Lyons is a lecturer in history at the University of Hull and then at Trinity College Dublin. He becomes the founding Professor of Modern History at the University of Kent in 1964, serving also as Master of Eliot College from 1969 to 1972.
Lyons principal works include Ireland Since the Famine, the standard university textbook for Irish history from the mid-19th to late-20th century, which The Times calls “the definitive work of modern Irish history” and a biography of Charles Stewart Parnell.
Lyons is critical of Cecil Woodham-Smith‘s much-acclaimed history of the Great Irish Famine and has generally been considered among the “revisionist” historians who reconsiders the role of the British state in events like the Famine.
Lyons marries Jennifer Ann Stuart McAlister in 1954, and has two sons, one of whom, Nicholas, is a former Lord Mayor of London.
On September 15, 1983, Lyons is nominated, unopposed, as chancellor of Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). But less than a week later he is dead, succumbing in Dublin on September 21 to acute pancreatitis, which had struck him in mid-August. He had begun to write the first draft of his W. B. Yeats biography (having accumulated a great archive of material) only a few weeks before. His ashes are buried beside Trinity College chapel.
Concannon is educated by the Loreto nuns in Coleraine, County Londonderry. In 1897, she studies modern languages at the Royal University of Ireland on a three-year scholarship. She studies abroad during these years as in 1899, she travels to Germany and studies German in Berlin University accompanied by her friend, Mary Macken. She then travels to France to study French at Sorbonne University. In 1900, she graduates Bachelor of Arts with first class honours and goes on to study Master of Arts in 1902 at the Royal University of Ireland. She is fortunate to being one of the first generation of educated women.
In 1906, Concannon marries Tomás Bán Ó Conceanainn, who she met in 1900 when he arrived home from the United States. They settle down in County Galway where they share the same love for the Irish language and write many Irish texts. They have no children. In Galway, she is a professor at University College Galway where she teaches history, which mainly involves the history of Irish women. In 1909, she is offered a lectureship at University College Dublin, in Italian, but the offer is then withdrawn before she can accept it, so she decides to pursue a writing career.
Concannon produces over twenty books, including works on religion, the history of Ireland and Irish women’s history. Her works are highly impacted by her political and nationalist views. Her analyses of Irish history is based on Catholicism and patriotism. She is also an advocate of Irish language restoration. Her first writings are love poems to her husband. These poems are ”simple, sensuous and passionate.”
Concannon also produces a number of imaginative historical text for children. She uses her married name for her publications and her first book, entitled A Garden of girls, or the famous schoolgirls of former days, is published in 1914. It is about “school life and education of real little girls” Her next well known piece is the Life of St. Columban in 1915, which is a study about the Irish ancient monastic life and a biography of a sixth-century saint.
Two of Concannon’s books, Daughters of Banba (1922) and St. Patrick (1932), receive the Tailteann Medal for Literature, and The Poor Clares in Ireland (1929) wins the National University Prize, a D.Litt. higher doctorate degree for historical research.
Concannon’s most common publication, Women of ‘Ninety Eight, is dedicated to all the dead women and all the living ones who have given their loved ones. This book emerges on the ideologies of Catholicism and patriotism “praising the devotion of Irish nationalist women while emphasising the centrality of women’s spiritual and domestic role in the home to the well-being of the nation.” As this work is written during the time of the Irish War of Independence, she stresses the importance of women help during the rebellion as “they acted as messengers and intelligence officers,” and in some cases, they fought as any men.
Concerning the Land Purchase (Guarantee Fund) Bill 1935, which according to George Cecil Bennett will negatively impact the rural middle class of which he is a representative, Bennett accuses Concannon and her fellow Dublin men of not caring about the people of the country. Concannon goes on to vote that the Dáil should disagree with the Seanad Éireann-proposed bill with 71 others.
Though Concannon is a TD as a university representative, she votes with her party to remove university representation from the Dáil, leading one TD to say, “I am very much surprised to see such a distinguished scholar and such a great contributor to Irish literature as Deputy Mrs. Concannon voting for the disfranchisement of the University that she has so well and so ably represented.”
Concannon speaks on behalf of Irish women in the Dáil in 1936. She speaks on how Irish women play a fundamental role in Ireland’s agricultural economy and therefore more money should be put toward educating these women.
Concannon is one of the minority voices against the role appointed to women in Éamon de Valera‘s constitution. She does not contest the Dáil election of 1937.
After the adoption of the Constitution of Ireland in 1937, the National University of Ireland constituency is reconstituted in the new Seanad Éireann. The first election takes place in 1938, and Concannon is elected. She is a popular figure and is re-elected each election in the Seanad until she dies in office on February 27, 1952.
Johnny Adair, leader of “C Company” of the Ulster Loyalistparamilitary organisation Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), a cover name of the Ulster Defence Association, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on October 27, 1963. He is known as Mad Dog. He is expelled from the organisation in 2002 following a violent power struggle. Since 2003, he, his family and a number of supporters have been forced to leave Northern Ireland by other loyalists.
Adair is born into a working class loyalist background and raised in Belfast. He grows up in the Lower Oldpark area, a site of many sectarian clashes during “The Troubles.” By all accounts, he has little parental supervision, and does not attend school regularly. He takes to the streets, forming a skinheadstreet gang with a group of young loyalist friends, who “got involved initially in petty, then increasingly violent crime.” Eventually, he starts a rock band called Offensive Weapon, which during performances espouses support for the British National Front.
While still in his teens, Adair joins the Ulster Young Militants (UYM), and later the Ulster Defence Association, a loyalist paramilitary organisation which also calls itself the Ulster Freedom Fighters.
By the early 1990s, Adair has established himself as head of the UDA/UFF’s “C Company” based on the Shankill Road. When he is charged with terrorist offences in 1995, he admits that he had been a UDA commander for three years up to 1994. During this time, he and his colleagues are involved in multiple and random murders of Catholic civilians. At his trial in 1995, the prosecuting lawyer says he is dedicated to his cause against those whom he “regarded as militant republicans – among whom he had lumped almost the entire Roman Catholic population.” Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) detectives believe his unit killed up to 40 people during this period.
Adair once remarks to a Catholic journalist from the Republic of Ireland upon the discovery of her being Catholic, that normally Catholics travel in the boot of his car. According to a press report in 2003, he is handed details of republican suspects by British Army intelligence, and is even invited for dinner in the early 1990s. In his autobiography, he claims he was frequently passed information by sympathetic British Army members, while his own whereabouts were passed to republican paramilitaries by the RUC Special Branch, who, he claims, hated him.
The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bombing of a fish shop on the Shankill Road in October 1993 is an attempt to assassinate Adair and the rest of the UDA’s Belfast leadership in reprisal for attacks on Catholics. The IRA claims that the office above the shop is regularly used by the UDA for meetings and one is due to take place shortly after the bomb is set to explode. The bomb goes off early, killing one IRA man, Thomas Begley, and nine Protestant civilians. The UFF retaliates with a random attack on the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel, County Londonderry, which kills eight civilians, two of whom are Protestants. Adair survives 13 assassination attempts, most of which are carried out by the IRA and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).
During this time, undercover officers from the Royal Ulster Constabulary record months of discussions with Adair, in which he boasts of his activities, producing enough evidence to charge him with directing terrorism. He is convicted and sentenced to 16 years in HM Prison Maze. In prison, according to some reports, he sells drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy tablets and amphetamines to other loyalist prisoners, earning him an income of £5000 a week.
In January 1998, Adair is one of five loyalist prisoners visited in the prison by British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam. She persuades them to drop their objection to their political representatives continuing the talks that leads to the Good Friday Agreement in April. In 1999, he is released early as part of a general amnesty for political prisoners after the Agreement.
Following his release, much of Adair’s activities are bound up with violent internecine feuds within the UDA and between the UDA and other loyalist paramilitary groupings. The motivation for such violence is sometimes difficult to piece together. It involves a combination of political differences over the loyalist ceasefires, rivalry between loyalists over control of territory and competition over the proceeds of organised crime.
In 1999, shortly after his release from prison, Adair is shot at and grazed in the head by a bullet at a UB40 concert in Belfast. He blames the shooting on republicans, but it is thought that rival loyalists are to blame.
In August 2000, Adair is again mildly injured by a pipe bomb he is transporting in a car. He again attempts to blame the incident on an attack by republicans, but this claim is widely discounted. A feud breaks out at the time between the UDA and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) leaving several loyalists dead. As a result of Adair’s involvement in the violence, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Mandelson, revokes his early release and returns him to prison.
In May 2002, Adair is released from prison again. Once free, he is a key part of an effort to forge stronger ties between the UDA/UFF and the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), a small breakaway faction of the UVF loyalist paramilitary organization in Northern Ireland. The most open declaration of this is a joint mural depicting Adair’s UDA “C company” and the LVF. Other elements in the UDA/UFF strongly resist these movements, which they see as an attempt by Adair to win external support in a bid to take over the leadership of the UDA. Some UDA members dislike his overt association with the drugs trade, with which the LVF are even more heavily involved. A loyalist feud begins, and ends with several men dead and scores evicted from their homes.
On September 25, 2002, Adair is expelled from the UDA/UFF along with close associate John White, and the organisation almost splits as Adair tries to woo influential leaders such as Andre Shoukri, who are initially sympathetic to him. There are attempts on Adair’s and White’s lives.
Adair returns to prison in January 2003, when his early release licence is revoked by Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Paul Murphy, on grounds of engaging in unlawful activity. On February 1, 2003, UDA divisional leader John Gregg is shot dead along with another UDA member, Rab Carson, on returning from a Rangers F.C. match in Glasgow. The killing is widely blamed on Adair’s C Company as Gregg is one of those who organised his expulsion from the UDA. Five days later, on February 6, about twenty Adair supporters, including White, flee their homes for Scotland, widely seen as a response to severe intimidation.
Adair is released from prison again on January 10, 2005. He immediately leaves Northern Ireland and joins his family in Bolton, Lancashire, where it is claimed he stays with supporters of Combat 18 and the Racial Volunteer Force.
The police in Bolton question Adair’s wife, Gina, about her involvement in the drugs trade, and his son, nicknamed both “Mad Pup” and “Daft Dog,” is charged with selling crack cocaine and heroin. Adair is arrested and fined for assault and threatening behaviour in September 2005. He had married Gina Crossan, his partner for many years and the mother of his four children, at HM Prison Maze on February 21, 1997. She is three years Adair’s junior and grew up in the same Lower Oldpark neighbourhood.
After being released, Adair is almost immediately arrested again for violently assaulting Gina, who suffers from ovarian cancer. Since this episode he reportedly moves to Scotland, living in Troon in Ayrshire.
In May 2006, Adair reportedly receives £100,000 from John Blake publishers for a ghost-written autobiography.
In November 2006, the UK’s Five television channel transmits an observational documentary on Adair made by Dare Films.
Adair appears in a documentary made by Donal MacIntyre and screened in 2007. The focus of the film centers around Adair and another supposedly reformed character, a Neo-Nazi from Germany called Nick Greger, and their trip to Uganda to build an orphanage. Adair is seen to fire rifles, stating it is the first time he has done so without wearing gloves. He also admits to being “worried sick” and “pure sick with worry” after Greger disappears in Uganda for days on end. It turns out that he had gone off and married a Ugandan lady. Adair confesses via telephone that he “thought something might have happened to Nick.”
On July 20, 2015, three Irish republicans, Antoin Duffy, Martin Hughes and Paul Sands, are found guilty of planning to murder Adair and Sam McCrory. Charges against one of the accused in the trial are dropped on July 1.
On September 10, 2016, Adair’s son, Jonathan Jr., is found dead in Troon, aged 32. He dies from an accidental overdose while celebrating the day after his release from prison for motoring offences. He had been in and out of prison since the family fled Northern Ireland. He served a five-year sentence for dealing heroin and crack cocaine. The year before, he had been cleared of a gun raid at a party and in 2012 is the target of a failed bomb plot. He was also facing trial later that year on drugs charges.
In December 2023, while recording a podcast with far-right activist Tommy Robinson, Adair surprisingly expresses a grudging respect for the IRA hunger strikers, describing the manner of their deaths as “dedication at the highest level” for a political cause and admitting that he would not have volunteered to do the same if asked.
Twenty miles off the coast of County Donegal on October 2, 1942, the luxury Cunard liner RMS Queen Mary, converted into a troop carrier for World War II, smashes into her escort ship, the British Royal NavycruiserHMS Curaçoa (D41). The HMS Curacoa, which had connected with the RMS Queen Mary to escort her for the final two hundred miles to the port of Greenock, Scotland, sinks with the loss of 338 men. As are his orders, Captain Cyril Illingworth of the RMS Queen Mary, which is carrying an estimated 15,000 U.S. troops, does not stop to mount a rescue operation.
On a near perfect afternoon, the RMS Queen Mary is off the Irish coast. The vessel is setting a zigzag course to help evade U-boats and long-range Germanbombers. The RMS Queen Mary has caught up with her 4,290 tonne escort vessel, the HMS Curacoa, and is set to overtake her.
Aboard the HMS Curacoa, seaman Ernest Watson is admiring the RMS Queen Mary’s majestic lines when he notices the bow is swinging toward the cruiser. To his horror, she continues to swing and is soon on a collision course. The gap narrows inexorably as the stunned Watson finally finds his vocal cords and screams, “She’s going to ram us.” Later Watson describes how many of his mates are so shocked they cannot move.
Within seconds, there is a screech of twisted metal followed by the hiss of steam and the screams of those injured or trapped below. The RMS Queen Mary, twenty times larger than the cruiser, has been traveling at top revs giving her a speed of 28.5 knots. The impact swings the HMS Curacoa broadside on and the troopship slices through her 10 cm armour plating. It is all over in seconds, and the troopship continues on her zigzag course leaving the HMS Curacoa cut in two with the forward and aft sections separated by 100 metres of ocean.
At the moment of impact, as the HMS Curacoa reels in the water, Watson and many other seaman on deck are thrown into the freezing water. Even as they surface they watch in horror as the stern quickly sinks, taking with it the men trapped behind the water-tight doors. The forward section follows soon after, leaving the men in the murky water surrounded by debris, oil and drowned or mutilated bodies. It is every man for himself as survivors cling to floating wreckage. They are about 20 nautical miles off the Irish coast which, had boats or rafts been launched, would put them within easy reach of safety.
The survivors believe the RMS Queen Mary will turn back to pick them up, however, it is with obvious despair that they watch her disappear over the horizon. To sail on is probably the toughest decision Captain Illingworth ever has to make. The World War I veteran has many years of experience by the time he has risen to become Cunard-White Star Line’s senior commander and master of the RMS Queen Mary. He is obeying orders that under no circumstances is he to stop until the RMS Queen Mary has safely delivered the troops to Britain. His only option is to signal nearby British destroyers to rescue survivors.
Two destroyers react to Captain Illingworth’s message and steam toward the wreckage where two hours after the collision, they find many bodies of sailors who have died of hypothermia. Only the hardiest live long enough to land in Londonderry, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the next day. Of the HMS Curacoa’s 430 personnel, only 99 seamen and two officers survive. Because of war-time security the official inquiry is delayed until the war in Europe is over. Then, in June 1945, only a few weeks after VE Day, the Admiralty Commissioners sued Cunard-White Star Line claiming the RMS Queen Mary had been responsible.
It appears to be a clear-cut case. The HMS Curacoa’s captain, John Boutwood, gives evidence to a Royal Navy inquiry and is acquitted without a reprimand. Later he gains the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). Boutwood says the HMS Curacoa steamed at some 3 knots slower than the larger vessel which had been in the process of overtaking at the time of the collision. He says he had been amazed when the troopship continued turning to starboard and closed the gap between the vessels. When the collision occurred he, and all others on the bridge, had clung to whatever was nearest.
At first, Boutwood vainly hopes the damaged ship will stay afloat. He also says it was impossible to give orders because of the noise of escaping steam from the boiler room. The RMS Queen Mary’s first officer gives evidence that he had taken over the helm less than two minutes before she rams the cruiser. She is about 500m away and on the starboard bow. He is unconcerned at the narrow gap because he expects HMS Curacoa to take evasive action. He believes the cruiser, a more manoeuvrable vessel, would change course.
The first officer had also been reassured by Captain Illingworth, that the cruiser was “experienced in escorting and would keep out of the way.” At a later hearing some months after the opening, Illingworth says he had felt a bump at the time of the collision and had asked the quartermaster if they had been hit by a bomb. The answer was: “No sir, we have hit the cruiser.”
The judge holds the cruiser responsible saying the normal rules of an overtaking vessel keeping clear of the other does not apply in this case. He says the cruiser could have avoided the collision up to seconds before it occurred. The Admiralty, faced with huge compensation to the families of the dead sailors, appeals. In appeal the ruling is that the cruiser was responsible for two-thirds of the damage and the RMS Queen Mary for one-third. Still not satisfied, the case goes to the House of Lords where the verdict of the Appeal Court is upheld in February 1949. No survivor comes out unscathed but above all others, Illingworth has to live with the memory of leaving British sailors to fight for their lives in the ocean.
However, when asked at the first hearing if he felt Illingworth had made the right decision, the captain of the HMS Curacoa says, “I would say, yes.” The RMS Queen Mary continues as a troopship until August 11, 1945. The vessel is now a floating attraction at Long Beach, California.
(From: “SS Queen Mary & the loss of HMS Curacoa 1942” by A. N. Other and NHSA Webmaster, Naval Historical Society of Australia, https://navyhistory.au)
James NesbittMBE, a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Detective Chief Inspector who is best known for heading the Murder Squad team investigating the notorious Shankill Butchers‘ killings in the mid-1970s, dies on August 27, 2014, following a brief illness.
Nesbitt is born on September 29, 1934, in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the son of James, an electrician, and Ellen. He is brought up in the Church of Ireland religion and lives with his parents and elder sister, Maureen, in a terraced house in Cavehill Road, North Belfast, which is considered to be a middle class area at the time. Having first attended the Model Primary School in Ballysillan Road, in 1946 he moves on to Belfast Technical High School where he excels as a pupil. From an early age, he is fascinated by detective stories and dreams about becoming a detective himself.
As a child, Nesbitt avidly reads about all the celebrated murder trials in the newspapers. At the age of 16, he opts to leave school and goes to work as a sales representative for a linen company where he remains for seven years.
At the age of 23, Nesbitt seeks a more exciting career and realises his childhood dream by joining the Royal Ulster Constabulary as a uniformed constable. He applies at the York Road station in Belfast and passes his entry exams. His first duty station is at Swatragh, County Londonderry. During this period, the Irish Republican Army‘s Border Campaign is being waged. He earns two commendations during the twelve months he spends at the Swatragh station, having fought off two separate IRA gun attacks which had seen an Ulster Special Constabulary man shot. In 1958, he is transferred to the Coleraine RUC station where his superiors grant him the opportunity to assist in detective work. Three years later he is promoted to the rank of detective.
Nesbitt marries Marion Wilson in 1967 and begins to raise a family. By 1971 he is back in his native Belfast and holds the rank of Detective Sergeant. He enters the RUC’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) section and is based at Musgrave Street station. Many members of the RUC find themselves targeted by both republican and loyalistparamilitaries as the conflict known as The Troubles grows in intensity during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In September 1973, Nesbitt is promoted to Detective Inspector and moves to head up the RUC’s C or “Charlie” Division based in Tennent Street, off the Shankill Road, the heartland of loyalism and home of many loyalist paramilitaries. C Division covers not only the Shankill but also the republican Ardoyne and “The Bone” areas. Although he encounters considerable suspicion from his subordinates when he arrives at Tennent Street, he manages to eventually create much camaraderie within the ranks of those under his command when before there had been rivalry and discord. C Division loses a total of twelve men as a result of IRA attacks. During his tenure as Detective Chief Inspector at Tennent Street, he and his team investigate a total of 311 killings and solve around 250 of the cases.
By 1975, Nesbitt is encountering death and serious injury on a daily basis as the violence in Northern Ireland shows no signs of abating. However, toward the end of the year, he is faced with the first of a series of brutal killings that add a new dimension to the relentless tit-for-tat killings between Catholics and Protestants that has already made 1975 “one of the bloodiest years of the conflict.”
The Shankill Butchers are an Ulster loyalist paramilitary gang, many of whom are members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), that is active between 1975 and 1982 in Belfast. It is based in the Shankill area and is responsible for the deaths of at least 23 people, most of whom are killed in sectarian attacks.
The gang kidnaps, tortures and murders random civilians suspected of being Catholics. Each is beaten ferociously and has their throat slashed with a butcher knife. Some are also tortured and attacked with a hatchet. The gang also kills six Ulster Protestants over personal disputes and two other Protestants mistaken for Catholics.
Most of the gang are eventually caught by Nesbitt and his Murder Squad and, in February 1979, receive the longest combined prison sentences in United Kingdom legal history.
In 1991, after Channel 4 broadcasts a documentary claiming that the Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee had been reorganised as an alliance between loyalist paramilitaries, senior RUC members and leader figures in Northern Irish business and finance, Nesbitt and Detective Inspector Chris Webster are appointed by Chief Constable Hugh Annesley to head up an internal inquiry into the collusion allegations. The investigation delivers its verdict in February 1993 and exonerates all those named as Committee members who did not have previous terrorist convictions arguing that they are “respectable members of the community” and in some cases “the aristocracy of the country.”
Prior to his retirement, Nesbitt has received a total of 67 commendations, which is the highest number ever given to a policeman in the history of the United Kingdom. In 1980, he is awarded the MBE “in recognition of his courage and success in combating terrorism.”
Nesbitt dies on August 27, 2014, after a brief illness.
Discontented with James Chichester-Clark and Brian Faulkner who come to government after O’Neill’s 1969 fall from power, Boal resigns from the UUP in 1971 and joins Ian Paisley in establishing the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in order to provide dissident unionist opinion with a viable political alternative. He works as the first chairman and one of the first public representatives of the DUP and continues to sit in Stormont during the years of 1971–1972. He later resumes his practice as a barrister.
While Boal’s interest in federalism diminishes after the 1970s, the federalist Boal scheme of January 1974 is again put forward by liberal protestants such as John Robb as late as 2007. His friendship with Paisley finally breaks when the DUP agrees to enter government with Sinn Féin in 2007. He tells Paisley, who takes the breach very hard, that he had betrayed everything he ever advocated.
Mitchel is born in Camnish, near Dungiven, County Derry on November 3, 1815, the son of a Presbyterian minister. At the age of four, he is sent to a classical school, run by an old minister named Moor, nicknamed “Gospel Moor” by the students. He reads books from a very early age. When a little over five years old, he is introduced to Latin grammar by his teacher and makes quick progress. In 1830, not yet 15 years old, he enters Trinity College, Dublin (TCD) and obtains a law degree in 1834.
In the spring of 1836, Mitchel meets Jane Verner, the only daughter of Captain James Verner. Though both families are opposed to the relationship, they become engaged in the autumn and are married on February 3, 1837, by the Rev. David Babington in Drumcree Church, the parish church of Drumcree.
Mitchel works in a law office in Banbridge, County Down, where he eventually comes into conflict with the local Orange Order. He meets Thomas Davis and Charles Gavan Duffy during visits to Dublin. He joins the Young Ireland movement and begins to write for The Nation. Deeply affected by the misery and death caused by the Great Famine, he becomes convinced that nothing will ever come of the constitutional efforts to gain Irish freedom. He then forms his own paper, United Irishman, to advocate passive resistance by Ireland’s starving masses.
In May 1848, the British tire of Mitchel’s open defiance. Ever the legal innovators in Ireland, they invent a crime especially for the Young Irelanders – felony-treason. They arrest him for violating this new law and close down his paper. A rigged jury convicts him, and he is deported first to Bermuda and then to Australia. However, on June 8, 1853, he escapes to the United States.
Mitchel works as a journalist in New York City and then moves to the South. When the American Civil War erupts, he is a strong supporter of the Southern cause, seeing parallels with the position of the Irish. His family fully backs his commitment to the Southern cause. He loses two sons in the war, one at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 and another at the Battle of Fort Sumter in 1864, and another son loses an arm. His outspoken support of the Confederacy causes him to be jailed for a time at Fort Monroe, where one of his fellow prisoners is Confederate PresidentJefferson Davis.
In 1874, the British allow Mitchel to return to Ireland and in 1875 he is elected in a by-election to be a member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom representing the Tipperary constituency. However, his election is invalidated on the grounds that he is a convicted felon. He contests the seat again in the resulting by-election and is again elected, this time with an increased vote.
Unfortunately, Mitchel, one of the staunchest enemies to English rule of Ireland in history, dies in Newry on March 20, 1875, and is buried there. Thirty-eight years later, his grandson, John Purroy Mitchel, is elected Mayor of New York City.
Kelly is one of five sons and four daughters born to William Kelly, retail and wholesale fruitier, and his wife Margaret (née Maginness). Living off Carlisle Circus in a flashpoint area of north Belfast and close to Crumlin Road Gaol, the Kellys are a strongly republican family, regularly supplying republican inmates with fruit and assisting them on their release.
Kelly joins the IRA in the early 1950s when he is eighteen and takes part in the Border Campaign of 1956–62 but is arrested in December 1956 and imprisoned until 1963. He is a member of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) in 1967–69 which leads on to sectarian riots in Belfast. A leader of the newly formed Provisional IRA in 1969, he is involved in the formation of “citizens’ defence groups” to protect nationalist areas of Belfast from loyalist rioters who are largely unhampered by the police.
Kelly is jailed on three occasions for IRA related activity spending a total of fifteen years in prison in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. His first term is for his activity in the 1956 IRA border campaign. He also serves a six-month term in 1973 in the Republic of Ireland for being a member of the IRA.
Commenting later on the Troubles, Kelly says, “Yes, it was a terrible period. But you can’t turn the clock back. The Irish government did not create the Provisional IRA. What happened was as inevitable as the changing seasons.”
The citizens’ defence groups seek help from the government in Dublin in 1969, then led by Jack Lynch. Several ministers respond and arrange a fund of £100,000 but the planned arms shipment fails. Kelly later says, “These discussions were all about guns. The whole thing was government-sponsored, government-backed and government-related.” The planning includes travel to Britain, Europe, and on to the United States where he meets the founders of NORAID. He is one of the co-defendants in the subsequent Dublin “Arms Trial” with ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney, accused of conspiring to import arms illegally into the Republic of Ireland. The trial eventually collapses from a lack of evidence, as the relevant government files are kept secret, but the Irish government sacks several ministers as a result.
Kelly goes into electoral politics, serving on Magherafelt District Council from 1997. At the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly election he is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly as a Sinn Féin member for Mid Ulster. He is deselected before the 2003 election, and criticises the decision by the Sinn Féin leadership to support policing reforms. In January 2006 he co-writes a letter with Brendan Hughes which casts doubt on the claims that dissident republicans have threatened Sinn Féin leaders and claims that the real threats are being made by the Sinn Féin leadership against those who seek a debate on policing. He leaves Sinn Féin which he considers too controlled from the centre, opposing the leadership “deceit and the philosophy of creative ambiguity,” and he retires from politics.
Kelly dies in Maghera following a long battle with cancer on September 5, 2007. Many tributes are paid to him including a minute’s silence before the Derry Senior Football Championship quarter final between St. Patrick’s GAC, Loup, and Dungiven GAC on September 8, 2007, at the home of his local club, Watty Graham GAC, Glen. A Na Piarsaigh Belfast GAC jersey is draped over his coffin before he is interred at Maghera Catholic Graveyard.
McLaughlin is one of ten children of Patrick McLaughlin, butcher and cattle dealer, and Annie McLaughlin (née Doherty). He starts singing in local churches in the Bogside at the age of seven, and as a teenager adds two years to his age to enlist in the Irish Guards, later serving abroad with the Palestine Police Force, before returning in the late 1930s to join the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).
Known as The Singing Bobby, McLaughlin becomes a local celebrity before starting to work in the UK variety circuit, where he also plays summer seasons in English seaside resorts. The renowned Irish tenor John McCormack (1884–1945) advises him that his voice is better suited to a lighter repertoire than the operatic one he has in mind and urges him to find an agent. He finds the noted impresario Jack Hylton (1892–1965) who books him but is unable to fit his full name on the bill, thus Joseph McLaughlin becomes Josef Locke.
Locke makes an immediate impact when featured in “Starry Way,” a twenty-week summer show at the Opera House Theatre in Blackpool, Lancashire, England in 1946 and is rebooked for the following summer, then starring for three seasons at the Blackpool Hippodrome. He appears in ten Blackpool seasons from 1946 to 1969, not the nineteen seasons he later claims.
Locke makes his first radio broadcast in 1949 and subsequently appears on television programmes such as Rooftop Rendezvous, Top of the Town, All-star Bill and The Frankie Howerd Show. He is signed to the Columbia label in 1947, and his first releases are the two Italian songs “Santa Lucia” and “Come Back to Sorrento.”
In 1947, Locke releases “Hear My Song, Violetta,” which becomes forever associated with him. It is based on a 1936 tango “Hör’ mein Lied, Violetta” by Othmar Klose and Rudolf Lukesch. The song “Hör’ mein Lied, Violetta” is often covered, including by Peter Alexander and is itself based on Giuseppe Verdi‘s La traviata. His other songs are mostly a mixture of ballads associated with Ireland, excerpts from operettas, and familiar favourites.
In 1948, Locke appears in several films produced by Mancunian Films, usually as versions of himself. He plays himself in the film Holidays with Pay. He also appears as “Sergeant Locke” in the 1949 comedy What a Carry On!
In 1958, after Locke has appeared in five Royal Variety Performancetelecasts, and while he is still at the peak of his career, the British tax authorities begin to make substantial demands that he declines to meet. Eventually he flees the country for Ireland, where he lays low for several years. When his differences with the taxman are eventually settled, he relaunches his career in England with tours of the northern variety clubs and summer seasons at Blackpool’s Queen’s Theatre in 1968 and 1969, before retiring to County Kildare, emerging for the occasional concert in England. He later appears on British and Irish television, and in November 1984 is given a lengthy 90-minute tribute in honour of the award he is to receive at the Olympia Theatre commentating his career in show business on Gay Byrne‘s The Late Late Show. He also makes many appearances on the BBC Television‘s long running variety show The Good Old Days.
In 1991, the Peter Chelsom film Hear My Song is released. It is a fantasy based on the notion of Locke returning from his Irish exile in the 1960s to complete an old love affair and save a Liverpool-based Irish night-club from ruination. Locke is played by Ned Beatty, with the singing voice of Vernon Midgley. The film leads to a revival in Locke’s career. A compilation CD is released, and he appears on This Is Your Life in March 1992. He performs in front of the Prince and Princess of Wales at the 1992 Royal Variety Performance, singing “Goodbye,” the final song performed by his character in the film. He announces prior to the song that this will be his final public appearance.
Locke dies at the age of 82 at a nursing home in Clane, County Kildare on October 15, 1999, and is cremated at Glasnevin Cemetery. He is survived by his wife, Carmel, and a son.
On March 22, 2005, a bronze memorial to Locke is unveiled outside the City Hotel on Queen’s Quay in Derry by Phil Coulter and John Hume. The memorial is designed by Terry Quigley. It takes the form of a spiraling scroll divided by lines, representing a musical stave. The spiral suggests the flowing melody of a song and is punctuated by images illustrating episodes in his life, including Locke in police uniform, Blackpool Tower, Carnegie Hall, and the musical notes of the opening lines of “Hear My Song.”
A biography of the singer, entitled Josef Locke: The People’s Tenor, by Nuala McAllister Hart is published in March 2017, the centenary of his birth. The book corrects many myths that the charismatic Locke circulated about his career.
The agreement on January 28, 1610, between the Crown and the Irish Society of London to carry out the plantation of Derry, Coleraine, and part of Tyrone refers to a significant historical event known as the Plantation of Ulster. This event takes place in the early 17th century and is part of the broader policy of the English and later British colonization of Ireland.
The Plantation of Ulster is a process initiated by the English Crown, primarily under King James I, to colonize the province of Ulster in the north of Ireland with English and ScottishProtestant settlers to defend against a future attack from within or without. This follows the Flight of the Earls in 1607, when several Gaelic Irish lords leave Ireland, leading to the confiscation of their lands by the Crown.
In his survey, James I finds that the town of Derry (renamed Londonderry) can become either a great asset as a control over the River Foyle and Lough Swilly, or it can become an inviting back door if the people of the area are against him. He pressures the guilds of the City of London to fund the resettlement of the area, including the building of a new walled city.
The Irish Society is formed by the City of London in response to James I’s royal request to participate in the plantation. The Society is a consortium of Londonlivery companies, which are trade associations and guilds.
The Crown grants the Irish Society lands in Ulster, particularly in modern-day County Londonderry (then including what is now County Tyrone), to establish new settlements. The key areas are the city of Derry and the town of Coleraine.
The primary objective is to settle Ulster with loyal Protestant subjects, thus consolidating English influence in Ireland. The plantation aims to bring about economic development and to establish control over what is considered a rebellious and unruly region.
The livery companies of London undertake the establishment of new towns, fortifications, and the settlement of the land with tenants. However, the implementation faces various challenges, including resistance from the native Irish population, logistical difficulties, and issues of mismanagement.
The Plantation of Ulster has profound and lasting demographic, social, and political impacts. It leads to significant changes in land ownership and contributes to the religious and cultural diversification of the region. The plantation is also a root cause of the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland, contributing to centuries of conflict between the Protestant and Catholic communities.
The agreement between the Crown and the Irish Society of London to carry out the Plantation of Ulster is a pivotal event in Irish history. It plays a crucial role in shaping the historical trajectory of Ireland, particularly Northern Ireland, and its effects are still felt in the region’s complex socio-political landscape.
The Plantation of Ulster remains a subject of historical analysis and debate, reflecting the complex interplay of colonization, cultural identity, and conflict in Irish history.
(From: “The Crown and the Irish Society of London, Agree to Carry Out the Plantation of Derry, Coleraine and Part of Tyrone,” McManus Family History, http://www.mcmanusfamilyhistory.com | Pictured: The crest of the Irish Society of London)
seamus dubhghaill 