seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Signatory


by Leave a comment

Founding of European Movement Ireland

European Movement Ireland (EM Ireland) (Irish: Gluaiseacht na hEorpa in Éirinn) is founded in Dublin on January 11, 1954. EM Ireland is an independent not-for-profit organisation that campaigns for every Irish person to get involved in the European Union (EU) and by doing so, help shape it. It is the oldest Irish organisation dealing with the EU, pre-dating Ireland’s membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 by almost twenty years. The organisation is headed by Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Noelle Connell. Julie Sinnamon acts as Chair of the EM Ireland Board.

One hundred people meet in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin on January 11, 1954, and found the Irish Council of the European Movement. Signing the Articles of Association that found the EM Ireland are seven pioneers of Ireland’s future in Europe. They are: Donal O’Sullivan, university lecturer; Garret FitzGerald, economist; Louis P. F. Smith, economist; Denis Corboy, barrister; George Colley, solicitor; Declan Costello, barrister; and Sean J. Healy, secretary.

These seven signatories lay the first stone paving Ireland’s way to full membership of the EU. The aim of the Irish Council is to inform Irish individuals and organisations about the EU. One of its primary objectives is for Ireland to gain membership of the European Communities (EC) (principally the European Economic Community (EEC), as the EU is then known). Former Taoisigh Garret FitzGerald and Jack Lynch, and former President Mary Robinson back the initiative. After a referendum is held on the Third Amendment of the Irish Constitution, which is overwhelmingly approved by voters in May 1972, Ireland joins the European Communities as a full member state on January 1, 1973.

The Irish Council later becomes European Movement Ireland. Today the organisation claims to act as source of information for Irish citizens regarding the work of the EU and its stated aim is to promote reasoned robust and fair debate about EU in Ireland.

EM Ireland retains an affiliation with the European Youth Parliament, a youth organization which runs events for secondary school age children along the structure of a mock European Parliament.

EM Ireland is part of a pan-European network. European Movement International is a lobbying association that coordinates the efforts of associations and national councils with the goal of promoting European integration, and disseminating information about it. It seeks to encourage and facilitate the active participation of citizens and civil society organisations in the European Union as it develops. The European Movement network is represented in over 41 countries and has over 20 international organisations as members. The current President of European Movement is the former MEP from Belgium, Guy Verhofstadt. For a full list of all European Movement offices, and an outline of the history of the international network visit the EM International website at http://www.europeanmovement.eu/


by Leave a comment

Birth of Áine Ceannt, Revolutionary Activist & Humanitarian Leader

Áine Ceannt (née Ní Bhraonáin), Irish revolutionary activist and humanitarian leader, is born Frances Mary Brennan at 28 Upper Camden Street, Dublin, on September 23, 1880.

Brennan is the daughter of Francis Brennan, who himself is a Fenian earlier in his life, and sister of Lily O’Brennan and Kathleen O’Brennan. Her mother is Elizabeth Anne Butler. She is educated in the Dominican College, Eccles Street, and adopts the name Áine upon joining the Gaelic League. It is through her Irish language activism that she meets her future husband, Éamonn Ceannt, whom she marries on June 7, 1905. Their son, Ronan, is born in June 1906. A convinced republican, she joins Cumann na mBan on its foundation in 1914. She writes and delivers dispatches during the Easter Rising. Her husband is one of the signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and is executed by the British at Kilmainham Gaol on May 8, 1916.

Newly widowed, Ceannt continues her republican activism, serving as Vice-President of Cumann na mBan and as a member of the Sinn Féin Standing Committee. She also plays a role in the development of the Sinn Féin Courts, a parallel legal system designed to offer an alternative to the British courts.

Ceannt is ardently opposed to the signature of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921. She is imprisoned by the Irish Free State government during the Irish Civil War in Mountjoy Prison for her anti-Treaty activity. Throughout the war, she serves at the highest levels within anti-Treaty Sinn Féin. In the years that follow, she spearheads efforts to secure state compensation for the widows and the children of those who had died in 1916 and in the Irish War of Independence. She serves as the head of the Children’s Fund of the Irish White Cross, an American-funded humanitarian organisation founded to assist victims of unrest in Ireland. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Irish Red Cross.

In her later years, Ceannt moves to Churchtown, Dublin. She dies on February 2, 1954, in her home, Inis Ealgan, and was buried in Dean’s Grange Cemetery, situated in the suburban area of Deansgrange in Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, County Dublin.

(Pictured: Photograph, circa 1917, of Áine and Ronan Ceannt, the family of Éamonn Ceannt, who is executed for his participation in the 1916 Easter Rising)


by Leave a comment

Thomas MacDonagh’s Letter to Family at End of Easter Week 1916

In a letter to his family written on April 30, 1916, Thomas MacDonagh recalls “I was astonished to receive by a messenger from P.H. Pearse, Commandant General of the Army of the Irish Republic, an order to surrender unconditionality to the British General. I did not obey the order as it came from a prisoner. I as then in supreme command of the Irish Army, consulted with my second in command and decided to confirm the order. I knew that it would involve my death and the deaths of other leaders. I hoped that it would save many true men among our followers, good lives for Ireland. God grant it has done so and God approve our deed. For my self I have no regret. The one bitterness that death has for me is the separation it brings from my beloved wife Muriel, and my beloved children, Donagh and Barbara. My country will then treat them as wards, I hope. I have devoted myself too much to National work and too little to the making of money to leave them a competence. God help them and support them, and give them a happy and prosperous life. Never was there a better, truer, purer woman than my wife Muriel, or more adorable children than Don and Barbara. It breaks my heart that I shall never see my children again, but I have not wept or murmured. I counted the cost of this and am ready to pay it. Muriel has been sent for here. I do not know if she can come. She may have no one to take the children while she is coming. If she does.”

MacDonagh and Pearse are contemporaries of one another: poets, progressive educators, Gaelic revivalists. They are men who gird for battle “with a revolver in one hand and a copy of Sophocles in the other.” Each man commands a unit of Irish Volunteers during the Easter Rising, which takes place the week of April 24-30,1916. MacDonagh occupies Jacob’s biscuit factory and Pearse the General Post Office (GPO), from which he issues the surrender at the end of the week.

McDonagh and Pearse are signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, a document issued by the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army at the beginning of the Easter Rising, proclaiming Ireland’s independence from the United Kingdom. The reading of the proclamation by Pearse outside the General Post Office (GPO) on Sackville Street (now O’Connell Street), Dublin‘s main thoroughfare, marks the beginning of the Rising.

Pearse’s and MacDonagh’s signatures on the Proclamation are a fatal endorsement for them and for each of the other five men to lend it their signatures. After being court-martialed, both Pearse and MacDonagh, along with Thomas Clarke, are executed by firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin on May 3, 1916, the first of the rebels to be executed.

(Pictured: Thomas McDonagh (left) and Patrick Pearse)