Broy is a double agent within the DMP, with the rank of Detective Sergeant (DS). He works as a clerk inside G Division, the intelligence branch of the DMP. While there, he copies sensitive files for IRA leader Michael Collins and passes many of these files on to Collins through Thomas Gay, the librarian at Capel Street Library. On April 7, 1919, he smuggles Collins into G Division’s archives in Great Brunswick Street (now Pearse Street), enabling him to identify “G-Men,” six of whom are eventually killed by the IRA. He supports the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and joins the National Army during the Irish Civil War, reaching the rank of colonel. In 1925, he leaves the Army and joins the Garda Síochána.
Broy’s elevation to the post of Commissioner comes when Fianna Fáil replaces Cumann na nGaedheal as the government. Other more senior officers are passed over as being too sympathetic to the outgoing party.
In 1934, Broy oversees the creation of “The Auxiliary Special Branch” of the Garda, formed mainly of hastily trained anti-Treaty IRA veterans, who were opponents of Broy in the civil war. It is nicknamed the “Broy Harriers” by Broy’s opponents, a pun on the Bray Harriers athletics club or more likely on the Bray Harriers hunt club. It is used first against the quasi-fascistBlueshirts, and later against the diehard holdouts of the IRA, now set against former comrades. The “Broy Harriers” nickname persists into the 1940s, even though Broy himself is no longer in command, and for the bodies targeted by the unit is a highly abusive term, still applied by radical Irish republicans to the Garda Special Branch (now renamed the Special Detective Unit). The Broy Harriers engage in several controversial fatal shootings. They shoot dead a protesting farmer named Lynch in Cork, and when the matter is discussed in the Senate in 1934, the members who support Éamon de Valera‘s government walk out. They are detested by sections of the farming community. In the light of this latter history, their name is often used in reference to individuals or groups who attempt to disrupt contemporary dissident republicans, such as the remnants of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.
Broy is President of the Olympic Council of Ireland from 1935 to 1950. He is also a member of the Standing Committee of the Irish Amateur Handball Association.
Broy dies on January 22, 1972, at his residence in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar.
On September 17, 2016, a memorial to Broy is unveiled in Coolegagen Cemetery, County Offaly, close to his childhood home. His daughter Áine is in attendance, as are representatives of the government, the Air Corps, and the Garda Síochana.
Neil Jordan‘s film Michael Collins (1996) inaccurately depicts Broy (played by actor Stephen Rea) as having been arrested, tortured and killed by Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) agents. In addition, G Division was based not in Dublin Castle, as indicated in the film, but in Great Brunswick Street. Collins had a different agent in the Castle, David Neligan. Broy is also mentioned and makes an appearance in Michael Russell’s detective novel The City of Shadows, set partly in Dublin in the 1930s, published by HarperCollins in 2012.
Sheehy is born in Tralee, County Kerry, on October 16, 1897. In 1914 he joins Fianna Éireann, the republican boy scouts, and later the Irish Volunteers. He commands the Boherbue company of the IRA, and later the Tralee company. His brother Jimmy is killed in the British Army in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
Sheehy sides against the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1922, like most of the IRA in Kerry. In the Irish Civil War, when Free State troops land in Kerry as part of a seaborne offensive, he is in command of the Anti-Treaty garrison in Tralee. After the Army takes the town, he retreats, burning the barracks there. As the conflict becomes a guerrilla affair, he finds himself in charge of three flying columns, or around 75 men in total, in the Ballymacthomas area. He and Tom McEllistrim are in charge of an attack on Castlemaine in January 1923.
Just after the Irish Civil War, when Sheehy is still on the run, he manages to play football for Kerry. Kerry captain Con Brosnan, though a member of the Free State army, guarantees his safe passage. He pays into Munster and All-Ireland finals, slips off his street clothes, plays, and then at the final whistle, disappears back into the crowd. In 1936 he is in New York and is able to smuggle a large number of Thompson submachine guns back to Ireland.
In February 1941 Sheehy is arrested and interned in the Curragh Camp for two years. He is arrested again and charged with making “seditious speeches” on May 11, 1946, the day that IRA hunger striker Seán McCaughey dies. He is found guilty and sentenced to four months imprisonment.
Sheehy plays Gaelic football with his local club, John Mitchels, and is a member of the senior Kerry county football team from 1919 until 1930. He also plays hurling with Tralee Parnells. He captains Kerry to the All-Ireland title in 1930. He plays in the Railway Cup hurling final in 1927 and is captain of the football team the same year and wins other medals in 1931. Three of his sons – Seán Óg, Niall and Paudie – all win All-Ireland titles with Kerry in the 1960s.
Sheehy remains a staunch supporter of Sinn Féin and is critical of the moves to end abstention by the party in the late 1960s. He sides with the Provisionals in the split at the 1970 Ardfheis and remains active in Provisional Sinn Féin until his death, supporting the IRA’s guerrilla campaign. He dies in Tralee on January 12, 1980, and is given a republican funeral at his own request. His funeral oration is given by Dáithí Ó Conaill, vice-president of Sinn Féin.
Donnelly is the son of Timothy Donnelly, a master plumber, and Mary Brennan. He is the sixth of eight surviving children. The 1911 Census lists him living with his family at 34 Wexford Street. Apprenticed as a plumber, he becomes involved in the Irish Volunteers. During the Easter Rising of 1916 he is the commander of C Company of Éamon de Valera‘s command in Boland’s Mill.
Donnelly is Vice-Commandant of the 3rd Battalion of the Dublin Brigade of the IRA during the Irish War of Independence. On February 10, 1921, he is arrested. Four days later he escapes from Kilmainham Gaol along with Ernie O’Malley and Frank Teeling. Returning to his command in the IRA, he is appointed chief of the Irish Republican Police (IRP) in mid-1921 as part of an attempt to enforce law and order in those areas of the country where the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) have been forced out.
Donnelly founds the National Association of the Old IRA in an attempt to mend some of the rifts in the Republican Movement. He is a member of the provisional National Executive of the Republican Prisoners’ Release Association.
On March 2, 1940, Donnelly is one of the founders of Córas na Poblachta and serves as its president. He becomes a founding member of Clann na Poblachta in 1946.
As one of the most senior surviving veterans of the Easter Rising, Donnelly plays a prominent role in the 50th anniversary commemorations in 1966. He dies in Dublin on December 7 of that year.
Costello is born on June 20, 1891, in Fairview, Dublin, the younger son of John Costello senior, a civil servant, and Rose Callaghan. He is educated at St. Joseph’s, Fairview, and then moves to O’Connell School, for senior classes, and later attends University College Dublin (UCD), where he graduates with a degree in modern languages and law. He studies at King’s Inns to become a barrister, winning the Victoria Prize there in 1913 and 1914. He is called to the Irish Bar in 1914, and practises as a barrister until 1922.
In 1922, Costello joins the staff at the office of the Attorney General in the newly established Irish Free State. Three years later he is called to the inner bar, and the following year, 1926, he becomes Attorney General of Ireland, upon the formation of the Cumann na nGaedheal government, led by W. T. Cosgrave. While serving in this position he represents the Free State at Imperial Conferences and League of Nations meetings.
Costello is also elected a Bencher of the Honourable Society of King’s Inns. He loses his position as Attorney General of Ireland when Fianna Fáil comes to power in 1932. The following year, however, he is elected to Dáil Éireann as a Cumann na nGaedheal TD. Cumann na nGaedheal soon merges with other parties to form Fine Gael.
During the Dáil debate on the Emergency Powers Act 1939, Costello is highly critical of the Act’s arrogation of powers, stating that “We are asked not merely to give a blank cheque, but to give an uncrossed cheque to the Government.” He loses his seat at the 1943 Irish general election but regains it when Éamon de Valera calls a snap election in 1944. From 1944 to 1948, he is the Fine Gael front-bench Spokesman on External Affairs.
In 1948, Fianna Fáil has been in power for sixteen consecutive years and has been blamed for a downturn in the economy following World War II. The 1948 Irish general election results show Fianna Fáil short of a majority, but still by far the largest party, with twice as many seats as the nearest rival, Fine Gael. It appears that Fianna Fáil is headed for a seventh term in government. However, the other parties in the Dáil realise that between them, they have only one seat fewer than Fianna Fáil, and if they band together, they would be able to form a government with the support of seven Independent deputies. Fine Gael, the Labour Party, the National Labour Party, Clann na Poblachta and Clann na Talmhan join to form the first inter-partygovernment in the history of the Irish state.
While it looks as if cooperation between these parties will not be feasible, a shared opposition to Fianna Fáil and Éamon de Valera overcomes all other difficulties, and the coalition government is formed.
Since Fine Gael is the largest party in the government, it has the task of providing a suitable candidate for Taoiseach. Naturally, it is assumed that its leader, Richard Mulcahy, will be offered the post. However, he is an unacceptable choice to Clann na Poblachta and its deeply republican leader, Seán MacBride. This is due to Mulcahy’s record during the Irish Civil War. Instead, Fine Gael and Clann na Poblachta agree on Costello as a compromise candidate. Costello had never held a ministerial position nor was he involved in the Civil War. When told by Mulcahy of his nomination, Costello is appalled, content with his life as a barrister and as a part-time politician. He is persuaded to accept the nomination as Taoiseach by close non-political friends.
During the campaign, Clann na Poblachta had promised to repeal the Executive Authority (External Relations) Act 1936 but does not make an issue of this when the government is being formed. However, Costello and his Tánaiste, William Norton of the Labour Party, also dislike the act. During the summer of 1948, the cabinet discusses repealing the act, however, no firm decision is made.
In September 1948, Costello is on an official visit to Canada when a reporter asks him about the possibility of Ireland leaving the British Commonwealth. For the first time, he declares publicly that the Irish government is indeed going to repeal the External Relations Act and declare Ireland a republic. It has been suggested that this is a reaction to offence caused by the Governor General of Canada at the time, Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis, who is of Northern Irish descent and who allegedly arranges to have placed symbols of Northern Ireland in front of Costello at an official dinner. Costello makes no mention of these aspects on the second reading of the Republic of Ireland Bill on November 24 and, in his memoirs, claims that Alexander’s behaviour had in fact been perfectly civil and could have had no bearing on a decision which had already been made.
The news takes the Government of the United Kingdom and even some of Costello’s ministers by surprise. The former had not been consulted and following the declaration of the Republic in 1949, the UK passes the Ireland Act that year. This recognises the Republic of Ireland and guarantees the position of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom for so long as a majority there want to remain in the United Kingdom. It also grants full rights to any citizens of the Republic living in the United Kingdom. Ireland leaves the Commonwealth on April 18, 1949, when The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 comes into force. Frederick Henry Boland, Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, says caustically that the affair demonstrates that “the Taoiseach has as much notion of diplomacy as I have of astrology.” The British envoy, John Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby, is equally critical of what he calls a “slipshod and amateur” move.
Many nationalists now see partition as the last obstacle on the road to total national independence. Costello tables a motion of protest against partition on May 10, 1949, without result.
In 1950, the independent-minded Minister for Health, Noël Browne, introduces the Mother and Child Scheme. The scheme would provide mothers with free maternity treatment and their children with free medical care up to the age of sixteen, which is the normal provision in other parts of Europe at that time. The bill is opposed by doctors, who fear a loss of income, and Roman Catholic bishops, who oppose the lack of means testing envisaged and fear the scheme could lead to birth control and abortion. The cabinet is divided over the issue, many feeling that the state cannot afford such a scheme priced at IR£2,000,000 annually. Costello and others in the cabinet make it clear that in the face of such opposition they will not support the Minister. Browne resigns from the government on April 11, 1951, and the scheme is dropped. He immediately publishes his correspondence with Costello and the bishops, something which had hitherto not been done. Derivatives of the Mother and Child Scheme are introduced in Public Health Acts of 1954, 1957 and 1970.
The Costello government has a number of noteworthy achievements. A new record is set in housebuilding, the Industrial Development Authority and Córas Tráchtála are established, and the Minister for Health, Noel Browne, with the then new Streptomycin, bring about an advance in the treatment of tuberculosis. Ireland also joins a number of organisations such as the Organization for European Economic Co-operation and the Council of Europe. However, the government refuses to join NATO, allegedly because the British remain in Northern Ireland. The scheme to supply electricity to even the remotest parts of Ireland is also accelerated.
While the “Mother and Child” incident does destabilise the government to some extent, it does not lead to its collapse as is generally thought. The government continues; however, prices are rising, a balance of payments crisis is looming, and two TDs withdraw their support for the government. These incidents add to the pressure on Costello and so he decides to call a general election for June 1951. The result is inconclusive but Fianna Fáil returns to power. Costello resigns as Taoiseach. It is at this election that his son Declan is elected to the Dáil.
Over the next three years while Fianna Fáil is in power a dual-leadership role of Fine Gael is taking place. While Richard Mulcahy is the leader of the party, Costello, who has proved his skill as Taoiseach, remains as parliamentary leader of the party. He resumes his practice at the Bar. In what is arguably his most celebrated case, the successful defence of The Leader against a libel action brought by the poet Patrick Kavanagh, dates from this period. Kavanagh generously praises Costello’s forensic skill, and the two men become friends.
At the 1954 Irish general election Fianna Fáil loses power. A campaign dominated by economic issues results in a Fine Gael-Labour Party-Clann na Talmhan government coming to power. Costello is elected Taoiseach for the second time.
The government can do little to change the ailing nature of Ireland’s economy, with emigration and unemployment remaining high, and external problems such as the Suez Crisis compounding the difficulty. Measures to expand the Irish economy such as export profits tax relief introduced in 1956 would take years have sizable impact. Costello’s government does have some success with Ireland becoming a member of the United Nations in 1955, and a highly successful visit to the United States in 1956, which begins the custom by which the Taoiseach visits the White House each Saint Patrick’s Day to present the U.S. President with a bowl of shamrock. Although the government has a comfortable majority and seems set for a full term in office, a resumption of Irish Republican Army (IRA) activity in Northern Ireland and Great Britain causes internal strains. The government takes strong action against the republicans.
In spite of supporting the government from the backbenches, Seán MacBride, the leader of Clann na Poblachta, tables a motion of no confidence, based on the weakening state of the economy and in opposition to the government’s stance on the IRA. Fianna Fáil also tables its own motion of no confidence, and rather than face almost certain defeat, Costello again asks PresidentSeán T. O’Kelly to dissolve the Oireachtas. The general election which follows in 1957 gives Fianna Fáil an overall majority and starts another sixteen years of unbroken rule for the party. Some of his colleagues questioned the wisdom of his decision to call an election. The view is expressed that he was tired of politics and depressed by his wife’s sudden death the previous year.
Following the defeat of his government, Costello returns to the bar. In 1959, when Richard Mulcahy resigns the leadership of Fine Gael to James Dillon, he retires to the backbenches. He could have become party leader had he been willing to act in a full-time capacity. He remains as a TD until 1969, when he retires from politics, being succeeded as Fine Gael TD for Dublin South-East by Garret FitzGerald, who himself goes onto to become Taoiseach in a Fine Gael-led government.
During his career, Costello is presented with a number of awards from many universities in the United States. He is also a member of the Royal Irish Academy from 1948. In March 1975, he is made a freeman of the city of Dublin, along with his old political opponent Éamon de Valera. He practises at the bar until a short time before his death at the age of 84, in Ranelagh, Dublin, on January 5, 1976. He is buried at Dean’s Grange Cemetery in Dublin.
Hayes sends a plan for the invasion of Northern Ireland by German troops to Germany in April 1940. This plan later becomes known as Plan Kathleen. He is also known to have met with German agent Hermann Görtz on May 21, 1940, in Dublin shortly after the latter’s parachuting into Ireland on May 5, 1940, as part of Operation Mainau. He is known to have asked Görtz for money and arms to wage a campaign in Northern Ireland, although shortly after this meeting the original Plan Kathleen is discovered. The discovery of the plan leads to the acceleration of joint British and Irish military planning for a German invasion known as Plan W.
Another meeting on August 15, 1940, on Rathgar Road, Dublin, organised by Hayes and attended by senior IRA men Paddy McGrath, Tom Harte and Tom Hunt, is also raided by the Garda Síochána.
On June 30, 1941, Northern-based IRA men kidnap Hayes, accusing him of being a spy. By his own account, he is tortured and “court-martialed” for “treason” by his comrades, and would have been executed, but he buys himself time composing an enormously long confession. He manages to escape on September 8, 1941, and hands himself in to the Garda for protection.
The Officer Commanding (O/C) of the IRA Northern Command, Seán McCaughey, is convicted on September 18, 1941, of the kidnapping. After a long hunger and thirst strike in Portlaoise Prison, he dies on May 11, 1946.
Hayes is later sentenced to five years’ imprisonment by the Special Criminal Court on account of his IRA activities.
Within IRA circles, Hayes is still considered a traitor and an informer. One of the main allegations against him is that he informed the Garda Síochána about IRA arms dumps in Wexford. However, this is later blamed on a Wexford man named Michael Deveraux, an officer of the Wexford Battalion of the IRA who is subsequently abducted and executed by an IRA squad in County Tipperary on Hayes’ orders. George Plant, a Protestant IRA veteran, is later executed in Portlaoise Prison for Devereux’s murder.
After his release, Hayes resumes his clerical position at Wexford County Council. He dies in Enniscorthy on December 28, 1974.
Barnhill, a right‐wing member of the Protestant‐based Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which rules the British province, is the first member of the Parliament of Northern Ireland to die in two years of violence that have resulted in 196 deaths up to this point.
Barnhill’s wife says that the senator had gone to answer the door at their home, close to the border with the Republic of Ireland. She says she heard two shots and found her husband lying near the door with a gunman kneeling at his side. Then, she says, a second man helps drag him into the main room, where the attackers plant a gelignite bomb beside his body.
Barnhill, 63 years old, has been a Senator for ten years. He often is outspoken in public denunciations of the outlawed Irish Republican Army (IRA) for its terrorist campaign to overthrow the provincial government. He is an officer in the Orange Order, the powerful Freemasonry of Northern Ireland Protestants, and a director of a Londonderry seed company.
The police say that Mrs. Barnhill ran for help from the ruins of her home and is admitted to a hospital under treatment for shock.
At least 28 people die in the violence of the previous nine days, fifteen of them in an explosion on December 4 that wrecks a bar in a Roman Catholic area.
The leadership of the Irish Republican Army disclaims responsibility for the bombs and charges that they were set off as acts of provocation by the British Army. The British dismiss the charge as ludicrous.
The IRA, fighting for the separation of predominantly Protestant Northern Ireland from Britain and its merger with the Republic of Ireland to the south, has threatened to destroy Belfast‘s center by Christmas. Mass arrests fail to halt the latest wave of violence.
Preaching in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, Ireland’s ecclesiastical capital, the Belfast‐born Cardinal delivers his toughest attack yet on the latest incidents, which include the fatal shooting of a parttime soldier in his home in front of his five children, and the bombing the previous day of a Protestant‐owned Belfast furniture showroom, in which four people are killed and nineteen are injured.
A plaque commemorating Barnhill’s murder is unveiled at Stormont on the 30th anniversary of his death on December 12, 2001.
(From: “Rightist Ulster Senator Slain by Gunmen in Home,” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com, December 13, 1971)
Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor, Irish singer-songwriter dubbed the first superstar of the 1990s by Rolling Stone magazine, is born on December 8, 1966, in Dublin. During her career she attracts publicity not only for her voice, which is alternately searing and soothing, but also for her controversial actions and statements.
O’Connor’s parents divorce when she is eight years old, and she and her siblings are sent to live with their abusive mother, who beats the children on a regular basis. Eventually, she leaves to live with her father and stepmother, but the child, who habitually shoplifts, proves to be too troublesome for the couple, and they send her to reform school. Although she hates the reform school, it is there that she makes her first contacts with the music world. A teacher introduces her to the drummer of a local band, In Tua Nua, and for a brief period she works with the band and even cowrites one of their hit singles. After a year and a half at the reform school, she is transferred to a boarding school in Waterford, but it proves unbearable. She eventually returns to Dublin, where she attempts to start her own music career.
In Dublin O’Connor eventually joins the pub rock band Ton Ton Macoute. In 1985, while singing with the group, she attracts the attention of the London-based record label Ensign Records, which asks her for a demo tape. Soon afterward she signs a contract with the label and begins work on her debut album, The Lion and the Cobra, which is released in 1987 to critical praise. She follows the album with the largely autobiographical I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (1990). The album is propelled to the top of the U.S. pop charts on the strength of the number one single “Nothing Compares 2 U”—a transcendent cover of a 1985 Prince song.
In the following year O’Connor attracts attention not only for her singing but also for a series of controversial statements, actions, and appearances, including refusing to appear on NBC’s Saturday Night Live because of objections to the week’s guest host, boycotting the 1991 Grammy Awards ceremony and declining to sing there, and refusing to allow the U.S. national anthem to be played before one of her performances. She also attracts criticism for her public support of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and for tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live in 1992. Nevertheless, she wins the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 1991 for “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” and continues to be highly regarded for her musical abilities.
In 1992 O’Connor releases an album of torch songs, Am I Not Your Girl?, which receives only minor publicity, and she releases a fourth album, Universal Mother, in 1994. Soon afterward she takes a hiatus from public life, spending time with her children and attending therapy in order to work through problems that linger from her harsh childhood. Her struggles with mental health continue throughout her life.
In 2018 O’Connor announces that she has converted to Islam and changes her name to Shuhadāʾ Sadaqat, although she states that she will continue to perform as Sinéad O’Connor. Her memoir, Rememberings (2021), receives broad critical praise, and she is the subject of the documentary Nothing Compares (2022).
(From: “Sinéad O’Connor,” written and fact checked by The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com, last updated September 30, 2024)
McCorley is born into a Roman Catholic family at 67 Hillman Street in Belfast on September 6, 1901. He is one of three children born to Roger Edmund McCorley, a meat carver in a hotel, and Agnes Liggett. He has two elder brothers, Vincent and Felix. He joins the Fianna in his teens. His family has a very strong republican tradition, and he claims to be the great-grandson of the United Irishmen folk hero Roddy McCorley, who was executed for his part in the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
McCorley is noted for his militancy, as he is in favour of armed attacks on British forces in Belfast. The Brigade’s leaders, by contrast, in particular, Joe McKelvey, are wary of sanctioning attacks for fear of loyalist reprisals on republicans and the Catholic population in general. In addition, McCorley is in favour of conducting an armed defense of Catholic areas, whereas McKelvey does not want the IRA to get involved in what he considers to be sectarian violence. McCorley writes later that in the end, “the issue settled itself within a very short space of time, when the Orange mob was given uniforms, paid for by the British, and called the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC).” The role of the USC, a temporary police force raised for counter-insurgency purposes, in the conflict is still debated, but republicans maintain that the organization was responsible for the indiscriminate killings of Catholics and nationalists.
On January 26, 1921, McCorley, is involved in the fatal shooting of three Auxiliary Division officers in their beds in the Railway View hotel in central Belfast. Shortly afterwards, he and another IRA man, Seamus Woods, organize an active service unit (ASU) within the first battalion of the Belfast Brigade, with the intention of carrying out attacks, with or without the approval of the Brigade leadership. The unit consists of 32 men. McCorley later writes, “I issued a general order that, where reprisal gangs [State forces] were cornered, no prisoners were to be taken.” In March 1921, he personally leads the ASU in the killing of three Black and Tans in Victoria Street in central Belfast. He is responsible for the deaths of two more Auxiliaries in Donegall Place in April. In reprisal for these shootings, members of the RIC assassinate two republican activists, the Duffin brothers in Clonard Gardens in west Belfast. On June 10, 1921, both and Woods and McCorley units are involved in the killing a RIC man who is suspected in the revenge killings of the Duffin brothers. Two RIC men and a civilian are also wounded in that attack.
Thereafter, there is what historian Robert Lynch has described as a “savage underground war” between McCorley’s ASU and RIC personnel based in Springfield Road barracks and led by an Inspector Ferris. Ferris is accused of murdering the Lord Mayor of Cork Thomas Mac Curtain and had been posted to Lisburn for his safety. Ferris himself is among the casualties, being shot in the chest and neck, but surviving. McCorley claims to have been one of the four IRA men who shot Ferris. In addition, his men bomb and burn a number of businesses including several cinemas and a Reform Club. In May 1921, however, thirteen of his best men are arrested when surrounded by British troops during an operation in County Cavan. They are held in Crumlin Road Gaol and sentenced to death.
On June 3, McCorley organizes an attack on Crumlin Road Gaol in an attempt to rescue the IRA men held there before they are executed. The operation is not a success; however, the condemned men are reprieved after a truce is agreed between the IRA and British forces in July 1921. On Bloody Sunday (July 10, 1921), he is a major leader in the defense of nationalist areas from attacks by both the police and loyalists. On that day twenty people are killed before he negotiates a truce beginning at noon on July 11. At least 100 people are wounded, about 200 houses are destroyed or badly damaged – most of them Catholic homes, leaving 1,000 people homeless.
In April 1922, McCorley becomes leader of the IRA Belfast Brigade after Joe McKelvey goes south to Dublin to join other IRA members who are against the Anglo-Irish Treaty. With McKelvey’s departure, Seamus Woods becomes Officer Commanding of the IRA’s 3rd Northern Division, which has up to 1,000 members, with McCorley designated as Vice Officer Commanding. McCorley for his part, supports the Treaty, despite the fact that it provides for the partition of Ireland and the continued British rule in Northern Ireland. The reason for this is that Michael Collins and Eoin O’Duffy have assured him that this is only a tactical move and indeed, Collins sends men, money and weapons to the IRA in the North throughout 1922.
However, McCorley’s command sees the collapse of the Belfast IRA. In May 1922, the IRA launches an offensive with attacks all across Northern Ireland. In Belfast, he carries out an assault on Musgrave Street RIC barracks. He also conducts an arson campaign on businesses in Belfast. His men also carry out a number of assassinations, including that of Ulster Unionist PartyMPWilliam J. Twaddell, which causes the internment of over 200 Belfast IRA men.
To escape from the subsequent repression, McCorley and over 900 Northern IRA men flee south, to the Irish Free State, where they are housed in the Curragh. McCorley is put in command of these men. In June 1922, the Irish Civil War breaks out between Pro and Anti-Treaty elements of the IRA. He takes the side of the Free State and Michael Collins. After Collins is killed in August 1922, his men are stood down. About 300 of them join the National Army and are sent to County Kerry to put down anti-Treaty guerrillas there. In the Spring of 1923, bitterly disillusioned by the brutal counterinsurgency against fellow republicans, he resigns his command.
McCorley later asserts that he “hated the Treaty” and only supported it because it allowed Ireland to have its own armed forces. Both he and Seamus Woods are severe critics of the Irish Free State inertia towards Northern Ireland after the death of Michael Collins. He comments that when Collins was killed “the Northern element gave up all hope.”
In 1936 McCorley is instrumental in the establishment of the All-Ireland Old IRA Men’s Organization, serving as Vice-President with President Liam Deasy (Cork No. 3 Brigade) and Secretary George Lennon (Waterford No. 2 Brigade).
Blaney is first elected to Dáil Éireann for the Donegal East constituency in a by-election in December 1948, following the death of his father from cancer. He also becomes a member of the Donegal County Council. He remains on the backbenches for a number of years before he is one of a group of young party members handpicked by Seán Lemass to begin a re-organisation drive for the party following the defeat at the 1954 Irish general election. Within the party he gains fame by running the party’s by-election campaigns throughout the 1950s and 1960s. His dedicated bands of supporters earn the sobriquet “the Donegal Mafia,” and succeed in getting Desmond O’Malley and Gerry Collins elected to the Dáil.
Following Fianna Fáil’s victory at the 1957 Irish general election, Éamon de Valera, as Taoiseach, brings new blood into the Cabinet in the shape of Blaney, Jack Lynch, Kevin Boland and Mícheál Ó Móráin. Blaney is appointed Minister for Posts and Telegraphs however he moves to the position of Minister for Local Government at the end of 1957 following the death of Seán Moylan. He retains the post when Lemass succeeds de Valera as Taoiseach in 1959. During his tenure it becomes possible to pay rates by installment and he also introduces legislation which entitles non-nationals to vote in local elections.
In 1966 Lemass resigns as Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader. The subsequent leadership election sees Cork politician Jack Lynch become party leader and Taoiseach. In the subsequent cabinet reshuffle Blaney is appointed Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries.
In 1969, when conflict breaks out in Northern Ireland, Blaney is one of the first to express strong Irish republican views, views which contradict the policy of the Irish Government, in support of Northern nationalists. From around late 1968 onwards, he forms and presides over an unofficial Nationalist group in Leinster House popularly known as “the Letterkenny Table.” The group is dominated by Blaney up until his death.
There is general surprise when, in an incident known as the Arms Crisis, Blaney, along with Charles Haughey, is sacked from Lynch’s cabinet amid allegations of the use of the funds to import arms for use by the IRA. Lynch asks for their resignations but both men refuse, saying they did nothing illegal. Lynch then advises President de Valera to sack Haughey and Blaney from the government. Haughey and Blaney are subsequently tried in court but are acquitted. However, many of their critics refuse to recognise the verdict of the courts. Although Blaney is cleared of wrongdoing, his ministerial career is brought to an end.
Lynch subsequently moves against Blaney so as to isolate him in the party. When Blaney and his supporters try to organise the party’s national collection independently, Lynch acts and in 1972 Blaney is expelled from Fianna Fáil for “conduct unbecoming.”
Following his expulsion from Fianna Fáil, Kevin Boland tries to persuade Blaney to join the Aontacht Éireann party he is creating but Blaney declines. Instead, he contests all subsequent elections for Independent Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party, an organisation that he built up. Throughout the 1970s there are frequent calls for his re-admittance to Fianna Fáil but the most vocal opponents of this move are Fianna Fáil delegates from County Donegal.
Father Des Wilson, Irish Catholic priest and church dissident who in the course of the Northern IrelandTroubles embraces ideas and practice associated, internationally, with liberation theology, dies in his native Belfast on November 5, 2019. He believes the Word of God can never be silent in the face of oppression, injustice and suffering. He seeks to apply the ideas of liberation theology to the North, supporting and empowering marginalised communities, and acting as a voice for the voiceless.
Wilson is born in Belfast on July 8, 1925, the youngest of five sons to William Wilson, a publican and native of County Cavan, and his wife Emma (née McAvoy), a native of south County Down. He spends his earliest years above his father’s pub in Belfast, before the family moves to a house in the suburbs.
Wilson attends primary school locally, then receives secondary education at St. Malachy’s College. During his time there Belfast is blitzed in April and May 1941. Almost 1,000 are killed. The carnage he sees is a factor in his deciding on the priesthood.
After ordination Wilson serves as chaplain in Belfast’s Mater Infirmorum Hospital, then spends 15 years in St. Malachy’s as spiritual director. Former pupils remember him as fair, and able to play jazz excellently on the organ.
Wilson lives out his beliefs, spending half a century in Belfast’s Ballymurphy estate, among the North’s most deprived, and one of the areas which suffers worst from the Troubles. There he plays a role in community development, establishing projects to provide employment in the area. He suffers, finding himself for years outside the official Catholic Church.
Wilson plays a significant role in providing adult education. He wants an education that does not just provide qualifications and open career paths but is psychologically liberating.
Life changes in 1966 when Wilson is moved to St. John’s Parish in West Belfast as a curate. Having come from a comfortable background in Ballymurphy, he is shocked by the poverty, the poor housing and the treatment of women. Unusual for a priest at the time, he moves into a terraced house in the estate. He finds the Catholic Church unable to respond to the multiple problems people are facing. That inability worsens as the Troubles erupt.
Wilson’s personal probity is so recognised that he is accepted as a mediator in feuds between the Provisional Irish Republican Army and Official Irish Republican Army in the 1970s and is able to broker permanent peace. He also helps bring about the ceasefires in the 1990s.
Wilson does not shirk unpopular stances. In the 1970s he refuses to condemn the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Later he says the conviction of former Real Irish Republican Army leader Michael McKevitt for directing terrorism is unsafe. He also publicly visits and supports a Ballymurphy couple which has a very bitter falling out with Sinn Féin, leading to a picket on their home.
By 1975 relations with his bishop has broken down and Wilson resigns but continues ministering in Ballymurphy. Forbidden to say Mass in a church, his pay cut off, he says Mass in his house. He suffers hardship, living from savings, some earnings from writing, broadcasting and lecturing, and help from Quaker and Presbyterian friends. By the early 1980s his Ballymurphy home becomes too small for the many classes he organises. His classes are rehoused and expanded as the Conway Education Centre in a vacant mill. He is able to offer a range of vocational and non-vocational courses with almost 1,000 students. In the mid-1980s his relationship with the Dioceses of Down and Connor is re-established, and he is allowed to continue his ministry.
Personally, Wilson has great gifts of head and heart and is incapable of rancour. A strong belief is that it is important to share food to talk, as happened in Biblical times. Thus, a lunch would last an afternoon.
Wilson dies on November 5, 2019, in Belfast. Instead of wreaths, he asks mourners to donate to the Ballymurphy Massacre Memorial Garden. The garden is dedicated to the victims of the Ballymurphy massacre of August 1971, which saw the killing in the district of eleven civilians by soldiers of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment. The victims include Fr. Hugh Mullan, who had been a student of Wilson’s at St. Malachy’s. He was shot while going to the aid of a wounded man.
seamus dubhghaill 