Long comes from a carpentry and blacksmithing background. In 1959, he enters Queen’s University Belfast to study civil engineering. He graduates with first class honours and then takes a PhD at Queens. In 1967, he moves to Canada, working as a bridge designer for Fenco Engineering in Toronto.
Long, however, spends only a year in Canada, returning to Belfast in 1968 to become an associate professor of civil engineering at Queen’s University Belfast. In 1976, he is promoted to a full professorship. His work is largely in the field of concrete structures, particularly in chloride resistance, maintenance problems and arch bridge structures. He publishes twenty papers in journals managed by the Institution of Civil Engineers and wins eight of the institution’s medals for these, including the ICE Gold Medal.
From 1997 Long works on the FlexiArch, a precast concrete arch in which the individual voussoirs are joined by a flexible polymeric membrane. The arch arrives to site flat packed and when lifted into position by a crane, the gaps between the voussoirs close under gravity and form the correct arch profile. He patents the product, which is produced by Irish precast manufacturer Macrete, in 2004. The product can be constructed within a day and, containing no corrodible elements, has been stated to have a design lifespan of 300 years. More than fifty FlexiArch bridges have been constructed in the UK and Ireland and spans up to 30m are possible.
By 2002, Long is appointed dean of the faculty of engineering at QUB. In November of that year, he is appointed president of the ICE for the 2002–2003 session, the first Northern Irish person to hold that position. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Institute for the Advancement of Engineering.
Long is appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2006 New Year Honours for services to higher education and civil engineering. He resigns as professor at QUB in 2006 but remains there as an emeritus professor in the School of Natural and Built Environment. Since 2015, the ICE Northern Ireland awards the Adrian Long medal to the best paper in an ICE journal to be authored by a Northern Ireland member. The medal features a bust of Long.
Coalisland is a town in County Tyrone that has a tradition of militant republicanism; five residents are killed by British security forces before the first IRA ceasefire in 1994. In February 1992, four IRA volunteers are killed in a gun battle with the SAS during their escape after a machine gun attack on the RUC/British Army barracks there. Three months later, an IRA bomb attack on a British Army patrol at Cappagh, in which a paratrooper loses his legs, triggers a series of clashes between local residents and British troops on May 12 and 17. A number of civilians and soldiers are injured, a soldier’s backpack radio destroyed, and two British weapons stolen. The melee is followed by a 500-strong protest in the town and bitter exchanges between Republic of Ireland and British officials. Further scuffles between civilians and soldiers are reported in the town on March 6, 1994.
At 9:40 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, 1997, a grenade is thrown at the joint British Army/RUC base at Coalisland, blowing a hole in the perimeter fence. The RUC reports that a 1 kg device hit the fence ten feet off the ground. Another source claims that the device is a coffee-jar bomb filled with Semtex. The grenade is thrown or fired by two unidentified men. At the time of the attack, there is an art exhibition at Coalisland Heritage Hall, also known as The Mill, from where the explosion and the gunshots that follow are clearly heard. The incident lasts less than two minutes.
Just one minute after the IRA attack, bypassers hear high-velocity rounds buzzing around them. A number of men, apparently SAS soldiers, get out of civilian vehicles wearing baseball caps with “Army” stamped on the front. A source initially describes them as members of the 14 Field Security and Intelligence Company. The men are firing Browning pistols and Heckler & Kochsubmachine guns. Witnesses say there are eight to ten gunshots, while a republican source claims that up to eighteen rounds are fired. Nineteen-year-old Gareth Doris is shot in the stomach and falls to the ground. He is allegedly returning from the local church and is in the company of a priest when he is shot. A local priest, Seamus Rice, is driving out of the church car park when his car is hit by bullets, smashing the windscreen.
Three minutes after the blast, hundreds of angry residents gather at the scene and confront the undercover soldiers. The soldiers fire live rounds at the ground and into the air to keep people back. The crowd keeps drawing back and moving forward again until 9:50 p.m., when the RUC arrives and begins firing plastic bullets at the protesters. Two women are wounded by plastic bullets and the undercover soldiers then flee in unmarked cars, setting off crackers or fireworks at the same time. Sinn FéincouncillorFrancie Molloy claims that the protesters forced the SAS to withdraw, saving Doris’s life in the process. Witnesses allegedly fear an undercover soldier brandishing a pistol would have killed the wounded Doris with a shot to his head.
Afterward, hundreds of residents are forced to leave their homes as security forces search the area near the base. This keeps tensions high, according to local republican activist Bernadette McAliskey. Two men are later questioned by the RUC about the attack.
The attack, along with two large bombings the same day in Wilmslow, England, raise concerns that the IRA is trying to influence the upcoming UK general election. Martin McGuinness describes the shooting as “murderous,” while independent councillor Jim Canning says that more than a dozen soldiers “were threatening to shoot anybody who moved […] while a young man lay shot on the ground.” Republican sources claim that this is another case of shoot-to-kill policy by the security forces. Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MPKen Maginnis, however, praises the SAS for their actions.
Gareth Doris is admitted to South Tyrone Hospital in Dungannon, where he is arrested after undergoing surgery. He is later transferred to Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast. He is later convicted for involvement in the bombing and sentenced to ten years in jail, before being released in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Gareth is the cousin of Tony Doris, an IRA member killed in an SAS ambush in the nearby village of Coagh on June 3, 1991, and a cousin of Sinn Féin leader Michelle O’Neill. According to Sinn Féin councillor Brendan Doris, another cousin of Gareth, “He absolutely denies being involved in terrorist activity of any description.” Amnesty International raises its concerns over the shooting and the fact that no warning is given beforehand.
DNA evidence collected in the area of the shooting leads to the arrest of Coalisland native Paul Campbell by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in 2015, on the charges of being the other man with Doris during the attack. In February 2020, he is convicted by a Diplock court in Belfast. He denies the charges but receives a seven-and-a-half-year sentence. The prosecutor acknowledges that Campbell would have been released by this time under the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement but argues that that was a decision for the parole commission, not the court.
On July 5, 1997, on the eve of the 1997 nationalist riots in Northern Ireland, the British Army/RUC base is the scene of another attack, when an IRA volunteer engages an armoured RUC vehicle with gunfire beside the barracks. One female officer is wounded. The former RUC station at Coalisland is eventually shut down in 2006 and sold for private development in 2010.
(Pictured: Coalisland RUC/British Army base in Coalisland, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland)
Donnelly is born in Killybrackey, near Dungannon, County Tyrone, on July 10, 1914, into a family of cattle breeders. His father, Joseph Donnelly, sells his farm in 1917 and the family moves to Dundalk and opens a greengrocer‘s shop. Joseph Donnelly becomes quite prosperous, running his shop, dealing cattle and buying and selling property in the Dundalk area. In addition to Charles, the Donnellys have five other sons and two daughters. His mother, Rose, dies in 1927, when he is 13 years old.
Donnelly receives his early education in the Christian Brothers school in Dundalk. When he is fourteen in 1928, the family moves again, this time to Dublin, where his father purchases a house on Mountjoy Square in the north inner city. He enrolls in O’Connell School on North Frederick Street but is expelled after only a few weeks. He spends the next few months wandering the streets of Dublin during school time before his father discovers what had happened. Also at this time, he meets and is befriended by radical political activists from the Irish Republican Army (IRA), the Communist Party of Ireland and the left-Republican group Saor Éire.
Donnelly’s father and aunts get him an apprenticeship with a carpenter, but he gives this up after a year to enroll in University College Dublin (UCD) in 1931, where he studies Logic, English, History and the Irish language. In university he begins writing poetry and prose for student publications but fails his first-year examinations. At this time, he also becomes deeply involved in radical left-wing and republican politics. He drops out of university in 1934, having failed his first-year exams three times and joins the radical group, the Republican Congress. There he befriends veteran republicans Frank Ryan and George Gilmore. He also becomes involved in a romantic relationship with another republican activist, Cora Hughes, Éamon de Valera‘s goddaughter and later partner of George Gilmore. In July 1934, he is arrested and imprisoned for two weeks for his role in picketing a Dublin bakery with other Congress members. After this, his father expells him from the family home and he spends a period sleeping in parks around Dublin.
The Republican Congress splits at its first annual meeting in September 1934, but the 20-year-old Donnelly is elected to the National Executive of the truncated organisation. Thereafter, he writes for the Congress newspaper on political and social questions. In January 1935, he is again arrested for assaulting a Garda at a Congress demonstration and is imprisoned for a month. In February 1935, he leaves Ireland for London. In the British capital he forms the first Republican Congress branch in London and becomes its first chairman. He finds employment variously as a dishwasher in pubs and cafes and as a reporter with an international news agency. While in London he remains a regular contributor to the Republican Congress newspaper and various left-wing publications. Together with two other poets, Leslie Daiken and Ewart Milne, he is one of the founders of a duplicated publication called Irish Front, the London journal of the Republican Congress. Daiken admits that many of the Irish Front editions are written almost entirely by Donnelly.
Eoin McNamee recalls Donnelly as “a frail looking Dublin man with a Tyrone background…he was something of an intellectual and clearly the theorist of the Irish Republican Congress in London at that time. He was well versed in Marxism, wrote for the Congress and Communist press, and frequently appeared on left-wing public platforms.”
In July 1936, on the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Donnelly urges the Republican Congress to send fighters to the International Brigades. He himself returns to Dublin with the intention of organising such a force. By the end of 1936, he has gone again to London and joins the Brigades. He reaches Spain on January 7, 1937, and at Albacete, meets up with an Irish contingent, led by Frank Ryan, known as the Connolly Column, who had come to Spain to fight on the Republican side. He and his comrades are attached to the American Lincoln Battalion. On February 15, after receiving only rudimentary military training, the Lincoln Battalion is thrown into the Battle of Jarama, near Madrid. Donnelly reaches the front on February 23, where he is promoted to the rank of field commander. On February 27, his unit is sent on a frontal assault on the Nationalist positions on a hill named Pingarrón. The object of the attack is to take the enemy trenches and ultimately to drive them across the Jarama River. He and his unit are pinned down by machine gun fire all day. In the evening, the Nationalists launch a counterattack.
A Canadian veteran recalls, “We ran for cover, Charlie Donnelly, the commander of an Irish company is crouched behind an olive tree. He has picked up a bunch of olives from the ground and is squeezing them. I hear him say something quietly between a lull in machine gun fire: Even the olives are bleeding.” The line later becomes famous.
A few minutes later, as his unit retreats, Donnelly is caught in a burst of gunfire. He is struck three times, in the right arm, the right side and the head. He collapses and dies instantly. His body lay on the battlefield until it is recovered by fellow Irish Brigadier Peter O’Connor on March 10. He is buried at Jarama in an unmarked grave with several of his comrades.
Written by Donnelly’s brother Joseph, a collection of his work, Charlie Donnelly: the Life and Poems, is published in 1987 by Dedalus Press. On the eve of the 71st anniversary of his death, February 26, 2008, he is commemorated with the unveiling of a plaque at his alma mater, UCD, attended by 150 people. The commemoration, organised jointly by a group of UCD students and the Donnelly family, is hosted by the School of English and also includes a lecture by Gerald Dawe on Donnelly’s life and poetry. In April 2008, the UCD branch of the Labour Party is renamed the Charlie Donnelly Branch in his honour.
Donnelly’s friend Blanaid Salkeld commemorates him in her poem “Casualties,” writing “That Charlie Donnelly small and frail/ And flushed with youth was rendered pale/ But not with fear, in what queer squalor/ Was smashed up his so-ordered valour.” A 1976 documentary about the Civil War by Cathal O’Shannon is entitled Even the Olives are Bleeding.
Donnelly is survived by a brother, Joseph, who manages to get many of his poems published in 1987; only five or six are published during his lifetime. Discussing his work, Colm Tóibín says it “mixed an Audenesque exactitude with a youthful romanticism… his poem “The Tolerance of Crows” belongs in any anthology of modern poetry.” In 1992, Donnelly has work included in Dedalus Irish Poets: An Anthology from Dedalus Press.
In June 1834, Archdale is elected the Member of Parliament for Fermanagh following the retirement of his uncle Mervyn Archdall. He is returned unopposed in the succeeding nine elections. From 1836, he is a noted member of the Orange Order and becomes treasurer of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. He votes in 1856 to disendow Maynooth College. When in 1868 he is asked to support a plea for the reprieve of Michael Barrett, a local Fenian under sentence of death in London, he refuses. He does not stand at the election of January 1874.
On the death of another uncle, Lt. Col. William Archdall, on January 1, 1857, Archdale inherits the family estates of Castle Archdale and Trillick in County Tyrone. He is appointed High Sheriff of Fermanagh in 1879.
Archdale has an interest in and also keeps racehorses. Other pursuits in which he is prominent are coursing and boating. He is a Freemason and member of five clubs.
Archdale marries Emma Inez, the daughter of Jacob Goulding of Kew, Surrey, with whom he has two sons, Mervyn Henry and Hugh James, and three daughters.
Archdale dies on December 22, 1895, at Cannes in the south of France. His estates pass to his brother, William Humphrys Archdale, who also takes over the representation of Fermanagh in Parliament.
After the death of Brendan Doris in 2006, Martin McGuinness pays tribute to the Doris family as “a well-known and respected republican family [who] have played a significant role in the republican struggle for many years.”
O’Neill becomes involved in republican politics in her teens, assisting her father with constituency work in his role as a Dungannon councillor. She joins Sinn Féin after the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, at the age of 21, and starts working as an advisor to Francie Molloy in the Northern Ireland Assembly, holding this role until 2005.
O’Neill automatically relinquishes her office following Paul Givan‘s resignation as first minister on February 3, 2022. Sinn Féin becomes the largest party after the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election, putting O’Neill in line to become the First Minister of Northern Ireland, and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader to become the deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. However, she remains to be officially sworn in as First Minister because, as part of its opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol, the DUP has refused to nominate a deputy First minister and there is therefore no functioning executive of Northern Ireland.
In August 2022, O’Neill is asked in a BBC interview whether it was right during the Troubles for the Provisional IRA “to engage in violent resistance to British rule.” She is criticised for her response, “I think at the time there was no alternative, but now thankfully we have an alternative to conflict, and that is the Good Friday Agreement – that is why it’s so precious to us all.”
In May 2023, O’Neill attends the coronation of King Charles, saying, “Well obviously I wanted to be here. We live in changing times, and it was the respectful thing to do, to show respect and to be here for all those people at home, who I had said I would be a first minister for all. Attendance here is about honouring that and fulfilling my promise.”
Donal Donnelly, Irish theatre and film actor, dies in Chicago, Illinois, on January 4, 2010. Perhaps best known for his work in the plays of Brian Friel, he has a long and varied career in film, on television and in the theatre. He lives in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States at various times, and his travels lead him to describe himself as “an itinerant Irish actor.”
Donnelly gets his start in an amateur group calling itself the Globe Theatre Players. It is organised and run by Jim Fitzgerald and Monica Brophy. He then later tours with Anew McMaster‘s Irish repertory company before moving to England where he stars with Rita Tushingham in the film The Knack …and How to Get It.
For many years, Donnelly tours a one-man performance of the writings of George Bernard Shaw, adapted and directed by Michael Voysey and entitled My Astonishing Self.
On television, Donnelly plays the lead role of Matthew Browne in the 1970s ITV sitcom Yes, Honestly, opposite Liza Goddard. But from the late 1950s onwards, he often appears in such British TV programs as The Avengers, Z-Cars and The Wednesday Play.
In 1968, Donnelly records an album of Irish songs, Take the Name of Donnelly, which is arranged, produced and conducted by Tony Meehan formerly of the Shadows.
Donnelly, who is a heavy smoker all his life, dies from cancer at the age of 78 in Chicago, Illinois, on January 4, 2010. He is survived by his wife, Patricia ‘Patsy’ Porter, a former dancer he met working on Finian’s Rainbow, and two sons, Jonathan and Damian. Their only daughter, Maryanne, predeceases him after being killed in a riding accident. A brother, Michael Donnelly, is a Fianna Fáil senator and councillor, and Lord Mayor of Dublin (1990–91).
In June 1919, de Valera arrives in the United States for what is to be an 18-month visit. He has recently escaped from Lincoln Gaol in England in sensational fashion, after a duplicate key is smuggled into the jail in a cake and he escapes dressed as a woman. A few months later he is a stowaway aboard the SS Lapland from Liverpool bound for America.
De Valera’s plan is to secure recognition for the emerging Irish nation, tap into the huge Irish American community for funds, and to pressurize the U.S. government to take a stance on Irish independence. Playing on his mind is the upcoming Versailles conference where the nascent League of Nations is preparing to guarantee “existing international borders” – a provision that will imply Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom.
De Valera also has a challenge in winning over PresidentWoodrow Wilson, who is less than sympathetic to Ireland’s cause.
De Valera’s interest in America is of course personal. He is born in New York City on October 14, 1882, and his U.S. citizenship is one of the reasons he is spared execution after the 1916 Easter Rising.
At first de Valera keeps a low profile in America. Though he is greeted by Harry Boland and others when he docks in New York City, he first goes to Philadelphia and stays with Joseph McGarrity, the County Tyrone-born leader of Clan na Gael and a well-known figure in Irish America. He also quietly pays a visit to his mother in Rochester, New York.
De Valera’s first major engagement is on June 23, 1919, when he is unveiled to the American public at a press conference in the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City. Crowds throng the streets around the hotel, and de Valera proclaims, “I am in America as the official head of the Republic established by the will of the Irish people in accordance with the principle of self-determination.”
De Valera then embarks upon a tour across America. Vast crowds turn out to see the self-proclaimed “president of the Irish republic.” In Boston an estimated crowd of 70,000 people hear him talk in Fenway Park. In San Francisco he unveils a statute of Irish revolutionary hero Robert Emmet in Golden Gate Park.
Later in the year, de Valera holds a huge rally in Philadelphia, where he is welcomed by the mayor at Independence Hall. He also visits smaller towns and cities across the United States, and his trip garners huge press coverage – an invaluable boon for his campaign to heighten awareness of the Irish issue in America.
But difficulties soon emerged during de Valera’s visit. He becomes embroiled in a bitter split among Irish Americans. He finds himself at odds with Judge Daniel Cohalan and John Devoy, central figures in the Friends of Irish Freedom (FOIF) association. Part of the dispute centers around money. De Valera had settled on an idea for a bond sale as a way of raising money for the cause – investors would be given bond certificates that would be exchangeable for bonds of the Irish Republic once it gets international recognition. But Cohalan and Devoy, who have already raised thousands through the Friends of Irish Freedom, are opposed, concerned about the scheme’s legality for one.
De Valera’s claim in an interview that Irish-British relations can be analogous to the relationship between Cuba and America also enrages the Cohalan-Devoy camp, who accuse him of surrendering the idea of full Irish sovereignty.
De Valera’s increasingly acrimonious relationship with Cohalan and Devoy spills over into the 1920 Republican and Democratic conventions. Against the advice of Cohalan and Devoy, he advances a resolution about Irish independence which is rejected 12-1 at the Republican convention in June of that year. A rival resolution by Cohalan squeezes through but ultimately is overturned. Similarly, he fails to secure the inclusion of the Irish issue in the Democratic Party’s policy platform during the Democrats’ convention in San Francisco.
De Valera leaves the United States in December 1920 with mixed results. Though he has raised millions of dollars through the bond sale, he has made little progress in co-opting official America to Ireland’s cause. Much as division is to characterise the next chapter of his political career in Ireland, de Valera’s sojourn in America leaves Irish America more divided than it has ever been.
(From: “Éamon de Valera’s US trip that left Irish America divided” by Suzanne Lynch, The Irish Times, http://www.irishtimes.com, June 1, 2019 | Pictured: Éamon de Valera (center) in New York with Friends of Irish Freedom’s Judge Daniel Cohalan and John Devoy in July 1919, Topical Press Agency/Getty)
On December 12, 1993, a unit of the Provisional Irish Republican Army‘s (IRA) East Tyrone Brigade ambushes a two-men unmarked mobile patrol of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) in Fivemiletown, County Tyrone. Two constables, Andrew Beacom and Ernest Smith, are shot and killed instantly. A military helicopter is also fired at by a second IRA unit in the aftermath of the incident, during a follow-up operation launched in the surroundings of the town by both the British Army and the RUC. A number of suspects are questioned, but the perpetrators make good their escape. The action occurs just three days before the Downing Street Declaration.
Fivemiletown lays in the western edge of the Clogher Valley, near the border between County Fermanagh and County Tyrone. No deaths directly related with paramilitary activity has occurred there during the Troubles prior to the 1993 IRA shootings, though there are a number of incidents in the region in the previous months.
On May 7, 1992, members of the IRA South Fermanagh Brigade detonate a 1,000-pound bomb delivered by a tractor after crossing through a hedge outside the local RUC part-time barracks. The huge explosion leaves ten civilians wounded and causes widespread damage to the surrounding property. The security base itself is heavily damaged and the blast is heard 30 miles away. According to a later IRA statement, the destruction of the security base compels the British forces to organise their patrols from the nearby RUC barracks at Clogher, allowing the East Tyrone Brigade to study their pattern and carry out the 1993 ambush at Fivemiletown’s main street.
A secondary incident occurs some hours later, on May 9, when a British soldier kills his company’s sergeant major in a blue-on-blue shooting at the same place while taking part in a security detail around the wrecked facilities.
On January 20, 1993, the RUC base in Clogher is hit and severely damaged by a Mark-15 “barrack buster” mortar bomb launched by the IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade. A number of constables receive minor injuries.
Constable Andrew Beacom and Reserve Constable Ernest Smith are patrolling Fivemiletown’s Main Street in a civilian-type, unmarked Renault 21 on the early hours of December 12, 1993. Both men are part of the RUC Operational Support Unit, which surveils the border along with the British Army. The constables are based at Clogher RUC barracks.
The IRA reports that two active service units from the East Tyrone Brigade had taken up positions in the centre of Fivemiletown and identified the RUC unmarked vehicle before the ambush.
At 1:30 a.m., up to the junction of Main Street and Coneen Street, at least two IRA volunteers open fire from both sides of the road with automatic weapons, hitting the vehicle with more than 20 rounds. Beacom and Smith die on the spot. Constable Beacom lives in Fivemiletown, just a hundred metres from the site of the ambush, where his wife owns a restaurant. She is one of the first persons to arrive to the scene of the shooting. Smith resides with his family at Augher.
According to a colleague in the Operational Support Unit, himself a reserve constable deployed at Lisnaskea and a former Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier, their deaths “hit the unit very hard.” The men are appreciated for their in-depth knowledge of the area.
A “major” follow-up security operation is mounted between Fivemiletown and the border with the Republic of Ireland, supported by airborne troops and RUC reinforcements, in an attempt to block the attacker’s escape.
Approximately an hour after the ambush, an Army Air Corps (AAC) Westland Lynx helicopter comes upon a number of IRA volunteers in the searching area, just a few miles from the site of the shooting, but the aircraft becomes the target of automatic rifle fire and is forced to disengage. Though the helicopter is not hit, the assailants break contact successfully. The IRA East Tyrone Brigade report claims that the attack on the Westland Lynx is carried out by a second active service unit, which set up a firing position on the predicted path of the British helicopters carrying reinforcements into Fivemiletown after the initial shooting. A number of people are arrested and questioned about the killings, but the perpetrators manage to slip away.
The shootings are widely condemned. RUC Chief Constable Sir Hugh Annesley says that “At a time when the whole community is looking toward peace, the Provisional IRA has yet again shown they have absolutely nothing to offer but deaths and suffering.”
Presbyterian Moderator Rev. Andrew Rodgers calls on the governments to break any contact with Sinn Féin and other “men of blood in both sections of the community.”
A former IRA member cites instead the answer of an IRA volunteer in the area when questioned by him about the futility of the actions at Fivemiletown. He replies that “The war must go on.”
(Pictured: A photograph showing a British Army sentry guarding the scene of the IRA ambush on a Royal Ulster Constabulary mobile patrol, December 12, 1993)
James Green Douglas, Irish businessman and politician dies on September 16, 1954. In 1922 he serves as the first-ever Leas-Chathaoirleach (deputy chairperson) of Seanad Éireann, the upper house of the newly independent Irish parliament. He goes on to serve in the Seanad for 30 years.
Douglas is born July 11, 1887, at 19 Brighton Square, Dublin, the eldest of nine children of John Douglas, proprietor of John Douglas & Sons Ltd, drapers and outfitters of Wexford St. and originally of Grange, County Tyrone, and his wife, Emily, daughter of John and Mary Mitton of Gortin, Coalisland, County Tyrone. The genealogy of the Douglas family to which he belongs can be traced to Samuel Douglas of Coolhill, Killyman, County Tyrone.
Douglas attends (1895–98) a small school for Quaker children and is a boarder (1898–1902) in the Friends’ School, Lisburn. In 1902 he begins a three-year apprenticeship in his father’s business.
On February 14, 1911, Douglas marries Georgina (Ena) Culley (1883–1959), originally of Tirsogue, Lurgan, County Armagh, whom he meets during his apprenticeship. Their children are John Harold Douglas, who succeeds to the family busines and replaces his father as senator, and James Arthur Douglas, who becomes a well-known architect.
From an early age Douglas is fascinated by politics and influenced by the newspapers edited by Arthur Griffith. He becomes a member of the Dublin Liberal Association, whose members for the most part are Protestanthome rulers. After the 1916 Easter Rising, with George Russell and others, who also regard themselves as neither unionists nor nationalists, he sets out to promote what they term “full dominion status” for Ireland. This paves the way for the Irish Convention (1917–18), which, however, fails to reconcile the polarised political attitudes of the time.
Douglas goes on to become a very active member of Seanad Éireann between 1922 and 1936 under the constitution he had helped to prepare. In 1922, he is elected as the first vice-chairman of the Senate. The Senate is abolished in 1936 and re-established under the terms of the 1937 Constitution of Ireland. He is again an active Senator between 1938 and 1943, and from 1944 to 1954. The topics most associated with him during his work as Senator are international refugees and the League of Nations.
For some thirty years he runs the family business, and is also a director of Aspro (Ireland) Ltd, Nugent & Cooper Ltd, Philips Lamps (Ireland) Ltd, and the Greenmount & Boyne Linen Co. Ltd. In addition, he serves as president of the Linen and Cotton Textile Manufacturers Association and as a member of the council of the Federated Union of Employers.
With 18 seats in the 108-seat Assembly, Sinn Féin should be entitled to two ministerial posts. However, Trimble is ready to delay, until Christmas if necessary, the formation of the 10-member cabinet in the hope of prior IRA disarmament.
Trimble, referring to Sinn Féin presidentGerry Adams‘s declaration that violence “must be over, done with, a thing of the past,” says he welcomes the move. “However, as in all partnerships, the opportunity to implement the Agreement in its entirety is predicated on trust and equality.”
“There can be neither trust nor equality if one party to the Agreement is not prepared to destroy the weapons of war. We should all be here relying only on our votes and not on weapons. I hope we will see those previously engaged in violence now embrace peace with a new vigour.”
Trimble adds, “I’m determined to do everything I can to make the Agreement work. However, I, and I am sure by far the greater number of people, simply cannot reconcile people in positions of government with a failure to discharge their responsibility under the Agreement to dismantle terrorist organisations.”
Adams responds that Sinn Féin should enjoy “a direct and automatic right” to hold two seats in the executive.
Trimble speaks after the Northern Ireland Assembly pays tribute to the 29 victims of the bombing in Omagh, County Tyrone, on August 15 by dissident members of the IRA.
Sinn Féin appoints its strategist Martin McGuinness to act as an intermediary between the IRA and the international body set up to oversee arms decommissioning.
The previous week, Irish TaoiseachBertie Ahern makes it clear that he does not see decommissioning as a precondition for the inclusion of Sinn Féin in the executive.
However, time is running out. In less than six months, by February 1999, Westminster is due to transfer powers to the “shadow assembly,” which will have authority over all areas except defence, police, foreign policy and tax.
(From: “Trimble gives Sinn Fein ultimatum over arms,” by BBC News, http://www.news.bbc.co.uk, September 14, 1998)
seamus dubhghaill 