seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: County Clare


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Death of George Gilmore, IRA Leader & Communist

George Frederick Gilmore, a Protestant Irish republican and communist who becomes an Irish Republican Army leader during the 1920s and 1930s, dies in Howth, County Dublin, on June 29, 1985. During his period of influence, he attempts to shift the IRA to the political left, but alongside Peadar O’Donnell and Frank Ryan he is expelled for his efforts. After leaving the IRA, he attempts to unite Irish republicanism under the banner of the Republican Congress, but ideological debates split the group apart. Afterward, he removes himself from public life.

Born at Hillside Terrace in Howth, County Dublin, on May 5, 1898, Gilmore is the second son of Philip Gilmore, an accountant originally from County Antrim, and Fanny Angus. Despite his father primarily working for Unionist landlords, and being educated at home, George and his brothers Harry and Charlie all turn toward Irish republicanism. By 1916, Gilmore has become a member of Fianna Éireann, the Republican boy scouts, and later a member of the South County Dublin battalion of the Irish Volunteers.

Gilmore fights in the Irish Republican Army in the Irish War of Independence and in the Irish Civil War on the Anti-Treaty IRA side. During the civil war he is captured and imprisoned, but manages to escape custody in August 1923, the aftermath of which causes riots as the remaining prisoners are placed in solitary confinement.

Following the end of the civil war, Gilmore serves as the secretary of future Taoiseach Seán Lemass, as well alongside Frank Aiken. During the early 1920s, he, Lemass and Aiken regularly meet with the IRA army council to represent the emerging political leadership of Irish republicanism that coalesces as Fianna Fáil in 1926. The trio regularly sits opposite IRA leaders Frank Ryan, Peadar O’Donnell, and Seán Russell.

In October 1925, Gilmore and Lemass organise the escape of nineteen IRA prisoners from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. As part of the jailbreak, Gilmore impersonates a member of Garda Síochána. None of the nineteen escapees are subsequently recaptured, and their escape serves as a major propaganda coup. However, the following month, Gilmore is involved in a riot that takes place on Armistice Day and he is subsequently arrested and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. He resists the entire duration; first resisting the arrest and then, once imprisoned, refusing to wear a prison uniform and going on hunger strike. Early in 1928, members of the IRA attack Mountjoy Prison where he is being held and shoot the warden after a story emerges that Gilmore had previously been the victim of a vicious beating by the guards. He is released in 1929 but re-arrested and re-imprisoned almost immediately, resulting in a retaliatory beating by the guards that leaves him unconscious.

Sometime between 1929 and 1930, Gilmore is sent by the IRA to Russia to receive military training and to seek aid.

Gilmore is arrested yet again upon his return to Ireland in April 1931, charged with having resisted arrest ten months previously. In October he tries to escape with the help of his brother Charlie and almost succeeds, using a plot involving mock pistols wrapped in silver to intimidate the guards. In the aftermath of the failed escape, his treatment in Arbour Hill Prison from 1931-32 is abysmal. He once again refuses to wear prison clothing because of his political status and remains naked in a windowless cell from October 1931 until February 1932. In June 1931, of a cache of weapons are discovered near his home at Killakee in the Dublin Mountains, which results in him and his brother Charlie being placed before a military tribunal which sentences him to five years in prison and Charlie to three (in 1932 Fianna Fail comes to power and the brothers are released). Neither recognises the authority of the court, with George stating, “I do not want anybody to think I excuse myself for such a charge as having arms, I am admittedly hostile to British imperialism and international capitalism.”

Gilmore’s fortunes are dramatically altered when Fianna Fáil emerges victorious in the 1932 Irish general election. In the aftermath, Frank Aiken, former Chief of Staff of the IRA and new Minister for Defence goes to see Gilmore on March 9 and on the next day all republican prisoners are released as part of a general amnesty. Thirty thousand supporters greet the prisoners at College Green, Dublin.

Finally out of long-term imprisonment, Gilmore is eager to resume working toward a socialist Ireland. He has supported Peadar O’Donnell’s shortlived socialist republican group Saor Éire from prison, but in the aftermath of its demise, he concludes that the group has spent too much time imagining what it might do if in government, and not enough time considering what the immediate aims of the IRA should be. With his close personal ties to their leadership, Gilmore has a positive view of Fianna Fáil, and at this point in time believes their goals differ little from his own and those of the IRA. Nevertheless, He encourages the IRA to not become too closely associated with Fianna Fáil, fearing the IRA will become a subservient body. He himself has ascended to the IRA’s army council upon his release, and in March 1932 is among representatives of the Army Council that liaises with Éamon de Valera about a possible partnership between the IRA and Fianna Fáil.

On August 14, 1932, Gilmore and fellow Irish republican T. J. Ryan are beaten badly, shot and wounded by plain-clothes members the Garda Síochána (Criminal Investigation Department) in Kilrush, County Clare. This incident is blamed on the police by an official Tribunal of Inquiry report one month later.

In March 1934, Gilmore, alongside Frank Ryan and Peadar O’Donnell, refuse to continue on as members of the IRA executive as part of a deepening rift over the direction of the IRA. Left-wing members of the IRA such as Gilmore, Ryan and O’Donnell insist that the IRA needs to tie their activity to social agitation in addition to their military aims, but this is a minority viewpoint, with the majority believing the IRA should have a “strictly military” outlook. The rift ultimately spirals into Gilmore, Ryan and O’Donnell being court-martialed and expelled in April.

In the aftermath, Gilmore works with Roddy Connolly, Nora Connolly O’Brien and Peadar O’Donnell to found the Republican Congress, a left-wing socialist Irish republican group. The group breaks up in 1935 over internal differences. Gilmore, Ryan and O’Donnell believe that the Republican Congress should be a united front, an alliance of all republican groups in Ireland. Roddy Connolly and other members of the Communist Party of Ireland believe that the Congress should be a vanguard party. A conference is held by the Republican Congress in Rathmines, Dublin, in September 1934 to vote on the issue. Before the vote is taken, Gilmore gives a speech in which he accuses Fianna Fáil of using republicanism as a means to promote Irish capitalism. When the votes are taken on whether the Republican Congress should be a united front or a vanguard party, Gilmore’s united front faction wins. However, supporters of the vanguard party concept such as Roddy Connolly immediately resign from the Congress in protest and walk out on the group. It proves to be a blow that the Congress never recovers from and the group is defunct by 1936. Gilmore makes a last-ditch effort to save the Congress by traveling to the United States to seek funds from Irish American groups but is not successful.

Upon the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, Gilmore and O’Donnell become supporters of the International Brigades. Both men travel to Spain personally, during which they are involved in a plane crash and Gilmore’s leg is broken.

Following the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, Gilmore writes an appeal pleading with the IRA to dump arms until the war in Europe is over and denounces them for flirting with fascism by seeking aid from Germany.

During the 1960s, when the republican movement once again moves to the left, Gilmore and O’Donnell are once again in demand as speakers and as writers in republican publications. In 1966, for the 50th anniversary of the Easter Rising, Gilmore releases a pamphlet entitled “Labour and the republican movement” in which he espouses the principles of James Connolly. Additionally, he appeals to young republicans not to repeat the mistake older republicans had made in being too rigid in their views and too short on policy.

Gilmore dies on June 29, 1985, at the age of 87, in a nursing home in Howth, County Dublin.


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Birth of Bindon Blood Stoney, Civil Engineer

Bindon Blood Stoney FRS, a civil engineer who also makes some significant contributions to astronomy, is born on June 13, 1828, at Oakley Park, King’s County (now County Offaly).

Stoney is the younger son of George Stoney and Anne Blood, second daughter of Bindon Blood of Cranagher and Rockforest, County Clare. His brother is the physicist George Johnstone Stoney, known for coining the term electron for the fundamental unit of electricity. He is also the uncle of another Irish physicist George Francis FitzGerald, the son of his sister Anne Frances. His nieces are Edith Anne Stoney, a pioneer medical physicist, and Florence Stoney, the first female radiologist in the United Kingdom. Both serve in hospitals near the front line during World War I.

Stoney is privately educated at home while his father’s properties lose value in the post-Napoleonic depression and are sold during the famine of 1845–49. He then attends Trinity College Dublin (TCD), where in 1850 he obtains his BA and a diploma in civil engineering with distinction. He marries Susannah Frances Walker on October 7, 1879; they have four children.

In 1850–52, prior to beginning his engineering work, Stoney assists William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse at Parsonstown. There he accurately maps the spiral form of the Andromeda Galaxy and observes 105 New General Catalogue (NGC) objects and 8 Index Catalogues (IC) objects. Ninety-one of the NGC objects and all of the IC objects are new. On March 1, 1851, he discovers the spiral galaxy NGC 5609, which is the most distant visually observed galaxy in the NGC catalogue.

Bindon’s career in engineering commences when he works on surveys for the Aranjuez to Almansa railway in Spain from 1852 to 1853. Upon returning to Ireland in 1854, he is appointed as resident engineer under James Barton on the Boyne railway viaduct until its completion in 1855. This viaduct claims to have the longest span in the world and has the world’s longest girders at the time.

Bindon’s groundbreaking work building a metal bridge with a span of such dimensions using shock-absorbent wrought-iron latticed bars instead of a continuity of plate with Barton is possibly the first of its kind. It is the basis for his later two-volume publication The theory of strains in girders and similar structures, with observations on the strength and other properties of materials (1866), nicknamed “Stoney on strains” and reproduced in two further editions.

Bindon becomes an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) in January 1858 and a full member in November 1863.

In 1856, Bindon is appointed as assistant engineer to George Halpin, Jr. at the Ballast Board on Westmoreland Street and in 1859 he is appointed as Executive Engineer. He is ambitious and an engineering innovator who comes up with a cheap way to develop the Dublin Port – something appreciated by the board but they also do not want to upset Halpin. When Halpin retires, Stoney becomes the new inspector of works and in 1868, becomes the first chief engineer of the newly constituted Dublin Port and Docks Board.

Bindon designs a large dredging plant and rebuilds nearly 7,000 feet of quay walls along both north and south banks of the River Liffey, replacing the tidal berths by deep water berths. Additionally, the northern quays are lengthened eastward and the formation of Alexandra Basin begins in 1871 and is partially completed by 1885. In addition to harbour works, he is in charge of the design and construction of two major bridges that cross the River Liffey. In 1872–1875 he largely rebuilds Essex Bridge, designed in the 1750s by George Semple to his own flamboyant design. It is renamed Grattan Bridge after Henry Grattan. In 1877–80 he redesigns the 1790s Carlisle Bridge of James Gandon, renamed O’Connell Bridge after Daniel O’Connell, to provide a crossing linking Sackville (later O’Connell) Street with the converging streets to the south. He builds a new iron swing bridge in 1877–1879, just west of The Custom House named Beresford Bridge.

Stoney invents a diving bell, and means to use precast concrete. Toward the end of his career, he erects the North Bull Lighthouse (1877–80) to replace the inadequate light on the Bull Wall marking the northern side of the Dublin port channel entrance opposite Poolbeg Lighthouse before finally retiring in 1898.

Stoney is admitted to the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) in 1857. He is given an honorary degree by University College Dublin (UCD) in recognition of his achievements and is later elected President of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland in 1871. In 1874, he is awarded the Telford Medal and Telford premium of the Institution of Civil Engineers for a paper documenting his work on the northern quays. He is elected Fellow of the Royal Society on June 2, 1881.

Stoney dies in Dublin on May 5, 1909, and he is buried in Mount Jerome Cemetery. Stoney Road in East Wall is named after him.


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Birth of Kevin McNamara, Catholic Archbishop of Dublin

Kevin McNamara, a senior Catholic academic and bishop who serves for three years as Archbishop of Dublin, is born on June 10, 1926, in Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare. In the early 1980s he is seen as one of the most outspoken members of the Irish hierarchy on issues such as abortion and divorce.

McNamara is ordained a priest in St. Patrick’s College Maynooth in June 1949. His natural academic talent is recognised and he is soon appointed to teach moral theology rising to become Professor of Dogmatic Theology.

In 1976, McNamara is appointed by Pope Paul VI to succeed Bishop Eamon Casey in the Diocese of Kerry and is ordained bishop in November 1976 from Cardinal William Conway.

In office, McNamara and the neighbouring Bishop of Limerick, Jeremiah Newman, become the most outspoken conservative voices in the Irish hierarchy. They are seemingly out of step with the more diplomatic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, Tomás Ó Fiaich, and with the Archbishop of Dublin and Primate of Ireland, Dermot Ryan.

McNamara and Newman are particularly outspoken on the issue of a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the Constitution of Ireland. While other bishops advocate people vote with their conscience in the referendum on the issue, McNamara and Newman instruct Catholics that they have a duty to “vote yes” to the referendum.

In 1984, the Archdiocese of Dublin becomes vacant when Archbishop Ryan is given a senior appointment in the Roman Curia. Ryan is expected to be made a cardinal as a result of the appointment but dies suddenly in office before a consistory can be held. McNamara’s selection to replace the more liberal Ryan in Dublin creates media reports linking his appointment to the ongoing tensions between the papal nuncio in Ireland, Archbishop Gaetano Alibrandi, and the liberal Fine Gael–Labour Party coalition under Garret FitzGerald. Relations between Alibrandi and the coalition break down, with the government requesting that Alibrandi be removed because of his suspected closeness to Irish republicans in Sinn Féin and to the opposition Fianna Fáil party and in particular its leader, Charles Haughey. Critics accused Alibrandi of engineering McNamara’s appointment in the belief that the outspoken McNamara can help derail the coalition’s liberal policies on divorce and contraception.

McNamara, as expected, takes a far more outspoken stance of issues than had Ryan previously. While the coalition succeeds in liberalising the law on contraception, its efforts to amend the constitution on divorce are defeated.

McNamara’s service in Dublin is short-lived. Already suffering from what proves to be terminal cancer, he dies on April 8, 1987 after a three year battle with the disease, months after the Fine Gael minority government is defeated in the 1987 Irish general election. He is succeeded as archbishop by a university lecturer, Desmond Connell.

In the early 2000s, amid growing scandals within the Catholic Church in Ireland about clerical sex abuse, it is revealed that as archbishop McNamara had sought legal advice as to the Church’s liability arising from such abuse.


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Death of Nuala O’Faolain, Journalist & Writer

Nuala Brigid Anne O’Faolain, journalist and writer, dies in Blackrock, Dublin, on May 9, 2008. Her debut memoir, Are You Somebody?, published when she is in her mid-fifties, becomes a sensation in Ireland and a worldwide bestseller.

O’Faolain is born in Dublin on March 1, 1940, the second of nine children of Tomás O’Faolain and Kathleen O’Sullivan. Originally a schoolteacher and Army lieutenant, under the pen name Terry O’Sullivan, her father becomes a prominent social diarist for the Evening Press in Dublin. He is distant from his children and engages in extra-marital affairs which produce at least two half-siblings. Despite earning as much money as the newspaper’s editor, Douglas Gageby, he does not share his income with his family. The family lives in poor conditions, frequently going hungry. Her mother becomes an alcoholic, going to the pub every day at 4 p.m. and not returning home until midnight.

O’Faolain attends convent school in Dublin but is expelled at the age of fourteen after going home from dances with a married man. She then goes to a boarding school in County Monaghan, whose austere environment and strict educational standards benefit her. From there, she studies English literature at University College Dublin (UCD), where she runs in a social circle that includes Mary Lavin, John McGahern, Patrick Kavanagh, and Louis MacNeice. Although she drops out of her studies temporarily and spends time working menial jobs in England, with financial assistance from Lavin and others, she graduates in 1961. On scholarships, she studies medieval English at the University of Hull before completing a postgraduate degree in 19th-century English literature at the University of Oxford. She then returns to Dublin to work at UCD as an academic in the English literature department, which brings her into contact with the bohemian Dublin literary scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1970, O’Faolain moves to London to work for the BBC. She is a producer at the Community Programme Unit, which seeks to allow members of the public to create programmes for national broadcast on human interest topics like transgender people, anti-pornography protests, and community organising in the Bogside. She also makes programmes with the arts faculty of the Open University, and teaches evening classes at Morley College. During this period, she shows little interest in Ireland, regarding the country as backward and unsophisticated, but a visit to the Merriman Summer School in County Clare in 1974 sparks new enthusiasm. In 1977, she moves back to Dublin to work for the public broadcaster, RTÉ, where she becomes a colleague of female journalists like Doireann Ní Bhriain, Marian Finucane, and Nell McCafferty – later her partner – who are making programmes about Irish society with a feminist bent. She Is the producer of Women Today, a pioneering radio programme, from 1983 to 1986. One series she works on, Plain Tales, a televised interview programme in which women speak directly to camera about their life experiences, wins a Jacob’s Award in 1985.

O’Faolain has an interest in books from an early age, and credits voracious reading for helping her through a difficult childhood. She works as a book reviewer for The Times. Between 1990 and 1993, she co-presents Booklines, a television programme about books for RTÉ, a programme she says “nobody ever watched because it was on terribly late at night.”

In 1986, Conor Brady, the editor of The Irish Times, offers O’Faolain a newspaper column after hearing her being interviewed by Gay Byrne on the radio. Brady is struck by her ability to “infuse ordinary people’s everyday activities with value and interest.” The column becomes a major success and she is awarded journalist of the year in 1986.

O’Faolain acts as a roving commentator for The Irish Times, covering the 1994 Cregg Wood murders in County Clare, and visiting Northern Ireland at the time of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Following periods of leave while she works on her books, she leaves the paper in 2002, and writes a column in the Sunday Tribune from 2005 until her death.

O’Faolain never marries and has no children. Although she writes about her relationships with men and women, she does not identify as bisexual, though others have described her as such. She suffers from alcoholism. After Are You Somebody?, she divides her time between Ireland and New York City. During the final years of her life, she is in a relationship with a Brooklyn-based lawyer, John Low-Beer, whom she meets on Match.com.

O’Faolain is diagnosed with metastatic cancer while living in New York City in early 2008. She experiences a strange feeling in the right side of her body and presents at the emergency department of a hospital, where she is told that she has primary tumours in her lungs which has spread to her brain and liver, and that her cancer is incurable. She refuses chemotherapy.

O’Faolain returns to Ireland and is interviewed by her friend, Marian Finucane, on her radio show about her terminal illness on April 12, 2008. Both O’Faolain and Finucane are in tears during the interview, which is recorded in Galway, where she is undergoing radiotherapy. She tells Finucane: “I don’t want more time. As soon as I heard I was going to die, the goodness went from life”. Her frank discussion of her illness leads to the interview being preceded by a warning that her comments may be upsetting to others with life-threatening conditions. She says that she does not believe in God or an afterlife, but as in the song “Thíos i Lár an Ghleanna,” she is asking for help she knows will not come from a god she does not believe in. The interview has a major public impact in Ireland. After Finucane’s death in 2020, the Irish Independent describes it as “one of the most extraordinary [interviews] in the history of Irish broadcasting.”

In the final weeks of her life, O’Faolain travels Europe with close friends and family, staying in the Ritz Hotel in Paris and visiting the Berlin State Opera and the Prado Museum in Madrid for the first time. She dies in a hospice in Blackrock, Dublin, late on May 9, 2008. Her funeral takes place in the Church of Our Lady of the Visitation in Fairview in north Dublin on May 13. Her ashes are buried in Kilbarrack Cemetery in north Dublin with her maternal grandparents, Terence and Marion O’Sullivan, and her brother, Dermot Phelan.


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Birth of Malcolm Byrne, Fianna Fáil Politician

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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Birth of Proinsias Mac Airt, Activist & IRA Volunteer

Proinsias Mac Airt (English: Frank Card), Irish republican activist and long-serving member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on April 18, 1922.

Mac Airt first becomes involved in Irish republicanism as a boy when he joins the Fianna Éireann. His first imprisonment is in 1942 when he is sent to jail for illegal military foot drilling. He Is later interned during the IRA’s Border Campaign of 1956-1962.

Having retired at some earlier point, Mac Airt returns to the republican movement in 1969, throwing his lot in with the newly established Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) and their political arm Provisional Sinn Féin. Indeed, in early 1970 his Patrick Pearse cumann, which he sets up in the Clonard area of the Falls Road, is the first branch of Provisional Sinn Féin established in Belfast and proves central to the growth of the dissident party in the city. In August 1970, he Is appointed editor of the Belfast-based Republican News, succeeding Jimmy Steele who had died soon after being appointed editor. Despite his advancing age Mac Airt also becomes involved in the gun battles that rage between the republicans from Falls and loyalists from the neighbouring Shankill Road. As a consequence, he becomes one of the leaders of the nascent PIRA in Belfast. He is publicly named as a leading republican by General Anthony Farrar-Hockley who commands the British Army present during the clashes and with whom Mac Airt has held failed negotiations at the scene of conflict. He serves as Adjutant to Billy McKee, who is first commander of the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade. According to Brendan Hughes, Mac Airt’s Kane Street home doubles as Belfast Brigade headquarters at the early stage in the movement’s history.

On April 15, 1971, Mac Airt, along with Billy McKee, is arrested by the British Army when found in possession of a handgun. Both men are sentenced under the Explosive Substances Act 1883 and sent to Crumlin Road Gaol. In the prison the two men are recognised as the leaders of the republican prisoners, a role held by Gusty Spence on the loyalist side. They co-operate informally with Spence to maintain order until they agree to establish an official Camp Council. The make-up of this group sees Mac Airt and McKee representing the PIRA, Spence and an associate identified only as “Robert” representing the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ned McCreery and James Craig as Ulster Defence Association (UDA) delegates, with members of the Official IRA (OIRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) eventually added.

Mac Airt is involved in the talks held between republicans and clergymen from various Protestant churches held at Feakle, County Clare, on December 12, 1974. While the talks produced little, he Is one of those who maintains contact with the clergymen. Indeed, on January 19, 1975, one of the ministers, Rev William Arlow of the Irish Council of Churches (ICC), even introduces Mac Airt and his ally Jimmy Drumm to British government officials Michael Oatley and James Allan in an attempt to have the republican grievances heard.

Although a new generation of leaders emerges in the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin, Mac Airt remains an influential veteran. He is close to Danny Morrison and Tom Hartley and helps to ensure the removal of Seán Caughey from the editorship of Republican News in 1975 and his replacement by Morrison.

In 1968, Mac Airt records two vocal songs, “Croppy Boy” and “Flag of the Fianna” on the LP record Irish Songs of Freedom produced for the Outlet Recording Co. Ltd, Belfast.

Mac Airt dies on January 8, 1992, at the age of 69. The President of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, delivers the graveside oration at his funeral, describing him as “a radical in the Connolly tradition.”


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Birth of Charles Cunningham Boycott, Land Agent

Charles Cunningham Boycott, land agent and the man who gave the English language the word “boycott,” is born on March 12, 1832, at Burgh St. Peter, Norfolk, England.

Boycott is the eldest surviving son of William Boycatt (1798–1877), rector of Wheatacrebury, Norfolk, and Elizabeth Georgiana Boycatt (née Beevor). The family name is changed to Boycott by his father in 1862. Educated at a boarding school in Blackheath, London, and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, he is commissioned ensign in the 39th (Dorsetshire) Regiment of Foot on February 15, 1850, and serves briefly in Ireland. He sells his commission on December 17, 1852, having attained the rank of captain, marries Annie Dunne of Queen’s County (County Laois) in 1852, and leases a farm in south County Tipperary.

In 1855, Boycott leaves for Achill Island, County Mayo, where he sub-leases 2,000 acres and acts as land agent for a friend, Murray McGregor Blacker, a local magistrate. He settles initially near Keem Strand but after some years builds a fine house near Dooagh overlooking Clew Bay. He clashes with local landowners and agents and is regularly involved in litigation. Twice summonsed unsuccessfully for assault (1856, 1859), he is involved (1859–60) in a bitter dispute with a land agent over salvage rights for shipwrecks, one of the few lucrative activities on the island. Achill’s remoteness and the difficulties of wresting a living from its harsh environment adds a roughness to the island’s social relations and probably aggravates Boycott’s tendency to high-handedness.

In 1873, Boycott inherits money and moves to mainland County Mayo, leasing Lough Mask House near Ballinrobe and its surrounding 300 acres. He also becomes agent for John Crichton, 3rd Earl Erne‘s neighbouring estate of 1,500 acres, home to thirty-eight tenant farmers paying rents of £500 a year, of which he receives 10 per cent as agent. He also serves as a magistrate and is unpopular because of his brusque and authoritarian manner, and for denying locals such traditional indulgences as collecting wood from the Lough Mask estate or taking short cuts across his farm. In April 1879, he purchases the 95-acre Kildarra estate between Claremorris and Ballinlough and an adjoining wood for £1,125, taking out a mortgage of £600 which stretches his finances.

Boycott is no brutal tyrant, but he is aloof, stubborn, and pugnacious, and believes that the Irish peasantry is prone to idleness and require firm handling. Such qualities and beliefs are unremarkable enough, but in the peculiar circumstances of the land war in County Mayo, they are enough to catapult this rather ordinary man to worldwide notoriety.

In autumn 1879, concerted land agitation begins in County Mayo, and on August 1, 1879, Boycott receives a notice threatening his life unless he reduces rents. He ignores it and evicts three tenants, which embitter relations on the estate. Lough Mask House is placed under Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) surveillance beginning in November 1879. In August 1880, his farm labourers, encouraged by the Irish National Land League, strike successfully for a wage increase from 7s. –11s. to 9s. –15s. Since the harvest is poor, Lord Erne allows a 10 per cent rent abatement. But in September 1880, when Boycott demands the rent, most tenants seek a 25 per cent abatement. Lord Erne refuses, and on September 22, Boycott attempts to serve processes against eleven defaulters. Servers and police are attacked by an angry crowd of local women and forced to take refuge in Boycott’s house. Almost immediately he is subjected to the ostracism against land grabbers advocated by Charles Stewart Parnell in his September 19 speech at Ennis, County Clare. This weapon proves as devastating against an English land agent as an Irish land-grabber. His servants leave him, labourers refuse to work his land, his walls and fences are destroyed, and local traders refuse to do business with him. He is jeered on the roads, is hissed and hustled by hostile crowds in Ballinrobe, and requires police protection.

The campaign against Boycott is largely orchestrated by Fr. John O’Malley, a local parish priest and president of the Neale branch of the Irish National Land League. It is probably O’Malley who coins the term “boycott” as an alternative to the word “ostracise,” which he believes would mean little to the local peasantry. Propagated by O’Malley’s friend, the American journalist, James Redpath, it is adopted by advocates and opponents alike.

On October 22, 1880, before his story breaks on the world, Boycott gives evidence of his treatment to the Bessborough Commission in Galway. He publicises his plight in an October 18, 1880, letter to The Times, and in a long interview with The Daily News on October 24, which is reprinted in Irish unionist newspapers and arouses considerable sympathy for him. Although he rarely uses his former military rank, he becomes universally known as “Captain Boycott,” since it suits both sides to portray him as someone of social standing. Letters of support appear in unionist papers and the Belfast News Letter sets up a “Boycott Relief Fund” and proposes a relief expedition, portraying Boycott as a peaceable English gentleman unjustly subjected to intimidation.

The prospect of hundreds of armed loyalists descending on County Mayo alarms the government, who announce on November 8 that they will provide protection for a small group of labourers to harvest Boycott’s crops. On November 12, fifty-seven loyalists from counties Cavan and Monaghan, “the Boycott Relief Expedition,” arrive at Lough Mask with an escort of almost a thousand troops. After harvesting Boycott’s crops, they leave on November 26. The entire operation costs £10,000 – about thirty times the value of the crops. Although the expedition passes off largely without incident, it focuses international media attention on the affair and establishes the word “boycott” in English and several other languages as a standard term for communal ostracism.

On November 27, Boycott and his wife go to the Hammam Hotel, Dublin, where he receives death threats. On December 1, he travels to London and then to the United States (March–May 1881) to see Murray McGregor Blacker, the friend from his time on Achill Island who has since settled in Virginia. In an interview with the New York Herald, he criticises the liberal government’s weakness toward the Land League and claims that the Irish land question is an intractable problem that can only be solved in the long term by emigration and industrialisation.

Boycott returns to Lough Mask on September 19, 1881, and at an auction in Westport is mobbed and burned in effigy. This, however, is the last outburst of hostility against him, and as the land agitation wanes so does his unpopularity. Although unsuccessful in efforts to win compensation from the government, he receives a public subscription of £2,000. He remains in County Mayo as Lord Erne’s agent until February 1886, when he obtains the post of land agent for Sir Hugh Adair in Flixton, Suffolk, but he keeps the small Kildarra estate, where he continues to holiday. On December 12, 1888, he gives evidence of his treatment to the parliamentary commission on “Parnellism and crime.”

After suffering from ill-health for some years, Boycott dies at Flixton on June 19, 1897, and is buried in the churchyard of Burgh St. Peter. A British-made film, Captain Boycott (1947), stars Cecil Parker in the title role.

(From: “Boycott, Charles Cunningham” by James Quinn, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Photo credit: Granger NYC/© Granger NYC/Rue des Archives)


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Death of Micho Russell, Musician & Author

Micho Russell, an Irish musician and author best known for his expert tin whistle performance, dies in an automobile accident on February 19, 1994. He also plays the simple system flute and is a collector of Irish traditional music and folklore.

Russell is born in Doonagore, Doolin, County Clare, on March 25, 1915. He comes from a musically renowned family. His mother plays the concertina, and his father is a sean-nós singer. He has two brothers, Packie and Gussie, who are also musicians. He also has two sisters. He never marries.

Russell teaches himself to play the tin whistle by ear, beginning at the age of eleven. The 1960s revival of Irish traditional music brings him attention and performance opportunities. In 1973, he wins the All-Ireland tin whistle competition, which further increases demand for his performances. Like Séamus Ennis, he is also known for his spoken introductions to tunes in his live performances, which incorporate folklore and legend. His knowledge of tradition extends past music to language, stories, dance, herbal lore, and old country cures.

“Micho Russell’s Reel,” Russell’s only known composition, is a variant of an older tune he calls “Carthy’s Reel.” He tells Charlie Piggott, “…So Carthy was beyond anyway, and he heard the old tune from a piper playing it, and he had the first part but only three-quarters of the second part. So when Séamus Ennis came around collecting music, I put in the last bit. That’s roughly the story of the tune.” The reel has been recorded by other artists such as Mary Bergin. His best-known songs are John Phillip Holland and The Well of Spring Water.

Russell dies in a car accident on February 19, 1994, in Kilcolgan, County Galway, on his way home from a gig just prior to going back into the studio to record another CD.


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Duel Between Daniel O’Connell & John D’Esterre

Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847) kills John D’Esterre in a duel on February 1, 1815.

O’Connell is sometimes referred to as an equivalent to Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi. Like King and Gandhi, O’Connell attempts to change the circumstances of his people, Irish Catholics in this case, through the use of nonviolence. He can take a great deal of credit for the passage of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, which revokes the remaining discriminatory Penal Laws. This political success is achieved in significant part through mass protest and is notable for the absence of violence. O’Connell, however, is not always non-violent. He is known for being hot-tempered and capable of violence in his early days.

Rosmanagher Bridge and Toll Gate are built by D’Esterre in 1784 at his own expense. The large inscription stone on the bridge commemorates this piece of engineering. He owns extensive lands in the region and the Ratty River hinders both farming and communication, especially as the nearest bridge is at Sixmilebridge, County Clare. Despite objections that the structure will interfere with navigation on the river, he builds his bridge and then tries to recover his costs by erecting toll gates on the western side of the river. O’ Connell refuses to pay the toll according to local tradition and this leads to his famous duel with D’Esterre, a Limerick-born Protestant and former marine who is also a member of the Dublin Corporation. D’Esterre takes exception to O’Connell’s description of the Corporation as being “beggarly.”

D’Esterre is in difficult financial circumstances at the time of the duel. Some thought indicates that he is possibly encouraged into violent confrontation by influential figures who wish to break the forty-year-old O’Connell’s growing political power. Regardless of the motivation, the crack shot D’Esterre arranges to meet O’Connell to settle the matter on February 1, 1815, at the Bishopscourt estate in County Kildare.

D’Esterre shoots first and misses. O’Connell returns fire, wounding his opponent in the groin. The wound proves to be fatal two days later. It seems O’Connell is distressed by the deadly outcome and offers D’Esterre’s widow a pension as compensation. The offer is refused, but an allowance for D’Esterre’s daughter is accepted. O’Connell fulfills this obligation for the subsequent 30 years of his life.

(From: “OTD: O’Connell – D’Esterre Duel – 1815” by Martin Nutty, Irish Stew Podcast, http://www.irishstewpodcast.com, February 1, 2022)


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Death of T. K. Whitaker, Economist, Politician and Civil Servant

Thomas Kenneth Whitaker, Irish economist, politician, diplomat and civil servant, dies in Blackrock, Dublin, on January 9, 2017, a month after his 100th birthday. He serves as Secretary of Ireland’s Department of Finance from 1956 to 1969, as Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland from 1969 to 1976 and as a Senator from 1977 to 1982, after being nominated by the Taoiseach. He is considered one of the most influential civil servants in the history of the Irish State, with his economic policies greatly influencing the development of modern Ireland.

Whitaker is born in Rostrevor, a small town in the south of County Down, to Roman Catholic parents on December 8, 1916, and is reared in Drogheda, County Louth, in modest circumstances. Neither of his parents are from Ulster. His mother, Jane O’Connor, comes from Ballyguirey East, Labasheeda, County Clare. His father, Edward Whitaker, hails from County Westmeath and is assistant manager of a linen mill. He receives his primary and secondary education at the local CBS in Drogheda. He studies mathematics, Celtic studies and Latin by correspondence course at University of London, and is awarded external degrees in economics: a bachelor’s degree in 1941 and a master’s degree in 1952.

In 1956, Whitaker is appointed Secretary of the Department of Finance, at the age of thirty-nine. His appointment takes place at a time when Ireland’s economy is in deep depression. Economic growth is non-existent, inflation apparently insoluble, unemployment rife, living standards low and emigration at a figure not far below the birth rate. He believes that free trade, with increased competition and the end of protectionism, will become inevitable and that jobs will have to be created by a shift from agriculture to industry and services. He forms a team of officials within the department which produce a detailed study of the economy, culminating in a plan recommending policies for improvement. The plan is accepted by the government and is transformed into a white paper which becomes known as the First Programme for Economic Expansion, and quite unusually is published with his name attached in November 1958. The programme becomes known as the “Grey Book” which many argue brings the stimulus of foreign investment into the Irish economy. However, other reforms such as the Department of Industry and Commerce‘s export profits tax relief introduced in 1956, are opposed by Whitaker.

In 1977, Taoiseach Jack Lynch nominates Whitaker as a member of the 14th Seanad. He serves as a Senator from 1977 to 1981, where he sits as an independent member.

In 1981, Whitaker is nominated to the 15th Seanad by Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, where he serves until 1982. FitzGerald also appoints him to chair a Committee of Inquiry into the Irish penal system, and he chairs a Parole Board or Sentence Review Group for several years.

Whitaker also serves as Chancellor of the National University of Ireland (NUI) from 1976 to 1996. He was also President of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and as such, a member of the Board of Governors and Guardians of the National Gallery of Ireland, from 1985 to 1987. He has a very strong love for the Irish language throughout his career and the collection of Irish poetry, An Duanaire: Poems of the Dispossessed 1600–1900, edited by Seán Ó Tuama and Thomas Kinsella is dedicated to Whitaker. From 1995 to 1996 he chairs the Constitution Review Group, an independent expert group established by the government, which publishes its report in July 1996.

Whitaker receives many national and international honours and tributes for his achievements during his lifetime, most notably the conferral of “Irishman of the 20th Century” in 2001 and Greatest Living Irish Person in 2002. In November 2014, the Institute of Banking confers an Honorary Fellowship on him and creates an annual T. K. Whitaker Scholarship in his name. In April 2015, he is presented with a lifetime achievement award by University College Dublin‘s Economics Society for his outstanding contribution to Ireland’s economic policy.

In November 2016, to mark his centenary year, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council acknowledges Whitaker’s “outstanding and progressive contribution to Irish public service and to society.” The Cathaoirleach of Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, Cormac Devlin, presents a special award to Whitaker which is accepted by Ken Whitaker on behalf of his father.

Whitaker marries Nora Fogarty in 1941 and they have six children. After his wife’s death in 1994, he remarries, to Mary Moore in 2005. The couple is invited to Áras an Uachtaráin in 2006 for his 90th birthday by the President of Ireland Mary McAleese. Mary Moore Whitaker dies in 2008. T. K. Whitaker turns 100 in December 2016 and dies a month later on January 9, 2017, having survived both of his wives. He is buried at Shanganagh Cemetery, Shankill, Dublin.

The main administrative building in Dundalk Institute of Technology is named after him, the T.K. Whitaker Building. Whitaker Square in the Grand Canal Dock area of Dublin 2 is named in his honour. The offices of the Economic and Social Research Institute are located on the square.