“Sunday 21 July marks the 30th anniversary of an IRA operation in Belfast in 1972 which resulted in nine people being killed and many more injured.
While it was not our intention to injure or kill non-combatants, the reality is that on this and on a number of other occasions, that was the consequence of our actions.
It is therefore appropriate on the anniversary of this tragic event, that we address all of the deaths and injuries of non-combatants caused by us.
We offer our sincere apologies and condolences to their families.
There have been fatalities amongst combatants on all sides. We also acknowledge the grief and pain of their relatives.
The future will not be found in denying collective failures and mistakes or closing minds and hearts to the plight of those who have been hurt. That includes all of the victims of the conflict, combatants and non-combatants.
It will not be achieved by creating a hierarchy of victims in which some are deemed more or less worthy than others.
The process of conflict resolution requires the equal acknowledgement of the grief and loss of others. On this anniversary, we are endeavouring to fulfil this responsibility to those we have hurt.
The IRA is committed unequivocally to the search for freedom, justice and peace in Ireland.
We remain totally committed to the peace process and to dealing with the challenges and difficulties which this presents. This includes the acceptance of past mistakes and of the hurt and pain we have caused to others.”
P O’Neill, Irish Republican Publicity Bureau, Dublin.
Note: The Provisional IRA issues all its public statements under the pseudonym “P. O’Neill” of the “Irish Republican Publicity Bureau, Dublin.” Dáithí Ó Conaill, the IRA’s director of publicity, came up with the name. According to Danny Morrison, the pseudonym “S. O’Neill” was used during the 1940s.
Barry learns Irish from a young age. He attends Ballymartle National School but is unable to attend secondary school due to a lack of facilities in the area. He begins work on the family farm after primary school. In 1903, he moves to Cork to work as a draper‘s apprentice with the firm O’Sullivan and Howard, where he becomes involved in the Gaelic League and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. A successful athlete, he also plays for the Blackrock National Hurling Club and wins four senior county hurling championships between 1910–13.
In 1913, Barry joins the newly formed Irish Volunteers. In 1915, he moves to Kilkenny to take up employment there, where he continues his volunteer activities. Shortly after the 1916 Easter Rising, he is arrested in Kilkenny in a British Government crackdown, and sent to Frongoch internment camp in North Wales. In 1919, he returns to Cork, where he is Commandant of the Irish Republican Police (IRP) in Cork during the Irish War of Independence. In the Cork No. 1 Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), he helps with prisoner escapes and returning looted goods after the burning of Cork by Black and Tans. After the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the split that follows, he chooses the anti-Treaty branch of the IRA. He is captured by Irish Free State troops and is sent to Newbridge internment camp on October 6, 1922. He is not charged or convicted of any crime.
Irish Republican prisoners in Mountjoy Prison begin the 1923 Irish hunger strikes, protesting being interned without charges or trial and poor prison conditions. The strike quickly spreads to other camps and prisons, and Barry takes part starting on October 16. He dies 35 days later on November 20, 1923, at the hospital at Curragh Camp. IRA Volunteers Joseph Whitty from Newbawn, County Wexford, dies on September 2, 1923 and Andy O’Sullivan from Denbawn, County Cavan, dies as a result of hunger on November 22, 1923, in Mountjoy Prison. The 41-day hunger strike is called off the following day, November 23. Whitty, Barry and O’Sullivan are three of the 22 Irish Republicans who die on hunger-strike during the twentieth century. Barry is initially buried by the Free State army in the Curragh, but three days later, following a court order, his remains are disinterred. He is buried in the Republican plot at St. Finbarr’s Cemetery, Cork.
Prior to Barry’s body arriving in County Cork, the Bishop of Cork, Daniel Cohalan, issues a letter to the Catholic churches which forbids them to open their doors to his body. Bishop Cohalan expresses far different opinions on the 1920 death, also by hunger strike, of the Lord Mayor of CorkTerence MacSwiney. “Terence MacSwiney takes his place among the martyrs in the sacred cause of the Freedom of Ireland. We bow in respect before his heroic sacrifice. We pray that God may have mercy on his soul.”
In Barry’s hometown of Riverstick there stands a stone memorial, unveiled in 1966, in his honor and he is remembered with a wreath-laying commemoration every November.
Seán MacManus, Sinn Féin politician, is elected Mayor of Sligo on July 3, 2000. He is the national chairperson of the party from 1984 to 1990.
MacManus is born in 1950 near Blacklion, County Cavan, and moves to London in the 1960s to find work. There he meets and marries Helen McGovern, a native of Glenfarne, County Leitrim. In 1976, he returns to Ireland and settled in the Maugheraboy area of Sligo, County Sligo, so that their family of two boys can be educated in Ireland.
Still based in Maugheraboy, MacManus is involved in Irish Republican politics since the early 1970s and is secretary of the County Sligo Anti-H-Block Committee which campaigns in support of the republican prisoners hunger strikes of 1980/81. He becomes a member of the Sinn Féin Ard Comhairle (National Executive) in 1982 and remains there for over twenty years. He is elected as the first Sinn Féin National Chairperson from 1984 until 1990. After the Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire in 1994 he is part of the first Sinn Féin delegation to meet with the British government in over seventy years. He is also involved in the protracted negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement.
First elected to Sligo Corporation (now Sligo Borough Council) in 1994, MacManus remains until its abolition in May 2014. He is also elected to Sligo County Council in 1999 and is re-elected in 2004, 2009 and 2014. He steps down from elected politics in February 2017 being replaced by his son, Chris MacManus.
On July 3, 2000, MacManus is elected Mayor of Sligo, the first Sinn Féin Mayor in the Republic of Ireland since the beginning of the Troubles in 1969. He is also elected mayor in 2003. Sinn Féin PresidentGerry Adams says the election of McManus is a sign of “Sinn Féin’s rise as an active campaigning alternative in politics in the 26 counties”.
MacManus has two sons. Chris MacManus, the youngest, is also an elected member of Sligo Borough Council (1999–2014) and Sligo County Council (2017–2020) and is an MEP since March 2020. His eldest son, Joseph MacManus, was an IRA volunteer who was killed in a firefight against an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier in Belleek, County Fermanagh, in February 1992.
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 JusticeKevin 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.
Costello is the younger son of John Costello senior, a civil servant, and Rose Callaghan. He is educated at St. Joseph’s, Fairview, and then moves to O’Connell School, for senior classes, and later attends University College Dublin (UCD), where he graduates with a degree in modern languages and law. He studies at King’s Inns to become a barrister, winning the Victoria Prize there in 1913 and 1914. He is called to the Irish Bar in 1914, and practises as a barrister until 1922.
In 1922, Costello joins the staff at the office of the Attorney General in the newly established Irish Free State. Three years later he is called to the inner bar, and the following year, 1926, he becomes Attorney General of Ireland, upon the formation of the Cumann na nGaedheal government, led by W. T. Cosgrave. While serving in this position he represents the Free State at Imperial Conferences and League of Nations meetings.
Costello is also elected a Bencher of the Honourable Society of King’s Inns. He loses his position as Attorney General of Ireland when Fianna Fáil comes to power in 1932. The following year, however, he is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Cumann na nGaedheal TD. Cumann na nGaedheal soon merges with other parties to form Fine Gael.
During the Dáil debate on the Emergency Powers Act 1939, Costello is highly critical of the Act’s arrogation of powers, stating that “We are asked not merely to give a blank cheque, but to give an uncrossed cheque to the Government.” He loses his seat at the 1943 Irish general election but regains it when Éamon de Valera calls a snap election in 1944. From 1944 to 1948, he is the Fine Gael front-bench Spokesman on External Affairs.
In 1948, Fianna Fáil has been in power for sixteen consecutive years and has been blamed for a downturn in the economy following World War II. The 1948 Irish general election results show Fianna Fáil short of a majority, but still by far the largest party, with twice as many seats as the nearest rival, Fine Gael. It appears that Fianna Fáil is headed for a seventh term in government. However, the other parties in the Dáil realise that between them, they have only one seat fewer than Fianna Fáil, and if they band together, they would be able to form a government with the support of seven Independent deputies. Fine Gael, the Labour Party, the National Labour Party, Clann na Poblachta and Clann na Talmhan join to form the first inter-partygovernment in the history of the Irish state.
While it looks as if cooperation between these parties will not be feasible, a shared opposition to Fianna Fáil and Éamon de Valera overcomes all other difficulties, and the coalition government is formed.
Since Fine Gael is the largest party in the government, it has the task of providing a suitable candidate for Taoiseach. Naturally, it is assumed that its leader, Richard Mulcahy, will be offered the post. However, he is an unacceptable choice to Clann na Poblachta and its deeply republican leader, Seán MacBride. This is due to Mulcahy’s record during the Irish Civil War. Instead, Fine Gael and Clann na Poblachta agree on Costello as a compromise candidate. Costello had never held a ministerial position nor was he involved in the Civil War. When told by Mulcahy of his nomination, Costello is appalled, content with his life as a barrister and as a part-time politician. He is persuaded to accept the nomination as Taoiseach by close non-political friends.
During the campaign, Clann na Poblachta had promised to repeal the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 but does not make an issue of this when the government is being formed. However, Costello and his Tánaiste, William Norton of the Labour Party, also dislike the act. During the summer of 1948, the cabinet discusses repealing the act, however, no firm decision is made.
In September 1948, Costello is on an official visit to Canada when a reporter asks him about the possibility of Ireland leaving the British Commonwealth. For the first time, he declares publicly that the Irish government is indeed going to repeal the External Relations Act and declare Ireland a republic. It has been suggested that this is a reaction to offence caused by the Governor General of Canada at the time, Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis, who is of Northern Irish descent and who allegedly arranges to have placed symbols of Northern Ireland in front of Costello at an official dinner. Costello makes no mention of these aspects on the second reading of the Republic of Ireland Bill on November 24 and, in his memoirs, claims that Alexander’s behaviour had in fact been perfectly civil and could have had no bearing on a decision which had already been made.
The news takes the Government of the United Kingdom and even some of Costello’s ministers by surprise. The former had not been consulted and following the declaration of the Republic in 1949, the UK passes the Ireland Act that year. This recognises the Republic of Ireland and guarantees the position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom for so long as a majority there want to remain in the United Kingdom. It also grants full rights to any citizens of the Republic living in the United Kingdom. Ireland leaves the Commonwealth on April 18, 1949, when The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 comes into force. Frederick Henry Boland, Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, says caustically that the affair demonstrates that “the Taoiseach has as much notion of diplomacy as I have of astrology.” The British envoy, John Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby, is equally critical of what he calls a “slipshod and amateur” move.
Many nationalists now see partition as the last obstacle on the road to total national independence. Costello tables a motion of protest against partition on May 10, 1949, without result.
In 1950, the independent-minded Minister for Health, Noël Browne, introduces the Mother and Child Scheme. The scheme would provide mothers with free maternity treatment and their children with free medical care up to the age of sixteen, which is the normal provision in other parts of Europe at that time. The bill is opposed by doctors, who fear a loss of income, and Roman Catholic bishops, who oppose the lack of means testing envisaged and fear the scheme could lead to birth control and abortion. The cabinet is divided over the issue, many feeling that the state cannot afford such a scheme priced at IR£2,000,000 annually. Costello and others in the cabinet make it clear that in the face of such opposition they will not support the Minister. Browne resigns from the government on April 11, 1951, and the scheme is dropped. He immediately publishes his correspondence with Costello and the bishops, something which had hitherto not been done. Derivatives of the Mother and Child Scheme are introduced in Public Health Acts of 1954, 1957 and 1970.
The Costello government has a number of noteworthy achievements. A new record is set in housebuilding, the Industrial Development Authority and Córas Tráchtála are established, and the Minister for Health, Noel Browne, with the then new Streptomycin, bring about an advance in the treatment of tuberculosis. Ireland also joins a number of organisations such as the Organization for European Economic Co-operation and the Council of Europe. However, the government refuses to join NATO, allegedly because the British remain in Northern Ireland. The scheme to supply electricity to even the remotest parts of Ireland is also accelerated.
While the “Mother and Child” incident does destabilise the government to some extent, it does not lead to its collapse as is generally thought. The government continues; however, prices are rising, a balance of payments crisis is looming, and two TDs withdraw their support for the government. These incidents add to the pressure on Costello and so he decides to call a general election for June 1951. The result is inconclusive but Fianna Fáil returns to power. Costello resigns as Taoiseach. It is at this election that his son Declan is elected to the Dáil.
Over the next three years while Fianna Fáil is in power a dual-leadership role of Fine Gael is taking place. While Richard Mulcahy is the leader of the party, Costello, who has proved his skill as Taoiseach, remains as parliamentary leader of the party. He resumes his practice at the Bar. In what is arguably his most celebrated case, the successful defence of The Leader against a libel action brought by the poet Patrick Kavanagh, dates from this period. Kavanagh generously praises Costello’s forensic skill, and the two men become friends.
At the 1954 Irish general election Fianna Fáil loses power. A campaign dominated by economic issues results in a Fine Gael-Labour Party-Clann na Talmhan government coming to power. Costello is elected Taoiseach for the second time.
The government can do little to change the ailing nature of Ireland’s economy, with emigration and unemployment remaining high, and external problems such as the Suez Crisis compounding the difficulty. Measures to expand the Irish economy such as export profits tax relief introduced in 1956 would take years have sizable impact. Costello’s government does have some success with Ireland becoming a member of the United Nations in 1955, and a highly successful visit to the United States in 1956, which begins the custom by which the Taoiseach visits the White House each St. Patrick’s Day to present the U.S. President with a bowl of shamrock. Although the government has a comfortable majority and seems set for a full term in office, a resumption of Irish Republican Army (IRA) activity in Northern Ireland and Great Britain causes internal strains. The government takes strong action against the republicans.
In spite of supporting the government from the backbenches, Seán MacBride, the leader of Clann na Poblachta, tables a motion of no confidence, based on the weakening state of the economy and in opposition to the government’s stance on the IRA. Fianna Fáil also tables its own motion of no confidence, and rather than face almost certain defeat, Costello again asks PresidentSeán T. O’Kelly to dissolve the Oireachtas. The general election which follows in 1957 gives Fianna Fáil an overall majority and starts another sixteen years of unbroken rule for the party. Some of his colleagues questioned the wisdom of his decision to call an election. The view is expressed that he was tired of politics and depressed by his wife’s sudden death the previous year.
Following the defeat of his government, Costello returns to the bar. In 1959, when Richard Mulcahy resigns the leadership of Fine Gael to James Dillon, he retires to the backbenches. He could have become party leader had he been willing to act in a full-time capacity. He remains as a TD until 1969, when he retires from politics, being succeeded as Fine Gael TD for Dublin South-East by Garret FitzGerald, who himself goes onto to become Taoiseach in a Fine Gael-led government.
During his career, Costello is presented with a number of awards from many universities in the United States. He is also a member of the Royal Irish Academy from 1948. In March 1975, he is made a freeman of the city of Dublin, along with his old political opponent Éamon de Valera. He practises at the bar until a short time before his death at the age of 84, in Ranelagh, Dublin, on January 5, 1976. He is buried at Dean’s Grange Cemetery in Dublin.
The “no-go” areas, known as Free Derry, are areas where both the Irish Republican Army and Provisional Irish Republican Army can openly patrol, train and open offices with widespread support and without involvement of security services. Bogside, Creggan and Brandywell make up the area Free Derry, and it is still known by that name despite the barricades no longer being present.
The 10,000 strong march sets off from Irish Street at 1500 GMT to call for an end to the “no-go” areas on the east bank side of the River Foyle.
The biggest security operation since the start of the Troubles is set up for the march with soldiers on every corner. The bridge is the centre of the trouble as it joins the Protestant side of the town to the “no-go” Roman Catholic areas of Bogside and Creggan.
Despite pleas from march organisers for the violence to stop it does not end until the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) steps in. They form a human barrier between the protesters and the Army. The confrontation lasts an hour and results in one man being injured but no arrests.
A spokesman for the Army says, “Naturally it is regretted that we have to fire rubber bullets but there we are. The only alternative is the Bogside would be invaded by the Protestant marchers.”
Despite the violence, William Craig, the leader of the Ulster Vanguard movement, who organised the march, says the marches will go on. “We are no longer protesting – we are demanding action,” he says.
The couple are welcomed at NUI Galway by the Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) Joan Burton, among the guests are Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.The highlight of Tuesday’s engagements is the historic handshake between the Prince and Gerry Adams. This is the first time a member of the British royal family and the Sinn Féin President have formerly engaged. They shake hands and speak briefly at a reception in NUI Galway, where the prince makes the first of two scheduled speeches.
Charles and Camilla then go on to visit the Burren in County Clare, fulfilling one of Charles’ life-long goals, by exploring the karst landscape for almost an hour.
They conclude their first day by dining with the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, and his wife Sabina, at Lough Cutra Castle in south County Galway. They dine on blanched Highgrove asparagus to start, followed by pan-seared halibut, with panna cotta and poached Highgrove rhubarb for dessert.
Their packed itinerary for Wednesday begins with a trip to Lissadell House with a civic reception and a viewing of the Niland Collection at The Model contemporary arts centre in Sligo. Mayor of Sligo, Seán MacManus, formerly of Sinn Féin, attends the reception. MacManus’ son was killed in a gun battle with security forces in Northern Ireland in 1992.
The prince then visits the Institute of Technology, Sligo, and the couple has lunch at Lissadell. They then visit the grave of W. B. Yeats and attend a service at St. Columba’s Church, in Drumcliff. The royal couple takes part in a tree-planting and unveil a plaque. The theme of this service and the tree-planting is peace and reconciliation.
The prince then visits Mullaghmore Harbour on Wednesday afternoon. On August 27, 1979, his great-uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, is killed in a bomb attack executed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Mountbatten holidayed every summer at Classiebawn Castle near the harbor. He had, along with family and friends, embarked on a lobster-potting and angling expedition when a bomb on board was detonated just a few hundred yards from the harbor. He died of his injuries, along with his grandson Nicholas Knatchbull (14), Paul Maxwell (15), from County Fermanagh, and Lady Brabourne (83), his eldest daughter’s mother-in-law.
Charles and Camilla conclude their Wednesday itinerary with a trip to the Sligo races.
On Thursday and Friday, Charles and Camilla travel to Northern Ireland. Their engagements include a reception and a concert featuring a selection of local performers at Hillsborough Castle. They make a trip to Mount Stewart House and gardens to mark the completion of a three-year restoration programme. They also visit the Corrymeela Community, Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation centre, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2015.
(From: “History is made as Prince Charles fulfills life-long dream in Ireland” by Cathy Hayes, IrishCentral, http://www.irishcentral.com, May 20, 2015 | Pictured: The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall at Mullaghmore pier on May 20, 2015)
O’Donnell is born on February 22, 1893, in Meenmore, near Dungloe, County Donegal, youngest among six sons and three daughters of Biddy and James O’Donnell. He is greatly influenced by his upbringing in the Rosses, in northwest Donegal, one of the poorest and most remote parts of Ireland. His father, a popular local fiddler, earns a living through his smallholding, seasonal labouring in Scotland, and winter work in a local corn mill. His mother, who comes from a radical labour and nationalist political background, works in a local cooperative store. He attends Rampart national school and Roshine national school, near Burtonport, where he is a monitor for four years. In 1911 he wins a scholarship to attend St. Patrick’s College in Drumcondra, Dublin, and returns in 1913 to the Rosses, where he spends two years teaching on the islands of Inishfree. In 1915 he is appointed head of Derryhenny national school, near Dungloe, and the following year becomes principal of a national school on the island of Arranmore, where he begins to write.
O’Donnell had long been concerned by the poor conditions of the local ‘tatie-hokers’ (potato pickers) who migrate annually to Scotland. In the summer of 1918, he travels there to help organise the Scottish Farm Servants’ Union. While there he is influenced by left-wing radicals such as Willie Gallacher, later a communistMember of Parliament (MP), and Emanuel ‘Manny’ Shinwell, later Baron Shinwell. In September 1918, against a background of rising labour militancy, he leaves teaching to become a full-time organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) in the west Ulster area. The following year he organises one of Ireland’s first “soviets” when the attendants and nurses of the Monaghan District Lunatic Asylum occupy the grounds and appoint O’Donnell as governor until their demands are met.
In early 1919 O’Donnell joins the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Monaghan, resigning from the ITGWU for full-time IRA service in late 1920. He leads the 2nd Battalion, Donegal IRA, from the summer of 1920. In December 1920 he goes “on the run” and leads a flying column in west Donegal until May 1921, when he is wounded. Regarded as insubordinate and militarily inexperienced, he is unpopular among the other senior officers of the 1st Northern Division. He, in turn, is disappointed by the lack of social radicalism among the nationalist leadership. He opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty, is placed in command of the minority anti-treaty 1st Northern Division and is a member of the IRA executive that occupies the Four Courts in Dublin in defiance of the provisional government.
Arrested in June 1922, O’Donnell shares a prison cell with Liam Mellows and influences his radical “Notes from Mountjoy,” an important document for subsequent left-wing republicans. He spends the next two years in various prisons and internment camps. His execution is widely expected to follow those of December 8, 1922. In August 1923, he is elected as a Sinn FéinTeachta Dála (TD) for Donegal in the general election called after the end of the Irish Civil War. He goes on hunger strike for forty-one days in late 1923 and succeeds in escaping from the Curragh in March 1924. In June 1924, while on the run, he marries Lile O’Donel, a wealthy Cumann na mBan activist who had smuggled communications for republican prisoners. O’Donel, a radical and member of the Communist Party, is the daughter of Ignatius O’Donel, a prominent landowner from Mayo. They have no children but raise their nephew, Peadar Joe, as their own son after the death in New York of O’Donnell’s brother Joe.
O’Donnell begins writing seriously while in jail and remains a prolific writer, journalist, and editor until the 1960s. His first novel, Storm, set in the Irish War of Independence, is published in 1925. One of his most highly regarded books, Islanders, is published in 1928. Adrigoole, like Islanders a story of poverty and starvation in rural Ireland, is published the following year. The Knife (1930) and On the Edge of the Stream (1934) soon follow. The most significant of his later novels is probably The Big Windows (1954). Foremost among his qualities as a writer is his empathy for the people, life, and landscape of rural Ireland. But his novels have been criticised for their slow pace, excessive detail, and didactic nature. He claims his writing is incidental to his political activism. His trilogy of autobiographical non-fiction, The Gates flew Open (1932), Salud! An Irishman in Spain (1936), and There Will Be Another Day (1963), which respectively concern the Irish Civil War, his activism during the Spanish Civil War, and his role in the land annuities agitation, remain highly regarded. His other important literary achievement is with The Bell, an innovative literary and political magazine which plays a useful dissenting role in an insular and conservative period. He founds The Bell with the writer Seán Ó Faoláin in 1940 and edits it from 1946 until it ceases publication in 1954.
O’Donnell exercises an influential role in the interwar IRA, particularly through his editorship of An Phoblacht (1926–29), which he attempts to divert from militarism to socialist agitation. His ultimate aim is for a thirty-two-county socialist republic. His most successful campaign is organising small farmers against the payment of land annuities to the government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. This campaign is later adopted by Fianna Fáil and contributes to their electoral success in 1932. He is less successful in radicalising the IRA. After the failure of Saor Éire, a left-wing IRA front which provokes clerical and popular hostility against the IRA, increasing tensions between the IRA’s left-wing and the leadership lead O’Donnell, along with Frank Ryan and George Gilmore, to split from the IRA to establish the short-lived Republican Congress in 1934.
Although O’Donnell claims he was never a Communist Party member, he plays a central role in forging links between republicans and the revolutionary left both in Ireland and internationally and invariably supports the communist party line at critical junctures. After the failure of Republican Congress, he takes up the cause of the Spanish republic. His championing of unpopular causes such as communism and Spain entail a good deal of frustration. He is physically attacked at political meetings and in 1932, despite having never visited the Soviet Union, loses a high-profile libel action against the Dominican Irish Rosary, which claim he had studied in Moscow‘s Lenin College. He is banned from entering the United States for several decades, although he maintains: “My relations with all the great powers continue to be friendly.”
O’Donnell continues to support radical campaigns until his death. He is an outspoken advocate of Irish emigrants. He is prominent in the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and serves as its president in the early 1960s. He is a leading protester against the Vietnam War and a supporter of African anti-colonial movements such as that against apartheid. In later years he is involved in the “Save the west” campaign, highlighting the problems of the west of Ireland.
After several months of ill-health following a heart attack, O’Donnell dies in Dublin, aged 93, on May 13, 1986. He leaves instructions that there are to be “no priests, no politicians and no pomp” at his funeral, and those wishes are granted. He is cremated in Glasnevin Cemetery and his ashes are buried at his wife’s home in Swinford, County Mayo. Although he once remarked that every cause he fought for was a failure, he is now regarded as one of the most influential socialist republican theorists and an important voice of dissent in twentieth-century Ireland.
(From: “O’Donnell, Peadar” by Fearghal McGarry, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie)
Lehane is the only surviving child of Denis Lehane, an excise officer originally from County Cork, and his wife Mary (née Connolly), a native of the Falls Road, Belfast. He grows up in an Irish-speaking household. Joseph Connolly, the senator, is his uncle on his mother’s side, while Michael O’Lehane, the trade unionist, is his uncle on his father’s side. His family emigrates to Hartlepool, in County Durham, England, in 1912, and then to Dublin in 1920. He is educated at Synge Street CBS and University College Dublin (UCD), where he studies Law and qualifies as a solicitor. He marries Marie O’Neill in 1937, and they have a son and two daughters.
As a solicitor, Lehane takes to defending members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in the Irish Courts. In 1927 he obtains permission for IRA prisoners to speak privately to their solicitors from the Irish High Court. He is active in other republican and nationalist circles. He is a member of the Moibhí Branch of Conradh na Gaeilge, and by the 1930s appears to become active in the IRA itself. In 1931 he is involved in Saor Éire, an attempt by the Irish left-wing to create a communist political party that would be linked to the IRA.
Lehane is a member of the IRA’s arms committee and in 1935 he is sentenced to 18-months’ imprisonment by the Military Tribunal for his membership of the IRA.
Lehane is an actor and has a keen interest in Irish language theatre. A committed Irish speaker, Lehane is at home in it, whether on radio, stage or in street conversation. He is one of the leading actors of the Irish Language Theatre Company between 1943 and 1958. He is a member of Dublin City Council and of the Citizens for Civil Liberties committee.
In 1977, the remains of Frank Ryan, one of the leading left-wing Republicans of the 1930s, are repatriated from East Germany, and Lehane delivers the eulogy.
A car transporting police officers is leading the two-vehicle convoy. It is shot at as it travels out of the village, causing the Crossley Tender behind to stop close to the local hotel. RIC Constables Christopher O’Regan and William Power, Sergeant John Regan and Black and Tans Constable Hubert Oakes all die in the ambush. British forces are able to take refuge in the hotel, where they call for reinforcements.
Following the ambush, the Flying Column takes to the nearby Partry Mountains and are subsequently engaged by British troops from the Border Regiment. IRA Adjutant (South Mayo Brigade) Michael O’Brien sustains fatal injuries when he is shot while trying to assist the injured Brigade leader, Commandant Maguire. Another IRA Volunteer, Pádraig Feeney, is also killed that afternoon.
On May 3, 1921, in reprisal for the ambush, Crown forces burn several commercial establishments and homes in the area. Extensive searches and reprisals follow in the area over the next week.
Monuments commemorating Michael O’Brien and Pádraig Feeney have since been erected in County Mayo.
(Pictured: The South Mayo Flying Column of the Irish Republican Army, taken at Moore Hall in Muckloon, County Mayo, during the summer of 1921)
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