Brewster is the son of William Bagenal Brewster, of Ballinulta, County Wicklow, by his wife Mary, daughter of Thomas Bates. He receives his earlier education at Kilkenny College, then proceeds to Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1812, taking his B.A. degree in 1817, and long after, in 1847, his M.A. degree.
Brewster is very active in almost all branches of his profession after his resignation, and his reputation as an advocate may be gathered from the pages of the Irish Law and Equity Reports, and in the later series of the Irish Common Law Reports, the Irish Chancery Reports, and the Irish Jurist, in all of which his name very frequently appears. Among the most important cases in which he takes part are the Mountgarrett case in 1854, involving a peerage and an estate of £10,000 a year, the Carden abduction case in July of the same year, the Yelverton case in 1861, the Egmont will case in 1863, the Marquess of Donegall‘s ejectment action and lastly, the great will cause of Fitzgerald v. Fitzgerald, in which Brewster’s statement for the plaintiff is said to be one of his most successful efforts.
On Edward Smith-Stanley becoming prime minister, Brewster succeeds Francis Blackburne as Lord Justice of Appeal in Ireland in July 1866, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland the following March. As Lord Chancellor, he sits in his court for the last time on December 17, 1868, when Benjamin Disraeli‘s government resigns. He then retires from public life.
There are only three or four judgments delivered by him in print, either in the Court of Appeal or the Court of Chancery (Ireland). His judicial manner is quiet, but with what is called “a touch of serviceable fierceness” which keeps order in Court. He is highly regarded by his colleagues. Even the bitter-tongued Jonathan Christian, who despises most of his fellow judges, defers to Brewster.
Brewster dies at his residence, 26 Merrion Square South, Dublin, on July 26, 1874, and is buried in the family vault at Tullow, County Carlow, on July 30. By his marriage in 1819 with Mary Ann, daughter of Robert Gray of Upton House, County Carlow, who dies in Dublin on November 24, 1862, he has issue one son, Colonel William Bagenal Brewster, and one daughter, Elizabeth Mary, wife of Mr. Henry French, both of whom die in the lifetime of their father. His estates are inherited by Elizabeth’s son, Robert French-Brewster, who adopts his grandfather’s surname. A nephew, Edward Brewster, studies under Abraham Brewster and becomes a lawyer and politician in New South Wales. Edward’s brother, John Grey Brewster, also emigrates to Australia, where he becomes a prosperous grazier and company director, retiring to England in later years where he dies in 1897.
(Pictured: Right Honourable Abraham Brewster photographed by Thomas Cranfield, 1861)
Duggan is the son of William Duggan, a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) officer, and Margaret Dunne. He is a cousin of revolutionaries Thomas Burke and Christopher Burke through his mother. His parents meet when his father, a native of County Wicklow, is stationed in Longwood, County Meath, where they marry on October 19, 1874. His father is transferred to County Armagh the following year as officers cannot serve in their wife’s native county.
In 1911, Duggan is living with his parents on St. Brigid’s Road Upper in Drumcondra, Dublin. After his school education, he begins work as a law clerk. During his early years, he becomes heavily involved in politics after he qualifies as a solicitor and sets up a practice at 66 Dame Street in Dublin. He marries Evelyn Kavanagh, and they have one son.
In 1916, as a keen supporter of Irish independence, Duggan is serving in the North Dublin Union in the days approaching the 1916 Easter Rising. One of his close friends, Thomas Allen, is shot while Duggan is at the Four Courts. His efforts to get medical assistance are unsuccessful at Richmond Hospital as the British officer who responds to the call declines the message and does not allow it to go through. Eventually medical assistance is received but it is too late for Allen. In Duggan’s region, the volunteers suffer very few injuries with the most violent fighting taking place on Friday night and Saturday morning.
Duggan suffers the consequences and is subject to court-martial and then sentenced to three years penal servitude. He is interned in Maidstone, Portland and Lewes prisons. Under the general amnesty of 1917, he is released after fourteen months in prison and returns to Dublin where he goes back to studying law.
Duggan retains numerous ministerial posts in the Cumann na nGaedheal government. In 1921, he plays a role in the Irish delegation throughout the Anglo-Irish discussions, then playing a dominant role in liaising with British officials.
After the post-treaty government, Duggan is appointed the Minister for Home Affairs and shortly afterward he becomes the Parliamentary Secretary for the Executive Council and the Minister for Defence. He continues in various roles as a TD until 1933. These include Government Chief Whip from 1927 to 1932. Until 1933, he is a Cumann na nGaedheal TD for Meath. In 1933, he declines to go forward for the general election but is elected to Seanad in April 1933. He also is involved in local politics in Dún Laoghaire as the chairman of the borough council until his death in 1936.
Duggan writes papers which reflect on his engagement in the Easter Rising. In his letters, he writes about the tough times of imprisonment. He also writes about his participation in Sinn Féin and his triumph in being a candidate for the South Meath constituency. Most of his papers consist of letters to his fiancée and later wife, May Duggan, which are written while in prison. His time as a TD is also included. In one letter, which he writes on April 25, 1916, he references “the whole damn family” consisting of information as to how his volunteers and he are being “treated as princes” by the nuns in the nearby convent, receiving help from the children in the area and building barricades. In his letter, he also writes about morale among his comrades and hearing of rumours about a German who had landed in County Kerry. In the note, he states that the letter should be sent to May Duggan who is his fiancée at the time. At the end of the letter he refers to himself as “Edmund” by which he is also known.
Duggan dies suddenly at his home in Dún Laoghaire, Dublin, on June 6, 1936, at the age of 58, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery on the north side of Dublin.
Bracken is the third child and second of three sons of Joseph Kevin (J. K.) Bracken and Hannah Bracken (née Ryan). The family moves to Kilmallock, County Limerick, in 1903, the year before his father’s death. By 1908, his mother takes the family to live in Glasnevin, a new suburb in north Dublin, and subsequently off the North Circular Road. He is educated in St. Patrick’s National School, Drumcondra, and at the Christian Brothers‘ O’Connell School in North Richmond Street. He is a mischievous, delinquent child, one time throwing a schoolfellow into the Royal Canal. In February 1915 he is sent to Mungret College, a Jesuit boarding school near Limerick. He is not amenable to the regime and runs away on several occasions, finding accommodation in local hotels under a false name.
At the end of 1915 Bracken goes to Australia with £14 in his pocket. He is first based in Echuca, Victoria, where he is put up in a convent. Later he moves to other houses run by religious orders. A voracious reader, he claims that he is doing research for a life of CardinalPatrick Francis Moran, and signs himself “Brendan Newman Bracken.” He seeks admission as a pupil to Riverview, the fashionable Jesuit school in Sydney, claiming that he had been educated at Clongowes Wood College. Unfortunately for him, a priest who had just come out from Clongowes exposes him. Opinionated and argumentative, he does not conceal his skepticism about the Catholic religion. For a time, he teaches in a Protestant school in Orange, New South Wales.
Bracken returns to Ireland in 1919. By this time his mother has remarried and is living with her new husband, Patrick Laffan, on a farm in Beauparc, County Meath. After a short stay there, he moves to Liverpool and finds employment as a teacher at the Liverpool Collegiate School, claiming that he had been to the University of Sydney. He teaches at the school for two terms in 1920, earning extra money as tutor to a young boy. With his savings he is able to gain admission to Sedbergh School, a public school in the town of Sedbergh in Cumbria, North West England, giving his name as Brendan Rendall Bracken, born 1904, and stating that his parents had perished in a bush fire in Australia, leaving him money to complete his education. He remains only one term but distinguishes himself by winning a prize for history. After Sedbergh, Bracken teaches at Rottingdean preparatory school and then at Bishops Stortford School. He cuts a flamboyant figure and drops the name of famous acquaintances with gay abandon. He stands over 6 feet and has a powerful presence and a domineering personality; his mop of red hair and pale freckled skin combine with black teeth to give him a bizarre appearance.
In 1922 Bracken moves to London. He takes charge of the Illustrated Review when its editor, Hilaire Belloc, resigns. Renamed English Life and covering political and social events, it affords Bracken an opportunity to meet prominent people, including J. L. Garvin, editor of The Observer. In autumn 1923 Garvin introduces him to Winston Churchill, who had lost his parliamentary seat in 1922 and decided to contact Leicester West in the 1923 United Kingdom general election. Bracken offers his services as campaign manager. The friendship between Churchill and Bracken is soon so close that Bracken is rumoured to be Churchill’s natural son. Churchill’s wife Clementine dislikes Bracken and discourages the friendship.
Meanwhile Bracken enjoys the life of a ubiquitous socialite and builds up his career in publishing. He becomes a director of Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1926, starting The Banker, a monthly magazine, for them, and acquiring the Financial News in 1928 and a half-share in The Economist. To these are added in due course the Investors Chronicle and The Practitioner. His success in business enables him to acquire a home in North Street in 1928, near the Houses of Parliament. He is driven about in a chauffeured Hispano-Suiza car.
In 1929, Bracken has himself adopted as conservative candidate for Paddington North, a marginal seat. After a hard-fought campaign characterised by minor violence provoked by Bracken’s intemperate language, he wins the seat by 528 votes. At one point a rumour is put about that Bracken is in reality a Polish Jew, which he has to disprove by exhibiting a copy of his birth certificate. His background is a subject of speculation among acquaintances, and in throwaway remarks he gives different fictitious versions of it, Ireland figuring in none of them. He does however remain in constant touch with his mother, to whom he seems to have been deeply devoted, until her death in 1928. However, he has as little contact as possible with his brother and sisters, although he does give assistance to some of them and their families at various times.
In parliament Bracken voices right-wing views on economic issues and is an enthusiastic imperialist. After Churchill resigns from the conservative front bench in 1930 because they would not oppose the Labour government’s proposal for Indian self-government, he is supported by Bracken. During the 1930s, when Churchill is in the wilderness, disagreeing with the party leadership on India and on what he sees as a policy of appeasement toward Hitler‘s Germany, Bracken is his sole political ally. Stanley Baldwin calls him Churchill’s “faithful chela.”
In September 1939, Churchill joins Neville Chamberlain‘s war cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. Bracken is appointed his parliamentary private secretary, continuing in that role when Churchill becomes Prime Minister. Despite the king’s opposition, Churchill insists in June 1940 that Bracken should be appointed a privy councillor. Bracken shuts up his house and moves to the Prime Minister’s residence for the duration of the war. As a confidant of the Prime Minister, he often acts as a go-between with other politicians and newspapermen. He is allowed to oversee patronage and takes a special interest in ecclesiastical appointments. In July 1941, he is persuaded by Lord Beaverbrook and Churchill to become Minister for Information. He wins over most of the proprietors by giving them more news, often on a confidential basis, and censorship is kept to a minimum. The BBC is also allowed a fair measure of freedom as long as it behaves responsibly; under the leadership of Cyril Radcliffe, the civil service head of the ministry, it operates more smoothly. Bracken was generally acclaimed for that success.
After the resignation of the Labour ministers from the government at the end of the war in Europe, Bracken joins the cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty. He is prominent in the general election campaign that follows and is the only conservative minister apart from Churchill to give more than one radio broadcast. He is accused, probably unjustly, of provoking Churchill to take extreme positions, and blamed when the conservatives are heavily defeated at the polls. Bracken himself loses Paddington North to Lt. Gen. Sir Noel Mason-MacFarlane. However, he is soon back in parliament representing Bournemouth, and as front-bench spokesman is an uncompromising opponent of the nationalisation measures of the Labour government (1945–51). He is out of sympathy with the leftward drift of the conservative party associated with Rab Butler and Harold Macmillan.
In December 1951, when Churchill is again Prime Minister, Bracken declines an invitation to serve as Colonial Secretary, pleading that his recurring sinusitis makes it impossible. He resigns his seat in the House of Commons and is created a peer, Viscount Bracken of Christchurch in Hampshire, but never takes his seat in the House of Lords. Although he retires from politics, he remains close to political events through his friendship with Churchill. He is deeply involved in concealing the severe stroke that Churchill suffers in 1953, so that he can carry on as Prime Minister.
In the postwar period, Bracken has important business interests. The Financial News group acquires the Financial Times in 1945, and he is returned as chairman of the expanded company. He writes a weekly Financial Times column until 1954. He oversees the building near St. Paul’s of a new head office, named “Bracken House” after his death. He is also chairman of the Union Corporation mining house, with interests in South Africa, which he frequently visits. From 1950 he is chairman of the board of governors of Sedbergh School, where he goes frequently and often walks for miles across the fells. He organises and finances the restoration of the eighteenth-century school building as a library, with a commemoratory inscription, “Remember Winston Churchill.”
From 1955 Bracken is a trustee of the National Gallery. He is an unrelenting opponent of the proposal to return to Ireland the impressionist paintings bequeathed to it by Hugh Lane, because a codicil willing them to Dublin has not been witnessed. Throughout the postwar period he carries on a prolific correspondence with friends such as Lord Beaverbrook, the American ambassador Lewis Douglas, and the Australian entrepreneur W. S. Robinson. These are a valuable and entertaining source on the political history of the time.
In January 1958, Bracken, who has always been a heavy smoker, is diagnosed with throat cancer. He lingers on until August 8, 1958, when he dies at the flat of his friend Sir Patrick Hennessy in Park Lane. He resists efforts made to reconcile him to the church of Rome. By his own wish he is cremated, and his ashes are scattered on Romney Marsh, Kent. On his instructions his papers are burned by his chauffeur. His estate comes to £145,032.
(From: “Bracken, Brendan” by Charles Lysaght, Dictionary of Irish Biography, www. dib.ie, October 2009 | Pictured: Brendan Bracken, bromide print by Elliott & Fry, January 13, 1950, National Portrait Gallery, London)
On a cold December day in 1919, a group of young IRA volunteers wait at a public house near the Ashtown gate of Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Some are from Dublin, members of Michael Collins’ recently created assassination unit, the Squad. Others are from farther afield, like Dan Breen and Seán Treacy from County Tipperary and Martin Savage from County Sligo.
They are waiting for Sir John French, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the most senior British official in the land. He is returning from a visit to the west of Ireland and has alighted at Ashtown train station before returning by car to his official residence, the Viceregal Lodge, in the Phoenix Park.
The IRA men have a signaler in a tree and when French’s car approaches, they attempt to block the road with a farm cart. However, they are too late to block the Lord Lieutenant’s car which sweeps through the impromptu barricade. Shots are fired and one policeman is wounded but French himself emerges unscathed.
A second car, which the IRA believes to contain French, bears the brunt of the volunteers’ revolver fire and grenades. Though the car is badly damaged, there are no casualties.
The third car in the convoy contains French’s military escort and the soldiers inside the vehicle return fire, killing one of the attackers, Martin Savage. Some of the volunteers attempt to recover his body but the Crown forces’ fire is too heavy. Savage’s body is left on the scene as the IRA party flees on bicycles back to the city.
The Irish Times, for one, expresses outrage at the attack, “the attempted assassination of the greatest of Irishmen” which it says will “shock Ireland” and force Sinn Féin, victorious in the election of the previous year, to reflect on whether it wants to be associated with “outrage and assassination.” “There will now be many throughout the world ready to attribute the character of a murder society to the whole new Irish movement.”
Many in Ireland are even less sympathetic to hear of the escape of the Lord Lieutenant. The Irish Catholicbishops issue a statement the next day condemning not the attack but British rule in Ireland, which they characterise as “rule of the sword, utterly unsuited to a civilised nation.”
The attack is, in hindsight, a turning point, moving the standoff over Irish independence toward all out guerrilla warfare, but also, in a way, symbolising the eclipse of French and of his vision for what the country should be.
Sir John French’s health declines in 1920 and though he holds the position of Lord Lieutenant until April 1921, his central role in Irish affairs is eclipsed by new Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood. He wants to retire to his estates in Ireland in 1922 but is told it is simply too dangerous for him. During the Irish Civil War (1922-23), his country house at Drumdoe, County Roscommon, is raided by armed men who carry off much of the furniture.
(From: “Today in Irish History: 19 December 1919, The Attempted Assassination of Sir John French” by John Dorney, The Irish Story, http://www.theirishstory.com, December 18,2019 | Pictured: L to R, Sir John French and Martin Savage)
On the evening of December 3, 2012, hundreds of protesters gather outside Belfast City Hall as the Belfast City Council votes to limit the days that the Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom, flies from City Hall. Since 1906, the flag has been flown every day of the year. This is reduced to eighteen specific days a year, the minimum requirement for UK government buildings. The move to limit the number of days is backed by the council’s Irish nationalists while the Alliance Party abstains from the vote. It is opposed by the unionist councillors.
Minutes after the vote, protesters break into the back courtyard and try to force open the doors of the building. Two security staff and a press photographer are injured, and windows of cars in the courtyard are smashed. Protesters then clash with the police, injuring fifteen officers.
Ulster loyalists and British nationalists hold street protests throughout Northern Ireland. They see the council’s decision as part of a wider “cultural war” against “Britishness” in Northern Ireland. Throughout December and January, protests are held almost daily and most involve the protesters blocking roads while carrying Union Flags and banners. Some of these protests lead to clashes between loyalists and the police, sparking riots. Rioters attack police with petrol bombs, bricks, stones and fireworks. Police respond with plastic bullets and water cannon. Alliance Party offices and the homes of Alliance Party members are attacked, while Belfast City Councillors are sent death threats. According to police, some of the violence is orchestrated by high-ranking members of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA). Loyalists also put up thousands of Union flags in public places, which further heightened tension.
After February 2013, the protests become smaller and less frequent, and lead to greater loyalist protests about related issues, such as restrictions on traditional loyalist marches.
Prime Minister of the United KingdomDavid Cameron condemns the protests, saying “violence is absolutely unjustified in those and in other circumstances.” MPNaomi Long says that Northern Ireland is facing “an incredibly volatile and extremely serious situation.” She also calls on Cameron to intervene after a police car outside her office is firebombed with a policewoman escaping injury in early December.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland‘s (PSNI) Chief ConstableMatt Baggott blames the violence on the UVF for “orchestrating violence for their own selfish motives. Everyone involved needs to step back. The lack of control is very worrying. The only answer is a political solution. Otherwise, this will eat into our ability to deal with drugs, into our ability to deal with alcohol issues, and deal with what is a very severe dissident threat.”
In September 2013, business representatives in Belfast reveal that the flag protests had resulted in losses totaling £50 million in the year to July 2013.
(Pictured: The Union Flag flying atop Belfast City Hall in 2006. The statue of Queen Victoria is in the foreground.)
On November 24, 1972, the Fianna Fáil government fires the RTÉ Authority after it broadcast a recorded radio interview on November 19 by Kevin O’Kelly with Seán Mac Stíofáin, then Chief of Staff of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, on the RTÉ This Week radio programme. Mac Stíofáin is arrested on the same day, charged with IRA membership, and the interview is used as evidence against him. He is sentenced to six months imprisonment on November 25 by the Special Criminal Court in Dublin.
The announcement of dismissal comes shortly before 10:00 p.m. in a statement from Gerry Collins, Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. It is an abrupt but not unexpected climax to a week of conflict and speculation after the broadcast of the Mac Stíofáin interview.
Collins reads the announcement on RTÉ but does not make any further comments. He also announces the appointment of the new Authority. The Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, who is in London for his meeting with British Prime MinisterEdward Heath, is kept fully informed of developments during the day.
Lynch says at the London airport before his departure for Dublin that the dismissal is an exercise in democracy. The action is taken because the Government sees the need for “protecting our community.”
Lynch speaks to reporters just after midnight after arriving at the airport from his dinner with the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street. He says that the Cabinet had decided its course of action in regard to RTÉ on Tuesday, November 21, and that he had been in touch by phone throughout the day with his colleagues in Dublin.
The RTÉ Authority, the Taoiseach says, is controlled by Acts of Parliament and is subject to the democratic process.
It is the obligation of the Government to ensure that their terms of reference are adhered to. The Authority breached a directive given under the Broadcasting Act, ordering them “not to project people who put forward violent means for achieving their purpose.”
In the opinion of the Government, the interview with Mac Stíofáin is a breach of that directive. When Lynch is asked by a reporter how the Government knew that the RTÉ interview with Mac Stíofáin was taking place, he says that they have their own way of knowing things.
The comments of the members of the dismissed Authority reflect indignation, hurt and relief.
Phyllis O’Kelly, widow of the late Seán T. O’Kelly, former President of Ireland, says that it was “a strange thing to happen.” She does not accept that the station was deliberately trying to outwit the Government. The interviewer, Kevin O’Kelly, had listed various people that he wished to interview, and they seemed all right to her.
The Authority’s letter to the Minister makes it abundantly clear that the Authority appreciates his right to issue the direction. It also makes clear its anxiety to abide by that direction.
Blair urges Protestant waverers to keep the Good Friday Agreement alive and insists that IRA disarmament, which the pro-British unionists are demanding, is “part of the agreement.”
Britain says two monitors, former President of FinlandMartti Ahtisaari and South AfricanCyril Ramaphosa, have reported to the province’s disarmament commission. “We and the Irish government understand from the decommissioning commission that a second inspection of IRA dumps has now taken place, and they have received a report to that effect from President Ahtisaari and Mr. Ramaphosa,” a Northern Ireland Office statement says.
The IRA discloses the inspection, aimed to show that arms from its long anti-British war are no longer being used, as tension grows ahead of a crucial October 28 conference of the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). “We specifically announced that we would repeat the inspection of a number of arms dumps by third parties to confirm that our weapons are secure,” the IRA says. “We now wish to confirm that this re-inspection has taken place and thank those involved for their co-operation.”
Ramaphosa and Ahtisaari first examine arms stockpiles in June 2000.
The IRA is observing a ceasefire following a 30-year war against British rule in Northern Ireland.
U.S. PresidentBill Clinton joins Britain and Ireland in applauding the IRA’s decision that it will permit a fresh look at some of its hidden arsenal.
However, as Blair arrives three bomb alerts underline the fragility of a peace that has been shaken by sporadic attacks by armed dissidents who oppose the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. A detective escapes injury when a bomb under his car fails to explode in a carpark at Antrim, north Belfast. A police spokesman blames Protestant “loyalistparamilitaries.” Army bomb experts also deal with two “suspicious objects” found in other parts of the province, police say.
Blair’s visit is seen as a bid to garner support for First MinisterDavid Trimble, who is under pressure from within his Ulster Unionist Party over his decision to share power with Sinn Féin, even though the IRA has not disarmed.
Blair appeals to unionists ahead of their conference not to squander the accord’s hard-won political advances. He warns that disarmament will be out of reach if the coalition falls. “This is the only way forward for the future. If the Executive collapses and the Assembly then collapses, which must automatically happen, you don’t have a process at all, you don’t have decommissioning,” he tells reporters.
Confirmation of the second inspection is seen as a lift for the peace process which might ease pressure on Trimble.
UUP hardliners on Saturday, October 28, plan to urge grassroots members to back their demand for Trimble to pull out of the ruling coalition by November 30 if the IRA has not disarmed by that time. However, Trimble, at a news conference, dismisses the five-week deadline as “a crude device.”
(From: “IRA confirms arms dump inspections,” CNN.com, October 26, 2000 | Pictured: David Trimble, Seamus Mallon and Tony Blair at Stormont. Photograph: Eric Luke/The Irish Times)
The Irish National Land League is an Irish political organisation of the late 19th century which organises tenant farmers in their resistance to exactions of landowners. Its primary aim is to abolish landlordism in Ireland and enable tenant farmers to own the land they work on. The period of the Land League’s agitation is known as the Land War.
The Irish National Land League is founded at the Imperial Hotel in Castlebar, County Mayo, on October 21, 1879. At that meeting Charles Stewart Parnell, the prominent Home RuleMember of Parliament, is elected president of the league. Andrew Kettle, Michael Davitt and Thomas Brennan are appointed as honorary secretaries. This unites practically in a single organisation all the different strands of land agitation and tenant rights movements on the nationalist side of the increasingly frozen sectarian-political divide in Ireland.
The government had introduced the Landlord and Tenant (Ireland) Act 1870, the first Land Act, which proves largely ineffective. It is followed by further marginally more effective Irish Land Acts of 1880 and 1881. These establish the Irish Land Commission that starts to reduce some rents. The passage of the second Land Act in 1881 fails to mollify many of the leaders of the Land League, mainly due to the fact that close to 300,000 tenants behind in their rents are excluded from its benefits. Parnell together with all of his party lieutenants, including Father Eugene Sheehy, known as “the Land League priest,” go into a bitter verbal offensive.
William Ewart Gladstone has them arrested and imprisoned in Kilmainham Gaol in October 1881 under the Irish Coercion Act for “sabotaging the Land Act,” from where the No Rent Manifesto is issued, calling for a national tenant farmer rent strike until “constitutional liberties” are restored, and the prisoners freed. It has a modest success In Ireland and mobilizes financial and political support from the Irish diaspora. Many other leaders of the League, including Michael Davitt, whose name is added to the bottom of the document by others, and other moderate elements in Ireland oppose this move.
Perhaps sensing weakness in the League organization, the government outlaws the League on October 20, 1881, but the work of the League is then continued by the Ladies’ Land League, which had been founded earlier by Parnell’s sister Anna. In 1882, Parnell is released from jail after reaching a written compact with the government, which extends the benefits of the Land Act to those excluded earlier, while Parnell pledges to help end land-agitation violence in Ireland and cooperate with Gladstone’s Liberal party.
In October 1882, Parnell forms the Irish National League, replacing the Land League. The Land League passes into history, but it has helped show Irish peasants that if they all stand together there is strength in numbers.
(Pictured: Irish land League poster dating from the 1880s)
In effect a special extension of the Defence of the Realm Acts, the aim of the Act is to increase convictions of nationalist rebels while averting the need to declare martial law. Under Section 3(6) of the Act, military authorities are empowered to jail any Irish person without charge or trial. Secret courts-martial are established, and lawyers (appointed by Crown agents) can be present only if the death penalty is involved. Inquests of military or police actions are banned.
By the middle of 1920, Ireland is in the throes of a full-fledged rebellion that is barely recognized by the British Government in Ireland headquartered in Dublin Castle. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), the military arm of the Dáil Éireann revolutionary government, is engaged in a guerilla campaign to destroy elements of British power, particularly burning down courthouses and attacking members of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), Britain’s police force in the countryside.
The British response to the increase in violence and the assassination of police officers is twofold. To suppress the IRA “murderers,” Major GeneralHugh Tudor, commander of the RIC and self-styled “Chief of Police,” begins supplementing that body with the employment of World War I veterans known as the “Black and Tans” because of the colour of their surplus World War I uniforms, and an additional temporary force of Auxiliaries. With little discipline and utter indifference to the plight or moral indignation of the Irish population, these groups raid and burn villages, creameries, and farm buildings to intimidate supporters of the IRA.
The second measure is the enactment of the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act (ROIA). The Act is envisioned as a remedy to the problem perceived by Chief Secretary for Ireland Sir Hamar Greenwood that “throughout the greater part of Ireland criminal justice can no longer be administered by the ordinary constitutional process of trial by judge and jury.”
The genesis of the Act may be seen in a Cabinet discussion on May 31, 1920, in which the members focus on the violence in Ireland. Rather than addressing violence as the product of rebellion, Greenwood insists that, “The great task is to crush out murder and arson.” He asserts that the violence is perpetrated by handsomely paid thugs. Commenting on a pending Irish bill, Secretary of State for WarWinston Churchill states, “You should include in the Bill a special tribunal for trying murderers. It is monstrous that we have some 200 murders, and no one hung.” The prime minister agrees that convicted murderers should be hanged but questions whether convictions can be obtained from Catholics. The concern of all is that the civil courts are incapable of strictly administering justice to the revolutionaries because the juries largely consisted of Irish Catholics. The ensuing discussion of possibly imposing court-martial jurisdiction is inconclusive.
After the May 31 meeting, Greenwood investigates the feasibility of imposing martial law in Ireland and raises martial law as the specific subject of a July 23, 1920, conference committee meeting of the Cabinet led by Prime MinisterDavid Lloyd George to which the key members of the Dublin Castle administration are invited. William E. Wylie, the law advisor at Dublin Castle, notes that the RIC is disintegrating through resignations brought on by terrorist attacks, and that with “regard to the Civil Courts, the entire administration of the Imperial Government had ceased.” The civilian participants from Dublin Castle, especially Wylie, maintain that martial law is counter-productive, and will only antagonize the Irish people. As an alternative to martial law, General Tudor argues for the imposition of court-martial jurisdiction. Tudor argues forcefully that court-martial jurisdiction over all crimes will support the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries that he is recruiting. He declaims that “not a single criminal had been brought to justice for murder.” Lloyd George closes the discussion directing the Dublin Castle participants to provide final proposals for enforcement of the laws.
A draft bill to establish military criminal jurisdiction is considered by the Cabinet on July 26. The prime minister’s most telling contribution is his question as to whether a convicted man would be shot or hanged. It appears that he is comforted by the response that the defendant will be tried under the ordinary law which implies death by hanging. The resulting bill is completed by July 30, 1920, and is then quickly pushed through Parliament and receives royal assent on August 9, 1920. The ROIA provides that all crimes punishable under the laws in Ireland can be brought before a court-martial. The court-martial will have the power to impose any punishment authorized by statute or common law including the death penalty. The final step is taken on August 20, 1920, when the final regulations for implementation go into effect.
The combination of growing police and military pressure and recourse to the ROIA lead to increased internments of known or suspected IRA members and a steady increase in convictions to 50-60 per week. This makes it more difficult for IRA soldiers to continue openly working day jobs while carrying on part-time guerrilla activities. As a result, the IRA shifts its approach to guerrilla warfare in the rural counties. Volunteers from IRA units are organized into elite, full-time, mobile flying columns of around 25 men who live off the land and on the run. These flying columns prove to be more suited to ambushes of patrols and convoys and other targets of opportunity, rather than attacks on barracks which had become better defended.
On December 10, 1920, martial law is proclaimed in counties Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperary. In January 1921 martial law is extended to counties Clare and Waterford.
In a crucial judgement, R (Egan) v Macready, the Irish courts rule that the Act does not give power to impose the death penalty. This would no doubt have proved politically contentious had not hostilities ended the same day.
Despite its name, the courts are of the view that ROIA applies in England as well. Following the creation of the Irish Free State, when the Act is repealed by implication, it is still used to deport ex-members of the Irish Self-Determination League to Ireland.
Cox is the younger of two sons of Dr. Michael Cox, physician originally of Roscommon and Sligo, and Elizabeth Cox (née Nolan). Like his father, he supports the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) and maintains an interest in a wide range of subjects outside his chosen career throughout his life. He attends Belvedere College (1900-09), where he often obtains first place in his class and wins the Union prize for essay writing three years in a row (1905–07). He is the first auditor of the Belvedere Debating Society and is succeeded in the post by George O’Brien, who remains his lifelong friend. In 1909, he wins both a Royal University of Ireland (RUI) scholarship and an entrance exhibition to University College Dublin (UCD), a college of the new National University of Ireland (NUI).
Working for an arts degree at UCD, then housed at 86 St. Stephen’s Green, Cox overcomes an innate shyness to cultivate a reputation as a skillful and humorous orator in the Literary and Historical Society (L&H), where he befriends both Kevin O’Higgins and John A. Costello. He has immense respect for both men, and they remain firm friends. The respect is reciprocal, and during their subsequent careers O’Higgins and Costello often have occasion to seek Cox’s wise counsel. In 1912, Cox defeats Costello for the auditorship of the L&H by 112 votes to 63, and in the same year attains a first-class honours BA. His role as auditor means that he is involved with UCD for a further year. He attends lectures at the Incorporated Law Society while at the same time he pursues both the LL. B course, a one-year postgraduate law degree, and an MA at UCD. By the end of 1913 he has achieved first place in the LL. B and first-class honours in his MA. In addition, he has become auditor of the Solicitors’ Apprentices’ Debating Society.
After university Cox is apprenticed to a solicitor, Francis Joseph Scallan, who runs a firm in partnership with his brother, John Louis Scallan. On qualifying in 1915, he remains with the firm as an assistant solicitor until 1920, when he forms a partnership with another solicitor, John McAreavey. The firm is called Arthur Cox & Co. and has its offices at 5 St. Stephen’s Green. Initially the new firm’s clients are predominantly made up of those for whom he worked at his previous firm, and friends from his university days. Through George O’Brien he meets Sir Horace Plunkett, president of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS), a connection of enormous benefit, which sees the firm both become solicitor to the IAOS and gain a large number of clients through its membership.
Despite his relative youth, Cox is held in high esteem by those attempting to construct the apparatus of the newly independent Irish Free State in 1922. This is clear when he provides Hugh Kennedy, law officer to the provisional government and future Chief Justice of Ireland, with a lengthy opinion on the status of the Anglo–Irish Treaty, in the context of drafting a constitution for the new state. He is conscious of the need to counter claims that the treaty does not go far enough in acknowledging Irish nationhood; and he advises that the first article of the new constitution should explicitly state that the sovereignty of the new state derives from the Irish people. This is ultimately done in the preamble of the Constitution of the Irish Free State (1922).
In 1923, Cox is appointed solicitor to Siemens-Schuckert, the German engineering firm, and helps to negotiate the terms of an agreement with the Irish government for the construction of a hydro-electric station at Ardnacrusha, County Clare. In 1926, the Electricity (Supply) Act is passed, on which he advises. Although he experiences much success in these years, he is very much affected by the death of his friend Kevin O’Higgins, who is shot and dies from his injuries on July 10, 1927. He visits O’Higgins on his deathbed. Arthur Cox & Co. expands rapidly in its early years, and in 1926 Cox and McAreavey purchase new premises at 42–3 St. Stephen’s Green. Four years later he buys his partner out of the firm.
Given his friendships with various members of the original Free State administration, and the amount of work he receives from it, government work for Cox dries up when Fianna Fáil comes to power in 1932. However, the protectionist corporate policies and implementing legislation of the new administration bring new opportunities. The legislation places severe restrictions on foreign companies owning and operating enterprises in Ireland. He develops a reputation for assisting corporate clients to circumnavigate the restrictive laws. Along with his friend James Beddy, chief executive of the Industrial Credit Corporation, he realises that foreign investment is essential to the growth of the Irish economy. He introduces many clients to Beddy, and between them they find ways to assist the firms in investing in various enterprises without breaching the law. During this period, he cements his reputation as the foremost corporate lawyer in Ireland. This is evident when James Marmion Gilmor Carroll appoints him, as one of only two non-family members, to the board of the tobacco manufacturers P. J. Carroll & Co. He plays a key role in transforming the archaic practices of the firm by persuading Carroll to recruit Kevin McCourt as executive director. He and McCourt later convince Carroll to employ his nephew, Don Carroll, who plays a key role in the modernisation and diversification of the firm. In 1960 He and Carroll negotiate the sale of 40 per cent of the company to Rothmans International.
Despite his reputation as a corporate lawyer, Cox also represents non-corporate clients, some of whom include well-known personalities. In 1946, he agrees to assist Hungarian film-maker Gabriel Pascal in attempting to persuade the Irish government to establish an Irish film studio, with a view to filming the plays of George Bernard Shaw. He puts much time and energy into trying to convince the government to provide finance for the venture, but to no avail.
In 1942, Cox is elected to the council of the Incorporated Law Society and becomes president of the society for the 1951-52 term, presiding over the celebrations to commemorate the centenary of the society’s charter of incorporation. In 1951, he also becomes chairman of the company law reform committee, which produces its report, known as “the Cox report,” in 1958. Renowned for his eccentricities, he is almost as well known for his shabby mode of dress as he is for his incisive mind and immense capacity for work. His reputation is also based on a strict adherence to discretion and confidentiality. This is clear in 1948 when his old friend John A. Costello, having been offered the office of Taoiseach in the first inter-party government, turns to him for advice on whether he should accept the post. In 1954, Costello nominates him to the 8th Seanad.
In October 1953, the London firm of Nicholl Manisty & Co. retains him to represent British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill in a libel action brought by BrigadierEric Dorman O’Gowan, arising from comments in Churchill’s The Second World War: The Hinge of Fate. Churchill also relies on the advice of his friend Sir Hartley Shawcross, leader of the English bar, who makes several visits to Dublin to meet Cox and counsel (including John A. Costello). Cox and Shawcross believe it necessary to reach some form of settlement to avoid Churchill having to appear in court. The action is therefore withdrawn in return for an undertaking that certain corrections will be made.
On August 5, 1940, Cox marries Brigid O’Higgins (née Cole), widow of his friend Kevin O’Higgins. Prior to this he lives with his mother at 26 Merrion Square. He had purchased Carraig Breac in Howth in 1936 and moves there on his marriage. His commitment to his work means that he often works seven days a week and he therefore keeps a flat on Mespil Road, Dublin, from 1940. In 1959, he sells Carraig Breac and moves to 8 Shrewsbury Road, Dublin.
On February 14, 1961, Brigid Cox dies. Soon after, Cox decides to retire from his profession and study for the priesthood. He is intent on becoming a Jesuit and discusses his intentions with the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, who agrees to ordain him after two years of private tuition at the Jesuit theologate at Milltown Park, Dublin. On being accepted by the Jesuits, he makes arrangements to settle his worldly affairs by selling his home on Shrewsbury Road and leaving his practice to the existing partners. He enters Milltown Park on October 15, 1961, and is ordained on December 15, 1963. His impact on Irish life over the previous forty years is evident by the presence at his ordination of John A. Costello, W. T. Cosgrave, Seán T. O’Kelly, and James Dillon, among others.
Following ordination Cox is appointed to serve at the Jesuit mission in Monze, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia). He arrives at Monze in August 1964 and is appointed extraordinary chaplain to the local convent and hospital. On June 8, 1965, he suffers head injuries in a car accident while traveling to Namwada in Zambia. Taken to Choma hospital, he initially appears to be relatively unscathed but collapses and dies on June 11, 1965. He is found to have suffered from a cerebral haemorrhage and a fractured skull. He is buried in the grounds of the Jesuit retreat house in Chikuni, Zambia.
Many of the Cox family papers are housed at the UCD archives.
(From: “Cox, Arthur Conor Joseph” by Shaun Boylan, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)
seamus dubhghaill 