Maurice O’Neill, an Irish Republican Army (IRA) Captain captured in 1942 after a shootout with Irish police (Garda Síochána), is executed on November 12, 1942, one of only two people executed in independent Ireland for a non-murder offence.
O’Neill is a farmer from an Irish republican family in the farming community of Cahersiveen, County Kerry. He and his older brother Sean are dedicated Irish republicans. He fights in the Irish Republican Army’s 1942-44 Northern Campaign and is assigned to the IRA’s General Headquarters (GHQ) at the time of his capture. In the early 1930s, his brother Sean serves in the IRAs Dublin Brigade and serves on GHQ Staff IRA in various capacities from 1945 to 1955.
On October 24, 1942, O’Neill is arrested after a raid by Garda Síochána in which Garda Detective Officer Mordant is shot and killed in Donnycarney, Dublin. The mission of the police raid is the capture of Harry White, the IRA Quartermaster General. White escapes capture and O’Neill is arrested but not charged with the murder of the Detective Officer but with “shooting with intent.” It is thought that Detective Officer Mordant’s death may have been a result of crossfire between Special Branch policemen.
The 25-year-old O’Neill’s execution provokes particularly widespread protests, as he is a popular figure in his native County Kerry. He apparently is stoic and calm when his fate becomes clear. In a letter to his elder brother, Sean, from Arbour Hill Prison, he writes: “I suppose you saw in the papers where I met my Waterloo last Saturday night. Well, such are the fortunes of war…there is only one sentence, death or release. So I believe it is the full penalty for me. There is no good in having false hopes, hard facts must be faced.” In his last letter to his father he writes: “I am glad that I am not being reprieved as the thought of the torture I would have to endure in Portlaoise makes me shudder.”
Many Irish republican prisoners are released in 1948 as is the body of O’Neill (on September 17, 1948). O’Neill is buried in the republican plot at Kilavarnogue Cemetery, Cahersiveen, County Kerry. His name is listed on a monument in Fairview Park, Dublin, with the names other IRA members of that period who lose their lives. The Maurice O’Neill Bridge to Valentia Island is built in 1970 and named in memory of the young farmer who had been executed in 1942. In Kilflynn, County Kerry, the Crotta O’Neill’shurling club is named after him. In 2011, an Irish television documentary focuses on how O’Neill’s execution affected his family.
Whelan is awarded many prizes in the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) Taylor art competitions, including one in 1912 for a portrait of his sister Lena, entitled On the Moors, rendered in a strongly academic technique. In 1916, he wins the Taylor scholarship for the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) schools for his finest early work, The Doctor’s Visit, an adroitly executed composition of contrasting shadows and light. Typical of many of his genre interiors, the painting depicts a room in the family home, with relatives as models: Whelan’s mother sits by the bed watching over his ill cousin, while his sister, dressed in a Mater hospital nurse’s uniform, is in the background opening the door for the doctor. The subtly evoked atmosphere of restrained emotion foreshadowed a hallmark of his mature style.
Whelan exhibits annually at the RHA for forty-five years (1911–56), averaging six works per year. He is elected an RHA associate in 1920, becoming a full member in 1924. He participates in the Exposition d’art irlandais at the Galerie Barbazanges in Paris in 1922. A visiting teacher at the RHA schools in 1924, he also teaches in the DMSA for a time. He has studios at 64 Dawson Street (1914–27) and 7 Lower Baggot Street (1931–56). Beginning in the 1910s, he receives regular commissions for portraits, constituting his primary source of income. Having become the family’s main breadwinner following his parents’ deaths in the 1920s, he concentrates most of his production on this lucrative activity, portraying numerous leading figures in the spheres of politics, academia, religion, society, medicine, and law.
Situated securely in the academic tradition, in most of his portraits Whelan favours a sombre, restricted palette, with the sitter placed, in grave demeanour, against a monotone background with few accessories. In a 1943 interview he asserts that twentieth-century portraiture suffers from the drabness of modern costume, for which the artist must compensate by careful rendition of the subject’s hands. He tends to depart from his prevailing portrait style when painting women, whom he characteristically depicts in meticulously observed interiors, a notable example being his portrait of Society hostess Gladys Maccabe (c.1946; NGI).
Whelan’s commercial concentration on portraiture notwithstanding, he expresses his true talent in genre compositions, especially kitchen interiors, in which he emulates the technique of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Two of the most accomplished of these depict his sister Frances in the basement kitchen of the family home: The Kitchen Window (1927; Crawford Art Gallery, Cork) demonstrates a particularly skillful use of light, while Interior of a Kitchen (1935) is notable for the dexterous handling of objects of varied shapes and textures. His genre works include both urban and rural scenes, with a distinctive interest in portraying occupations and other activities. Gypsy (1923), an Orpenesque composition of a shawled woman in a west-of-Ireland landscape with a caravan in the background, receives wide contemporary critical acclaim. Jer (c.1925), depicting a man seated by the fire in a cottage interior, is reproduced in J. Crampton Walker’s Irish Art and Landscape (1927). The Fiddler (c.1932), a naturalistic, sensitively characterised study, is first shown at an Ulster Academy exhibition at Stranmillis, Belfast. A Kerry Cobbler is reproduced in Twelve Irish Artists (1940), introduced by Thomas Bodkin, as among the works denoting the development of a distinctively Irish school of painting.
In 1929, Whelan designs the first Irish Free State commemorative stamp, a portrait of Daniel O’Connell for the centenary of Catholic emancipation. Commissioned by the Thomas Haverty trust to paint an incident from the life of Saint Patrick for the 1932 Eucharistic Congress, he executes The Baptism by St. Patrick of Ethna the Fair and Fedelmia the Ruddy, Daughters of the Ard Rí Laoghaire, a work highly conservative in style. He rapidly completes an oil study of the papal legate, Lorenzo Lauri, also for the Eucharistic Congress. He is represented in the art competitions at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. His depiction of Saint Brigid, shown at the Academy of Christian Art exhibition (1940), becomes a familiar image owing to the wide circulation of reproductions.
Whelan’s political portraits are influential in creating a strong, assured image of the newly formed Irish state, and thus retain an historical significance. His posthumous portrait, The Late General Michael Collins, exhibited at the RHA in 1943 and now held in Leinster House, is an iconic, heroic image of the fallen leader. His portraits of Arthur Griffith and Kevin O’Higgins – commissioned posthumously, as is the Collins, by Fine Gael – also hang in Leinster House, while that of John A. Costello, exhibited at the RHA in 1949, is now held in the King’s Inns, Dublin. He paints two presidents, Douglas Hyde and Seán T. O’Kelly, both works currently in Áras an Uachtaráin. A portrait of Éamon de Valera, painted in 1955 when the sitter is Leader of the Opposition, is in Leinster House. In 1954, he designs a second commemorative stamp, picturing a reproduction of a portrait bust of John Henry Newman, to mark the centenary of the Catholic University of Ireland.
Whelan is elected an honorary academician of both the Ulster Academy of Arts (1931), and the Royal Ulster Academy (1950). He becomes a member of the United Arts Club in 1934. As a representative of the RHA, he sits on the board of governors of the National Gallery of Ireland for many years, and is on the advisory committee of the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art. Unmarried, he resides until his death at the Eccles Street address, with two sisters who continue to manage the family hotel. He dies on November 6, 1956, from leukemia at the Mater private nursing home in Dublin. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.
(From: “Whelan, (Michael) Leo,” by Carmel Doyle, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
O’Callaghan is born into a family with a Fenianparamilitary history. His paternal grandfather had taken the Anti-Treaty side during the Irish Civil War, and his father had been interned by the Irish Government at the Curragh Camp in County Kildare for IRA activity during World War II.
By the late 1960s, O’Callaghan ceases to practise his Catholic faith, adopts atheism and has become interested in the theories of Marxist revolutionary politics, which finds an outlet of practical expression in the sectarian social unrest in Northern Ireland at the time, centered on the activities of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association. In 1969, communal violence breaks out in Northern Ireland and believing that British imperialism is responsible, he joins the newly founded Provisional IRA at the age of 17.
Soon afterward, O’Callaghan is arrested by local Gardaí after he accidentally detonates a small amount of explosives, which cause damage to the homes of his parents and their neighbours. After demanding, and receiving, treatment as a political prisoner, he quietly serves his sentence.
After becoming a full-time paramilitary with the IRA, in the early to mid-1970s O’Callaghan takes part in over seventy operations associated with Irish Republican political violence including bomb materials manufacture, attacks on IRA targets in Northern Ireland, and robberies to provide funding for the organisation.
In 1976, O’Callaghan ends his involvement with the IRA after becoming disillusioned with its activities. He later recalls that his disenchantment with the IRA began when one of his compatriots openly hoped that a female police officer who had been blown up by an IRA bomb had been pregnant so they could get “two for the price of one.” He is also concerned with what he perceives as an undercurrent of ethnic hatred in its rank and file toward the Ulster Scots population. He leaves Ireland and moves to London. In May 1978, he marries a Scottish woman of Protestantunionist descent. During the late 1970s, he runs a successful mobile cleaning business. However, he is unable to fully settle into his new life, later recalling, “In truth there seemed to be no escaping from Ireland. At the strangest of times I would find myself reliving the events of my years in the IRA. As the years went on, I came to believe that the Provisional IRA was the greatest enemy of democracy and decency in Ireland.”
In 1979, O’Callaghan is approached by the IRA seeking to recruit him again for its paramilitary campaign. In response, he decides to turncoat against the organisation and becomes an agent within its ranks for the Irish Government. He decides to become a double agent even though he knows that even those who hate the IRA as much as he now does have a low opinion of informers. However, he feels it is the only way to stop the IRA from luring teenagers into their ranks and training them to kill.
Soon after being approached by the IRA to re-join, O’Callaghan returns to Tralee from London, where he arranges a clandestine meeting with an officer of the Garda Special Detective Unit in a local cemetery, at which he expresses his willingness to work with it to subvert the IRA from within. At this point, he is still opposed to working with the British Government. A few weeks later, he makes contact with Kerry IRA leader Martin Ferris and attends his first IRA meeting since 1975. Immediately afterward, he telephones his Garda contact and says, “We’re in”.
During the 1981 hunger strike in the Maze Prison, O’Callaghan attempts to start his own hunger strike in support of the Maze prisoners but is told to desist by the IRA for fear it will detract focus from the prisoners. He successfully sabotages the efforts of republicans in Kerry from staging hunger strikes of their own.
In 1984, O’Callaghan notifies the Garda of an attempt to smuggle seven tons of AK-47assault rifles from the United States to Ireland aboard a fishing trawler named Valhalla. The guns are intended for the arsenal of the Provisional IRA’s units. As a result of his warning, a combined force of the Irish Navy and Gardaí intercept the boat that received the weaponry, and the guns are seized. The seizure marks the complete end of any major attempt by the IRA to smuggle guns out of the United States.
In 1983, O’Callaghan claims to be tasked by the IRA with placing 25 lbs. of Frangex in the Dominion Theatre in London, in an attempt to kill Prince Charles and Princess Diana who are due to attend a charity pop music concert there. A warning is phoned into the Garda, and the Royal couple are hurriedly ushered from the theatre by their police bodyguard during the concert. The theatre had been searched before the concert and a second search following the warning reveals no device.
In 1985, O’Callaghan is elected as a Sinn Féin councillor for Tralee Urban District Council, and unsuccessfully contests a seat on Kerry County Council.
After becoming disillusioned with his work with the Irish Government following the murder of another of its agents within the IRA, which it had failed to prevent despite O’Callaghan’s warnings of the threat to him, and sensing a growing threat to himself from the organisation which had become suspicious of his own behaviour, he withdraws from the IRA and leaves Ireland to live in England, taking his wife and children with him. His marriage ends in a divorce in 1987, and on November 29, 1988, he walks into a police station in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, where he presents himself to the officer on duty at the desk, confesses to the murder of Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) Greenfinch (female member) Eva Martin and the murder of D.I. Peter Flanagan during the mid-1970s, and voluntarily surrenders to British prosecution.
Although the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) offers him witness protection as part of the informer policy, O’Callaghan refuses it and is prosecuted under charges of two murders and 40 other crimes, to all of which he pleads guilty, committed in British jurisdiction with the IRA. Having been found guilty, he is sentenced to a total of 539 years in prison. He serves his sentence in prisons in Northern Ireland and England. While in jail, he publishes his story in The Sunday Times. He is released after being granted the royal prerogative of mercy by Queen Elizabeth II in 1996.
In 1998, O’Callaghan publishes an autobiographical account of his experiences in Irish Republican paramilitarism, entitled The Informer: The True Life Story of One Man’s War on Terrorism (1998).
In 2002, O’Callaghan is admitted to Nightingale Hospital, Marylebone, an addiction and rehab center where he undergoes a rehabilitation program for alcohol dependency. His identity and past activities are not revealed to the other patients. He lives relatively openly in London for the rest of his life, refusing to adopt a new identity. He is befriended in the city by the Irish writer Ruth Dudley Edwards, and works as a security consultant, and also occasional advisor to the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) on how to handle Irish republicanism in general, and Sinn Féin in particular.
In 2006, O’Callaghan appears in a London court with regard to an aggravated robbery that occurs in which he is the victim.
In 2015, O’Callaghan publishes James Connolly: My Search for the Man, the Myth & his Legacy (2015), a book containing a critique of the early 20th century Irish revolutionary James Connolly, and what he considers to be his destructive legacy in Ireland’s contemporary politics.
O’Callaghan dies by drowning after suffering a heart attack at the age of 63 while in a swimming pool in Kingston, Jamaica, on August 23, 2017, while visiting his daughter. A memorial service is held in his memory on March 21, 2018, at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, a Church of England parish church at the northeast corner of Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, London. The service is attended by representatives from Ulster Unionist parties and the Irish Government.
Against his father’s wishes, Neligan joins the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) – also in 1917. Picking up travel documentation from the local Royal Irish Constabulary barracks, he declines a suggestion that he enlist in this armed rural force. After service as a uniformed constable with the DMP, he is promoted to Detective and transferred into the Department’s widely hated counterintelligence and anti-political-subversion unit, the G Division, in 1919. In May 1920, his elder brother Maurice (1895–1920), an Irish Republican Army (IRA) member and friend of Michael Collins, persuades him to resign from the DMP.
After his resignation, Neligan returns to his native County Limerick with the intention of joining the Limerick IRA. Shortly afterward, Maurice is killed in a motorcycle accident, near their home in Templeglantine. In the meantime, Neligan also receives word from a family friend that Michael Collins wishes to meet with him in Dublin. Collins is outraged that Neligan has been allowed to resign and persuades him to rejoin the DMP as a mole for the intelligence wing of the IRA. Along with Detectives Eamon Broy and James McNamara, Neligan acts as a highly valuable agent for Collins and passes on reams of vital information. He leaks documents about the relative importance of police and military personnel and also warns insurgents of upcoming raids and ambushes. There are unconfirmed rumors that Neligan might be a double agent working for British interests.
In 1921, Collins orders Neligan to let himself be recruited into MI5 and he uses the opportunity to memorise their passwords and the identities of their agents. All of this is passed on to Collins. After Broy and McNamara are dismissed in 1921, Neligan becomes Collins’ most important mole inside Dublin Castle.
In 1924, Neligan hands over his post to the youthful Colonel Michael Joe Costello and takes command of the DMP, which still continues as a force separate from the newly established Garda Síochána, with the rank of Chief Superintendent. The next year he transfers to the Garda when the two police forces are amalgamated, and is instrumental in the foundation of the Garda Special Branch. When Éamon de Valera becomes head of government in 1932, his republican followers demand Neligan’s dismissal. Instead, Neligan is transferred to an equivalent post in the Irish Civil Service. In June 1935, he is married to fellow civil servant Sheila Maeve Rogan. They have one son and three daughters, and reside at 15 St. Helen’s Road, Booterstown, Dublin.
Neligan draws pensions from the DMP, the British MI5, the Garda Síochána and the Irish Civil Service. He also receives an “Old IRA” pension through the Department of Defence.
Séamus Ennis (Irish: Séamas Mac Aonghusa), Irish musician, singer and Irish music collector, dies in Naul, County Dublin, on October 5, 1982. He is most noted for his uilleann pipe playing and is partly responsible for the revival of the instrument during the twentieth century, having co-founded Na Píobairí Uilleann, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to the promotion of the uilleann pipes and its music. He is recognised for preserving almost 2,000 Irish songs and dance-tunes as part of the work he does with the Irish Folklore Commission. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest uilleann pipers of all time.
Ennis’s father, James, works for the Irish civil service at Naul, County Dublin. In 1908, James Ennis is in a pawn shop in London and purchases a bag containing the pieces of a set of old uilleann pipes. They were made in the mid nineteenth century by Coyne Pipemakers of Thomas Street in Dublin. In 1912, he comes in first in the Oireachtas competition for warpipes and second in the uilleann pipes. He is also a prize-winning dancer. In 1916, he marries Mary Josephine McCabe, an accomplished fiddle player from County Monaghan. They have six children, Angela, Séamus, Barbara, and twins, Cormac and Ursula (Pixie) and Desmond. Séamus is born on May 5, 1919, in Jamestown in Finglas, Dublin. James Ennis is a member of the Fingal trio, which includes Frank O’Higgins on fiddle and John Cawley on flute, and performs regularly with them on the radio. At the age of thirteen, Séamus starts receiving lessons on the pipes from his father. He attends a Gaelscoil, Cholmcille, and a Gaelcholáiste, Coláiste Mhuire, which gives him a knowledge of the Irish language that serves him well in later life. He sits in an exam to become Employment Exchange clerk but is too far down the list to be offered a job. He is twenty and unemployed.
Colm Ó Lochlainn is editor of Irish Street Ballads and a friend of the Ennis family. In 1938, Ennis confides in Colm that he intends to move to England to join the British Army. Colm immediately offers him a job at The Three Candles Press. There Ennis learns all aspects of the printing trade. This includes writing down slow airs for printed scores – a skill which later proves important. Colm is director of an Irish language choir, An Claisceadal, which Ennis joins. In 1942, during The Emergency, shortages and rationing mean that things become difficult in the printing trade. Professor Seamus Ó Duilearge of the Irish Folklore Commission hires the 23-year-old to collect songs. He is given “pen, paper and pushbike” and a salary of three pounds per week. Off he goes to Connemara.
From 1942 to 1947, working for the Irish Folklore Commission, Ennis collects songs in west Munster; counties Galway, Cavan, Mayo, Donegal, Kerry; the Aran Islands and the Scottish Hebrides. His knowledge of Scottish Gaelic enables him to transcribe much of the John Lorne Campbell collection of songs. Elizabeth Cronin of Ballyvourney, County Cork, is so keen to chat to Ennis on his visits that she writes down her own songs and hands them over as he arrives, and then gets down to conversation. He has a natural empathy with the musicians and singers he meets. In August 1947, he starts work as an outside broadcast officer with Raidió Éireann. He is a presenter and records Willie Clancy, Seán Reid and Micho Russell for the first time. There is an air of authority in his voice. In 1951, Alan Lomax and Jean Ritchie arrived from the United States to record Irish songs and tunes. The tables are turned as Ennis becomes the subject of someone else’s collection. There is a photograph from 1952/53 showing Ritchie huddled over the tape recorder while Ennis plays uilleann pipes.
Late in 1951, Ennis joins the BBC. He moves to London to work with producer Brian George. In 1952, he marries Margaret Glynn. They have two children, the organist Catherine Ennis and Christopher. His job is to record the traditional music of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland and to present it on the BBC Home Service. The programme is called As I Roved Out and runs until 1958. Meeting up with Alan Lomax again, he is largely responsible for the album Folk and Primitive Music (volume on Ireland) on the Columbia Records label.
In 1958, after his contract with the BBC is not renewed, Ennis starts doing freelance work, first in England then back in Ireland, with the new TV station Teilifis Éireann. Soon he is relying totally on his musical ability to make a living. About this time, his marriage breaks down and he returns to Ireland. He suffers from tuberculosis and is ill for some time. In 1964, he performs at the Newport Folk Festival. His father gives him the pipes he had bought in 1908. Although most pipers can be classed as playing in a tight style or an open style, Ennis is in between. He is a master of the slow air, knowing how to decorate long notes with taste and discreet variation.
Two events will live in legend among pipers. The first is in Bettystown, County Meath, in 1968, when the society of Irish pipers, Na Píobairí Uilleann, is formed. Breandán Breathnach is playing a tape of his own piping. Ennis asks, “What year?” Breandán replies, “1948.” Ennis says, “So I thought.” For a couple of hours the younger players perform while Ennis sits in silence. Eventually he is asked to play. Slowly he takes off his coat and rolls up his sleeves. He spends 20 minutes tuning up his 130-year-old pipes. He then asks the gathering whether all the tape recorders are ready and proceeds to play for over an hour. To everyone’s astonishment he then offers his precious pipes to Willie Clancy to play a set. Clancy demurs but eventually gives in. Next, Liam O’Flynn is asked to play them, and so on, round the room. The second unforgettable session is in Dowlings’ Pub in Prosperous, County Kildare. Christy Moore is there, as well as most of the future members of Planxty.
Ennis never runs any school of piping but his enthusiasm infuses everyone he meets. In the early 1970s, he shares a house with Liam O’Flynn for almost three years. Finally, he purchases a piece of land in Naul and lives in a mobile home there. One of his last performances is at the Willie Clancy Summer School in 1982. He dies on October 5, 1982. His pipes are bequeathed to Liam O’Flynn. Radio producer Peter Browne produces a compilation of his performances, called The Return from Fingal, spanning 40 years.
Séamus Ennis Road in his native Finglas is named in his honour. The Séamus Ennis Arts Centre in Naul is opened in his honour, to commemorate his work and to promote the traditional arts. He is also the subject of Christy Moore’s song “The Easter Snow.” This is the title of a slow air Ennis used to play, and one after which he named his final home in Naul.
In March 1917, Ryan passes his final medical examinations. That June he sets up medical practice in Wexford. In 1921, he moves to Dublin where he opens a doctor’s practice at Harcourt Street, specialising in skin diseases at the Skin and Cancer Hospital on Holles Street. He leaves medicine in 1925, after he purchases Kindlestown, a large farm near Delgany, County Wicklow. He lives there and it remains a working farm until his death.
In July 1919, Ryan marries Máirín Cregan, originally from County Kerry and a close friend of Sinéad de Valera throughout her life. Cregan, like her husband, also fought in the Easter Rising and is subsequently an author of children’s stories in Irish. They have three children together.
While studying at university in 1913, Ryan joins the Gaelic League at Clonmel. The company commander recruits the young Catholicnationalist, who becomes a founder-member of the Irish Volunteers and is sworn into the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) the following year. In 1916, he goes first to Cork to deliver a message from Seán Mac Diarmada to Tomás Mac Curtain that the Easter Rising is due to happen on Easter Sunday, then to Cork again in a 12-hour journey in a car to deliver Eoin MacNeill‘s cancellation order, which attempts to stop the rising. When he arrives back on Tuesday, he serves as the medical officer in the General Post Office (GPO) and treats many wounds, including James Connolly‘s shattered ankle, a wound which gradually turns gangrenous. He is, along with Connolly, one of the last people to leave the GPO when the evacuation takes place. Following the surrender of the garrison, he is deported to HM Prison Stafford in England and subsequently Frongoch internment camp. He is released in August 1916.
Ryan rejoins the Volunteers immediately after his release from prison, and in June 1917, he is elected Commandant of the Wexford Battalion. His political career begins the following year when he is elected as a Sinn Féin candidate for the constituency of South Wexford in the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland. Like his fellow Sinn Féin MPs, he refuses to attend the Westminster Parliament. Instead he attends the proceedings of the First Dáil on January 21, 1919. As the Irish War of Independence goes on, he becomes Brigade Commandant of South Wexford and is also elected to Wexford County Council, serving as chairman on one occasion. In September 1919, he is arrested by the British and interned on Spike Island and later Bere Island. In February 1921, he is imprisoned at Kilworth Internment Camp, County Cork. He is later moved on Ballykinlar Barracks in County Down and released in August 1921.
In 1926, Ryan is among the Sinn Féin TDs who follow leader Éamon de Valera out of the party to found Fianna Fáil. They enter the Dáil in 1927 and spend five years on the opposition benches.
In 1947, after spending fifteen years as Minister for Agriculture, Ryan is appointed to the newly created positions of Minister for Health and Minister for Social Welfare. Following Fianna Fáil’s return to power at the 1951 Irish general election, he returns as Minister for Health and Social Welfare. Following the 1954 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil loses power and he moves to the backbenches once again.
Following the 1957 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil are back in office and de Valera’s cabinet has a new look to it. In a clear message that there will be a change to economic policy, Ryan, a close ally of Seán Lemass, is appointed Minister for Finance, replacing the conservative Seán MacEntee. The first sign of a new economic approach comes in 1958, when Ryan brings the First Programme for Economic Development to the cabinet table. This plan, the brainchild of T. K. Whitaker, recognises that Ireland will have to move away from self-sufficiency toward free trade. It also proposes that foreign firms should be given grants and tax breaks to set up in Ireland.
When Lemass succeeds de Valera as Taoiseach in 1959, Ryan is re-appointed as Minister for Finance. Lemass wants to reward him for his loyalty by also naming him Tánaiste. However, the new leader feels obliged to appoint MacEntee, one of the party elders to the position. Ryan continues to implement the First Programme throughout the early 1960s, achieving a record growth rate of 4 percent by 1963. That year an even more ambitious Second Programme is introduced. However, it overreaches and has to be abandoned. In spite of this, the annual growth rate averages five percent, the highest achieved since independence.
Ryan does not stand in the 1965 Irish general election, after which he is nominated by the Taoiseach to Seanad Éireann, where he joins his son, Eoin Ryan Snr. At the 1969 dissolution he retires to his farm at Kindlestown, County Wicklow, where he dies at age 77 on September 25, 1970. He is buried at Redford Cemetery, Greystones, County Wicklow. His grandson, Eoin Ryan Jnr, serves in the Oireachtas from 1989 to 2007 and later in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2009.
He marries firstly Mary Halloran of Cloyne, County Cork, in 1845. She dies in 1901. In the year of his retirement, he remarries Florence Henrietta Gore, widow of Edward Croker. He has no children. James Joyce remarks in Ulysses that his second marriage at the age of 85 infuriates his nephew, who had been waiting patiently for years to inherit his money.
Despite his many years of service on the Bench, Chatterton does not seem to be highly regarded as a judge. On his retirement the Bar pays tribute to his good qualities but adds several qualifications: “there might have been on the Bench lawyers more profound, reasoners more acute…” In his first decade on the Bench, Chatterton has to endure the continual denigration of Jonathan Christian, the Lord Justice of Appeal in Chancery. Christian is notoriously bitter-tongued, and while he despises most of his colleagues, he seems to have a particular dislike of Chatterton. He regularly votes on appeal to overturn his judgments, and frequently adds personal insults. Nor does he confine his attacks to the courtroom: there is controversy in 1870 when remarks of Christian that Chatterton is “lazy, stupid, conceited and so incompetent that he ought to be pensioned off” find their way into The Irish Times. The hint about pensioning off Chatterton is not taken up, no doubt because he enjoys the confidence of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Thomas O’Hagan, 1st Baron O’Hagan, who is also on bad terms with Christian. In an appeal from Chatterton in 1873, the two appeal judges clash publicly, with O’Hagan reprimanding Christian for insulting a judge who is not there to defend himself.
Chatterton becomes involved in controversy in 1885, over the first attempt to rename Sackville Street to O’Connell Street. Dublin Corporation votes for the name change, but it arouses considerable objections from local residents, one of whom seeks an injunction. Chatterton grants the injunction on the ground that the corporation has exceeded its statutory powers. Rather unwisely, he also attacks the merits of the decision, accusing the Corporation of “sentimental notions.” The corporation is angered by both the decision and the criticisms: while it may have been a coincidence, the fact that Temple Street is briefly renamed Chatterton Street is interpreted by some as an insult to the judge, since the street is much frequented by prostitutes. The controversy is short-lived as the corporation is granted the necessary statutory powers in 1890, and the new name becomes official in 1924, by which time it has gained popular acceptance.
Cronin is the only son among three children of Con Cronin, a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and his wife Kate. After his father’s death, his mother works as a cook in a boarding school while the children are brought up by relatives in Ballinskelligs in the County KerryGaeltacht. Educated locally, he is deeply influenced by his Gaeltacht childhood; his later writings often refer to the hypocrisy of a state that romanticises the Gaeltacht while neglecting its social problems.
During World War II, Cronin’s sisters emigrate to England to train as nurses while he works as a labourer for Kerry County Council. In December 1941, he joins the Irish Army and is selected in 1943 for an officers’ training course, on which he forms a lifelong friendship with the future theatre directorAlan Simpson. He is commissioned and remains in the army until 1948.
Shortly thereafter Cronin emigrates to New York City, where he finds work as a journalist writing for The Advocate, an Irish American newspaper. He is strongly influenced by interviewing 1916 veterans for The Advocate and by contact with left-wing Irish American associates of Michael Quill, who played leading roles in the foundation of the Transport Workers Union of America. He becomes active in the semi-secret separatist organisation Clan na Gael, and in autumn 1955 returns to Ireland with the aim of helping the IRA to prepare for another military campaign.
Cronin begins work as a sub-editor with the Evening Press and also contributes summaries of world affairs to The Irish Times.
Cronin establishes contact with the IRA, and his military experience leads to his rapid assignment to GHQ staff. He is initially placed in charge of training and instruction, composing a manual on guerrilla warfare and twelve lectures on battlefield training. He teaches new military techniques and new recruits, such as the future IRA Chief of Staff Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, find him deeply impressive.
Cronin becomes a leading advocate of an early IRA campaign against Northern Ireland and becomes the chief strategist for Operation Harvest, a campaign which sees the carrying out of a range of military operations from direct attacks on security installations to disruptive actions against infrastructure. He is arrested on January 8, 1957, near the border in County Cavan. He is imprisoned several times over the course of the campaign (1956–1962).
Most of the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership are interned by the Dublin government on July 6, 1957. Cronin, one of the few to escape, becomes IRA Chief of Staff. He also acts for a time as editor of the movement’s newspaper, United Irishman. He tries to secure weapons from various sources, leading an unsuccessful raid on a British Army base at Blandford Camp in Dorset on February 16, 1958, and through contacts with Spanish republican exiles in Paris. The Irish American community remains the IRA’s main source of external support.
Cronin is arrested on September 30, 1958, and interned, causing considerable disarray, as he had been running much of the campaign single-handed. When the internees are released in March 1959, he resumes his position as Chief of Staff after a factional dispute causes the resignations of Tomás Óg Mac Curtain and the former Chief of Staff Tony Magan. He continues to argue that a sustained guerrilla campaign might yet succeed, but in June 1960 is again arrested and imprisoned for six months.
In November 1960, the Irish Freedom Committee (IFC), a Clan na Gael splinter group, accuses Cronin of being a communist and a “Free State agent,” supposedly implicated in the 1944 execution of Charlie Kerins. The IRA supports Cronin, but he nevertheless decides to resign successively as Chief of Staff, as a member of the Army Council, and as an IRA volunteer, on the grounds that his presence endangers the American support necessary for the continuance of the campaign. He then secures a job as a journalist on the Irish Independent. He withdraws his resignation in November 1961 after the Irish government reinstates military tribunals to try suspected IRA men. He is subsequently sentenced to six months’ imprisonment by a military tribunal and is in prison when the border campaign ends on February 26, 1962. Released on amnesty on April 19, 1962, he finally resigns from the IRA the next day.
By February 1966, Cronin has returned to the United States, where he resides for the remainder of his life, with regular visits to Ireland. He works as a journalist on the Newark Evening News and the Dow Jones News Service and is the U.S. correspondent of The Irish Times from 1967 to 1991, becoming that paper’s first Washington, D.C. correspondent.
In the 1970s Cronin takes a degree at New York University, then teaches and studies for a doctorate at The New School for Social Research in New York under Hans Morgenthau. His dissertation forms the basis for his magnum opus, Irish nationalism: its roots and ideology (1980). Although limited by its colonial model and socialist-republican intellectual framework, this historically oriented account draws on his extensive research and personal contacts to some effect.
Cronin is the author of a dozen books and pamphlets, including a biography of republican Frank Ryan, Washington’s Irish Policy 1916-1986: independence, partition, neutrality (1987), an authoritative account of Irish-US relations, Our Own Red Blood: The Story of the 1916 Rising (1966), and a number of works on guerrilla strategy, including an early Sinn Féin pamphlet Resistance under the pseudonym of J. McGarrity.
After the death of his first wife in 1974, Cronin marries Reva Rubinstein, a toxicologist. In 1980 they move to Washington, D.C. He has no children by either marriage, though his second wife brings him a stepson. After several years of illness, he dies in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 9, 2011. He is survived by his second wife, Reva Rubenstein Cronin.
Nationalist forces enter Newcastle West, County Limerick, on Monday, August 7, 1922, after a twelve-hour battle, in which twelve anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) members, sometimes referred to as Irregulars, are killed. The casualties of the Nationalists are less than those of the Irregulars.
Taking little respite after Sunday’s labors, the Nationals advance from Rathkele on Monday morning, and by midday are in sight of their fresh objective. Armored cars enter the town and machine gun fire is directed against a party of Irregulars, causing many casualties.
When the artillery goes into action against the headquarters of the Irregulars, the Irregulars flee precipitately along Cord road.
Owing to the slow progress in the operations in Southern Ireland, the meeting of Dáil Éireann, scheduled to open Saturday, is postponed again.
The official army bulletin announces that the Nationals captured Castle Island on Saturday, August 5. It says that the counties of Cork and Kerry with a part of South Tipperary and a small area in County Waterford are the only districts held by the Irregulars with any degree of security.
The streets of Dublin are lined with great crowds of people on Tuesday, August 8, for the military funeral of nine National Army soldiers who were killed in fighting the Republican Irregulars in County Kerry. Michael Collins, Chairman of the Provisional Government, and all the leading officers of the army in Dublin march beside the hearses. Each coffin is covered with the Republican tricolour. There are many clergymen and other civilians in the funeral procession.
Prominent Catholics of Dublin and Belfast are trying to effect a better understanding between the Ulster and Free State Governments, according to the Daily Mail. This newspaper further states that all efforts to this end, which have all been taken with the advice and approval of leading English Catholics, are without official character.
A message from Strabane, County Tyrone, received by the Exchange Telegraph Company on August 8 states that a settlement between the Ulster Government and the Free State authorities is imminent, the terms of agreement having been practically arranged in negotiations proceeding in London.
In Downing Street, however, all knowledge of any such Irish negotiations is disclaimed and a telegram from Belfast quotes Ulster Government officials as denying that a settlement with the Free State is imminent.
The Free State Government is also unaware of any negotiations for a settlement between the Ulster Government and the Free State authorities. It is further states that such negotiations are unlikely to take place.
(From: “Irish Irregulars Routed With Loss,” The New York Times, August 9, 1922 | Pictured: General Michael Collins inspects a soldier at Newcastle West, County Limerick, August 8, 1922)
Martin is born on July 23, 1921, in Ballylongford, County Kerry, to a middle-class family in which the children are raised speaking Irish at the dinner table. His parents, Conor and Katherine Fitzmaurice Martin, have five sons and five daughters. Four of the five sons become priests, including his younger brother, Francis Xavier Martin.
Martin participates in the research on the Dead Sea Scrolls and publishes 24 articles on Semitic palaeography. He does archaeological research and works extensively on the Byblos syllabary in Byblos, in Tyre, and in the Sinai Peninsula. He assists in his first exorcism while working in Egypt for archaeological research. In 1958, he publishes a work in two volumes, The Scribal Character of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
In 1964, Martin requests a release from his vows and from the Jesuit Order. He receives a provisional release in May 1965 and a dispensation from his vows of poverty and obedience on June 30, 1965. Even if dispensed from his religious vow of chastity, he remains under the obligation of chastity if still an ordained secular priest. He maintains that he remains a priest, saying that he had received a dispensation from Paul VI to that effect.
Martin moves to New York City in 1966, working as a dishwasher, a waiter, and taxi driver, while continuing to write. He co-founds an antiques firm and is active in communications and media for the rest of his life.
In 1967, Martin receives his first Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1970, he publishes the book The Encounter: Religion in Crisis, winning the Choice Book Award of the American Library Association. He then publishes Three Popes and the Cardinal: The Church of Pius, John and Paul in its Encounter with Human History (1972) and Jesus Now (1973). In 1970, he becomes a naturalizedU.S. citizen.
In 1969, Martin receives a second Guggenheim Fellowship, allowing him to write his first of four bestsellers, Hostage to the Devil: The Possession and Exorcism of Five Living Americans (1976). In the book, he calls himself an exorcist, claiming he assisted in several exorcisms. According to McManus Darraugh, William Peter Blatty “wrote a tirade against Malachi, saying his 1976 book was a fantasy, and he was just trying to cash in.” Darraugh also says that Martin became “an iconic person in the paranormal world.”
Martin is a periodic guest on Art Bell‘s radio program, Coast to Coast AM, between 1996 and 1998. The show continues to play tapes of his interviews on Halloween.
The Vatican restores Martin’s faculty to celebrate Mass in 1989, at his request. He is strongly supported by some Traditionalist Catholic sources and severely criticized by other sources, such as the National Catholic Reporter. He serves as a guest commentator for CNN during the live coverage of the visit of Pope John Paul II to the United States in October 1995.
On July 27, 1999, Martin dies in Manhattan of an intracerebral haemorrhage, four days after his 78th birthday. It is caused by a fall in his Manhattan apartment. The documentary Hostage to the Devil claims that Martin says he was pushed from a stool by a demonic force.
seamus dubhghaill 