O’Connor is one of five children of Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) Supreme Council member and later MPJames O’Connor. He is IRB treasurer in 1870 and party to the discussions on the New Departure, a collaboration between constitutional and physical force nationalists, the open and the secret movements. Her uncle, John O’Connor, is a leading member of the Supreme Council.
In 1890, when O’Connor’s father is a journalist, her mother, Mary O’Connor, and four of her sisters – Annie, Aileen, Kathleen and Norah – die after eating contaminated mussels gathered on the seashore near where they lived in what became known as the Seapoint tragedy. She becomes violently ill, but survives.
O’Connor travels to London after a falling out with her stepmother six years later. She finds work as a civil servant and a paid speaker for the Liberal Party, through which she meets Crompton Llewelyn Davies, adviser to David Lloyd George and solicitor to the General Post Office, brother of Arthur Llewelyn Davies and uncle of the boys who inspire the creation of Peter Pan. They marry on December 8, 1910. The marriage produces two children: Richard and Catherine.
Davies is an orthodox home ruler but is radicalised by the 1916 Easter Rising. Davies and her husband raise funds for Roger Casement‘s legal defence and later lobby for his death sentence to be commuted. She is saluted as one of the “fond ones” in a letter from Casement to Margaret Gavan Duffy on the eve of his August 3, 1916, execution in Pentonville Prison.
Following the Easter Rising, Davies takes her two children to Ireland and purchases Furry Park, a crumbling mansion near Dublin. She collaborates with Michael Collins during the Irish War of Independence and her home in Clontarf becomes one of Collins’ many safe houses as he directs the war. She is arrested and imprisoned in 1920. Collins also stays at her Portmarnock house, using it as a safe house.
Davies says in later life that she and Michael Collins had been lovers, but the historian Peter Hart claims her to be a stalker. It has been suggested that Collins is the father of her son Richard. Historian Meda Ryan denies this saying “Letters from him and a phone call confirmed that he was born December 24, 1912, before his mother met Collins.”
Historian Tim Pat Coogan in his book Michael Collins says that Davies claimed on the night that Collins learned that Éamon de Valera was going to reject the Anglo-Irish Treaty “he was so distressed that I gave myself to him.” Coogan refuses to give a source and in the footnotes, he says, “Confidential source.”
Davies makes a lasting contribution to Irish literature with a translation, with George Thomson, of the Muiris Ó Súilleabháin book Fiche Bliain faoi Bhláth as Twenty Years a-Flowering. She is thought to have helped Collins write his book The Path to Freedom.
Moylett is born into a farming family and emigrates to London as a young man working in various departments in Harrods for five years before returning to Ireland in 1902. He opens a grocery and provisions business in Ballina and, as it proves successful, he later establishes branches in Galway and London between 1910 and 1914. The London-branch is sold at the outbreak of World War I.
Having founded and organised the recruitment and funding of the Mayo activities of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) he also acts as a justice of the Sinn Féin courts. He is advised to leave the area due to death threats from the Black and Tans and their burning down of his commercial premises in Ballina. On one occasion during the period, according to his military statements, he prevents some over-enthusiastic volunteers from attempting to kidnap and assassinate Prince George, Future King of England, who is sailing and holidaying in the Mayo/Donegal region at the time.
Relocating to Dublin, the Irish overseas Trading Company is formed with a former director of Imperial Chemical Industries. Moylett becomes involved in the Irish nationalist movement and is active in the Mayo and Galway areas during the Irish War of Independence. The Irish Overseas Trading Company, of which he is one of two directors, acts as a front for the importation of armaments covered by consignments of trade goods. According to his subsequent detailed military statements archived in the bureau of military history by the Irish Army, the consignments are imported to a number of warehouses in the Dublin Docks with the three keyholders to the warehouses being Éamon de Valera, Michael Collins and Arthur Griffith.
With Harry Boland in the United States with Éamon de Valera, Moylett succeeds him as president of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and, in October 1920, is selected to go to London as the personal envoy of Arthur Griffith. During the next several months, he is involved in secret discussions with British government officials on the recognition of Dáil Éireann, a general amnesty for members of the Irish Republican Army and the organisation of a peace conference to end hostilities between both parties.
Moylett is assisted by John Steele, the London editor of the Chicago Tribune, who helps him contact high-level members of the British Foreign Office. One of these officials, in particular C.J. Phillps, has frequent meetings with him. Discussions center on the possibility of an armistice and amnesty in Ireland with the hope for a settlement in which a national Parliament will be established with safeguards for Unionists of Ulster. These meetings are later attended by H. A. L. Fisher, the President of the Board of Education and one of the most outspoken opponents of unauthorised reprisals against the Irish civilian population by the British government. One of the main points Fisher expresses to Moylett is the necessity of Sinn Féin to compromise on its demands for a free and united republic. His efforts are hindered however, both to the slow and confused pace of the peace negotiations as well as the regularly occurring violence in Ireland, most especially the Bloody Sunday incident on November 21, 1920, which happens while he is in London speaking with members of the cabinet. During the Irish Civil War, although a supporter of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, he chooses not to participate in the Free State government party which he views as an amalgam of Unionists and the old Irish Party. In 1926, he is a founding member of the Clann Éireann party and becomes an early advocate of the withholding of land annuities.
In 1930, Moylett and his family move to Dublin, and by 1940 his political activities in the city have become a concern for the Gardai. He begins moving in antisemitic, pro-German far-right politic circles while in Dublin, engaging with the likes of Gearóid Ó Cuinneagáin and George Griffith. Indeed alongside Griffith, he is deeply involved with the founding of the People’s National Party, an explicitly anti-Jewish Pro-Nazi party whose membership overlaps greatly with that of the Irish Friends of Germany. He leaves the People’s National Party in October 1939 only when he is expelled from the party and his position as treasurer on charges of embezzling party funds. In 1941 he continues to support these far-right groups when he aids Ó Cuinneagáin in setting up the Youth Ireland Association, a group gathered to fight “a campaign against the Jews and Freemasons, also against all cosmopolitan agenda.” When the group is found to be stealing guns from army reservists, the Gardai shuts the group down in September 1942.
Margaret Brady is born to Patrick Brady, a coal merchant whose family are from County Meath, and Brigid Brady (née Savage) of Oldtown, Dublin. She is baptised in St. Lawrence O’Toole’s parish. At the time, her parents are living at 1 Clarence Street. She has three known siblings and is educated by the Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul. She is employed as a stationery shop assistant where she meets her future husband, James Pearse.
In 1877, she marries James Pearse at St. Agatha’s Church, off the North Strand. James is born in Bloomsbury, Middlesex, on December 8, 1839, and later lives in Birmingham. He comes to Ireland to work as a sculptor in the late 1850s with his first wife, Emily Susanna Fox, who dies in 1876. They have four children together. The first three children are Margaret Mary (born on August 4, 1878), Patrick (born on November 10, 1879) and William (born on November 15, 1881). All three children are born while the family lives in 27 Great Brunswick Street. Their youngest child, Mary Brigid, is born on September 29, 1888, by which time the family has moved to Newbridge Avenue, Sandymount. Pearse’s aunt, Margaret Brady, an Irish speaker, is a frequent visitor to the family home and encourages the children’s interest in the Irish language and culture. Her husband dies in 1900. Pearse does not permit her children to play with other children, however, she supports her children in all their aspirations. She has a very strong relationship and consequent effect on her eldest son, Patrick, who founds St. Enda’s School in 1908 and is the headmaster up until the time of his execution. She takes over the responsibility of Housekeeper at the school.
Pearse supports her sons’ political beliefs. After their execution, she wishes to maintain their legacy and becomes involved in political life. She joins Sinn Féin after the Rising and gives support and endorsement to candidates during the 1918 Westminster election. During the 1920 Poor Law Elections for the Rathmines area of Dublin, she stands as a Sinn Féin candidate and is elected on the first count. She is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin County constituency at the 1921 Irish elections.
Pearse strongly opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty, as do all the female TDs. She states during the Treaty debate that:
“I rise to support the motion of our President for the rejection of the Treaty. My reasons for doing so are various, but my first reason for doing so I would like to explain here today is my son’s account. It has been said here on several occasions that Patrick Pearse would have accepted this Treaty. I deny it. As his mother I deny it, and on his account, I will not accept it.”
Later she continues in a similar vein:
“Always we had to be on the alert. But even the Black and Tans alone would not frighten me as much as if I accepted this Treaty; because I feel in my heart – and I would not say it only I feel it – that the ghosts of my sons would haunt me.”
Following the ratification of the Treaty Pearse leaves the Dáil with the other anti-Treaty deputies. She is defeated at the 1922 Irish general election. She supports those who oppose the Treaty during the Irish Civil War and continues to be a member of Sinn Féin until 1926. In 1926 she leaves the party conference with Éamon de Valera and becomes a founder member of Fianna Fáil. She never stands for election again.
At the launch of The Irish Press newspaper, Pearse is asked to press the button to start the printers rolling. At many public occasions she states that were her sons alive they too would have joined Fianna Fáil. Accordingly, Patrick Pearse is recognised as the spiritual figurehead of the party to this day.
After Patrick’s death, the responsibility for running the school falls to Pearse and her two daughters. As Patrick Pearse had died without a will, the school is left in a precarious financial position. In May 1924, when she is aged 70, she undertakes a trip to the United States to raise funds for the school, alongside showing support for Éamon de Valera and the Irish Republic. At an event in Brooklyn on May 19, 1924, when referencing the execution of her two sons, she declares herself the “proudest mother in Ireland.” She also states that Michael Collins had attempted to “bribe” her with an offer to subsidise the school, which she refused. During a meeting in Seattle on August 11, 1924, she again discusses her sons and how she believes “the best way to honour their memory was to carry on their work for Ireland.” She raises over $10,000 in donations for the school during the trip. Notwithstanding her fundraising activities, St. Enda’s continues to decline and eventually closes in 1935. Great Brunswick Street, where she and the Pearse family originally lived, is renamed Pearse Street in 1920 by a resolution passed at the Dublin City Council meeting.
Pearse dies on April 22, 1932. She is honoured with a large state funeral and a motion is passed at the meeting of Dublin City Council expressing sympathy with the Pearse family. On April 26, 1932, sizeable crowds pay their respects as her funeral procession makes its way through the streets of Dublin. At the General Post Office (GPO), where Patrick and William fought during the Easter Rising, the funeral cortege pauses for a minute of silence before proceeding to Glasnevin Cemetery. Éamon de Valera gives an oration as she is laid to rest, which praises her inspiring courage, charity and cheerfulness during the years after her son’s death.
After Pearse’s death, her daughter, Mary Margaret, continues to reside at St. Enda’s. She also joins Fianna Fáil, and serves as a TD from 1933 to 1937 and later serves in Seanad Éireann as a Senator from 1938 until her death in 1968. Upon her death, as per her mother’s request, she passes St. Enda’s on to the people of Ireland.
Hardebeck is born on December 10, 1869, in Clerkenwell, London, to a German father and Welsh mother. He loses his sight when he is a baby. He attends the Royal Normal School for the Blind in London (1880–92) where, under his teacher Frederick Corder, a professor from the Royal Academy of Music, he shows a marked aptitude for music.
In 1893, at the age of twenty-four, Hardebeck moves to Belfast, where he opens a music store, but the venture fails, and he becomes the organist of a small parish in the city, the Holy Family Church, Wellington Place. He enters an anthem, O God of My Salvation, for contralto and chorus, for the 1897 Dublin Feis Ceoil and wins. On this occasion he hears folk song arrangements of Charles Villiers Stanford and others for the first time. At the 1901 Feis Ceoil, he again wins a prize, this time for a large cantata, The Red Hand of Ulster. In 1914, his wife, Mary Reavy, dies.
In 1919, Hardebeck becomes the director of the music school in Cork and becomes the first professor of Irish music at University College Cork (UCC) in 1922. Ill-suited for administrative tasks, he relinquishes the post after one year and returns to Belfast, which after the Irish Civil War has become the capital of Northern Ireland. In 1932, he finally settles in Dublin, where he works for An Gúm, the Irish government publisher, as arranger of Irish traditional songs for piano and choirs, many of which become teaching material at schools in the nascent Republic of Ireland. He also teaches Irish and traditional music in the Dublin Municipal School of Music for two years. On many occasions he acts as adjudicator in singing and musical competitions across Ireland.
Despite Hardebeck’s mixed German/Welsh/English background, the events of the 1913 Dublin lock-out, the outbreak of World War I, and the 1916 Easter Rising radicalise him, turning him into an Irish nationalist. He is quoted as saying, “I believe in God, Beethoven and Patrick Pearse.” He studies the Irish language and collects folk songs from around the country, making some unique arrangements that bridge the gap between traditional and art song.
At home in Dublin, Hardebeck plays his excellent arrangements of Irish melodies on a Schiedmayerharmonium. The instrument has a “percussion” stop, which he uses to great effect. He also owns a Knauss piano but plays the harmonium by choice. He is quite an authority on plainchant. The noted Irish harpsichord maker Cathal Gannon is a close friend of his for many years. Hardebeck teaches him how to appreciate the structure of the classical symphony and concerto and passes on his enthusiasm and love of Irish melodies.
Following Hardebeck’s death at his home, 14 St. Vincent Street, Berkeley Road, Dublin, on February 10, 1945, a Radio Éireann-sponsored symphony concert, held in the Capitol Theatre in Dublin, begins with a sympathetic performance of his orchestral variations upon Seoithín Seó. A state funeral is held in Saint Joseph’s Church, Berkeley Road, Dublin. The church is packed; various government ministers, the Lord Mayor and representatives of PresidentDouglas Hyde and of Éamon de Valera are there. Hardebeck’s own Kyrie and Agnus Dei are performed at the Requiem Mass. He is interred in Glasnevin Cemetery, where a Benedictus is chanted by the clergy present. A vote of sympathy is issued by the Irish National League of the Blind to Hardebeck’s widow and relatives, in which the hope is expressed “that the nation as a whole would not be unmindful of the important contribution which the late Dr. Hardebeck had made to Irish culture, music and art.”
Unfortunately, very little attention has been given to Hardebeck, who is one of the instigators in the revival of Irish music. Indeed, he is largely forgotten after his death. This is possibly due to his mixed origins and place of birth. His arrangement for orchestra of The Lark in the Clear Air is a fine piece of music, but he is content to sell it to the music publishers Boosey & Hawkes for just six guineas.
In June 2013, a plaque to Hardebeck’s memory is installed at Holy Family Church, Belfast.
(Pictured: “Carl Hardebeck (1869-1945),” oil on canvas, National Museums NI)
Broy is a double agent within the DMP, with the rank of Detective Sergeant (DS). He works as a clerk inside G Division, the intelligence branch of the DMP. While there, he copies sensitive files for IRA leader Michael Collins and passes many of these files on to Collins through Thomas Gay, the librarian at Capel Street Library. On April 7, 1919, he smuggles Collins into G Division’s archives in Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street), enabling him to identify “G-Men,” six of whom are eventually killed by the IRA. He supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and joins the National Army during the Irish Civil War, reaching the rank of colonel. In 1925, he leaves the Army and joins the Garda Síochána.
Broy’s elevation to the post of Commissioner comes when Fianna Fáil replaces Cumann na nGaedheal as the government. Other more senior officers are passed over as being too sympathetic to the outgoing party.
In 1934, Broy oversees the creation of “The Auxiliary Special Branch” of the Garda, formed mainly of hastily trained anti-Treaty IRA veterans, who were opponents of Broy in the civil war. It is nicknamed the “Broy Harriers” by Broy’s opponents, a pun on the Bray Harriers athletics club or more likely on the Bray Harriers hunt club. It is used first against the quasi-fascistBlueshirts, and later against the diehard holdouts of the IRA, now set against former comrades. The “Broy Harriers” nickname persists into the 1940s, even though Broy himself is no longer in command, and for the bodies targeted by the unit is a highly abusive term, still applied by radical Irish republicans to the Garda Special Branch (now renamed the Special Detective Unit). The Broy Harriers engage in several controversial fatal shootings. They shoot dead a protesting farmer named Lynch in Cork, and when the matter is discussed in the Senate in 1934, the members who support Éamon de Valera‘s government walk out. They are detested by sections of the farming community. In the light of this latter history, their name is often used in reference to individuals or groups who attempt to disrupt contemporary dissident republicans, such as the remnants of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
Broy is President of the Olympic Council of Ireland from 1935 to 1950. He is also a member of the Standing Committee of the Irish Amateur Handball Association.
Broy dies on January 22, 1972, at his residence in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar.
On September 17, 2016, a memorial to Broy is unveiled in Coolegagen Cemetery, County Offaly, close to his childhood home. His daughter Áine is in attendance, as are representatives of the government, the Air Corps, and the Garda Síochana.
Neil Jordan‘s film Michael Collins (1996) inaccurately depicts Broy (played by actor Stephen Rea) as having been arrested, tortured and killed by Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) agents. In addition, G Division was based not in Dublin Castle, as indicated in the film, but in Great Brunswick Street. Collins had a different agent in the Castle, David Neligan. Broy is also mentioned and makes an appearance in Michael Russell’s detective novel The City of Shadows, set partly in Dublin in the 1930s, published by HarperCollins in 2012.
O’Malley is one of eight surviving children of Joseph O’Malley, civil engineer, and his wife, Mary “Cis” (née Tooher). Born into a wealthy middle-class family, he is educated by the Jesuits at Crescent College and later at Clongowes Wood College, County Kildare. He later studies at University College Galway (UCG), where he is conferred with a degree in civil engineering in 1943. He later returns to Limerick, where he works as an engineer before becoming involved in politics.
O’Malley plays rugby at provincial level for Munster, Leinster and Connacht and at club level for Bohemians and Shannon RFC. His chances at an international career are ruined by the suspension of international fixtures during World War II. It is at a rugby match in Tralee that he first meets Dr. Hilda Moriarty, who he goes on to marry in August 1947.
Although O’Malley runs as a Fianna Fáil candidate, he is born into a politically active family who supports Cumann na nGaedheal until a falling-out with the party in the early 1930s. He first becomes involved in local politics as a member of Limerick Corporation. He becomes Mayor of Limerick in 1961, the third O’Malley brother to hold the office (Desmond from 1941-43 and Michael from 1948-49). He is a strong electoral performer, topping the poll in every general election he runs in.
O’Malley is first elected to Dáil Éireann as a Fianna Fáil TD for Limerick East at the 1954 Irish general election. Fianna Fáil is not returned to government on that occasion. He spends the rest of the decade on the backbenches. However, his party is returned to power in 1957. Two years later, the modernising process begins when Seán Lemass takes over from Éamon de Valera as Taoiseach. Lemass introduces younger cabinet ministers, as the old guard who has served the party since its foundation in 1926 begin to retire.
In 1961, O’Malley joins the government as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance. He is part of a new, brasher style of politician that emerges in the 1960s, sometimes nicknamed “the men in the mohair suits.” It is expected that this generation of politician, born after the Irish Civil War, will be a modernising force in post-de Valera Ireland.
Although his sporting background is in rugby and swimming, it is association football which O’Malley gets involved in at a leadership level, becoming President of the Football Association of Ireland despite never having played the sport.
Following Fianna Fáil’s retention of power in the 1965 Irish general election, O’Malley joins the cabinet as Minister for Health. He spends just over a year in this position before he is appointed Minister for Education, a position in which he displays renowned dynamism. Having succeeded Patrick Hillery, another dynamic young minister, he resolves to act swiftly to introduce the recommendations of an official report on education.
As Minister for Education, O’Malley extends the school transport scheme and commissions the building of new non-denominational comprehensive and community schools in areas where they are needed. He introduces Regional Technical Colleges (RTCs), now called Institutes of Technology, in areas where there is no third level college. The best example of this policy is the University of Limerick, originally an Institute of Higher Education, where O’Malley is credited with taking the steps to ensure that it becomes a university. His plan to merge Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin arouses huge controversy, and is not successful, despite being supported by his cabinet colleague Brian Lenihan. Access to third-level education is also extended, the old scholarship system being replaced by a system of means-tested grants that give easier access to students without well-off parents.
Mid-twentieth century Ireland experiences significant emigration, especially to the neighbouring United Kingdom where, in addition to employment opportunities, there is a better state provision of education and healthcare. Social change in Ireland and policies intending to correct this deficit are often met with strong resistance, such as Noël Browne‘s proposed Mother and Child Scheme. As a former Health Minister, O’Malley has first-hand experience of running the department which had attempted to introduce this scheme and understood the processes that caused it to fail, such as resistance from Department of Finance and John Charles McQuaid. This influences his strategy in presenting the free-education proposal.
Shortly after O’Malley is appointed, he announces that from 1969 all education up to Intermediate Certificate level will be without cost, and free buses will bring students in rural areas to their nearest school, seemingly making this decision without consulting other ministers. However, he does discuss it with Lemass. Jack Lynch, who, as Minister for Finance, has to find the money to pay for the programme, is not consulted and is dismayed at the announcement.
By announcing the decision first to journalists and on a Saturday (during a month when the Dáil is in recess), the positive public reaction tempers resistance to the idea before the next cabinet meeting. O’Malley’s proposals are hugely popular with the public, and it is impossible for the government to go back on his word.
Some Irish commentators consider that O’Malley’s extension of education, changing Ireland from a land where the majority are schooled only to the age of 14 to a country with universal secondary-school education, indirectly leads to the Celtic Tiger boom of the 1990s-2000s when it is followed for some years by an extension of free education to primary degree level in university, a scheme that is launched in 1996 by the Labour Party and axed in 2009 by Fianna Fáil’s Batt O’Keeffe.
In 1967, O’Malley appoints Justice Eileen Kennedy to chair a committee to carry out a survey and report on the reformatory and industrial school systems. The report, which is published in 1970, is considered ground-breaking in many areas and comes to be known as the Kennedy Report. The Report makes recommendations about a number of matters, including the Magdalene laundries, in relation to which they are not acted upon. The report recommends the closure of a number of reformatories, including the latterly infamous reformatory at Daingean, County Offaly.
O’Malley’s reforms make him one of the most popular members of the government. He is affectionately known as “the School Man” for his work in education. His sudden death in Limerick on March 10, 1968, before his vision for the education system is completed, comes as a shock to the public. He is buried with a full Irish state funeral.
Following O’Malley’s death, his widow, Hilda O’Malley, does not run in the subsequent by-election for the seat he has left vacant. It is won narrowly by their nephew Desmond O’Malley. Hilda seeks the Fianna Fáil nomination for the 1969 Irish general election, but Fianna Fáil gives the party nomination to Desmond, as the sitting TD. Hilda runs as an Independent candidate in that election. After what proves a bitter campaign against her nephew, she fails to get the fourth seat in Limerick East by just 200 votes.
Blackham is born in London, England, on December 16, 1891. His father, William George Blackham, is an Ulster Protestant from Newry, while his mother is an Englishwoman named Evison Elizabeth Saunders. An uncle is Robert J. Blackham who is the Surgeon-General to the British Army in Ireland. The family are evangelical Protestants, against which he rebels. Having been brought up to take the Bible literally, he suffers a religious crisis upon the realisation his teachers at school do not. He finds the transition to adulthood difficult, particularly due to the early death of his father.
For a time, Blackham moves in socialist circles, under the influence of Ulster socialist Robert Wilson Lynd. However, upon the discovery that his father had been a Protestant who had been in favour of Irish home rule and also had some republican sympathies, he turns toward Irish nationalism.
Blackham becomes involved in the Gaelic League while in London. he Gaelicizes his name to Aodh Sandrach de Blácam or Hugh de Blácam, despite his non-Gaelic ethnic origin. He learns the Irish language from the essayist Robert Wilson Lynd. During this time, he seeks to synthesize his urge to reclaim his sense of Irish nationality with the works and thoughts of hardline Catholic author G. K. Chesterton. It is partially because of Chesterton’s influence that he converts to Catholicism, although the conversion of Protestant Irish Nationalists to Catholicism is common throughout the early 20th century. Another influence upon his decision to convert is his desire to marry Catholic Mary McCarville of County Monaghan.
In May 1914 de Blácam returns to Ireland and begins working as a freelance journalist. He joins the Enniscorthy Echo as a journalist in 1915.
During the Irish War of Independence de Blácam writes nationalist propaganda alongside Arthur Griffith and Herbert Moore Pim. He is interned by the British in 1919. During this time period he writes two political manifestoes: Towards the Republic; a study of new Ireland’s social and political aims (1918) and What Sinn Féin Stands For (1921). The two books argue that at their root, Catholic social teaching (CST) and Bolshevism are essentially identical and that Ireland, having only experienced feudalism and capitalism because of external forces, can skip many of the phrases normally described in the Marxist Trajectory of historical development and go straight to a soviet-type society, an idea not dissimilar to the two-stage theory. He imagines this soviet-type society to be an Irish-speaking decentralised rural cooperative commonwealth. Critics of Sinn Féin frequently cite his works as proof of the infeasibility of Sinn Féin’s aims.
De Blácam opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and subsequently aids the Anti-Treaty Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish Civil War. For this he is interned by the newly created Irish Free State in 1922. Following his release, he continues to pin his flag to the mast of Éamon de Valera and his newly formed Fianna Fáil party. He believes De Valera fully embodies his own political ideas.
During the 1920s de Blácam joins The Irish Times, which he later leaves to become editor of The Catholic Standard. For seventeen years he writes a feature in the Fianna Fáil aligned The Irish Press called “Roddy the Rover.”
It was also during the 1920s that de Blácam moves to Dublin, where he begins to move in the same circles as George Bernard Shaw, George Russell, and W. B. Yeats. He hopes all three men might one day convert to Catholicism as he did and is sorely disappointed when each do not. Upon the death of Yeats, he goes so far as to refer to Yeats’ poem as “Demonic.” He has similar hopes for Peadar O’Donnell but is similarly disappointed in his lack of interest in conversion.
In 1938 de Blácam publishes The Black North, a book which carries an introduction by de Valera. In the book he argues that Ulster Protestants are in actuality both Irish and Catholic, but they simply do not realise it. Among his arguments to support this idea are the suggestions that the presbyterian emphasis on self-government is derived from the Gaelic clan tradition, that presbyterian “kailyard” writers of rural nostalgia such as Lydia Mary Foster exemplify the naturally Irish piety and purity of her co-religionists, and that the fact that some workers commute from the Armagh borderland to work in Dundalk factories prove that the south is better off economically than the north.
It is suggested de Blácam is an influence upon de Valera’s 1943 broadcast “The Ireland That We Dreamed Of.” Politically he is highly considered about rural depopulation and is involved in a number of organisations seeking to end it. He advocates more economic autarky and cultural protectionism to combat rural depopulation and lamented urbanisation and industrialisation. He also tries to convince the Fianna Fáil executive that they should ban women from emigration as well as ban women from factories in order to force women to remain in rural Ireland. His ideas fail to impress the executive, with Seán MacEntee in particular standing in strong disagreement.
De Blácam is a member of the Fianna Fáil executive until 1947, when he defects to the upstart Irish Republican party Clann na Poblachta. For this move he is immediately fired from The Irish Press. He stands for Clann na Poblachta in the Louth constituency at the 1948 Irish general election but is not elected.
During the brief period in which Clann na Poblachta is in government, de Blácam serves as an official spokesman for the Department of Health and as a speechwriter to Noël Browne, the embattled Minister for Health.
De Blácam dies while working in the Custom House on January 16, 1951. His funeral is attended by many dignitaries including TaoiseachJohn A. Costello and former Taoiseach Éamon de Valera. He is buried in New Mellifont Abbey, County Louth.
Hutchinson is born in Glasgow, Scotland, on February 16, 1927. His father, Harry Hutchinson, a Scottish printer whose own father had left Dublin to find work in Scotland, is Sinn Féin treasurer in Glasgow and is interned in Frongoch internment camp in 1919–21. His mother, Cathleen Sara, is born in Cowcaddens, Glasgow, of emigrant parents from County Donegal. She is a friend of Constance Markievicz. In response to a letter from Cathleen, Éamon de Valera finds work in Dublin for Harry as a clerk in the Labour Exchange, and later he holds a post in Stationery Office.
Hutchinson is five years old when the family moves to Dublin and is the last to be enrolled in St. Enda’s School before it closes. He then goes to school at Synge Street CBS where he learns Irish and Latin. One of his close friends there is the poet and literary critic John Jordan. In 1948 he attends University College Dublin (UCD) where he spends a year and a half, learning Spanish and Italian.
Having published some poems in The Bell in 1945, Hutchinson’s poetic development is greatly influenced by a 1950 holiday in Spain and Portugal. A short stop en route at Vigo brings him into contact for the first time with the culture of Galicia. Later, in Andalusia, he is entranced by the landscape and by the works of the Spanish poets Federico García Lorca, Emilio Prados and Luis Cernuda.
In 1951 Hutchinson leaves Ireland again, determined to live in Spain. Unable to get work in Madrid, as he had hoped, he travels instead to Geneva, where he gets a job as a translator with the International Labour Organization, which brings him into contact with Catalan exiles, speaking a language then largely suppressed in Spain. An invitation by a Dutch friend leads to a visit to the Netherlands, in preparation for which he teaches himself the Dutch language.
Hutchinson returns to Ireland in 1953 and becomes interested in the Irish language poetry of writers such as Piaras Feiritéar and Aonghus Fionn Ó Dálaigh and publishes a number of poems in Irish in the magazine Comhar in 1954. The same year he travels again to Spain, this time to Barcelona, where he learns the Catalan and Galician languages, and gets to know Catalan poets such as Salvador Espriu and Carles Riba. With the British poet P. J. Kavanagh, he organises a reading of Catalan poetry in the British Institute.
Hutchinson goes home to Ireland in 1957 but returns to Barcelona in 1961 and continues to support Catalan poets. An invitation by the publisher Joan Gili to translate some poems by Josep Carner leads to the publication of his first book, a collection of thirty of Carner’s poems in Catalan and English, in 1962. A project to publish his translation of Espriu’s La Pell de brau (The Bull-skin), falls through some years later. Some of the poems from this project are included in the collection Done into English.
In 1963, Hutchinson’s first collection of original poems in English, Tongue Without Hands, is published by Dolmen Press in Ireland. In 1967, having spent nearly ten years altogether in Spain, he returns to Ireland, making a living as a poet and journalist writing in both Irish and English. In 1968, a collection of poems in Irish, Faoistin Bhacach (A Lame Confession), is published. Expansions, a collection in English, follows in 1969. Friend Songs (1970) is a new collection of translations, this time of medieval poems originally written in Galician-Portuguese. In 1972 Watching the Morning Grow, a new collection of original poems in English, comes out, followed in 1975 by another, The Frost Is All Over.
In October 1971, Hutchinson takes up the Gregory Fellowship in Poetry at the University of Leeds, on the recommendation of Professor A. Norman Jeffares. There is some controversy around the appointment following accusations, later retracted, that Jeffares had been guilty of bias in the selection because of their joint Irish heritage. He holds tenure at the University for three years, and during that time contributes to the University’s influential poetry magazine Poetry & Audience.
From 1977 to 1978 Hutchinsonn compiles and presents Oró Domhnaigh, a weekly radio programme of Irish poetry, music and folklore for Ireland’s national network, RTÉ. He also contributes a weekly column on the Irish language to the station’s magazine RTÉ Guide for over ten years. A collaboration with Melita Cataldi of Old Irish lyrics into Italian is published in 1981. Another collection in English, Climbing the Light (1985), which also includes translations from Irish, Italian and Galician, is followed in 1989 by his last Irish collection, Le Cead na Gréine (By Leave of the Sun). The Soul that Kissed the Body (1990) is a selection of his Irish poems translated into English. His most recent English collection is Barnsley Main Seam (1995). His Collected Poems is published in 2002 to mark his 75th birthday. This is followed in 2003 by Done into English, a selection of many of the translated works he produced over the years.
A co-editor and founder of the literary journal Cyphers, Hutchinson receives the Butler Award for Irish writing in 1969. He is a member of Aosdána, the state-supported association of artists, from which he receives a cnuas (stipend) to allow him to continue writing. He describes this as “a miracle and a godsend” as he is fifty-four when invited to become a member and is at the end of his tether. A two-day symposium of events is held at Trinity College Dublin, to celebrate his 80th birthday in 2007, with readings from his works by writers including Macdara Woods, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Paul Durcan and Sujata Bhatt. His most recent collection, At Least for a While (2008), is shortlisted for the Poetry Now Award.
Hutchinson lives in Rathgar, Dublin, and dies of pneumonia in Dublin on January 14, 2012. His extensive archive is in the library of Maynooth University. Its opening on May 24, 2015, is accompanied by the inauguration of an annual Pearse Hutchinson seminar and the launch of a collection of unpublished Hutchinson poems, Listening to Bach.
Some critics argue that Hutchinson’s concern with simplicity and Ireland’s place in the comparative history of human oppression too often deteriorates into banality, didacticism, and regurgitation of sentimental revivalist tropes. Even these, however, acknowledge his occasional greatness, while his champions argue that his achievement has not yet been fully recognised and absorbed.
Donnelly is the son of Timothy Donnelly, a master plumber, and Mary Brennan. He is the sixth of eight surviving children. The 1911 Census lists him living with his family at 34 Wexford Street. Apprenticed as a plumber, he becomes involved in the Irish Volunteers. During the Easter Rising of 1916 he is the commander of C Company of Éamon de Valera‘s command in Boland’s Mill.
Donnelly is Vice-Commandant of the 3rd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA during the Irish War of Independence. On February 10, 1921, he is arrested. Four days later he escapes from Kilmainham Gaol along with Ernie O’Malley and Frank Teeling. Returning to his command in the IRA, he is appointed chief of the Irish Republican Police (IRP) in mid-1921 as part of an attempt to enforce law and order in those areas of the country where the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) have been forced out.
Donnelly founds the National Association of the Old IRA in an attempt to mend some of the rifts in the Republican Movement. He is a member of the provisional National Executive of the Republican Prisoners’ Release Association.
On March 2, 1940, Donnelly is one of the founders of Córas na Poblachta and serves as its president. He becomes a founding member of Clann na Poblachta in 1946.
As one of the most senior surviving veterans of the Easter Rising, Donnelly plays a prominent role in the 50th anniversary commemorations in 1966. He dies in Dublin on December 7 of that year.
Costello is born on June 20, 1891, in Fairview, Dublin, the younger son of John Costello senior, a civil servant, and Rose Callaghan. He is educated at St. Joseph’s, Fairview, and then moves to O’Connell School, for senior classes, and later attends University College Dublin (UCD), where he graduates with a degree in modern languages and law. He studies at King’s Inns to become a barrister, winning the Victoria Prize there in 1913 and 1914. He is called to the Irish Bar in 1914, and practises as a barrister until 1922.
In 1922, Costello joins the staff at the office of the Attorney General in the newly established Irish Free State. Three years later he is called to the inner bar, and the following year, 1926, he becomes Attorney General of Ireland, upon the formation of the Cumann na nGaedheal government, led by W. T. Cosgrave. While serving in this position he represents the Free State at Imperial Conferences and League of Nations meetings.
Costello is also elected a Bencher of the Honourable Society of King’s Inns. He loses his position as Attorney General of Ireland when Fianna Fáil comes to power in 1932. The following year, however, he is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Cumann na nGaedheal TD. Cumann na nGaedheal soon merges with other parties to form Fine Gael.
During the Dáil debate on the Emergency Powers Act 1939, Costello is highly critical of the Act’s arrogation of powers, stating that “We are asked not merely to give a blank cheque, but to give an uncrossed cheque to the Government.” He loses his seat at the 1943 Irish general election but regains it when Éamon de Valera calls a snap election in 1944. From 1944 to 1948, he is the Fine Gael front-bench Spokesman on External Affairs.
In 1948, Fianna Fáil has been in power for sixteen consecutive years and has been blamed for a downturn in the economy following World War II. The 1948 Irish general election results show Fianna Fáil short of a majority, but still by far the largest party, with twice as many seats as the nearest rival, Fine Gael. It appears that Fianna Fáil is headed for a seventh term in government. However, the other parties in the Dáil realise that between them, they have only one seat fewer than Fianna Fáil, and if they band together, they would be able to form a government with the support of seven Independent deputies. Fine Gael, the Labour Party, the National Labour Party, Clann na Poblachta and Clann na Talmhan join to form the first inter-partygovernment in the history of the Irish state.
While it looks as if cooperation between these parties will not be feasible, a shared opposition to Fianna Fáil and Éamon de Valera overcomes all other difficulties, and the coalition government is formed.
Since Fine Gael is the largest party in the government, it has the task of providing a suitable candidate for Taoiseach. Naturally, it is assumed that its leader, Richard Mulcahy, will be offered the post. However, he is an unacceptable choice to Clann na Poblachta and its deeply republican leader, Seán MacBride. This is due to Mulcahy’s record during the Irish Civil War. Instead, Fine Gael and Clann na Poblachta agree on Costello as a compromise candidate. Costello had never held a ministerial position nor was he involved in the Civil War. When told by Mulcahy of his nomination, Costello is appalled, content with his life as a barrister and as a part-time politician. He is persuaded to accept the nomination as Taoiseach by close non-political friends.
During the campaign, Clann na Poblachta had promised to repeal the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 but does not make an issue of this when the government is being formed. However, Costello and his Tánaiste, William Norton of the Labour Party, also dislike the act. During the summer of 1948, the cabinet discusses repealing the act, however, no firm decision is made.
In September 1948, Costello is on an official visit to Canada when a reporter asks him about the possibility of Ireland leaving the British Commonwealth. For the first time, he declares publicly that the Irish government is indeed going to repeal the External Relations Act and declare Ireland a republic. It has been suggested that this is a reaction to offence caused by the Governor General of Canada at the time, Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis, who is of Northern Irish descent and who allegedly arranges to have placed symbols of Northern Ireland in front of Costello at an official dinner. Costello makes no mention of these aspects on the second reading of the Republic of Ireland Bill on November 24 and, in his memoirs, claims that Alexander’s behaviour had in fact been perfectly civil and could have had no bearing on a decision which had already been made.
The news takes the Government of the United Kingdom and even some of Costello’s ministers by surprise. The former had not been consulted and following the declaration of the Republic in 1949, the UK passes the Ireland Act that year. This recognises the Republic of Ireland and guarantees the position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom for so long as a majority there want to remain in the United Kingdom. It also grants full rights to any citizens of the Republic living in the United Kingdom. Ireland leaves the Commonwealth on April 18, 1949, when The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 comes into force. Frederick Henry Boland, Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, says caustically that the affair demonstrates that “the Taoiseach has as much notion of diplomacy as I have of astrology.” The British envoy, John Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby, is equally critical of what he calls a “slipshod and amateur” move.
Many nationalists now see partition as the last obstacle on the road to total national independence. Costello tables a motion of protest against partition on May 10, 1949, without result.
In 1950, the independent-minded Minister for Health, Noël Browne, introduces the Mother and Child Scheme. The scheme would provide mothers with free maternity treatment and their children with free medical care up to the age of sixteen, which is the normal provision in other parts of Europe at that time. The bill is opposed by doctors, who fear a loss of income, and Roman Catholic bishops, who oppose the lack of means testing envisaged and fear the scheme could lead to birth control and abortion. The cabinet is divided over the issue, many feeling that the state cannot afford such a scheme priced at IR£2,000,000 annually. Costello and others in the cabinet make it clear that in the face of such opposition they will not support the Minister. Browne resigns from the government on April 11, 1951, and the scheme is dropped. He immediately publishes his correspondence with Costello and the bishops, something which had hitherto not been done. Derivatives of the Mother and Child Scheme are introduced in Public Health Acts of 1954, 1957 and 1970.
The Costello government has a number of noteworthy achievements. A new record is set in housebuilding, the Industrial Development Authority and Córas Tráchtála are established, and the Minister for Health, Noel Browne, with the then new Streptomycin, bring about an advance in the treatment of tuberculosis. Ireland also joins a number of organisations such as the Organization for European Economic Co-operation and the Council of Europe. However, the government refuses to join NATO, allegedly because the British remain in Northern Ireland. The scheme to supply electricity to even the remotest parts of Ireland is also accelerated.
While the “Mother and Child” incident does destabilise the government to some extent, it does not lead to its collapse as is generally thought. The government continues; however, prices are rising, a balance of payments crisis is looming, and two TDs withdraw their support for the government. These incidents add to the pressure on Costello and so he decides to call a general election for June 1951. The result is inconclusive but Fianna Fáil returns to power. Costello resigns as Taoiseach. It is at this election that his son Declan is elected to the Dáil.
Over the next three years while Fianna Fáil is in power a dual-leadership role of Fine Gael is taking place. While Richard Mulcahy is the leader of the party, Costello, who has proved his skill as Taoiseach, remains as parliamentary leader of the party. He resumes his practice at the Bar. In what is arguably his most celebrated case, the successful defence of The Leader against a libel action brought by the poet Patrick Kavanagh, dates from this period. Kavanagh generously praises Costello’s forensic skill, and the two men become friends.
At the 1954 Irish general election Fianna Fáil loses power. A campaign dominated by economic issues results in a Fine Gael-Labour Party-Clann na Talmhan government coming to power. Costello is elected Taoiseach for the second time.
The government can do little to change the ailing nature of Ireland’s economy, with emigration and unemployment remaining high, and external problems such as the Suez Crisis compounding the difficulty. Measures to expand the Irish economy such as export profits tax relief introduced in 1956 would take years have sizable impact. Costello’s government does have some success with Ireland becoming a member of the United Nations in 1955, and a highly successful visit to the United States in 1956, which begins the custom by which the Taoiseach visits the White House each Saint Patrick’s Day to present the U.S. President with a bowl of shamrock. Although the government has a comfortable majority and seems set for a full term in office, a resumption of Irish Republican Army (IRA) activity in Northern Ireland and Great Britain causes internal strains. The government takes strong action against the republicans.
In spite of supporting the government from the backbenches, Seán MacBride, the leader of Clann na Poblachta, tables a motion of no confidence, based on the weakening state of the economy and in opposition to the government’s stance on the IRA. Fianna Fáil also tables its own motion of no confidence, and rather than face almost certain defeat, Costello again asks PresidentSeán T. O’Kelly to dissolve the Oireachtas. The general election which follows in 1957 gives Fianna Fáil an overall majority and starts another sixteen years of unbroken rule for the party. Some of his colleagues questioned the wisdom of his decision to call an election. The view is expressed that he was tired of politics and depressed by his wife’s sudden death the previous year.
Following the defeat of his government, Costello returns to the bar. In 1959, when Richard Mulcahy resigns the leadership of Fine Gael to James Dillon, he retires to the backbenches. He could have become party leader had he been willing to act in a full-time capacity. He remains as a TD until 1969, when he retires from politics, being succeeded as Fine Gael TD for Dublin South-East by Garret FitzGerald, who himself goes onto to become Taoiseach in a Fine Gael-led government.
During his career, Costello is presented with a number of awards from many universities in the United States. He is also a member of the Royal Irish Academy from 1948. In March 1975, he is made a freeman of the city of Dublin, along with his old political opponent Éamon de Valera. He practises at the bar until a short time before his death at the age of 84, in Ranelagh, Dublin, on January 5, 1976. He is buried at Dean’s Grange Cemetery in Dublin.
seamus dubhghaill 