As part of the 2008 Cork Midsummer Festival, 1,100 volunteers gather on the grounds of Blarney Castle in the early hours of Tuesday, June 17, 2008, and strip naked to have their picture taken at the famous location.
The occasion is the first shoot in Ireland by the American photographic artist Spencer Tunick, who has already made quite a name for himself shooting large groups of naked people in public spaces in New York City, Montreal, London and Amsterdam.
Like many of Tunick’s projects, the event in Cork comes about by invitation. “It was Mary McCarthy, the art curator at Dublin Docklands, who contacted me first,” says Tunick, via Zoom from his office in New York, of the organiser who is director of the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. “Mary thought to make it a two-city project, in Cork and Dublin, and brought Cork Midsummer Festival on board. People think I can choose where I want to work, but it’s not as if I can get up and say, ‘hmm, I want to photograph 1,000 people in a volcanic crater in Hawaii.’ In reality, I need a team on the other side, helping me. And it was Mary who established that team in Ireland.”
McCarthy’s crew works with Tunick on selecting locations for his shoots. Blarney Castle appeals to Tunick. “When you think of a castle, you think of swords, you think of dreams, you think of battle and war,” he says. “But you might also think of the rose. I tried to combine a lot of different ideas or fantasies about the castle and connect them to the body. But there were also a lot of grounds around the castle, so I could have different set-ups and positions to shoot in.”
When Cork Midsummer Festival puts out a call for volunteers, it is inundated with applications. Those chosen are of all ages, and from all walks of life. “I think sometimes people associate my live works with young people. But there’s often a lot of people over 50, and into their 80s, at this great unifying event that touches on the idea of group photo gatherings from the 1920s. When you see a big haul of people lined up, undressed of course, it combines group portraiture with abstraction and the naked body.”
At Blarney Castle, beginning around 5:30 a.m., he shoots the crowd in a variety of poses on the castle lawns, facing toward and away from the camera, then lying on their backs as they each held a single rose aloft (pictured above), red for the women and white for the men. He then photographs a small number on their knees in the river that runs through the grounds, and a smaller number again kissing the Blarney Stone. Some participants see the photo shoot as an opportunity to challenge the general disapproval of nakedness that prevails in the Ireland of their youth. Others see it as a way to make peace with their body image.
Later that morning, Tunick photographs about 50 naked volunteers covered in foam at White Street Carpark in Cork city centre. “As a kid, I was always fascinated by the bubble scene in Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, the film,” says Tunick. “So, I wanted, in a whimsical and surreal way, to amplify my memories of that. But I also wanted to work with the history of the area, so I infused Murphy’s beer into four bubble machines and created a snow globe effect with the nudes. That was beautiful.”
Looking back on the photographs, one is struck by how most of the bodies are white. If it is true that Cork has become far more ethnically diverse city since that day in 2008, one must also wonder if Tunick’s call for volunteers appealed to a certain demographic. “I always ask the organisers to do community outreach in different areas, so we can get more colour and ethnicities into the work,” he says. “But sometimes it doesn’t really resonate, and sometimes the population is not there, you know. And often, where that population exists, it might not be connected to the body in contemporary art. But I’ve always tried, and now I insist that the organisers make an extra effort.”
Tunick’s shoots at Blarney Castle and White Street attract lavish coverage in the media, a reflection perhaps on how they coincide with a change in the public perception of nudity. The project would almost certainly have caused an uproar even twenty years previously. Participants describe a sense of joy and liberation. “This was definitely pre-Instagram, right? And now when we’re on Instagram, we think the whole world is accepting of nudity in public, but back then, there was not that same outlet for my images. But there was that documentation by the press, and through that, I think people realised that something had happened that went against the grain in a positive way.”
Four days later, Tunick photographs 2,500 naked volunteers on the South Wall in Dublin. Again, the event attracts headlines, but already, it seems, the culture has moved on, and there is not quite that same element of surprise and delight as there had been in Cork.
Tunick has done many projects since. Some of his favourites include those in Kingston upon Hull in 2016 and on the Dead Sea in 2011 and again in 2021. “I like working with props. In Cork, I used roses and beer foam. But now I like working with body paint. In Hull, we covered around 4,000 people in four shades of blue. The blues were those of the water I saw in a number of paintings in the Maritime Museum in the city. I asked Pantone to replicate the colours, and those were the blues we used. Not many people know that.”
“My projects in the Dead Sea were partly about showing how the salt in the water could elevate the body. That created a very interesting, otherworldly effect in the photographs. But they also aimed to raise awareness of how the Dead Sea is disappearing because of irrigation to serve the need for drinking water by adjoining countries such as Israel and Jordan. It’s a very difficult situation.”
Many photographers find their work curtailed by pandemic restrictions of the early 2020s. Tunick too is forced to postpone photographing groups of people on location, but he does find a way to go on creating. “An art collective called Studio 333 in Mexico asked me if I wanted to do group works on video chats, and offered to manage it technically. So we started making group works with people from all walks of life, all around the world. We had someone in Saudi Arabia posing with someone in Israel. We had people in Australia, people in Europe, people all over the world. I think the only place we weren’t able to work with was Antarctica, but who knows? Maybe that’s in the future.” The resulting images are published online, on Tunick and Studio 333’s websites and social media accounts, under the collective title ”Stay Apart Together.”
As for the future, Tunick would love to work in Ireland again, he says. “It’s always been my dream to do a work in Northern Ireland, maybe with 100 or 200 people on the Giant’s Causeway? I can’t have too many, because then you wouldn’t see the rocks. Northern Ireland, the Giant’s Causeway… that project’s been on my mind for a long time, so hopefully some museum or curator will invite me to do it.”
(From: “Cork in 50 Artworks, No 49: Spencer Tunick’s nude installation at Blarney Castle” by Marc O’Sullivan, Irish Examiner, http://www.irishexaminer.com, April 11, 2022 | Pictured: Blarney Castle with the crowd assembled by Spencer Tunick)
On June 15, 1988, an unmarked military van carrying six British Army soldiers is blown up by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) at Market Place in Lisburn, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The explosion takes place at the end of a charity marathon run in which the soldiers had participated. All six soldiers are killed in the attack – four outright, one on his way to hospital and another later on in hospital.
Lisburn is the headquarters of the British Army in Northern Ireland. Four of the dead are from the Royal Corps of Signals while the other two are from the Green Howards and the Royal Army Ordnance Corps. A booby trap bomb is hidden under the Ford Transit van in which the soldiers are traveling, and is designed in such a way that the blast goes upward to cause maximum damage to the vehicle. Eleven civilian bystanders are injured, including a two-year-old child and 80-year-old man. The bombing is sometimes referred to as the Lisburn “Fun Run” bombing.
On Wednesday, June 15, 1988, at 8:50 p.m., an unmarked blue Ford Transit van carrying six off-duty British soldiers in civilian clothes drives off from a leisure centre carpark in Lisburn. The soldiers have just taken part in the “Lisburn Fun Run”, a 13-mile (21 km) charity half marathon held in the town. They leave the van unattended in the car park, which is the start and finish point for the run. It is there that an IRA active service unit (ASU), who has been following the van, hides a bomb underneath the vehicle. The half marathon and shorter “fun runs” are organised by Lisburn Borough Council, together with the YMCA, to raise funds for the disabled. There are 4,500 participants that day and at least 200 British Army personnel have been given leave to participate in the event.
Nine minutes later, the van stops at traffic lights at Market Place, in Lisburn’s town centre. As the van moves on, the seven-pound (3.2 kg) bomb detonates, turning the van into a massive fireball and instantly killing four of the soldiers as the vehicle disintegrates with the force of the blast. The Semtex device has been designed in a cone shape to channel the blast upward, thereby causing maximum damage to the vehicle and the soldiers inside. The area around Market Place is crowded with onlookers, including many teenagers and families with young children, although the biggest crowd is at the carpark. In all, about 10,000 onlookers have attended the charity run. There is pandemonium as frightened parents search for their children, while others rush to give aid to the dead and dying soldiers before fire engines and ambulances arrive.
Eleven civilian bystanders are injured in the attack, including a two-year-old child and an 80-year-old man. Another soldier dies on the way to hospital while a sixth soldier dies later that night after undergoing surgery for severe head injuries. The dead soldiers are stationed at Ebrington Barracks in Derry and are returning to base when the bomb goes off. Four of the men – Sergeant Michael Winkler (31), Signalman Mark Clavey (24), Lance Corporal Graham Lambie (22), and Corporal William Patterson (22) – are from the Royal Corps of Signals, while the other two – Corporal Ian Metcalf (36) and Lance Corporal Derek Green (20) – are from the Green Howards and Royal Army Ordnance Corps respectively.
Lisburn is a mainly Ulster Protestant town, 14 miles (23 km) southwest of Belfast. It serves as the garrison headquarters of the British Army in Northern Ireland. Six months before the van bombing, a booby trap bomb planted by the IRA kills Ulster Defence Association (UDA) leader John McMichael in the town.
The van bombing results in the greatest loss of life suffered by the British Army since eleven soldiers were killed in the Droppin Well Disco bombing on December 6, 1982.
On June 16, the Provisional IRA Belfast Brigade claims responsibility for the bombing, promising to wage “unceasing war” against the British security forces in Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams allegedly says that the IRA’s killing of the six soldiers is “vastly preferable” to killing members of the (locally recruited) Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) or Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). The leisure centre is forced to remain shut for a time after the loyalistProtestant Action Force (a cover-name of the UVF) issues a warning that they regard Catholic staff working there as “legitimate targets,” inferring that they may have had a hand in the bombing. Lisburn mayor Councillor William Bleakes condemns the threats by the PAF.
That same day, Tom King, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, travels to Lisburn where he holds a meeting with Lieutenant General Sir John Waters, the British Army Commander in Northern Ireland, and senior RUC officers. They discuss the attack and proposals for heightened security. The soldiers had failed to follow proper security procedures, as they had left their vehicle unguarded for over two hours and had then driven off without having checked under it beforehand. After the Lisburn meeting, King flies to London where he reports directly to British Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcher, who describes the attack as a “terrible atrocity.” However, she rejects demands from Conservative members of Parliament to bring back internment, regarding the proposal as “a very serious step.”
In his statement to the House of Commons, Tom King suggests that there would have been a much higher death toll had the bomb exploded in the carpark, where thousands of people had gathered after the run.
The Republic of Ireland‘s government also strongly condemns the killings and extends its sympathy to the families of the dead soldiers. The bombing is a topic of debate in the Seanad Éireann on June 16, 1988. Bishop Cahal Daly of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Down and Connor denounces the bombers and the killings in the “strongest possible terms.”
Questions are raised as to how the IRA knew the soldiers were attending the charity run in Lisburn, how they recognised their unmarked van, and how the unit was able to plant a bomb in the predominantly loyalist town without being spotted, despite the number of people in the carpark. The RUC believes that the bombers may have been wearing sports gear as they mingled with the crowd that evening. They appeal to onlookers who had attended the event to hand over any film they may have taken of the “fun run” in an attempt to identify the IRA bombers.
The following Saturday, between 1,000 and 2,000 people gather in Lisburn town centre to attend a remembrance service for the six soldiers. A book of condolences is also opened.
In 1921, McCaughey’s family moves to the Ardoyne district in north Belfast. Hus father is a founding member of the Irish republican Dungannon Clubs and organizes the first branch of Sinn Féin in County Tyrone. As a teenager he joins the Gaelic League and Sinn Féin and also becomes a long time student and teacher of the Irish language in the Glens of Antrim. He joins the IRA in 1935 and in 1938 is promoted to Officer Commanding (O/C) of its Northern Command, headquartered near the town of Carrickmore, County Tyrone, which is the ancestral home of Joseph McGarrity and Patrick McCartan, both leaders of the Irish republican organization Clan na Gael. In December 1939, he is arrested and imprisoned at the Curragh Camp. After being released in 1940 he returns to the Northern Command of the IRA. He is held in high regard and is considered to be one of the best officers of the northern IRA. At the time of his arrest in Rathmines, Dublin, on September 2, 1941, he is acting Chief of Staff.
In September 1941, McCaughey is found guilty by a Dublin court of having detained and assaulted Stephen Hayes, IRA Chief of Staff, who was accused of being a spy for the Irish Free State government. Hayes escapes and later testifies against him at a Military Court. He is sentenced to death by firing squad. His sentence is commuted to a life sentence of penal servitude.
Imprisoned in Portlaoise Prison on July 24, 1941, McCaughey joins other IRA prisoners in the ongoing blanket protest. Refusing to wear a criminal’s prison clothes, he is kept in solitary confinement and spends nearly five years naked except for a blanket. This form of resistance by Irish republican prisoners is also used in the 1980s blanket protests in the Maze prison (also known as “Long Kesh”) and the HM Prison Armagh (women’s prison) in Northern Ireland. He and other Irish republican prisoners endure years of hardships. Sitting month after month, year after year in bleak solitary cells, they are taken out once a week for a bath, and for the rest of the week live the life of an animal trapped in a burrow. That they do not go mad is a remarkable comment on mans capacity for survival. During his almost five years in Portlaoise, he Is never permitted to have visitors.
McCaughey commences a hunger strike on April 19, 1946. After ten days, he stops taking water and dies on May 11, 1946, the twenty-third day of his protest. An inquest is held in the prison at which the prison doctor admits that during his over four and a half years of imprisonment that McCaughey had never been allowed out in the fresh air or sunlight and that “he would not treat his dog the way Seán McCaughey had been treated in Portlaoise.”
McCaughey is the last person to die on hunger strike in the Irish state. There is a long history of hunger striking in Ireland – within the 20th century a total of 22 Irish republicans die on hunger strike with survivors suffering long-term health and psychological effects. Four men die during the 1920 Cork hunger strike. The largest hunger strike in Irish history is the 1923 Irish hunger strikes, during which five men die. Ten men die during the 1981 Irish hunger strike.
(Pictured: Seán McCaughey (right) and Charlie McGlade, O’Connell Street, Dublin, 1941)
On June 5, 1976, a bomb explodes at the door of the Times Bar on York Road, killing two Protestants. The pub is frequented by members of the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), a legal loyalist paramilitary group. Irish republicans are blamed for the bombing. Shortly after, the UVF Brigade Staff (its Shankill Road-based leadership) decide to hit back by attacking the Chlorane Bar. It is a hastily arranged operation devised by its military commander “Bunter,” whom investigative journalistMartin Dillon refers to as “Mr. F.” The Chlorane Bar is located at 23 Gresham Street in Belfast’s city centre, near Smithfield Market. Its clientele is mixed (Protestant and Catholic), which is unusual during The Troubles. On August 17, 1973, the Chlorane Bar had been firebombed, however, no one was injured as the pub was closed at the time of the attack. Later that same month, the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF), a cover name sometime used by the UDA, claim responsibility for a car bomb which exploded in Gresham Street. Although there were no human casualties, a pet shop located near the bomb’s epicentre was damaged in the blast and a number of animals inside the building were either killed or injured.
The attack is planned and executed by the UVF platoons based at the Brown Bear and the Windsor Bar respectively. These are two pubs located on the Shankill Road and regularly frequented by UVF members. Dillon sometimes refers to the former platoon as the “Brown Bear Team” because the members generally meet at that particular pub, which faces Shankill Library on the corner of Mountjoy Street. To carry out the attack, along with the procuring of weapons and masks, a black taxi is hijacked by two young men outside the Long Bar on the Shankill Road to transport the gunmen to the Chlorane Bar. Taxi driver Mark Hagan and a passenger are held hostage at the Windsor Bar.
The Chlorane Bar is likely chosen for its nearness to the Shankill Road, affording the attackers a speedy getaway. There is not much of a security presence that evening in the area. The driver of the taxi, with four specifically chosen armed men seated in the rear of the vehicle in the manner of genuine passengers, makes his way from the Shankill Road to North Street and turns south into Gresham Street. Upon arrival outside the Chlorane Bar, the four gunmen don their masks, devised from yellow money bags, and exit the taxi.
At 10:00 p.m., the four masked gunmen storm through Chlorane Bar’s front door leading to the public bar. There are about sixteen customers inside the pub at the time. One of the four gunmen is Robert “Basher” Bates, a member of the violent Shankill Butchers gang led by Lenny Murphy, who is in police custody at the time the attack against the Chlorane takes place. Bates is the only one of the four to have been from the “Brown Bear Team.” The hit squad is commanded by a “Mr. G,” leader of the Windsor Bar UVF platoon, with “Mr. D” as his second-in-command and “Mr. C” completing the team. Entering the bar in single file, “Mr. G” orders everybody to stand up, and then asks the startled customers whether there are any “Prods” (Protestants) among them. William Greer, a Protestant, thinking the gunmen are from the Irish Republican Army, quickly flees to the men’s toilet where he places his feet up against the door. Customer Frederick Graham and his girlfriend, Pat Mahood, assume the same thing. “Mr. G” tells the customers to separate into two groups, with the Protestants standing at the bottom end of the bar, and the Catholics at the top.
When one man, Edward Farrell, admits to being a Catholic, the UVF men open fire. Farrell tries to run toward the toilet but is shot dead. The Catholic owner of the Chlorane, 64-year-old James Coyle, is standing behind the bar when he is hit at close-range. The bullet enters his heart and he dies instantly. The gunmen continue firing and two Protestant men, Daniel McNeil and Samuel Corr, are also struck by the hail of bullets. McNeil is killed on the spot and Corr is fatally wounded. Another Catholic man, John Martin, is shot and dies of his injuries on June 23. Several other customers are hit as gunfire is sprayed around the bar. One customer pretends to be dead, however, a gunman walks over to where he lay and deliberately fires three shots into his thigh, knee, and below the ankle. The man later recounts that he had then looked up to see “men lying shot all over the place.” William Greer, hiding in the toilet, is shot when one of the gunmen fire through the door. He survives despite being hit in the leg and neck. There are more customers upstairs in the lounge area, but although they hear the gunshots, the gunmen never go near them. Dillon maintains that it had not been the UVF unit’s intention to kill any Protestants.
“Mr. G” calls a halt to the shooting, saying “that’s it,” and the four-man UVF team nonchalantly walks out of the pub and re-enters the hijacked black taxi, which is parked so the driver has easy access to North Street. This route offers a quick return to the Shankill. After the four men get into the back seat, the driver (“Mr. H”) drives off. As the taxi passes by the Catholic Unity Flats area, three shots are fired from the vehicle. Two young men walking nearby get a look at the driver. He is described as being around 38 to 40 years old and having shoulder-length, black curly hair. Upon the taxi’s return to the Shankill, Mark Hagan and the passenger are released. They immediately go to the Tennent Street Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) Station off the Shankill where they report the taxi’s hijacking. The shooting team proceeds to the Long Bar pub where “Mr. I” (commander of UVF 1st Battalion) procures a forty-ounce bottle of vodka for “Mr. G” and “Mr. D” – their payment for leading the operation.
Having heard the gunshots, a barmaid serving in the upstairs lounge goes downstairs to investigate and discovers the body of her employer, James Coyle, lying on the floor behind the bar and those of the other dead and wounded. The first policeman on the scene is Constable George McElnea, from the RUC Special Patrol Group in Tennent Street. He quickly notices the pile of bodies near the men’s toilet as Samuel Corr stumbles toward him, gravely injured. McElnea places Corr on a bench and offers what assistance he can but to no avail. Corr dies of his gunshot wounds before the ambulance arrives. Alan McCrum, a Scenes of Crime officer, appears at the Chlorane fifteen minutes after the shootings. He retrieves 24 spent bullet casings from the floor and determines that most of the shots had been fired at the rear of the pub. Later ballistic testing establishes that the weapons used in the attack were a .22 caliber pistol, a 9 mm pistol, and two .45 snub-nosed revolvers. Police believe one of the victims, Daniel McNeil, had tenuous UVF connections, although he is not an active member.
The hijacked black taxi is found by police the following morning in a cul-de-sac in Beresford Street, off the Shankill Road. A cyclist, who had witnessed the masked gunmen entering the Chlorane Bar, describes the four men as having been in the 20 to 30 age group, all about 5’10 in height and well-built. The last gunman to enter had shoulder-length brown hair. The witness had gone to a nearby British Army post where he told soldiers what he had seen.
Ten days after the gun attack, the Chlorane Bar is blown up by a bomb. Three weeks after the attack the Provisional IRA, using their sometime cover-name of the “Republican Action Force“, enter Walker’s Bar in Templepatrick and kill three Protestant civilians in retaliation for the Chlorane attack. As part of this series of deadly tit for tat attacks on pubs, the UVF responds by killing six customers at the Catholic-owned Ramble Inn outside Antrim.
No one is ever charged with the shootings. In February 1979, Bates is convicted of the murders he had committed as part of the Shankill Butchers, and given ten life sentences. In his statement to the police following his arrest in 1977, he recounts his role in the Chlorane Bar attack. He alleges while working as a barman in the Long Bar on the evening of June 5, 1976, he is approached by the UVF military commander, “Mr. F”, who informs him of a job in which he is to take part that same evening. It is decided to attack the city centre pub in retaliation for the IRA’s earlier bombing of The Times pub. Bates goes on to say that “Mr. I” provides the weapons which are used in the shooting and “Mr. J” (UVF Provost Marshal) procures the masks. Bates claims that his revolver malfunctions and therefore he never fires his gun during the attack. However, forensic evidence proves that two .45 revolvers had been fired inside the Chlorane. Upon his release from the HM Prison Maze, Bates is gunned-down in June 1997 by the son of James Curtis Moorhead, a UDA man he had killed in 1977.
Jackson is born on September 27, 1948, in Tullynarry Cottages, Donaghmore, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, one of seven children of John Jackson, farmhand, and his wife Eileen. As a teenager he participates in Paisleyite demonstrations against the Northern Ireland civil rights movement. He is already a local “hard man” who cultivates an air of menace. After a brief period in Australia, he returns home and serves in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) from 1972 to 1975. He also joins the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and is alleged to have committed his first murders in 1973. He is arrested in 1973 after the doorstep killing of a BanbridgeCatholic who works in the shoe factory that employs Jackson. The victim’s wife identifies Jackson as the murderer, but the charge is withdrawn after she admits to a degree of prompting by the police.
Jackson is a leading member of a UVF gang linked to about 100 murders carried out at random against Catholic civilians between 1973 and 1979, earning for the north Armagh and east Tyrone area the nickname “the murder triangle.” He also allegedly helps to plan the Dublin and Monaghan car bombings of May 17, 1974, killing thirty-three civilians, and orchestrates the attack on the Miami Showband on July 31, 1975. He becomes UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade commander in 1975. Never convicted of any of the numerous murders attributed to him, he is however jailed between 1979 and 1983 for arms possession.
Jackson marries Eileen Maxwell in the late 1960s. They have a son and two daughters. The marriage does not survive his imprisonment and after his release he moves to Donaghcloney, County Down, where he lives with a much younger girlfriend. He remains active in loyalist paramilitarism but takes a less prominent role. He survives several Irish Republican Army (IRA) attempts on his life, including the detonation of a car bomb outside his house. In 1984, the editor of the Belfast edition of the Sunday World is shot and wounded after publishing articles denouncing “the Jackal,” the nickname by which the press calls Jackson during his lifetime.
After the Anglo–Irish Agreement of 1985, Jackson is briefly linked to Ulster Resistance (UR), a paramilitary group founded by associates of Ian Paisley. He allegedly assists the rearming and reorganisation of the Mid-Ulster UVF under Billy Wright after the killing of his brother-in-law and alleged accomplice, Roy Metcalf, by the IRA in 1988. Relations between Wright and Jackson cool after the killing of a Catholic in Donaghcloney by Wright’s men leads to Jackson being called in for questioning, and he supports the UVF leadership in its 1996–97 dispute with Wright. He is also the focus of recurring allegations about collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and elements of the security forces in mid-Ulster, including claims that he operated on behalf of British military intelligence who shielded him from prosecution.
Jackson dies of lung cancer at the age of 49 at his Donaghcloney home on May 30, 1998. He is buried on June 1 in a private ceremony in the St. Bartholomew Church of Ireland churchyard in his native Donaghmore, County Down. His grave, close to that of his parents, is unmarked apart from a steel poppy cross. His father had died in 1985 and his mother outlives him by five years.
Considerable uncertainty surrounds his involvement in many of the crimes attributed to him, but there is no doubt that he is a cold-blooded multiple murderer and one of the most sinister “hard men” of loyalist paramilitarism.
(From: “Jackson, Robin” by Patrick Maume, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
Robb is the daughter of the managing director of J. Robb & Co., Charles Robb and his wife Agnes (née Arnold), daughter of Dr. Wilberforce Arnold. She attends Richmond Lodge, and then Somerville College, Oxford to study modern languages in 1924. She receives a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in 1927, a Master of Arts (MA) in 1931 and then a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in 1932. She publishes her research as Neoplatonism of the Italian renaissance in 1935. She is a member of the Northern Ireland committee of the National Trust, to which she presents the family home, Lisnabreeny House, Castlereagh, in 1937. She engages in social and voluntary work for a time, before moving to London in 1938 to take up a position at the London Institute of Italian Studies.
Robb publishes her first volume with Wiley-Blackwell in 1939 as Poems. She is the registrar and advisory officer to the Women’s Employment Federation between 1940 and 1944, during which time she writes a partial account of her experiences in An Ulsterwoman in England in 1942. She returns to Northern Ireland in 1944, working for a number of public bodies including International PEN and the National Trust, and writing. She serves as a member of the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts in 1951. In the same year she edits The Arts in Ulster with John Hewitt and Sam Hanna Bell, which argues that any mention of politics should be excluded from collections.
In 1962 and 1966 Robb produces a large two-volume history of William of Orange. In 1963, she becomes a member of the Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde. She produces a final volume of poetry in 1970, Ards eclogues, and is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Over her lifetime she writes seven volumes of poetry, history and art criticism.
Boland is enrolled in the IRB along with his younger brothers Harry in 1904, following in the footsteps of his father. He and his brothers Harry and Ned subsequently join the Irish Volunteers when that organisation is established in 1913, serving in the same company as Arthur Griffith. When news breaks out of the Easter Rising in 1916 he immediately leaves his job, however, he is bitterly disappointed when he finds out that the order has been countermanded. When the rebellion begins in earnest on Easter Monday, he makes his way to Jacob’s Mill where he fights under Thomas MacDonagh. Following the official surrender, he is arrested and interned at Frongoch internment camp in Wales, where he comes into contact with other notable revolutionary leaders, including his brother Harry’s friend Michael Collins.
Boland is released after a general amnesty in December 1916, however, he remains involved in revolutionary circles, although he declines to rejoin the IRB, believing the organisation is no longer needed. He is arrested and imprisoned in Belfast from May to December 1918 for practising military drills in the Dublin Mountains. Meanwhile, a number of his colleagues secure their release by winning seats in the 1918 United Kingdom general election.
Boland and his brothers are opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. He is Battalion Commandant of 3 Battalion, 2 Dublin Brigade (South Dublin) in Blessington, County Wicklow, but is captured early on in the Irish Civil War on July 7, 1922, and is interned until his release in July 1924. On the outside, his brother Harry dies some days after being shot, in August 1922, after two National Army officers attempt to arrest him at the Grand Hotel in Skerries, County Dublin. Boland applies to the Irish government for a service pension under the Military Service Pensions Act of 1934 and is awarded 11 and 5/12 years of service at Grade C for his service with the Irish Volunteers and the IRA between April 1, 1916 and September 30, 1923.
Following the end of the Irish Civil War, Boland helps to build up Sinn Féin as the main Republican party. While still imprisoned, he is selected to stand for Dáil Éireann as the Teachta Dála (TD) for Roscommon, Harry’s old seat, for the 1923 Irish general election, in which he is successful. He is among those in Kilmainham Gaol who go on hunger strike in October 1923. The hunger strike does not result in his release and he credits his practice of yoga with keeping him alive at the time.[3]
Boland is eventually released from the custody of the state in July 1924. Upon his release, he becomes secretary of Sinn Féin and stands on the executive of the party.
Boland is among the first in Sinn Féin to call for an end to the party’s abstentionism from DáilÉireann, believing it to be a political dead end. Party leader Éamon de Valera proposes that the party abandon this policy and take their seats in the Dáil if changes are made to the oath of allegiance to the British monarch. His proposal is defeated and de Valera and his supporters, including Boland, leave Sinn Féin. Shortly after this split, a new party emerges called Fianna Fáil, with de Valera acting as leader and the other disillusioned Republican TDs joining. Boland is vital in transferring many members from Sinn Féin to Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil briefly also has an abstentionist policy but in 1927 a new law forces Fianna Fáil TDs to take the oath of allegiance and take their seats in the Dáil. Fianna Fáil dismisses the oath as “an empty formula.”
Boland works alongside Seán Lemass in building up Fianna Fáil’s grassroots support and organisation, giving particular attention to the party’s rural apparatus. In the September 1927 Irish general election Fianna Fáil comes within four seats of the ruling Cumann na nGaedheal party. The latter forms a coalition of sorts with the Farmers’ Party and returns to government.
Following the 1932 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil forms a new government. Boland is appointed Government Chief Whip, a position which allows him to attend cabinet meetings but not vote at them.
Fianna Fáil remains in power with an increased mandate following the 1933 Irish general election and Boland is promoted to the position of Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. Despite being the Minister in charge of the postal service, he does not own a telephone until some time later. During his tenure, the postal service makes considerable progress. It is also during this time that the Post Office becomes a paying concern. During his time as minister, he oversees a major expansion of the telephone service in Ireland, improvements in the transmission capacity of Radio Éireann, and construction of new provincial post offices and a new central postal sorting office.
Boland is acting Minister for Justice briefly for a time when P. J. Ruttledge is ill. It is during this time that he declares the Irish Republican Army a proscribed organisation.
A cabinet reshuffle in 1936 sees Boland become Minister for Lands. The Land Act 1939 reforms land distribution, broadening the criteria by which the state can take control over undeveloped land while offering the tenant of the land more favourable terms of compensation. He is critical of the policy of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, Seán Lemass, of centralising industrial development in Dublin. He instead wishes to see a more decentralised economy based around food production. The differing viewpoint causes a rift between Boland and Lemass, but despite this Boland favoured Lemass’s policy of state intervention in the economy over Seán MacEntee‘s more laissez-faire approach.
In 1937 Boland is highly vocal during the drafting of a new constitution of Ireland by Fianna Fáil against any word which would give the Catholic Church special status, something heavily considered at the time. He declares that if the constitution elevates the position of the Catholic Church above others, it would be sectarian, anti-republican, and a hindrance to any prospects of Irish reunification. As a compromise, the term “special position” is used in the approved text of the Constitution.
Following the outbreak of World War II in 1939, known in Ireland as the Emergency, there is a cabinet reshuffle, and Boland is appointed as Minister for Justice. He takes over at a time when the IRA has once again declared war against the British state and has begun their Sabotage Campaign. He is charged with the task of crushing the organisation and preventing the IRA from drawing the Irish state into conflict with the United Kingdom. Although he always considers himself a republican, he takes a hardline against the IRA and uses his powers to order the internment of hundreds of IRA members before introducing military courts and special criminal courts.
In 1940, several imprisoned IRA members go on hunger strike but Boland refuses to grant their release. Two of the men eventually die, one of whom is the nephew of one of his Fianna Fáil colleagues. Tony D’Arcy dies at the age of 32 on April 16, 1940, as a result of a 52-day hunger strike, and Jack McNeela dies three days later after 55 days on hunger strike. These deaths spark reprisals by the IRA on the Garda Síochána. Boland subsequently introduces tougher measures by setting up a military court with the death penalty and no provision for appeal except for a review by the government. In all, twelve men are found guilty with six of them facing death and the remaining six having their sentences changed to imprisonment. Among those executed is Charlie Kerins, an acting Chief of Staff of the IRA.
As Minister of Justice, Boland is also asked to enforce policies of wartime censorship, however, finding the idea of the state censorship distasteful he establishes a censorship board to avoid accusations of bias.
During the Emergency, Boland is also responsible for the detention of several foreign agents in pursuit of Ireland’s strict policy of neutrality. During this time some 500 individuals are interned and 600 are sentenced under the newly introduced Offences against the State Act, 1939. By 1943 the IRA is in disarray, particularly after the Chief of Staff is arrested and imprisoned, leaving the organisation without leadership. Boland and Fianna Fáil feel their hardline is backed by the electorate following strong returns for the party at the 1944 Irish general election.
In 1947, Boland is among four leading Fianna Fáil figures (including de Valera) involved in the “Locke’s Distillery Scandal”, an accusation brought by Oliver J. Flanagan that foreign businessmen are bribing members of Fianna Fáil to gain the right to purchase the distillery. A tribunal of inquiry finds no evidence to support the claims, but the event taints the public’s view of Fianna Fáil.
By 1948, Fianna Fáil has been in government for an uninterrupted 16 years. With World War II finally over, the electorate seeks change and a fresh start. Arising to meet this desire is the new political party Clann na Poblachta. Led by Seán MacBride, this new party seeks to kick off a new post-war political era in Ireland, and to do this means removing Fianna Fáil from power. Many in Clann na Poblachta have republican backgrounds and in some ways, the party can be partially described as an organic reaction to Fianna Fáil and Boland’s hardline stance during the war years. Many in political circles, including inside Fianna Fáil, believe Clann na Poblachta can be a new force to reckon with.
However, de Valera always holds a reputation for being cunning in selecting the dates of general elections, and he once again cements that notion, when he calls for a general election in early 1948 before Clann na Poblachta is completely ready to contest a national election. At the 1948 Irish general election Clann na Poblachta and other Fianna Fáil opponents do well, but not as well as expected. To remove Fianna Fáil from government, every single party in the Dáil and several independents have to form the unwieldy “First Inter-Party Government.” The coalition sees Clann na Poblachta forced to work with Fine Gael, considered the traditional “enemy” of Irish republicanism. By 1951, the coalition collapses and Fianna Fáil returns to government following that year’s election, with Boland re-appointed Minister for Justice.
Boland does not seek ministerial office in 1957 when Fianna Fáil returns to power after its defeat in 1954. However, his son, Kevin, is appointed to the cabinet as Minister for Defence at the beginning of his first term in the Dáil. By this stage, Boland is beginning to be seen as an aging warhorse, with his base in Roscommon starting to slip and Fianna Fáil unhappy that he is unable to get a Fianna Fáil running mate elected alongside himself.
At the 1961 Irish general election, Boland is defeated for the first time in fourteen general election campaigns. Despite losing his Dáil seat, he subsequently secures election to Seanad Éireann. Four years later in 1965, he returns to the Seanad, this time as a nominee by the Taoiseach Seán Lemass.
In 1970, the outbreak of the Arms Crisis sees Kevin Boland resign as a Minister and as Secretary of Fianna Fáil in protest at the government’s policy on Northern Ireland and in response to the sackings of Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney from the cabinet over allegations they had arranged for weapons to be provided to the Provisional IRA. Gerald Boland, in a similar protest, resigns as a vice president and as a trustee of Fianna Fáil, although he remains a member of the party. He also articulates his loss of confidence in the leadership of TaoiseachJack Lynch.
Boland dies in Dublin at the age of 87 on January 5, 1973. He is buried in the republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery, Glasnevin, County Dublin. His wife, Annie Boland, predeceases him in 1970. He is survived by his three daughters and four sons.
Twaddell’s death precipitates a clamp-down on the IRA in Northern Ireland and 350 IRA members are interned. Seamus Woods, who is interned on HMS Argenta during the clampdown, is charged with his murder. Woods, who had joined the Irish National Army, is trying to control irregular elements within the IRA. By agreement with the government of Northern Ireland, two officers of the Irish National Army are given permission to travel to the trial. General J. J. “Ginger” O’Connell and Commandant Charles McAlister give evidence and Woods is found not guilty. A total of 724 people are interned in Northern Ireland up to the end of 1924.
Twaddell was buried at Drumcree Church cemetery, Portadown, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, where his headstone says that he was “foully murdered in Belfast.”
FitzGerald joins Fine Gael, attaching himself to the liberal wing of the party. and in 1969 is elected to Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament. He later gives up his university lectureship to become Minister for Foreign Affairs in the coalition government of Liam Cosgrave (1973–77). When the coalition government is resoundingly defeated in the 1977 Irish general election, Cosgrave yields leadership of Fine Gael to FitzGerald. In his new role as Leader of the Opposition and party leader, he proceeds to modernize and strengthen the party at the grass roots. He briefly loses power in 1982 when political instability triggers two snap elections.
By the time of the 1981 Irish general election, Fine Gael has a party machine that can easily match Fianna Fáil. The party wins 65 seats and forms a minority coalition government with the Labour Party and the support of a number of Independent TDs. FitzGerald is elected Taoiseach on June 30, 1981. To the surprise of many, FitzGerald excludes Richie Ryan, Richard Burke and Tom O’Donnell, former Fine Gael stalwarts, from the cabinet.
On May 5, 2011, it is reported that FitzGerald is seriously ill in a Dublin hospital. Newly elected Fine Gael Taoiseach Enda Kenny sends his regards and calls him an “institution.” On May 6 he is put on a ventilator. On May 19, after suffering from pneumonia, he dies at the Mater Private Hospital in Dublin at the age of 85.
In a statement, Irish PresidentMary McAleese hails FitzGerald as “a man steeped in the history of the State who constantly strove to make Ireland a better place for all its people.” Taoiseach Enda Kenny pays homage to “a truly remarkable man who made a truly remarkable contribution to Ireland.” Henry Kissinger, the former United States Secretary of State, who serves as an opposite number to FitzGerald in the 1970s, recalls “an intelligent and amusing man who was dedicated to his country.”
FitzGerald’s death occurs on the third day of Queen Elizabeth II‘s state visit to the Republic of Ireland, an event designed to mark the completion of the Northern Ireland peace process that had been “built on the foundations” of FitzGerald’s Anglo-Irish Agreement with Margaret Thatcher in 1985. In a personal message, the Queen offers her sympathies and says she is “saddened” to learn of FitzGerald’s death.
On his visit to Dublin, United States PresidentBarack Obama offers condolences on FitzGerald’s death. He speaks of him as “someone who believed in the power of education; someone who believed in the potential of youth; most of all, someone who believed in the potential of peace and who lived to see that peace realised.”
FitzGerald is the author of a number of books, including Planning in Ireland (1968), Towards a New Ireland (1972), Unequal Partners (1979), All in a Life: An Autobiography (1991), and Reflections on the Irish State (2003).
The siege of Enniskillen takes place at Enniskillen in Fermanagh, in present day Northern Ireland, in 1594 and 1595, during the Nine Years’ War. In February 1594, the English capture Enniskillen Castle from the Irish following a waterborne assault and massacre the defenders after they surrender. From May 1594, an Irish army under Hugh Maguire and Cormac MacBaron O’Neill besiege the English garrison in the castle, and in August they defeat an English relief force in the Battle of the Ford of the Biscuits. A second relief force is allowed to resupply the garrison, but the castle remains cut off. Eventually, in May 1595, the English garrison surrenders to the Irish and are then massacred.
Enniskillen Castle sits on the River Erne and commands the strategic bottleneck between Upper and Lower Lough Erne. On January 25, 1594, English Captain John Dowdall arrives at Enniskillen by boat with three infantry companies. They dig trenches in which they place light cannons and musketeers, but the cannons are too small to make much of an impact on the castle walls. On January 30, Captain George Bingham arrives with 300 men.
They launch a waterborne assault on the castle. While musketeers in boats and artillery on land fire at the castle, a large boat holding 67 men anchors at a vulnerable part of the walls. They make a breach in the wall with pickaxes, forcing the Irish to take shelter in the keep. Dowdall threatens to destroy the castle with gunpowder if the garrison does not surrender. An Irish witness claims there are 36 fighting men and 40 women and children in the castle, while Dowdall claims there are 200. After they surrender, Dowdall has them put to the sword and claims to have killed 150. Captain Thomas Lee, who is present, describes this as a great dishonor to the Queen as the defenders had surrendered “uppon composicion, And your majesties worde being past to the poore beggars that kept it, they were all notwithstandinge dishonourably putt to the sworde in a most miserable state.”
Dowdall writes on February 2 to the Lord Deputy of Ireland that he has captured the castle from the “rebel” Hugh Maguire. An English garrison is left in place. A detailed coloured illustration of the siege is made shortly after.
On May 17, 1594, now acting with the covert support of Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, Hugh Maguire and Cormac MacBaron O’Neill lay siege to Enniskillen which is now isolated in hostile country. Their army consists of 1,400 foot soldiers and 600 horsemen. It quickly grows with support arriving from Hugh Roe O’Donnell. The English commander, James Eccarsall, has only 50 foot soldiers and 24 horsemen to defend the castle, along with some light artillery. Eccarsall launches a sortie by boat but has to retreat under heavy fire. Irish fortifications cut off access by river and the castle is attacked nightly. Many of the garrison fall sick due to food shortages and exhaustion brought on by incessant skirmishing with the Irish.
On August 7, Maguire and his allies defeat an English relief force for Enniskillen at the Battle of the Ford of the Biscuits. A second relief force commanded by the Lord Deputy of Ireland, William Russell, is sent by another route. Although it is not attacked by the Irish, none of Russell’s scouts or messengers reach the castle nor return. Russell relieves the beleaguered garrison by August 30 with six months supplies, then withdraws. Following this, there is a truce, but “subterfuge and deception were the hallmarks of this stage of the war.”
Maguire raises the clan and the castle is again attacked in January 1595 (Third Siege of Enniskillen). This time, forty selected men dressed in chain mail and armed with Lochaber axes attack at night. His men overrun the outer defences but the garrison holds out in the tower. The Irish withdraw but take with them the garrison’s three boats, preventing the English from patrolling the Erne and cutting them off.
The garrison’s plight is not lost on the authorities in Dublin, but the Crown does not have enough troops for a relief force, and Lord Deputy Russell considers withdrawing the garrison. A report to the Lord Deputy of Ireland suggests that Clan Maguire plans to bring down the walls with gunpowder. In May 1595, the garrison agrees to surrender Enniskillen to the Irish in exchange for their lives. However, the entire garrison is then massacred. Russell claims that the garrison had surrendered on terms to Cormac MacBaron O’Neill, who then reneged upon his word and had the surrendered garrison executed en masse. This is inconsistent with the treatment of other English garrisons, such as the Blackwater Fort, who are granted liberal terms to leave their position in February 1595. However, the Enniskillen garrison may also have been slain as retaliation for Dowdall’s similar violation of the surrender terms and massacre of Clan Maguire’s defenders of the castle and their families in the year before.
seamus dubhghaill 