Maurice O’Neill, an Irish Republican Army (IRA) Captain captured in 1942 after a shootout with Irish police (Garda Síochána), is executed on November 12, 1942, one of only two people executed in independent Ireland for a non-murder offence.
O’Neill is a farmer from an Irish republican family in the farming community of Cahersiveen, County Kerry. He and his older brother Sean are dedicated Irish republicans. He fights in the Irish Republican Army’s 1942-44 Northern Campaign and is assigned to the IRA’s General Headquarters (GHQ) at the time of his capture. In the early 1930s, his brother Sean serves in the IRAs Dublin Brigade and serves on GHQ Staff IRA in various capacities from 1945 to 1955.
On October 24, 1942, O’Neill is arrested after a raid by Garda Síochána in which Garda Detective Officer Mordant is shot and killed in Donnycarney, Dublin. The mission of the police raid is the capture of Harry White, the IRA Quartermaster General. White escapes capture and O’Neill is arrested but not charged with the murder of the Detective Officer but with “shooting with intent.” It is thought that Detective Officer Mordant’s death may have been a result of crossfire between Special Branch policemen.
The 25-year-old O’Neill’s execution provokes particularly widespread protests, as he is a popular figure in his native County Kerry. He apparently is stoic and calm when his fate becomes clear. In a letter to his elder brother, Sean, from Arbour Hill Prison, he writes: “I suppose you saw in the papers where I met my Waterloo last Saturday night. Well, such are the fortunes of war…there is only one sentence, death or release. So I believe it is the full penalty for me. There is no good in having false hopes, hard facts must be faced.” In his last letter to his father he writes: “I am glad that I am not being reprieved as the thought of the torture I would have to endure in Portlaoise makes me shudder.”
Many Irish republican prisoners are released in 1948 as is the body of O’Neill (on September 17, 1948). O’Neill is buried in the republican plot at Kilavarnogue Cemetery, Cahersiveen, County Kerry. His name is listed on a monument in Fairview Park, Dublin, with the names other IRA members of that period who lose their lives. The Maurice O’Neill Bridge to Valentia Island is built in 1970 and named in memory of the young farmer who had been executed in 1942. In Kilflynn, County Kerry, the Crotta O’Neill’shurling club is named after him. In 2011, an Irish television documentary focuses on how O’Neill’s execution affected his family.
Against his father’s wishes, Neligan joins the Dublin Metropolitan Police (DMP) – also in 1917. Picking up travel documentation from the local Royal Irish Constabulary barracks, he declines a suggestion that he enlist in this armed rural force. After service as a uniformed constable with the DMP, he is promoted to Detective and transferred into the Department’s widely hated counterintelligence and anti-political-subversion unit, the G Division, in 1919. In May 1920, his elder brother Maurice (1895–1920), an Irish Republican Army (IRA) member and friend of Michael Collins, persuades him to resign from the DMP.
After his resignation, Neligan returns to his native County Limerick with the intention of joining the Limerick IRA. Shortly afterward, Maurice is killed in a motorcycle accident, near their home in Templeglantine. In the meantime, Neligan also receives word from a family friend that Michael Collins wishes to meet with him in Dublin. Collins is outraged that Neligan has been allowed to resign and persuades him to rejoin the DMP as a mole for the intelligence wing of the IRA. Along with Detectives Eamon Broy and James McNamara, Neligan acts as a highly valuable agent for Collins and passes on reams of vital information. He leaks documents about the relative importance of police and military personnel and also warns insurgents of upcoming raids and ambushes. There are unconfirmed rumors that Neligan might be a double agent working for British interests.
In 1921, Collins orders Neligan to let himself be recruited into MI5 and he uses the opportunity to memorise their passwords and the identities of their agents. All of this is passed on to Collins. After Broy and McNamara are dismissed in 1921, Neligan becomes Collins’ most important mole inside Dublin Castle.
In 1924, Neligan hands over his post to the youthful Colonel Michael Joe Costello and takes command of the DMP, which still continues as a force separate from the newly established Garda Síochána, with the rank of Chief Superintendent. The next year he transfers to the Garda when the two police forces are amalgamated, and is instrumental in the foundation of the Garda Special Branch. When Éamon de Valera becomes head of government in 1932, his republican followers demand Neligan’s dismissal. Instead, Neligan is transferred to an equivalent post in the Irish Civil Service. In June 1935, he is married to fellow civil servant Sheila Maeve Rogan. They have one son and three daughters, and reside at 15 St. Helen’s Road, Booterstown, Dublin.
Neligan draws pensions from the DMP, the British MI5, the Garda Síochána and the Irish Civil Service. He also receives an “Old IRA” pension through the Department of Defence.
Mackey is born in Castleconnell, County Limerick, on July 12, 1912. Educated at Castleconnell National School, he receives no secondary schooling and subsequently joins the Electricity Supply Board where he spends forty-seven years as a van driver with the company at Ardnacrusha, County Clare. He also spends five years as a member of the Irish Army.
Mackey first arrives on the inter-county scene at the age of seventeen when he first links up with the Limerick minor team, before later lining out with the junior side. He makes his senior debut in the 1930–31 National Hurling League. He goes on to play a key part for Limerick during a golden age for the team, and wins three All-Ireland medals, five Munster medals and five National Hurling League medals. An All-Ireland runner-up on two occasions, he also captains the team to two All-Ireland victories.
Mackey’s brother, John, also shares in these victories while his father, John “Tyler” Mackey, is a one-time All-Ireland runner-up with Limerick.
Mackey represents the Munster GAA inter-provincial team for twelve years, winning eight Railway Cup medals during the period. At club level, he wins fifteen championship medals with Ahane.
Throughout his inter-county career, Mackey makes 42 championship appearances for Limerick. His retirement comes following the conclusion of the 1947 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship.
In retirement from playing, Mackey becomes involved in team management and coaching. As trainer of the Limerick senior team, he guides them to the 1955 Railway Cup Hurling Championship. He also serves as a selector on various occasions with both Limerick and Munster. He also serves as a referee.
Mackey is widely regarded as one of the greatest hurlers in the history of the game. He is the inaugural recipient of the All-Time All Star Award. He is repeatedly voted onto teams made up of the sport’s greats, including at centre-forward on the Hurling Team of the Century in 1984 and the Hurling Team of the Millennium in 2000. In 2021, the trophy given to the winning Munster Senior Hurling Championship team is named in Mackey’s honour.
Mackey is married to Kathleen “Kitty” Kennedy (1914–2003) and the couple has five children: Paddy, Michael, Greg, Audrey and Ruth.
In declining health for some years, Mackey suffers a series of strokes toward the end of his life. He dies in Dooradoyle, County Limerick, on September 13, 1982. All his medals and trophies are on display in the GAA Museum in Croke Park. A stand in the Limerick Gaelic Grounds is named after him.
Cronin is the only son among three children of Con Cronin, a member of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and his wife Kate. After his father’s death, his mother works as a cook in a boarding school while the children are brought up by relatives in Ballinskelligs in the County KerryGaeltacht. Educated locally, he is deeply influenced by his Gaeltacht childhood; his later writings often refer to the hypocrisy of a state that romanticises the Gaeltacht while neglecting its social problems.
During World War II, Cronin’s sisters emigrate to England to train as nurses while he works as a labourer for Kerry County Council. In December 1941, he joins the Irish Army and is selected in 1943 for an officers’ training course, on which he forms a lifelong friendship with the future theatre directorAlan Simpson. He is commissioned and remains in the army until 1948.
Shortly thereafter Cronin emigrates to New York City, where he finds work as a journalist writing for The Advocate, an Irish American newspaper. He is strongly influenced by interviewing 1916 veterans for The Advocate and by contact with left-wing Irish American associates of Michael Quill, who played leading roles in the foundation of the Transport Workers Union of America. He becomes active in the semi-secret separatist organisation Clan na Gael, and in autumn 1955 returns to Ireland with the aim of helping the IRA to prepare for another military campaign.
Cronin begins work as a sub-editor with the Evening Press and also contributes summaries of world affairs to The Irish Times.
Cronin establishes contact with the IRA, and his military experience leads to his rapid assignment to GHQ staff. He is initially placed in charge of training and instruction, composing a manual on guerrilla warfare and twelve lectures on battlefield training. He teaches new military techniques and new recruits, such as the future IRA Chief of Staff Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, find him deeply impressive.
Cronin becomes a leading advocate of an early IRA campaign against Northern Ireland and becomes the chief strategist for Operation Harvest, a campaign which sees the carrying out of a range of military operations from direct attacks on security installations to disruptive actions against infrastructure. He is arrested on January 8, 1957, near the border in County Cavan. He is imprisoned several times over the course of the campaign (1956–1962).
Most of the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership are interned by the Dublin government on July 6, 1957. Cronin, one of the few to escape, becomes IRA Chief of Staff. He also acts for a time as editor of the movement’s newspaper, United Irishman. He tries to secure weapons from various sources, leading an unsuccessful raid on a British Army base at Blandford Camp in Dorset on February 16, 1958, and through contacts with Spanish republican exiles in Paris. The Irish American community remains the IRA’s main source of external support.
Cronin is arrested on September 30, 1958, and interned, causing considerable disarray, as he had been running much of the campaign single-handed. When the internees are released in March 1959, he resumes his position as Chief of Staff after a factional dispute causes the resignations of Tomás Óg Mac Curtain and the former Chief of Staff Tony Magan. He continues to argue that a sustained guerrilla campaign might yet succeed, but in June 1960 is again arrested and imprisoned for six months.
In November 1960, the Irish Freedom Committee (IFC), a Clan na Gael splinter group, accuses Cronin of being a communist and a “Free State agent,” supposedly implicated in the 1944 execution of Charlie Kerins. The IRA supports Cronin, but he nevertheless decides to resign successively as Chief of Staff, as a member of the Army Council, and as an IRA volunteer, on the grounds that his presence endangers the American support necessary for the continuance of the campaign. He then secures a job as a journalist on the Irish Independent. He withdraws his resignation in November 1961 after the Irish government reinstates military tribunals to try suspected IRA men. He is subsequently sentenced to six months’ imprisonment by a military tribunal and is in prison when the border campaign ends on February 26, 1962. Released on amnesty on April 19, 1962, he finally resigns from the IRA the next day.
By February 1966, Cronin has returned to the United States, where he resides for the remainder of his life, with regular visits to Ireland. He works as a journalist on the Newark Evening News and the Dow Jones News Service and is the U.S. correspondent of The Irish Times from 1967 to 1991, becoming that paper’s first Washington, D.C. correspondent.
In the 1970s Cronin takes a degree at New York University, then teaches and studies for a doctorate at The New School for Social Research in New York under Hans Morgenthau. His dissertation forms the basis for his magnum opus, Irish nationalism: its roots and ideology (1980). Although limited by its colonial model and socialist-republican intellectual framework, this historically oriented account draws on his extensive research and personal contacts to some effect.
Cronin is the author of a dozen books and pamphlets, including a biography of republican Frank Ryan, Washington’s Irish Policy 1916-1986: independence, partition, neutrality (1987), an authoritative account of Irish-US relations, Our Own Red Blood: The Story of the 1916 Rising (1966), and a number of works on guerrilla strategy, including an early Sinn Féin pamphlet Resistance under the pseudonym of J. McGarrity.
After the death of his first wife in 1974, Cronin marries Reva Rubinstein, a toxicologist. In 1980 they move to Washington, D.C. He has no children by either marriage, though his second wife brings him a stepson. After several years of illness, he dies in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 9, 2011. He is survived by his second wife, Reva Rubenstein Cronin.
Born Leslie Yodaiken into a Russian–Jewish family in Portobello, Dublin, Daiken is the son of Samuel and Rosa Yodaiken. His father is a dealer in rubber and scrap metal, with premises in Dublin and Glasgow, and he is educated at two independent fee-paying schools, St. Andrew’s College and Wesley College, and then in 1930 he enters Trinity College Dublin. In his first year, one of his lecturers in French literature was Samuel Beckett. He is an active member of the Dublin University Socialist Society and a founding member of the college’s Gaelic Society.
In 1933, Daiken is present at the house of Charlotte Despard in Eccles Street, Dublin, also used as a Workers’ College, when it is attacked by a mob of Blueshirts. He leads the immediate defence of the building, which is saved on that occasion by the intervention of Irish Republican Army (IRA) men posing as the police.
In 1934, as Yodaiken, he graduates with a BA from Trinity in English and French Literature, with a Second Class degree. After graduating, Daiken works briefly as a schoolteacher in Dublin. In April 1935, his short story “Angela” is published in The New English Weekly under the pen name of Ned Kiernan. That year, he migrates to London.
Soon after his arrival in London, Daiken is one of the three founders of a duplicated publication called Irish Front, together with two other poets, Charles Donnelly and Ewart Milne.
In England, Daiken starts to shorten his surname from Yodaiken to Daiken, for his publications, but he does not make this change formally until doing so by deed poll in 1943.
In December 1935, The Irish Times reviews a production in Camden Town of Ireland Unfree, a stage version by Daiken of Patrick Pearse’s poem “The Rebel.” It states that “Mr. Daiken carries Pearse’s theme beyond his idealistic conclusion to the revolutionary viewpoint of the Irish workers.”
Daiken keeps up his links with leftist Irish writers and dissidents and edits the collection of working-class political verse Goodbye Twilight: songs of the struggle in Ireland (1936), illustrated by Harry Kernoff. The Irish Press describes this as “forty young poets with blazing eyes and clenched fists.” In another review, Louis MacNeice calls the book a “collection of proletarian poems – some communist, some Irish republican, and all written in a defiant spirit of opposition … a violent reaction against Yeats and all that he stood for.”
In 1939, Mairin Mitchell is highly critical of the Irish leftists, and in particular Daiken, for their views on the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, and writes to Desmond Ryan in September, “Brian O’Neill, Bloomsbury, and Daiken will sing Russia right or wrong.”
In October 1939, at the time of the wartime National Registration Act, Daiken is living in a studio at Old Castle Wharf, Twickenham, and describes himself as “Script-writer and advertising copywriter.”
During World War II, Daiken enlists in the Corps of Signals of the Irish Army, a neutral force, and also works for Reuters as a correspondent on education. In 1944, he edits They Go, the Irish, a collection of essays, including one from Seán O’Casey. In 1945, a collection of his verse is published under the title Signatures of All Things. In the summer of that year, Samuel Beckett gives Daiken his unpublished novel Watt, in the hope that he can find a publisher for it, but he fails to do so. They continue to write to each other and meet in London and Paris in the 1950s. He also keeps up with another friend from Trinity, Con Leventhal.
After he becomes a father in 1945, Daiken’s main interest moves on from political activism to children’s games and toys, and by 1951 the basement of his London home has become a toy museum. He writes on the subject and makes television and radio programmes for the BBC about it. His film One potato, two potato, a compilation of children’s street rhymes, wins the Festival Mondial du Film prize in 1958. His radio play The Circular Road is about a Jewish-Irish child.
In the 1950s Daiken founds the National Toy Museum and Institute of Play, today part of the Toy Collection at Hove Museum of Creativity.
Daiken returns to Ireland many times as a visitor. In the early 1960s he completes a radio play about the Jewish community of Dublin in the 1920s, which is broadcast on RTÉ.
In October 1963, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, recruits Daiken as a lecturer in education, and not long before his death he makes a film called The Piano about teaching white and black children in a school in Africa. He dies on August 15, 1964, while spending the summer vacation at home in London, leaving an estate valued at £3,865. He is cremated. His widow survives him until 1981.
In a tribute to Daiken, his 1930s communist associate Brian O’Neill writes, “He was always busy, always with a half dozen irons in the fire, always trying to give a hand to some Irish writer who needed it.”
In the early 1990s, Katrina Goldstone interviews Daiken’s brother, Aubrey Yodaiken, and later reports: “I was left with a faint sense of melancholy, as my interviewee had become distressed speaking about his brother, Leslie Daiken, and recalling his irrepressible and exasperating personality, his many projects, half-started novels…”
Aubrey Yodaiken is distressed by the lack of appreciation of his brother’s many cultural efforts and by the fact that his “scattershot literary endeavours” seem to have come to naught.
The National Library of Ireland holds a collection of Daiken’s papers, in particular his publications and correspondence, presented to it in 1995 by his elder daughter, by then Melanie Cuming, and his younger brother, Aubrey Yodaiken. The papers are mostly in English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Hebrew, and Irish.
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.
Walsh is born in the townland of Rathroon, near Bandon, County Cork, on February 20, 1880. His family comes from a farming background, “working a substantial holding of medium but well-cultivated land.” Until the age of fifteen, he attends a local school in Bandon, but by his own account “as far as learning went, I may as well have been at home.” Together with his school friend P. S. O’Hegarty, he passes the Civil Service exams for the Postal service. He later works locally as a clerk in the Post Office. Like O’Hegarty, he spends three years in London at King’s College, studying for the Secretary’s Office “a syllabus (which) differed little from the Indian Civil Service.” While O’Hegarty succeeds in his studies, Walsh does not, and returns to Cork where a friend, Sir Edward Fitzgerald, arranges work for him on the Entertainments Committee of the Cork International Exhibition.
Walsh is active in the GAA, promoting Gaelic games in many areas, but particularly in Cork city and county. His interest in organised sports has a strong political dimension.
“I happened to be one of those who realised the potentialities of the GAA as a training ground for Physical Force. Contamination with the alien and all his works was taboo. I gathered around me a force of youthful enthusiasts from the University, Civil Service and Business. With this intensely organised instrument, war was declared on foreign games which were made to feel the shock so heavily that one by one, Soccer and Rugby Clubs began to disappear.”
Walsh participates in the Easter Rising in 1916 in the General Post Office (GPO). He claims he is responsible for mobilising 20 members of the Hibernian Rifles and takes them to the GPO. However, Rifles commandant John J. Scollan contradicts this account. He is promoted from Rifleman to Vice-Commandant of the Hibernian Rifles in 1915.
Walsh is arrested following the general surrender and sentenced to death after a court-martial at Richmond Barracks. This is almost immediately commuted to life imprisonment, but he is released the following year under a general amnesty.
In later 1917 Walsh is arrested and imprisoned after making a speech declaring “the only way to address John Bull is through the barrel of a rifle.”
Walsh is elected as a Sinn FéinMember of Parliament (MP) in the 1918 United Kingdom general election for the Cork City constituency. As a member of the First Dáil he is arrested for partaking in an illegal government. He is released in 1921 and supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty and goes on to become a founding member of the new political party, Cumann na nGaedheal. He serves as Postmaster General from 1922 until 1924 and joins the cabinet of W. T. Cosgrave between 1924 and 1927, after the office is reconstituted as the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. He is elected at every election for the Cork Borough constituency until 1927 when he retires from government.
In August 1922 Walsh is part of a government committee which is intended to consider what the Irish Free State’s policy towards north-east Ulster will be.
During World War II, known at the time in Ireland as “the Emergency,” Walsh’s connections with fascism, including his association with Ailtirí na hAiséirghe, bring him to the attention of the Directorate of Military Intelligence, the Intelligence branch of the Irish Army. Their request to the Minister for Justice, Gerald Boland, to place a tap on Walsh’s phone is, however, refused. He is closely associated with Irish-based pro-Nazi initiatives through his association with Ailtirí na hAiséirghe, frequently expressing his views with anti-semitic rhetoric.
After leaving politics Walsh founds a bus company which operates with great success between the city centre and south Dublin. When private bus services are bought out by the Dublin Tramway Co., he invests his profits in other Irish companies including Clondalkin Paper Mills, Solus Teoranta and Benbulben Barytes. He is also a director of Killeen and Newbrook Paper Mills, timber exporters Dinan Dowds, the Moore Clothing Co., and Fancy Goods. In 1937 he is elected president of the Federation of Irish Manufacturers, having previously held the vice-presidency. His businesses benefit greatly from the protectionist measures introduced by Fianna Fáil after 1932. Nonetheless, he complains that not enough has been done to make capital available to native entrepreneurs, and that “alien” interests are allowed too much scope to penetrate the Irish market.
In 1944 Walsh publishes a short memoir, Recollections of a Rebel. In his later years he suffers from deteriorating health, leading to his resignation from the presidency of the Federation of Irish Manufacturers in 1946. He dies in Dublin on February 3, 1948. He is buried in St. Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork, County Cork.
On April 24, 2016, a plaque commemorating Walsh is unveiled in Kilbrittain, County Cork.
Quinlan goes to school in nearby Loher. He and his wife Carmel have a son, Leo, who is sixteen when his father serves in the Congo, and later becomes a commandant, the same rank his father held when in Katanga, although the father retires with the higher rank of colonel.
“A” Company, 35th Battalion (UN service) of the Irish Army United Nations Operation in the Congo (ONUC) contingent, commanded by Quinlan, is attacked by Katangese Gendarmerie troops loyal to President Moïse Tshombe and the State of Katanga. Quinlan’s lightly armed company is besieged in Jadotville, and resists Katangese assaults for six days. A relief force of Irish, Indian and Swedish troops is unsuccessful in their attempts to reach Quinlan’s position.
Quinlan’s company suffers five wounded in action during the six-day siege. On the other hand, up to 300 Katangese troops are killed, including thirty mercenaries, and an indeterminate number are wounded, with figures ranging from 300 to 1,000. Quinlan, however, has no access to resupply and reinforcements and, with his transport destroyed by Katanga’s Fouga Magister jet, a breakout is virtually impossible. In the end, with his position untenable, without any clear orders or promise of assistance, having run out of ammunition and food and low on water, he accepts a second offer to surrender to the Katangese.
Although suffering no loss of life, Quinlan’s company are held as prisoners of war and hostages for approximately one month. The Katangese barter the Irish soldiers for prisoners in the custody of the Congolese government. After being released, “A” Company are returned to their base in Elisabethville (now Lubumbashi). Some weeks later, Quinlan finds himself involved in active combat again, this time with his company in support of Swedish UN troops. Eventually they are reinforced with fresh troops from Ireland. After weeks of fighting and their six-month tour of duty now complete, “A” Company is rotated home to Ireland that December.
In its immediate aftermath, the Irish state does not give much recognition to the Battle of Jadotville, and no Irish soldier receives any decoration for actions at Jadotville. This may have been because of a perceived shame that “A” Company had surrendered and an unwillingness to highlight political or strategic errors at higher levels by the UN mission. Quinlan, however, recommends a number of his men for the Military Medal for Gallantry (MMG), Ireland’s highest award for military valour, for their actions during the battle.
Quinlan never serves overseas again and retires as a full colonel after forty years with the Irish Army.
Quinlan dies on August 27, 1997, unaware that his reputation will be restored nine years after his death. His wife does not live to see his official rehabilitation either, dying two years after her husband.
The veterans of Jadotville are dissatisfied with the Irish Defence Forces‘ refusal to acknowledge the battle and the implied black mark on the reputation of their commander. Following a long campaign for recognition, in 2004 the then Minister for Defence, Willie O’Dea, agrees to hold a review of the battle. An inquiry by the Defence Forces clears Quinlan and “A” Company of allegations of soldierly misconduct. A commemorative stone recognising the soldiers of “A” Company is erected on the grounds of Custume Barracks in Athlone in 2005. A commissioned portrait of Quinlan is installed in the Congo Room of the Irish Defence Forces’ UN School.
In 2016, the Irish government awards a Presidential Unit Citation to “A” Company, the first in the State’s history. In October 2017, a plaque commemorating Quinlan is unveiled by former TaoiseachEnda Kenny at Coomakista Pass, County Kerry.
In November 2020, an Independent Review Group commissioned by Irish Defence Minister Simon Coveney recommends that Quinlan receive the Distinguished Service Medal (DSM).
Quinlan’s tactics at Jadotville influence subsequent training programmes, and are, according to RTÉ, “cited in military textbooks worldwide as the best example of the use of the so-called perimeter defence.”
Quinlan is played by Jamie Dornan in the film The Siege of Jadotville (2016), which is adapted from Declan Power‘s book, The Siege at Jadotville: The Irish Army’s Forgotten Battle (2005). His wife Carmel is played by Fiona Glascott. Colonel Quinlan’s son, Commandant Leo Quinlan, says that Dornan bears an uncanny resemblance to his father, and gets everything about him right except his County Kerry accent, which is so strong that “if he had done my father’s accent, you’d need subtitles.” Quinlan’s grandson Conor is a member of the film’s cast.
John James Bernard (J. B.) Malone, an Irish hillwalking enthusiast who popularises the pastime through his television programmes and books, is born on December 13, 1913, in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. He is responsible for the establishment of the Wicklow Way as a recognised walking trail, having first proposed it in 1966.
Malone is born to James Bernard Malone and his wife, Agnes (née Kenny), both from Dublin. He is raised mainly in England and completes his secondary education at the Marist Brothers College, Grove Ferry, Kent.
Malone moves to Ireland in 1931 where he finds employment in a builders’ providers firm and an insurance company before joining the Irish Army in 1940. There he becomes a cartographer in the intelligence section. In 1947, having left the army, he goes to work at the Department of Posts and Telegraphs as a draughtsman. He remains employed in the Irish civil service until his retirement in 1979. Also in 1947, he marries Margaret Garry, and they have three children.
Malone starts hillwalking in 1931 when he climbs Montpelier Hill to visit the ruins of the Hell Fire Club. Later, while on leave during his military career, he develops a detailed knowledge of walking routes throughout the hills of County Wicklow. He sits on the Board of An Taisce in Ireland from 1970 to 1974.
Following his retirement from the civil service, Malone is appointed as a field officer with the Long-Distance Walking Routes Committee of Cospóir, the Irish Sports Council. There, he negotiates rights of way with landowners to enable his vision of the Wicklow Way to become a reality. He first proposes a guided walking route through the Wicklow hills in 1966, although he had first raised the idea as early as 1942.
From 1938 to 1975 Malone contributes a regular column to the Evening Herald entitled Over the Hills. Between 1967 and 1968 he writes the column Know your Dublin, illustrated by Liam C. Martin. The column features information on a Dublin landmark and is later compiled into a book published in 1969.
During the 1960s, Malone presents a television documentary series on RTÉ entitled Mountain and Meadow, in which, accompanied by a cameraman, he introduces viewers to a variety of hill walks in Wicklow and surrounding counties. In 1980, he presents a one-hour TV programme on the newly opened Wicklow Way.
From 1950 to 1988, Malone writes several books on hillwalking in the Dublin Mountains and the Wicklow Mountains.
In 1980, Malone is made an honorary life member of An Óige, the Irish Youth Hostel Association (IYHA), in recognition of his contribution to promoting the Irish countryside.
Following his death in 1989, Malone’s contribution to hillwalking in Ireland is marked by the erection of the J.B. Malone Memorial Stone plaque in his honour on a section of the Wicklow Way overlooking Lough Tay.
In October 2014, on the 25th anniversary of Malone’s death, the South Dublin Libraries hold an exhibition on his life and work.
(Pictured: The John James Bernard Malone memorial, on the Wicklow Way overlooking Lough Tay and Luggala)
At Villanova, Carroll runs a sub-four-minute mile and in 1964, is the anchor for the team which breaks the 4 x 880-yard relay World Record. In the same year, he also sets the European Indoor record for the 880-yards and competes in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, in the Men’s 800 metres finishing just outside of the qualifying places in heat 5 of the first round with a time of 1:51.1. When running against Bill Crothers in 1964, Sports Illustrated describes him as “one of the best middle-distance runners in the world.”
Carroll represents Ireland in the 400 metres (time: 46.8) and the 800 metres (time: 1:49) in the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, and continues to win national championships, fourteen in total. He wins a bronze medal in the 800m at the 1969 European Indoor Games in Belgrade.
In 1972, Carroll becomes the spokesman for the Dublin Corporation, now known as Dublin City Council, a post he holds until 1996, when he joins the Dublin Chamber of Commerce as its chief executive.
In 1980, Carroll leads a group which approaches the Business Houses Athletic Association and the Dublin Corporation with the idea for the Dublin Marathon. He is also among the 2,100 people who compete in the race that year. The winner of the Marathon receives the Noel Carroll Memorial Trophy presented each year by one of Carroll’s children.
Carroll dies on October 23, 1998, after suffering a heart attack while training at University College Dublin (UCD). In 2008, his four children take part in the Dublin Marathon to raise money for the Noel Carroll Building, the headquarters of a project in Kolkata, India, run by GOAL, a charity for which Carroll had served as the chairman.
Carroll’s grandson is the Irish rugby international player, Jordi Murphy.
seamus dubhghaill 