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Death of Joseph MacDonagh, Politician & Businessman

Joseph MacDonagh, politician and businessman, dies in Dublin while on hunger strike, from the effects of a burst appendix, on December 25, 1922.

MacDonagh is born on May 18, 1883, in Cloughjordan, County Tipperary, the youngest of six surviving children (four sons and two daughters) of Joseph MacDonagh, native of Roosky, County Roscommon, and Mary MacDonagh (née Parker), a Dublin native, both of whom are national school teachers. He is educated in his father’s school in Cloughjordan, and at Rockwell College, Cashel, County Tipperary. Prior to the execution of his eldest brother, Thomas MacDonagh, one of the signatories of the Easter 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic, he seems to have had no involvement in politics but works as a customs-and-excise officer with Inland Revenue in Thurles, County Tipperary. Interned after the rising entirely due to his kinship with one of the insurgent leaders, he is compelled to retire from the civil service.

Moving to Dublin by September 1916, MacDonagh is headmaster for a time of Patrick Pearse‘s St. Enda’s School, the bilingual school where his brother Thomas had formerly served on the staff under Pearse, which had reopened after the rising in Cullenswood House, Oakley Road, Rathmines. By 1918 he is in private practice as an income tax recovery expert. He later quips that by recovering thousands of pounds annually for clients, he has done greater harm to the British government than any other Irishman. He is also partner by 1919 in an insurance brokerage with fellow Sinn Féin TD William Cosgrave. Following Cosgrave’s departure, the firm trades from 1920 as MacDonagh & Boland, with offices first on Dame Street, and latterly on College Green.

MacDonagh’s prominence in the post-1916 reorganisation of Sinn Féin commences at the April 19, 1917, convention of advanced nationalists summoned by George Noble Plunkett after his parliamentary by-election victory. MacDonagh makes a resounding speech ratifying Plunkett’s determination not only to abstain from attendance at Westminster, but also to affirm the principles of the republican Easter Week proclamation rather than the dual-monarchy programme of Sinn Féin under Arthur Griffith. After campaigning vigorously on behalf of the successful by-election candidacy of Éamon de Valera in East Clare, he is arrested on August 30 and sentenced to six-months’ imprisonment for making a seditious speech. He joins in the hunger strike of republican prisoners seeking prisoner-of-war status in Mountjoy Gaol, on which Thomas Ashe dies on September 25 after enduring forcible feeding. Released with the other surviving strikers, he is a principal witness at the emotional inquest into the circumstances of Ashe’s death.

Elected to the Sinn Féin executive at the October 1917 ardfheis, at which the party adopts a republican constitution, MacDonagh is alternately rearrested and released on several occasions under the “cat-and-mouse act,” enduring further hunger strikes in both Belfast and Dundalk jails, before serving out in its entirety the original six-month sentence (1917–18). After deportation to England and while incarcerated in Reading Gaol, he is returned unopposed in the 1918 United Kingdom general election in Ireland as Sinn Féin candidate in North Tipperary and is released in time to attend the second session of the first Dáil Éireann on April 10, 1919. With the Dáil driven underground in September 1919 after its proscription, he protests against the infrequency of sessions, querying whether “private members [were] to abstain from Dublin as well as Westminster.”

Elected in January 1920 to both Dublin Corporation and Rathmines town council, MacDonagh concentrates his political energies on local government until appointment in January 1921 as acting Dáil Minister for Labour, and director of the Belfast boycott. Exercising effective authority over the labour department because of the imprisonment of the minister, Constance Markievicz, he seeks to define a comprehensive industrial and economic strategy and establishes a labour commission to formulate proposals. The resultant radical plan for supplanting capitalist ownership by developing cooperative and distributive industrial structures is ignored by his cabinet colleagues. His organisation and enforcement of the Belfast boycott – a response to the anti-Catholic rioting of July 1920, and expulsion of workers from jobs and families from homes – is relentless and efficient. He appoints a team of boycott organisers and local boycott committees empowered to impose fines and to seize goods, and blacklists firms that are facilitating circumvention of the boycott by trans-shipment of Belfast goods through non-boycotted northern towns or through British ports.

Throughout the Irish War of Independence MacDonagh is constantly on the run, usually under disguise as a priest, and is imprisoned for a time in Mountjoy Gaol in 1920. One of four Sinn Féin candidates returned unopposed to the Second Dáil for Tipperary Mid, North, and South, after a cabinet reorganisation in August 1921 following the truce, he remains as boycott director but is removed from the Labour Department. Bitterly opposed to the Anglo–Irish Treaty, in the Dáil debates he responds to Griffith’s assertion that the agreement is indeed a treaty concluded between two sovereign nations by asking why the pro-Treatyites are conducting the sovereign Irish nation into the British empire, and whether they are doing so “with their heads up or their hands up.”

Manager of the anti-Treaty bulletin Poblacht na hÉireann, in the 1922 Irish general election MacDonagh is returned on the first count to the third seat in his constituency. Arrested soon after the outbreak of the Irish Civil War, he escapes from Portobello military barracks. Rearrested on September 30 and imprisoned in Mountjoy Gaol, he falls seriously ill with acute appendicitis but refuses to sign the required form to secure release for medical treatment because it implicitly recognises the legitimacy of the Free State government. Transferred at length to the Mater Misericordiae private nursing home, he undergoes an operation, but two days later, having developed peritonitis, he dies on December 25, 1922. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery.

A small, supple man with alert blue eyes, MacDonagh wielded a swift and stinging tongue in debate. It is said that he indulged his caustic wit more for the delight in the bon mot than for the bitterness of the invective. Genial in company, with a store of amusing anecdote, he was celebrated for hearty humour even in the face of hardship and danger. On a prison sickbed days before his death, he referred to another inmate, bald-headed like himself, “who wears his hair like mine.” In 1913, he married Margaret O’Toole of Dublin. They had one daughter and two sons. They resided in Rathmines, first at 86 Moyne Road, before moving during 1922 to 9 Palmerston Road.

(From: “MacDonagh, Joseph” by Lawrence William White, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Birth of Joe Clarke, Irish Republican Politician

Joseph Christopher Clarke (Irish: Seosamh Ó Clérigh), Irish republican politician, is born on December 22, 1882, in Rush, Dublin.

Clarke is the son of William Clarke, merchant seaman, and Margaret Clarke (née Austin). Educated locally, he leaves school at the age of eleven and begins work as a kitchen porter, later becoming a boot-shop assistant, a harness maker and a van driver. Influenced by a series of lectures at the Oliver Bond Club, Parnell Square, and by the writings of Arthur Griffith, he commits himself to the republican cause, joining the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in 1913 and subsequently the Irish Volunteers.

Clarke works for the Sinn Féin Bank and is active in the 1916 Easter Rising. On Easter Monday morning, on April 24, 1916, he is one of thirteen volunteers who hold the Mount Street Bridge for nine hours against the overwhelming forces of the Sherwood Foresters regiment of the British Army. When captured, he is shot in the head, but survives, and is instead imprisoned in Liverpool Prison, Wakefield Prison and then Frongoch internment camp.

On his return to Ireland, Clarke acts as the courier for the First Dáil and serves as an usher at the first meeting of the First Dáil. He is interned from January 1921. Released in 1923, he acts as caretaker of the Sinn Féin headquarters on Harcourt Street and founds the Irish Book Bureau. Although the Anti-Treaty Sinn Féin rejects participation in the Dáil, they continue to contest local elections, and Clarke sits on Dublin City Council.

Although jailed many times between 1922 and 1940, Clarke remains an active republican campaigner, supporting the Irish Republican Army (IRA) initiatives of the 1940s and 1950s, taking a prominent role at republican meetings, and publicising the conditions of republican prisoners.

Clarke is a founder member of Comhairle na Poblachta in 1929. In 1937, he works with Brian O’Higgins to establish the Wolfe Tone Weekly as a light-hearted party newspaper. In August 1939, he is interned at Arbour Hill Prison, then later at Cork County Jail.

Although Clarke had served under Éamon de Valera during the Easter Rising, the two become implacable opponents. He is ejected from an official commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the First Dáil for interrupting de Valera’s speech in order to raise the complaints of the Dublin Housing Action Committee (DHAC). He vows to outlive de Valera and succeeds in this endeavour by outliving him a year.

Clarke is elected as a Vice-President of Sinn Féin in 1966. In the split of 1970, he supports the provisional wing, remaining Vice-President. In 1973 he is deported from Britain upon his arrival at Heathrow Airport.

Despite crippling arthritis, Clarke continues his work, refusing an IRA pension as he considers himself still on active service. He dies on April 22, 1976, at St. James’s Hospital, Dublin, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery close to the republican plot.

Clarke marries Anne, daughter of Thomas Hughes, sawyer, on July 25, 1909. They have two sons and one daughter. After her death, he marries Elizabeth Delaney on May 30, 1949.

The Dublin South West Inner City cumann of Sinn Féin is named for Clarke.

(Pictured: Joe Clarke selling Easter Lilies on Dublin’s O’Connell Street in 1966)


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Death of Henry Armstrong, Politician & Member of Parliament

Henry Bruce Wright Armstrong, Northern Irish barrister, politician and Unionist Member of Parliament (MP) for Mid Armagh from June 1921 until 1922, dies on December 4, 1943.

Born on July 27, 1844, at Hull House, Sholden, Kent, England, Armstrong is the second surviving son of William Jones Wright Armstrong, Justice of the Peace (JP), Deputy Lieutenant and High Sheriff of Armagh, and Frances Elizabeth, widow of Sir Michael McCreagh, and daughter of Major Christopher Wilson. He is educated at The Royal School, Armagh, and Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining a BA (2nd Class Law Tripos) in 1867 and an MA in 1870. He is called to the English bar (Inner Temple) in 1868. He practises in England for four years. During this period, he also travels widely in Europe, the East, and the Far East, witnessing the last of the German army leave France after the Franco–Prussian War (1870–71) and acting as a copy carrier for The Daily News while in Metz in 1873.

Known principally for his contribution to Ulster politics at local level, Armstrong serves as JP and is appointed High Sheriff of Armagh for 1875 and High Sheriff of Longford for 1894. He is a County Councillor for Armagh from 1899 to 1920, and a Member of the Irish Convention in 1917–18. Vice-Lieutenant of County Armagh in 1920, he is a Senator of Queen’s University Belfast from 1920 to 1937.

Armstrong is returned unopposed to the Imperial House of Commons for Mid-Armagh in the 1921 Mid Armagh by-election, at the advanced age of 76, becoming one of the oldest first-time MPs whose birth date is recorded. Certainly, he immediately becomes the oldest member of the current House of Commons. He is a Senator of Northern Ireland from 1921 to 1937, and Lord Lieutenant of Armagh from 1924 to 1939. For twenty-five years he is a member of the Representative Body of the Church of Ireland. He is Chairman of the County Armagh Education Committee from 1925 to 1931, and President of the Association of Education Committees of Northern Ireland. In 1932, he is made a Privy Councillor for Northern Ireland, and in 1938 he serves as a Justice for the Government of Northern Ireland in the absence of the Governor.

In his later years, Armstrong provides financial support for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe.

In 1883, Armstrong marries Margaret Leader, daughter of William Leader of Rosnalea, County Cork. They have five sons and three daughters, of whom C. W. Armstrong also becomes a politician.

Armstrong dies at his home in Dean’s Hill, Armagh, on December 4, 1943, at the age of 99 years.


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Birth of Raymond McCartney, Sinn Féin Politician & Provisional IRA Volunteer

Raymond McCartney, former Sinn Féin politician and former hunger striker and volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), is born on November 29, 1954, in Derry, County Derry, Northern Ireland.

McCartney takes part in the civil rights march in Derry on January 30, 1972, an event widely known as Bloody Sunday. One of his cousins, James Wray, is one of fourteen men shot and killed by the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment of the British Army on that march. As a result of this incident, he joins the Provisional IRA several months later. In 1974, Martin McGuinness, who commands the IRA in Derry, instructs him to beat up an Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) man, Patsy O’Hara, who McGuinness calls a “scumbag” and a “hood.” On January 12, 1979, at Belfast‘s Crown Court, he and another man, Eamonn MacDermott, are convicted of the murder of Detective Constable Patrick McNulty of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), who was shot several times outside a garage in Derry on January 27, 1977. He is also convicted of IRA membership and the murder of businessman Jeffery Agate in February 1977 and is sentenced to life imprisonment. The murder convictions are overturned in 2007.

While incarcerated at Long Kesh Detention Centre, McCartney is involved in the blanket and dirty protests, then takes part in the 1980 hunger strike, along with fellow IRA members Brendan Hughes, Tommy McKearney, Tom McFeely, Sean McKenna, Leo Green, and INLA member John Nixon.

McCartney spends 53 days on hunger strike, from October 27 to December 18. From 1989–91 he is Officer Commanding of the IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks and is released in 1994.

Following his release, McCartney is active with ex-prisoners’ groups Tar Abhaile and Coiste na n-Íarchimí, and is the first member of Sinn Féin to hear his own voice heard on television after the lifting of the British broadcasting ban in 1994. He is arrested on April 4, 2002, following a breach of security at Belfast’s police headquarters, but is released without charge the following day. Later that year, on September 5, he is the first former IRA member to appear before the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and encourages anyone with information, including paramilitaries, to come forward. He is a member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Foyle from July 15, 2004, until February 3, 2020.

On February 15, 2007, McCartney and MacDermott have their murder convictions quashed by the Court of Appeal, following an investigation by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) in 2002. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland declines to compensate McCartney and MacDermott on the grounds that they have not proven themselves innocent. The decision is appealed to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom which, in May 2011, finds in favour of the applicants, opening the way for a substantial compensation claim from both for their prison terms of 15 and 17 years.


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Death of W. T. Cosgrave, First President of the Free State Executive Council

William Thomas Cosgrave, Irish Fine Gael politician who serves as the first president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State (1922-32), dies in The Liberties, Dublin, on November 16, 1965. He also serves as Leader of the Opposition in both the Free State and Ireland (1932-44), Leader of Fine Gael (1934-44), founder and leader of Fine Gael’s predecessor, Cumann na nGaedheal (1923-33), Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State (August 1922-December 1922), the President of Dáil Éireann (September 1922-December 1922), the Minister for Finance (1922-23) and Minister for Local Government (1919-22). He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) (1921-44) and is a member of parliament (MP) for the North Kilkenny constituency (1918-22).

Cosgrave is born at 174 James’s Street, Dublin, on June 5, 1880, to Thomas Cosgrave, grocer, and Bridget Cosgrave (née Nixon). He is educated at the Christian Brothers School at Malahide Road, Marino, Dublin, before entering his father’s publican business. He first becomes politically active when he attends the first Sinn Féin convention in 1905.

At an early age, Cosgrave is attracted to the Irish nationalist party Sinn Féin. He becomes a member of the Dublin Corporation in 1909 and is subsequently reelected to represent Sinn Féin interests. He joins the Irish Volunteers in 1913, although he never joins the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) because he does not believe in secret societies. When the group splits in 1914 upon the outbreak of World War I, he sides with a radical Sinn Féin minority against the constitutional nationalists led by John Redmond, who supports the British war effort.

Cosgrave takes part in the 1916 Easter Rising and is afterward interned by the British for a short time. In 1917, he is elected to Parliament for the city of Kilkenny. In the sweeping election victory of Sinn Féin in the 1918 United Kingdom general election, he becomes a member of the First Dáil. He is made Minister for Local Government in the first republican ministry, and during the Irish War of Independence (1919–21) his task is to organize the refusal of local bodies to cooperate with the British in Dublin.

Cosgrave is a supporter of the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty settlement with Great Britain, and he becomes Minister of Local Government in Ireland’s provisional government of 1922. He replaces Michael Collins as Chairman of the Provisional Government when the latter becomes commander-in-chief of the National Army in July 1922. He also replaces Arthur Griffith as president of the Dáil after Griffith’s sudden death on August 12, 1922. As the first president of the Executive Council of the Irish Free State, he, who had helped found the political party Cumann na nGaedheal in April 1923 and became its leader, represents Ireland at the Imperial Conference in October 1923. A month earlier he is welcomed as Ireland’s first spokesman at the assembly of the League of Nations.

Cosgrave’s greatest achievement is to establish stable democratic government in Ireland after the Irish Civil War (1922–23). In the Dáil there is no serious opposition, since the party headed by Éamon de Valera, which refuses to take the oath prescribed in the treaty, abstains from attendance. But neither Cosgrave nor his ministry enjoy much popularity. Order requires drastic measures, and taxation is heavy and sharply collected. He seems sure of a long tenure only because there is no alternative in sight.

In July 1927, shortly after a general election, the assassination of Kevin O’Higgins, the vice president, produces a crisis. The Executive Council introduces a Public Safety Act, which legislates severely against political associations of an unconstitutional character and introduces a bill declaring that no candidature for the Dáil should be accepted unless the candidate declares willingness to take a seat in the Dáil and to take the oath of allegiance. The result of this measure is that de Valera and his party decide to attend sessions in the Dáil, and, since this greatly alters the parliamentary situation, Cosgrave obtains leave to dissolve the assembly and hold a general election. The September 1927 Irish general election leaves his party numerically the largest in the Dáil but without an overall majority. He continues in office until de Valera’s victory at the 1932 Irish general election. Cumann na nGaedheal joins with two smaller opposition parties in September 1933 to form a new party headed by Cosgrave, Fine Gael (“Irish Race”), which becomes Ireland’s main opposition party. In 1944 he resigns from the leadership of Fine Gael.

Cosgrave dies on November 16, 1965, at the age of 85. The Fianna Fáil government under Seán Lemass awards him the honour of a state funeral, which is attended by the Cabinet, the leaders of all the main Irish political parties, and Éamon de Valera, then President of Ireland. He is buried in Goldenbridge Cemetery in Inchicore, Dublin. Richard Mulcahy says, “It is in terms of the Nation and its needs and its potential that I praise God who gave us in our dangerous days the gentle but steel-like spirit of rectitude, courage and humble self-sacrifice, that was William T. Cosgrave.”

While Cosgrave never officially holds the office of Taoiseach (prime minister), Ireland considers him to be its first Taoiseach due to having been the Free State’s first head of government.

Cosgrave’s son, Liam, serves as a TD (1943-81), as leader of Fine Gael (1965-77) and Taoiseach (1973-77). His grandson, also named Liam, also serves as a TD and as Senator. His granddaughter, Louise Cosgrave, serves on the Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Council (1999-2009).

In October 2014, Cosgrave’s grave is vandalised, the top of a Celtic cross on the headstone being broken off. It is again vandalised in March 2016.


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Death of Thomas Addis Emmet, Lawyer & Politician

Thomas Addis Emmet, Irish and American lawyer and politician, dies at his home in New York on November 14, 1827, following a seizure while in court. He is a senior member of the revolutionary republican group Society of United Irishmen in the 1790s and Attorney General of New York 1812–1813.

Emmett is born in the Hammond’s Marsh area of Cork, County Cork, on April 24, 1764, the son of Dr. Robert Emmet from County Tipperary (later to become State Physician of Ireland) and Elizabeth Mason of County Kerry, both of whose portraits are today displayed at Cork’s Crawford Art Gallery. He is the elder brother of Robert Emmet, who is executed for leading the Irish Rebellion of 1803, becoming one of Ireland’s most famous republican martyrs. His sister, Mary Anne Holmes, holds similar political beliefs.

Emmet is educated at Trinity College, Dublin and is a member of the committee of the College Historical Society. He later studies medicine at the University of Edinburgh and is a pupil of Dugald Stewart in philosophy. After visiting the chief medical schools on the continent, he returns to Ireland in 1788. However, the sudden death of his elder brother, Christopher Temple Emmet (1761–1788), a student of great distinction, induces him to follow the advice of Sir James Mackintosh to forsake medicine for the law as a profession.

Emmet is a man of liberal political sympathies and becomes involved with a campaign to extend the democratic franchise for the Irish Parliament and to end discrimination against Catholics. He is called to the Irish bar in 1790 and quickly obtains a practice, principally as counsel for prisoners charged with political offenses. He also becomes the legal adviser of the Society of the United Irishmen.

When the Dublin Corporation issues a declaration of support of the Protestant Ascendancy in 1792, the response of the United Irishmen is their nonsectarian manifesto which is largely drawn up by Emmet. In 1795 he formally takes the oath of the United Irishmen, becoming secretary in the same year and a member of the executive in 1797. As by this time the United Irishmen had been declared illegal and driven underground, any efforts at peaceful reform of government and Catholic emancipation in Ireland are abandoned as futile, and their goal is now the creation of a non-sectarian Irish republic, independent from Britain and to be achieved by armed rebellion. Although Emmet supports this policy, he believes that the rebellion should not commence until French aid has arrived, differing from more radical members such as Lord Edward FitzGerald.

British intelligence infiltrates the United Irishmen and manages to arrest most of their leaders on the eve of the rebellion. Though not among those taken at the house of Oliver Bond on March 12, 1798, Emmet is arrested about the same time and is one of the leaders imprisoned initially at Kilmainham Gaol and later in Scotland at Fort George until 1802. Upon his release he goes to Brussels where he is visited by his brother Robert in October 1802 and is informed of the preparations for a fresh rising in Ireland in conjunction with French aid. However, at that stage France and Britain are briefly at peace, and the Emmets’ pleas for help are turned down by Napoleon.

Emmet receives news of the failure of his brother’s rising in July 1803 in Paris, where he is in communication with Napoleon. He then emigrates to the United States and joins the New York bar where he obtains a lucrative practice.

After the death of Matthias B. Hildreth, Emmet is appointed New York State Attorney General in August 1812 but is removed from office in February 1813 when the opposing Federalist Party obtains a majority in the Council of Appointment.

Emmet’s abilities and successes become so acclaimed, and his services so requested that he becomes one of the most respected attorneys in the nation, with United States Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story declaring him to be “the favourite counsellor of New York.” He argues the case for Aaron Ogden in the landmark United States Supreme Court case of Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. 1 (1824) relating to the Commerce and Supremacy clauses of the United States Constitution.

Emmet dies on November 14, 1827, while conducting a case in court regarding the estate of Robert Richard Randall, the founder of Sailors’ Snug Harbor, a home for needy seamen in Staten Island, New York. He is buried in St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery churchyard in the East Village, New York City, where a large white marble monument marks his grave.


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Death of Neil Blaney, Fianna Fáil Politician

Neil Terence Columba Blaney, Irish politician first elected to Dáil Éireann in 1948 as a Fianna Fáil Teachta Dála (TD) representing Donegal East, dies in Dublin of cancer at the age of 73 on November 8, 1995. He serves as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (1957), Minister for Local Government (1957–1966) and Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries (1966–1970). He is Father of the Dáil from 1987 until his death.

Blaney is born on October 1, 1922, in Fanad, County Donegal, the second eldest of a family of eleven. His father, from whom he got his strong republican views and his first introduction to politics, had been a commander in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Donegal during the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. He is educated locally at Tamney on the rugged Fanad Peninsula and later attends St. Eunan’s College in Letterkenny. He later works as an organiser with the Irish National Vintners and Grocers Association.

Blaney is first elected to Dáil Éireann for the Donegal East constituency in a by-election in December 1948, following the death of his father from cancer. He also becomes a member of the Donegal County Council. He remains on the backbenches for a number of years before he is one of a group of young party members handpicked by Seán Lemass to begin a re-organisation drive for the party following the defeat at the 1954 Irish general election. Within the party he gains fame by running the party’s by-election campaigns throughout the 1950s and 1960s. His dedicated bands of supporters earn the sobriquet “the Donegal Mafia,” and succeed in getting Desmond O’Malley and Gerry Collins elected to the Dáil.

Following Fianna Fáil’s victory at the 1957 Irish general election, Éamon de Valera, as Taoiseach, brings new blood into the Cabinet in the shape of Blaney, Jack Lynch, Kevin Boland and Mícheál Ó Móráin. Blaney is appointed Minister for Posts and Telegraphs however he moves to the position of Minister for Local Government at the end of 1957 following the death of Seán Moylan. He retains the post when Lemass succeeds de Valera as Taoiseach in 1959. During his tenure it becomes possible to pay rates by installment and he also introduces legislation which entitles non-nationals to vote in local elections.

In 1966 Lemass resigns as Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader. The subsequent leadership election sees Cork politician Jack Lynch become party leader and Taoiseach. In the subsequent cabinet reshuffle Blaney is appointed Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries.

In 1969, when conflict breaks out in Northern Ireland, Blaney is one of the first to express strong Irish republican views, views which contradict the policy of the Irish Government, in support of Northern nationalists. From around late 1968 onwards, he forms and presides over an unofficial Nationalist group in Leinster House popularly known as “the Letterkenny Table.” The group is dominated by Blaney up until his death.

There is general surprise when, in an incident known as the Arms Crisis, Blaney, along with Charles Haughey, is sacked from Lynch’s cabinet amid allegations of the use of the funds to import arms for use by the IRA. Lynch asks for their resignations but both men refuse, saying they did nothing illegal. Lynch then advises President de Valera to sack Haughey and Blaney from the government. Haughey and Blaney are subsequently tried in court but are acquitted. However, many of their critics refuse to recognise the verdict of the courts. Although Blaney is cleared of wrongdoing, his ministerial career is brought to an end.

Lynch subsequently moves against Blaney so as to isolate him in the party. When Blaney and his supporters try to organise the party’s national collection independently, Lynch acts and in 1972 Blaney is expelled from Fianna Fáil for “conduct unbecoming.”

Following his expulsion from Fianna Fáil, Kevin Boland tries to persuade Blaney to join the Aontacht Éireann party he is creating but Blaney declines. Instead, he contests all subsequent elections for Independent Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party, an organisation that he built up. Throughout the 1970s there are frequent calls for his re-admittance to Fianna Fáil but the most vocal opponents of this move are Fianna Fáil delegates from County Donegal.

At the 1979 European Parliament elections Blaney tops the poll in the Connacht–Ulster constituency to the annoyance of Fianna Fáil. He narrowly loses the seat at the 1984 election but is returned to serve as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) in the 1989 election where he sits with the regionalist Rainbow Group. He also canvasses for IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election, in which Sands is elected to Westminster.

Blaney holds his Dáil seat until his death from cancer at the age of 73 on November 8, 1995, in Dublin.


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Birth of Judith Cochrane, Alliance Party Politician

Judith Cochrane, Alliance Party of Northern Ireland politician, is born in Bloomfield, Belfast, Northern Ireland, on October 31, 1975. She serves as a member of Northern Ireland Assembly for the Belfast East constituency from 2011 to 2016.

Cochrane is a lifelong resident of East Belfast. She is educated at Strandtown Primary School and Methodist College Belfast. After earning her bachelor’s degree in nutrition at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland, she returns to Belfast to complete her master’s degree in business administration at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB).

Prior to her election as Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA), Cochrane serves as a Councillor on Castlereagh Borough Council between 2005 and 2011 and works in the Department for Social Development and as a Management Consultant for SMEs in Northern Ireland.

During her term at Stormont, Cochrane sits on the Finance and Personnel Committee and is a member of the Assembly Commission. She founds the All Party Group on Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and is a member of the All Party Group on Cancer, the All Party Group on Tourism, and the All Party Group on Rugby, which she co-founds and serves as vice chair.

Cochrane is also the present Chairperson of the Northern Ireland Assembly and Business Trust (NIABT).

In addition to her duties at Stormont, Cochrane runs her own constituency office on the Upper Newtownards Road in Ballyhackamore.

Cochrane chooses not to seek reelection and stands down ahead of the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election. Former MLA and MP for Belfast East Naomi Long replaces her on the ballot.

Cochrane is married to Jonny Cochrane with whom she has two children. The family resides in East Belfast and actively attends Bloomfield Presbyterian Church.

(Pictured: Judith Cochrane, MLA for Belfast East, speaking in the Assembly on December 2, 2014, Northern Ireland Assembly, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKY0y0_uBUQ)


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Birth of Patrick Sarsfield Donegan, Fine Gael Politician

Patrick “Paddy” Sarsfield Donegan, Irish Fine Gael politician, is born on October 29, 1923, in Monasterboice, County Louth. He serves as a Senator for the Agricultural Panel from 1957 to 1961, a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1954 to 1957 and 1961 to 1981 and a government minister from 1973 to 1977

Donegan is the son of Thomas Francis Donegan, a publican and farmer, and Rose Ann Donegan (née Butterly). He is educated at Fieldstown and Tenure national schools, a Christian Brothers school in Drogheda, County Louth, and Castleknock College, a voluntary Vincentian secondary school for boys in Castleknock, County Dublin. After working as a buyer of malting barley for Guinness, he purchases and successfully develops a seed merchant’s and milling company. His extensive farming interests include the breeding of Belgian Blue and Limousin cattle, at a time when continental breeds are new to Ireland.

Bypassing the customary apprenticeship on local government bodies prior to a career in national politics, Donegan is elected as a Fine Gael TD for the Louth constituency at the 1954 Irish general election. He loses his seat at the 1957 Irish general election but is elected to Seanad Éireann as a Senator for the Agricultural Panel. He regains his Dáil seat at the 1961 Irish general election.

In the Fine Gael–Labour Party coalition government which takes office after the 1973 Irish general election, Donegan is appointed as Minister for Defence. In October 1976, he makes a speech on an official visit to the opening of new kitchen facilities in an army barracks at Mullingar, County Westmeath in which he describes as a “thundering disgrace” President Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh‘s refusal to sign the Emergency Powers Bill 1976. Ó Dálaigh had instead exercised his powers under Article 26 of the Constitution of Ireland to refer it to the Supreme Court. The Taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, refuses Donegan’s resignation. On October 21, Fianna Fáil proposes a motion in the Dáil calling on the minister to resign, which is defeated. Ó Dálaigh views the refusal to remove the minister as an affront to his office by the government and resigns on October 22, 1976.

In December 1976, Donegan is appointed as Minister for Lands. In February 1977, this office is restructured as the Minister for Fisheries. He serves in cabinet until the government loses office after the 1977 Irish general election.

Donegan retires from politics at the 1981 Irish general election. He dies at his home in County Louth on November 26,2000, following a long illness. Tributes in the Dáil are led by John Bruton as Fine Gael leader. He is buried in his hometown of Monasterboice, County Louth.


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Death of Alexander Sullivan, Politician, Barrister & Journalist

Alexander Martin Sullivan, Irish Nationalist politician, barrister, and journalist, dies in Rathmines, Dublin, on October 17, 1884.

Sullivan, the second of six sons of Daniel Sullivan, house painter, and his wife, Catherine (née Baylor), a teacher, is born on May 15, 1829, in Bantry, County Cork. A popular date for Sullivan’s birth appears in many histories as 1830, but his gravestone reads 1829. He is educated in the local national school. One of his brothers is Timothy Daniel Sullivan, the Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1886 to 1888.

During the Great Famine of 1845 to 1847, Sullivan is employed as a clerk in connection with the relief works started by the government. Deeply influenced by the distress he witnesses, he afterward joins the Confederate Club formed in Bantry in support of the revolutionary movement of the Young Irelanders and is the organiser of the enthusiastic reception given by the town to William Smith O’Brien in July 1848 during the insurgent leader’s tour of the southern counties. Early in 1853, he goes to Dublin to seek employment as an artist. An exhibition of the arts and industries of Ireland is held in Dublin that year, and he is engaged to supply pencil sketches to the Dublin Expositor, a journal issued in connection with the exhibition. Subsequently, he obtains a post as a draughtsman in the Irish valuation office, and afterward as a reporter on the Liverpool Daily Post.

In 1855, Sullivan becomes assistant editor of The Nation, and subsequently editor and proprietor. From 1861 to 1884, in conjunction with his elder brother, T. D. Sullivan, he makes The Nation one of the most potent factors in the Irish Nationalist cause and also issues the Weekly News and Zozimus. Called to the Irish bar in 1876, he is a “special call” of the Inner Temple in 1877 and is made QC in 1881. He mainly practices at the English bar, though he acts in some political cases in Ireland.

At the 1874 United Kingdom general election Sullivan is elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for County Louth, but although he does not formally resign, he does not take his seat. At the general election in April 1880, he is again returned for County Louth, but this time formally resigns from the Commons on May 18, 1880. However, Charles Stewart Parnell is elected for both Cork City and for Meath and chooses to sit for Cork City. At the resulting by-election on May 20, 1880, Sullivan is returned unopposed to fill the vacancy in Meath. Following the development of a severe heart condition, he nearly dies after a heart attack in mid-August 1881. He holds his seat until his resignation on February 3, 1882. He then concentrates on his work at the parliamentary bar.

As a member of the Dublin Corporation, Sullivan secures a magnificent site for the Grattan Monument, toward which he donates £400, the amount of a subscription by his admirers while he is undergoing imprisonment for a political offence in 1868. The monument is formally unveiled in January 1876. Between 1878 and 1882 he is engaged in many notable trials. His last great case is on November 30, 1883, when he is a colleague of Lord Russell in the defence of Patrick O’Donnell for the murder of James Carey, an informer.

Sullivan suffers another heart attack while on holiday in Bantry in September 1884 and spends his last days with William Martin Murphy at Dartry, County Dublin. Murphy regards him as a father figure, attributing his success to Sullivan’s early advice and journalistic training. Sullivan dies on October 17, 1884, at Dartry Lodge, Rathmines, Dublin. He is buried at Glasnevin Cemetery. With his wife, Frances Genevieve Donovan, whom he marries on April 27, 1861, and who outlives him by nearly forty years, he has a family of three sons and five daughters. His second son and namesake, Alexander Martin Sullivan, is the last to hold the rank of Serjeant-at-law (Ireland).

In addition to his labours, Sullivan is a great temperance reformer. He also writes two notable books, The Story of Ireland and New Ireland and contributes many sketches (including some verse) to Irish Penny Readings (1879–85). Some of his correspondence is located in the Isaac Butt papers in the National Library of Ireland.