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Death of Rosie Hackett, Trade Union Leader & Insurgent

Rosanna “Rosie” Hackett, Irish insurgent and trade union leader, dies on May 4, 1976, at St. Vincent’s Hospital, Fairview, Dublin. She is a founder-member of the Irish Women Workers’ Union (IWWU) and supports strikers during the 1913 Dublin lock-out. She later becomes a member of the Irish Citizen Army and is involved in the 1916 Easter Rising. In the 1970s, the labour movement awards her a gold medal for decades of service, and in 2014 a Dublin city bridge is named in her memory.

Hackett is born into a working-class family in Dublin on July 25, 1893, the daughter of John Hackett, a hairdresser, and Roseanna Dunne. According to the 1901 census, she is living with her widowed mother and five other family members in a tenement building on Bolton Street in Dublin. The available documents suggest that her father dies when she is still very young. She joins the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) when it is established in 1909 by James Larkin, which marks the beginning of her lifelong activity in trade unionism. By 1911 she is living with her family in a cottage on Old Abbey Street, and her mother has remarried to Patrick Gray.

Hackett fights for many decades for the rights of workers. Through her affiliation and work with the ITGWU, the IWWU and the Irish Citizen Army, she helps carve out and secure modern-day working conditions. Her career begins as a packer in a paper store, then becoming a messenger for Jacob’s biscuits. At that time the working conditions in the factory are poor.

On August 22, 1911, Hackett helps organise the withdrawal of women’s labour in Jacob’s factory to support their male colleagues who are already on strike. With the women’s help, the men secure better working conditions and a pay rise. Two weeks later, at the age of eighteen, she co-founds the IWWU with Delia Larkin. During the 1913 lock-out she helps mobilise the Jacob’s workers to come out in solidarity with other workers. They, in turn, are locked out by their own employers. This does not stop her work to help others, and she, along with several of her IWWU colleagues, set up soup kitchens in Liberty Hall to help feed the strikers. However, in 1914 her Jacob’s employers sack her over her role in the lock-out.

Hackett begins work as a clerk in the printshop in Liberty Hall, and it is here she becomes involved with the Irish Citizen Army. She is involved in preparations for the 1916 Rising, working in a union shop, helping with printers, and making first-aid kits and knap-sacks.

If other members of the ITGWU were looking for James Connolly, Hackett aids in bringing them to him. She “worked as canvasser and traveler and was called on to carry out many confidential jobs.”

Hackett takes up first aid training provided by Dr. Kathleen Lynn for six months before the Rising and attends night marches organised by the Irish Citizen Army. According to her own account, she says, “A week before Easter, I took part in the ceremony of hoisting the challenge flag over Hall.” Like other girls and women who are involved in the Rising, she carries messages and guns and prepares uniforms and food for Irish Republican Army (IRA) members “and sometimes risky work.”

Three weeks before the Easter Rising, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) raid a shop where Hackett is working. She is alone when they come, and they are looking for a copy of “Gael.” She says to them, “wait until I get the head” and she calls for Connolly. The police are stopped by Connolly and Helena Molony who are armed, and Hackett immediately hides everything, so that when the police come back, they cannot get anything.

Through her experience of working in the printshop, Hackett helps to print the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. She is in the printing room in Liberty Hall as a trusted messenger in 1916 when the Proclamation is printed, and it is the first time she is allowed in. Three men are there when she enters the room and one comes over to her, shakes her hand and congratulates her. It makes her very proud, especially since no one else is allowed to get in. She subsequently tells family members of handing it still wet to James Connolly before it is read by Patrick Pearse outside the entrance to the General Post Office (GPO).

Hackett is an active member of the Irish Citizen Army. On Easter Tuesday, under the command of Constance Markievicz, she takes part in the 1916 Rising and is located in the area of St. Stephen’s Green and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. This position is heavily attacked with guns, short of first aid and “looked like a death trap.” However, after moving from an initially overlooked position in St. Stephen’s Green, it is one of the last positions to surrender. In the Royal College, as a first-aid practitioner, she is allowed entry to the lecture room sanctioned to the Red Cross only. Another first-aider, Aider Nora O’Daily, later reports that during those days, “I have a very kind remembrance of Little Rosie Hackett of the Citizen Army, always cheerful and always willing; to see her face about the place was a tonic itself.”

After surrendering, the rebels are taken to Dublin Castle. Hackett is imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol for ten days.

In 1917, on the anniversary of Connolly’s death, Hackett, together with Helena Molony, Jennie Shanahan and Brigid Davis, print and hang a poster detailing the anniversary. After the first poster displayed by the ITGWU members is taken down by the police, they work to ensure that their poster will stay on Liberty Hall much longer by staying on top of the roof to defend it. They barricade the door using a ton of coal and nails on the windows. The poster is hanging there until 6:00 p.m. and thousands of people can see it.

After the Rising, Hackett returns to the IWWU which, at its strongest, organises over 70,000 women. After the 1945 laundry strike, they win an extra week of paid holidays for the workers. She attends many important labour union events such as the opening of the new Liberty Hall on May 2, 1965, and Arbour Hill memorial services. Until her retirement, she runs the trade union shops resulting in over five decades of active participation in the Irish trades union movement work to improve conditions for Irish workers. In 1970 she is awarded a gold medal for fifty years of ITGWU membership.

In the 1970s, Walter McFarlane, then branch secretary of the ITGWU, awards an honorary badge for Hackett’s fifty years contribution to the union.

Hackett never marries and lives in Fairview, Dublin, with her brother Tommy until her death on May 4, 1976. She is buried at St. Paul’s plot in Glasnevin Cemetery next to her mother and stepfather. At her burial, she is honoured with a military salute and her coffin is covered with the Irish flag. After her passing, her legacy is remembered in the union’s newspaper, a tale of the strife of Hackett together with the rest of Dublin’s working class, for which she fought to change.

In May 2014, the Rosie Hackett Bridge is officially opened by the Lord Mayor of Dublin. The Hackett Bridge Campaign began in October 2012, led by three women Angelina Cox, an active member of Labour Youth, Jeni Gartland and Lisa Connell. The final shortlist of contending names for the new bridge were Rosie Hackett, Kathleen Mills, Willie Bermingham, Bram Stoker and Frank Duff.

In April 2015, a plaque is unveiled on Foley Street by the North Inner City Folklore Project to commemorate the women of the Irish Citizen Army. The plaque lists Hackett as a member of the St. Stephen’s Green/College of Surgeons garrison during the 1916 Easter Rising.


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Death of Kathleen Napoli McKenna, Nationalist Activist & Journalist

Kathleen Napoli McKenna, Irish nationalist activist and journalist closely associated with Arthur Griffith, dies in Rome, Italy, on March 22, 1988.

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.

When the Irish Free State government is established, McKenna becomes a private secretary to a number of Ministers for External Affairs, including FitzGerald, Kevin O’Higgins and W. T. Cosgrave. In 1924, she is a private secretary to the Boundary Commission, as well as one of a pair of secretaries who travels with the Irish delegation to the London Imperial Conference in 1924. From 1927 to 1931 she is James Dolan‘s secretary and parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce. Before its closure in 1924, she writes a number of articles for the Freeman’s Journal.

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.


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The Murder of Dominic “Mad Dog” McGlinchey

Dominic “Mad Dog” McGlinchey, Irish republican paramilitary leader who moves from the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) to become head of the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) paramilitary group in the early 1980s and self-confesses participation in more than thirty killings, dies in a hail of bullets while making a phone call in Drogheda, County Louth, on February 10, 1994. No one is ever convicted of his murder.

McGlinchey is one of eleven siblings born into a staunchly republican home in Ballyscullion Road, Bellaghy, in rural south County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. His father owns a garage and some of his father’s police customers later die at McGlinchey’s hands. His mother Monica is a devout Catholic. He is educated at the local school. When he was sixteen, he begins an apprenticeship in his father’s garage. About this time, he is joining the numerous civil rights marches that are taking place in the county. His precise reasons for doing so are unclear, but speculation is that he is reacting to events around him and the idea of participating in marches offers glamour and a close identification with his own community.

In 1971, McGlinchey is interned without charge for ten months in Long Kesh Detention Centre. Not long after his release the following year, he is imprisoned again on arms charges. On July 5, 1975, during his imprisonment, he marries Mary O’Neil, daughter of Patrick O’Neil from Toomebridge. Together they have three children.

Following his release, McGlinchey joins Ian Milne and future Provisional IRA hunger strikers Francis Hughes and Thomas McElwee and wages a campaign of shooting and bombing throughout the county and beyond. Together, they later join the Provisional IRA. The gang spends the late 1970s on the run, carrying out operations and evading both the British Army and the Garda Síochána. Following a mailvan robbery, the latter force arrests McGlinchey in County Monaghan in 1977 for carjacking a Garda patrol vehicle and threatening the officer with a pistol, although he claims that the gun is actually a wheel brace. He fails to make bail at Dublin‘s Special Criminal Court after a Garda Superintendent argues that McGlinchey would fail to attend court if bailed. He is convicted and sent to the maximum-security Portlaoise Prison. In 1982, while serving his prison sentence, he clashes with the prison’s IRA leadership and is either expelled by them for indiscipline or leaves the organisation due to strategic differences.

Following his departure from the IRA and his release from prison, McGlinchey joins the INLA. Due to his experience, he rises through the ranks, becoming chief of staff by 1982. Under his leadership, the INLA, which had previously had a reputation for disorganisation, becomes extremely active in cross-border assassinations and bombings. These include many individual assassinations and woundings, but also massacres such as the Droppin Well bombing of 1982 in which both civilians and soldiers die. There are some failed operations, and McGlinchey, who believes this is the result of an informer within the ranks, devotes much time and energy to finding the cause. Those suspected of betraying the organisation are treated brutally, often by McGlinchey personally. As a result of this resurgence of activity and his high profile, the press nicknames him “Mad Dog.” Under his tenure the Darkley massacre is carried out, ostensibly by another group but using a weapon supplied by McGlinchey. In late 1983, while still on the run, he gives an interview with the Sunday Tribune newspaper in which he condemns the Darkley killings but also lays out his political philosophy and plans for the future.

By 1984, McGlinchey has fallen out with members of a powerful Republican family from South Armagh over what he considers missing funds. Men loyal to this family are subsequently killed by McGlinchey’s unit, which includes his wife. In March of the same year, he is captured in Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare, following a gunfight with the Gardaí. At this time, he is wanted in Northern Ireland for the shooting of an elderly woman, but republicans have traditionally been able to avoid extradition by claiming their offences were political. The bloody war in the north is leading the Republic of Ireland to re-evaluate its position, however, and he becomes the first republican to be extradited to Northern Ireland. Although convicted and sentenced there to life imprisonment, this is overturned in 1985. As a result, he is returned to the Republic, where he is sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment on firearms charges. While he is incarcerated, his wife is shot dead at her Dundalk home.

McGlinchey is released in March 1993 and claiming to have no further involvement with the INLA, moves to Drogheda. He survives an assassination attempt soon after his release from prison, but in February 1994, his enemies catch up with him. At around 9:30 on the evening of Thursday, February 10, 1994, he visits and dines with friends of his in Duleek Road, near his home. He leaves about forty minutes later, intending to take a video back to a shop in Brookville, on the north side of town. At around 11:00 p.m. he and his 16-year-old son Dominic are returning home, when he pulls up to make a phone call from a public kiosk on Hardman’s Gardens, near Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. Almost immediately and despite the presence of four witnesses, a red Mazda pulls up alongside him. While his son watches from the car, three men get out and beat McGlinchey. Once he is on the ground the men, who are armed with three pump action shotguns and a pistol, fire into him fourteen times. The attack finishes with a coup de grâce to the head, although he is already dead. His last words are reputed to be “Jesus, Mary help me.” His son yells for an ambulance.

The following day, an autopsy is carried out in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, which indicates McGlinchey had been hit in the neck, skull, the left upper chest, the left arm, and both legs. His inquest is held in Drogheda two weeks later, suspended and then reopened in November 1996. Gardaí forensic officers tell the coroner that they had compared the shell casings they had found with the database, but no matches have been made to other known weapons. The officer notes that no such information has been received from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The shotguns used are impossible to trace ballistically, but it is ascertained that the Mazda was registered in the north. His and his wife’s killers have never been found.

McGlinchey’s funeral is held on February 13, 1994, in Bellaghy, with no republican accoutrements. There is no INLA colour guard, and only an Irish tricolor draped over the coffin. Over 1,500 people attend and are watched closely by 200 RUC. Police armoured vans are held on the perimeter. He is buried alongside his wife and their young daughter Máire. His coffin is carried from the McGlinchey family home to St. Mary’s Church by pallbearers who are swapped out from the crowd every 40-yards or so. Martin McGuinness is among them, as is Bernadette McAliskey and her daughter Róisín. His sons carry the coffin for the final yards.

McGlinchey’s posthumous reputation ranges from being a “psycho” to his enemies to being an inspiration to those who followed him. Commentators have speculated on what he would have contributed to Irish politics had he lived. Some have suggested that he would have contributed to the Northern Ireland peace process, while others have argued that dissident republicans, opposed to that process, would have found him a willing rallying point. He remains an influence on Irish fiction and music, with both Edna O’Brien and Martin McDonagh producing acclaimed pieces based on his life and career. He is also featured in popular songs.


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Sinn Féin MPs Enter the House of Commons

On January 21, 2002, Sinn Féin‘s four MPs take the historic step of signing up to use the facilities of the House of Commons, whose authority over Northern Ireland republicans have been fighting for almost a century. Party policy is also changed to allow MPs to sit in the Irish Parliament, the Dáil.

Amid concern among some republicans that the move comes close to recognising British rule, Sinn Féin president and Belfast West MP, Gerry Adams, insists that his party will never take its seats at Westminster. “There will never ever be Sinn Féin MPs sitting in the British houses of parliament,” he tells a Westminster press conference.

David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) Northern Ireland First Minister, predicts this controversial move is a first step towards the same situation in Westminster.

However, flanked by his three fellow Sinn Féin MPs, Martin McGuinness (Mid Ulster), Pat Doherty (West Tyrone) and Michelle Gildernew (Fermanagh and South Tyrone), Adams says taking up seats in the Dáil is a very different proposition from doing so the Commons. No Sinn Féin member would take the loyalty oath to the Queen, needed to take up a seat in Parliament, but that was a mere side issue to the key question of sovereignty, he says. Even if the oath were amended, the party would still refuse to take its seats because republicans do not recognise parliament’s jurisdiction over Northern Ireland.

“There are lots of things which there can be no certainty of and there are some things of which we can be certain,” Adams says. “There will never, ever be Sinn Féin MPs sitting in the British Houses of Parliament. The transfer of power by London and Dublin to the Assembly in the north … is all proof of where we see the political centre of gravity on the island of Ireland and that is in the island of Ireland.”

Adams insists his party’s presence in the Commons is a “temporary” measure until they can join the parliament of a united Ireland.

A ban on MPs using Commons facilities without taking the loyalty oath was lifted in December 2001 to Conservative fury. Tories end three decades of cross-party cooperation over the move, which also entitles Sinn Féin’s four MPs to allowances of £107,000 a year each.

Shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Quentin Davies claims Adams plans to use the cash for party political campaigning – something forbidden by Westminster rules. He accuses British Prime Minister Tony Blair of “deliberately contributing to a great propaganda coup in which … the British Government are licking their boots.” The Prime Minister’s spokesman says Blair acknowledges “many victims do feel very strongly about what has happened, but the Prime Minister’s view is that this peace process has saved many lives.”

Sitting alongside a giant Irish tricolour inside his new office, Adams likens his presence there to that of MPs who had served in the British Army and intelligence services – suggesting some of them still do. He also dismisses concerns about the misuse of the money, accusing those “complaining loudest” of being from parties “indicted for corruption and sleaze.”

Sinn Féin’s move into their new offices coincides with a “routine” meeting with the Prime Minister in Downing Street to discuss the peace process. The Sinn Féin president uses publicity surrounding the controversial move to issue a new challenge to Blair to tackle the loyalist “killing campaign.” Adams is joined in Downing Street by his three fellow Sinn Féin MPs.

“There have been 300 bombs over the last nine or ten months,” Adams says. “The British Prime Minister has to face up to the reality that the threat to the peace process within Northern Ireland comes from within loyalism.”

Adams blames Betty Boothroyd‘s decision to bar Sinn Féin MPs from using Commons facilities for the current controversy. “We are here, elected, with our mandate renewed and increased,” he adds.

Adams is asked how he would react if he met former Cabinet minister Lord Tebbit and his wife, who was badly injured by the 1984 Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb attack at the Tories conference at the Grand Brighton Hotel in Brighton, at the Commons. “I don’t ignore anyone. As someone who has been wounded and shot and someone whose house has been bombed, I understand precisely how others who have suffered more than me feel about all of this,” Adams replies. “I would like to think that as part of building a peace process that all of us agree there must be dialogue.”

(Pictured: from left, Sinn Fein MPs Michelle Gildernew, Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams and Pat Doherty)


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Death of Gerry Adams, Sr., Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Gerard Adams Sr., a Belfast Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer who takes part in its Northern Campaign in the 1940s, dies on November 17, 2003, at Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has also been described as “important in the emergence of the Provisional IRA in 1970.”

Adams is born in 1926. He marries Anne Hannaway, also a Republican from an established republican family, by whom he has thirteen children, three of whom die in infancy. His children include Gerry Adams, a former abstentionist MP for Belfast West and former TD who becomes a leading figure in Sinn Féin and serves as its president until 2018, as well as Liam Adams, who dies serving a prison sentence in Northern Ireland for raping his daughter.

Adams is captured after being shot and wounded during an IRA operation in 1942 after he shot a Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officer in the foot. He is sentenced to eight years in prison and serves five. He is interned in 1971 along with his son, Gerry Adams.

Adams dies “a lonely old man” on November 17, 2003. He is buried with the Irish tricolour, despite the private reservations of family members over alleged abuse that would only be made public some years later. His son, Gerry, says that he felt his father had “besmirched” the flag.

In December 2009, six years after Adams’s death, his family claims that he had subjected some members of his family to emotional, physical and sexual abuse over many years. The family says that this abuse “had a devastating impact” on the family, with which they are still then coming to terms. The family decides to go public about the abuse in order to help other families in similar circumstances.

(Pictured: Gerry Adams, Sr. (L) pictured with his son, Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams)


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Birth of Rosie Hackett, Trade Union Leader & Insurgent

Rosanna “Rosie” Hackett, Irish insurgent and trade union leader, is born into a working-class family in Dublin on July 25, 1893. She is a founder-member of the Irish Women Workers’ Union (IWWU) and supports strikers during the 1913 Dublin lock-out. She later becomes a member of the Irish Citizen Army and is involved in the 1916 Easter Rising. In the 1970s, the labour movement awards her a gold medal for decades of service, and in 2014 a Dublin city bridge is named in her memory.

Hackett is the daughter of John Hackett, a hairdresser, and Roseanna Dunne. According to the 1901 census, she is living with her widowed mother and five other family members in a tenement building on Bolton Street in Dublin. The available documents suggest that her father dies when she is still very young. She joins the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) when it is established in 1909 by James Larkin, which marks the beginning of her lifelong activity in trade unionism. By 1911 she is living with her family in a cottage on Old Abbey Street, and her mother has remarried to Patrick Gray.

Hackett fights for many decades for the rights of workers. Through her affiliation and work with the ITGWU, the IWWU and the Irish Citizen Army, she helps carve out and secure modern-day working conditions. Her career begins as a packer in a paper store, then becoming a messenger for Jacob’s biscuits. At that time the working conditions in the factory are poor.

On August 22, 1911, Hackett helps organise the withdrawal of women’s labour in Jacob’s factory to support their male colleagues who are already on strike. With the women’s help, the men secure better working conditions and a pay rise. Two weeks later, at the age of eighteen, she co-founds the IWWU with Delia Larkin. During the 1913 lock-out she helps mobilise the Jacob’s workers to come out in solidarity with other workers. They, in turn, are locked out by their own employers. This does not stop her work to help others, and she, along with several of her IWWU colleagues, set up soup kitchens in Liberty Hall to help feed the strikers. However, in 1914 her Jacob’s employers sack her over her role in the lock-out.

Hackett begins work as a clerk in the printshop in Liberty Hall, and it is here she becomes involved with the Irish Citizen Army. She is involved in preparations for the 1916 Rising, working in a union shop, helping with printers, and making first-aid kits and knap-sacks.

If other members of the ITGWU were looking for James Connolly, Hackett aids in bringing them to him. She “worked as canvasser and traveller and was called on to carry out many confidential jobs.”

Hackett takes up first aid training provided by Dr. Kathleen Lynn for six months before the Rising and attends night marches organised by the Irish Citizen Army. According to her own account, she says, “A week before Easter, I took part in the ceremony of hoisting the challenge flag over Hall.” Like other girls and women who are involved in the Rising, she carries messages and guns and prepares uniforms and food for Irish Republican Army (IRA) members “and sometimes risky work.”

Three weeks before the Easter Rising, the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) raid a shop where Hackett is working. She is alone when they come, and they are looking for a copy of “Gael.” She says to them, “wait until I get the head” and she calls for Connolly. The police are stopped by Connolly and Helena Molony who are armed, and Hackett immediately hides everything, so that when the police come back, they cannot get anything.

Through her experience of working in the printshop, Hackett helps to print the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. She is in the printing room in Liberty Hall as a trusted messenger in 1916 when the Proclamation is printed, and it is the first time she is allowed in. Three men are there when she enters the room and one comes over to her, shakes her hand and congratulates her. It makes her very proud, especially since no one else is allowed to get in. She subsequently tells family members of handing it still wet to James Connolly before it is read by Patrick Pearse outside the entrance to the General Post Office (GPO).

Hackett is an active member of the Irish Citizen Army. On Easter Tuesday, under the command of Constance Markievicz, she takes part in the 1916 Rising and is located in the area of St. Stephen’s Green and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland. This position is heavily attacked with guns, short of first aid and “looked like a death trap.” However, after moving from an initially overlooked position in St. Stephen’s Green, it is one of the last positions to surrender. In the Royal College, as a first-aid practitioner, she is allowed entry to the lecture room sanctioned to the Red Cross only. Another first-aider, Aider Nora O’Daily, later reports that during those days, “I have a very kind remembrance of Little Rosie Hackett of the Citizen Army, always cheerful and always willing; to see her face about the place was a tonic itself.”

After surrendering, the rebels are taken to Dublin Castle. Hackett is imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol for ten days.

In 1917, on the anniversary of Connolly’s death, Hackett, together with Helena Molony, Jennie Shanahan and Brigid Davis, print and hang a poster detailing the anniversary. After the first poster displayed by the ITGWU members is taken down by the police, they work to ensure that their poster will stay on Liberty Hall much longer by staying on top of the roof to defend it. They barricade the door using a ton of coal and nails on the windows. The poster is hanging there until 6:00 p.m. and thousands of people can see it.

After the Rising, Hackett returns to the IWWU which, at its strongest, organises over 70,000 women. After the 1945 laundry strike, they win an extra week of paid holidays for the workers. She attends many important labour union events such as the opening of the new Liberty Hall on May 2, 1965, and Arbour Hill memorial services. Until her retirement, she runs the trade union shops resulting in over five decades of active participation in the Irish trades union movement work to improve conditions for Irish workers. In 1970 she is awarded a gold medal for fifty years of ITGWU membership.

In the 1970s, Walter McFarlane, then branch secretary of the ITGWU, awards an honorary badge for Hackett’s fifty years contribution to the union.

Hackett never marries and lives in Fairview, Dublin, with her brother Tommy until her death on July 4, 1976. She is buried at St. Paul’s plot in Glasnevin Cemetery next to her mother and stepfather. At her burial, she is honoured with a military salute and her coffin is covered with the Irish flag. After her passing, her legacy is remembered in the union’s newspaper, a tale of the strife of Hackett together with the rest of Dublin’s working class, for which she fought to change.

In May 2014, the Rosie Hackett Bridge is officially opened by the Lord Mayor of Dublin. The Hackett Bridge Campaign began in October 2012, led by three women Angelina Cox, an active member of Labour Youth, Jeni Gartland and Lisa Connell. The final shortlist of contending names for the new bridge were Rosie Hackett, Kathleen Mills, Willie Bermingham, Bram Stoker and Frank Duff.

In April 2015, a plaque is unveiled on Foley Street by the North Inner City Folklore Project to commemorate the women of the Irish Citizen Army. The plaque lists Hackett as a member of the St. Stephens Green/College of Surgeons garrison during the 1916 Easter Rising.


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Birth of Bill Gannon, IRA Volunteer & Communist Party Member

Bill Gannon, well-known militant of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and later a leading member of the Communist Party of Ireland, is born on June 23, 1902.

Gannon fights in the Irish War of Independence. In the Irish Civil War, he takes the anti-Treaty side and is among the force which seizes the Four Courts in Dublin.

After the defeat of his side, Gannon spends a considerable time under internment together with numerous others. He is completely unreconciled to the victory of the “Free Staters,” and together with two fellow detainees, Archie Doyle and Timothy Coughlin, take part in forming a secret “vengeance grouping.” The three vow that once free of imprisonment they will take revenge on their opponents, whom they consider traitors to the Irish cause.

Most such private revenge pacts are broken up by the IRA leadership when it reorganises after 1924, but Gannon and his two fellow conspirators persist and carry through their deadly aim. The act which first makes Gannon, Doyle and Coughlin well-known is the assassination of Minister for Justice Kevin O’Higgins. On Sunday, July 10, 1927, the three surprise O’Higgins on the Booterstown Avenue side of Cross Avenue in Blackrock, County Dublin, and shoot him down.

O’Higgins is especially hated by IRA members for having ordered the executions of seventy-seven of their fellows during the Civil War, an act for which he outspokenly took responsibility and refused to express any remorse. Moreover, he was a dominant member of the Free State government, and the conspirators had good reasons to believe that his death would weaken it.

None of the three is ever apprehended or charged with the assassination, though Coughlin is killed by a police informer in 1928 under circumstances which remain controversial up to the present. Gannon and Doyle benefit from the amnesty for IRA members issued by Éamon de Valera on his accession to power in 1932, and after that date they can openly admit their part in assassinating O’Higgins without fear of being prosecuted.

By this time, Gannon has already turned to the Left and become a leading member of the Communist Party of Ireland when it is refounded in 1933. This decision is possibly influenced by Donal O’Reilly, his lifelong companion who had been with him at the Four Courts and who already joined the Communist Party in its earlier incarnation under Roddy Connolly. The radical left-wing commentator Jack Cleary approvingly mentions Gannon as among the few IRA militants who have “given up the gun in favor of working-class politics.” This is in marked contrast to Gannon’s aforementioned fellow-assassin Archie Doyle, who continues to take part in IRA armed raids well into the 1940s.

Being an Irish Communist in these years carries, however, its own risks. Gannon is mentioned as being among the defenders of Connolly House, the party’s Dublin headquarters, when it is attacked and ultimately set on fire by a right-wing mob in 1933. In subsequent years Communists continue to suffer constant harassment, often descending into outright violence.

Gannon is at present mainly remembered for his major part in organising Irish volunteers (the Connolly Column) to fight on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, a work undertaken in close co-operation with Frank Ryan and Peadar O’Donnell, and which comes to overshadow his earlier fame (or notoriety) in connection with the O’Higgins assassination.

Gannon dies at the age of 63 on September 12, 1965. He gets a well-attended party funeral; his coffin being draped with a red flag and the Irish Tricolor.


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The Funeral of Joe B. O’Hagan, Founding Member of the Provisional IRA

Leading Sinn Féin members are among the 5,000 people who attend the funeral of Joe B. O’Hagan, a founding member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), on April 26, 2001. Party president Gerry Adams gives the oration at the graveside when the leading republican figure is buried in Lurgan, County Armagh, Northern Ireland.

O’Hagan, known to all and sundry simply as JB, dies on Monday, April 23, 2001, in the town in which he was born almost 79 years previously and from which he and his wife Bernadette had been exiled for 25 years during the current phase of the conflict. As befitted a soldier of Óglaigh na hÉireann, a uniformed IRA Guard of Honour attends O’Hagan’s body in the wake house and it is six of his comrades who carry the coffin, bedecked in the Irish Tricolour and beret and gloves, from the family home on the first section of its journey to St. Paul’s Chapel for the Funeral Mass.

Up to 2,000 people attend the funeral and businesses in the bustling North Armagh town close along the route as a mark of respect. At St. Colman’s Cemetery just outside the town, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams pays fulsome tribute to a republican who had been active from the 1940s into the 1990s and right up to his sudden death. Adams notes O’Hagan’s strong faith and welcomes the tribute paid during the Funeral Mass to JB’s republican beliefs and exploits. He adds, however, that it is high time the Catholic hierarchy reverses its directive banning the Tricolour from republican funerals in church premises. “Our National Flag should be allowed to stay on the coffin for the entire ceremony,” he says.

“I have always associated JB with Bernadette,” he tells those gathered at the graveside, “even though they were apart for so many years. They were married for 52 years, and Bernadette told me yesterday that she wouldn’t change a day of it, that she was proud of him and of his life.”

“In many ways he died the way he had lived, very quietly, modestly, not complaining, unassuming to the end. He was one of the most respected republicans of our time. There is no greater tribute that can be paid to any man or woman than to be known as a decent human being and Joe B. was that and more.”

Adams goes on to briefly record the extraordinary history of O’Hagan’s involvement in the republican struggle, as soldier and political activist, since he first joined the IRA in 1940, including that famous 1973 escape from Mountjoy Jail by helicopter, accompanied by Kevin Mallon and the late Seamus Twomey.

“JB grew up in the 1920s in a state abandoned by the Irish Government, where nationalists were subjected to the B-Specials and the Special Powers Act. He stood up at a time when standing up was a very very dangerous thing to do,” says Adams. “It is a wonder to me that he was active in every decade from the 1940s on. There is a mighty man!”

“He also personifies why Irish republicanism has never been defeated. He was an example of a physical force republican who was prepared to support and exhaust other means of struggle. He saw armed struggle as a means rather than as an end, but he never ceased to be an unrepentant republican and to work always for the establishment of an Irish Republic based on national rights for the people of this island. He supported the Good Friday Agreement not as an end but as an effort to build a new accord with our opponents and enemies. Political unionism has found it very difficult to deal with this strategy.”

“Joe B was very philosophical and very wise. He is representative of that republican element who never broke a promise in their lives.”

“Those who seek to defeat the republican struggle by blaming the IRA for everything need to know that none of this will work. That is because of the work that JB and people like him put into this struggle. We won’t be worn down or accept anything less than our full rights. The message for David Trimble and Tony Blair is that it is impossible for us to accept inequality, injustice and second-class citizenship. That is the past. We are looking to the future.”

“Joe B’s passing has left a huge gap, but we should celebrate his life. He touched so many of us. Joe B kept us right. The flame he kept flickering in the lean times is burning brightly now because of his contribution.”

Adams extends his solidarity and sympathy and that of all those present to Bernadette, to O’Hagan’s children, Barry, Kevin, Fintan, Siobhán, Felim and Dara, to his eleven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, his sisters and entire family circle.

At the end of the Funeral Mass for O’Hagan, the O’Hagan family lead by Joe’s son Fintan place the Irish Tricolour on the coffin before the remains are taken from the chapel. This act is borne out of anger and frustration.

O’Hagan was a republican, an honourable man and a religious man who went to Mass every day. So, his family feels that the Catholic Church, that was as much an influence on O’Hagan’s life as was his republicanism, should respect his wish and allow his coffin to be draped in the Tricolour. The family appeals to the Catholic Church authorities and Adams intercedes on their behalf, but they are refused the right to grant O’Hagan his wish that the Flag not be removed from his coffin.

Dara O’Hagan, the Sinn Féin Northern Ireland Assembly member for Upper Bann, tells the bishop that by sticking to their old policy the Catholic Church is criminalising republicanism and indeed criminalising her father.

Also, the Catholic hierarchy misses a great opportunity to heal a hurt that has existed for over 20 years, when the remains of IRA Volunteer Kevin `Dee’ Delaney were refused entry into Corpus Christi Church in Springhill while bearing the Irish Tricolour. The rancour and hurt felt by republicans over this slight, coming as it does, in conjunction with the British Government’s attempts to criminalise republicanism, has long been an insult that republicans have resented. After all, churches are the people’s property as it is their money and effort that build them. The people of Springhill and the Greater Ballymurphy area paid £5 a brick for the Corpus Christi building and the Delaney family no doubt contributed to that fund.

By taking matters into their own hands, the O’Hagan family claims back some ground for republicans and sends a message to the bishops that they have a part to play in this new political era and that they need to look at their attitude to republicanism.

O’Hagan’s wife Bernadette says that as Fintan draped the Irish Trocolour on Joe’s coffin and the church burst into spontaneous applause, her heart was lifted. “I was so glad, and I walked down the aisle with a smile on my face,” said Bernadette.

(From: “Unassuming and mighty man laid to rest” by Martin Spain, An Phoblacht Republican News, May 3, 2001)


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The Clonoe Ambush

The Clonoe Ambush, a military action between the British Army and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), occurs on February 16, 1992, during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. An IRA unit attacks the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) security base in the village of Coalisland in County Tyrone and is ambushed shortly afterwards by the Special Air Service (SAS) in the grounds of a church in the village of Clonoe while attempting to make its escape, resulting in several IRA fatalities.

From 1985 onwards, the IRA in East Tyrone had been at the forefront of a campaign against British state police and army facilities and their personnel. In 1987, an East Tyrone IRA unit was ambushed with eight of its members being killed by the SAS while they were making an attack on a police station in Loughgall, County Armagh. This was the IRA’s greatest loss of life in a single incident during The Troubles. Despite these losses, the IRA’s campaign continued, with it attacking nearly 100 police and military facilities over the next five years, wrecking thirty-three and damaging the remainder to varying degrees. The SAS ambush has no noticeable long-term effect on the level of IRA activity in East Tyrone. In the two years before the Loughgall ambush, the IRA killed seven people in East Tyrone and North Armagh, and eleven in the two years following the ambush.

Three other IRA members – Gerard Harte, Martin Harte and Brian Mullin – had been ambushed and killed by the SAS as they tried to kill an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier near Carrickmore, County Tyrone. British intelligence identified them as the perpetrators of the Ballygawley bus bombing, which killed eight British soldiers. After that bombing, all troops going on leave or returning from leave were ferried in and out of East Tyrone by helicopter. Another high-profile attack of the East Tyrone Brigade was carried out on January 11, 1990, near Augher, where a Gazelle helicopter was shot down.

On June 3, 1991, three IRA men, Lawrence McNally, Michael “Pete” Ryan and Tony Doris, were killed at the town of Coagh, when a stolen car they were driving in on their way to kill an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment soldier was ambushed by the Special Air Service. Ryan was the same man who, according to Irish journalist and author Ed Moloney, had led an attack on Derryard checkpoint on the orders of IRA Army Council member Thomas “Slab” Murphy two years earlier.

The IRA’s East Tyrone Brigade lost 53 members killed by the British Forces during the Troubles – the highest of any “Brigade areas.” Of these, 28 were killed between 1987 and 1992.

At 10.30 p.m. on the night of February 16, 1992, a stolen car and lorry carrying multiple IRA attackers drives into the centre of the village of Coalisland and, pulling up at its fortified Royal Ulster Constabulary security base, fires 30 rounds of armour-piercing tracer ammunition into it at close range from a Soviet Union made DShK heavy machine-gun that they had mounted on the back of the lorry. The heavy machine gun is fired by IRA member Kevin O’Donnell, the rest of the unit being armed with Soviet-made AKM assault rifles. The IRA attackers then drive off at speed up Annagher hill, without any apparent pursuit from the security forces. While making their escape they drive past the home of Tony Doris, an IRA man who had been killed by the British Army the previous year, where they stop to fire into the air, shouting, “Up the ‘RA, that’s for Tony Doris!” Witnesses also report the IRA men waving Irish Tricolours from the back of the lorry. After this they drive on at speed to the car park of St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in the village of Clonoe, two miles away from Coalisland police station, arriving at 10.45 p.m., where getaway cars are waiting.

Immediately on arrival, the IRA attackers are in the process of preparing to abandon the attack vehicles and dismounting the DShK to take with them when they are assailed by a British Army detachment that had been lying in wait for them in the car park’s perimeter, primarily composed of soldiers from the Special Air Service, who engage them with sustained automatic fire. Patrick Vincent, age 20, the driver of the stolen lorry, is shot dead with five bullets while still in its cab. Peter Clancy, age 19, and Kevin O’Donnell, age 21) are killed while dismounting the DShK on the back of the lorry. Sean O’Farrell, age 23, is pursued on foot across the church grounds over a distance of 100 yards before being shot dead with five bullets while trying to climb over a fence. Two other IRA men, one of them being Aidan McKeever, who are found sitting in a car in the car park with the intention of acting as getaway drivers, surrender after being wounded and are taken prisoner. The roof of the church is accidentally set on fire after a stray round hit a fuel storage tank. One British soldier is wounded during the confrontation. An IRA statement reports that another active service unit made up of at least four volunteers taking part in the operation at Coalisland “escaped unharmed” under heavy fire in other vehicles after splitting up into two teams.

Several witnesses to the ambush later claim that some of the IRA men tried to surrender to the British Army engaging unit during the ambush but were summarily executed. Justice Seamus Treacy of Northern Ireland’s High Court awards McKeever, the IRA getaway driver, £75,000 in damages in 2011. It is unclear whether or not this decision is appealed, or whether the damages are ever paid.

A local IRA source points out areas of incompetence in the attack by the IRA unit involved that leads to its destruction:

  • The use of a long-range weapon for a short-range shooting. The DShK can be used up to 2,000 metres from the target, and its armour-piercing capabilities at 1,500 metres are still considerable.
  • The use of tracer rounds is ill-judged as they easily reveal the firing location of the gun if it is not being fired from a well-hidden position.
  • The escape route is chosen at random, with the machine-gun in full sight and the support vehicle flashing its hazard lights.
  • The gathering of so many men at the same place after such an attack is another factor in the failure to escape for most of the attacking force.

During the funeral services for O’Donnell and O’Farrell in Coalisland, the parish priest criticises the security forces for what happened at Clonoe church, which had resulted in the deaths of the four IRA men. The priest, Fr. MacLarnon, then appeals to the IRA and Sinn Féin to replace “the politics of confrontation with the politics of cooperation.” While Francie Molloy, a local Sinn Féin councillor, walks out of the church in protest, leading Sinn Féin politicians Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness remain in their seats. There are hundreds of Royal Ulster Constabulary police officers outside the church during the funeral, the RUC having changed its policy after the Milltown Cemetery attack. This show of force is criticised by Sinn Féin.

This is the last occasion that IRA members are killed in a series of ambushes by the British Army, spearheaded by the Special Air Service, in Northern Ireland. Growing tension between locals and the British military foot-patrols lead to street confrontations with soldiers from the Parachute Regiment three months later.

(Pictured: The ambush scene at Clonoe, County Tyrone, where four IRA men were shot dead by the British army in February 1992)


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Death of Seán Keating, Romantic-Realist Painter

Seán Keating, Irish romantic-realist painter who paints some iconic images of the Irish War of Independence and of the early industrialization of Ireland, dies on December 21, 1977, at the Adelaide Hospital in Dublin.

Keating is born in Limerick, County Limerick on September 28, 1889. He studies drawing at the Limerick Technical School before a scholarship arranged by William Orpen allows him to go study at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin at the age of twenty. Over the next few years, he spends two weeks or so during the late summer on the Aran Islands and his many portraits of island people depict them as rugged heroic figures.

In 1914 he wins the RDS Taylor award with a painting titled The Reconciliation. The prize includes £50.00 which allows him to go to London to work as Orpen’s studio assistant in 1915. In late 1915 or early 1916, he returns to Ireland where he documents the Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Irish Civil War. Examples include Men of the South (1921–22) which shows a group of Irish Republican Army (IRA) men ready to ambush a military vehicle and An Allegory (first exhibited in 1924), in which the two opposing sides in the Irish Civil War are seen to bury the tri-colour covered coffin amid the roots of an ancient tree. The painting includes a self-portrait of the artist.

Keating is elected an Associate of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in 1918, and a full member in 1923. One of the cardinal achievements of the Irish Free State in the 1920s is the building, in partnership with Siemens, of a hydro-electric power generator at Ardnacrusha, near Limerick. Between 1926 and 1927, at his own volition, he produces a considerable number of paintings related to this scheme. He exhibits several examples of the paintings in the RHA exhibitions in 1927 and 1928. Most of the paintings are now in the collection of ESB Group.

In 1936 group of prominent Limerick politicians, artists and patrons establish the first Limerick City Collection of Art from various donations and bequests. Keating is part of this artist-led initiative to form a municipal art gallery in Limerick similar to those already in Dublin and Cork. The collection is formed primarily out of donations and bequests. As a pivotal member of the committee, Keating himself donates many works to the collection which is first exhibited as a municipal collection in the Savoy Cinema, Limerick City on November 23, 1937. It is not until 1948 that an extension to the rear of Limerick Free Library and Museum becomes the home to the City Collection as the Limerick Free Art Gallery. In 1985 the Library and Museum are transferred to larger buildings.

In 1939 Keating is commissioned to paint a mural for the Irish pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. He is President of the RHA from 1950 to 1962 and shows at the annual exhibition for 61 years from 1914. Although he is an intellectual painter in the sense that he consciously sets out to explore the visual identity of the Irish nation, and his paintings show a very idealised realism, he fears that the modern movement will bring back a decline in artistic standards. Throughout his career, he exhibits nearly 300 works at the RHA and also shows at the Oireachtas.

Seán Keating dies on December 21, 1977 at the Adelaide Hospital in Dublin and is buried at Cruagh Cemetery, Rathfarnham. The 1978 RHA Exhibition features a small memorial collection of his work.

Posthumous exhibitions of his work are mounted by The Grafton Gallery, Dublin (1986) and the Electricity Supply Board (1987). Sean Keating – The Pilgrim Soul, a documentary presented and written by his son Justin Keating, airs on RTÉ in 1996.

(Pictured: Photograph of Keating’s “An Allegory” painted between 1922 and 1924. The painting represents Keating’s own disillusionment and loss of idealism resulting from the outbreak of the Irish Civil War. The only figure of the group addressing the observer is a self-portrait of the artist.)