writer Eliza Lawrence. She dies in 1811.

After his retirement in 1852, Holmes resides in London with his only child Elizabeth. He dies at the age of 94 at her home, 37 Eaton Place, Belgrave Square, London, on October 7, 1859.

During the course of his life, Holmes is the author of three published works. The first, published in 1799, is entitled A Demonstration of the Necessity of the Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland, a satirical pamphlet ridiculing the arguments of its supporters. The next is An Address to the Yeomanry of Ireland, demonstrating the necessity of their declaring their opinions upon Political Subjects. His most important work however, according to Peter Aloysius Sillard, is The Case of Ireland Stated, which apparently goes through six editions, the last in 1847.

(Pictured: Image of Robert Holmes from Michael Doheny’s “The Felon’s Track”)


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Birth of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Republican Political & Military Leader

Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Irish republican political and military leader, is born Peter Roger Casement Brady on October 2, 1932, in Longford, County Longford. He is Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) from 1958 to 1959 and again from 1960 to 1962, president of Sinn Féin from 1970 to 1983, and president of Republican Sinn Féin from 1987 to 2009.

Ó Brádaigh is born into a middle-class republican family. His father, Matt Brady, is an IRA volunteer who is severely wounded in an encounter with the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in 1919. His mother, May Caffrey, is a Cumann na mBan volunteer and a 1922 graduate of University College Dublin (UCD). His father dies when he is ten and is given a paramilitary funeral led by his former IRA colleagues. His mother, prominent as the Secretary for the County Longford Board of Health, lives until 1974. He is educated at Melview National School at primary level and attends secondary school at St. Mel’s College, leaving in 1950, and graduates from University College Dublin in 1954. That year he takes a job teaching Irish language at Roscommon Vocational School in Roscommon. He is a deeply religious Catholic who refrains from smoking or drinking.

Ó Brádaigh joins Sinn Féin in 1950. While at university, in 1951, he joins the Irish Republican Army. In September 1951, he marches with the IRA at the unveiling of the Seán Russell monument in Fairview Park, Dublin. A teacher by profession, he is also a Training Officer for the IRA. In 1954, he is appointed to the Military Council of the IRA, a subcommittee set up by the IRA Army Council in 1950 to plan a military campaign against Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) barracks in Northern Ireland.

On August 13, 1955, Ó Brádaigh leads a ten-member IRA group in an arms raid on Hazebrouck Barracks, near Arborfield, Berkshire, England, a depot for the No. 5 Radar Training Battalion of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. It is the biggest IRA arms raid in Britain. Most, if not all, of the weapons are recovered in a relatively short period of time. A van, traveling too fast, is stopped by the police and IRA personnel are arrested. Careful police work leads to weapons that had been transported in a second van and stored in London.

The IRA Border Campaign commences on December 12, 1956. As an IRA General Headquarters Staff (GHQ) officer, Ó Brádaigh is responsible for training the Teeling Column in the west of Ireland. During the Campaign, he serves as second-in-command of the Teeling Column. On December 30, 1956, he partakes in the Teeling Column attack on RUC barracks in Derrylin, County Fermanagh. RUC Constable John Scally is killed in the attack and is the first fatality of the new IRA campaign. Ó Brádaigh and others are arrested by the Garda Síochána across the border in County Cavan the day after the attack. They are tried and jailed for six months in Mountjoy Prison. A leading abstentionist, upon his arrest he refuses to recognize the authority of the Irish government and refuses to renounce violence in exchange for his release.

Although a prisoner, Ó Brádaigh is elected a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the Longford–Westmeath constituency at the 1957 Irish general election. Running on an abstentionist ticket, Sinn Féin wins four seats which go to Ó Brádaigh, Eighneachán Ó hAnnluain, John Joe McGirl and John Joe Rice. They refuse to recognise the authority of Dáil Éireann and state they will only take a seat in an all-Ireland parliament. He does not retain his seat at the 1961 Irish general election.

Upon completing his prison sentence, Ó Brádaigh is immediately interned at the Curragh Camp along with other republicans. On September 27, 1958, he escapes from the camp along with Dáithí Ó Conaill. While a football match is in progress, the pair cuts through a wire fence and escapes from the camp under a camouflage grass blanket. This is an official escape, authorised by the officer commanding (OC) of the IRA internees, Tomás Óg Mac Curtain. He is the first Sinn Féin TD on the run since the 1920s.

In October 1958, Ó Brádaigh becomes the IRA Chief of Staff, a position he holds until May 1959, when Seán Cronin is elected as his replacement. He is arrested in November 1959, refuses to answer questions, and is jailed in Mountjoy Prison under the Offences against the State Act. He is released in May 1960 and, after Cronin is arrested, again becomes Chief of Staff. Although he always emphasises that it is a collective declaration, he is the primary author of the statement ending the IRA Border Campaign in 1962. At the IRA 1962 Convention he indicates that he is not interested in continuing as Chief of Staff.

After Ó Brádaigh’s arrest in December 1956, he takes a leave from teaching at Roscommon Vocational School. He is re-instated and begins teaching again in late 1962, just after he is succeeded by Cathal Goulding in the position of Chief of Staff of the IRA. He remains an active member of Sinn Féin and is also a member of the IRA Army Council throughout the decade.

In the 1966 United Kingdom general election, Ó Brádaigh runs unsuccessfully as an Independent Republican candidate in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency.

Ó Brádaigh opposes the decision of the IRA and Sinn Féin to drop abstentionism and to recognise the Westminster parliament in London, the Stormont parliament in Belfast and the Leinster House parliament in 1969/1970. On January 11, 1970, along with Seán Mac Stíofáin, he leads the walkout from the 1970 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis after the majority votes to end the policy of abstentionism, although the vote to change the Sinn Féin constitution fails to receive the required two-thirds majority. The delegates who walk out reconvene at the Kevin Barry Hall in Parnell Square, Dublin, and establish Provisional Sinn Féin.

Ó Brádaigh is voted chairman of the Caretaker Executive of Provisional Sinn Féin. That October, he formally becomes president of the party. He holds this position until 1983. In his presidential address to the 1971 Provisional Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, he says that the first step to achieving a United Ireland is to make Northern Ireland ungovernable. He apparently also serves on the Army Council or the executive of the Provisional Irish Republican Army until he is seriously injured in a car accident on January 1, 1984.

On May 31, 1972, Ó Brádaigh is arrested under the Offences Against the State Act and immediately commences a hunger strike. A fortnight later the charges against him are dropped and he is released. With Dáithí Ó Conaill he develops the Éire Nua policy, which is launched on June 28, 1972. The policy calls for a federal Ireland.

On December 3, 1972, Ó Brádaigh appears on the London Weekend Television Weekend World programme. He is arrested by the Gardaí again on December 29, 1972, and charged in the newly established Special Criminal Court with Provisional IRA membership. In January 1973 he is the first person convicted under the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act 1972 and is sentenced to six months in the Curragh Camp.

In 1974, Ó Brádaigh testifies in person before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations regarding the treatment of IRA prisoners in Ireland. He also has a meeting with prominent Irish American congressman Tip O’Neill. The same year, the State Department revokes his multiple entry visa. Federal Bureau of Investigation documents in 1975 describe him as a “national security threat” and a “dedicated revolutionary undeterred by threat or personal risk” and show that the visa ban was requested by the British Foreign Office and supported by the Dublin government.

On December 10, 1974, Ó Brádaigh participates in the Feakle talks between the IRA Army Council and Sinn Féin leadership and the leaders of the Protestant churches in Ireland. Although the meeting is raided and broken up by the Gardaí, the Protestant churchmen pass on proposals from the IRA leadership to the British government. These proposals call on the British government to declare a commitment to withdraw, the election of an all-Ireland assembly to draft a new constitution and an amnesty for political prisoners.

The IRA subsequently calls a “total and complete” ceasefire intended to last from December 22, 1974, to January 2, 1975, to allow the British government to respond to proposals. British government officials also hold talks with Ó Brádaigh in his position as president of Sinn Féin from late December to January 17, 1975.

On February 10, 1975, the IRA Army Council, unanimously endorses an open-ended cessation of IRA “hostilities against Crown forces,” which becomes known as the 1975 truce. The IRA Chief of Staff at the time is Seamus Twomey of Belfast. It is reported in some quarters that the IRA leaders mistakenly believe they had persuaded the British Government to withdraw from Ireland and the protracted negotiations between themselves and British officials are the preamble to a public declaration of intent to withdraw. In fact, as British government papers now show, the British entertain talks with the IRA in the hope that this would fragment the movement further and score several intelligence coups during the talks. This bad faith embitters many in the republican movement, and another ceasefire does not happen until 1994.

In late December 1976, along with Joe Cahill, Ó Brádaigh meets two representatives of the Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee (ULCCC), John McKeague and John McClure, at the request of the latter body. Their purpose is to try to find a way to accommodate the ULCCC proposals for an independent Northern Ireland with the Sinn Féin’s Éire Nua programme. It is agreed that if this can be done, a joint Loyalist-Republican approach can then be made to request the British government to leave Ireland. Desmond Boal QC and Seán MacBride SC are requested and accepted to represent the loyalist and republican positions. For months they have meetings in various places including Paris. The dialogue eventually collapses when Conor Cruise O’Brien, then Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and vociferous opponent of the Provisional IRA, becomes aware of it and condemns it on RTÉ Radio. As the loyalists had insisted on absolute secrecy, they feel unable to continue with the talks as a result.

In the aftermath of the 1975 truce, the Ó Brádaigh/Ó Conaill leadership comes under severe criticism from a younger generation of activists from Northern Ireland, headed by Gerry Adams, who becomes a vice-president of Sinn Féin in 1978. By the early 1980s, Ó Brádaigh’s position as president of Sinn Féin is openly under challenge and the Éire Nua policy is targeted in an effort to oust him. The policy is rejected at the 1981 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis and finally removed from the Sinn Féin constitution at the 1982 Ard Fheis. At the following year’s Ard Fheis, Ó Brádaigh and Ó Conaill resign from their leadership positions, voicing opposition to the dropping of the Éire Nua policy by the party.

On November 2, 1986, the majority of delegates to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis vote to drop the policy of abstentionism if elected to Dáil Éireann, but not the British House of Commons or the Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont, thus ending the self-imposed ban on Sinn Féin elected representatives from taking seats at Leinster House. Ó Brádaigh and several supporters walk out and immediately assemble at Dublin’s West County Hotel and set up Republican Sinn Féin (RSF). As an ordinary member, he had earlier spoken out against the motion (resolution 162) in an impassioned speech. The Continuity IRA becomes publicly known in 1996. Republican Sinn Féin’s relationship with the Continuity IRA is similar to the relationship between Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA when Ó Brádaigh was Sinn Féin’s president.

Ó Brádaigh believes RSF to be the sole legitimate continuation of the pre-1986 Sinn Féin, arguing that RSF has kept the original Sinn Féin constitution. RSF readopts and enhances his Éire Nua policy. His party has electoral success in only a few local elections.

Ó Brádaigh remains a vociferous opponent of the Good Friday Agreement, viewing it as a programme to copperfasten Irish partition and entrench sectarian divisions in the north. He condemns his erstwhile comrades in Provisional Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA for decommissioning weapons while British troops remain in the country. In his opinion, “the Provo sell-out is the worst yet – unprecedented in Irish history.” He condemns the Provisional IRA’s decision to seal off a number of its arms dumps as “an overt act of treachery,” “treachery punishable by death” under IRA General Army Order Number 11.

In July 2005, Ó Brádaigh hands over a portion of his personal political papers detailing discussions between Irish Republican leaders and representatives of the British Government during 1974–1975 to the James Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland, Galway.

In September 2009, Ó Brádaigh announces his retirement as leader of Republican Sinn Féin. His successor is Des Dalton. He is also a long-standing member of the Celtic League, an organization which fosters cooperation between the Celtic people and promotes the culture, identity and eventual self-determination for the people, in the form of six sovereign states, for the Celtic nations – Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Scotland, Isle of Man and Ireland.

After suffering a period of ill-health, Ó Brádaigh dies on June 5, 2013, at Roscommon County Hospital. His funeral is attended by 1,800 mourners including Fine Gael TD Frank Feighan and is policed by the Garda Emergency Response Unit and Gardaí in riot gear, for “operational reasons,” a show of force believed to have been to deter the republican tradition of firing a three-volley salute of shots over the final place of rest during the graveyard oration. As a result, there are some minor scuffles between gardai and mourners.