The train is returning from Belfast, where King George V has just opened the first Parliament of Northern Ireland on June 22. It is part of a heavy security escort for the King, including the 10th Royal Hussars (machine gun troop) and their horses, who have been stationed at the Curragh in County Meath. Three special trains have been arranged to bring them back to Dublin, but the third is attacked.
The IRA plants a mine or detonates a bomb that partially derails the train a mile north of Adavoyle Station, between Newry and Dundalk. The derailment causes ten carriages to be thrown across an embankment, killing and injuring many soldiers and horses.
At least three British soldiers are killed (including a sergeant and a private) and twenty are wounded, some of whom later die from their injuries. The train guard, Frank Gallagher, is killed and two other railway officials are seriously injured. Reports vary about the number of horses killed. Some say over 40 horses are killed while others claim as many as 100. Many horses are shot to prevent them from being captured or causing further casualties. Soldiers reportedly weep for their dead horses, as they had served together in World War I. A local farmer and a train guard are also shot dead in the aftermath.
The attack causes an outcry in Britain, highlighting the IRA’s ability to strike high-profile military convoys. The incident underscores the vulnerability of British forces returning from political events in Ireland and is one of several such attacks during the War of Independence.
The Adavoyle ambush is remembered as a symbolic and brutal act in the conflict, combining military casualties with the killing of animals that have been comrades in war. It also illustrates the IRA’s use of railways as a strategic target during the campaign.
Today, the Adavoyle railway station is in ruins, though the Belfast-Dublin line still passes the site.
Currie becomes an active member in the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). He later speaks about the effect of partition on Catholics in Northern Ireland: “Partition was used to try to cut us off from the rest of the Irish nation. Unionists did their best to stamp out our nationalism and, the educational system, to the extent it could organise it, was oriented to Britain and we were not even allowed to use names such as Séamus or Seán. When my brothers’ godparents went to register their birth, they were told no such names as Séamus or Seán existed in Northern Ireland and were asked for the English equivalent.”
Currie contests the 1979 United Kingdom general election and 1986 by-election in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone seat, but is unsuccessful on both attempts. He also is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly in 1982 for the same seat. That Assembly, which is an attempt by the Government of the United Kingdom to reintroduce devolved power-sharing, collapses in 1986 without executive ministerial functions ever being transferred to it from the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland as no political agreement can be reached on power-sharing between the parties owing to nationalists abstentionism over the constituency boundaries used to elect members, and unionist opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.
Following his decision to quit Northern Ireland politics, and relocate his family to County Kildare, Currie becomes actively involved in politics in the Republic of Ireland. Partly due to his long-standing doubts about the commitment of politicians in the Republic to the plight of northern nationalists, he join the Fine Gael party in 1989. He is elected as a Fine Gael TD for Dublin West at the 1989 Irish general election.
In 1990, Fine Gael selects Currie as their candidate for the 1990 Irish presidential election, running against Tánaiste and Fianna Fáil TD, Brian Lenihan Sr, and Senator Mary Robinson for the Labour Party. The 1990 election is the first contested election for the Irish Presidency in 17 years. Currie receives 267,902 first-preference votes (approximately 17%) and is eliminated on the first count. The distribution of his votes sees Mary Robinson elected as Ireland’s first female president on the second count, beating Lenihan by more than 86,000 votes.
In his 2004 autobiography All Hell will Break Loose, Currie writes about his experience of running in the presidential election, and the prejudice he faced as a nationalist from Ulster in southern politics: “What annoyed, indeed angered me most was the suggestion that because I came from the North, I was not a real Irishman … what I called the partitionist mentality … [during the election campaign] the [then Fianna Fáil] Minister for Justice [Ray Burke] said Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes ‘had to go to Tyrone to find a candidate for the presidency’ … it was hard to take, particularly from so-called republicans.”
Following his defeat in the presidential election, Currie holds his Dáil seat in Dublin West at the 1992 and 1997 Irish general elections. Following the formation of the so-called Rainbow Coalition between Fine Gael, Labour and Democratic Left, on December 20, 1994, newly appointed TaoiseachJohn Bruton appoints him as a Minister of State with responsibility for Children’s Rights at the Departments of Health, Education and Justice, becoming the first ever minister in an Irish Government with dedicated responsibility for children. He holds this post until the appointment of a new Irish Government on June 26, 1997, following the 1997 Irish general election.
At the 2002 Irish general election Currie contests the new constituency of Dublin Mid-West, and fails to be elected. He immediately announces his retirement from electoral politics. He continues to speak and campaign for civil rights across the island of Ireland and for causes he believes in, such as justice for the families of the Disappeared during the Troubles. He and his wife and family are personal friends of the family of one of the Disappeared, Columba McVeigh, from Donaghmore, County Tyrone. His daughter Emer Currie is elected in his former constituency of Dublin West at the 2024 Irish general election.
Following the deaths of Seamus Mallon and John Hume in January and August 2020 respectively, Currie becomes the last surviving founder of the SDLP.
Currie dies on November 9, 2021, at the age of 82 at his residence in Derrymullen, County Kildare. Following an initial funeral mass in Allentown, County Kildare, his remains are transferred to his original family home in Edendork, near Dungannon, County Tyrone, where a second funeral mass was celebrated at St. Malachy’s Church, Edendork. He is buried alongside his parents in the cemetery adjoining the church.
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.”
MacNeill is one of five children born to Archibald McNeill, a Roman Catholic working-class baker, sailor and merchant, and his wife, Rosetta McNeill (née McAuley), also a Catholic. He is raised in Glenarm, an area which “still retained some Irish-language traditions.” His niece is nationalist and teacher, Máirín Beaumont.
MacNeill marries Agnes Moore on April 19, 1898. The couple has eight children, four sons and four daughters (though the 1911 census entry for MacNeill notes eleven children, seven of whom are still alive).
The Gaelic League is from the start strictly non-political, but in 1915, a proposal is put forward to abandon that policy and become a semi-political organisation. MacNeill strongly supports this and rallies to his side a majority of delegates at the 1915 Oireachtas. Douglas Hyde, a non-political Protestant, who had co-founded the League and been its president for 22 years, resigns immediately afterward.
Through the Gaelic League, MacNeill meets members of Sinn Féin, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), and other nationalists and republicans. One such colleague, The O’Rahilly, runs the league’s newspaper An Claidheamh Soluis, and in October 1913 asks MacNeill to write an editorial for it on a subject broader than Irish language issues. He submits a piece called “The North Began,” encouraging the formation of a nationalist volunteer force committed to Irish Home Rule, much as the unionists had done earlier in the year with the Ulster Volunteers to thwart Home Rule in Ireland. In July 1915, he comments on the threat that the unarmed nationalists in Ulster might face: “…a demented…English driven Orange Army would be let loose upon the helpless Catholic people of Ulster, who would be driven out of the province or massacred where they stood.”
Bulmer Hobson, a member of the IRB, approaches MacNeill about bringing the idea to fruition, and, through a series of meetings, MacNeill becomes chair of the council that forms the Irish Volunteers, later becoming its chief of staff. Unlike the IRB, he is opposed to the idea of an armed rebellion, except in resisting any suppression of the Volunteers, seeing little hope of success in open battle against the British army.
The Irish Volunteers have been infiltrated by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which plan on using the organisation to stage an armed rebellion, to separate Ireland from the United Kingdom and establishing an Irish Republic. The entry of the UK into World War I is, in their view, a perfect opportunity to do that. With the cooperation of James Connolly and the Irish Citizen Army, a secret council of IRB officials plan a general rising at Easter 1916. On the Wednesday before Easter, they present MacNeill with a letter, allegedly stolen from high-ranking British staff in Dublin Castle, indicating that the British are going to arrest him and all the other nationalist leaders. Unbeknownst to MacNeill, the letter—called the Castle Document—is a forgery.
When MacNeill learns about the IRB’s plans, and when he is informed that Roger Casement is about to land in County Kerry with a shipment of German arms, he is reluctantly persuaded to go along with them, believing British action is now imminent and that mobilization of the Irish Volunteers will be justified as a defensive act. However, after learning that the German arms shipment has been intercepted and Casement arrested, and having confronted Patrick Pearse, who refuses to relent, MacNeill countermands the order for the Rising by sending written messages to leaders around the country, and placing a notice in the Sunday Independent cancelling the planned “manoeuvres.” This greatly reduces the number of volunteers who report for duty on the day of the Easter Rising.
Pearse, Connolly and the others agree that the uprising will go ahead anyway, but it begins one day later than originally intended to ensure that the authorities are taken by surprise. Beginning on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, the Rising lasts less than a week. After the surrender of the rebels, MacNeill is arrested although he has taken no part in the insurrection. The rebel leader Tom Clarke, according to his wife Kathleen, warns her on the day before his execution, “I want you to see to it that our people know of his treachery to us. He must never be allowed back into the National life of this country, for so sure as he is, so sure will he act treacherously in a crisis. He is a weak man, but I know every effort will be made to whitewash him.”
In 1923, MacNeill, a committed internationalist, is also a key member of the diplomatic team that oversees Ireland’s entry to the League of Nations.
MacNeill’s family is split on the treaty issue. One son, Brian, takes the anti-Treaty side and is killed in disputed circumstances near Sligo by Free State troops during the Irish Civil War in September 1922. Two other sons, Niall and Turloch, as well as nephew Hugo MacNeill, serve as officers in the Free State Army. One of his brothers, James McNeill, is the second and penultimate Governor-General of the Irish Free State.
In 1924, the three-man Irish Boundary Commission is set up to settle the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State. MacNeill represents the Irish Free State. He is the only member of the Commission without legal training and has been described as being “pathetically out of his depth.” However, each of the Commissioners is selected out of political expediency rather than for any established competence or insight into boundary making. On November 7, 1925, a conservative British newspaper, The Morning Post, publishes a leaked map showing a part of eastern County Donegal (mainly The Laggan district) that is to be transferred to Northern Ireland, the opposite of the main aims of the commission. Perhaps embarrassed by that, especially since he said that it had declined to respect the terms of the Treaty, MacNeill resigns from the commission on November 20. Hus performance in the Boundary Commission has been deemed highly negative in a 2025 study The Root of All Evil: The Irish Boundary Commission.
On November 24, 1925, MacNeill also resign as Minister for Education, a position unrelated to his work on the commission.
On December 3, 1925, the Free State government agrees with the governments in London and Belfast to end its onerous treaty requirement to pay its share of the United Kingdom’s “imperial debt” and, in exchange, agrees that the 1920 boundary will remain as it is, overriding the commission. This angers many nationalists and MacNeill is the subject of much criticism, but in reality, he and the commission have been sidestepped by the intergovernmental debt renegotiation. In any case, despite his resignations, the intergovernmental boundary deal is approved by a Dáil vote of 71–20 on December 10, 1925, and MacNeill is listed as voting with the majority in favour. He loses his Dáil seat at the June 1927 Irish general election.
MacNeill is an important scholar of Irish history and among the first to study Early Irish law, offering both his interpretations, which at times are coloured by his nationalism, and translations into English. He is also the first to uncover the nature of succession in Irish kingship, and his theories are the foundation for modern ideas on the subject.
MacNeill is a contributor to the Royal Irish Academy‘s Clare Island Survey, recording the Irish place names of the island. His disagreements and disputes with Goddard Henry Orpen, particularly over the latter’s book Ireland under the Normans, generate controversy.
MacNeill retires from politics completely and becomes Chair of the Irish Manuscripts Commission. In his later years he devotes his life to scholarship and publishes several books on Irish history. He dies in Dublin of natural causes, aged 78, on October 15, 1945. He is buried in Kilbarrack Cemetery.
John William Nixon, MBE, a unionistpolitician and police leader in Northern Ireland, dies on May 11, 1949, at his home in Woodvale House, Ballygomartin Road, Belfast. He is allegedly responsible for several sectarian atrocities, including the McMahon killings and the Arnon Street killings. Eyewitnesses to the Arnon street killings claim they can identify the police involved and allege that their leader is District Inspector Nixon. It is widely believed that Nixon’s “murder gang” within the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) hunted down and murdered Catholics as reprisals for the killing of police.
Nixon is born on June 1, 1877, in Graddum, a townland located between the village of Kilnaleck and the hamlet of Crosskeys in County Cavan. He becomes a district inspector in the RIC, and transfers to its successor in the newly created region of Northern Ireland, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). By 1922, he is responsible for controlling access to the Roman Catholic Ardoyne and Marrowbone areas of Belfast, and works closely with the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC).
Irish nationalist writer and activist Michael Farrell alleges that during this period Nixon leads the Cromwell Club, an unofficial organisation of security officials responsible for killing several Catholic civilians. These allegations are not independently confirmed and during his lifetime Nixon successfully sues the Derry Journal and a book publisher for libel. He is appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1923 “… for services rendered by him during the troubled period.”
In 1924, Nixon, long a member of the Orange Order, makes a political speech at an Orange lodge. This contravenes RUC regulations, and he is dismissed on the orders of Sir James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
Nixon holds his seat until his death on May 11, 1949, at home in Woodvale House, Ballygomartin Road, Belfast. He denies the murder allegations against him until the end of his life.
(Pictured: Captain John William Nixon (right) with Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Craig and Colonel Spencer, attending a conference with Michael Collins at City Hall, Dublin in February 1922)
Shillington originally plans to join the Northern Ireland Civil Service, however he wants a more varied career. He joins the Royal Ulster Constabulary on February 8, 1933, as a cadet officer. He completes his training at the Newtownards depot in County Down. He is promoted to district inspector in 1935, and serves as officer in charge of D District in Belfast. In 1944, he is promoted to 1st Class District Inspector and is posted to Derry, County Londonderry.
In 1953, after nine years in Derry, Shillington is promoted to County Inspector and returns to Belfast. There, he joins the Inspector General’s Headquarters and serves in an administrative post. On January 16, 1961, he is appointed Commissioner of Belfast City.
In 1969, Shillington is appointed Deputy Inspector-General of the RUC, as second-in-command to the Inspector-General, Anthony Peacocke, who, like Shillington, had been educated at Sedbergh and Cambridge. When the Battle of the Bogside breaks out in Derry in August 1969, he requests permission to use CS gas for the first time in the United Kingdom. When that does not halt the rioting, he requests that the British Army be brought in. He telephones Peacocke on August 13 in order to persuade him of this. Peacocke, who has long denied the need for army involvement, eventually agrees, but his reputation never recovers and following the publication of the Hunt Report in October he resigns as Inspector-General.
Shortly thereafter, Sir Arthur Young is seconded from the City of London Police to be the last Inspector-General and the first Chief Constable of the RUC. James Callaghan, then Home Secretary, sends him to implement the Hunt Report. Young’s measures introduce the standard British rank system for police officers in Northern Ireland and disbands the Ulster Special Constabulary (USC). Shillington remains as Young’s deputy, and when the latter returns to the mainland in 1970 he succeeds him to become the RUC’s second Chief Constable.
Shillington marries Mary (Peggy) Bulloch in 1935. They have two sons and a daughter. He dies on August 14, 2001, at the age of 90, in a County Armagh nursing home.
In 1924, James Clark Snr. changes the family name to Chichester-Clark by deed poll, thus preventing the old Protestant Ascendancy name Chichester, his wife’s maiden name, from dying out. On his mother’s side the family are descended from the Donegall Chichesters and are the heirs of the Dawsons of Castledawson, who had originally held Moyola Park.
Chichester-Clark marries widow Moyra Haughton (née Morris) in 1959. Lady Moyola’s first husband, Capt. Thomas Haughton from Cullybackey, had been killed in the RAF Nutts Corner air crash in January 1953. She, while pregnant, is seriously injured in the crash and suffers a broken neck. He and his wife have two daughters (Tara and Fiona), in addition to Moyra’s son Michael from her previous marriage. Lady Moyola is a cousin of Colonel Sir Michael McCorkell, Lord Lieutenant of County Londonderry (1975–2000). Chichester-Clark serves as his Vice Lord-Lieutenant.
Chichester-Clark is an officer in the 1st Battalion, Irish Guards, part of 24th Infantry Brigade attached to British 1st Infantry Division, and participates briefly in the Anzio landings. He is injured on February 23, 1944, by an 88m shell as he and his Platoon Sergeant take their first look at the ground in the “gullies” to the west of the Anzio–Albano Laziale road. His company is all but wiped out, and he spends most of the war in hospital recovering from injuries, the effects of which stay with him throughout his life.
Following the war, Chichester-Clark’s military career takes him from the dull duties of the post-war occupation of Germany, to Canada as aide-de-camp to Harold Alexander, 1st Earl Alexander of Tunis, then Governor General of Canada. The popularity and competence of his senior officer makes this uneventful two-year period of his life the most remarkable element of his pre-parliamentary career. On returning from Canada, he continues in the Army for several years, refusing promotion to seniority before retiring a major in 1960.
In an uncontested by-election in 1960, Chichester-Clark takes over the South Londonderry seat in the Northern Ireland Parliament that had been held by his grandmother, Dame Dehra Parker, since 1933. As Dehra Chichester, she is an MP for the county of Londonderry until 1929 when she stands down for a first time. Chichester-Clark’s father replaces her in 1929 when the county is split, but he suddenly dies in 1933. Dehra, by then remarried, willingly returns to Northern Ireland from England, and wins the ensuing by-election.
Chichester-Clark retains the seat for the remainder of the Parliament’s existence, and so the South Londonderry area is represented by three generations of the same family for the entire period of the Northern Ireland House of Commons. Between 1929 and the last election in 1969, the family is challenged for the seat on only two occasions, the second being in 1969, when future Westminster MP Bernadette Devlin stands, attracting 39% of the vote.
Chichester-Clark makes his maiden speech on February 8, 1961, during the Queen’s speech debate.
For the remainder of Basil Brooke, 1st Viscount Brookeborough‘s premiership, Chichester-Clark remains on the back benches. It is not until 1963, when Terence O’Neill becomes Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, that he is appointed assistant whip, and a month later when William Craig is promoted to the Ministry of Home Affairs, he takes over as Government Chief Whip. Accounts of the period are that he enjoys the Whip’s office more than any other he is to subsequently hold in politics. This despite including references to anti O’Neill MP and future Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) Westminster MP, John McQuade, and the occasional “good row.” From the outset, O’Neill takes the unusual decision to allow Chichester-Clark to attend and speak at all cabinet meetings while Chief Whip. Proving a competent parliamentary party administrator, O’Neill adds Leader of the House of Commons to Chichester-Clark’s duties in October 1966, a promotion that makes him a full member of the Cabinet. He is also sworn into the Privy Council of Northern Ireland in 1966.
In 1967, O’Neill sacks his Minister of Agriculture, Harry West, for ministerial impropriety, and Chichester-Clark is appointed in his place, a position he retains for two quiet years. On April 23, 1969, he resigns from the Cabinet one day prior to a crucial Parliamentary Party meeting, claiming that he disagrees with the Prime Minister’s decision to grant universal suffrage in local government elections at that time. He states that he disagrees not with the principle of one man one vote but with the timing of the decision, having the previous day expressed doubts over the expediency of the measure in Cabinet. It has since been suggested that his resignation was in order to accelerate O’Neill’s own resignation, and to improve his own position in the jostling to succeed him.
O’Neill “finally walked away” five days later on April 28, 1969. In order to beat his only serious rival, Brian Faulkner, Chichester-Clark needs the backing of O’Neill-ite MPs elected at the 1969 Northern Ireland general election, to which end he attends a tea party in O’Neill’s honour only days after causing his resignation.
Chichester-Clark beats Faulkner in the 1969 Ulster Unionist Party leadership election by one vote on May 1, 1969, with his predecessor using his casting vote in the tied election for his distant cousin because “Faulkner had been stabbing him in the back for a lot longer.” Although Faulkner believes, until his death, that he is the victim of an upper-class conspiracy to deny him the premiership, he becomes a high profile and loyal member of Chichester-Clark’s cabinet.
Chichester-Clark’s premiership is punctuated by civil unrest that erupts after August 1969. He suffers from the effects of the Hunt Report, which recommends the disbandment of the Ulster Special Constabulary, which his Government accepts to the consternation of many Unionists.
In April 1970, Chichester-Clark’s predecessor and another Unionist MP resign their seats in the Northern Ireland House of Commons. The by-election campaigns are punctuated by major liberal speeches by senior government figures like Brian Faulkner, Jack Andrews and the Prime Minister himself. Ian Paisley‘s Protestant Unionist Party (PUP), however, takes both seats in the House of Commons. Later that same month the O’Neill-ite group, the New Ulster Movement, becomes the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland, and his party begins passing votes of no confidence in him.
As the civil unrest grows, the British Government, particularly the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, becomes increasingly involved in Northern Ireland’s affairs, forcing Chichester-Clark’s hand on many issues. These include the disbanding of the “B” Specials of the Ulster Special Constabulary and, importantly, the handing over of operational control of the security forces to the British ArmyGeneral Officer Commanding Northern Ireland.
On March 9, 1971, the Provisional Irish Republican Army lures three off-duty soldiers from a pub in Belfast to a lane way outside the city, where they kill them. Chichester-Clark flies to London on March 18, 1971, to request a new security initiative from the new British prime ministerEdward Heath, who offers an extra 1,300 troops, and resists what he sees as an attempt by Chichester-Clark to gain political control over them. Chichester-Clark resigns on March 20.
On March 23, 1971, Brian Faulkner is elected UUP leader in a vote by Unionist MP’s, defeating William Craig by twenty-six votes to four. He is appointed prime minister the same day.
On July 20, 1971, Chichester-Clark is created a life peer as Baron Moyola, of Castledawson in the County of Londonderry, his title taken from the name of his family’s estate. He endorses the Good Friday Agreement in the 1998 Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement referendum. He remains quiet about his political career in his retirement. Lady Moyola, however, says that her husband does enjoy the time – contrary to popular opinion – and that he thinks of life as an MP as akin to that of an army welfare officer.
Chichester Clark dies on May 17, 2002, at the age of 79, following a short illness. His funeral takes place at Christ Church in Castledawson on May 21. He is the last surviving Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
Conor is born on May 9, 1881, in Fortingale Street, Belfast, the third son and fourth child of William Connor, a tinsmith and sheet metal worker, who later becomes a gas fitter, and Mary Connor (née Wallace). He is educated at the Clifton Park central national school, where his artistic abilities are noticed by his music teacher. In 1894, he enrolls at the Belfast government school of design. He is a very successful student, and by 1903 has become an assistant teacher. He completes his studies in 1904, and begins an apprenticeship with the Belfast firm of lithographers, David Allen and Son. Through his work in the poster design department he develops an enthusiasm for using crayons on a textured surface. This becomes a characteristic feature of his later drawings. In these early years he first starts recording images of Belfast life, often sketched from behind a folded newspaper in the street. Influenced by the Gaelic revival, in the years 1907–9 he signs his name in several different ways such as “Liam” and “Liam Conor.” In later years he signs himself simply “Conor.”
Having abandoned his career as a lithographer around 1910, Conor concentrates his efforts on painting professionally. He begins exhibiting with the Belfast Art Society in 1910, and in the period that follows he spends time in Craigavad, County Down, the Blasket Islands in County Kerry, Dublin, and Donegal. During a visit to Paris, which he later recalls as being in 1912 and 1913, he meets the painter André Lhote. After his return to Belfast he is elected to the committee of the Belfast Art Society in 1913. On the outbreak of World War I, he is commissioned by the British government to record the everyday activities of munitions workers and soldiers in Ulster. His pictures mostly show soldiers in training and various scenes from the home front, including the work of women in munitions factories and hospitals. Described as “vigorous and personable, if rather folksy . . . effectively uniformed versions of the tinkers and shipyard workers for which he subsequently became known,” these paintings are exhibited and subsequently, in 1916, auctioned for the Ulster Volunteer Patriotic Fund. His long association with the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) begins in 1918 and he shows up to 200 works at the academy over the next forty-nine years.
In 1921, Conor moves to London, where he becomes acquainted with, among others, Sir William Orpen, Sir John Lavery, and Augustus John. He becomes a member of the Chelsea Arts Club, and contributes four paintings to the National Portrait Society as part of its spring exhibition in 1921. His friendship with Lavery is significant. Through him Conor receives a commission to paint the opening of the first Northern Ireland parliament in June 1921. He goes on to exhibit with a variety of influential bodies, including the Royal Academy of Arts, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. In 1922, The Twelfth, executed c.1918, is shown in the Galerie Barbazanges in Paris, under the title Le cortège Orangiste à Belfast, as part of the World Congress of the Irish Race. He is represented at the Paris salon in 1923 and the following year he has a successful exhibition at the St. Stephen’s Green Gallery, Dublin.
In 1926, Conor travels to Philadelphia and New York, where, during his nine-month stay, he receives numerous commissions for portraits and has work shown in the Babcock Galleries, the Brooklyn Art Gallery, and the American Irish Historical Society. In 1932, he designs the costumes for the principals in the Pageant of St. Patrick, which marks the 1,500th anniversary of the saint’s coming to Ireland. That year also sees the unveiling of his muralUlster Past and Present at the Belfast Municipal Museum and Art Gallery. Measuring 2.8 by 7.4 metres, it is at the time the largest mural in the country. During World War II he is again appointed an official war artist and his work is represented at the exhibition of war artists at the National Gallery, London, in 1941. His book The Irish Scene is published in 1944, and though it sells well, the subsequent bankruptcy of his publishers mean that Conor receives no royalties. He also provides the illustrations for books by Lynn C. Doyle, the pseudonym of his friend Leslie Montgomery.
Although Conor is best known for his depictions of the everyday life of people in his native Belfast, in which he attempts to capture the “flash of humour which lightens their daily toil,” he also produces landscapes and portraits. His sitters included Douglas Hyde, St. John Greer Ervine, Charles D’Arcy, and Charles Vane-Tempest-Stewart, 7th Marquess of Londonderry. The Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts organises several successful Conor exhibitions. Their one-man show of 1945 becomes the first to tour the province, while their exhibition of his work in 1954 has an attendance in excess of 2,800. Conor closes his long-established studio on Stranmillis Road in 1960 but continuea to exhibit, notably with the Bell Gallery in 1964, 1966, and 1967.
(From: “Conor, William” by Frances Clarke, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: “William Conor,” oil on canvas by Gladys Maccabe, Ulster Folk Museum)
Discontented with James Chichester-Clark and Brian Faulkner who come to government after O’Neill’s 1969 fall from power, Boal resigns from the UUP in 1971 and joins Ian Paisley in establishing the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in order to provide dissident unionist opinion with a viable political alternative. He works as the first chairman and one of the first public representatives of the DUP and continues to sit in Stormont during the years of 1971–1972. He later resumes his practice as a barrister.
While Boal’s interest in federalism diminishes after the 1970s, the federalist Boal scheme of January 1974 is again put forward by liberal protestants such as John Robb as late as 2007. His friendship with Paisley finally breaks when the DUP agrees to enter government with Sinn Féin in 2007. He tells Paisley, who takes the breach very hard, that he had betrayed everything he ever advocated.
Kilfedder leaves the UUP in 1977 in opposition to the party’s policies tending to integrationism, preferring to advocate the restoration of the Stormont administration. For a time he sits as an “Independent Ulster Unionist.” He contests the 1979 European Parliament election under that label, finishing fourth in the count for the three seats, having overtaken the UUP leader Harry West on transfers.
On March 20, 1995, while traveling by train into London from Gatwick Airport, Kilfedder dies of a heart attack. This is the same day that the Belfast Telegraph carries a front-page story saying that an Ulster MP has been targeted as one of twenty MPs invited by the LGBT rights organisation OutRage! in a letter to come out. He dies unmarried and is survived by two sisters.
seamus dubhghaill 