seamus dubhghaill

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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.


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Birth of Fr. Alec Reid, Facilitator in the Northern Ireland Peace Process

Alexander Reid CSsR, Irish Catholic priest noted for his facilitator role in the Northern Ireland peace process, is born in Dublin on August 5, 1931. BBC journalist Peter Taylor subsequently describes Reid’s role as “absolutely critical” to the success of the peace process.

Reid is raised in Nenagh, County Tipperary, from the age of six following the death of his father. He studies English, history and philosophy at University College Galway.

Reid is professed as a Redemptorist in 1950 and ordained a priest seven years later. For the next four years, he gives Parish Missions in Limerick, Dundalk and Galway (Esker), before moving to Clonard Monastery in Belfast, where he spends almost the next forty years. The Redemptorist Monastery at Clonard stands on the interface between the Catholic nationalist Falls Road and the Protestant loyalist Shankill Road areas of west Belfast.

In the late 1980s, Reid facilitates a series of meetings between Gerry Adams and John Hume, in an effort to establish a “Pan-Nationalist front” to enable a move toward renouncing violence in favour of negotiation. Reid, himself a staunch nationalist who favours a united Ireland and the withdrawal of British forces from Northern Ireland, then acts as their contact person with the Irish Government in Dublin from a 1987 meeting with Charles Haughey up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. In this role, which is not public knowledge at the time, he holds meetings with various Taoisigh, and particularly with Martin Mansergh, advisor to various Fianna Fáil leaders. After the eventual success of the peace negotiations, Gerry Adams says, “there would not be a peace process at this time without [Father Reid’s] diligent doggedness and his refusal to give up.”

In 1988 in Belfast, Reid delivers the last rites to two British Army corporals, David Howes and Derek Wood of the Royal Corps of Signals, who are killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) – an event known as the corporals killings – after they drive into the funeral cortège of IRA member Kevin Brady, who had been killed in the Milltown Cemetery attack. A photograph of his involvement in that incident becomes one of the starkest and most enduring images of the Troubles. Unknown until years later, he is carrying a letter from Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams to Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) leader John Hume outlining Adams’ suggestions for a political solution to the Troubles. Adams later tells the BBC in 2019 that Reid also advised U.S Ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith during the peace process, stating “He was talking to her on the side and she was talking to her brother Teddy.”

After he moves to Dublin, Reid is involved in peace efforts in the Basque Country. In January 2003, he is awarded the Sabino Arana 2002 “World Mirror” prize, by the Sabino Arana Foundation in Bilbao, in recognition of his efforts at promoting peace and reconciliation. He and a Methodist minister, the Rev. Harold Good, announce that the IRA has decommissioned their arms at a news conference in September 2005.

Reid is involved in controversy in November 2005 when he makes comments during a meeting in Fitzroy Presbyterian Church concerning the Unionist community in Northern Ireland. When the loyalist activist Willie Frazer makes remarks that Catholics had butchered Protestants during the Troubles, Reid angrily responds, “You don’t want to hear the truth. The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated like human beings. They were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews.” Reid later apologises, saying his remarks had been made in the heat of the moment. In an interview with CNN, he says that “The IRA were, if you like, a violent response to the suppression of human rights.”

Reid dies in a Dublin hospital on November 22, 2013. He is survived by two sisters and an aunt, and is buried in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast.


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Preparations Commence for the Plantation of Ulster

On July 19, 1608, preparations commence for the plantation of six Ulster counties of Armagh, Cavan, Coleraine, Donegal, Fermanagh, and Tyrone.

The Plantation of Ulster is the organised colonisation, or plantation, of the Irish province of Ulster by people from Great Britain during the reign of King James I. Most of the settlers, or planters, come from southern Scotland and northern England. Their culture differs from that of the native Irish. Small privately funded plantations by wealthy landowners begin in 1606, while the official plantation begins in 1609. Most of the colonised land had been confiscated from the native Gaelic chiefs, several of whom had fled Ireland for mainland Europe in 1607 following the Nine Years’ War against English rule. The official plantation comprises an estimated half a million acres of arable land in counties Armagh, Cavan, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Donegal, and Coleraine. Land in counties Antrim, Down, and Monaghan is privately colonised with the king’s support.

Among those involved in planning and overseeing the plantation are King James, the Lord Deputy of Ireland, Arthur Chichester, and the Attorney-General for Ireland, John Davies. They see the plantation as a means of controlling, anglicising, and “civilising” Ulster. The province is almost wholly Gaelic, Catholic, and rural and has been the region most resistant to English control. The plantation is also meant to sever Gaelic Ulster’s links with the Gaelic Highlands of Scotland. The colonists, or “British tenants,” are required to be English-speaking, Protestant and loyal to the king. Some of the undertakers and settlers, however, are Catholic. The Scottish settlers are mostly Presbyterian Lowlanders and the English mostly Anglican Northerners. Although some “loyal” natives are granted land, the native Irish reaction to the plantation is generally hostile, and native writers bewail what they see as the decline of Gaelic society and the influx of foreigners.

The Plantation of Ulster is the biggest of the Plantations of Ireland. It leads to the founding of many of Ulster’s towns and creates a lasting Ulster Protestant community in the province with ties to Britain. It also results in many of the native Irish nobility losing their land and leads to centuries of ethnic and sectarian animosity, which at times spills into conflict, notably in the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and, more recently, the Troubles.


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Birth of Bernard “Barney” Hughes, Master Baker & Entrepreneur

Bernard “Barney” Hughes, master baker, entrepreneur, and liberal reformer, is born on July 8, 1808, second among eight children of Peter Hughes, probably a tradesman or labourer, and Catherine Hughes (née Quinn), of Blackwatertown, near Armagh in what is now Northern Ireland.

Hughes is brought up as a devout Roman Catholic and speaks both Irish and English fluently. He starts working at age 12 as a baker’s boy in Armagh and around 1822 tries unsuccessfully to set up his own bakery. To enhance his career prospects, he moves to Belfast in the mid-1820s and becomes a journeyman baker. He soon proves to be a highly skilled and reliable worker and in 1833 is appointed operations manager at the Public Bakery, Church Street.

Hughes is a great admirer of Daniel O’Connell and is part of the delegation that meets him when he visits Belfast in 1840. However, his employer does not share his views on liberal reform, and strained relations lead to Hughes setting up his own bakery in December 1840. At this point he must have already gained a reputation as a highly respected citizen in Belfast, as he is able to borrow £1,400 for the new factory that is built at 71 Donegall Street. This proves a wise investment, as within two years his factory produces more bread than any other bakery in the town. Demand for his loaves and his famous “Belfast bap” is fueled by the thousands of poor Catholics who migrate to the city in search of employment in the two decades before the famine.

Hughes is probably the first entrepreneur in Ireland to appreciate how machinery can create economies of scale in food production. He keeps enlarging his factory by adding ovens (using his own patent design) and dough‐mixing machines, and in 1847 opens another bakery on Donegall Place, which becomes known as the “railway bakery” on account of the rails that are used to transport raw materials by cart between various parts of the site. By using new technology, he is able to produce large quantities of consistently high‐quality bread at prices that are up to 20% cheaper than his local competitors. By 1851 he employs up to a third of those in the Belfast baking trade. He removes much of the human drudgery in the baking process, and higher productivity means that his employees can sleep at home rather than on the bakery floor. The population growth of Belfast continues to increase steeply after the famine years, and in 1858 he opens a third bakery on Divis Street, in the Falls area of the town. Distribution problems during the 1840s had convinced Hughes that he needs tighter control over all elements of the food production chain. By the 1870s his empire includes flour mills, ships to import grain, a brewery, shops, and a fleet of horse‐drawn vans.

Hughes is an enlightened employer and throughout his life he gives generously to the poor in Belfast. During the famine years of the 1840s he keeps the price of bread as low as possible, and on special days such as Christmas gives away thousands of loaves. In July 1842 he confronts a mob of up to 2,000 hungry and agitated weavers who are intent on causing damage to his bakery. He convinces them that he is a friend of the people. This is borne out by the fact that he is the largest single donor to both the Belfast Relief Committee and the Belfast Relief Fund for Ireland during the great famine. Though he is not politically ambitious, he does feel that he can use his status as one of the largest employers in Belfast and the wealthiest Catholic layman to promote the liberal cause. He is particularly appalled by the way in which the members of the conservative‐dominated council are able to indemnify themselves against the £84,000 debt which they had accrued while in office during the 1840s and 1850s.

Hughes is the first Catholic to be elected to the Belfast town council (1855–58, 1871–72) and the first Catholic alderman (1872–78). There are numerous attempts to smear his reputation, and articles in the Belfast News Letter lampoon his thick Armagh accent. As councillor he imprudently remarks on one public occasion that Belfast is “governed by Protestants, but the bone and sinew of the town is Roman Catholic.” This is seized upon by his conservative adversaries as evidence of an anti‐Protestant stance. In reality, he is always even‐handed and against any form of violent action. In his Smithfield ward there are large groups of poor Catholics and Protestants in close proximity to each other and this leads to regular disturbances. As a JP (1867–78) he urges fellow members of the Belfast Home Rule Association to avoid the tactics of the Fenians. In 1878 he is one of a group of magistrates who upholds the right of the Protestant shipyard workers to hold processions in Belfast.

Hughes’s fair mindedness sometimes brings him into collision with his more zealous Catholic friends. In 1876 he is heavily criticised for supporting the campaign to have a statue of the Rev. Henry Cooke, the Presbyterian preacher with strong anti‐Catholic views, erected in a prominent position in Belfast. He contributes funds to the Catholic Institute in Belfast, donates the site for St. Peter’s Church in 1858, and pays for the Lady Chapel. Despite his generosity, Patrick Dorrian, the coadjutor bishop of Down and Connor, vetoes a plan by the Vatican to award him a papal honour.

Hughes dies on September 23, 1878, and is buried privately at Friar’s Bush Graveyard. His son Edward, later appointed the first chairman of The Irish News at its launch in 1891, takes over the business and builds a large “model bakery” on a two‐acre site on the Springfield Road which is one of the largest and most technically sophisticated factories of its kind in Europe.

(From: “Hughes, Bernard (‘Barney’)” by Daniel Beaumont, Dictionary of Irish Biography, http://www.dib.ie, October 2009)


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Protestant March Ends in Bloody Battle on the Craigavon Bridge

A Protestant march against the creation of “no-go” areas in Londonderry on June 3, 1972, ends in a bloody battle on the Craigavon Bridge. Soldiers use rubber bullets and water cannon to control the crowd when the so-called “Tartan gangs” at the tail end of the march begin to throw bottles and stones at the British Army.

The “no-go” areas, known as Free Derry, are areas where both the Irish Republican Army and Provisional Irish Republican Army can openly patrol, train and open offices with widespread support and without involvement of security services. Bogside, Creggan and Brandywell make up the area Free Derry, and it is still known by that name despite the barricades no longer being present.

The 10,000 strong march sets off from Irish Street at 1500 GMT to call for an end to the “no-go” areas on the east bank side of the River Foyle.

The biggest security operation since the start of the Troubles is set up for the march with soldiers on every corner. The bridge is the centre of the trouble as it joins the Protestant side of the town to the “no-go” Roman Catholic areas of Bogside and Creggan.

Despite pleas from march organisers for the violence to stop it does not end until the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) steps in. They form a human barrier between the protesters and the Army. The confrontation lasts an hour and results in one man being injured but no arrests.

A spokesman for the Army says, “Naturally it is regretted that we have to fire rubber bullets but there we are. The only alternative is the Bogside would be invaded by the Protestant marchers.”

Despite the violence, William Craig, the leader of the Ulster Vanguard movement, who organised the march, says the marches will go on. “We are no longer protesting – we are demanding action,” he says.

On July 31, 1972, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw orders 20,000 soldiers to dismantle IRA barricades in the “no-go” areas of Derry and Belfast.

1972 becomes the bloodiest year of the Troubles. Some 470 people are killed that year, the overwhelming majority of them civilians.

(From: “1972: Protestant march ends in battle,” BBC On This Day, http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday)


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The Glenanne Barracks Bombing

The Glenanne barracks bombing is a large truck bomb attack carried out by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) against a British Army (Ulster Defence Regiment) base at Glenanne, near Mountnorris, County Armagh, on May 31, 1991. The bombing leaves three soldiers dead and 14 people wounded, four of them civilians.

The bombing takes place at a time when the Northern Ireland Office arranges multi-party talks, known as the Brooke/Mayhew talks, on the future of Northern Ireland. Sinn Féin members are not invited to attend because of their links with the IRA, which prevents them from being recognised as a “constitutional” party. The talks end in failure soon after.

Built in 1972, the barracks house two companies of the 2nd Battalion, Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). Seen as an outpost, it sits on the dividing line between a Protestant area and a Catholic area. Although the military barracks itself had not been attacked by the IRA previously, seven UDR soldiers from the base had already been killed during the Troubles.

At 11:30 PM, a driverless truck loaded with 2,500 lb (1,100 kg) of a new type of homemade explosive is rolled down a hill at the rear of the barracks and crashes through the perimeter fence. According to a witness, a UDR lance corporal who alerts the base, the truck is a Mercedes, and a Toyota HiAce van carrying at least two men acts as a support vehicle. The men are seen outside the parked van, masked and armed, one with a handgun and the other with a submachine gun. This same witness alerts the base believing the IRA team are about to carry out a mortar attack, and debris thrown up on the roof by the lorry as it plunges down the hill is misinterpreted by some inside the base as a mortar projectile. Automatic fire is heard by other witnesses just before the main blast. A Reuters report claims that IRA members trigger the bomb by firing upon the driverless vehicle. It is later determined that the lorry had been stolen the day before in Kingscourt, County Cavan, in the Republic of Ireland.

The blast leaves a crater 200 ft. (61 m) deep and throws debris and shrapnel as far as 300 yards (270 m). The explosion can be heard over 30 miles (48 km) away, as far as Dundalk. This is the biggest bomb detonated by the IRA up to this point. Most of the UDR base is destroyed by the blast and the fire that follows. At first, a massive mortar attack is suspected. Some livestock are killed and windows broken around the nearby Mossfield housing as a result of the explosion. The cars parked outside the base are obliterated. Ceilings are brought down and the local primary school is also damaged.

The barracks is usually manned by eight soldiers, but at the time there are 40 people in the complex, attending a social event. Three UDR soldiers – Lance Corporal Robert Crozier (46), Private Sydney Hamilton (44) and Private Paul Blakely (30) – are killed and ten are wounded. Two of them are caught by the explosion when they come out to investigate after a sentry gives the alarm. A third dies inside the base. Four civilians are also wounded. The Provisional IRA claims responsibility two days later.

Author Kevin Toolis lists the destruction of Glenanne UDR barracks in County Armagh as part of the cycle of violence and tit-for-tat killings in neighbouring County Tyrone. The IRA later claims that the death of three of its men in the town of Coagh is a Special Air Service (SAS) retaliation for the Glenanne bombing.

The base is never rebuilt. It had outlived its operational usefulness and a decision had already been taken to close it down. The decision not to rebuild the compound raises some controversy among unionists. A memorial stone is erected by the main entrance road with the names of the UDR soldiers killed over the years while serving in Glenanne.


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Death of Bill O’Herlihy, Broadcaster & Public Relations Executive

Bill O’Herlihy, Irish television broadcaster and public relations executive, dies in Dublin on May 25, 2015. He is best known for his broadcasts for Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ), primarily in the sporting arena.

Born and raised in Glasheen in Cork, County Cork, O’Herlihy is the son of a local government official and the grandson of William O’Herlihy, a news editor for The Cork Examiner. He is educated at Glasheen boys’ national school and later at St. Finbarr’s College, Farranferris.

After finishing his schooling at fifteen, O’Herlihy follows his grandfather into journalism and secures a job in the reading room of The Cork Examiner. He is only seventeen years-old when he subsequently becomes sub-editor of the Evening Echo, a position he holds for five years. He also graduates to the positions of news, features and sports reporter.

In the early 1960s O’Herlihy begins his broadcasting career when he starts to do local association football reports from Cork for Radio Éireann. In 1965, he makes his first television broadcast in a programme commemorating the sinking of the RMS Lusitania off the Cork coast. After three years O’Herlihy is asked to join RTÉ’s current affairs programme 7 Days to add the required field-reporting skills to the studio-based interviews. The programme has a reputation for its hard-hitting investigative reporting, and he reports on many varying stories from illegal fishing in Cork to the outbreak of the crisis in Northern Ireland. In November 1970, the 7 Days programme comes into controversy when O’Herlihy reports a story on illegal money lending. The report is unconventional as it is one of the first television pieces to use hidden cameras, it claims the government is not responding to illegal moneylending. A tribunal of inquiry follows, and O’Herlihy is forced to move away from current affairs.

Following this controversy, while O’Herlihy is not sacked as he has fifteen months left on his contract with RTÉ, he is moved to the RTÉ Sports department. There he works under Michael O’Hehir, who dislikes him and his broadcasting style. In spite of this O’Herlihy fronts RTÉ’s television coverage of the Olympic Games that year. He also becomes involved in the production of various sports programmes.

O’Herlihy is not long in the RTÉ Sports department when he becomes a regular presenter for such programmes as Sunday Sport and Sports Stadium. In 1978 he becomes RTÉ Soccer host alongside Eamon Dunphy and, in 1984, Johnny Giles joins the panel and Liam Brady follows in 1998. Since 1974 O’Herlihy becomes RTÉ’s chief sports presenter for such events as all Olympic Games until 2012, FIFA World Cups until 2014, UEFA European Football Championships until 2012 and European and World Track and Field Championships. He hosts RTÉ highlights of the Ryder Cup in 2006 when it is at the K Club in County Kildare and continues to present coverage of Ireland’s soccer internationals for RTÉ, along with Dunphy, Giles and Brady.

O’Herlihy hosts RTÉ’s coverage of rugby union in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, when RTÉ attains the rights to cover the English Premier League in 1992, Tom McGurk takes over as host of RTÉ’s coverage of rugby union. O’Herlihy covers the Premier League, Irish Internationals and The Champions League before dropping the Premier League in 2008. He continues to cover the Olympic Games and International Athletic Championships such as the European and World Athletics. He presents the first Rugby World Cup on RTÉ television in 1987 and, with Jim Carney, co-presents the first edition of The Sunday Game in 1979.

In 2012, while covering Chloe Magee‘s progress at the 2012 Summer Olympics O’Herlihy remarks that badminton was once considered “a mainly Protestant sport.” RTÉ subsequently receives a number of complaints, and while Magee criticises the remarks, the argument is made that the incident inadvertently reflected a complex historical reality.

O’Herlihy presents RTÉ Sport‘s coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, his ninth FIFA World Cup. He fronts 18 European Championships and FIFA World Cups for RTÉ, the last of which comes in 2014. This proves to be the final tournament with O’Herlihy at the helm. He retires at its conclusion and dies the following year.

O’Herlihy attends the 12th Irish Film & Television Awards on Sunday, May 24, 2015. He dies peacefully in his sleep at his home the following day at the age of 76 nearly a year after his retirement. He is survived by wife Hillary and daughters Jill and Sally. Giles, Brady and Dunphy appear on The Late Late Show in tribute later that week. At the time of his death O’Herlihy is working on a sports version of Reeling in the Years, which RTÉ immediately cancels.