seamus dubhghaill

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Final Rally of the Peace People’s Campaign

A rally of twelve to fifteen thousand Peace People from both north and south takes place at the new bridge over the River Boyne at Drogheda, County Louth, on December 5, 1976. In general, the Peace People’s goals are the dissolution of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and an end to violence in Northern Ireland. The implicit goals of the Peace People rallies are delegitimization of violence, increasing solidarity, and gaining momentum for peace.

In the 1960s, Northern Ireland begins a period of ethno-political conflict called the Troubles. Through a series of social and political injustices, Northern Ireland has become a religiously divided society between historically mainland Protestants and Irish Catholics. Furthermore, the Irish people have become a fragmented body over a range of issues, identities, circumstances and loyalties. The conflict between Protestants and Catholics spills over into violence, marked by riots and targeted killings between the groups beginning in 1968. In addition, paramilitary groups, including the prominent IRA, launch attacks to advance their political agendas.

The violence continues to escalate. On August 10, 1976, Anne Maguire and her children are walking along Finaghy Road North in Belfast. Suddenly, a Ford Cortina slams into them. The car is being driven by Danny Lennon, who moments before had been shot dead by pursuing soldiers.  The mother is the only survivor. The collision kills three of her four children, Joanne (8), John (2), and Andrew (6 months). Joanne and Andrew die instantly while John is injured critically.

The next day, immediately following John’s death, fifty women from the Republican neighborhoods of Andersonstown and Stewartstown protest Republican violence by marching with baby carriages. That evening, Mairead Corrigan, Anne Maguire’s sister, appears on television pleading for an end to the violence. She becomes the first leader of the Peace People to speak publicly.

However, she was not the only one to initiate action. As soon as she hears Mairead speak on the television, Betty Williams begins petitioning door-to-door for an end to sectarian violence. She garners 6,000 signatures of support within a few days.  This support leads directly into the first unofficial action of the Peace People. On 14 August, only four days after the incident, 10,000 women, both Protestant and Catholic, march with banners along Finaghy Road North, the place of the children’s death, to Milltown Cemetery, their burial site.  This march mostly includes women along with a few public figures and men. The marchers proceed in almost utter silence, only broken by short bouts of singing from the nuns in the crowd and verbal and physical attacks by Republican opposition.

The following day, the three who become leaders of the Peace People – Mairead Corrigan, Betty Williams, and journalist Ciaran McKeown – come together for their first official meeting.  During these initial meetings they establish the ideological basis of nonviolence and goals for the campaign.  The essential goals for the movement are the dissolution of the IRA and an end to the violence in Northern Ireland.  The goals of the campaign implicit in their declaration are awareness, solidarity, and momentum. 
Peace People’s declaration:

“We have a simple message to the world from this movement for Peace. We want to live and love and build a just and peaceful society. We want for our children, as we want for ourselves, our lives at home, at work, and at play to be lives of joy and peace. We recognise that to build such a society demands dedication, hard work, and courage. We recognise that there are many problems in our society which are a source of conflict and violence. We recognise that every bullet fired, and every exploding bomb make that work more difficult. We reject the use of the bomb and the bullet and all the techniques of violence. We dedicate ourselves to working with our neighbours, near and far, day in and day out, to build that peaceful society in which the tragedies we have known are a bad memory and a continuing warning.”

During the four-month campaign, Peace People and partners organize and participate in 26 marches in Northern Ireland, Britain, and the Republic of Ireland. In order to organize these marches effectively they establish their main headquarters in Belfast.

After the initial Finaghy Road March, the Peace People, both Protestants and Catholics, rally in Ormeau Park on August 21. The official Declaration of the Peace People is first read at this rally, the largest rally of the entire campaign.   The group numbers over 50,000. The rally even includes some activists from the Republic of Ireland, most notably Judy Hayes from the Glencree Centre of Reconciliation near Dublin. After the rally, she and her colleagues return to the south to organize solidarity demonstrations.     

In the few days before the next march, the organization “Women Together” request Peace People to call off the march, disapproving of Catholics and Protestants participating in a joint march. The Peace People are not dissuaded. The next Saturday, 27,000 people march along Shankill Road, the loyalist/Protestant neighborhood.

In the next three months, Peace People organize and participate in a rally every Saturday; some weeks even have two. Some of the most notable marches include the Derry/Londonderry double-march, the Falls march, the London march, and the Boyne march.

The Saturday following the Shankill march marks the Derry/Londonderry double-march. At this march, Catholics march on one side of the River Foyle and Protestants on the other.  The groups meet on the Craigavon Bridge.  Simultaneously, 50,000 people march in solidarity in Dublin.

On October 23, marchers meet in the Falls, Belfast, in the pouring rain on the same Northumberland street corner where the Shankill March had started.  The Falls Road rally is memorable for the fear and violence that ensues. During this rally Sinn Féin supporters throw stones and bottles at the marchers.  The attackers escalate the violence as the marchers near Falls Park. The marchers are informed by others that more attackers await them at the entrance to the park, inciting fear within the body of the rally.  The leaders decide that this is an important moment of conflict in the rally and that they must push on.  They continue verbally encouraging the marchers through the cloud of bottles, bricks, and stones.

The leaders plan to escalate the campaign momentum for the last two major symbolic rallies in London and Boyne, Drogheda.  A week before the rallies, on November 20-21, they plan a membership drive. Over 105,000 people sign within two days.

The symbolic week of the culminating rallies begins on November 27 at the glamorous London Rally. They begin to march at Hyde Park, cut through Westminster Abbey, and end at Trafalgar Square. Some groups sing “Troops Out,” and others resound with civil rights songs.  

On December 5, Peace People holds its final march of the campaign, along the River Boyne. The Northern and Southern Ireland contingents met at the Peace Bridge. This is an important point in the legacy of the Peace People movement. Now that the enthusiastic rallies are over, the people are responsible for the tedious local work and continuing the momentum and solidarity that the rallies have inspired. The shape of the Peace People is changing.

After the planned marches are over, the rally portion of the campaign fades and the Peace People take a new shape. Corrigan, Williams, and McKeown stop planning marches, but continue to be involved in action that takes the form of conferences and traveling overseas. However, the leaders begin doing more separated work. Ciaran McKeown increases his focus on radical political restructuring.

In 1977, Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan receive the Nobel Peace Prize.  Issues regarding the use of the monetary award impact the two leaders’ relationships in an irreconcilable manner.  

Due to the fact that many people, unlike McKeown, are less interested in the political side of the equation, the People continue actions along the lines of rallies and social work. Actions continue through the People’s initiative in the form of Peace Committees that each does separate work in local areas.

The Peace People makes a substantial impact.  They help to de-legitimize violence, increase solidarity across sectarian lines, and develop momentum for peace.  Although the violence does not fully subside until 1998 with the negotiation of political change, Ireland sees in 1976 one of its most dramatic decreases in political violence, accompanying the Peace People’s marches and rallies. The campaign dramatizes how tired the people are of bloodshed, their desperate desire for peace, and the clear possibility of alternatives.

(From: “Peace People march against violence in Northern Ireland, 1976” by Hannah Lehmann, Global Nonviolent Action Database, https://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/, 2011 | Pictured: The Peace People organisation rally in Drogheda, County Louth, December 5, 1976)


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Oliver Cromwell Abandons the First Siege of Waterford

Oliver Cromwell abandons the First Siege of Waterford on December 2, 1649, and goes into winter quarters at Dungarvan. Waterford is besieged twice during 1649 and 1650 during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The town is held by Confederate Ireland, also referred to as the Irish Catholic Confederation, under General Richard Farrell and English Royalist troops under General Thomas Preston. It is besieged by English Parliamentarians under Cromwell, Michael Jones and Henry Ireton.

Waterford is a Catholic city and like most other towns in southeast Ireland, the populace has supported the Confederate Catholic cause since the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Late in 1641, Protestant refugees, displaced by the insurgents, begin to arrive in the town, creating tension among the Catholic townspeople. The city’s mayor wants to protect the refugees, but the recorder and several of the aldermen on the city council want to strip them of their property and let in the rebels, who arrive outside the walls in early 1642. At first, the Mayor’s faction is successful in refusing to admit rebel forces, but by March 1642, the faction in the municipal government sympathetic to the rebellion prevails. The Protestants in Waterford are expelled, in most cases put on ships to England, sometimes after having their property looted by the city mob. In 1645, Confederate troops under Thomas Preston besiege and capture nearby Duncannon from its English garrison, thus removing the threat to shipping coming to and from Waterford.

Waterford’s political community is noted for its intransigent Catholic politics. In 1646, a synod of Catholic Bishops, based in Waterford, excommunicate any Catholic who supports a treaty between the Confederates and English Royalists, which does not allow for the free practice of the Catholic religion. The Confederates finally agree to a treaty with Charles I of England in 1648, in order to join forces with the Royalists against their common enemy, the English Parliament, which is both anti-Catholic and hostile to the King. The Parliamentarians land a major expeditionary force in Ireland at Dublin, under Cromwell in August 1649.

The English Parliamentarian New Model Army arrives to besiege Waterford in October 1649. One of the stated aims of Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland is to punish the Irish for the mistreatment of Protestants in 1641. Given Waterford’s history of partisan Catholic politics, this provokes great fear amongst the townspeople. This fear is accentuated by the fate of Drogheda and nearby Wexford which had recently been taken and sacked by Cromwell’s forces and their garrisons massacred.

Waterford is very important strategically in the war in Ireland. Its port allows for the importation of arms and supplies from continental Europe and its geographical position commands the entrance of the rivers Suir and Barrow.

Before besieging Waterford, Cromwell has to take the surrounding garrisons held by Royalist and Confederate troops in order to secure his lines of communication and supply. Duncannon, whose fort commands the sea passage into Waterford, is besieged by Parliamentarians under Ireton from October 15 to November 5. However, due to a stubborn defence, the garrison there under Edward Wogan holds out. This means that heavy siege artillery cannot be brought up to Waterford by sea.

New Ross surrenders to Cromwell on October 19 and Carrick-on-Suir is taken on November 19. A counterattack on Carrick by Irish troops from Ulster under a Major Geoghegan is repulsed on November 24, leaving 500 of the Ulstermen dead.

Having isolated Waterford from the east and north, Cromwell arrives before the city on November 24. However, Waterford still has access to reinforcements from the west and up to 3,000 Irish soldiers from the Confederate’s Ulster Army under Richard O’Farrell are fed into the city in the course of a week. O’Farrell, having been a successful officer in the Spanish Army, is highly trained and experienced in siege warfare from battles in Flanders. Cromwell has come up against a superior minded soldier and commander. The weather is extremely cold and wet, and the Parliamentarian troops suffer heavily from disease. Out of 6,500 English Parliamentarian soldiers who besiege Waterford in 1649, only 3,000 or so are still fit by the time the siege is called off. Added to this, Cromwell is able to make little headway in taking the city. The capture of a fort at Passage East enables him to bring up siege guns by sea, but the wet weather means that it is all but impossible to transport them close enough to Waterford’s walls to use them. Farrell proves tactically superior in defending Waterford and repels Cromwell’s attempts. Eventually Cromwell has to call off the siege on December 2 and go into winter quarters at Dungarvan. Among his casualties is his commander Michael Jones, who dies of disease.


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Death of James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde

James FitzJames Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, KG, Irish statesman and soldier, dies in Avignon on November 16, 1745. He is the third of the Kilcash branch of the family to inherit the earldom of Ormond. He serves in the campaign to put down the Monmouth Rebellion, in the Williamite War in Ireland, in the Nine Years’ War and in the War of the Spanish Succession but is accused of treason and goes into exile after the Jacobite rising of 1715.

Butler is born into a Protestant family on April 29, 1665, at Dublin Castle. He is the second but eldest surviving son, and one of eleven children, of Thomas Butler by his wife Emilia van Nassau-Beverweerd. His father is known as Lord Ossory. His father is heir apparent of James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormond but predeceases him and so never becomes duke. His father’s family, the Butler dynasty, is Old English and descends from Theobald Walter, who had been appointed Chief Butler of Ireland by King Henry II in 1177. His mother is Dutch. She descends from a cadet branch of the House of Nassau.

Butler is educated in France and afterwards at Christ Church, Oxford. On the death of his father on July 30, 1680, he becomes Baron Butler in the peerage of England and the 7th Earl of Ossory in the peerage of Ireland.

Butler obtains command of a cavalry regiment in Ireland in 1683 and having received an appointment at court on the accession of James II, he serves against the Duke of Monmouth at the Battle of Sedgemoor in July 1685. Having succeeded his grandfather as 2nd Duke of Ormonde on July 21, 1688, he is appointed a Knight of the Order of the Garter on September 28, 1688. In 1688, he also becomes Chancellor of the University of Dublin and Chancellor of the University of Oxford.

In January and February 1689, Butler votes against the motion to put William of Orange and Mary on the throne and against the motion to declare that James II has abdicated it. Nevertheless, he subsequently joins the forces of William of Orange, by whom he is made colonel of the 2nd Troop of Horse Guards on April 20, 1689. He accompanies William in his Irish campaign, debarking with him in Carrickfergus on June 14, 1690, and commands this troop at the Battle of the Boyne in July 1690. In February 1691 he becomes Lord Lieutenant of Somerset.

Butler serves on the continent under William of Orange during the Nine Years’ War and, having been promoted to major general, he fights at the Battle of Steenkerque in August 1692 and the Battle of Landen in July 1693, where he is taken prisoner by the French and then exchanged for the Duke of Berwick, James II’s illegitimate son. He is promoted to lieutenant general in 1694.

After the accession of Queen Anne in March 1702, Butler becomes commander of the land forces co-operating with Sir George Rooke in Spain, where he fights in the Battle of Cádiz in August 1702 and the Battle of Vigo Bay in October 1702 during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). Having been made a Privy Councillor, he succeeds Lord Rochester as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1703. In 1704, he leases and rebuilds a property that becomes known as Ormonde Lodge in Richmond outside London.

Following the dismissal of the Duke of Marlborough, Butler is appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Forces and colonel of the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards on January 4, 1712, and Captain General on February 26, 1712. In the Irish Parliament he and the majority of peers support the Tory interest.

Butler plays a dramatic role at the notorious meeting of the Privy Council on March 8, 1711, when Antoine de Guiscard, a French double agent who is being questioned about his treasonable activities, attempts to assassinate Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford, against whom he has a personal grudge for drastically cutting his allowance, by stabbing him with a penknife. Harley is wounded, but not seriously, due largely to the fact that he is wearing a heavy gold brocade waistcoat in which the knife gets stuck. Several Councillors, including Butler, stab Guiscard in return. Guiscard implores Butler to finish the deed, but he replies that it is not for him to play the hangman. In any case, he has the sense to see that Guiscard must be kept alive at least long enough to be questioned, although as it turns out Guiscard’s wounds are fatal, and he dies a week later.

On April 23, 1712, Butler leaves Harwich for Rotterdam to lead the British troops taking part in the war. Once there he allows himself to be made the tool of the Tory ministry, whose policy is to carry on the war in the Netherlands while giving secret orders to him to take no active part in supporting their allies under Prince Eugene. In July 1712, he advises Prince Eugene that he can no longer support the siege of Le Quesnoy and that he is withdrawing the British troops from the action and instead intends to take possession of Dunkirk. The Dutch are so exasperated at the withdrawal of the British troops that they close the towns of Bouchain on Douai to British access, despite the fact that they have plenty of stores and medical facilities available. Butler takes possession of Ghent and Bruges as well as Dunkirk, in order to ensure his troops are adequately provided for. On April 15, 1713, he becomes Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk.

Ormonde’s position as Captain-General makes him a personage of much importance in the crisis brought about by the death of Queen Anne and, during the last years of Queen Anne, he almost certainly has Jacobite leanings and corresponds with the Jacobite Court including his cousin, Piers Butler, 3rd Viscount Galmoye, who keeps barrels of gunpowder at Kilkenny Castle. King George I, on his accession to the throne in August 1714, institutes extensive changes and excludes the Tories from royal favour. Butler is stripped of his posts as Captain-General, as colonel of the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards and as Commander in Chief of the Forces with the first two posts going to the Duke of Marlborough and the role of Commander-in-Chief going to John Dalrymple, 2nd Earl of Stair. On November 19, 1714, Butler is instead made a member of the reconstituted Privy Council of Ireland.

Accused of supporting the Jacobite rising of 1715, Butler is impeached for high treason by Lord Stanhope on June 21, 1715. He might avoid the impending storm of Parliamentary prosecution, if he remains in England and stands trial but instead, he chooses to flee to France in August 1715 and initially stays in Paris with Lord Bolingbroke. On August 20, 1715, he is attainted, his estate forfeited, and honours extinguished. The Earl Marshal is instructed to remove the names and armorial bearings of Butler and Bolingbroke from the list of peers and his banner as Knight of the Garter is taken down in St. George’s Chapel.

On June 20, 1716, the Parliament of Ireland passes an act extinguishing the regalities and liberties of the county palatine of Tipperary; for vesting Butler’s estate in the crown and for giving a reward of £10,000 for his apprehension, should he attempt to land in Ireland. But the same parliament passes an act on June 24, 1721, to enable his brother, Charles Butler, 1st Earl of Arran, to purchase his estate, which he does accordingly.

Butler subsequently moves to Spain where he holds discussions with Cardinal Giulio Alberoni. He later takes part in a Spanish and Jacobite plan to invade England and puts James Francis Edward Stuart on the British throne in 1719, but his fleet is disbanded by a storm in the Bay of Biscay. In 1732, he moves to Avignon, where he is seen in 1733 by the writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He dies at Avignon in exile on November 16, 1745, but his body is returned to London and buried in Westminster Abbey on May 22, 1746.

On July 20, 1682, Butler, then called Lord Ossory, marries Lady Anne Hyde, daughter of Laurence Hyde, who is then Viscount Hyde of Kenilworth but becomes Earl of Rochester in November. The couple has a daughter, Mary, who dies young in 1688.

Following the death of his first wife in 1685, Butler plans to marry again in order to secure a male heir. He gains permission from the House of Lords for the arranging of a jointure for another marriage in May 1685, and in August of that year, he marries Lady Mary Somerset, daughter of the Duke of Beaufort and Mary Capel. The couple has a son, Thomas (1686–1689), and two daughters, Elizabeth (1689–1750) and Mary (1690–1713). His second wife is a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Anne. Their younger daughter, Mary, marries John Ashburnham, 1st Earl of Ashburnham.

(Pictured: Portrait of James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde, by Michael Dahl, National Portrait Gallery)


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Death of Frank Duff, Founder of the Legion of Mary in Dublin

Francis Michael Duff, Irish lay Catholic and author known for bringing attention to the role of the Catholic Laity during the Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic Church, dies in Dublin on November 7, 1980. He is also the founder of the Legion of Mary in Dublin.

Duff is born in Dublin on June 7, 1889, at 97 Phibsboro Road, the eldest of seven children of John Duff and his wife, Susan Letitia (née Freehill). The wealthy family lives in the city at St. Patrick’s Road, Drumcondra. He attends Blackrock College.

In 1908, Duff enters the Civil Service and is assigned to the Irish Land Commission. In 1913, he joins the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul and is exposed to the real poverty of Dublin. Many who live in tenement squalor are forced to attend soup kitchens for sustenance, and abject poverty, alcoholism, and prostitution are rife in parts of Dublin. He joins and soon rises through the ranks to President of the St. Patrick’s Conference at St. Nicholas of Myra Parish. Having concern for people he sees as materially and spiritually deprived, he gets the idea to picket Protestant soup kitchens as he considers they are giving aid in the form of food and free accommodation at hostels in return for not attending Catholic services. He sets up rival Catholic soup kitchens and, with his friend, Sergeant Major Joe Gabbett, discourages Catholics from patronizing Protestant soup kitchens. They succeeded in closing down two of them over the years.

Duff publishes his first pamphlet, Can we be Saints?, in 1916. In it, he expresses the conviction that all, without exception, are called to be saints, and that through Christian faith, all have the means necessary.

In 1918, a friend gifts Duff a copy of True Devotion to Mary by the seventeenth-century French cleric Louis de Montfort, which influences his views on Mary. He is additionally influenced by the writings of John Henry Newman.

Duff briefly acts as private secretary to Michael Collins, the chairman of the Provisional Government and the commander-in-chief of the National Army. In 1924, he is transferred to the Department of Finance.

On September 7, 1921, Duff is a part of a meeting alongside Fr. Michael Toher and fifteen women which becomes the nucleus of what would become the Legion of Mary. The Legion of Mary is created to organise lay Catholics to perform voluntary work. He models the organisation on Roman legions. Some of the first causes the Legion pursues is to become involved with homelessness and prostitution in Dublin. In 1922, he defies the wishes of the Archbishop of Dublin and the widespread Crypto-Calvinism, or Jansenism, within the Catholic Church in Ireland, which had created an intense hostility towards both prostitutes and other allegedly “fallen women.” Similarly, to St. Vitalis of Gaza before him, he begins an outreach to the prostitutes living in often brutal and inhuman conditions in the “kip houses” of “the Monto,” as Dublin’s red-light district, one of the largest in Europe at the time, is then called. Although middle-class Dubliners dismissively view these women as “whores,” the impoverished but devoutly Catholic residents of the Monto tenements refer to local prostitutes as “unfortunate girls,” and understand that they often turn to prostitution as a last resort. As part of his work, Duff establishes the Sancta Maria hostel, a safe house for former prostitutes who had run away from their “kip keepers.” Following the Irish War of Independence and Irish Civil War, he also persuades the first Catholic Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, former Irish Army General W. R. E. Murphy, to launch a crackdown and, even though prostitution in the Republic of Ireland, rooted in human trafficking, still exists, the closure of the Monto’s last “Kip-Houses” is announced on March 12, 1925.

In 1927, Duff establishes the Morning Star hostel for homeless men, followed shortly by the Regina Coeli hostel for homeless women in 1930. Unlike the Magdalen Asylums, the Regina Coeli hostel reflects his view that unwed mothers should be taught how to be able to provide for and raise their children. This defies the norm of the era which holds that the children of unwed mothers should be saved from the stigma of their illegitimacy by being put up for adoption as quickly as possible.

While Duff enjoys the support of W. T. Cosgrave, Ireland’s head of government, and in May 1931 is granted an audience with Pope Pius XI, his efforts are opposed internally in the Dublin diocese. The Archbishop of Dublin Edward Joseph Byrne and his successor John Charles McQuaid seek to censor him because of his involvement with prostitutes. McQuaid also does not approve of his ecumenical efforts. In the 1930s and 1940s Duff creates the Mercier Society, a study group designed to bring together Catholics and Protestants, as well as the Pillar of Fire, a group designed to promote dialogue with Ireland’s Jewish community. In communication with Irish social dissidents Seán Ó Faoláin and Peadar O’Donnell, he suggests he is far more censored than even they are.

Duff does have some supporters amongst the Catholic hierarchy though. With the backing of Cardinal Joseph MacRory and Francis Bourne of Westminster, the Legion is able to expand rapidly and internationally. In 1928 the Legion establishes its first presidium in Scotland. In 1932 he is able to use the occasion of the Eucharistic Congress of Dublin to introduce the concept of the Legion of Mary to several visiting bishops, leading to further international growth.

Duff retires from the Civil Service in 1934 to devote all of his time to the Legion of Mary.

In July 1940, an overseas club for Afro-Asian students in Dublin is created. At that time Ireland is a popular destination for students from Asia and Africa because of its recent anti-imperial, anti-colonial history. Duff personally funds the purchase of a building for the club using funds from an inheritance. The club lasts until 1976 and facilitate many notable students, including Jaja Wachuku.

For the rest of his life, and with the help of many others, Duff guides the Legion’s worldwide extension. Today, the Legion of Mary has an estimated four million active members and 10 million auxiliary members in close to 200 countries in almost every diocese in the Catholic Church.

In 1965, Pope Paul VI invites Duff to attend the Second Vatican Council as a lay observer. When he is introduced to the assembly by the Archbishop of Liverpool, John Heenan, he receives a standing ovation.

Duff makes the promotion of devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus part of the Legion’s apostolate.

Duff dies in Dublin at the age of 91 on November 7, 1980, and is interred at Glasnevin Cemetery. In July 1996, the cause of his beatification is introduced by Cardinal Desmond Connell.


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William of Orange Arrives in Brixham, England

On November 5, 1688, William of Orange, King of the Netherlands and son-in-law of King James II of England, arrives in Brixham, England, with 40,000 soldiers, sailors and volunteers, prior to marching on London to be crowned King William III as part of the Glorious Revolution.

He has been invited by the Protestant noblemen of the country to come and usurp the English throne. Led by Lord Monmouth, a group of Protestant nobles have unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the Catholic James from ascending to the throne on the death of Charles II in 1685. Since then, James has been disturbing the Protestant noblemen who have remained loyal to him in 1685 by giving Catholics more and more freedoms in both England and Ireland.

On May 7, 1688, James II issues a “Declaration of Indulgence” pledging religious toleration. Still the Protestant nobles are comforted by the fact that all the possible heirs to James are Protestant. Thus the country will be safely returned to a Protestant monarch in time and many of James’ reforms will be reversed. All that changes on June 10, 1688, when the Queen gives birth to a male heir, one who is to be raised as a Catholic.

Soon thereafter, an invitation is sent across to William, who is married to James’ sister Mary, to come and save England for Protestantism. This, William is more than happy to do, for Louis XIV of France is threatening to invade the Netherlands and what better way to ensure the support of England in that coming war than to become the King of that country.

The “Glorious Revolution,” as the British would come to call it, is now underway. In less than two months, James II flees for his life and goes into exile in France, never to return. For the native population of Ireland, the eventual results of this revolution are far from “glorious.” The results are death, destruction, poverty, hundreds of years of second-class citizenship in their own land, and a legacy of hatred between Protestant and Catholic in the north of Ireland that persists to this day.

(Pictured: “William III Landing at Brixham, Torbay, 5 November 1688” by Jan Wyck, National Maritime Museum)


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Birth of Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Republican Political & Military Leader

Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, Irish republican political and military leader, is born Peter Roger Casement Brady on October 2, 1932, in Longford, County Longford. He is Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) from 1958 to 1959 and again from 1960 to 1962, president of Sinn Féin from 1970 to 1983, and president of Republican Sinn Féin from 1987 to 2009.

Ó Brádaigh is born into a middle-class republican family. His father, Matt Brady, is an IRA volunteer who is severely wounded in an encounter with the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) in 1919. His mother, May Caffrey, is a Cumann na mBan volunteer and a 1922 graduate of University College Dublin (UCD). His father dies when he is ten and is given a paramilitary funeral led by his former IRA colleagues. His mother, prominent as the Secretary for the County Longford Board of Health, lives until 1974. He is educated at Melview National School at primary level and attends secondary school at St. Mel’s College, leaving in 1950, and graduates from University College Dublin in 1954. That year he takes a job teaching Irish language at Roscommon Vocational School in Roscommon. He is a deeply religious Catholic who refrains from smoking or drinking.

Ó Brádaigh joins Sinn Féin in 1950. While at university, in 1951, he joins the Irish Republican Army. In September 1951, he marches with the IRA at the unveiling of the Seán Russell monument in Fairview Park, Dublin. A teacher by profession, he is also a Training Officer for the IRA. In 1954, he is appointed to the Military Council of the IRA, a subcommittee set up by the IRA Army Council in 1950 to plan a military campaign against Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) barracks in Northern Ireland.

On August 13, 1955, Ó Brádaigh leads a ten-member IRA group in an arms raid on Hazebrouck Barracks, near Arborfield, Berkshire, England, a depot for the No. 5 Radar Training Battalion of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. It is the biggest IRA arms raid in Britain. Most, if not all, of the weapons are recovered in a relatively short period of time. A van, traveling too fast, is stopped by the police and IRA personnel are arrested. Careful police work leads to weapons that had been transported in a second van and stored in London.

The IRA Border Campaign commences on December 12, 1956. As an IRA General Headquarters Staff (GHQ) officer, Ó Brádaigh is responsible for training the Teeling Column in the west of Ireland. During the Campaign, he serves as second-in-command of the Teeling Column. On December 30, 1956, he partakes in the Teeling Column attack on RUC barracks in Derrylin, County Fermanagh. RUC Constable John Scally is killed in the attack and is the first fatality of the new IRA campaign. Ó Brádaigh and others are arrested by the Garda Síochána across the border in County Cavan the day after the attack. They are tried and jailed for six months in Mountjoy Prison. A leading abstentionist, upon his arrest he refuses to recognize the authority of the Irish government and refuses to renounce violence in exchange for his release.

Although a prisoner, Ó Brádaigh is elected a Sinn Féin Teachta Dála (TD) for the Longford–Westmeath constituency at the 1957 Irish general election. Running on an abstentionist ticket, Sinn Féin wins four seats which go to Ó Brádaigh, Eighneachán Ó hAnnluain, John Joe McGirl and John Joe Rice. They refuse to recognise the authority of Dáil Éireann and state they will only take a seat in an all-Ireland parliament. He does not retain his seat at the 1961 Irish general election.

Upon completing his prison sentence, Ó Brádaigh is immediately interned at the Curragh Camp along with other republicans. On September 27, 1958, he escapes from the camp along with Dáithí Ó Conaill. While a football match is in progress, the pair cuts through a wire fence and escapes from the camp under a camouflage grass blanket. This is an official escape, authorised by the officer commanding (OC) of the IRA internees, Tomás Óg Mac Curtain. He is the first Sinn Féin TD on the run since the 1920s.

In October 1958, Ó Brádaigh becomes the IRA Chief of Staff, a position he holds until May 1959, when Seán Cronin is elected as his replacement. He is arrested in November 1959, refuses to answer questions, and is jailed in Mountjoy Prison under the Offences against the State Act. He is released in May 1960 and, after Cronin is arrested, again becomes Chief of Staff. Although he always emphasises that it is a collective declaration, he is the primary author of the statement ending the IRA Border Campaign in 1962. At the IRA 1962 Convention he indicates that he is not interested in continuing as Chief of Staff.

After Ó Brádaigh’s arrest in December 1956, he takes a leave from teaching at Roscommon Vocational School. He is re-instated and begins teaching again in late 1962, just after he is succeeded by Cathal Goulding in the position of Chief of Staff of the IRA. He remains an active member of Sinn Féin and is also a member of the IRA Army Council throughout the decade.

In the 1966 United Kingdom general election, Ó Brádaigh runs unsuccessfully as an Independent Republican candidate in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone constituency.

Ó Brádaigh opposes the decision of the IRA and Sinn Féin to drop abstentionism and to recognise the Westminster parliament in London, the Stormont parliament in Belfast and the Leinster House parliament in 1969/1970. On January 11, 1970, along with Seán Mac Stíofáin, he leads the walkout from the 1970 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis after the majority votes to end the policy of abstentionism, although the vote to change the Sinn Féin constitution fails to receive the required two-thirds majority. The delegates who walk out reconvene at the Kevin Barry Hall in Parnell Square, Dublin, and establish Provisional Sinn Féin.

Ó Brádaigh is voted chairman of the Caretaker Executive of Provisional Sinn Féin. That October, he formally becomes president of the party. He holds this position until 1983. In his presidential address to the 1971 Provisional Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, he says that the first step to achieving a United Ireland is to make Northern Ireland ungovernable. He apparently also serves on the Army Council or the executive of the Provisional Irish Republican Army until he is seriously injured in a car accident on January 1, 1984.

On May 31, 1972, Ó Brádaigh is arrested under the Offences Against the State Act and immediately commences a hunger strike. A fortnight later the charges against him are dropped and he is released. With Dáithí Ó Conaill he develops the Éire Nua policy, which is launched on June 28, 1972. The policy calls for a federal Ireland.

On December 3, 1972, Ó Brádaigh appears on the London Weekend Television Weekend World programme. He is arrested by the Gardaí again on December 29, 1972, and charged in the newly established Special Criminal Court with Provisional IRA membership. In January 1973 he is the first person convicted under the Offences Against the State (Amendment) Act 1972 and is sentenced to six months in the Curragh Camp.

In 1974, Ó Brádaigh testifies in person before the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations regarding the treatment of IRA prisoners in Ireland. He also has a meeting with prominent Irish American congressman Tip O’Neill. The same year, the State Department revokes his multiple entry visa. Federal Bureau of Investigation documents in 1975 describe him as a “national security threat” and a “dedicated revolutionary undeterred by threat or personal risk” and show that the visa ban was requested by the British Foreign Office and supported by the Dublin government.

On December 10, 1974, Ó Brádaigh participates in the Feakle talks between the IRA Army Council and Sinn Féin leadership and the leaders of the Protestant churches in Ireland. Although the meeting is raided and broken up by the Gardaí, the Protestant churchmen pass on proposals from the IRA leadership to the British government. These proposals call on the British government to declare a commitment to withdraw, the election of an all-Ireland assembly to draft a new constitution and an amnesty for political prisoners.

The IRA subsequently calls a “total and complete” ceasefire intended to last from December 22, 1974, to January 2, 1975, to allow the British government to respond to proposals. British government officials also hold talks with Ó Brádaigh in his position as president of Sinn Féin from late December to January 17, 1975.

On February 10, 1975, the IRA Army Council, unanimously endorses an open-ended cessation of IRA “hostilities against Crown forces,” which becomes known as the 1975 truce. The IRA Chief of Staff at the time is Seamus Twomey of Belfast. It is reported in some quarters that the IRA leaders mistakenly believe they had persuaded the British Government to withdraw from Ireland and the protracted negotiations between themselves and British officials are the preamble to a public declaration of intent to withdraw. In fact, as British government papers now show, the British entertain talks with the IRA in the hope that this would fragment the movement further and score several intelligence coups during the talks. This bad faith embitters many in the republican movement, and another ceasefire does not happen until 1994.

In late December 1976, along with Joe Cahill, Ó Brádaigh meets two representatives of the Ulster Loyalist Central Co-ordinating Committee (ULCCC), John McKeague and John McClure, at the request of the latter body. Their purpose is to try to find a way to accommodate the ULCCC proposals for an independent Northern Ireland with the Sinn Féin’s Éire Nua programme. It is agreed that if this can be done, a joint Loyalist-Republican approach can then be made to request the British government to leave Ireland. Desmond Boal QC and Seán MacBride SC are requested and accepted to represent the loyalist and republican positions. For months they have meetings in various places including Paris. The dialogue eventually collapses when Conor Cruise O’Brien, then Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and vociferous opponent of the Provisional IRA, becomes aware of it and condemns it on RTÉ Radio. As the loyalists had insisted on absolute secrecy, they feel unable to continue with the talks as a result.

In the aftermath of the 1975 truce, the Ó Brádaigh/Ó Conaill leadership comes under severe criticism from a younger generation of activists from Northern Ireland, headed by Gerry Adams, who becomes a vice-president of Sinn Féin in 1978. By the early 1980s, Ó Brádaigh’s position as president of Sinn Féin is openly under challenge and the Éire Nua policy is targeted in an effort to oust him. The policy is rejected at the 1981 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis and finally removed from the Sinn Féin constitution at the 1982 Ard Fheis. At the following year’s Ard Fheis, Ó Brádaigh and Ó Conaill resign from their leadership positions, voicing opposition to the dropping of the Éire Nua policy by the party.

On November 2, 1986, the majority of delegates to the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis vote to drop the policy of abstentionism if elected to Dáil Éireann, but not the British House of Commons or the Northern Ireland parliament at Stormont, thus ending the self-imposed ban on Sinn Féin elected representatives from taking seats at Leinster House. Ó Brádaigh and several supporters walk out and immediately assemble at Dublin’s West County Hotel and set up Republican Sinn Féin (RSF). As an ordinary member, he had earlier spoken out against the motion (resolution 162) in an impassioned speech. The Continuity IRA becomes publicly known in 1996. Republican Sinn Féin’s relationship with the Continuity IRA is similar to the relationship between Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA when Ó Brádaigh was Sinn Féin’s president.

Ó Brádaigh believes RSF to be the sole legitimate continuation of the pre-1986 Sinn Féin, arguing that RSF has kept the original Sinn Féin constitution. RSF readopts and enhances his Éire Nua policy. His party has electoral success in only a few local elections.

Ó Brádaigh remains a vociferous opponent of the Good Friday Agreement, viewing it as a programme to copperfasten Irish partition and entrench sectarian divisions in the north. He condemns his erstwhile comrades in Provisional Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA for decommissioning weapons while British troops remain in the country. In his opinion, “the Provo sell-out is the worst yet – unprecedented in Irish history.” He condemns the Provisional IRA’s decision to seal off a number of its arms dumps as “an overt act of treachery,” “treachery punishable by death” under IRA General Army Order Number 11.

In July 2005, Ó Brádaigh hands over a portion of his personal political papers detailing discussions between Irish Republican leaders and representatives of the British Government during 1974–1975 to the James Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland, Galway.

In September 2009, Ó Brádaigh announces his retirement as leader of Republican Sinn Féin. His successor is Des Dalton. He is also a long-standing member of the Celtic League, an organization which fosters cooperation between the Celtic people and promotes the culture, identity and eventual self-determination for the people, in the form of six sovereign states, for the Celtic nations – Wales, Cornwall, Brittany, Scotland, Isle of Man and Ireland.

After suffering a period of ill-health, Ó Brádaigh dies on June 5, 2013, at Roscommon County Hospital. His funeral is attended by 1,800 mourners including Fine Gael TD Frank Feighan and is policed by the Garda Emergency Response Unit and Gardaí in riot gear, for “operational reasons,” a show of force believed to have been to deter the republican tradition of firing a three-volley salute of shots over the final place of rest during the graveyard oration. As a result, there are some minor scuffles between gardai and mourners.


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Death of Thomas McDowell, Former CEO of “The Irish Times”

Thomas Bleakley McDowell, often called T. B. McDowell or simply “the Major,” dies on September 9, 2009. He is a British Army officer and subsequently chief executive of The Irish Times for nearly 40 years.

Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on May 18, 1923, the only child of a Protestant and unionist couple, McDowell finishes school at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution in 1941 as World War II is under way. He is dissuaded from enlisting immediately in the British Army by his parents as his father, also named Thomas, had been gassed in World War I and suffers serious lung problems which lead to his early death in 1944. He goes instead to Queen’s University Belfast to study commerce but, a year later and still uncertain about his long-term plans, he joins the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, being commissioned in 1943. He goes on to join the Royal Ulster Rifles.

A knee injury during a night training exercise in Omagh makes McDowell ineligible for active military service and he becomes a weapons instructor. The accident also leads to him meeting his future wife, Margaret Telfer, the physiotherapist who treats him in hospital in Bangor, County Down.

McDowell rises to the rank of major and is part of the Allied forces in occupied Austria following the end of the war, taking part in joint patrols in Vienna with Russian, American and French officers. In the post-war period, he is given two years to finish his college course and spends a summer studying law with a tutor before passing the English bar and returning to the British Army.

After a further military posting to Edinburgh, McDowell’s legal qualification brings him to the army legal service in the War Office in London. With little prospect of further promotion and every chance of being posted abroad without his young family, he decides to leave the army. He is offered a job as legal adviser in London to James North Ltd, a company which makes protective clothing. With no experience of industry, he asks to be given a managerial role at first. The company suggests a managing position in its operations in Dublin. He slots easily into the city’s old business establishment, joining the Kildare Street Club, becoming a director of Pim’s department store, and setting his career firmly on a commercial rather than a legal path.

McDowell’s involvement with newspapers comes about through the recognition of his business acumen. He is asked by some acquaintances to take a look at the financial troubles of the Evening Mail, which is bought subsequently by The Irish Times, adding to the latter’s own financial difficulties.

McDowell is asked later by The Irish Times to see if Roy Thomson, the Canadian-born British press baron whom he had met while they both looked separately at the Evening Mail, might be interested in taking it over. Thomson passes and the company then asks McDowell himself to take charge as chief executive in 1962. Among his first actions are to close the Evening Mail and the Sunday Review, a short-lived tabloid that is ahead of its time. A year later, another problem is resolved when Douglas Gageby, who had been hired as managing director of The Irish Times shortly before McDowell’s arrival, takes over as editor.

Thus, what had begun as a slightly awkward relationship, turns into a highly successful partnership as Gageby sets about broadening the newspaper’s editorial appeal and McDowell sets it on a successful commercial course. McDowell always credits Gageby and his successors as editor with the success of the newspaper. Although he has a close relationship with editors, especially Gageby, he does not interfere in the editorial running of the newspaper.

By the early 1970s, the circulation of The Irish Times has almost doubled in a decade to 60,000 and it is making money. Some of the directors indicate an interest in selling the company. McDowell proposes instead that it be turned into a trust. It is a period when several newspapers in Ireland and Britain have changed hands or are seen as being vulnerable to takeovers. His aims are to protect the newspaper’s independence, make it as difficult as possible for anyone to take over, and formalise its aims in a guiding trust.

McDowell works on the trust document for many months, going through 28 drafts before he is satisfied with the result. The five directors of the company, including McDowell and Gageby, transfer their shares in the company to a solicitor in the autumn of 1973 in anticipation of announcing the trust at the end of that year. Further delays in finalising the trust terms result in its announcement in April 1974, on the eve of the introduction of capital gains tax. The timing gives rise to suggestions that the directors are taking their cash (£325,000 each) out of the company before the new tax takes effect. McDowell always denies that this is the case, maintaining that the timing is coincidental. He is also adamant that the motivation behind the formation of the trust itself is altruistic.

The formation of the trust leaves the newspaper with a large bank debt, used to buy out the directors/shareholders, at what turns out to be a difficult economic period after the first oil crisis hits the western world in the autumn of 1974. McDowell successfully guides The Irish Times‘ financial fortunes through the subsequent recession and into further periods of growth throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

McDowell stands down as chief executive of the company in 1997 and retires from the chairmanship of The Irish Times Trust in 2001. He is given the title President for Life in recognition of his huge contribution to the newspaper.

McDowell is a private person and never seeks or exploits the public status or limelight that goes with being a newspaper publisher. During his visit to the new The Irish Times offices on Tara Street in June 2008 for the unveiling of a portrait of him by Andrew Festing, he describes the newspaper and his family as the two loves of his life.

McDowell dies unexpectedly at the age of 87 on September 9, 2009. His funeral takes place in Whitechurch Parish Church, Rathfarnham, followed by burial in the adjoining churchyard.


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Death of Brian Robinson, Loyalist Militant & Member of the UVF

Brian Robinson, loyalist militant from Belfast, Northern Ireland, and member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), is shot dead by two members of an undercover British Army unit on September 2, 1989. His death is one of the few from the alleged shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland to have involved a loyalist victim.

Robinson is born in Belfast in 1962 to Rab and Margaret Robinson, and brought up a Protestant on Disraeli Street in the staunchly loyalist Woodvale district of the Shankill Road. It is unknown when he becomes a member of the local Ulster Volunteer Force. He holds the rank of volunteer in its B Company, 1st Battalion Belfast Brigade. By the time of his death he has moved to Forthriver Crescent in the Glencairn estate, an area immediately northwest of Woodvale.

On September 2, 1989, Robinson and fellow UVF member Davy McCullough are travelling on a motorbike, with Robinson as the passenger armed with a gun, in Belfast’s Crumlin Road, close to the Irish nationalist area of Ardoyne. Upon seeing Paddy McKenna, a Catholic civilian, walking along the street, Robinson opens fire, hitting McKenna a total of eleven times and killing him. Unbeknownst to the two UVF members, an undercover British Army unit, linked to the Special Air Service, is in the area. Giving chase in a Vauxhall Astra car and a Fiat, the soldiers ram the motorbike, forcing both men off the road. Robinson is shot twice in his torso, then twice more in the back of the head by a female soldier standing over him. He is 27-years-old. Upon hearing the news of her son’s death, Robinson’s mother, Margaret, suffers a fatal heart attack. The two are buried on the same day.

The UVF leadership in west Belfast later claims that the intelligence leading to Robinson’s death had been provided by one of their own men, Colin “Crazy” Craig, who allegedly had been a police informer for several years. Craig is killed by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) on June 16, 1994, along with fellow UVF members Trevor King and David Hamilton. A UVF commander is quoted as mourning King and Hamilton, but adding that Craig was in line to be shot by the UVF anyway. Republican sources claim that the security forces infiltration of the UVF is even deeper, including Trevor King and “the most senior UVF figure in the North.”

Robinson’s funeral is well-attended as it leaves his home in Forthriver Crescent. Despite his membership in the UVF there are no paramilitary displays at the funeral, and the coffin is covered in the Union Jack instead of a UVF standard. Robinson is a member of the “Old Boyne Heroes” lodge of the Orange Order, and several members wearing their sashes flank the coffin. The cortege then meets up with Margaret Robinson’s funeral as it leaves her home in Crimea Street. A lorry carrying floral tributes leads the cortege. Both mother and son are buried in Roselawn Cemetery. A death notice from Robinson’s Orange lodge is published in the local press, which causes controversy.

Robinson’s death is commemorated annually in a band parade attended by loyalist bands in the Belfast area. One band, Star of the Shankill, has “In Memory of Brian Robinson” written on its crest and emblazoned upon its bass drum. The band also attracts controversy when it appears at a parade organised by the Apprentice Boys of Derry that passes near the area in which Robinson killed his victim. In 2010, Rab Robinson, the brother of Brian, issues an appeal to the parades organisers to postpone the parade that year, owing to the death of his younger brother earlier that year.

Robinson is commemorated in a mural on Disraeli Street, off Woodvale Road in Belfast.

In 2015, Robinson’s son Robert removes a Special Air Service flag that had been erected by the loyalists at the Twaddell Avenue protest camp. The Shankill UVF is later said to be reviewing its policy of flying the flag.

(Pictured: Mural commemorating Brian Robinson on Disraeli Street, off Woodvale Road in Belfast)


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Birth of Desmond Ryan, Revolutionary, Writer & Historian

Desmond Ryan, Irish writer, historian, and in his earlier life a revolutionary in Sinn Féin, is born in London on August 27, 1893.

Ryan is the son of the Templemore, County Tipperary-born London journalist William Patrick Ryan, editor of the Peasant and Irish Nation and assistant editor of the London Daily Herald, and his wife, Elizabeth. He comes to Ireland in 1906, aged 13, with his mother and sister, and studies at St. Enda’s School, Rathfarnham, under headmaster and founder Patrick Pearse. He later teaches in the school and is briefly Pearse’s secretary.

Ryan attributes to Pearse the saying “[G]ive me a hundred men and I will free Ireland!” He becomes part of a group of former students lodging in St. Enda’s while they go to university who join the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB). They meet in a safe house at Rathfarnham in 1911. The men take the tram from Rathfarnham to Nelson’s Pillar in central Dublin. Pearse once told his friend, “Let them talk! I am the most dangerous revolutionary of the whole lot of them!” In 1911, the Dungannon Clubs revive the Volunteers Militia movement. These clubs are not initially successful in Dublin but are more so in Belfast amongst nationalists. One of the northern members is the Dubliner Oscar Traynor, in his youth a professional footballer with Belfast Celtic F.C., later a war hero and later again a politician and Minister for Posts and Telegraphs.

At this stage, according to Ryan, Pearse is a constitutional nationalist who speaks for Home Rule from a platform shared with Tom Kettle and John Redmond and refuses to hear any criticism of the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP). But on the foundation of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) by Edward Carson and the approach of World War I, Pearse becomes increasingly sure that Ireland cannot achieve independence except by force, and begins with Thomas MacDonagh, Éamonn Ceannt, Joseph Plunkett, Tom Clarke, Bulmer Hobson and others to plan the Easter Rising.

Eoin MacNeill is appointed leader of the Irish Volunteers. Ryan writes that Pearse, a risk-taker and idealist, tells him MacNeill is “too tactful.” MacNeill is prepared to entertain the Irish Parliamentary Party with negotiations. Ryan quotes Pearse as saying, “[MacNeill] has the reputation of being tactful, but his tact consists in bowing to the will of the Redmondites every time. He never makes a fight except when they assail his personal honour, when he bridles up at once… very delicate position… he is weak, hopelessly weak.”

Pearse tells Ryan that MacNeill is “a Grattan come to life again.” Henry Grattan is a constitutional orator and MP in the Protestant-only 18th-century Irish House of Commons, but one of those who fiercely opposes the notorious Acts of Union 1800, secured by massive bribery (which is then repaid out of Irish taxes), making Ireland part of the United Kingdom. Moreover, MacNeill is an “inconclusive ditherer.” He wants the Irish Volunteers to be apolitical.

The Easter Rising is preceded by the revelation of the “Castle Document,” a plan by the British government to arrest the leaders of the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army and other radicals. Ryan claims that this document, presented to MacNeill on the Wednesday before the Rising and said to have been stolen from high-ranking British staff in Dublin Castle, is a forgery. Some claim that it is concocted by Joseph Plunkett with the implicit approval of Catholic Archbishop Cullen of Dublin, a sympathiser with Dublin Castle and Redmond’s war stratagem. “Forgery is a strong word,” Ryan says, “but that in its final form the document was a forgery no doubt can exist whatever.” Modern interpretation from Charles Townshend has judged the document to be genuine, and the opinion attributed to the Archbishop’s Palace as circumstantial. Grace Gifford, Plunkett’s widow, says that she was with Plunkett when he deciphered it at Larkfield House. Prior to his execution, Seán Mac Diarmada is met by a priest, and makes the assumptive response that it is a fraudulent document.

Ryan fights through the Easter Rising from April 24, 1916, in the General Post Office (GPO) under murderous artillery fire and describes the battle vividly in his witness statement to the Bureau of Military History. He describes the garrison retreating to Moore Street and quotes Pearse’s sculptor brother Willie Pearse, who is executed a few days later, as saying “Connolly has been asked out to negotiate. They have decided to go to save the men from slaughter, for slaughter it is.”

Ryan fights in the Irish War of Independence and afterwards writes about his experiences. However, the Irish Civil War which follows from June 1922 to April 1923 repels him. He cannot accept that Irishmen would fight Irishmen.

Ryan returns to his studies in University College Dublin (UCD), and after taking his BA follows his father into journalism, working for the Freeman’s Journal. In 1922, he moves to London to work on the Daily Herald. He writes books on Pearse, James Connolly, Éamon de Valera, Seán Treacy and John Devoy, and on Fenianism as well as writing on the Rising and the War of Independence.

Ryan marries Sarah Hartley in 1933. In 1939 they return to Ireland, where he edits the Torch, a Labour paper. Finding his views at odds with the Labour Party‘s official line, publication ceases in 1944. He and his wife then move to Swords in north County Dublin, where they operate a poultry farm.

Desmond Ryan dies on December 23, 1964.


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Birth of Seán MacEntee, Fianna Fáil Politician

Seán Francis MacEntee (Irish: Seán Mac an tSaoi), Fianna Fáil politician, is born as John McEntee at 47 King Street, Belfast, on August 23, 1889. He serves as Tánaiste (1959-65), Minister for Social Welfare (1957-61), Minister for Health (1957-65), Minister for Local Government and Public Health (1941-48), Minister for Industry and Commerce (1939-41), and Minister for Finance (1932-39 and 1951-54). He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1918 to 1969.

MacEntee is the son of James McEntee, a publican, and his wife, Mary Owens, both of whom are from Monaghan. James McEntee is a prominent Nationalist member of Belfast Corporation and a close friend of Joseph Devlin MP.

MacEntee is educated at St. Mary’s Christian Brothers’ Grammar School, St. Malachy’s College and the Belfast Municipal College of Technology where he qualifies as an electrical engineer. His early political involvement is with the Irish Socialist Republican Party in Belfast. He quickly rises through the ranks of the trade union movement becoming junior representative in the city’s shipyards. Following his education, he works as an engineer in Dundalk, County Louth, and is involved in the establishment of a local corps of the Irish Volunteers in the town. He mobilises in Dundalk and fights in the General Post Office garrison in the Easter Rising in 1916. He is sentenced to death for his part in the rising. This sentence is later commuted to life imprisonment. He is released in the general amnesty in 1917 and is later elected a member of the National Executives of both Sinn Féin and the Irish Volunteers in October 1917. He is later elected Sinn Féin Member of Parliament (MP) for South Monaghan at the 1918 Irish general election.

An attempt to develop MacEntee’s career as a consulting engineer in Belfast is interrupted by the Irish War of Independence in 1919. He serves as Vice-Commandant of the Belfast Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). He is also a member of the Volunteer Executive, a sort of Cabinet and Directory for the Minister for Defence and the HQ Staff, however, he remains one of the few Sinn Féiners from the north. On August 6, 1920, he presents ‘a Memorial’ lecture to the Dáil from the Belfast Corporation. He tells the Dáil it is the only custodian of public order, that a Nationalist pogrom is taking place, and he advises them to fight Belfast. The Dáil government’s policy is dubbed Hibernia Irredenta or “Greening Ireland.” He is asked to resign his South Monaghan seat after voting against a bunting celebration in Lurgan to mark the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

In April 1921 MacEntee is transferred to Dublin to direct a special anti-partition campaign in connection with the May general election. It remains Michael Collins‘s policy, he declares, that the largely Protestant shipyard workers of Belfast are being directed by the British, urging all Irishmen to rejoin the Republic. Correspondingly the Ulster Unionist Council rejects the call for a review of the boundary commission decision made on Northern Ireland. But when Ulstermen choose James Craig as Premier, Collins denounces democracy in the north as a sham. It is on the partition of Ireland issue that MacEntee votes against the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. During the subsequent Irish Civil War, he commands the IRA unit in Marlboro Street Post Office in Dublin. He later fights with Cathal Brugha in the Hamman Hotel and is subsequently interned in Kilmainham and Gormanstown until December 1923.

After his release from prison, MacEntee devotes himself more fully to his engineering practice, although he unsuccessfully contests the Dublin County by-election of 1924. He becomes a founder-member of Fianna Fáil in 1926 and is eventually elected a TD for Dublin County at the June 1927 Irish general election.

MacEntee founds the Association of Patent Agents in 1929, having gained his interest in Patents when he worked as an assistant engineer in Dundalk Urban District Council. He values his status as a Patent Agent as he maintains his name on the Register for over 30 years while he holds Ministerial rank in the Irish Government, although he is not believed to have taken any active part in the patent business, which is carried on by his business partners.

In 1932, Fianna Fáil comes to power for the very first time, with MacEntee becoming Minister for Finance. In keeping with the party’s protectionist economic policies his first budget in March of that year sees the introduction of new duties on 43 imports, many of them coming from Britain. This sees retaliation from the British government, which in turn provokes a response from the Irish government. This is the beginning of the Anglo-Irish Trade War between the two nations, however, a treaty in 1938, signed by MacEntee and other senior members brings an end to the issue.

In 1939, World War II breaks out and a cabinet reshuffle results in MacEntee being appointed as Minister for Industry and Commerce, taking over from his rival Seán Lemass. During his tenure at this department, he introduces the important Trade Union Act (1941). In 1941, another reshuffle of ministers takes place, with him becoming Minister for Local Government and Public Health. The Health portfolio is transferred to a new Department of Health in 1947. Following the 1948 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil returns to the opposition benches for the first time in sixteen years.

In 1951, Fianna Fáil are back in government, although in minority status, depending on independent deputies for survival. MacEntee once again returns to the position of Minister for Finance where he feels it is vital to deal with the balance of payments deficit. He brings in a harsh budget in 1951 which raises income tax and tariffs on imports. His chief aim is to cut spending and reduce imports, however, this comes at a cost as unemployment increases sharply. The increases are retained in his next two budgets in 1952 and 1953. It is often said that it is his performance during this period that costs Fianna Fáil the general election in 1954. The poor grasp on economics also does his political career tremendous damage as up to that point he is seen as a likely successor as Taoiseach. Seán Lemass, however, is now firmly seen as the “heir apparent.”

In 1957, Fianna Fáil returns to power with an overall majority with MacEntee being appointed Minister for Health. The financial and economic portfolios are dominated by Lemass and other like-minded ministers who want to move away from protection to free trade. He is credited during this period with the reorganisation of the health services, the establishment of separate departments of health and social welfare, and the fluoridation of water supplies in Ireland. In 1959, he becomes Tánaiste when Seán Lemass is elected Taoiseach.

Following the 1965 Irish general election, MacEntee is 76 years old and retires from the government. He re-emerges in 1966 to launch a verbal attack on Seán Lemass for deciding to step down as party leader and Taoiseach. The two men, however, patch up their differences shortly afterwards. MacEntee retires from Dáil Éireann in 1969 at the age of 80, making him the oldest TD in Irish history.

MacEntee dies in Dublin on January 9, 1984, at the age of 94. He is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. At the time of his death, he is the last surviving member of the First Dáil.