seamus dubhghaill

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Tag Archives: Crumlin (Dublin)


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Birth of Kathleen Behan, Irish Republican & Folk Singer

Kathleen Behan (née Kearney), Irish republican and folk singer, and mother of Irish authors Brendan, Brian and Dominic, is born on September 18, 1889, at 49 Capel Street, Dublin.

She is the fifth child and youngest daughter of pork butcher and grocer, John Kearney (1854–97), and his wife Kathleen Kearney (née McGuinness) (1860–1907). She has four brothers and two sisters. Her father is from Rosybrook, County Louth and her mother is from Rathmaiden, Slane, County Meath, both coming from prosperous farming families. Her father has a business on Lower Dorset Street, with a grocery, pub and a row of houses. Owing to his own poor management, by the time she is born he has a smaller business on Dolphin’s Barn Lane. Following his death in 1897, she and her sisters are placed in the Goldenbridge orphanage at Inchicore by their mother. She is there from 1898 to 1904 where she becomes an avid reader. When she leaves, she rejoins her family in a one-room tenement flat on Gloucester Street.

Her oldest sibling, Peadar Kearney, is an ardent republican who writes the lyrics to the song that becomes the Irish national anthem, ”Amhrán na bhFiann”(English: “The Soldier’s Song”). It is through him that she meets a printer’s compositor and member of the Irish Volunteers, Jack Furlong. They marry in 1916. She is an active member of Cumann na mBan, and serves as a courier to the General Post Office, Dublin and other outposts during the 1916 Easter Rising. At the same time, Furlong fights in the Jacob’s factory garrison. The couple has two sons: Roger Casement (Rory) Furlong (1917–87) and Sean Furlong (born March 1919). Sean is born six month’s after she is widowed when Furlong dies in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. She lives with her mother-in-law, who is also a republican and seamstress who makes Irish Volunteer uniforms. She is arrested for running an Irish Republican Army (IRA) safe house. She works for a short time for Maud Gonne as a housekeeper, where she meets W. B. Yeats and Sarah Purser. A study painted of her by Purser (above) is now in the National Gallery of Ireland entitled The Sad Girl. From 1918 to 1922 she works as a clerk in the Dublin Corporation, while also a caretaker in the Harcourt Street branch of the Irish White Cross republican aid association.

In 1922 she marries Stephen Behan, house painter, trade unionist and fellow republican. The couple has four sons and one daughter: Brendan (b. 1923), Seamus (b. 1925), Brian (b. 1926), Dominic (b. 1928), and Carmel (b. 1932). Brendan is born while his father is imprisoned during the Irish Civil War, and Behan claims that Michael Collins gives her money while she is pregnant. Stephen’s mother owns three slum tenements, so the Behans live rent-free in a one-room basement flat at 14 Russell Street. Owing to her disdain at gossiping on the house steps, she is nicknamed “Lady Behan” by her neighbours. When Stephen’s mother dies in 1936, the Behans moved to a newly built council house in Crumlin, living at 70 Kildare Road. The family finds the new house far from work and school, and the local area devoid of community.

The family experiences extreme poverty frequently, owing to Stephen’s unemployment and during the nine month long building strike of 1936. Behan attempts to claim a pension as her first husband had served in 1916, but her application is rejected. She had said the exposure to flour had effected Furlong’s lungs negatively. It is declined as she had remarried before the enactment of the Army Pensions Act 1923. Despite their circumstances, the house attracts conversation, music, books and politics. The Behan’s republican, socialist, labour activist and anti-clericalism have a strong effect on their sons, particularly Brendan and Dominic. Such is the volume of radical meetings that take place at the Behan home, it is dubbed “the Kremlin” by their neighbours, and a “madhouse” by Stephen. During The Emergency of 1939 to 1945 she fights against local shopkeepers who ignore price controls, and is labelled as “red” for her anti-Franco and pro-Stalin sympathies. Her reply to the branding of her as such is “I’m not red, I’m scarlet.”

From the 1950s onwards, Behan shares international fame with her sons Dominic and Brendan. She often travels to London to see their plays, eventually appearing on British and Irish television and cultivating her own following. She is badly injured when she is struck by a motorcycle, a day before Stephen’s death in 1967. Owing to the effect of these injuries, she moves in 1970 to the Sacred Heart Residence of the Little Sisters of the Poor, Sybil Hill, Raheny.

In 1981, she records an album When All the World Was Young. Taped conversations of her reminiscences are made into an autobiographic book, Mother of all the Behans, by her son Brian in 1984. A one-woman stage adaptation of the book by Peter Sheridan and starring Rosaleen Linehan is acclaimed in Ireland, Britain and North America.

Behan dies in the nursing home in Raheny on April 26, 1984, and is buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery.

(Pictured: Portrait of Kathleen Behan by Sarah Purser, National Gallery of Ireland)


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Birth of Eric Byrne, Former TD and Labour Party Politician

Eric Joseph Byrne, former Labour Party politician who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin South-Central constituency from 1989 to 1992, 1994 to 1997 and 2011 to 2016, is born in Dublin on April 21, 1947. He is formerly a member of Official Sinn Féin, the Workers’ Party and Democratic Left.

Byrne is educated at Synge Street CBS and the Bolton Street College of Technology. A carpenter before entering politics, he stands unsuccessfully for election to Dáil Éireann as a Workers’ Party candidate for Dublin Rathmines West at the 1977 Irish general election and Dublin South-Central at the 1981, February 1982, November 1982 and 1987 Irish general elections.

He is elected in 1985 as a Workers’ Party member of Dublin City Council for Crumlin–Kimmage area, and is re-elected at subsequent local elections until 2011, when he is forced to resign his seat due to dual mandate. He is finally elected at the 1989 Irish general election. He joins with Workers’ Party members who form Democratic Left in 1992. He unexpectedly loses his seat at the 1992 Irish general election. Labour’s Pat Upton is unexpectedly returned on the first count, with Byrne finally losing the last seat to Fianna Fáil‘s Ben Briscoe by five votes after a marathon 10-day count.

Byrne is elected to the 27th Dáil at a by-election on June 9, 1994, following the resignation of long-serving Fianna Fáil TD John O’Connell, who had previously been a Labour TD for the same constituency. He is a backbench supporter of the Rainbow government led by Fine Gael‘s John Bruton.

He loses his seat again at the 1997 Irish general election. Although the Labour Party and the Democratic Left merge in 1999, he is not selected to contest the Dublin South-Central by-election which follows Pat Upton‘s death later that year. Upton’s sister Mary is elected for the Labour Party.

Byrne contests the 2002 Irish general election on the Labour Party ticket as Mary Upton’s running-mate but is unsuccessful. Along with Upton, he contests the Dublin South-Central constituency at the 2007 Irish general election advocating a Labour Party/Fine Gael government but misses the final seat by 69 votes. He is nominated by the Labour Party to contest the Seanad election in the Labour panel but is not elected. In 2009, he is re-elected to Dublin City Council. At the 2011 Irish general election he is re-elected to the Dáil, after a fourteen-year absence.

In January 2015, Byrne becomes involved in an altercation with Sinn Féin TD, Jonathan O’Brien. During ministers’ questions, O’Brien criticises Tánaiste Joan Burton over homelessness in Ireland, citing the experiences of his brother, a recovering heroin addict. Byrne asks of O’Brien, “Why doesn’t his good family give him a home?” This infuriates O’Brien. The Irish Times journalist Miriam Lord criticizes Byrne, remarking that “You sense the relief rising in the chamber. They don’t like it when the real world intrudes. These sort of things don’t really happen to TDs.”

Byrne loses his seat at the 2016 Irish general election.


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Birth of Tony Gregory, Independent Politician & Teachta Dála

Tony Gregory, Irish independent politician and a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Central constituency from 1982 to 2009, is born on December 5, 1947, in Ballybough on Dublin‘s Northside.

Gregory is the second child of Anthony Gregory, warehouseman in Dublin Port, and Ellen Gregory (née Judge). He wins a Dublin Corporation scholarship to the Christian Brothers’ O’Connell School. He later goes on to University College Dublin (UCD), where he receives a Bachelor of Arts degree and later a Higher Diploma in Education, funding his degree from summer work at the Wall’s ice cream factory in Acton, London. Initially working at Synge Street CBS, he later teaches history and French at Coláiste Eoin, an Irish language secondary school in Booterstown. His students at Synge Street and Coláiste Eoin include John Crown, Colm Mac Eochaidh, Aengus Ó Snodaigh and Liam Ó Maonlaí.

Gregory becomes involved in republican politics, joining Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1964. In UCD he helps found the UCD Republican Club, despite pressure from college authorities, and becomes involved with the Dublin Housing Action Committee. Within the party he is a supporter of Wicklow Republican Seamus Costello. Costello, who is a member of Wicklow County Council, emphasises involvement in local politics and is an opponent of abstentionism. Gregory sides with the Officials in the 1970 split within Sinn Féin. Despite having a promising future within the party, he resigns in 1972 citing frustration with ideological infighting in the party. Later, Costello, who had been expelled by Official Sinn Féin, approaches him and asks him to join his new party, the Irish Republican Socialist Party. He leaves the party after Costello’s assassination in 1977. He is briefly associated with the Socialist Labour Party.

Gregory contests the 1979 local elections for Dublin City Council as a “Dublin Community Independent” candidate. At the February 1982 general election, he is elected to Dáil Éireann as an Independent TD. On his election he immediately achieves national prominence through the famous “Gregory Deal,” which he negotiates with Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey. In return for supporting Haughey as Taoiseach, he is guaranteed a massive cash injection for his inner-city Dublin constituency, an area beset by poverty and neglect.

Although Gregory is reviled in certain quarters for effectively holding a government to ransom, his uncompromising commitment to the poor is widely admired. Fianna Fáil loses power at the November 1982 general election, and many of the promises made in the Gregory Deal are not implemented by the incoming Fine Gael–Labour Party coalition.

Gregory is involved in the 1980s in tackling Dublin’s growing drug problem. Heroin had largely been introduced to Dublin by the Dunne criminal group, based in Crumlin, in the late 1970s. In 1982 a report reveals that 10% of 15- to 24-year-olds have used heroin at least once in the north inner city. The spread of heroin use also leads to a sharp increase in petty crime. He confronts the government’s handling of the problem as well as senior Gardaí, for what he sees as their inadequate response to the problem. He co-ordinates with the Concerned Parents Against Drugs group in 1986, who protest and highlight the activities of local drug dealers and defend the group against accusations by government Ministers Michael Noonan and Barry Desmond that it is a front for the Provisional IRA. He believes that the solution to the problem is multi-faceted and works on a number of policy level efforts across policing, service co-ordination and rehabilitation of addicts. In 1995 in an article in The Irish Times, he proposes what would later become the Criminal Assets Bureau, which is set up in 1996, catalysed by the death of journalist Veronica Guerin. His role in its development is later acknowledged by then Minister for Justice Nora Owen.

Gregory also advocates for Dublin’s street traders. After attending a sit-down protest with Sinn Féin Councillor Christy Burke, and future Labour Party TD Joe Costello on Dublin’s O’Connell Street in defence of a street trader, he, Burke and four others are arrested and charged with obstruction and threatening behaviour. He spends two weeks in Mountjoy Prison after refusing to sign a bond to keep the peace.

Gregory remains a TD from 1982 and, although he never holds a government position, remains one of the country’s most recognised Dáil deputies. He always refuses to wear a tie in the Dáil chamber stating that many of his constituents could not afford them.

Gregory dies on January 2, 2009, following a long battle with cancer. Following his death, tributes pour in from politicians from every party, recognising his contribution to Dublin’s north inner city. During his funeral, politicians from the Labour Party, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are told that although they speak highly of Gregory following his death, during his time in the Dáil he had been excluded by many of them and that they were not to use his funeral as a “photo opportunity.” He is buried on January 7, with the Socialist Party‘s Joe Higgins delivering the graveside oration.

Colleagues of Tony Gregory support his election agent, Dublin City Councillor Maureen O’Sullivan, at the 2009 Dublin Central by-election in June. She wins the subsequent by-election.


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The Wellington Barracks Attack

During the early morning hours of November 8, 1922, the Anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) makes its most determined attack on Wellington Barracks in Dublin during the Irish Civil War.

The attack seems to be part of a general “hit-up” by the Republicans in the city. Other military barracks around the city are also attacked in the same week.

The Barracks’ orderly clerk is attending the morning parade, where National Army soldiers, mostly unarmed, are listening to the orders of the day, read by the regimental sergeant major. When he hears machine gun fire, the clerk first believes it to be practice firing. Then he sees puffs of dust spring up from the ground as bullets land around him. He throws himself to the ground.

Another soldier tells The Irish Times, “The first outburst crashed in on us just like a flash of lightning and did most of the damage. All of us that could crawled around for cover, it was simply death to walk in the square at that time.”

The IRA has occupied the upper stories and roofs of the houses across the Grand Canal, at the rear of the barracks. From there, they rake the parade square with gunfire. The sound is deafening to the stricken soldiers. One says, “It seemed as if marbles were being rained down from an immense height.”

A total of eighteen soldiers are hit. One is killed instantly and fourteen wounded, seven of whom require surgery. As the firing starts, a butcher’s van owned by one R. McGurk of Harold’s Cross is making a delivery to the barracks. The storm of bullets peppers the unfortunate deliverymen, killing their horse and mortally wounding the driver. According to the soldier, “the whole thing lasted about 15 minutes, the rest of the soldiers came out then and started some Lewis guns going.”

One hundred soldiers had been lined up on the square shoulder to shoulder. The National Army believes the IRA used a Lewis machine gun and tells the press there were up to forty attackers armed with rifles and machine guns. But in fact, IRA reports show that their squad, a party from the Dublin Brigade active service unit (ASU), led by William Roe, has only eleven men, broken up into four parties, with only two of the parties firing ninety rounds with a Thompson submachine gun and fifteen with a “Peter the Painter” Mauser automatic.

The IRA volunteers make their escape across country, through the villages of Kimmage and Crumlin, pursued by Irish Free State troops. They are seen carrying two badly wounded men of their own. The Army later claims the two were killed in the firefight, but there is no indication that this is true.

(From: “Wellington Barracks, Dublin, 1922 – A Microcosm of the Irish Civil War” by John Dorney, The Irish Story, http://www.theirishstory.com, June 2010)


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Birth of Irish Folk Singer Patsy Watchorn

Patsy Watchorn, Irish folk singer notable for being a member of the Dublin City Ramblers and later The Dubliners, is born in Crumlin, Dublin, on October 16, 1944.

Watchorn first comes to prominence in 1969 as the lead singer of The Quare Fellas, a Dublin-based ballad group. They evolve into the Dublin City Ramblers in the early 1970s and with Watchorn as their lead singer they have hits with songs such as “The Rare Ould Times” and “The Ferryman,” both of which are written by Pete St. John.

Watchorn also writes and sings the Irish Football Team anthem, “We are the Boys in Green” (Home & Away album), with The Dublin City Ramblers for the teams European Championship campaign in Germany and again for the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy. The lyrics change slightly in both releases in 1988 and 1990.

In 1995, Watchorn leaves The Dublin City Ramblers and makes a number of solo albums. He joins The Dubliners in 2005, taking Paddy Reilly‘s place. He is well received throughout Ireland, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and the United States. He appears on their Tour Sampler EP in 2005, as well as the double album Live at Vicar Street (2006). He plays the banjo, bodhrán and spoons. He cites Luke Kelly, former lead singer with The Dubliners, as his favourite singer.

When The Dubliners announce their retirement in 2012 after finishing their 50 Years Anniversary Tour, Watchorn decides to keep on touring with former band members Seán Cannon and Eamonn Campbell and banjo player Gerry O’Connor under the name of “The Dublin Legends.”

On April 28, 2014, Watchorn posts a message on his website, stating that he has “decided to take a break from the music business for a while” and will not be touring the rest of 2014 with The Dublin Legends. He later admits this is due to ill health and that doctors had advised him that touring would do further damage to his health.

Watchorn’s distinctive and passionate vocals have made him a huge rock on the Irish folk scene. In his solo projects in the mid- and late-1990s, after his departure from The Dublin City Ramblers, he has session men who used to play alongside him and he uses the stage name “Patsy Watchorn, agus a Cháirde” (which means “and his Friends” in Irish).


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Execution of James Dickey, Member of the Society of United Irishmen

James Dickey, a young barrister from a Presbyterian family in Crumlin, County Antrim, in the north of Ireland, is hanged at Corn Market, Belfast, on June 26, 1798. He is active in the Society of United Irishmen and is hanged with Henry Joy McCracken for leading rebels at the Battle of Antrim.

The Society of United Irishmen is formed in October 1791 by leading citizens in Belfast who seek a representative government in Ireland based on principles they believe have been modelled by the American and French Revolutions. At their first meeting they embrace the argument of Theobald Wolfe Tone for a “brotherhood of affection” between Irishmen of all religious persuasions. Tone argues that in Ireland the landed Anglican Ascendancy and the English appointed Irish executive employ division between Protestants and Catholics to balance “the one party by the other, plunder and laugh at the defeat of both.”

Despairing of reform, and in the hope of French assistance, in May 1798, the United Irishmen take up arms against the Dublin government and the British Crown. Beginning in Kildare, the insurrection spreads to other counties in Leinster before finally reaching the Presbyterian districts surrounding Belfast. On June 5, the Antrim societies of United Irishmen meet in Templepatrick where they elect textile manufacturer Henry Joy McCracken as their General. The next day McCracken issues a proclamation calling for the United army of Ulster to rise. The initial plan meets with success, as the towns of Larne, Ballymena, Maghera and Randalstown are taken and the bridge at Toome is damaged to prevent the government rushing reinforcements into Antrim from west of the River Bann.

According to the memoirs of James Burns from Templepatrick, Dickey commands the insurgents at Randalstown and kills Samuel Parker, a “traitor, with his own hands, while standing at his own door, where he went for the purpose.”

McCracken leads a body of about 6,000 rebels in an attack on Antrim town. As promised, Catholic Defenders turn out, but in the march upon the town tensions with the Presbyterian United Irish causes some desertions and a delay in McCracken’s planned assault. McCracken’s men are defeated, and his army melts away. On June 15, Dickey, together with McCracken, James Hope, James Orr and about fifty other rebel survivors from Antrim, arrive at Slemish, near Ballymena. There they set up camp for three weeks before leaving under threat of attack from Colonel Green of the Tay Fencibles.

Dickey is captured by the Sutherland fencibles on Divis, a hill northwest of Belfast. He is court-martialed and hanged at Corn Market, Belfast on June 26, 1798. Famously, before his hanging he refuses to wear a black hood saying to the hangman, “Sir, don’t cover my face!” According to local legend he shouts, “Don’t think gentlemen, I am ashamed to show my face among you, I am dying for my country!” However, a loyalist source hostile to the United Irish cause, Henry Joy of the Belfast News Letter, has Dickey on the scaffold recanting his commitment to the “brotherhood of affection” between Catholic and Protestant. He supposedly warned the assembled that had “the Presbyterians of the north succeeded in their [republican] designs, they would ultimately have had to contend with the Roman Catholics.” It is testament to the sentiment that in the north is to largely expunge the memory of his, and McCracken’s, sacrifice.

Dickey is 22 years old at the time of his execution. His head is placed on a spike outside the Market House on Belfast’s High Street.

Dickey’s brother, John Dickey of Crumlin, is also implicated in the rebellion. He is informed on by neighbours who had noticed that he was making pikes and attending secret meetings of the United Irishmen late at night. Arrested and court-martialed, he refuses the terms granted by the government to the “State Prisoners” in Dublin. He is transported to the West Indies for penal servitude but manages to escape and makes his way to the United States.


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Birth of Rory O’Connor, Irish Republican Revolutionary

Rory O’Connor (Irish: Ruairí Ó Conchubhair), Irish republican revolutionary, is born in Kildare Street, Dublin, on November 28, 1883.

O’Connor is educated in St. Mary’s College, Dublin, and then in Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare, a public school run by the Jesuit order. It is also attended by the man who later condemns O’Connor to death, his close friend Kevin O’Higgins. He studies experimental physics, logic, and metaphysics. He also attends the College of Science, Merrion Street. He takes a BA (1906) and receives a B.Eng (1911). In 1910, he takes his Bachelor of Engineering and Bachelor of Arts degrees at University College Dublin (UCD), then known as the National University. Prominent in the university’s Literary and Historical Society, he advocates militant constitutional nationalism as one of the many society members active in the Young Ireland branch of the United Irish League.

O’Connor goes to work as a railway engineer, then he moves to Canada where he is an engineer in the Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian Northern Railway, being responsible for the construction of 1,500 miles (2,400 km) of railroad. He returns to Ireland in 1915 at Joseph Plunkett‘s request and works for Dublin Corporation as a civil engineer. He joins the Catholic nationalist organisation the Ancient Order of Hibernians and serves in the Easter Rising in 1916 in the GPO as an intelligence officer. He is wounded by a sniper during reconnaissance at the Royal College of Surgeons.

During the subsequent Irish War of Independence (1919-21) O’Connor is Director of Engineering of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), a military organisation descended from the Irish Volunteers. The specialist skills of engineering and signaling are essential to the development of the 5th Battalion, Dublin Brigade. Its men are forbidden frontline duty as their contribution is regarded as vital, their number too small. But units only expand on an incremental local basis, disappointing General Richard Mulcahy.

O’Connor is also involved in the Republican breakout from Strangeways Prison in Manchester, England, on October 25, 1919. Michael Collins takes a particular interest in the escape and actually visits Austin Stack in the prison under a false name to finalise the arrangements. IRA men hold up traffic while a ladder is propped up against the outside of a prison wall. In all six prisoners escape, among them Piaras Beaslaí.

O’Connor refuses to accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which establishes the Irish Free State. It is ratified by a narrow vote in Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament. He and many like him feel that the Treaty copper-fastens the partition of the six counties of Northern Ireland and undermines the Irish Republic declared in 1916.

On January 10, a meeting is held at O’Connor’s home in Monkstown, Dublin. In attendance are all senior anti-Treaty IRA officers except Liam Mellows. O’Connor is appointed to chair this grouping, known as the Republican Military Council. It is agreed that an IRA convention should be called without delay; failing this, a separate GHQ will be formed. At a further meeting in O’Connor’s office on March 20, a temporary IRA GHQ staff is elected under Liam Lynch as chief of staff. O’Connor remains in charge of engineering.

On March 26, 1922, the anti-Treaty officers of the IRA hold a convention in Dublin, in which they reject the Treaty and repudiate the authority of the Dáil. However, they are prepared to discuss a way forward. The convention meets again on April 9. It creates a new army constitution and places the army under a newly elected executive of 16 men, including O’Connor, that are to choose an army council and headquarters staff. Asked by a journalist if this development means the anti-Treatyites ware proposing a “military dictatorship” in Ireland, O’Connor replies, “You can take it that way if you want.”

On April 14, 1922, O’Connor is one of a number of IRA leaders in a 200-strong force that occupies the Four Courts building in the centre of Dublin in defiance of the Provisional Government. They intend to provoke the British troops, who are still in the country, into attacking them, which they believe will restart the war with Britain and re-unite the IRA against their common enemy. They also occupy other smaller buildings regarded as being associated with the former British administration, such as the Ballast Office and the Freemasons‘ Hall in Molesworth Street, but the Four Courts remains the focus of interest. On June 15, O’Connor sends out men to collect the rifles that belong to the mutineers of the Civic Guards.

Michael Collins tries desperately to persuade the IRA men to leave the Four Courts. At the Third IRA Convention on June 18, the Executive is split over whether the Irish Government should demand that all British troops leave within 72 hours. A motion to this effect, opposed by Lynch, is narrowly defeated, whereupon O’Connor and others leave the meeting to set up a separate GHQ. The IRA effectively splits into two factions opposed to the government.

On June 22, 1922, Sir Henry Wilson is assassinated in London by two IRA men, Reginald Dunne and Joseph O’Sullivan, each a former British soldier. Some now argue that this was done on the orders of Michael Collins, who had been a close friend of Dunne’s in the London Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). Prime Minister David Lloyd George writes an angry letter to Collins, which includes the line “…still less can Mr. Rory O’Connor be permitted to remain his followers and his arsenal in open rebellion in the heart of Dublin… organizing and sending out from this centre enterprises of murder not only in the area of your Government…”

On June 28, 1922, after the Four Courts garrison has kidnapped J. J. “Ginger” O’Connell, a general in the National Army, Collins gives orders for the shelling of the Four Courts with borrowed artillery lent by Winston Churchill. The shelling leads to the Four Courts catching fire, damaging parts of the building in addition to destroying numerous government documents. O’Connor is one of 130 men that surrender on June 30, some of whom are arrested and imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison. This incident marks the official start of the Irish Civil War, as fighting breaks out openly around the country between pro- and anti-Treaty factions.

On December 8, 1922, along with three other republicans, Liam Mellows, Richard Barrett and Joe McKelvey, captured with the fall of the Four Courts, O’Connor is executed by firing squad in reprisal for the anti-Treaty IRA’s killing of Free State Teachta Dála (TD) Sean Hales. The execution order is signed by Kevin O’Higgins. O’Connor had been best man at O’Higgins’s wedding on October 27, 1921. Their deaths remain a symbol of the bitterness and division of the Irish Civil War. O’Connor, one of 77 republicans executed by the Provisional Government, is seen as a martyr by the Republican movement in Ireland.

On O’Connor’s execution, the equestrienne Joan de Sales La Terriere, a close friend of his, names her son in his honour. “Rory O’Connor Place” in Arklow is named in his honour. There is also a pub in Crumlin, Dublin, named after him and a housing estate near Dún Laoghaire, County Dublin, called “Rory O’Connor Park.” A Sinn Féin cumann (UCD) is named after him.

(Pictured: Rory O’Connor addressing members of the IRA’s Dublin City Brigade at Smithfield, April 1922)


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Ulster Volunteer Force Attacks Across Northern Ireland

On October 2, 1975, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary group, carries out a wave of shootings and bombings across Northern Ireland. Six of the attacks leave 12 people dead (mostly civilians) and around 45 people injured. There is also an attack in the small village of Killyleagh, County Down. There are five attacks in and around Belfast which leave people dead. A bomb which explodes near Coleraine leaves four UVF members dead. There are also several other smaller bombs planted around Northern Ireland, sixteen in total, but other than causing damage they do not kill or injure anyone.

There is a rise in sectarian killings during the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) truce with the British Army, which begins in February 1975 and officially lasts until February 1976. Loyalists, fearing they are about to be forsaken by the British government and forced into a united Ireland, increase their attacks on Irish Catholics/Irish nationalists. Loyalists kill 120 Catholics in 1975, the vast majority civilians. They hope to force the IRA to retaliate and thus end the truce. Some IRA units concentrate on tackling the loyalists. The fall-off of regular operations causes unruliness within the IRA and some members, with or without permission from higher up, engage in tit-for-tat killings.

The first attack of the day takes place at Casey’s Bottling Plant in Belfast. The UVF group, which is alleged to have been led by Shankill Butchers leader Lenny Murphy, enters the premises by pretending to have an order to be filled before launching the attack. Four employees are shot and killed in the attack, sisters Frances Donnelly (35), Marie McGrattan (47) and Gerard Grogan (18) all die that day, with a fourth, Thomas Osborne (18), dying of his wounds three weeks later. Murphy personally shoots all except Donnelly who is killed by his accomplice William Green. The two sisters are forced to kneel on the ground and are shot in the back of the head.

In the next attack Thomas Murphy (29), a Catholic photographer from Belfast, is killed in a booby-trap bomb and gun attack, when two UVF gunmen enter his premises on Carlisle Circus (close to both the loyalist Shankill Road and republican New Lodge areas of Belfast) and shoot him in the chest, before planting a duffel bag bomb in his shop. The resulting explosion injures several people including a female passer-by who loses her leg.

Next the UVF carries out a gun and bomb attack on McKenna’s Bar near Crumlin, County Antrim, which kills a Catholic civilian John Stewart (35) and injures scores of people.

In Killyleagh, County Down, a no-warning bomb explodes outside a Catholic-owned bar, The Anchor Inn. Irene Nicholson (37), a Protestant woman, is killed as she is passing by while the attack is being carried out. Three UVF members are later arrested for this attack in Bangor and one of them claims the attack was “a small one to scare them.”

Next Ronald Winters (26), a Protestant civilian, is shot dead by the UVF in his parents’ house on London Road, Belfast.

Later that night four UVF members are killed as they drive along a road in Farrenlester, near Coleraine, when the bomb they are transporting explodes prematurely.

The following day, October 3, the UVF is once again made a proscribed terrorist organisation. Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Merlyn Rees had unbanned the UVF in May 1974, the same day the ban on Sinn Féin was lifted, a move never extended to the IRA. Despite this the UVF are still able to kill Catholic civilians at will for the remainder of 1975 and for most of 1976 also.


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Birth of Margaret Mary Pearse, Politician & Teacher

Margaret Mary Pearse, Fianna Fáil politician and teacher, is born on August 24, 1878, at 27 Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street) in Dublin. She is a sister of Patrick Pearse, one of the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, and Willie Pearse, both of whom are executed for their part in the Rising.

Pearse is the eldest child of James Pearse and Margaret Pearse (née Brady), who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) in the 1920s. She is educated at the Holy Faith Convent in Glasnevin. After leaving school, she trains as a teacher. She helps to found St. Enda’s School with her brothers Patrick and Willie. Following the executions of her brothers in the aftermath of the Easter Rising, she continues to run St. Enda’s, along with Fergus De Búrca, until 1933.

Following in her mother’s footsteps, Pearse is first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil TD for the Dublin County constituency at the 1933 general election. She is defeated at the 1937 general election on the 7th count of votes but is elected to the Administrative Panel of the 2nd Seanad. She serves in the Seanad until her death in 1968, however, she and her mother are never considered to be more than figureheads for the party. She is a founding member of the teaching staff of Ardscoil Éanna in Crumlin, Dublin, upon its establishment in 1939.

Illness forces Pearse into the Linden Convalescent Home in Blackrock, County Dublin when she is in her 80s. In 1967, when she is 89 years old, her condition is described to be deteriorating. However, in 1968 during the months leading up to her 90th birthday, she leaves the Linden Convalescent Home for a short while in order to spend her birthday at St. Enda’s in Rathfarnham. The president of Ireland at the time, Éamon de Valera, visits her at St. Enda’s to congratulate her on her upcoming 90th birthday.

Margaret Pearse dies, unmarried, at the Linden Convalescent Home in Blackrock, County Dublin, on November 7, 1968, and is given a state funeral. President de Valera, the church and the state all pay tribute to her at the funeral. She is buried beside her parents and sister at Glasnevin Cemetery. The Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, says that Margaret Mary Pearse is the last remaining member of the noble Pearse family. He says her life, like her patriotic brothers, was dedicated to Ireland.

As per her mother’s wishes, Pearse bequeaths St. Enda’s to the people of Ireland as a memorial to her brother’s sacrifice. The school is now home to the Pearse Museum.


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Death of Tony Gregory, Independent Politician & TD

Tony Gregory, Irish independent politician and a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin Central constituency from 1982 to 2009, dies in Dublin on January 2, 2009.

Gregory is born on December 5, 1947, in Ballybough on Dublin’s Northside, the second child of Anthony Gregory, warehouseman in Dublin Port, and Ellen Gregory (née Judge). He wins a Dublin Corporation scholarship to the Christian Brothers’ O’Connell School. He later goes on to University College Dublin (UCD), where he receives a Bachelor of Arts degree and later a Higher Diploma in Education, funding his degree from summer work at the Wall’s ice cream factory in Acton, London. Initially working at Synge Street CBS, he later teaches history and French at Coláiste Eoin, an Irish language secondary school in Booterstown. His students at Synge Street and Coláiste Eoin include John Crown, Colm Mac Eochaidh, Aengus Ó Snodaigh and Liam Ó Maonlaí.

Gregory becomes involved in republican politics, joining Sinn Féin and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1964. In UCD he helps found the UCD Republican Club, despite pressure from college authorities, and becomes involved with the Dublin Housing Action Committee. Within the party he is a supporter of Wicklow Republican Seamus Costello. Costello, who is a member of Wicklow County Council, emphasises involvement in local politics and is an opponent of abstentionism. Gregory sides with the Officials in the 1970 split within Sinn Féin. Despite having a promising future within the party, he resigns in 1972 citing frustration with ideological infighting in the party. Later, Costello, who had been expelled by Official Sinn Féin, approaches him and asks him to join his new party, the Irish Republican Socialist Party. He leaves the party after Costello’s assassination in 1977. He is briefly associated with the Socialist Labour Party.

Gregory contests the 1979 local elections for Dublin City Council as a “Dublin Community Independent” candidate. At the February 1982 general election, he is elected to Dáil Éireann as an Independent TD. On his election he immediately achieves national prominence through the famous “Gregory Deal,” which he negotiates with Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey. In return for supporting Haughey as Taoiseach, he is guaranteed a massive cash injection for his inner-city Dublin constituency, an area beset by poverty and neglect.

Although Gregory is reviled in certain quarters for effectively holding a government to ransom, his uncompromising commitment to the poor is widely admired. Fianna Fáil loses power at the November 1982 general election, and many of the promises made in the Gregory Deal are not implemented by the incoming Fine Gael–Labour Party coalition.

Gregory is involved in the 1980s in tackling Dublin’s growing drug problem. Heroin had largely been introduced to Dublin by the Dunne criminal group, based in Crumlin, in the late 1970s. In 1982 a report reveals that 10% of 15- to 24-year-olds have used heroin at least once in the north inner city. The spread of heroin use also leads to a sharp increase in petty crime. He confronts the government’s handling of the problem as well as senior Gardaí, for what he sees as their inadequate response to the problem. He co-ordinates with the Concerned Parents Against Drugs group in 1986, who protest and highlight the activities of local drug dealers and defend the group against accusations by government Ministers Michael Noonan and Barry Desmond that it is a front for the Provisional IRA. He believes that the solution to the problem is multi-faceted and works on a number of policy level efforts across policing, service co-ordination and rehabilitation of addicts. In 1995 in an article in The Irish Times, he proposes what would later become the Criminal Assets Bureau, which is set up in 1996, catalysed by the death of journalist Veronica Guerin. His role in its development is later acknowledged by then Minister for Justice Nora Owen.

Gregory also advocates for Dublin’s street traders. After attending a sit-down protest with Sinn Féin Councillor Christy Burke, and future Labour Party TD Joe Costello on Dublin’s O’Connell Street in defence of a street trader, he, Burke and four others are arrested and charged with obstruction and threatening behaviour. He spends two weeks in Mountjoy Prison after refusing to sign a bond to keep the peace.

Gregory remains a TD from 1982 and, although he never holds a government position, remains one of the country’s most recognised Dáil deputies. He always refuses to wear a tie in the Dáil chamber stating that many of his constituents could not afford them.

Gregory dies on January 2, 2009, following a long battle with cancer. Following his death, tributes pour in from politicians from every party, recognising his contribution to Dublin’s north inner city. During his funeral, politicians from the Labour Party, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are told that although they speak highly of Gregory following his death, during his time in the Dáil he had been excluded by many of them and that they were not to use his funeral as a “photo opportunity.” He is buried on January 7, with the Socialist Party‘s Joe Higgins delivering the graveside oration.

Colleagues of Tony Gregory support his election agent, Dublin City Councillor Maureen O’Sullivan, at the 2009 Dublin Central by-election in June. She wins the subsequent by-election.