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Death of Piaras Béaslaí, Author, Playwright & Politician

Piaras Béaslaí, author, playwright, biographer and translator, who is a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), fights in the Easter Rising and serves as a member of Dáil Éireann, dies on June 22, 1965.

Béaslaí is born Percy Frederick Beazley in Liverpool, England on February 15, 1881, to Irish Catholic parents, Patrick Langford Beazley, originally from Killarney, County Kerry, and Nannie Hickey, from Newcastle West, County Limerick. During his summer holidays in his younger years, he spends time in Ireland (near Kenmare, County Kerry) with his paternal uncle, Father James Beazley, where he begins to learn the Irish language. He is educated at St. Francis Xavier’s College in Liverpool, where he develops his keen interest in Irish. By the time he is aged 17 his Irish proficiency is exceptional.

After finishing his education at St. Francis Xavier’s, Béaslaí is encouraged to begin Irish poetry by Tadhg Ó Donnchadha. He follows his father’s footsteps into journalism, initially working for the local Wallasey News. In 1906 he moves to Dublin, and within a year becomes a freelance writer for the Irish Peasant, Irish Independent, Freeman’s Journal and Express. He is offered a permanent position with Independent Newspapers, as assistant leader writer and special reporter for the Dublin Evening Telegraph. He writes regularly for the Freeman’s Journal, including a daily half-column in Irish.

After his early introduction to Irish poetry Béaslaí becomes involved in staging Irish-language amateur drama at the Oireachtas annual music festival. He begins to write both original works and adaptations from foreign languages. One of these works, Eachtra Pheadair Schlemiel (1909), is translated from German into Irish.

Later Béaslaí continues to write poetry, such as the collection “Bealtaine 1916” agus Dánta Eile (1920), and short stories such as “Earc agus Aine agus Scéalta Eile.” Between 1913 and 1939 he writes many plays, including Cliuche Cartaí (1920), An Sgaothaire agus Cúig Drámaí Eile (1929), An Danar (1929) and An Bhean Chródha (1931). He writes two books about his comrade Michael Collins: Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland (2 volumes, 1926) and Michael Collins: Soldier and Statesman (1937).

Béaslaí’s works revolve around the Irish language movement and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), focusing on the independence struggle of Ireland. He writes about these topics in newspapers such as the Standard and The Kerryman. His most notable work in newspapers during his later life includes his contribution to the Irish Independent, which publishes a section called ‘A Veteran Remembers’ five days a week from May 16 to June 1957, as well as a weekly section called ‘Moods and Memories’ on Wednesdays from May 24, 1961, to June 16, 1965.

One of the awards Béaslaí gains during his career is on August 14, 1928, a gold medal at the Tailteann Literary Awards. While in Dublin, he joins the Keating Branch of the Gaelic League, and after he moves to Ireland, he begins using the Irish form of his name, Piaras Béaslaí, rather than Percy Beazley.

Béaslaí is a founding member of the Irish Volunteers in 1913. In January 1916 he serves as a courier for political activist and revolutionary leader Seán Mac Diarmada. By the time of the Easter Rising that year, he is deputy commanding officer of the 1st Dublin Battalion. In an audio recording to which he contributes in 1958, he details his experience in the Rising, describing the rebels assembling before noon in Blackhall Street at battalion headquarters. After midday they march out to the Four Courts, erecting barricades as they do so. The Four Courts is his main station.

In the audio, Béaslaí recalls a green flag with a gold harp in the centre. This is the non-Sinn Féin flag at the time. He is in direct charge of the Four Courts area, and at one point during the fight he orders a complete blackout. He recalls, “things were going badly for the English soldiers” and describes the whole event as “a weird experience.” He remembers the streets being lit up with fires in the darkness as if it were bright as day. He speaks of the intensity of the firing line and then how it suddenly ceases on the Friday. He remembers falling asleep and when he awakens being presented with Patrick Pearse‘s order to surrender. The rebels are brought to Richmond Barracks. He then spends fifteen months in English prisons.

Béaslaí serves three years of penal servitude divided between a stringent HM Prison Portland and a more lenient HM Prison Lewes. He is then imprisoned two times within four months during 1919, both terms ending in celebrated escapes. After his final prison release, Michael Collins approaches him about editing An tOglach, the Irish Volunteer newspaper. This sees communication between GHQ and local volunteers drastically improve.

Later, Béaslaí becomes director of publicity for the Irish Republican Army, and at the 1918 Irish general election he is elected to the First Dáil as Sinn Féin MP for East Kerry. Sinn Féin MPs elected in the Westminster elections of 1918 refuse to recognise the Parliament of the United Kingdom, and instead assemble the following January at the Mansion House in Dublin as a revolutionary parliament, Dáil Éireann. Béaslaí is noted for his translation of the democratic programme of the First Dáil, which he reads aloud at the inaugural sitting.

Béaslaí is a member of the Sinn Féin party for five years. Between 1919 and 1921 he represents the East Kerry constituency in the First Dáil. Then, at the 1921 Irish elections, he is returned unopposed to the Second Dáil as a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for Kerry–Limerick West. Following the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, he is re-elected there unopposed at the 1922 Irish general election as a pro-Treaty Sinn Féin candidate, and is thus a member of the Third Dáil, which is Pro-Treaty at this stage. In 1922 he goes to the United States to explain the Treaty to Sinn Féin’s Irish American supporters. He does not contest the 1923 Irish general election.

Béaslaí and Con Collins share the distinction of having been elected in three Irish general elections unopposed by any other candidates.

During Béaslaí’s time in London, he gives a lot of his time to the Gaelic League. In the Keating branch of the league, in Ireland, he develops an interest in the IRB. Cathal Brugha, a branch member, asks him to join the IRB. The Keating branch is where Béaslaí meets Michael Collins, eventually introducing Collins to his cousin and fellow branch member, Elizabeth Mernin. He is also instrumental in establishing An Fáinne, an Irish-speaking league whose members vow to speak solely Irish among themselves and wear a membership badge of a circle. This coincides with his involvement in the IRB. His love of the Irish language gives him an opportunity to delve into his other hobbies. He writes for Banba, an Irish journal published by the Gaelic League. He is able to express his love for theatre, in the Gaelic League, forming a group of men called “Na hAisteoirí.”

Béaslaí dies, unmarried, at the age of 84 on June 22, 1965, in a nursing home in Dublin. He is buried in a plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, after a Requiem Mass in St. Columba’s Church, Iona Road, Glasnevin.


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Birth of Alfred John Webb, Politician & Member of Parliament

Alfred John Webb, Irish Quaker from a family of activist printers, is born in Dublin on June 10, 1834. He becomes an Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) politician and Member of Parliament (MP), as well as a participant in nationalist movements around the world. He supports Isaac Butt‘s Home Government Association and the United Irish League. At Madras in 1894, he becomes the third non-Indian (after George Yule and William Wedderburn) to preside over the Indian National Congress.

Webb is the first child and only son of the three children of Richard Davis Webb (1805-1872) and Hannah Waring Webb (1810-1862). The family runs a printing shop in Dublin and belongs to a Quaker group that supports reforms such as suffrage, the abolition of slavery and anti-imperialism. The family press prints booklets for many of these causes and, in turn, their regular customers grow to include other similar organisations, including the Irish Protestant Home Rule Association and the Ladies’ Land League, an organisation founded by Fanny and Anna Parnell in 1880 that advocates on behalf of poor tenant farmers.

Webb is interested in literature and history and begins to write A Compendium of Irish Biography. In 1865, he begins to take a more active interest in Irish politics. He is inspired by the Fenians, although he believes in non-violence and the Fenians of that time believe that Ireland can only gain independence through an armed revolution. He is first elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom on February 24, 1890, when he wins a by-election for the West Waterford constituency. He is again returned for West Waterford in the 1892 United Kingdom general election, this time as an anti-Parnellite MP. In December 1883, he resigns from the position of Land League treasurer, complaining of Parnell’s “autocratic management of funds.”

Webb’s family takes an interest in the welfare of British colonies and are outspoken opponents of the opium traffic into China. He is a close friend of Dadabhai Naoroji, a key member of the Indian National Congress, who is also a friend of other Irish nationalists including Michael Davitt and Frank Hugh O’Donnell. Naoroji is elected, as a member of the Liberal Party, in 1892, the year of the Liberal landslide to the Finsbury Central Westminster seat. While O’Donnell attempts to involve Naoroji in Irish politics, Webb is invited by Naoroji to preside over the Indian National Congress in 1894.

Webb is a supporter of Anti-Caste, Britain’s first anti-racism journal which fellow Quaker activist Catherine Impey founds in 1888. He is able to rally subscribers and activists for the journal around the world. For example, although he is not a regular subscriber, he and Dadabhai Naoroji co-sign a letter with others to request support for a new association, The Society for the Furtherance of Human Brotherhood.

Webb dies on July 30, 1908, and is laid to rest in the Quaker Friends Burial Ground in Temple Hill, Blackrock, Dublin.


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Birth of Sir Eyre Coote, Soldier, Politician & Governor of Jamaica

Sir Eyre Coote, Irish-born British soldier and politician who serves as Governor of Jamaica, is born on May 20, 1759.

Coote is the second son of the Very Reverend Charles Coote of Shaen Castle, Queen’s County (now County Laois), Dean of Kilfenora, County Clare, and Grace Coote (née Tilson). Educated at Eton College (1767–71), he enters Trinity College Dublin (TCD) on November 1, 1774, but does not graduate. In 1776 he is commissioned ensign in the 37th (North Hampshire) Regiment of Foot and carries the regiment’s colours at the Battle of Long Island on August 27, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War. He fights in several of the major battles in the war, including Rhode Island (September 15, 1776), Brandywine (September 11, 1777) and the siege of Charleston (1780). He serves under Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis, in Virginia and is taken prisoner during the siege of Yorktown in October 1781.

On his release Coote returns to England, is promoted major in the 47th (Lancashire) Regiment of Foot in 1783, and in 1784 inherits the substantial estates of his uncle Sir Eyre Coote. He inherits a further £200,000 by remainder on his father’s death in 1796. He resides for a time at Portrane House, Maryborough, Queen’s County, and is elected MP for Ballynakill (1790–97) and Maryborough (1797–1800). Although he opposes the union, he vacates his seat to allow his elder brother Charles, 2nd Baron Castle Coote, to return a pro-union member. He serves with distinction in the West Indies (1793–95), particularly at the storming of Guadeloupe on July 3, 1794, and becomes colonel of the 70th (Surrey) Regiment of Foot (1794), aide-de-camp to King George III (1795), and brigadier-general in charge of the camp at Bandon, County Cork (1796).

Coote is active in suppressing the United Irishmen in Cork throughout 1797, and in June arrests several soldiers and locals suspected of attempting to suborn the Bandon camp. On January 1, 1798, he is promoted major-general and given the command at Dover. He leads the expedition of 1,400 men that destroy the canal gates at Ostend on May 18, 1798, holding out stubbornly for two days against superior Dutch forces until he is seriously wounded and his force overwhelmed. Taken prisoner, he is exchanged and in 1800 commands a brigade in Sir Ralph Abercromby‘s Mediterranean campaign, distinguishing himself at Abu Qir and Alexandria. For his services in Egypt, he receives the thanks of parliament, is made a Knight of the Bath, and is granted the Crescent by the Sultan.

In 1801 Coote returns to Ireland. Elected MP for Queen’s County (1802–06), he generally supports the government and is appointed governor of the fort of Maryborough. He gives the site and a large sum of money towards the building of the old county hospital in Maryborough. In 1805 he is promoted lieutenant-general, and he serves as lieutenant-governor of Jamaica (1806–08). His physical and mental health deteriorates in the West Indian climate, and he is relieved of his post in April 1808. He is second in command in the Walcheren Campaign of 1809 and leads the force that takes the fortress of Flushing. However, he shows signs of severe stress during the campaign and asks to be relieved from command because his eldest daughter is seriously ill.

Coote is conferred LL.D. at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1811. Elected MP for Barnstaple, Devon (1812–18), he usually votes with government, but opposes them by supporting Catholic emancipation, claiming that Catholics strongly deserve relief because of the great contribution Catholic soldiers had made during the war. He strongly opposes the abolition of flogging in the army. Despite a growing reputation for eccentricity, he is promoted full general in 1814 and appointed Knight Grand Cross (GCB) on January 2, 1815, but his conduct becomes increasingly erratic. In November 1815 he pays boys at Christ’s Hospital school, London, to allow him to flog them and to flog him in return. Discovered by the school matron, he is charged with indecent behaviour. The Lord Mayor of London dismisses the case and Coote donates £1,000 to the school, but the scandal leads to a military inquiry on April 18, 1816. Although it is argued that his mind had been affected by the Jamaican sun and the deaths of his daughters, the inquiry finds that he is not insane and that his conduct is unworthy of an officer. Despite the protests of many senior officers, he is discharged from the army and deprived of his honours.

Coote continues to decline and dies in London on December 10, 1823. He is buried at his seat of West Park, Hampshire, where in 1828 a large monument is erected to him and his uncle Sir Eyre Coote.

Coote first marries Sarah Robard in 1785, with whom he has three daughters, all of whom die young of consumption. Secondly, he marries in 1805, Katherine, daughter of John Bagwell of Marlfield, County Tipperary, with whom he has one son, his heir Eyre Coote III, MP for Clonmel (1830–33). He also has a child by Sally, a slave girl in Jamaica, from whom Colin Powell, United States Army general and Secretary of State, claims descent.


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Birth of Timothy Michael Healy, Politician, Journalist, Author & Barrister

Timothy Michael “Tim” Healy, Irish nationalist politician, journalist, author, barrister, and one of the most controversial Irish Members of Parliament (MPs) in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, is born in Bantry, County Cork on May 17, 1855.

Healy is the second son of Maurice Healy, clerk of the Bantry Poor Law Union, and Eliza Healy (née Sullivan). His elder brother, Thomas Healy (1854–1924), is a solicitor and Member of Parliament (MP) for North Wexford and his younger brother, Maurice Healy (1859–1923), with whom he holds a lifelong close relationship, is a solicitor and MP for Cork City.

Healy’s father is transferred in 1862 to a similar position in Lismore, County Waterford. He is educated at the Christian Brothers school in Fermoy, and is otherwise largely self-educated, in 1869, at the age of fourteen, he goes to live with his uncle Timothy Daniel Sullivan in Dublin.

Healy then moves to England in 1871, working first as a railway clerk and then from 1878 in London as parliamentary correspondent of The Nation, writing numerous articles in support of Charles Stewart Parnell, the newly emergent and more militant home rule leader, and his policy of parliamentary obstructionism. Healy takes part in Irish politics and becomes associated with Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party. After being arrested for intimidation in connection with the Irish National Land League, he is promptly elected as member of Parliament for Wexford Borough in 1880.

In Parliament, Healy becomes an authority on the Irish land question. The “Healy Clause” of the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1881, which protects tenant farmers’ agrarian improvements from rent increases imposed by landlords, not only makes him popular throughout nationalist Ireland but also wins his cause seats in Protestant Ulster. He breaks with Parnell in 1886 and generally remains at odds with subsequent leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party, though he is a strong supporter of proposals for Irish Home Rule. Meanwhile, he is called to the Irish bar in 1884 and becomes a queen’s counsel in 1899.

Dissatisfied with both the Liberals and the Irish Nationalists after the Easter Rising in 1916, Healy supports Sinn Féin after 1917. He returns to considerable prominence in 1922 when, on the urging of the soon-to-be Irish Free State‘s Provisional Government of W.T. Cosgrave, the British government recommends to King George V that Healy be appointed the first “Governor-General of the Irish Free State,” a new office of representative of the Crown created in the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty and introduced by a combination of the Irish Free State Constitution and Letters Patent from the King.

Healy believes that he has been awarded the Governor-Generalship for life. However, the Executive Council of the Irish Free State decides in 1927 that the term of office of Governors-General will be five years. As a result, he retires from the office and public life in January 1928 and publishes his extensive two volume memoirs later in that year. Throughout his life he is formidable because he is ferociously quick-witted, because he is unworried by social or political convention, and because he knows no party discipline. Towards the end of his life, he becomes more mellowed and otherwise more diplomatic.

Healy dies on March 26, 1931, at the age of 75, in Chapelizod, County Dublin. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.


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Birth of Isaac Corry, Lawyer & Member of Parliament

Isaac Corry FRS, PC (I), PC, an Irish and British Member of Parliament and lawyer, is born on May 15, 1753, in Newry, County Down.

Corry is the son of Edward Corry, sometime Member of Parliament, and Catharine Bristow. His cousin is the writer Catherine Dorothea Burdett. He is educated at the Royal School, Armagh, where his contemporaries include Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, and later at Trinity College, Dublin, from which he graduates in 1773. On October 18, 1771, he is admitted to the Middle Temple and called to the bar at King’s Inns in 1779.

Corry succeeds his father as Member of Parliament for Newry in 1776, sitting in the Irish House of Commons until the Acts of Union 1800. From 1782 to 1789 he serves as equerry to Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland, being described in 1794 by Rt. Hon. Sylvester Douglas as “a well-bred man…He has no brogue…He once acted as a sort of groom of the bedchamber to the late Duke of Cumberland.” In 1798, he is also elected for Randalstown, but chooses not to sit and, in 1802, he is returned to the British House of Commons for Newry. He serves as a Whig at Westminster until 1806. It is written in 1783 that he would expect to enter high office, given that “he lives expensively and does not pursue his profession, which is the law.” In 1788 he becomes Clerk of the Irish Board of Ordnance. The following year he is appointed a commissioner of the revenue. Finally in 1799 he is appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer of Ireland and a Lord High Treasurer of Ireland in place of Sir John Parnell, who quarreled violently with William Pitt the Younger over the projected union, which he categorically refuses to support. In 1795 he becomes a Privy Councillor.

In 1802 Corry is dismissed from the Exchequer and replaced by John Foster (later Lord Oriel), he is awarded, however, £2,000 p.a. in compensation. In 1806 the changes in ownership of the Newry estates alters his position. The lands pass to a senior line of the Needham family and they support General Francis Needham, 1st Earl of Kilmorey, at the general election. Corry does not have the funds needed, in excess of £5000, to purchase a seat elsewhere. However, Lady Downshire is inclined to support the Grenville ministry and comes to a formal agreement with Corry to give him £1000 towards his expenses should he be successful in Newry, and, if not, to bring him in for another borough. He fails against the Needham interest in Newry, but a seat at Newport, Isle of Wight, is purchased for him, with £4000 from Lady Downshire, and he is appointed to the Board of Trade. Six months later Grenville’s ministry has fallen and there is another general election. Corry stands, again unsuccessfully, for Newry.

Corry is unmarried but has a long-term relationship with Jane Symms. They have three sons and three daughters. His daughter Ann marries Lt. Col. Henry Westenra, the brother of Robert Cuninghame, 1st Baron Rossmore. His residence in Newry is the Abbey Yard, now a school, and Derrymore House, Bessbrook, County Armagh, which he had inherited from his father and sold in 1810. It is now the property of the National Trust. During his life, a road is constructed from near the main entrance of Derrymore House around Newry and links up with the Dublin Road on the southern side of the town primarily for his use. This road subsequently becomes known as “The Chancellor’s Road,” as a result of his term as the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer. A local legend has it that the road is constructed after an incident in which Corry’s stagecoach is stoned while passing through Newry by people angry at an unpopular window tax he had introduced. The road has retained this name, but it is cut in half by the Newry by-pass in the mid-1990s, however, as a result of works associated with the new A1 dual carriageway, the two-halves of the road are now reconnected.

Corry dies at his house in Merrion Square, Dublin, on May 15, 1813, his 60th birthday. He is buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.


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The Historic Meeting of David Trimble & Pope John Paul II

David Trimble becomes the first Ulster Unionist leader to meet a Pope when his historic meeting with John Paul II takes place in Rome on April 21, 1999. The meeting is widely welcomed as a sign that old prejudices are ending but Trimble is hotly criticised by both Protestants and Catholics in his Upper Bann constituency.

The First Minister is one of 54 Nobel Peace Prize laureates who meets Pope John Paul II briefly at the Vatican, as part of a two-day trip organised by former Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The Nobel Prize winners meet the Pope as a group and are then introduced and shake hands individually. There is a group photograph but no filming of the event. Careful stage-management ensures there are no public photographs of the two men close together.

A spokesman for Trimble says the UUP leader told the Pope he hopes this will be the year when peace will be secured in Northern Ireland. The Pope recalls his visit to Ireland and says murder cannot be condoned or called by another name.

Although the meeting is welcomed on both sides of the North divide, it does little to enhance Trimble’s standing in Upper Bann, particularly in troubled Portadown. In Portadown’s loyalist estates, there is open hostility toward Trimble. Many residents accusing their MP of “putting his personal status above the interests of his constituents.” The response is typified by one angry woman who says, “The loyalist people of this town and Drumcree, put David Trimble into office. Now he has turned his back on us. That’s a fatal mistake, this town and Drumcree will now destroy Trimble.”

“It’s unbelievable that this meeting is actually taking place,” says Orangeman Ivor Young. “It totally contradicts the oath that David Trimble took when he joined the Orange Order. We all knew Trimble was a traitor, this latest escapade puts the final nail in his political coffin here in Upper Bann. There is no way that he will ever be elected here again.”

Trimble also comes in for further criticism from Portadown Orange District, whose Drumcree protest has continued for the past 288 days. David Jones, the District’s press officer says that the people of Portadown once again see their local MP on “a world stage,” instead of being involved locally. “There are a lot of people around Portadown who aren’t very impressed that David Trimble has gone off to meet the Pope and hasn’t got more involved in trying to get the situation here solved,” says Jones.

On Portadown’s Garvaghy Road, Catholics are also critical of Trimble’s visit to Rome. “It’s amazing how he can travel to Rome to meet and talk to strangers,” says one nationalist resident, “yet he can’t be bothered to travel less than 30 miles to meet us, to talk about the serious issues that confront this community. After all we are as much his constituents as are the loyalists in this town.”

The meeting is the first time that the First Minister of Northern Ireland or the head of the Ulster Unionist Party has met the Pope in Rome. It also represents a rare appearance by an Orangeman at the heart of the Roman Catholic Church. Trimble and his entourage meet the Pope in the sumptuous surroundings of the Consistory Hall, the same room where the Cardinals of the Church gather to advise the Pope.

Earlier in the morning Trimble says in an interview with the Vatican radio that besides giving an update on developments in Northern Ireland, he wishes to “express to his Holiness the Pope that he and the Church will do what it can to persuade the paramilitaries to commit themselves irrevocably to peaceful means.”

Other Nobel prize winners who meet the Pope include peace activist Betty Williams, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, former South African leader F. W. de Klerk, Guatemalan human rights activist Rigoberta Menchu, British scientist Joseph Rotblat, and former Israeli leader Shimon Peres.

Trimble’s fellow Nobel laureate, SDLP leader John Hume, is unable to attend the meeting.

(From: “Anger erupts at home as Trimble meets Pope” by Chris Anderson, Independent.ie (www.independent.ie), April 23, 1999)


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Birth of Bobby Storey, Provisional Irish Republican Army Volunteer

Robert “Bobby” Storey, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on April 11, 1956. Prior to an 18-year conviction for possessing a rifle, he also spends time on remand for a variety of charges and in total serves 20 years in prison. He also plays a key role in the Maze Prison escape, the biggest prison break in British penal history.

The family is originally from the Marrowbone area, on the Oldpark Road in North Belfast. The family has to move when Storey is very young due to Ulster loyalist attacks on the district, moving to Manor Street, an interface area also in North Belfast. His uncle is boxing trainer Gerry Storey and his father, also called Bobby, is involved in the defence of the area in the 1970s when Catholics are threatened by loyalists.

Storey is one of four children. He has two brothers, Seamus and Brian, and a sister Geraldine. Seamus and his father are arrested after a raid on their home which uncovers a rifle and a pistol. While his father is later released, Seamus is charged. He escapes from Crumlin Road Prison with eight other prisoners in 1971, and they are dubbed the Crumlin Kangaroos.

On his mother Peggy’s side of the family there is also a history of republicanism, but Storey says the dominant influences on him are the events happening around him. These include the McGurk’s Bar bombing in the New Lodge, some of those killed being people who knew his family, and also Bloody Sunday. This then leads to his attempts to join the IRA. He leaves school at fifteen and goes to work with his father selling fruit. At sixteen, he becomes a member of the IRA.

On April 11, 1973, his seventeenth birthday, Storey is interned and held at Long Kesh internment camp. He had been arrested 20 times prior to this but was too young for internment. In October 1974, he takes part in the protest at Long Kesh against living conditions where internees set fire to the “cages” in which they are being held. He is released from internment in May 1975. He is arrested on suspicion of a bombing at the Skyways Hotel in January 1976 and a kidnapping and murder in the Andersonstown district of Belfast in March 1976, but is acquitted by the judge at his trial. He is arrested leaving the courthouse and charged with a shooting-related incident. He is released after the case cannot be proven, only to be charged with shooting two soldiers in Turf Lodge. Those charges are dropped in December 1977. The same month he is arrested for the murder of a soldier in Turf Lodge, but the charges are again dropped. In 1978 he is charged in relation to the wounding of a soldier in Lenadoon, but is acquitted at trial due to errors in police procedure.

On December 14, 1979, he is arrested in Holland Park, London, with three other IRA volunteers including Gerard Tuite, and charged with conspiring to hijack a helicopter to help Brian Keenan escape from Brixton Prison. Tuite escapes from the same prison prior to the trial, and the other two IRA volunteers are convicted, but Storey is acquitted at the Old Bailey in April 1981. That August, after a soldier is shot, he is arrested in possession of a rifle and is convicted for the first time, being sentenced to eighteen years’ imprisonment.

Storey is one of the leaders of the Maze Prison escape in 1983, when 38 republican prisoners break out of the H-Blocks, the largest prison escape in British penal history and the largest peacetime prison escape in Europe. He is recaptured within an hour and sentenced to an additional seven years’ imprisonment. Released in 1994, he is again arrested in 1996 and charged with having personal information about a British Army soldier, and Brian Hutton, the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. At his trial at Crumlin Road Courthouse in July 1998, he is acquitted after his defence proves the personal information had previously been published in books and newspapers.

Having spent over twenty years in prison, much of it on remand, Storey’s final release is in 1998, and he again becomes involved in developing republican politics and strategy, eventually becoming the northern chairman of Sinn Féin.

On January 11, 2005, Ulster Unionist Member of Parliament for South Antrim David Burnside tells the British House of Commons under parliamentary privilege that Storey is head of intelligence for the IRA.

On September 9, 2015, Storey is arrested and held for two days in connection with the killing of former IRA volunteer Kevin McGuigan the previous month. He is subsequently released without any charges, and his solicitor John Finucane states Storey will be suing for unlawful arrest.

Storey dies in England on June 21, 2020, following an unsuccessful lung transplant surgery. Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald describes him as “a great republican” in her tribute. His funeral procession in Belfast on June 30 is attended by over 1,500 people including McDonald, deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill, and former Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams, but is criticised for breaking social distancing rules implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic which, at the time operating in Northern Ireland, limited funeral numbers to no more than 30 mourners.

In the 2017 film Maze, dramatising the 1983 prison break, directed by Stephen Burke, Storey is portrayed by Irish actor Cillian O’Sullivan.


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Birth of Margaret (May) Tennant, Promoter of Workers’ Rights & Public Health

Margaret Mary Edith (May) Tennant (née Abraham), promoter of workers’ rights and public health, is born April 5, 1869 at Rathgar, County Dublin, the only daughter of Dr. George Whitley Abraham, a lawyer in the civil service, and his wife, Margaret, daughter of Cornelius Curtain.

Abraham is educated at home by her father. Following his death in 1887, finding herself in financial straits, she moves to London, where she takes lodgings in Bloomsbury and works for Lady Emilia Dilke. Dilke is a social reformer and an advocate of trade unions for women, and as her secretary Margaret gains first-hand experience of the exploitative and unsanitary conditions afflicting women working in industry, a cause that she devotes the next decade to ameliorating. She is treasurer of the Womens’ Trade Union League, where she negotiates with employers on behalf of league members, organises meetings, and sends deputations to the House of Commons. From 1881 she coordinates a successful campaign to render regular government inspections of laundries mandatory (legislation is passed to this effect in 1908).

Abraham’s dedication to her work soon attracts wider recognition, and in 1891 she is appointed an assistant commissioner to undertake field inquiries for the Royal Labour Commission. In this capacity she travels incessantly throughout England and Ireland, gathering information and writing reports on often appalling working conditions. It is mainly because of this work that in 1893 the home secretary appoints her the first female factory inspector in England. Her new position marks a career shift from agitator to skillful and effective administrator. Traveling incessantly, the inspectors target illegal overtime, poor sanitation, and dangerous trades. In her first year alone she brings eighty prosecutions for illegal overtime.

In 1895 Abraham serves on a departmental committee at the Home Office on dangerous trades, where she meets Harold John Tennant, liberal MP for Berwickshire. The couple are married the following year, and have four sons and one daughter.

By 1896 Tennant is the superintending inspector of five more women inspectors, and her extensive experience in workers’ rights and public health is reflected in the book she publishes in that year, The law relating to factories and workshops, which runs to six editions. She finds it increasingly difficult to balance the pressures of her work with the demands of her private life, and she resigns her post soon after her marriage. However, she remains a committed social activist, serving as chairman of the Industrial Law Committee and on the Royal Commission on Divorce (1909). She is also an original member and treasurer of the Central Committee on Women’s Employment (1914–39).

During the World War I Tennant is chief adviser on women’s welfare to the Ministry of Munitions and director of the Women’s Department of the National Service Department. In recognition of her services the British government awards her the Companion of Honour in 1917, the same year that her eldest son, Harry, dies while on active service. Between the wars she turns her attention to women’s health, campaigning to improve maternal mortality and nursing care.

During the World War II, despite her failing health, Tennant works for the RAF Benevolent Fund. She is a member of the Central Consultative Council of Voluntary Organisations and the National Association for Prevention of Tuberculosis, chairman of the maternal health committee, governor of Bedford College, and a JP. She is also a director of the Mysore and Champion Reef Gold Mines, an enterprise of her husband’s family, and in this capacity travels to India and New Zealand in the mid-1920s.

The Tennants have homes in Edinglasserie, Aberdeenshire, and at 12 Victoria Square, London, as well as a restored country house, Great Maytham, at Rolvenden in Kent. She is a noted authority on gardening, and is director of The Gardener’s Chronicle (other interests included fishing, tennis, and gambling). After her husband’s death in 1935 she moves to a smaller house named Cornhill at Great Maytham, where she dies on July 11, 1946. Some of her correspondence is in the British Library, London.

(From: “Tennant (née Abraham), Margaret Mary Edith (May),” contributed by Sinéad Sturgeon and Georgina Clinton, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie)


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Birth of Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne

Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne, soldier, politician, traveler, and anthropologist, is born on March 29, 1880, in Dublin.

Guinness is the third son of Edward Cecil Guinness, 1st Earl of Iveagh, and Adelaide Maria Guinness, a cousin. He is educated at Eton College, where he displays a keen interest in the sciences, especially biology, and considerable athletic prowess. Forsaking an intention to enter the University of Oxford, he joins the Suffolk Yeomanry regiment of the British Army as a second lieutenant on November 15, 1899, and serves in the Second Boer War (1899–1902), where he is wounded and mentioned in dispatches.

On return from South Africa Guinness enters politics, unsuccessfully contesting Stowmarket in the 1906 United Kingdom general election as a Conservative Party candidate. In the following year he becomes MP for Bury St. Edmunds, holding the seat until 1931. He is also elected as a member of the London County Council (1907–10). He interrupts his career yet again at the outbreak of World War I and, rejoining the Suffolk Yeomanry, serves in Gallipoli and Egypt. By the end of the war he is a lieutenant colonel, three times mentioned in dispatches, with the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1917 and a bar to it in 1918.

In the immediate postwar years Guinness devotes himself to his political career, and his work is soon rewarded with important appointments: Under-Secretary of State for War (1922) and Financial Secretary to the Treasury (1923). He serves for a second time at the Treasury (1924–5) under Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Sworn of the Privy Council in 1924, he enters the cabinet in November 1925 as Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries. After the defeat of the Conservatives in the 1929 United Kingdom general election, he gradually withdraws from the political scene, retiring from his parliamentary seat in 1931. He is raised to the peerage in 1932 as Baron Moyne of Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.

Always a keen traveler, during the following years Guinness makes several expeditions in search of biological specimens and archaeological material. He travels twice to New Guinea and also goes to Greenland and the Bay Islands near Honduras. These voyages are vividly described in his books Walkabout (1936) and Atlantic circle (1938). He still maintains a political profile, however, serving in several different capacities including financial commissioner to Kenya (1932) and chairman of the West India Royal Commission (1938–9). At the outbreak of World War II, he works as chairman of the Polish Relief Fund before being appointed as Joint Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture on the formation of the Churchill government (1940). In 1941 he becomes Secretary of State for the Colonies and Leader of the House of Lords. Appointed Deputy Resident Minister of State in Cairo (August 1942), he becomes Minister-Resident for the Middle East in January 1944. On November 6, 1944, he is assassinated in Cairo by members of the ‘Stern Gang’, the Jewish terrorist group based in Palestine.

Guinness marries (1903) Lady Evelyn Hilda Stuart Erskine, daughter of the 14th Earl of Buchan. They have two sons and one daughter.

(Pictured: Walter Edward Guinness, 1st Baron Moyne of Bury St. Edmunds, bromide print, 1929, by Walter Stoneman, National Portrait Gallery)


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Death of Austin Clarke, Poet, Playwright & Novelist

Austin Clarke, poet, playwright and novelist, dies in Dublin on March 19, 1974. At the time of his death, he is considered to be the greatest poet of his generation after W. B. Yeats,

Clarke is born in 83 Manor Street, Stoneybatter, Dublin, on May 9, 1896. His main contribution to Irish poetry is the rigour with which he uses technical means borrowed from classical Irish language poetry when writing in English. Effectively, this means writing English verse based not so much on metre as on complex patterns of assonance, consonance, and half rhyme. Describing his technique to Robert Frost, he says, “I load myself down with chains and try to wriggle free.”

Clarke’s early poetry clearly shows the influence of Yeats. His first book, The Vengeance of Fionn, is a long narrative poem retelling an Ossianic legend. It meets with critical acclaim and, unusually for a first book of poetry, goes to a second edition. Between this and the 1938 volume Night and Morning, he publishes a number of collections, all of which, to one extent or another, can be seen as being written in the shadow of Yeats. There is, however, one significant difference. Unlike the older poet, Clarke is a Catholic, and themes of guilt and repentance run through this early work.

Between 1938 and 1955, Clarke publishes no new lyric or narrative poetry. He is co-founder of the Lyric Theatre, Dublin and writes a number of verses plays for them. He also works as a journalist and has a weekly poetry programme on RTÉ radio. It seems likely that he also experiences some kind of personal crisis during this time, and this has significant consequences for his later poetry.

Clarke returns to publishing poetry with the 1955 collection Ancient Lights and is to continue writing and publishing prolifically for the remainder of his life. Although he continues to use the same Gaelic-derived techniques, this late poetry is markedly different from his earlier work. Many of the later poems are satires of the Irish church and state, while others are sensual celebrations of human sexuality, free of the guilt of the earlier poems. He also publishes the intensely personal Mnemosyne Lay in Dust, which is a poem sequence detailing the fictional Maurice Devanes’s nervous breakdown and subsequent recovery.

Clarke also comes to admire the work of more avant-garde poets like Ezra Pound and Pablo Neruda, both of whom he writes poems about. A number of the late long poems, such as, for instance, the 1971 Tiresias, show the effects of studying these poets and their looser formal structures. He sets up the Bridge Press to publish his own work, which allows him the freedom to publish work that many mainstream Irish publishers of the time might have been reluctant to handle. His Collected Poems is published in 1974 and a Selected Poems in 1976.

In addition to some twenty volumes of poetry and numerous plays, Clarke publishes three novels: The Bright Temptation (1932), The Singing Men at Cashel (1936), and The Sun Dances at Easter (1952). All of these are banned by the Censorship of Publications Board (Ireland). He also publishes two volumes of memoirs, Twice Round the Black Church (1962) and A Penny in the Clouds (1968), and a number of scattered critical essays and book reviews. While all of these prose writings are of interest, his reputation rests firmly on his poetry.

In 1920 Clarke marries Cornelia (Lia) Cummins. The marriage effectively lasts only a few days, and he spends several months in St. Patrick’s Hospital recovering from it, but they do not divorce before Cummins dies in 1943. He meets, has three sons with, and later marries (1945) Norah Esmerelda Patricia Walker (1900–1985), granddaughter of Matthew Harris, MP for East Galway from 1885 to 1890.

Clarke lives in Bridge House beside Templeogue Bridge which spans the River Dodder in the south Dublin suburb of Templeogue. After his death on March 19, 1974, there is a proposal to preserve the house and his library of 6,500 books as a memorial. This is not possible owing to long-term plans to demolish the house and widen the road. The old Templeogue Bridge, built in 1800, and Bridge House are removed. A new bridge is opened by Councillor Bernie Malone, Chairman Dublin City Council, on December 11, 1984, which is renamed Austin Clarke Bridge in his honour.

(Photo © RTÉ Archives)