seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Great Britain


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Birth of Irish Folk Musician Finbar Furey

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Finbar Furey, multi-instrumental Irish folk musician, is born in Ballyfermot, Dublin on September 28, 1946. He is best known for his band of brothers, The Fureys.

Furey’s well-known musician father, Ted, starts him on the Uilleann pipes while he is very young. By his teens, he has won three All Ireland Medals, The Oireachtas, and many Feisanna. He is the only piper to win the All-Ireland, the Oireachtas medal and the four province titles in the same year. He is also an Irish Traveller.

Furey popularizes the pipes worldwide while on tour with his brother Eddie in the 1960s. In 1969, he and Eddie begin touring as backup musicians for the influential Irish folk group, The Clancy Brothers. He plays the pipes, as well as the banjo, tin whistle, and guitar with the group in live performances, on television, and on recordings. The Furey brothers leave the group the following year and begin performing as a duo again. They are awarded Single of the Year by John Peel in 1972.

When younger brothers Paul and George join the band several years later, The Fureys enjoy hits including When You Were Sweet Sixteen, Tara Hill, Green Fields of France, Red Rose Café and The Lonesome Boatman. In Britain, they become one of the first Irish folk groups to play on Top of the Pops.

In 1997, after nearly thirty years as The Fureys’ front man, Furey decides the time is right to follow his own path as a singer songwriter. He decides to step aside and pursue his solo career, to present his definitive one-man show and to explore new pastures as a singer, producer and writer.

In the early 2000s, Furey begins an acting career. His first appearance is in the Martin Scorsese film Gangs of New York. He also appears in Adam & Paul (2004), Strength and Honour (2007), short Paris Sexy (2010), and the RTÉ Television series Love/Hate.

In 2011 Furey releases the album Colours on Dolphin Music. The album features guest performances from Mary Black and Shayne Ward and is released in North America in 2012 on the Valley Entertainment record label.

In August 2013, Furey appears on the Irish television show The Hit. He records a single pitched by a songwriter, Gerry Fleming. The single, “The Last Great Love Song”, charts at number one in the Irish charts against Mundy‘s song “Jigsaw Man” written by Mark Walsh which charts at number five. The song is performed again with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra in the final and comes in first place in the public vote earning the title “The Ultimate Hit.”


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Birth of Charles Haughey, Taoiseach of Ireland

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Charles James Haughey, Fianna Fáil leader and Taoiseach of Ireland, is born in Castlebar, County Mayo on September 16, 1925.

Haughey is the third of seven children of Seán Haughey, an officer in the original Irish Republican Army (IRA), and Sarah McWilliams, both natives of Swatragh, County Londonderry. He attends University College Dublin, studying law and accounting. While making a fortune, apparently in real estate, he marries Maureen Lemass, the daughter of future Taoiseach Seán Lemass on September 18, 1951. After several attempts he enters Dáil Éireann (the lower house of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament) in 1957 as a member of the Fianna Fáil party for the Dublin North-East constituency. He becomes Minister for Justice in 1961 and later Minister for Agriculture and Minister for Finance.

In 1970 Haughey is twice tried for conspiracy to use government funds to procure arms for the outlawed IRA. The first trial is aborted, and he wins acquittal in the second. Dismissed from the government, he remains in the Dáil and gains strong support among his party’s grass roots. When Fianna Fáil is returned to office in 1977, he is made Minister for Health and Minister for Social Welfare. On the resignation of party leader Jack Lynch in 1979, he is elected party leader and becomes Taoiseach. In June 1981 his government falls, but he returns to power briefly in 1982. He becomes Taoiseach again after elections in February 1987, though his government lacks a majority in the Dáil. When Fianna Fáil forms a government with the Progressive Democrats in July 1989, thereby eschewing the party’s traditional rejection of coalition rule, he is made Taoiseach for a fourth time.

Haughey’s first two terms in office are marked by deteriorating relations with Great Britain, a declining economy, and deep divisions within Fianna Fáil. Despite the controversies that plague his government, the charismatic Haughey remains party leader after losing office for a second time in late 1982. During his later terms, he successfully mounts a fiscal austerity program to address Ireland’s financial crisis. In 1992 he resigns and retires after being implicated in a phone tapping scandal of two journalists. He denies the allegations. He remains out of public life until 1997, when an official tribunal of inquiry determines that he had received large sums of money from a prominent businessman while Taoiseach. The Dáil then establishes another tribunal to investigate his financial affairs, and many other irregularities are uncovered. He eventually agrees to pay €6.5 million in back taxes and penalties.

Haughey dies at the age of 80 from prostate cancer, from which he had suffered for a decade, on June 13, 2006, at his home in Kinsealy, County Dublin. He receives a state funeral on June 16. He is buried in St. Fintan’s Cemetery, Sutton, Dublin, following mass at Donnycarney. The then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern delivers the graveside oration. The funeral rites are screened live on RTÉ One and watched by a quarter of a million people. The funeral is attended by President Mary McAleese, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, members of the Oireachtas, many from the world of politics, industry and business. The chief celebrant is Haughey’s brother, Father Eoghan Haughey.


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Birth of Isaac Butt, Barrister & Politician

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Isaac Butt, barrister and politician, is born in Glenfin, County Donegal on September 6, 1813. If not the originator of the term Home Rule, he is the first to make it an effective political slogan. He is the founder (1870) and first chief of the Home Government Association and president (1873–77) of the Home Rule League of Great Britain, but he is superseded in 1878 as head of the Home Rule movement by the younger and more forceful Charles Stewart Parnell.

Butt is the son of a Church of Ireland rector and is descended from the O’Donnells of Tyrconnell, through the Ramsays. He receives his secondary school education at The Royal School in Raphoe, County Donegal, and at Midleton College in County Cork, before going to Trinity College Dublin at the age of fifteen, where he is elected a Scholar. While there he co-founds the Dublin University Magazine and edits it for four years. For much of his life he is a member of the Irish Conservative Party. He becomes Whately Chair of Political Economy at Trinity in 1836 and holds that position until 1841.

Butt is called to the Irish bar in 1838 and the English bar in 1859. Intermittently from 1852 he represents, successively, one English and two Irish constituencies in the House of Commons. In 1848 he undertakes the defense of the Young Ireland leaders, who are charged with high treason for their abortive insurrection that year. From 1865 to 1869 he is the principal defense counsel for the imprisoned leaders of the Fenians (Irish Republican, or Revolutionary, Brotherhood).

Despite his legal work for the Fenians, Butt, who is basically a conservative, fears the consequences of a successful Fenian revolt. Disillusioned, however, by the British government’s failure to relieve the Irish Great Famine of the late 1840s, he becomes convinced that a native parliament is required for Irish land reform and other needs. In May 1870 he calls for an Irish Parliament subordinate to the imperial Parliament at Westminster, and later that year he forms the Home Government Association. From 1871 he quickens the Irish nationalist agitation in the House of Commons but gradually loses his leadership, partly because he disapproves of Parnell’s tactics of obstructing routine parliamentary business.

Butt amasses debts and pursues romances. It is said that at meetings he is occasionally heckled by women with whom he had fathered children. He is also involved in a financial scandal when it is revealed that he had taken money from several Indian princes to represent their interests in parliament.

Isaac Butt dies on May 5, 1879, in Clonskeagh in Dublin. His remains are brought by train to Stranorlar, County Donegal, where he is buried in a corner of the Church of Ireland cemetery beneath a tree by which he used to sit and dream as a boy. His grave has been restored and the memorial now includes a wreath.

Despite his chaotic lifestyle and political limitations, Butt is capable of inspiring deep personal loyalty. Some of his friends, such as John Butler Yeats and the future Catholic Bishop of Limerick, Edward Thomas O’Dwyer, retain a lasting hostility towards Parnell for his role in Butt’s downfall.

In May 2010 the Church of Ireland parishes of Stranorlar, Meenglass and Kilteevogue instigate an annual memorial Service and Lecture in Butt’s honour, inviting members of the professions of law, politics and journalism to reflect aspects of his life. Speakers have included Dr. Joe Mulholland, Senator David Norris, Dr. Chris McGimpsey and Prof. Brian Walker.

(Pictured: Isaac Butt, portrait by John Butler Yeats)


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Passport Requests Increase Following UK Brexit Vote

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According to statistics released by the Department of Foreign Affairs on August 6, 2016, in the first full month since the United Kingdom‘s decision to leave the European Union, applications for Irish passports from people living in Great Britain increase by 73% and by 63% from those in Northern Ireland over the same period the previous year.

In July 2015 there are 4,242 applications submitted by people in Great Britain compared to 7,321 in July 2016. Meanwhile 6,638 passport requests are submitted from Northern Ireland.

Within in a day of the Brexit vote there is a surge in online interest in Irish passports and moving to Ireland. While the UK as a whole vote to leave the EU in the referendum, Northern Ireland votes to remain by a majority of 56 percent to 44 percent. The Department of Foreign Affairs says there is “an increase in queries in respect of entitlements to Irish passports” the very next day. The year-on-year figures for January show a 20 percent increase in applications prior to the vote.

Google Trends says UK searches for “getting an Irish passport” jump more than 100% after the Brexit result comes through. And while the data analysts do not reveal the exact number of searches for information on the Republic of Ireland‘s citizenship rules, they say most interest is shown in Northern Ireland with the normally unionist heartland of Holywood, County Down, taking top spot.

Sinn Féin repeatedly says that Northern Ireland must not be “dragged out of Europe.” Up to this point the British government dismisses calls from its representatives and others for a border poll in Irish unity.


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Operation Banner Ends in Northern Ireland

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Operation Banner, the operational name for the British Armed Forces‘ operation in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 2007 as part of the Troubles, ends at midnight on July 31, 2007. It is one of the longest continuous deployments in British military history.

The British Army is initially deployed, at the request of the unionist government of Northern Ireland, in response to the August 1969 riots. Its role is to support the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and to assert the authority of the British government in Northern Ireland. At the peak of the operation in the 1970s, about 21,000 British troops are deployed, most of them from Great Britain. As part of the operation, a new locally recruited regiment is also formed, the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). After the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the operation is gradually scaled down and the vast majority of British troops are withdrawn.

In August 2005, it is announced that in response to the Provisional IRA declaration that its campaign is over, and in accordance with the Good Friday Agreement provisions, Operation Banner would end by August 1, 2007. This involves troops based in Northern Ireland being reduced to 5,000, and only for training purposes. Security is entirely transferred to the police. The Northern Ireland Resident battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment, which had grown out of the Ulster Defence Regiment, stand down on September 1, 2006. The operation officially ends at midnight on July 31, 2007, making it the longest continuous deployment in the British Army’s history, lasting over 38 years.

While the withdrawal of troops is welcomed by the nationalist parties Social Democratic and Labour Party and Sinn Féin, the unionist Democratic Unionist Party and Ulster Unionist Party oppose the decision, which they regard as premature. The main reasons behind their resistance are the continuing activity of republican dissident groups, the loss of security-related jobs for the protestant community and the perception of the British Army presence as an affirmation of the political union with Great Britain.

According to the Ministry of Defence, 1,441 serving British military personnel die in Operation Banner, 722 of whom are killed in paramilitary attacks and 719 of whom die as a result of other causes. The British military kills 307 people during the operation, about 51% of whom are civilians and 42% of whom are members of republican paramilitaries.

(Pictured: Two British soldiers on duty at a vehicle checkpoint near the A5 Omagh/Armagh road junction)


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Birth of Sir Hudson Lowe, Governor of Saint Helena

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Sir Hudson Lowe, Anglo-Irish soldier and colonial administrator who is best known for his time as Governor of Saint Helena, where he is the “gaoler” of Napoleon Bonaparte, is born in Galway, County Galway on July 28, 1769.

Lowe is the son of John Lowe, an army surgeon. His childhood is spent in various garrison towns, particularly in the West Indies, but he is educated chiefly at Salisbury Grammar. He obtains a post as ensign in the East Devon Militia when he is eleven. In 1787 he enters his father’s regiment, the 50th Regiment of Foot, which is then serving in Gibraltar under Governor-General Charles O’Hara. In 1791, he is promoted to lieutenant. The same year he is granted eighteen months’ leave and chooses to spend the time traveling through Italy rather than return to Britain. He chooses to avoid traveling to France as the French Revolution had recently broken out.

Lowe holds several important commands in the war with France from 1793. He is knighted in 1814. He arrives on the island of Saint Helena, Napoleon’s last place of exile, in April 1816. Many persons, notably Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, consider the choice ill advised, for Lowe is a conscientious but unimaginative man who takes his responsibility with excessive seriousness. Overwhelmed by the magnitude of the charge given him, he adheres rigorously to orders and treats Napoleon with extreme punctiliousness. After October 1816, the news that rescue operations are being planned by Bonapartists in the United States causes Lowe to impose even stricter regulations. The next month he deports Emmanuel, comte de Las Cases, Napoleon’s confidant and former imperial chamberlain, for writing letters about Lowe’s severity.

When, in late 1817, Napoleon first shows symptoms of his fatal illness, Lowe does nothing to mitigate the emperor’s living conditions. Yet he recommends that the British government increase its allowance to Napoleon’s household by one-half. After the emperor’s death on May 5, 1821, Lowe returns to England, where he receives the thanks of King George IV but is met with generally unfavourable opinion and is widely criticized for his unbending treatment of the former emperor. He later commands the British forces on Ceylon (1825–30) but is not appointed governor of that island when the office falls vacant in 1830.

Hudson Lowe dies at the age of 75 at Charlotte Cottage, near Sloane Street, Chelsea, London, of paralysis, on January 10, 1844.


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Birth of Chartist Leader Feargus O’Connor

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Feargus Edward O’Connor, advocate of the Land Plan and prominent Chartist leader who succeeds in making Chartism the first specifically working-class national movement in Great Britain, is born near Castletown-Kinneigh, County Cork on July 18, 1796.

O’Connor is born into a prominent Irish Protestant family who claims to be the descendants of the 12th-century king Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair. He is educated mainly at Portarlington Grammar School and has some elementary schooling in England.

O’Connor practices law but exchanges law for politics when he enters the British Parliament in 1832 as a member for County Cork. Unseated in 1835, he turns to radical agitation in England, although he continues to press Irish grievances and to seek Irish support. As a result of his humour, invective, and energy, he becomes the best-known Chartist leader and the movement’s most popular speaker. His journal, the Northern Star (founded in 1837), gains a wide circulation.

O’Connor’s methods and views alienate other Chartist leaders, particularly William Lovett, but in 1841, after spending a year in prison for seditious libel, he acquires undisputed leadership of the Chartists. Failing to lead the movement to victory and vacillating in his attitude toward the middle class and toward the People’s Charter, a six-point bill drafted and published in May 1838, he begins to lose power, although he is elected to Parliament for Nottingham in 1847. The failure of the People’s Charter in 1848 marks the beginning of the end for O’Connor, whose egocentricity is already bordering on madness.

The circulation of the Northern Star falls steadily, and it loses money. O’Connor’s health is failing, and reports of his mental breakdown regularly appear in the newspapers. In the spring of 1852, he visits the United States, where his behaviour leaves no doubt that he is not a well man.

In 1852 in the House of Commons O’Connor strikes three fellow MPs, one of them Sir Benjamin Hall, a vocal critic of the Land Plan. Arrested by the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms, he is sent by his sister to Dr. Thomas Harrington Tuke‘s private Manor House Asylum in Chiswick, where he remains until 1854, when he is moved to his sister’s house. He dies on August 30, 1855, at 18 Albert Terrace, Notting Hill Gate and is buried on September 10 in Kensal Green Cemetery. No fewer than 40,000 people witness the funeral procession. Most Chartists preferred to remember O’Connor’s strengths rather than his shortcomings.


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The Sack of Baltimore

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The Sack of Baltimore takes place on June 20, 1631, when the village of Baltimore, County Cork is attacked by the Ottoman Algeria and Republic of Salé slavers from the Barbary Coast of North Africa. The attack is the largest by Barbary pirates on either Ireland or Great Britain.

The attack is led by a Dutch captain, Jan Janszoon van Haarlem, also known as Murad Reis the Younger. Murad’s force is led to the village by a man called Hackett, the captain of a fishing boat he had captured earlier, in exchange for his freedom. Hackett is subsequently hanged from the clifftop outside the village for conspiracy.

Murad’s crew, made up of Dutchmen, Moroccans, Algerians and Ottoman Turks, launches their covert attack on the remote village on June 20, 1631. They capture 107 villagers, mostly English settlers along with some local Irish people (some reports put the number as high as 237). The attack is focused on the area of the village known to this day as the Cove. The villagers are put in irons and taken to a life of slavery in North Africa.

There are conspiracy theories relating to the raid. It has been suggested that Sir Walter Coppinger, a prominent Catholic lawyer and member of the leading Cork family, who had become the dominant power in the area after the death of Sir Thomas Crooke, 1st Baronet, the founder of the English colony, orchestrates the raid to gain control of the village from the local Gaelic chieftain, Sir Fineen O’Driscoll. It is O’Driscoll who had licensed the lucrative pilchard fishery in Baltimore to the English settlers. Suspicion also points to O’Driscoll’s exiled relatives, who had fled to Spain after the Battle of Kinsale and had no hope of inheriting Baltimore by legal means. On the other hand, Murad may have planned the raid without any help. It is known that the authorities had advance intelligence of a planned raid on the Cork coast, although Kinsale is thought to be a more likely target than Baltimore.

Some prisoners are destined to live out their days as galley slaves, rowing for decades without ever setting foot on shore while others spend long years in harem or as labourers. At most, only three of them ever return to Ireland. One is ransomed almost at once and two others in 1646.

In the aftermath of the raid, the remaining villagers move to Skibbereen, and Baltimore is virtually deserted for generations.

(Pictured: “The sack of Baltimore (West Cork), ca. 1890-1891” pen and ink by Jack Butler Yeats)


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Birth of Pat Rabbitte, Labour Party Politician

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Patrick Brendan Rabbitte, former Labour Party politician, is born near Claremorris, County Mayo on May 18, 1949. He serves as Minister of State for Commerce, Science and Technology from 1994 to 1997, Leader of the Labour Party from 2002 to 2007 and Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources from 2011 to 2014. He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin South-West constituency from 1989 to 2016.

Rabbitte is raised in Woodstock, Ballindine, County Mayo. He is educated locally at St. Colman’s College, Claremorris before emigrating to Britain to find employment. He returns shortly afterward to attend University College Galway (UCG) where he studies Arts and Law.

Rabbitte becomes involved in electoral politics for the first time in late 1982, when he unsuccessfully contests Dublin South-West for the Workers’ Party (WP) at the November general election. He is elected to Dublin County Council in 1985. He enters Dáil Éireann as a Workers’ Party Teachta Dála (TD) for Dublin South-West at the 1989 election. He retains his seat at every election until 2016.

After Tomás Mac Giolla‘s retirement as President of the Workers’ Party in 1988, Rabbitte is seen as one of those who wants to move the party away from its hard left position. In 1992, he plays a prominent role with Proinsias De Rossa in an attempt to jettison some of the party’s harder left positions. This eventually splits the Workers’ Party.

In 1994, a new ‘Rainbow Coalition’ government of Fine Gael, the Labour Party and Democratic Left comes to power. Rabbitte is a member of the junior ministerial team, serving as Minister of State to the Government, as well as Minister for State at the Department of Enterprise and Employment with responsibility for Commerce, Science and Technology.

Following the 1997 general election the Rainbow Coalition loses power. The following year sees a merger between the Labour Party and Democratic Left, with Rabbitte participating in the negotiations. In October 2002 he succeeds Ruairi Quinn as the new leader of the Labour Party. Under his leadership the party makes some gains in the local elections of 2004.

The Labour Party agrees to enter a pre-election pact, commonly known as ‘The Mullingar Accord,’ with Fine Gael in an attempt to offer the electorate an alternative coalition government at the 2007 general election. This move causes some tension in the parliamentary party, as some members prefer not to be aligned with any party in advance of an election.

Following the disappointing result in the election for Labour, Rabbitte announces he is stepping down as leader on August 23, 2007. He is succeeded as party leader by Eamon Gilmore. Rabbitte is re-elected on the first count in the 2011 general election. His running mate Eamonn Maloney is also elected. On March 9, 2011, he is appointed as Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.

In July 2014, Rabbitte is replaced by Alex White as part of a reshuffle of the cabinet. He does not contest the 2016 general election.


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The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 Receives Royal Assent

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The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, the culmination of the process of Catholic emancipation throughout the United Kingdom, receives royal assent on April 13, 1829. In Ireland it repeals the Test Act 1673 and the remaining Penal Laws which had been in force since the passing of the Disenfranchising Act of the Parliament of Ireland of 1728. Its passage follows a vigorous campaign that threatens insurrection led by Irish lawyer Daniel O’Connell. The British leaders, starting with the Prime Minister, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, and his top aide Robert Peel, although personally opposed, give in to avoid civil strife. Ireland is quiet after the passage.

In 1778, English Catholics are relieved of the restrictions on land inheritance and purchase. A savage reaction to these concessions produces the Gordon Riots of 1780, and the whole history of Catholic Emancipation is one of struggle against great resistance. In 1791 the Roman Catholic Relief Act repeals most of the disabilities in Great Britain, provided Catholics take an oath of loyalty. In 1793 the army, the navy, the universities, and the judiciary are opened to Catholics, although seats in Parliament and some offices are still denied. These reforms are sponsored by William Pitt the Younger, who hopes thereby to split the alliance of Irish Catholics and Protestants. But Pitt’s attempt to secure a general repeal of the Penal Laws is thwarted by George III. Pope Pius VII consents to a royal veto on episcopal nominations if the Penal Laws are repealed, but the move fails. In Ireland the repeal of Poynings’ Law in 1782 is followed by an act (1792) of the Irish Parliament relaxing the marriage and education laws and an act (1793) allowing Catholics to vote and hold most offices.

The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 permits members of the Catholic Church to sit in the parliament at Westminster and to hold all but a handful of public offices. O’Connell had won a seat in a by-election for Clare in 1828 against an Anglican. Under the then extant penal law, O’Connell as a Catholic, is forbidden to take his seat in Parliament. Peel, the Home Secretary, until then is called “Orange Peel” because he always supports the Orange (anti-Catholic) position. Peel now concludes, “Though emancipation was a great danger, civil strife was a greater danger.” Fearing a revolution in Ireland, Peel draws up the Catholic Relief Bill and guides it through the House of Commons. To overcome the vehement opposition of both the House of Lords and King George IV, the Duke of Wellington works tirelessly to ensure passage in the House of Lords and threatens to resign as Prime Minister if the King does not give Royal Assent.

With the Universities Tests Act 1871, which opens the universities to Roman Catholics, Catholic Emancipation in the United Kingdom is virtually complete.