Warfield is raised in the Dublin suburb Inchicore, the second born in a family of four boys. Today, he and his wife June Warfield (née Radburn) reside in Blessington, County Wicklow.
Warfield is one of the founding members and lead singers of the Irish Folk band, The Wolfe Tones. He has written many songs for the band, notably “Up and Away (The Helicopter Song),” “Irish Eyes” and “My Heart is in Ireland.” “Let the People Sing” is written in dedication to those Irish ballad singers who were banned from singing Irish songs. It has been performed by many Celtic and Irish Rebel bands, including Celtic band Charlie and the Bhoys. The song is popular among fans of Celtic F.C. and a version is performed by The Malleys, omitting the second verse, at Celtic Park on match days.
Warfield’s affiliation with Celtic F.C. leads to him being asked to write a song for the club to celebrate its 100th anniversary. As a result, “Celtic Symphony” is composed. It is a song popular with many Celtic fans, but controversial due to its chorus, which features the words “ooh, ah, up the RA.” This is often seen as being a pro-Irish Republican Army (IRA) stance, but according to Warfield, the words were included in the balladic tradition of writing what is observed at the time.
As a songwriter, Warfield’s writing is typically a social commentary on Ireland and its issues. For the 2012 album, Child of Destiny, Warfield composes “Swing A Banker,” which is a comical ballad referring to Irish bankers as chickens. The music video is recorded outside the Treasury Building in Dublin.
The Wolfe Tones continue to tour but have announced that they are set to retire in 2024, after 60 years of performing together. In addition to gigs in the United States, there will be concerts at Galway Airport, Castlebar, County Mayo, and in the 3Arena in Dublin, with the band’s final gig taking place in Belfast in October 2024.
As of January 2024, Warfield has not communicated with his brother Derek Warfield since he left The Wolfe Tones in 2001.
Josephine McNeill, Irish diplomat, is born on March 31, 1895, in Fermoy, County Cork. She is the first Irish female diplomat appointed to represent Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity.
McNeill is born Josephine Ahearne, the daughter of shopkeeper and hotelier, James Ahearne, and his wife Ellen Ahearne (née O’Brien). She attends the Loretto Convent, Fermoy, and goes on to graduate from University College Dublin (UCD) with a BA, H.Dip.Ed. in French and German. With this she begins a teaching career, at St. Louis’ Convent, Kiltimagh, at the Ursuline Convent, Thurles, and at Scoil Íde. Scoil Íde, the female counterpart to St. Enda’s School, had been established by her friend, Louise Gavan Duffy. She is fluent in the Irish language and takes an active part in the cultural elements of the Irish independence movement, such as literature and music. She is a member of Cumann na mBan, serving as a member of the executive committee in 1921.
After the death of her husband in 1938, McNeill becomes the honorary secretary of the council of the Friends of the National Collections, as well as serving as chair of the executive committee of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association until 1950. As a member of the Department of External Affairs advisory committee on cultural relations, she writes on economic, social and cultural issues. She represents Ireland at the UNESCO general assembly in Paris in 1949.
McNeill is an active member of Clann na Poblachta from its foundation in 1946. She is appointed the minister to the Netherlands in 1950 by Seán MacBride, making her the first Irish female diplomat to represent the Republic of Ireland abroad in a ministerial capacity. This appointment is not well received by diplomats in the Department of External Affairs. Her reports from The Hague focus on the issues the Netherlands faces with decolonisation. In 1955, she becomes the minister to Sweden, going on to hold the joint appointment to Austria and Switzerland from 1956 to 1960, after which she retires. While serving in Switzerland she puts aside the resentment she feels towards Éamon de Valera based on how he had treated her husband, to sit with him during a convalescence while de Valera recovers from an eye operation.
McNeill is an amateur pianist and collects paintings and porcelains. In 1933, she publishes the Irish language book, Finnsgéalta ó India.
Boland is born on September 16, 1870, at 135 Capel Street, Dublin, to Patrick Boland, businessman, and Mary Donnelly. Following the death of his mother in 1882, he is placed with his six siblings under the guardianship of his uncle, Nicholas Donnelly, auxiliary bishop of Dublin.
Boland is educated at two private Catholic schools, the Catholic University School, Dublin, and Birmingham Oratory in Birmingham, England, where he becomes head boy. His secondary education at the two schools help give him the foundation and understanding to play an influential role in the politics of Great Britain and Ireland at the beginning of the 20th century, when he is a member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, which pursues constitutional Home Rule.
In 1892, Boland graduates with a BA from London University. He studies for a semester in Bonn, Germany, where he is a member of Bavaria Bonn, a student fraternity that is member of the Cartellverband. He studies law at Christ Church, Oxford, graduating with a BA in 1896 and MA in 1901. Although called to the Bar in 1897, he never practises.
Boland is the first Olympic champion in tennis for Great Britain and Ireland at the first modern Olympics, which take place in Athens in 1896. He visits his friend Thrasyvoulos Manos in Athens during the Olympics, and Manos, a member of the organising committee, enters Boland in the tennis tournament. He promptly wins the singles tournament, defeating Friedrich Traun of Germany in the first round, Evangelos Rallis of Greece in the second, Konstantinos Paspatis of Greece in the semifinals, and Dionysios Kasdaglis of Greece in the final.
Boland then enters the doubles event with Traun, the German runner whom he had defeated in the first round of the singles. Together, they win the doubles event. They defeat Aristidis and Konstantinos Akratopoulos of Greece in the first round, have a bye in the semifinals, and defeat Demetrios Petrokokkinos of Greece and Dimitrios Kasdaglis in the final. When the Union Jack and the German flag are run up the flagpole to honour Boland and Traun’s victory, Boland points out to the man hoisting the flags that he is Irish, adding “It [the Irish flag]’s a gold harp on a green ground, we hope.” The officials agreed to have an Irish flag prepared.
Following a visit to County Kerry, Boland becomes concerned about the lack of literacy among the native population. He also has a keen interest in the Irish Language.
Boland’s patriotic stand is well received in nationalist circles in Ireland. This and a lifelong friendship with John Redmond gain for him an invitation to stand as a candidate for the Irish Parliamentary Party in the safe seat of South Kerry, which he holds from 1900 to 1918. He is unopposed in the general elections of 1900 and 1906, and the first of 1910. In the second election of 1910 he is challenged by a local man, T. B. Cronin, who stands as an independent nationalist in the interest of William O’Brien. Boland stands down at the 1918 United Kingdom general election.
In 1908, Boland is appointed a member of the commission for the foundation of the National University of Ireland (NUI). From 1926 to 1947, he is General Secretary of the Catholic Truth Society. He receives a papal knighthood, becoming a Knight of St. Gregory in recognition for his work in education. In 1950, he is awarded an honorary Doctor of Law by the NUI.
Boland marries Eileen Moloney at SS Peter and Edward, Palace Street, Westminster, on October 22, 1902, the daughter of an Australian Dr. Patrick Moloney. They have one son and five daughters. His daughter Honor Crowley succeeds her husband Frederick Crowley upon his death sitting as Fianna FáilTD for South Kerry from 1945 until her death in 1966. His daughter Bridget Boland is a playwright who notably writes The Prisoner and co-writes the script for Gaslight, and, among other books, co-authors Old Wives’ Lore for Gardeners with her sister, Maureen Boland.
Connell is ordained priest by Archbishop John Charles McQuaid on May 19, 1951. He takes up a teaching post at the Department of Metaphysics at the University College Dublin. He is appointed Professor of General Metaphysics in 1972 and in 1983 becomes the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology. The College’s Department of Metaphysics is abolished after his departure.
Connell is appointed Archbishop of Dublin by the Holy See in early 1988. He is consecrated at St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin on March 6, 1988. He is created Cardinal-Priest by Pope John Paul II at the Consistory in Rome on February 21, 2001, with the TitulusS. Silvestri in Capite. Archbishops of Armagh, who hold the higher title of Primate of All Ireland, are more frequently appointed Cardinal than Archbishops of Dublin. The last Archbishop of Dublin to have been a cardinal is Cardinal Edward MacCabe, who was appointed in 1882. A large Irish contingent from Church and State, along with family and friends of the Cardinal, attend the installation which for the first time takes place at the front of the entrance to St. Peter’s Basilica.
On April 26, 2004, Connell retires as archbishop, handing the diocese to the coadjutor bishop, Diarmuid Martin. All bishops submit their resignation to the Pope on their 75th birthday. Connell’s is accepted shortly after his 78th birthday.
It is Connell’s failure, when Archbishop of Dublin in 1988–2004, to address adequately the abuse scandals in Dublin that lead the Vatican to assign Archbishop Martin as his replacement in the country’s largest diocese. The Murphy Report finds that Connell had handled the affair “badly” as he was “slow to recognise the seriousness of the situation.” It does praise him for making the archdiocesan records available to the authorities in 2002 and for his 1995 actions in giving the authorities the names of 17 priests who had been accused of abuse, although it says the list is incomplete as complaints were made against at least 28 priests in the archdiocese.
From 1988 Connell also continues to insure his archdiocese against liability from complainants, while claiming to the Murphy Commission that the archdiocese is “on a learning curve” in regard to child abuse. He arranges for compensation payments to be made from a “Stewardship Trust” that is kept secret from the archdiocese’s parishioners until 2003. In 1996 he refuses to help a victim of Paul McGennis and does not pass on what he knows about McGennis to her, or to the police. He apologises for this in 2002.
Desmond Connell dies in Dublin at the age of 90 on February 21, 2017, exactly sixteen years after his creation as Cardinal.
McKenna is born Kathleen Maria Kenna on September 9, 1897, in Oldcastle, County Meath. Her parents are William, a draper and hardware merchant, and Mary Kenna (née Hanley). She is the eldest child of seven, with three sisters and three brothers. She and her siblings add “Mc” to their surname as teenagers. Her maternal grandfather, a Fenian, miller and land agitator, is a strong influence on her. Agnes O’Farrelly is her paternal great aunt. She attends the Oldcastle Endowed School and goes on to pass the National University of Ireland (NUI) matriculation examination. She attends University College Dublin (UCD) briefly, but the family’s circumstances prevent her from completing her course.
McKenna’s father had been an active member of the Irish National Land League and the Meath Labour Union. He is one of the organisers of a short-lived local newspaper, Sinn Féin – Oldcastle Monthly Review, in 1902. Both her parents are members of Conradh na Gaielge. Arthur Griffith and Brian O’Higgins frequently visit the family home. Denounced by the local parish priest, Fr. Robert Barry, her father’s business goes into decline. The family leaves Oldcastle and moves to Dundalk in August 1915, and to Rugby, Warwickshire, England, in March 1916. In Rugby, her father teaches typing and shorthand, and her mother works in an ammunition factory. She works as a secretary for an engineering firm. Members of the family return to Ireland from 1919 to 1922, and by the time of her father’s death in 1939, he is living back in Oldcastle.
McKenna spends some holidays in Ireland and, during a visit to Dublin in the summer of 1919, she presents herself to the Sinn Féin offices in Harcourt Street. She has a letter of introduction from her father to Griffith, which emphasises her willingness to work for Irish independence. For her holidays, she works in the Sinn Féin press bureau and is employed as one of the first “Dáil girls” of the clandestine government. She is informed that if a planned news bulletin comes through, she will be summoned back to Dublin. In October 1919, she receives that summons and, after a typing test on November 11, she joins the Irish Bulletin under Minister for Publicity, Desmond FitzGerald, and director of publicity, Robert Brennan. She also becomes a member of the Conradh na Gaielge Parnell branch.
The Irish Bulletin is published five times a week, circulating the misdeeds of the British government in Ireland. McKenna edits and mimeographs a summary of “acts of aggression” from British forces in Ireland weekly, compiled by Anna Kelly. Frank Gallagher does most of the writing, edited by FitzGerald, and later Erskine Childers. Though she is sometimes described as the Bulletin‘s editor, she is more akin to an editorial assistant. R. M. Smyllie later recalls that she was in regular contact with the media. She types out each issue on a wax stencil in a typewriter which is used to create mimeograph copies, and then circulated to England. In the beginning, about 30 recipients, mostly London journalists, receive the Bulletin but by October 1920 it has grown to 600, and by July 1921 over 1,200. She also keeps the accounts, takes dictation of statements, and at times works up articles from notes given to her by Griffith or others. She also acts as a confidential messenger, couriering between Dáil departments and Irish Republican Army (IRA) leaders such as Michael Collins. Through this, she meets Moya Llewelyn Davies.
The Bulletin becomes a symbol of the underground government and a target for British forces. This necessitates the frequent moving of the operation from one Dublin hideout to another. She fears that if she were captured, she would break under interrogation. When FitzGerald is arrested, he is asked about “the girl wearing a green tam” in reference to McKenna’s tam-o’-shanter hat which prompts her to change her choice of hat. Despite the capture of a number of the Bulletin staff, as well as the capture of the office files and equipment on March 26, 1921, it never misses an issue.
McKenna’s sister Winifred also works as a secretary to the clandestine government. Her brother, Tadhg (Timothy), is a member of Sinn Féin and in Greenore, County Louth, is involved in trade union affairs. He is detained, beaten, and interned in March 1921. He is later an activist with the Irish Labour Party. Her brother William is a messenger for the Irish government during this period and during the Irish Civil War serves in the Free State Army.
After the truce in 1921, McKenna is assigned to the Dáil cabinet secretarial staff at the Mansion House, where she continues to work in the publicity department. She travels as Griffith’s private secretary to London as part of the Irish delegation to the treaty negotiations in October 1921. She is an admirer of both Griffith and Collins and is a firm supporter of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. She works as Griffith’s secretary until just before his death and also does some secretarial work for Collins during the negotiations. One of her sisters is anti-Treaty, and she later recalls that she lost friends due to her support of the treaty.
McKenna marries Vittorio Napoli in 1931. He is a captain, and later a general, in the Italian royal grenadier guards. They meet when she is on holiday in Italy in 1927. For the first five years of their marriage, they live in the port of Derna in Cyrenaica, Libya, while her husband is stationed there. A son and daughter are born there. From September 1939 to June 1940, the family lives in Albania, but after Italy enters World War II, she and the children move to Viterbo. Her husband is taken prisoner in Greece in September 1943, and is detained in Germany and Poland. He returns to Italy in September 1945. Viterbo had been heavily bombed, and after Allied troops arrive, McKenna works as a translator and gives English language lessons to support her family. Her husband remains in the army, and they remain in Viterbo until 1956, later moving to Rome.
After the war, McKenna writes articles for the Irish Independent and other publications from Ireland, the United States and New Zealand, including The Irish Press, Irish Travel, Standard, Word, and Writer’s Digest. Sometimes she writes under her own name, as well as her pen name Kayn or Kayen MacKay. As the wives of Italian officers do not traditionally work, the money she earns from this is kept for travel and other leisure activities. This money allows her to visit her family in Ireland in 1947 for the first time since 1932. After their retirement, she and her husband visit Ireland regularly, and travel around Italy.
McKenna applies for an Irish military pension in 1950/51 and 1970, receiving references in support of her claim from Gallagher. As she had not served in a military organisation, her claims are rejected. As an Irish War of Independence veteran, she is awarded free travel in 1972, which is later extended to her husband. In her later years, she becomes concerned about the inaccuracies in the history around the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. She gives two talks to Radio Éireann in 1951, speaking about her time with the Irish Bulletin. Copies of these recordings are now held by the Bureau of Military History. During her lifetime, extracts of her memoir are published in the Capuchin Annual and The Irish Times. She drafted and redrafted these memoirs from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. A version edited by her daughter and niece is published in 2014 as A Dáil girl’s revolutionary recollections.
McKenna dies on March 22, 1988, in Rome. She is buried with an Irish flag which she had kept with her. A large collection of her papers is held in the National Library of Ireland (NLI). In 2010, 2011 and 2016, some of her memorabilia is sold in Dublin.
O’Hegarty comes from a family with strong nationalist roots. His parents are John, a plasterer and stucco worker, and Katherine (née Hallahan) Hegarty. His elder brother is Patrick Sarsfield O’Hegarty, the writer. His parents’ families emigrated to the United States after the Great Famine, and his parents married in Boston. His father is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). In 1888, his father dies of tuberculosis at the age of 42, and his mother has to work to support the family.
O’Hegarty is educated at the Christian BrothersNorth Monastery school in Cork. By 1902, he has left school to work as a sorter in the local post office, rising to post office clerk. He is a supporter of the Gaelic revival, Irish traditional music, and Gaelic games. A committed sportsman, in his twenties he is captain of the Post Office HQ’s hurling team. He follows his brother Patrick into Conradh na Gaeilge and eventually the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood. He is a member of the Celtic Literary Society by 1905 and founds the Growney branch of Conradh na Gaeilge in 1907. A puritanical character by nature, he is a non-smoker and never drinks.
O’Hegarty is a founder of the local branch of the Irish Volunteers in Cork in December 1913. In June of the following year, he is appointed to the Cork section of the Volunteer Executive, and then to the Military Council. In October, the Dublin government discovers his illegal activities, and he is dismissed. Excluded from Cork under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) regulations, he moves to Ballingeary, where he works as a labourer. From there he moves to Enniscorthy, County Wexford, where he lives with Larry de Lacy. On February 24, 1915, he is arrested and tried under the Defence of the Realm Act for putting up seditious posters. But for this and a second charge of “possession of explosives” he is discharged. The explosives belonged to de Lacy.
The Volunteers appoint O’Hegarty as Commandant of Ballingeary and Bandon. During the Easter Rising, he is stationed in Ballingeary when visited by Michael McCarthy of Dunmanway to propose an attack on a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) post at Macroom. But their strength is fatally weakened and, having no reserves, they call off the attempt. In 1917, he becomes Vice-commandant of No.1 Cork Brigade. He works as a storekeeper at the workhouse but is intimidating, and clashes with the Poor Law Guardians.
During the Irish War of Independence, O’Hegarty is one of the most active in County Cork. Like others, he is exasperated with Tomás Mac Curtain’s inactivity and refusal to be more bellicose. One such is battalion commander Richard Langford, who joins with O’Hegarty’s unit to make an unauthorized raid on the RIC post at Macroom. Langford is court-martialed, but O’Hegarty continues to rise in the ranks. When a RIC Inspector is murdered, Mac Curtain condemns the shootings and calls for their end. On March 19, 1920, Mac Curtain is shot and killed in his home in Cork. The coroner blames the British establishment in Dublin, but the police never make any attempt to investigate the killings. Shortly after these events General Hugh Tudor begins the policy of official reprisals.
In January 1920, an inquiry is held into corruption alleged against “Hegarty’s Mob” or “Hegarty’s Crowd” running Cork City. O’Hegarty blames the former mayors for the charges of incompetence but remains on good terms with them.
In a raid on Cork City Hall on August 12, 1920, the British manage to net all the top brass of the IRA in Cork. In an incredible failure of intelligence, they do not identify the leadership as their prisoners. They are all released, including Liam Lynch, and O’Hegarty. Only Terence MacSwiney, the new Lord Mayor of Cork, is kept in custody and sent to England.
On February 25, 1921, the Coolavokig ambush is carried out by the 1st Cork Brigade under O’Hegarty at Ballyvourney village, on the road between Macroom and Ballyvourney. The IRA suffers no casualties; however, the number of British casualties has been disputed to this day.
The brigade commanders in the southern division retain a residual lingering resentment of Dublin GHQ’s lack of leadership and supplies. Seán Moylan, commandant of No. 2 Cork Brigade, thinks good communications with No.1 Brigade are to be vital, but little of this is seen via the organizer, Ernie O’Malley, at GHQ. At a meeting set up for April 26, 1921, when the manual of Infantry Training 1914 is produced, the document raises great anger. The meeting ends in uproar when O’Hegarty, who is “a master of invective, tore the communication and its authors to ribbons.”
O’Malley and Liam Lynch, the general, meet with O’Hegarty in the mountains of West Cork, near a deserted farmhouse, just off the main road. In the retreat that follows, the Irish take heavy casualties and leave their wounded to the good care of the British. These are the “Round-ups” in which the Irish sleep outside in order to avoid being at home when the Army calls. They are told by the Brigade to learn the national anthem of England to avoid arrest.
In East Cork brigade, O’Hegarty uncovers a spy ring. He is ruthless in the treatment of Georgina Lindsay and her chauffeur, who give away information to the Catholic clergy, but is remarkably lenient on brigade traitors within. He is allegedly not too bothered about evidence but is reminded that all executions of a traitor have to be approved by Dublin first.
O’Hegarty becomes more and more aggressive toward the establishment, using tough language to impose his will over the area. He attempts to force the civilian Teachtai Dála (TDs) for Cork to stand down, to give way to military candidates, telling the Dáil in December 1921, that any TD voting for the treaty will be guilty of treason. But Éamon de Valera is decided and overrules any interference with the Civil Government. Like the commanders, de Valera rejects the treaty but has already been defeated in the Dáil on a vote by W. T. Cosgrave‘s majority.
On February 1, 1922, O’Hegarty marries Maghdalen Ni Laoghaire, a prominent member of Cumann na mBan.
O’Hegarty is on the IRA’s Executive Council, but when there is a meeting on April 9, 1922, it is proposed that the Army should oppose the elections by force. As a result, Florence O’Donoghue and Tom Hales join him in resigning. In May, he and Dan Breen enter into negotiations with Free Stater Richard Mulcahy. A statement is published in the press asking for unity and acceptance of the Treaty. During this time, the republicans become very demoralized and ill-disciplined, but they have to gain strength before announcing independence from Dublin. The debate amongst the anti-Treaty IRA command is increasingly rancorous.
The bitter divisions split the anti-treatyites into two camps. Two motions are debated at the Army Convention on June 18, 1922. At first, the motion to oppose the treaty by force is passed. These men include Tom Barry, Liam Mellows, and Rory O’Connor, who are all in favour of continuing the fight until the British are driven out of Ireland altogether. However, one brigade’s votes have to be recounted, and then the motion is narrowly defeated. Joe McKelvey is appointed the new chief of staff, but the IRA is in chaos. While he strongly opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty, O’Hegarty takes a neutral role in the Irish Civil War and tries to avert hostilities breaking out into full-scale civil war. He emerges as a leader of the “Neutral IRA” with O’Donoghue. This is a “loose” confederation of 20,000 men who have taken part in the pre-truce wars but have remained neutral during the Civil War from January 1923. Over 150 persons attend its convention in Dublin on February 4, 1923. By April 1923, O’Malley is imprisoned in Mountjoy Prison. In a letter to Seamus O’Donovan on April 7, he blames Hegarty for all this compromise and “peace talk.”
It has been alleged by the author Gerard Murphy that O’Hegarty had a role in the assassination of the Commander-in-Chief, Michael Collins, in August 1922, along with Florrie O’Donoghue and Joe O’Connor. It is alleged that as members of the 1st Southern Division Cork, they are actually feigning claims of neutrality but remain part of the IRB in order to set up talks towards peace and the cessation of hostilities at the start of the Irish Civil War.
Although probably an atheist during the Irish War of Independence, O’Hegarty returns to the Catholic church later in life. On forming the Neutral Group of the IRA in December 1922, he tries to unify differences in the volunteers between Republicans and the Free Staters. He communicates with the Papal Nuncio during the inter-war years in an attempt to have Bishop of CorkDaniel Cohalan‘s excommunication bill lifted. Instead, he turns to commemoration as a way to earn favour in Rome, with the dedication of a Catholic church at St. Finbarr’s Cemetery. After his wife’s passing, he becomes a close friend with Florence O’Donoghue until his own death.
The second of two bombing attacks in early 1993 in Warrington, Cheshire, England, takes place on March 20, 1993. The first attack takes place on February 26, when a bomb explodes at a gas storage facility. This explosion causes extensive damage, but no injuries. In the March 20 attack, two smaller bombs explode in litter bins outside shops and businesses on Bridge Street. Two children are killed and 56 people are injured.
The attacks are carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). From the early 1970s, the IRA had been carrying out attacks in both Northern Ireland and England with the stated goal of putting pressure on the UK Government to withdraw from Northern Ireland. The IRA is designated a terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom.
Shortly before midday on Saturday, March 20, 1993, the Samaritans in Liverpool receive a bomb warning by telephone. According to police, the caller says only that a bomb has been planted outside a Boots shop. Merseyside Police send officers to branches of Boots in Liverpool and warn the Cheshire Constabulary, who patrols nearby Warrington. About 30 minutes later, at about 12:25 p.m., two bombs explode on Bridge Street in Warrington, about 100 yards apart. The blasts happen within a minute of each other. One explodes outside Boots and McDonald’s, and the other outside the Argos catalogue store. The area is crowded with shoppers. Witnesses say that shoppers flee from the first explosion into the path of the second. It is later found that the bombs had been placed inside cast iron litter bins, causing large amounts of shrapnel. Buses are organised to ferry people away from the scene and twenty paramedics and crews from seventeen ambulances are sent to deal with the aftermath.
Three-year-old Johnathan Ball dies at the scene. He had been in town with his babysitter, shopping for a Mother’s Day card. The second victim, 12-year-old Tim Parry, is gravely wounded. He dies on March 25, 1993, when his life support machine is switched off, after tests find only minimal brain activity. Another 54 people are injured, four of them seriously. One of the survivors, 32-year-old Bronwen Vickers, the mother of two young daughters, has to have a leg amputated, and dies just over a year later from cancer.
The Provisional IRA issues a statement the day after the bombing, acknowledging its involvement but saying:
“Responsibility for the tragic and deeply regrettable death and injuries caused in Warrington yesterday lies squarely at the door of those in the British authorities who deliberately failed to act on precise and adequate warnings.”
A day later, an IRA spokesman says that “two precise warnings” had been given “in adequate time,” one to the Samaritans and one to Merseyside Police. He adds, “You don’t provide warnings if it is your intention to kill.” Cheshire’s assistant chief constable denies there had been a second warning and says, “Yes, a warning was given half-an-hour before, but no mention was made of Warrington. If the IRA think they can pass on their responsibility for this terrible act by issuing such a nonsensical statement, they have sadly underestimated the understanding of the British public.”
The deaths of two young children ensures that the March 20 bombings receive major coverage in the media and cause widespread public anger. Shortly after the bombings, a group called “Peace ’93” is set up in Dublin. The main organiser is Susan McHugh, a Dublin housewife and mother. On March 25, 1993, thousands hold a peace rally in Dublin. They sign a condolence book outside the General Post Office and lay bouquets and wreaths, with messages of sorrow and apology, to be taken to Warrington for the boys’ funerals. Some criticise Peace ’93 for focusing only on IRA violence and for not responding to the deaths of children in Northern Ireland.
On September 19, 1994, Irish rock band The Cranberries release the song “Zombie,” which is written in protest of the bombings. The song goes on to become their biggest hit.
On November 14, 1996, the Duchess of Kent officially inaugurates a memorial called The River of Life, depicting “a symbol of hope for future generations,” in Bridge Street. It is developed in the aftermath of the bomb attack and commissioned by the Warrington Borough Council. The project, consisting of a symbolic water sculpture that features a commemorative plaque, is designed by the local primary school and Stephen Broadbent.
The parents of Tim Parry set up the Tim Parry Trust Fund to promote greater understanding between Great Britain and Ireland. The Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace works jointly with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) to develop The Peace Centre, close to Warrington town centre, which opens on the seventh anniversary of the attack in 2000. Its purpose is to promote peace and understanding amongst all communities affected by conflict and violence. The centre hosts an annual peace lecture, as well as being home to the local NSPCC and is the home of Warrington Youth Club until 2022.
The bombings receive further attention in 2019 after the Brexit Party selects former Living Marxism writer Claire Fox as their lead candidate in the North West England constituency for the 2019 European Parliament election. The Revolutionary Communist Party, of which Fox is a leading member in 1993, defends the IRA’s bombing in their party newsletter. Despite the controversy, which sees another Brexit Party candidate resign from the party list in protest at the comments, Fox and the Brexit Party top the poll in several areas of the North West, including in Warrington.
The killing of Ball and Parry is still on Cheshire Police’s list of unsolved murders.
A piece on BBC North West‘s Inside Out programme in September 2013 speculates that the bombing may have been the work of a “rogue” IRA unit, which was supported by the IRA but operated independently and who used operatives who were from England to avoid suspicion. The programme also examines a possible link between the attack and British leftist political group Red Action, though nothing is ever proven.
(Pictured: Army bomb disposal at the Warrington Bomb scene in March 1993, photo credit: Walker Howard)
Tone is born Martha Witherington in Dublin on June 17, 1769. She is the eldest daughter of merchant William Witherington and his wife Catherine (née Fanning). Her father is listed as a woolen draper on Grafton Street, Dublin, from 1768 to 1784, as a wine merchant from 1784 to 1788, and finally as a merchant from 1788 to 1793. It is claimed that he is a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and sits on the merchants’ guild on Dublin’s common council from 1777 to 1783. Her mother is a housekeeper to her father after he is widowed.
Tone receives a good education and maintains an interest in drama and literature throughout her life. Katherine Wilmot visits her in Paris in 1802 and comments on the books she has by French, Italian and English authors. When she is fifteen years old, she gets to know Wolfe Tone through her older brother. He is still a student in Trinity College Dublin, and it is he that renames her Matilda. They marry when she is just sixteen, on July 21, 1785, in St. Ann’s Church, Dublin, honeymooning in Maynooth. Upon their return they live with the Witheringtons, though they are not on good terms, and then with Wolfe Tone’s parents in Bodenstown, County Kildare.
The Tone’s first child, Maria, is born before October 1786. She is followed by a son, Richard, who is named for their neighbour Richard Griffith, who dies in infancy. Tone stays with her husband’s family while he is studying for the bar in London from 1787 to 1788. When he returns, the couple has two more sons: William Theobald Wolfe Tone, born on April 29, 1791, and Francis Rawdon Tone, born on June 23, 1793. Francis is known as Frank and is named after Francis Rawdon-Hastings. William is born in Dublin and Frank is probably born in Bodenstown. By this time, the family has a cottage in Bodenstown which Wolfe Tone had inherited from his uncle Jonathan Tone, which the family jokingly refers to as Château Boue. They live there until May 1795, when they leave for Princeton, New Jersey, due to political reasons.
Tone and her children come back to Europe to join Wolfe Tone in France eighteen months later. The family settles in Paris, at first living with Colonel Henry Shee at Nanterre, later moving to the suburb, Chaillot. She educates her children at home. Very few of her letters survive, but many of her husband’s letters and diaries are addressed or intended for her. From these and her letter to her friend Eliza Fletcher, it is clear she shares her husband’s interest in politics. Following her husband’s death in November 1798, she moves to a small apartment at 51 Rue Saint-Jacques in the Latin Quarter of Paris. This is to be close to her son William, who is attending Lycée Louis-le-Grand. She is awarded a pension of 1,200 francs for herself and 400 for each of her children after the expiration of the Treaty of Amiens on May 1, 1803.
Tone’s daughter Maria dies in April 1803, and then her son Frank dies in 1807, both of tuberculosis. William is displaying symptoms of the disease as well, which prompts her to move to the United States in 1807. From there, they attempt to sort out her husband’s affairs, which had been entrusted to James Reynolds. They retrieve only a few of Wolfe Tone’s pre-1795 diaries, and all of the post-1795 letters and diaries, which they add to the autobiography she already has in her possession. When William enters the Cavalry School at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in November 1810 as a cadet, she moves to be close to him, living at the Hôtel de la Surintendance. By approaching Napoleon in 1811, who knew Wolfe Tone, she ensures that her son receives French citizenship and the privileged status of “élève du gouvernement.” In January 1813, when William begins his service, she returns to Paris to live on the Rue de Lille and later moves to the Latin Quarter.
Following the defeat of Napoleon in June 1815, William is refused entry to Ireland or to visit Britain. This leads to both mother and son returning to the United States. Before she leaves Paris, she marries her old friend Thomas Wilson on August 19, 1816. Wilson is a Scottish businessman and advocate who has taken care of her financial affairs after the death of her husband. The couple visit Scotland, and then move to New York City in 1817, and finally to Georgetown, District of Columbia, around 1820. She lives there until her death and calls herself Matilda Tone-Wilson.
Starting in 1824, The New Monthly Magazine begins the unauthorised publication of extracts from Wolfe Tone’s autobiography. In response, Tone decides to publish all of Wolfe Tone’s papers and writing, including the autobiography, pamphlets and diaries, edited by their son William. What results is two large volumes entitled the Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, published in May 1826. She adds a memoir of her own life in Paris following his death in 1798. The book is a best-seller, and ensures the legacy of Wolfe Tone, as well as being an important contemporary document of both Irish and French revolutionary politics.
William Tone dies in 1828, after which Tone lives more privately. She dies in Georgetown on March 18, 1849. Thomas Wilson predeceases her in 1824. Just two weeks prior to her death she is interviewed by a Young Irelander, Charles Hart. She is initially buried near William Tone at Marbury burying-ground, Georgetown. After that cemetery is sold, she is reinterred in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York, on October 31, 1891, by her great-grandchildren. A new monument is dedicated to her, which is later restored in 1996.
Having begun his career as a freelance musician, playing with the BBC Philharmonic orchestra and English National Opera North, an accident ends Cusack’s career as a musician, resulting in him pursuing a career in arts administration. Initially he focuses on the classical music sector, working at two leading concert venues in London, the Wigmore Hall and the Southbank Centre.
In 1992, Cusack makes his first move into theatre following his appointment as Administrative Director of West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, alongside Jude Kelly, where he produces a number of plays including the touring production of Five Guys Named Moe for Cameron Mackintosh Limited. In 1996, he is appointed Head of Planning of the Royal National Theatre under the outgoing artistic director, Sir Richard Eyre, and subsequently with Sir Trevor Nunn and Sir Nicholas Hytner. In 2009, he becomes the National Theatre’s Associate Producer. During this period, he produces numerous productions for tour both in the UK and internationally, taking the work of the National Theatre to five continents. Alongside this, he works as a touring consultant for the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, the Royal Court Theatre, London, Fiery Angel in London’s West End, Canadian Stage in Toronto, Bangarra Dance Theatre in Sydney, TheEmergencyRoom and Corn Exchange in Dublin and Galway International Arts Festival. In June 2016, he is appointed Executive Producer of Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff. In addition to this, he is Consultant Producer to the National Centre for the Performing Arts (India) in Mumbai.
As well as his theatre producing work, Cusack offers representation to a number of Irish artists including the director Annie Ryan, the composer Mel Mercier and the British playwrightMatt Wilkinson.
In 2023, Cusack is the recipient of the Olwen Wymark Award from the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain for his championing of new writing which is presented at the 18th Annual Awards Ceremony in London.
The Pearse Street Ambush takes place in Dublin on March 14, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence. Dublin awakes to the news that six Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers, captured in an ambush at Drumcondra two months earlier, have been hanged. The gates of Mountjoy Gaol are opened at 8:25 a.m. and news of the executions is read out to the distraught relatives of the dead. As many as 40,000 people gather outside and many mournfully say the Rosary for the executed men.
The Labour movement calls a half-day general strike in the city in protest at the hangings. The clandestine Republican government declares a day of national mourning. All public transport comes to a halt and republican activists make sure the strike is observed.
By the evening, the streets clear rapidly as the British-imposed curfew comes into effect at 9:00 p.m. each night. The city is patrolled by regular British troops and the much-feared paramilitary police, or Auxiliaries, as people scurry home and await IRA retaliation for the hangings. This is not long in coming.
Pearse Street is just south of the River Liffey, running from Ringsend, an old fishing port, to the city centre. Number 144 Pearse Street houses the company headquarters of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade 3rd Battalion at St. Andrews Catholic Hall. It has been used for this purpose since before the 1916 Easter Rising.
On the evening of March 14, Captain Peadar O’Meara sends the 3rd Battalion out to attack police or military targets. As many as thirty-four IRA men prowl the area, armed with the standard urban guerrilla arms of easily hidden handguns and grenades. One young volunteer, Sean Dolan, throws a grenade at a police station on nearby Merrion Square, which bounces back before it explodes, blowing off his own leg.
At around 8:00 p.m., with the curfew approaching, a company of Auxiliaries, based in Dublin Castle is sent to the area to investigate the explosion. It consists of one Rolls-Royce armoured car and two tenders holding about 16 men. Apparently, the Auxiliaries have some inside information as they made straight for the local IRA headquarters at 144 Pearse Street. One later testifies in court that “I had been notified there were a certain number of gunmen there.”
However, the IRA is waiting. As soon as the Auxiliaries approach the building, they are fired upon from three sides. What the newspapers describe as “hail of fire” tears into the Auxiliaries’ vehicles. Five of the eight Auxiliaries in the first tender are hit in the opening fusillade. Two of them are fatally injured, including the driver, an Irishman named O’Farrell, and an Auxiliary named L. Beard.
The IRA fighters, however, are seriously outgunned. The Rolls Royce armoured car is impervious to small arms fire (except its tyres, which are shot out) and the mounted Vickers heavy machine gun sprays the surrounding houses with bullets. The unwounded Auxiliaries also clamber out of their tenders and return fire at the gun flashes from street corners and rooftops.
Civilian passersby thow themselves to the ground to avoid the bullets but four are hit, by which side it is impossible to tell. The British military court of inquiry into the incident finds that the civilians had been killed by persons unknown, if by the IRA then they were “murdered,” if hit by Auxiliaries the shootings were “accidental.” This, aside from demonstrating the court’s bias, shows that no one is sure who had killed them.
Firing lasts for only five minutes but in that time seven people, including the two Auxiliaries, are killed or fatally wounded and at least six more are wounded. Eighteen-year-old Bernard O’Hanlon, originally from Dundalk, lay sprawled, dead, outside 145 Pearse Street, his British Bull Dog revolver under him which has five chambers, two of which contain expended rounds and three of which contain live rounds, indicating he had gotten off just two shots before being cut down.
Another IRA Volunteer, Leo Fitzgerald, is also killed outright. Two more guerrillas are wounded, one in the hip and one in the back. They, along with Sean Dolan, who had been wounded by his own grenade, are spirited away by sympathetic fire brigade members and members of Cumann na mBan and treated in nearby Mercer’s Hospital.
Three civilians lay dead on the street. One, Thomas Asquith, is a 68-year-old caretaker, another, David Kelly, is a prominent Sinn Féin member and head of the Sinn Féin Bank. His brother, Thomas Kelly, is a veteran Sinn Féin politician and a Member of Parliament since 1918. The third, Stephen Clarke, aged 22, is an ex-soldier and may have been the one who had tipped off the Auxiliaries about the whereabouts of the IRA meeting house. An internal IRA report notes that he was “under observation… as he was a tout [informant] for the enemy.”
Two IRA men are captured as they flee the scene. One, Thomas Traynor, a 40-year-old veteran of the Easter Rising, is carrying an automatic pistol, but claims to have had no part in the ambush itself. He had, he maintains, simply been asked to bring in the weapon to 144 Great Brunswick Street. The other is Joseph Donnelly, a youth of just 17 years of age.
As most of the IRA fighters get away through houses, over walls and into backstreets, the Auxiliaries ransack St. Andrew’s Catholic Hall at number 144 Pearse Street but find little of value. Regular British Army troops quickly arrive from nearby Beggars Bush Barracks and cordon off the area, but no further arrests are made. Desultory sniping carries on in the city for several hours into the night.
March 14, 1921, was bloody day in Dublin. Thirteen people had died violently in the city by the end of the day – six IRA Volunteers executed that morning, two more killed in action at Pearse Street, two Auxiliaries killed in action and three civilians in the crossfire. It is the worst day of political violence in the city since Bloody Sunday on November 21, 1920, when 31 had been killed.
(From: “The Pearse Street Ambush, Dublin, March 14, 1921” by John Dorney, The Irish Story, http://www.theirishstory.com, January 26, 2015 | Pictured: British Army troops keep crowds back from Mountjoy Prison during the executions, March 14 1921.)
seamus dubhghaill 