Campbell is born in Belfast on July 15, 1879, into a Catholic and Irish nationalist family from County Down. He is educated at St. Malachy’s College, Belfast. After working for his father he teaches for a while. He travels to Dublin in 1902, meeting leading nationalist figures. His literary activities begin with songs, as a collector in Antrim, County Antrim and working with the composer Herbert Hughes. He is then a founder of the Ulster Literary Theatre in 1904. He contributes a play, The Little Cowherd of Slainge, and several articles to its journal Uladh edited by Bulmer Hobson. The Little Cowherd of Slainge is performed by the Ulster Literary Theatre at the Clarence Place Hall in Belfast on May 4, 1905, along with Lewis Purcell’s The Enthusiast.
Campbell moves to Dublin in 1905 and, failing to find work, moves to London the following year where he is involved in Irish literary activities while working as a teacher. He marries Nancy Maude in 1910, and they move shortly thereafter to Dublin, and then later to County Wicklow. His play Judgement is performed at the Abbey Theatre in April 1912.
Campbell takes part as a supporter in the Easter Rising of 1916, doing rescue work. The following year he publishes a translation from Irish of the short stories of Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the Rising.
Campbell becomes a Sinn FéinCouncillor in Wicklow in 1921. Later in the Irish Civil War he is on the Republican side, and is interned in 1922-23. His marriage breaks up, and he emigrates to the United States in 1925 where he settles in New York City. He lectures at Fordham University, and works in academic Irish studies, founding the University’s School of Irish Studies in 1928, which lasts four years. He is the editor of The Irish Review (1934), a short lived “magazine of Irish expression.” The business manager is George Lennon, former Officer Commanding of the County WaterfordFlying Column during the Irish War of Independence. The managing editor is Lennon’s brother-in-law, George H. Sherwood.
Campbell returns to Ireland in 1939, settling at Glencree, County Wicklow. He dies at Lacken Daragh, Enniskerry, County Wicklow on June 6, 1944.
The 1886 Belfast riots are a series of intense riots that begin in Belfast on June 4, 1886, and continue throughout the summer and autumn of 1886.
In the late 19th century, Catholics began to migrate in large numbers to the prosperous city of Belfast in search of work. By the time of the riots, Catholics make up over one-third of the population of the city. This migration brings with it sectarian tensions as Catholics and Protestants competed for jobs. As the minority, Catholics find themselves discriminated against in this area and are kept at the lower end of the labour market.
At this time there is a real possibility that the British government will establish a devolved Irish parliament (see Irish Home Rule Movement). Belfast Catholics believe that a devolved Irish government will be sympathetic to their situation and end the discrimination. Belfast Protestants believe this as well, and fear the end of their privileged position.
The introduction of the Bill leads to renewed sectarian tensions in Belfast. On June 3, a Catholic navvy sneers to a Protestant co-worker that under an Irish government Protestants will never get hired, even in Belfast. This represents the very worst fears of Protestants towards Home Rule and the story quickly spreads throughout Belfast. This leads to clashes between Protestant and Catholic shipyard labourers.
The riots intensif on June 8, the day that the Home Rule Bill is defeated in parliament. Celebrations are held throughout the city to celebrate the defeat. Some of the revellers attack Catholic homes and businesses. The police find themselves unable to cope with the situation. Reinforcements are sent in from other parts of Ireland. Most of the reinforcements are Catholic. A rumour that the reinforcements have been sent by Gladstone to punish Belfast Protestants for opposing Home Rule spreads throughout the city. It is encouraged by popular preachers such as Hugh Hanna and his Church of Ireland counterpart, the city’s Orange Order Grand Master, Rev. Richard Rutledge Kane. In the midst of the disorder, Kane declares that unless the police are disarmed, 200,000 armed Orangemen will relieve them of their weapons. The rioters thus begin to attack the police, and later the soldiers. Running battles between security forces and rioters lasts until June 14.
On June 22, the reinforcements are sent home by the city government, although some are kept as trouble is expected on July 12, the date of annual Protestant celebrations. Trouble does indeed erupt on the 12th and, contrary to the expectations of the government, the police find themselves overwhelmed by the Protestant attackers. Reinforcements have to be sent into Belfast again, and the threat of over 2,000 police officers and soldiers descending on the city causes the rioters to quit by July 14.
On the last Saturday of July, Hanna holds his annual outing for the Protestant children of Belfast. This outing usually involves a trip to the countryside, with marching and drumming along the way. Hanna agrees to comply with the city’s request that he forgo the drumming and marching due to the tense situation. As the outing makes its way through Belfast, disappointed local Protestants join in to march with their own drums and anti-Catholic banners. Marchers deliberately provoke the Catholics by marching into Catholic areas. Taunting quickly gives way to heavy street fighting between Catholics, Protestants and police. Bloody clashes on par with the riots in June last for a few days, but low-intensity rioting continues until September.
Officially thirty-one people are killed in the riots, although George Foy, who makes surgical reports on the riots, reckons that the real death toll might be as high as fifty. Hundreds are injured. Over four hundred arrests are made. An estimated £90,000 worth of property damage is incurred, and local economic activity is significantly compromised.
Pirrie is educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution before entering Harland & Wolff shipyard as a gentleman apprentice in 1862. Twelve years later he is made a partner in the firm, and on the death of Sir Edward Harland in 1895, he becomes its chairman, a position he holds until his death. As well as overseeing the world’s largest shipyard, he is elected Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1896, and is re-elected to the office as well as made an Irish Privy Counsellor the following year. He becomes Belfast’s first honorary freeman in 1898, and serves in the same year as High Sheriff of Antrim and subsequently of County Down. In February 1900, he is elected President of the UK Chamber of Shipping, where he had been vice-president the previous year. He helps finance the Liberals in Ulster in the 1906 United Kingdom general election, and that same year, at the height of Harland & Wolff’s success, he is raised to the peerage as Baron Pirrie, of the City of Belfast.
In February 1912, after chairing a famous meeting of the Ulster Liberal Association at which Winston Churchill defends the government’s policy of Home Rule for Ireland, Pirrie is jeered on the streets of Belfast, and assaulted as he boards a steamer in Larne: pelted with rotten eggs, herrings, and bags of flour. In 1910, the Ulster Liberal Association, an overwhelmingly Protestant body, with a weekly newspaper, and branch network throughout Ulster, adopts (in opposition to the Ulster Liberal Unionist Association) an explicitly pro-home rule position.
In the months leading up to the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, Pirrie is questioned about the number of life boats aboard the Olympic-classocean liners. He responds that the great ships are unsinkable and the rafts are to save others. This haunts him for the rest of his life. In April 1912, Pirrie is to travel aboard RMS Titanic, but illness prevents him.
During the war Pirrie is a member of the War Office Supply Board, and in 1918 becomes Comptroller-General of Merchant Shipbuilding, organising British production of merchant ships.
In 1921, Pirrie is elected to the Senate of Northern Ireland, and that same year is created ViscountPirrie of the City of Belfast, in the honours for the opening of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in July 1921, for his war work and charity work. In Belfast he is, on other grounds, already a controversial figure: a Protestant employer associated as a leading Liberal with a policy of Home Rule for Ireland.
Pirrie dies at sea off Cuba on June 7, 1924. His body is embalmed. On June 13, Ebro reaches Pier 42 on the North River in New York City, where Pirrie’s friend Andrew Weir, 1st Baron Inverforth and his wife meet Viscountess Pirrie and her sister. UK ships in the port of New York lower their flags to half-mast, and Pirrie’s body is transferred to Pier 59, where it is embarked on White Star Line‘s RMS Olympic, one of the largest ships Pirrie ever built, to be repatriated to the UK. He is buried in Belfast City Cemetery. The barony and viscountcy die with him. Lady Pirrie dies on June 19, 1935. A memorial to Pirrie in the grounds of Belfast City Hall is unveiled in 2006.
Drew’s parents are the Rev. Thomas Drew and Isabella (née Dalton) Drew. She is the third of the couple’s eight daughters and four sons, although most of her siblings die young. She spends her childhood in Belfast, where her father is the rector of Christ Church in Durham Street from 1833 to 1859. In 1866, she moves to 60 Upper Sackville Street, Dublin, to live with her brother, the architect Thomas Drew.
From here she appears to begin her journalist career, writing articles for the Irish Builder, going on to eventually become its assistant editor. She goes on to write for Belfast’s News Letter, and following advice from its proprietor James Alexander Henderson, she moves to London in 1871 becoming the paper’s London correspondent. She writes two columns, Metropolitan gossip and Ladies’ letter, which are among some of the earliest regular columns written specifically for women, providing society news for her readers in Belfast. Articles by her also appear in The Literary World, The British Architect and London Society.
Drew is one of the founding members of the Ladies’ Press Association, and campaigns for greater rights for women journalists. She becomes a prominent figure in the Institute of Journalists, representing the Institute at several international congresses. She is serving as the vice-president of the Institute at the time of her death. She also works on its Orphan Fund for many years, an initiative she originally suggests in 1891.
In 1894, Drew is one of the signatories of the Frances Power Cobbe memorial campaigning for greater recognition and rights for women journalists, alongside Millicent Fawcett and Jessie Boucherett. She writes a number of novels, including Harry Chalgraves’s Legacy (1876) and The Lutanistes of St. Jacobi’s (1881). In March 1885, she gives a lecture titled Dress, Economic and Technical at the Loan Exhibition of Women’s Industries in Bristol, which later appears as a pamphlet.
Drew dies at her home in Holland Street, Kensington, on August 26, 1910, and is buried at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Cemetery, Hanwell. Lady Drew, her sister-in-law, erects a Celtic cross memorial there in her honour. She bequeaths a jewel-studded gold bracelet to the Institute of Journalists, which had been presented to her by the Institute to mark her retirement in 1908. It is worn by women presidents or the wives of male presidents, and is known as the “Drew Bracelet.”
Perceval-Maxwell is born in 1870, the only son of John Perceval-Maxwell, eldest son of Robert Perceval-Maxwell DL (1813–1905), of Finnebrogue House, Downpatrick, County Down.
Perceval-Maxwell is educated at Eton College. He plays a significant part in the raising of the 36th (Ulster) Division on the outbreak of World War I. He is commissioned Major in the 13th (County Down) Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles, which he had raised, in September 1914, and is appointed second-in-command in December 1914. He is promoted to the temporary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel and commands a battalion from November 1916 and commands a battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers from May 1918. He is seriously wounded during the war. He resigns his commission in January 1919.
He is appointed to the Privy Council of Ireland in the honours for the opening of the Parliament of Northern Ireland in July 1921, entitling him to the style “The Right Honourable.” He serves in the Northern Ireland Senate from 1921 to 1925.
In 1895, Perceval-Maxwell marries Edith Grace Head. They have five sons: John Robert Perceval-Maxwell (born 1896), Richard Henry (born 1897, killed in action in 1916), Patrick Edward (born 1900), Brian Stephen (born 1908), and David (born 1911).
Perceval-Maxwell dies at the age of 62 on May 24, 1932, in a Belfast nursing home. He is buried in Inch Parish Churchyard, Downpatrick.
On May 12, 1992, a unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) East Tyrone Brigade launches a bomb attack on a British Army foot patrol near the republican stronghold of Cappagh, County Tyrone. One soldier of the Parachute Regiment, Alistair Hodgson, loses both legs as a result. The improvised land mine is described in an IRA statement as an “anti-personnel device.” Other paratroopers receive lesser wounds, according to the same statement. The incident triggers a rampage by members of the Parachute Regiment in the nearby, overwhelmingly Irish nationalist town of Coalisland, some ten miles to the east. The IRA attack is described as a “provocation” tactic, devised to produce an over-reaction by troops to make them even more unpopular among local nationalists.
The deployment of the paratroopers, which begins in April has already been criticised by republican activist and former Member of ParliamentBernadette Devlin McAliskey, who denounces beatings, shootings and damages to property reportedly carried out by the troops. These previous incidents include the destruction of fishing gear and boats in the townland of Kinturk, near Ardboe, and a brawl on April 22 between soldiers and motorists at a checkpoint in Stewartstown, in which plastic bullets are fired that end with a civilian and two paratroopers wounded. Unionist politician and Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) officer Ken Maginnis, then-Member of Parliament for the area, calls for the withdrawal of the regiment after receiving a large number of complaints about their behaviour.
On May 12, two hours after the IRA ambush at Cappagh, members of the regiment seal off the town of Coalisland, ten miles east of Cappagh. According to a Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) politician, the soldiers fabricate a bogus bomb warning, while the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) states that the operation began when a joint police/military patrol was stoned by a crowd. Two pubs are ransacked by the troops and a number of civilian cars are damaged. Several people are allegedly hit with sticks. Following this, a lieutenant is suspended from duty and the regiment is removed from patrol duties in Coalisland.
On the evening of May 17, a fistfight begins at Lineside Road, where a group of young men are having a drink. A passing four-man patrol of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers regiment is challenged to a “boxing match” by the residents. The soldiers set aside their weapons and engage the youths. Noncritical injuries are reported on both sides. The official claim is that the patrol was attacked by a mob of at least 30 people. In the melée, a rifle and a light machine gun are stolen. The rifle is later recovered nearby. The youths smash a backpack radio which is left behind by the troops. Two KOSB soldiers are hospitalised, while in the end seven other soldiers, including paratroopers, receive lesser injuries, one of them hit by a car that crashes through two roadblocks set up by the British Army.
The Parachute Regiment is called to the scene again, and at 8:30 p.m., a major riot starts outside The Rossmore pub between local people and about 20 to 25 paratroopers. The soldiers claim one of their colleagues is isolated and dragged by the crowd. Some witnesses claim paratroopers were in a frenzy, showing their guns and inviting civilians to try to take them. Suddenly, shots are fired by the troops — first into the air and then toward the people outside the pub. Three civilians are rushed to hospital in Dungannon with gunshot wounds, while the soldiers return to their barracks. Another four civilians suffer minor injuries. The paratroopers claim that a “member of the growing crowd” attempted to fire the stolen machine gun at them, but the weapon jammed. One of the wounded is the brother of IRA volunteer Kevin O’Donnell, who had been killed by the Special Air Service (SAS) in February during an ambush at the nearby hamlet of Clonoe, shortly after carrying out a machine-gun attack on the local RUC base.
About 500 people attend a protest rally in Coalisland on May 19, and the wisdom of deploying the troops to patrol the town is questioned by members of the Dáil in Dublin. The Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Ireland, David Andrews, asks the British Government to withdraw the regiment. As a result, the paratroopers are redeployed outside the urban areas. The RUC claims that the stolen machine gun is found 11 days later at a farmhouse near Cappagh, along with another light machine gun and an AK-47 rifle. The IRA denies they had the machine gun in their possession. Republicans question whether the weapon had really been stolen, suggesting this was merely an excuse for the soldiers’ rampage in Coalisland. Bernardette McAliskey goes even further, suggesting that the recovery of the machine gun near Cappagh, where the initial IRA attack had taken place, was actually staged by the security forces as a publicity stunt. British officials accuse Sinn Féin of being the instigators of the riots, while Michael Mates, then Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office, states that the incidents were due to “a gang of thugs motivated by the IRA.” Eventually the battalion’s 1992 tour in Northern Ireland is scaled down, with the patrols suspended before the official end of the deployment. The Third Brigade’s commander, Brigadier Tom Longland, is replaced by Brigadier Jim Dutton. This is the first occasion that a high-ranking officer is disciplined in such a way during the Troubles.
The last patrol takes place on June 27, when two paratroopers drown while crossing the River Blackwater. The same day there are further clashes with local residents, this time in the town of Cookstown, when a group of people that the BelfastNews Letter calls “drunken hooligans” assault a number of paratroopers trying to help an elderly man who is suffering a heart attack.
The 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment is replaced by the 1st Battalion of the Coldstream Guards.
Six soldiers face criminal charges for their roles in the May riots but are acquitted one year later. Five are bound over. Maurice McHugh, the presiding magistrate, avers that the soldiers were “not entirely innocent,” while Sinn Féin sources dub the ruling “a farce.” Dungannon priest Father Denis Faul is of the opinion that the soldiers should have been charged with conspiracy. The Ulster TelevisiondocumentaryCounterpoint of June 1993 claims that Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland, Sir Alasdair Fraser, returned the case file to the RUC recommending no prosecution. The programme also interviews Alistair Hodgson, the soldier maimed at Cappagh, who says that “had another member of my unit been injured in the way that I was, I would have been with the rest of the lads attacking the locals.” Authors Andrew Sanders and Ian S. Wood suggest that the deployment of the battalion in Coalisland and elsewhere hindered the British policy of police primacy in Northern Ireland.
Fresh clashes between local residents and troops are reported at Coalisland on March 6, 1994, a few months before the first IRA ceasefire, when a crowd assaults two soldiers after the RUC searched a car. Plastic bullets are fired, and three civilians and two soldiers are slightly injured.
(Pictured: Confrontation between a British paratrooper and a civilian in Coalisland, May 1992)
Goan is an Irish language speaker. He studies Celtic studies at University College Dublin (UCD). He joins RTÉ in 1979 as an archivist with RTÉ Radio. He becomes a producer and senior producer on RTÉ Radio. In 1988, he moves to RTÉ Television and works on Today Tonight. Remaining in current affairs, he becomes editor of Cúrsaí, an Irish language television programme about arts and current affairs. He becomes Editor of Irish Language Programming in 1990.
Four years after being appointed Editor, Goan is approached to become “Ceannasaí” of the new Teilifís na Gaeilge. From August 1994, he manages the commencement of the new television channel. After a successful launch of the channel, where award-winning programming is produced during his tenure, he returns to RTÉ in 2000. He is appointed Director of Television and becomes a member of the RTÉ Executive Board.
Bob Collins retires as Director-General of RTÉ in 2003 to pursue a career elsewhere. It is announced in July 2003 that Goan will fill this position. He becomes the Director-General in October 2003. In 2008, he has a salary of €280,000, but it is reduced by €35,000. In 2006, he is announced as member of the board of National Concert Hall and serves there until May 2011. After the broadcast of a news item on nude pictures of TaoiseachBrian Cowen, Minister Michael Kennedy calls for Goan to “consider his position” as Director-General of RTÉ. He also receives criticism from Minister Éamon Ó Cuív in February 2010, when Sunday Mass is reduced to being broadcast just once a month on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta.
Goan announces in July 2010 that he intends to step down at the end of his seven-year term. His resignation is accepted by the RTÉ Board.
In October 1964, during the general election campaign, a photo of McMillen is placed in the window of the election office in Divis Street flanked on one side by the Starry Plough flag and on the other by the tricolour. His campaign draws national attention after Ian Paisley demands that police remove the tricolour from McMillen’s election offices. The RUC raids the premises and confiscates the flag, sparking several days of rioting during which McMillen leads several thousand protesters in defiantly displaying the tricolour. He recalls the IRA gaining a “couple of dozen recruits” following the election, but he finishes at the bottom of the poll with 3,256 votes (6%). Around this time, he succeeds Billy McKee as the Officer commanding (OC) of the Belfast Brigade.
McMillen is keen to work for the unity of Protestant and Catholic workers. Roy Garland recalls that McMillan’s grandfather was master of an Orange lodge in Edinburgh and McMillan knew of that heritage and the meaning of the colours of the Irish flag. He prominently displays in his election offices a verse of a poem by John Frazier, a Presbyterian from County Offaly: “Till then the Orange lily be your badge my patriot brother. The everlasting green for me and we for one and other.”
In 1967, McMillen is involved in the formation of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) and is a member of a three-man committee which draws up the Association’s constitution. The NICRA’s peaceful activities result in violent opposition from many unionists, leading to fears that Catholic areas will come under attack. In May 1969, when asked at an IRA army council meeting by Ruairí Ó Brádaigh how many weapons the Belfast Brigade has for defensive operations, McMillen states they have only one pistol, a machine gun and some ammunition.
By August 14, 1969, serious rioting has broken out in Belfast and Catholic districts come under attack from both civilian unionists and the RUC. McMillen’s IRA command by this point still has only a limited number of weapons because the leadership in Dublin are reluctant to release guns. While he is involved in some armed actions on this day, he is widely blamed by those who established the Provisional IRA for the IRA’s failure to adequately defend Catholic neighbourhoods from Ulster loyalist attack. He is arrested and temporarily detained by the RUC on the morning of August 15 but is released shortly afterward.
McMillen’s role in the 1969 riots is very important within IRA circles, as it is one of the major factors contributing to the split in the movement in late 1969. In a June 1972 lecture organised by Official Sinn Féin in Dublin, he defends his conduct, stating that by 1969 the total membership of the Belfast IRA is approximately 120 men, and their armaments have increased to a grand total of 24 weapons, most of which are short-range pistols.
In September, McMillen calls a meeting of IRA commanders in Belfast. Billy McKee and several other republicans arrive at the meeting armed and demand McMillen’s resignation. He refuses, but many of those unhappy with his leadership break away and refuse to take orders from him or the Dublin IRA leadership. Most of them join the Provisional Irish Republican Army, when this group splits off from the IRA in December 1969. McMillen himself remains loyal to the IRA’s Dublin leadership, which becomes known as the Official IRA. The split rapidly develops into a bitter rivalry between the two groups. In April 1970, he is shot and wounded by Provisional IRA members in the Lower Falls area of Belfast.
In June 1970, McMillen’s Official IRA have their first major confrontation with the British Army, which had been deployed to Belfast in the previous year, in an incident known as the Falls Curfew. The British Army mounts an arms search in the Official IRA stronghold of the Lower Falls, where they are attacked with a grenade by Provisional IRA members. In response, the British flood the area with troops and declare a curfew. This leads to a three-day gun battle between 80 to 90 Official IRA members led by McMillen and up to 3,000 British troops. Five civilians are killed in the fighting and about 60 are wounded. In addition, 35 rifles, 6 machine guns, 14 shotguns, grenades, explosives and 21,000 rounds of ammunition, all belonging to the OIRA, are seized. McMillen blames the Provisionals for instigating the incident and then refusing to help the Officials against the British.
This ill-feeling eventually leads to an all-out feud between the republican factions in Belfast in March 1971. The Provisionals attempt to kill McMillen again, as well as his second-in-command, Jim Sullivan. In retaliation, McMillen has Charlie Hughes, a young PIRA member, killed. Tom Cahill, brother of leading Provisional Joe Cahill, is also shot and wounded. After these deaths, the two IRA factions in Belfast negotiate a ceasefire and direct their attention instead at the British Army.
When the Northern Ireland authorities introduce internment in August 1971, McMillen flees Belfast for Dundalk in the Republic of Ireland, where he remains for several months. During this time, the Official IRA carries out many attacks on the British Army and other targets in Northern Ireland. However, in April 1972, the organisation in Belfast is badly weakened by the death of their commander in the Markets area, Joe McCann. In May of that year, the Dublin leadership of the OIRA calls a ceasefire, a move which McMillen supports. Nevertheless, in the year after the ceasefire, his command kills seven British soldiers in what they term “retaliatory attacks.” McMillen serves on the Ard Chomhairle (leadership council) of Official Sinn Féin.
By 1974, a group of OIRA members around Seamus Costello are unhappy with the ceasefire. In December 1974, they break away from the Official movement, forming the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). Some OIRA members under McMillen’s command, including the entire Divis Flats unit, defect to the new grouping. This provokes another intra-republican feud in Belfast. The feud begins with arms raids on OIRA dumps and beatings of their members by the INLA. McMillen, in response is accused of drawing up a “death list” of IRSP/INLA members and even of handing information on them over to the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).
The first killing comes on February 20, 1975, when the OIRA shoot dead an INLA member named Hugh Ferguson in west Belfast. A spate of shootings follows on both sides.
On April 28, 1975, McMillen is shot dead by INLA member Gerard Steenson, as he is shopping in a hardware shop on Spinner Street with his wife Mary. He is hit in the neck and dies at the scene. His killing is unauthorised and is condemned by INLA/IRSP leader Seamus Costello. Despite this, the OIRA tries to kill Costello on May 9, 1975, and eventually kills him two years later. McMillen’s death is a major blow to the OIRA in Belfast.
Gwynn is educated at St. Columba’s College, Dublin, and Trinity College Dublin. In 1896 he heads the list of Foundation Scholars in Classics at TCD. In 1898 he graduates Bachelor of Arts, gaining a “first of firsts” with gold medals in Classics and Modern Literature.
In 1900, along with his brother Edward Gwynn and others, Gwynn founds the Social Services (Tenements) Company to provide housing for poor families in Dublin. He subsequently spends many periods working with the poor in Dublin’s slums. He is instrumental in founding the Trinity Mission, which serves slum dwellers in Belfast, and is for many years actively involved in the Dublin University Fukien Mission (later the Dublin University Far Eastern Mission), eventually becoming its chairman and president.
He is ordained deacon in 1906, achieving full priesthood two years later. He is the only one of Rev. John Gwynn’s sons to be ordained, and he never serves in a parish. That same year, he proceeds to MA and is elected a Fellow of Trinity College Dublin.
In 1907 Gwynn is appointed Lecturer in Divinity and Tutor. He remains Lecturer in Divinity until 1919 and continues as Tutor until 1937. He is appointed Chaplain of TCD in 1911, retaining that post until 1919.
In January 1909 he is appointed Acting Warden of his old school, St. Columba’s College, which is facing a major financial crisis. He keeps the institution afloat until a new warden is appointed.
Horrified by the brutality of the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) toward strikers during the lockout in 1913, Gwynn becomes a prominent advocate of the workers’ cause and joins the Industrial Peace Committee. On November 12, 1913, when the committee is barred from holding its meeting at the Mansion House, he invites the members to his college rooms at No. 40, New Square. It is this meeting that leads to the foundation of the Irish Citizen Army (ICA). In their history of Trinity College McDowell and Webb observe, “Gwynn’s support for the ‘army’ concept was based simply on the idea that military-style discipline would keep unemployed men fit and give them self-respect. ‘Sancta simplicitas!'”
In 1914 Gwynn marries Dr. Eileen Gertrude Glenn, a rector’s daughter from Pomeroy, County Tyrone. They have six children.
In 1916 Gwynn is appointed Professor of Biblical Greek, a post he holds for forty years (1916-56). During those four decades, he holds a number of other, often overlapping, academic appointments at the university, including Professor of Hebrew (1920-37), Registrar (1941), Vice-Provost (1941-43), Senior Lecturer (1944-50), and Senior Tutor (1950-56). In 1937 he is co-opted to Senior Fellowship. He is made an honorary fellow in 1958.
When the Dublin University Fabian Society is formed. Gwynn becomes one of its vice-presidents.
Like several of his brothers, Gwynn is a fine cricket player, in his youth captaining both his school XI and the Dublin University XI. A right-handed batsman and right-arm slow bowler, he plays once for the Ireland cricket team in 1901. He also plays four first-class matches for Dublin University in 1895. He retains a lifelong interest in the sport, and John V. Luce portrays him as President of the Dublin University Cricket Club, with his “tall rangy figure … a familiar sight at matches in College Park.”
Gwynn is tall and athletic, but in later life suffers from deafness. To aid his hearing he carries a large ear trumpet with him and this, together with his height and glowing white hair, makes him an impressive and instantly recognizable figure around Trinity College. In character, he is patient, kind and wise, but at the same time resolute and tough. His nephew-in-law, the late Archbishop of Armagh, George Simms, remarks that his “gentle humility inspired trust and drew confidences, his stubborn integrity brought surprises for those who mistook charity for easy-going indifference,” and spoke of his “Athanasian courage.”
Gwynn dies in Dublin at the age of 85 on June 25, 1962. He is buried in Whitechurch churchyard.
Conway is born on January 22, 1913, in Belfast, the eldest of four sons and five daughters of Patrick Joseph Conway and Annie Conway (née Donnelly). His father, a self-employed housepainter, also has a paint shop in Kent Street off Royal Avenue. His mother, who survives her son, is born in Carlingford, County Louth. He attends Boundary Street Primary School, St. Mary’s CBS (now St. Mary’s CBGS Belfast). His academic successes are crowned by a scholarship to Queen’s University Belfast. He decides to study for the diocesan priesthood. In 1933 he is conferred with an honours BA in English literature and goes on to read a distinguished course in theology at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth.
Conway is ordained on June 20, 1937, and awarded a DD (1938). On November 12, 1938, he enters the Pontifical Irish College in Rome, and in 1941 he receives the DCL degree at the Pontifical Gregorian University. When Italy enters World War II in June 1940, he returns to Belfast to take up duty in the Diocese of Down and Connor. He is appointed to teach English and Latin in St. Malachy’s College in Belfast, but after one year he is named professor of moral theology and canon law in Maynooth. He contributes regular ‘Canon law replies’ to the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, which are later collected as Problems in canon law (1950), the only book published by him.
In 1957 Conway becomes vice-president of Maynooth, and in 1958, he is named Ireland’s youngest bishop, Titular Bishop of Neve, and auxiliary bishop to Cardinal John D’Alton, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. He is consecrated in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh on July 27, 1958. He serves as administrator of St. Patrick’s Church, Dundalk, for the next five years, gaining valuable pastoral experience, and also uses these years to familiarise himself with his new diocese, especially its geography. On the death of D’Alton, he is chosen to succeed him in September 1963, and is enthroned on September 25 in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh by the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Sensi. At the end of 1964, Pope Paul VI chooses him as Ireland’s seventh residential cardinal, and he receives the red hat in the public consistory of February 22, 1965.
The thirteen-odd years of Conway’s ministry as primate are dominated firstly by the Second Vatican Council and secondly by the Troubles in Northern Ireland. His primary concern is the church, to steer it through testing times. He is a very active bishop in a diocese of 160,000 Catholics, with fifty-seven parishes and some 167 priests. He carries the burden alone until 1974 when he is given an auxiliary in the person of his secretary, Fr. Francis Lenny (1928–78). Two new parishes are created, five new churches are built, and many others are renovated to meet the requirements of liturgical reform. Twenty new schools are also provided. He attends all four sessions of the Vatican council (1962–65), as auxiliary bishop and as primate. On October 9, 1963, he addresses the assembly, making a plea that the council might not be so concerned with weightier matters as to neglect to speak about priests. He also makes contributions on the topics of mixed marriages, Catholic schools, and the laity. On the topic of education, he is convinced that integrated schools will not solve Northern Ireland’s problems.
Conway represents the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference at each assembly of the Synod of Bishops in Rome, at first with Bishop Michael Browne of the Diocese of Galway and Kilmacduagh, his former professor in Maynooth, and later with the Archbishop of Dublin, Dermot Ryan. With Cardinals Jean-Marie Villot and Pericle Felici, he is chairman of the first synod in 1969, a signal honour conferred on him by Pope Paul VI. He addresses the assembly, opposing the ordination of married men as a move that would release a flood of applications from around the world for dispensations from priestly celibacy. His experience of violence in Northern Ireland is reflected in contributions he makes to later synod assemblies, especially in 1971 and 1974.
Apart from the synod, Conway travels a few times each year to Rome for meetings of the three Roman congregations on which he is called to serve (those of bishops, catholic education, and the evangelisation of peoples) and the commission for the revision of the code of canon law. He also travels further afield in a representative capacity to the International Eucharistic Congress at Bogotá, also attended by Pope Paul VI, and to Madras (1972), where he acts as papal legate for the centenary celebrations in honour of St. Thomas. In 1966 he is invited by the bishops of Poland to join in celebrations for the millennium of Catholicism in that country but is refused an entry visa by the Polish government. In January 1973 he feels obliged to forgo participation in the Melbourne eucharistic congress because of the troubled situation at home. Within Ireland he accepts invitations to become a freeman of Cork and Galway (1965) and of Wexford (1966). In 1976 the National University of Ireland (NUI) confers on him an honorary LL.D.
Conway is acknowledged as an able and diligent chairman of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference. The core problem in the early years is how to lead the Irish church into the difficult new era that follows the council. He shows exceptional leadership qualities in the manner in which he promotes firm but gentle progress, avoiding sudden trauma and divisions. A major event in his term as Archbishop of Armagh, and one that gives him much satisfaction, is the canonization of Oliver Plunkett, his martyred predecessor, in the holy year 1975. He follows with great interest the final stages of the cause from 1968 and is greatly disappointed when grounded by his doctors six weeks before the event. He does however take part, concelebrating with Pope Paul VI at the ceremony on October 12, 1975. He also presides the following evening at the first mass of thanksgiving in the Lateran Basilica, receiving a tumultuous applause from the thousands of Irish present.
More than anything else, the Troubles in Northern Ireland occupy Conway during the second half of his term as archbishop and primate. He is the leading spokesman of the Catholic cause but never fails to condemn atrocities wherever the responsibility lay. He brands as ‘monsters’ the terrorist bombers on both sides. In 1971 he denounces internment without trial, and the following year he is mainly responsible for highlighting the ill-treatment and even torture of prisoners in Northern Ireland. He repudiates the idea that the conflict is religious in nature, emphasising its social and political dimensions, and is openly critical of the British government over conditions in Long Kesh Detention Centre, and of ‘the cloak of almost total silence’ surrounding violence against the Catholic community.
In January 1977 Conway undergoes surgery in a Dublin hospital, and almost immediately comes to know that he is terminally ill. It is the best-kept secret in Ireland until close to the end. On March 29, he writes to his fellow bishops informing them that the prognosis regarding his health is ‘not good, in fact . . . very bad,’ and that he is perfectly reconciled to God’s will. He is still able to work at his desk until Good Friday, April 8, 1977.
Conway dies in Armagh on Low Sunday night, April 17, 1977. Seven countries are represented at his funeral by six cardinals and many bishops. The apostolic nuncio, the bishops of Ireland, the president and Taoiseach, six Irish government ministers, and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland are also among the mourners. The cardinal is laid to rest in St. Patrick’s Cathedral Cemetery, Armagh. The red hat received from Pope Paul VI is suspended from the ceiling of the Lady chapel, joining those of his four immediate predecessors.
(From: “Conway, John William,” Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, contributed by J. J. Hanley)
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