seamus dubhghaill

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

Tag Archives: Sinn Féin


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Birth of Barry Andrews, Fianna Fáil Politician

Barry Andrews, Fianna Fáil politician who serves as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Dublin constituency, is born in Dublin on May 16, 1967. He previously serves as Minister of State for Children from 2008 to 2011. He is a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dún Laoghaire constituency from 2002 to 2011.

Andrews comes from a family with strong political connections. His grandfather, Todd Andrews, fought in the Irish War of Independence and became a founder-member of Fianna Fáil, and his grandmother, Mary Coyle, was a member of Cumann na mBan. His father, David Andrews, served as a TD from 1965 to 2002 and is a former Minister for Foreign Affairs, while his uncle, Niall Andrews, is a former Fianna Fáil TD and MEP and his cousin, Chris Andrews (son of Niall Andrews), has been a Sinn Féin TD since 2020 (having previously served as a Fianna Fáil TD from 2007 to 2011). In April 2018, Andrews is described as “part of Fianna Fáil royalty.”

Andrews is educated at Blackrock College and attends university at University College Dublin (UCD). Before entering political life, he works as a secondary school teacher in Dublin from 1991 until 1997, working in Senior College Ballyfermot, Sutton Park School and Bruce College. While a secondary school teacher, he studies law at King’s Inns and qualifies as a barrister in 1997. He is called to the Bar in 1997 and practices as a barrister until 2003.

Andrews is first elected to public office in the 1999 Irish local elections as a Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown County Councillor. He is elected to Dáil Éireann at the 2002 Irish general election.

In June 2006, Andrews leads a group of Fianna Fáil backbenchers in an unsuccessful attempt to establish a backbench committee to influence government policy. At the 2007 Irish general election, he retains his seat in Dún Laoghaire with 8,587 votes.

Andrews is appointed Minister of State for Children in May 2008. As Minister, he frames the Government response to the Ryan Report on Institutional Abuse. This includes an Implementation Plan that delivers an additional 200 social workers for the HSE Child and Family Services. In April 2009, he introduces the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Scheme, which provides, for the first time, free universal access to pre-school education. The scheme benefits 65,000 children in 2013.

After the release of the Murphy Report into child abuse in the Dublin diocese in November 2009, Andrews, speaking at a conference in Dublin Castle, is asked about the position of the Bishop of Limerick, Donal Murray. He says, “I think it’s everybody’s view that if adverse findings are made against an individual in a commission of inquiry, then it would be amazing that there be no consequences for them.” Bishop Murray subsequently apologises to survivors and resigns from office.

In December 2009, Andrews oversees the introduction of government policy to lower the legal age of consent to sixteen, citing a Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution report which recommends the legal age be reduced to sixteen from the current seventeen. He expresses the view the existing laws are “inappropriate” and out of touch with the modern reality of sexual relations between young people and promises to publish legislation to change the age of consent to sixteen. He notes that Ireland and Malta are “the only countries in Europe with an age of consent of seventeen.” However, the law is not passed by the Oireachtas before the 2011 Irish general election in which Fianna Fáil cedes power to a Fine Gael-Labour coalition.

On January 31, 2011, in the run up to the general election, Andrews is named Health spokesman by the party leader, Micheál Martin. He loses his seat at the general election.

In September 2012, Andrew is appointed Fianna Fáil Director of Elections for the Children’s referendum.

In February 2019, Andrews is selected as the Fianna Fáil candidate for the Dublin constituency at the 2019 European Parliament election. He is elected in May 2019 receiving 14.1% of the 1st preference votes, but as the fourth candidate elected, he does not take his seat until after the UK leaves the European Union on January 31, 2020.

In June 2023, Andrews is the recipient of the Defence, Security and Space Award at The Parliament Magazine‘s annual MEP Awards.

Andrews is a member of the European Parliament Committee on Development, the European Parliament Committee on International Trade, the European Parliament Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, the Delegation to the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, the Delegation to the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee and the European Parliament Delegation for Relations with South Africa. His contributions to the International Trade committee include his work on the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) where he is a rapporteur.

Andrews is a founder member of the European Parliament’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Alliance. He also founds the Brussels-Belfast Forum with members of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Andrews is appointed EU Chief Observer for the 2023 Nigerian Federal and State elections by High Representative Vice President Josep Borrell. A report on the election is subsequently produced highlighting that the election was marred by a lack of transparency, public mistrust in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), violence, and vote buying, stressing the need for comprehensive electoral reforms.

Outside of his political career, Andrews is appointed chief executive of the Irish aid charity GOAL in November 2012, replacing the retiring founder, John O’Shea. In October 2016, he resigns from GOAL after it is revealed that other senior executives of GOAL have been involved in “large-scale fraud,” though there is no suggestion that he himself is involved in the scandal. In October 2017, the new CEO of GOAL announces a deficit of €31.6 million due to the fraud but says that it will survive after “one of the most challenging years” in its 40-year history.

In March 2017, Andrews is appointed as Director-General of the Irish State-supported EU think tank and advocacy body, the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), with the Chairperson of the IIEA, former Leader of the Labour Party, Ruairi Quinn, describing him as having the “political and administrative skills” of value to the IIEA.

Andrews is married and has two sons and a daughter. His brother, David McSavage, is a comedian, and he is a first cousin of former RTÉ television and radio presenter Ryan Tubridy.


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Murder of Gerard “Jock” Davison, Former Provisional IRA Commander

Gerard “Jock” Davison, a former commander of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) in Belfast and later a supporter of Sinn Féin’s peace strategy, is shot dead in the city shortly after 9:00 a.m. on May 5, 2015, in the Markets area of south Belfast at the junction of Welsh Street and Upper Stanfield.

One of the first operations Davison is involved in is the shooting of Irish People’s Liberation Organisation (IPLO) Belfast Brigade commander Sammy Ward on October 31, 1992, during the Night of the Long Knives in Belfast.

Davison, the former IRA man, who more recently is a community worker in the working-class Markets area of Belfast, is questioned about the murder of 33-year-old Robert McCartney in January 2005. He is released without charge. He always denies ordering the murder of the father of two following an argument outside Magennis’s Bar in the city centre.

On May 5, 2015, around 9:00 a.m., Davison is shot numerous times at Welsh Street in the Markets area of south Belfast. While police do not identify who killed him, Kevin McGuigan, a former subordinate of Davison’s, is named as the chief suspect after he is also shot dead, reportedly by members of the Provisional IRA, on August 12, 2015.

On the evening of the killing, The Guardian’s Henry McDonald reports: “Davison is the most senior pro-peace process republican to have been killed since the IRA ceasefire of 1997. Security sources said it was highly unlikely that any Ulster loyalist group was behind the murders, adding that the killers may instead have come from within the nationalist community, possibly from people who had a longstanding grudge against the victim.”

Alasdair McDonnell, the Belfast South Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) Westminster candidate, condemns the shooting, saying, “This is a horrendous crime and those responsible have shown no regard for anyone that could have been caught in the middle of it during the school rush hour. My thoughts and prayers are with the individual’s family at this traumatic time.” He adds, “People here want to move on from the violence of the past. This community will reject those who bring murder and mayhem to our streets. I would appeal to anyone with any information to bring it forward as soon as possible.”

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams says, “People will be appalled by this morning’s murder in the Markets area of south Belfast. This brutal act will be condemned by all sensible people. There can be no place today for such actions. I would urge anyone with any information to bring that forward to the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland).”

Following his arrest in Fuengirola in August 2021, it is revealed Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch is to be questioned in relation to a weapon used in Davison’s murder.


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Ahern and Paisley Publicly Shake Hands for the First Time

History is made on April 4, 2007, as Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Ian Paisley shake hands for the first time in public prior to their milestone meeting at Farmleigh, the official Irish state guest house in Dublin.

Ahern is urged by Paisley to ensure that criminals who flee across the Irish border are arrested. The Democratic Unionist leader makes the proposal during a cordial one-and-a-half-hour meeting at Farmleigh in Phoenix Park, where the two leaders exchange their first public handshake.

Afterwards Paisley, who receives an invitation from the taoiseach to visit the Battle of the Boyne site later in the year, says that they had also discussed the need for the new administrations in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland to work for each other’s best interests. “We can confidently state that we are making progress to ensure our two countries can develop and grow side by side in the spirit of generous cooperation,” he declares. “I trust that old barriers and threats will be removed in my day. Business opportunities are flourishing. Genuine respect for the understanding of each other’s differences and, for that matter, similarities is now developing.”

Earlier the DUP leader, who becomes the First Minister of the new power-sharing government on May 8 alongside Sinn Féin‘s Martin McGuinness as deputy First Minister, firmly shakes the hand of Ahern in public for the first time. As he arrives at Farmleigh, he quips, “I better shake the hands of this man. I’ll give him a firm handshake.”

Paisley, who is accompanied by his son, Ian Paisley, Jr., affectionately grabs the taoiseach by the shoulder. There is another handshake after the meeting at Farmleigh is finished.

Paisley says, “Mr. Ahern has come to understand me as an Ulsterman of plain speech. He didn’t ever need a dictionary to find out what I was saying. We engaged in clear and plain speech about our hopes and our aspirations for the people we both serve. The prime minister kindly congratulated me on my election victory.”

Paisley says that he had raised a number of issues crucial to unionists. “I have taken the opportunity to raise with the prime minister a number of key matters including ensuring that fugitives from justice who seek to use the border to their advantage are quickly apprehended and returned without protracted legal wrangle.” He adds, “I raised other legal issues of interests to unionists, and we discussed cooperation of an economic nature that will be to our mutual benefit.” He also says he had raised the issue of bringing Northern Ireland’s corporation tax into line with that of Ireland.

Regarding the invitation to visit the site of the Battle of the Boyne, Paisley says, “We both look forward to the visit to the battle site at the Boyne… Not to refight it, because that would be unfair, for he would have the home advantage. No Ulsterman ever gives his opponents an advantage. He adds, “Such a visit would help to demonstrate how far we have come when we can celebrate and learn from the past, so the next generation more clearly understands.”

Ahern pays tribute to the leadership shown by Paisley in helping to deliver a better future for the people of Northern Ireland. As Northern Ireland’s politicians continue at great pace to prepare for the return of power sharing, the taoiseach says that the progress has been very encouraging. “At this important time in our history, we must do our best to put behind us the terrible wounds of our past and work together to build a new relationship between our two traditions,” he says. “That new relationship can only be built on a basis of open dialogue and mutual respect. I fervently believe that we move on from here in a new spirit of friendship. The future for this island has never been brighter. I believe that this is a future of peace, reconciliation and rising prosperity for all. We stand ready to work with the new executive. We promise sincere friendship and assured cooperation. I believe that we can and will work together in the interests of everyone on this island.”

Ahern says he believes that the Battle of the Boyne site can be a symbol of the new beginning in the relationship between governments in Belfast and Dublin. “I believe that this site can become a valuable and welcome expression of our shared history and a new point of departure for an island, north and south, which is at ease with itself and respectful of its past and all its traditions,” he declared.

The Battle of the Boyne was fought in 1690 between the followers of England‘s King William of Orange, a Protestant, and the deposed King James, a Catholic, in Drogheda, eastern Ireland. Ireland was at that point under English rule. The battle is commemorated by many Northern Irish loyalists on July 12 each year.

Ministerial posts within the new devolved Stormont government have yet to be finalised. Already Sinn Féin has announced that MPs Michelle Gildernew and Conor Murphy and assembly members Gerry Kelly and Caitríona Ruane will be members of the government. However, the party has not yet indicated which of the four will take the three senior cabinet posts in education, agriculture and regional development and which one will be the junior minister in the Office of First and Deputy First Minister.

The DUP has also yet to name its ministers, but it has chosen finance, economy, environment and culture arts and leisure as the government departments it will head. The DUP’s deputy leader, Peter Robinson, and Nigel Dodds, the Belfast North MP, who both served in the last devolved government, are tipped to be the finance and economy ministers.

The Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) announces the previous day that Margaret Ritchie, the assembly member for South Down, will be its only minister in the executive, taking charge of the Department of Social Development.

The Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) has yet to declare who their two ministers will be at the Departments of Health and Employment and Learning.

(From: “Upbeat Paisley shares first handshake with Irish PM” by Hélène Mulholland and agencies, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com, April 4, 2007)


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1997 Coalisland Attack

On the evening of March 26, 1997, the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) East Tyrone Brigade launches an improvised grenade attack on the fortified Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC)/British Army base in Coalisland, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. The blast sparks an immediate reaction by an undercover Special Air Service (SAS) unit, who shoots and wounds Gareth Doris, an Irish republican and alleged IRA volunteer. The SAS unit is then surrounded by a crowd of protesters who prevent them approaching Doris or leaving. RUC officers arrive and fire plastic bullets at the crowd, allowing the special forces to leave the area.

Coalisland is a town in County Tyrone that has a tradition of militant republicanism; five residents are killed by British security forces before the first IRA ceasefire in 1994. In February 1992, four IRA volunteers are killed in a gun battle with the SAS during their escape after a machine gun attack on the RUC/British Army barracks there. Three months later, an IRA bomb attack on a British Army patrol at Cappagh, in which a paratrooper loses his legs, triggers a series of clashes between local residents and British troops on May 12 and 17. A number of civilians and soldiers are injured, a soldier’s backpack radio destroyed, and two British weapons stolen. The melee is followed by a 500-strong protest in the town and bitter exchanges between Republic of Ireland and British officials. Further scuffles between civilians and soldiers are reported in the town on March 6, 1994.

At 9:40 p.m. on Wednesday, March 26, 1997, a grenade is thrown at the joint British Army/RUC base at Coalisland, blowing a hole in the perimeter fence. The RUC reports that a 1 kg device hit the fence ten feet off the ground. Another source claims that the device is a coffee-jar bomb filled with Semtex. The grenade is thrown or fired by two unidentified men. At the time of the attack, there is an art exhibition at Coalisland Heritage Hall, also known as The Mill, from where the explosion and the gunshots that follow are clearly heard. The incident lasts less than two minutes.

Just one minute after the IRA attack, bypassers hear high-velocity rounds buzzing around them. A number of men, apparently SAS soldiers, get out of civilian vehicles wearing baseball caps with “Army” stamped on the front. A source initially describes them as members of the 14 Field Security and Intelligence Company. The men are firing Browning pistols and Heckler & Koch submachine guns. Witnesses say there are eight to ten gunshots, while a republican source claims that up to eighteen rounds are fired. Nineteen-year-old Gareth Doris is shot in the stomach and falls to the ground. He is allegedly returning from the local church and is in the company of a priest when he is shot. A local priest, Seamus Rice, is driving out of the church car park when his car is hit by bullets, smashing the windscreen.

Three minutes after the blast, hundreds of angry residents gather at the scene and confront the undercover soldiers. The soldiers fire live rounds at the ground and into the air to keep people back. The crowd keeps drawing back and moving forward again until 9:50 p.m., when the RUC arrives and begins firing plastic bullets at the protesters. Two women are wounded by plastic bullets and the undercover soldiers then flee in unmarked cars, setting off crackers or fireworks at the same time. Sinn Féin councillor Francie Molloy claims that the protesters forced the SAS to withdraw, saving Doris’s life in the process. Witnesses allegedly fear an undercover soldier brandishing a pistol would have killed the wounded Doris with a shot to his head.

Afterward, hundreds of residents are forced to leave their homes as security forces search the area near the base. This keeps tensions high, according to local republican activist Bernadette McAliskey. Two men are later questioned by the RUC about the attack.

The attack, along with two large bombings the same day in Wilmslow, England, raise concerns that the IRA is trying to influence the upcoming UK general election. Martin McGuinness describes the shooting as “murderous,” while independent councillor Jim Canning says that more than a dozen soldiers “were threatening to shoot anybody who moved […] while a young man lay shot on the ground.” Republican sources claim that this is another case of shoot-to-kill policy by the security forces. Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP Ken Maginnis, however, praises the SAS for their actions.

Gareth Doris is admitted to South Tyrone Hospital in Dungannon, where he is arrested after undergoing surgery. He is later transferred to Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast. He is later convicted for involvement in the bombing and sentenced to ten years in jail, before being released in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. Gareth is the cousin of Tony Doris, an IRA member killed in an SAS ambush in the nearby village of Coagh on June 3, 1991, and a cousin of Sinn Féin leader Michelle O’Neill. According to Sinn Féin councillor Brendan Doris, another cousin of Gareth, “He absolutely denies being involved in terrorist activity of any description.” Amnesty International raises its concerns over the shooting and the fact that no warning is given beforehand.

DNA evidence collected in the area of the shooting leads to the arrest of Coalisland native Paul Campbell by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in 2015, on the charges of being the other man with Doris during the attack. In February 2020, he is convicted by a Diplock court in Belfast. He denies the charges but receives a seven-and-a-half-year sentence. The prosecutor acknowledges that Campbell would have been released by this time under the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement but argues that that was a decision for the parole commission, not the court.

On July 5, 1997, on the eve of the 1997 nationalist riots in Northern Ireland, the British Army/RUC base is the scene of another attack, when an IRA volunteer engages an armoured RUC vehicle with gunfire beside the barracks. One female officer is wounded. The former RUC station at Coalisland is eventually shut down in 2006 and sold for private development in 2010.

(Pictured: Coalisland RUC/British Army base in Coalisland, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland)


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Death of Kathleen Napoli McKenna, Nationalist Activist & Journalist

Kathleen Napoli McKenna, Irish nationalist activist and journalist closely associated with Arthur Griffith, dies in Rome, Italy, on March 22, 1988.

McKenna is born Kathleen Maria Kenna on September 9, 1897, in Oldcastle, County Meath. Her parents are William, a draper and hardware merchant, and Mary Kenna (née Hanley). She is the eldest child of seven, with three sisters and three brothers. She and her siblings add “Mc” to their surname as teenagers. Her maternal grandfather, a Fenian, miller and land agitator, is a strong influence on her. Agnes O’Farrelly is her paternal great aunt. She attends the Oldcastle Endowed School and goes on to pass the National University of Ireland (NUI) matriculation examination. She attends University College Dublin (UCD) briefly, but the family’s circumstances prevent her from completing her course.

McKenna’s father had been an active member of the Irish National Land League and the Meath Labour Union. He is one of the organisers of a short-lived local newspaper, Sinn Féin – Oldcastle Monthly Review, in 1902. Both her parents are members of Conradh na Gaielge. Arthur Griffith and Brian O’Higgins frequently visit the family home. Denounced by the local parish priest, Fr. Robert Barry, her father’s business goes into decline. The family leaves Oldcastle and moves to Dundalk in August 1915, and to Rugby, Warwickshire, England, in March 1916. In Rugby, her father teaches typing and shorthand, and her mother works in an ammunition factory. She works as a secretary for an engineering firm. Members of the family return to Ireland from 1919 to 1922, and by the time of her father’s death in 1939, he is living back in Oldcastle.

McKenna spends some holidays in Ireland and, during a visit to Dublin in the summer of 1919, she presents herself to the Sinn Féin offices in Harcourt Street. She has a letter of introduction from her father to Griffith, which emphasises her willingness to work for Irish independence. For her holidays, she works in the Sinn Féin press bureau and is employed as one of the first “Dáil girls” of the clandestine government. She is informed that if a planned news bulletin comes through, she will be summoned back to Dublin. In October 1919, she receives that summons and, after a typing test on November 11, she joins the Irish Bulletin under Minister for Publicity, Desmond FitzGerald, and director of publicity, Robert Brennan. She also becomes a member of the Conradh na Gaielge Parnell branch.

The Irish Bulletin is published five times a week, circulating the misdeeds of the British government in Ireland. McKenna edits and mimeographs a summary of “acts of aggression” from British forces in Ireland weekly, compiled by Anna Kelly. Frank Gallagher does most of the writing, edited by FitzGerald, and later Erskine Childers. Though she is sometimes described as the Bulletin‘s editor, she is more akin to an editorial assistant. R. M. Smyllie later recalls that she was in regular contact with the media. She types out each issue on a wax stencil in a typewriter which is used to create mimeograph copies, and then circulated to England. In the beginning, about 30 recipients, mostly London journalists, receive the Bulletin but by October 1920 it has grown to 600, and by July 1921 over 1,200. She also keeps the accounts, takes dictation of statements, and at times works up articles from notes given to her by Griffith or others. She also acts as a confidential messenger, couriering between Dáil departments and Irish Republican Army (IRA) leaders such as Michael Collins. Through this, she meets Moya Llewelyn Davies.

The Bulletin becomes a symbol of the underground government and a target for British forces. This necessitates the frequent moving of the operation from one Dublin hideout to another. She fears that if she were captured, she would break under interrogation. When FitzGerald is arrested, he is asked about “the girl wearing a green tam” in reference to McKenna’s tam-o’-shanter hat which prompts her to change her choice of hat. Despite the capture of a number of the Bulletin staff, as well as the capture of the office files and equipment on March 26, 1921, it never misses an issue.

McKenna’s sister Winifred also works as a secretary to the clandestine government. Her brother, Tadhg (Timothy), is a member of Sinn Féin and in Greenore, County Louth, is involved in trade union affairs. He is detained, beaten, and interned in March 1921. He is later an activist with the Irish Labour Party. Her brother William is a messenger for the Irish government during this period and during the Irish Civil War serves in the Free State Army.

After the truce in 1921, McKenna is assigned to the Dáil cabinet secretarial staff at the Mansion House, where she continues to work in the publicity department. She travels as Griffith’s private secretary to London as part of the Irish delegation to the treaty negotiations in October 1921. She is an admirer of both Griffith and Collins and is a firm supporter of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. She works as Griffith’s secretary until just before his death and also does some secretarial work for Collins during the negotiations. One of her sisters is anti-Treaty, and she later recalls that she lost friends due to her support of the treaty.

When the Irish Free State government is established, McKenna becomes a private secretary to a number of Ministers for External Affairs, including FitzGerald, Kevin O’Higgins and W. T. Cosgrave. In 1924, she is a private secretary to the Boundary Commission, as well as one of a pair of secretaries who travels with the Irish delegation to the London Imperial Conference in 1924. From 1927 to 1931 she is James Dolan‘s secretary and parliamentary secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce. Before its closure in 1924, she writes a number of articles for the Freeman’s Journal.

McKenna marries Vittorio Napoli in 1931. He is a captain, and later a general, in the Italian royal grenadier guards. They meet when she is on holiday in Italy in 1927. For the first five years of their marriage, they live in the port of Derna in Cyrenaica, Libya, while her husband is stationed there. A son and daughter are born there. From September 1939 to June 1940, the family lives in Albania, but after Italy enters World War II, she and the children move to Viterbo. Her husband is taken prisoner in Greece in September 1943, and is detained in Germany and Poland. He returns to Italy in September 1945. Viterbo had been heavily bombed, and after Allied troops arrive, McKenna works as a translator and gives English language lessons to support her family. Her husband remains in the army, and they remain in Viterbo until 1956, later moving to Rome.

After the war, McKenna writes articles for the Irish Independent and other publications from Ireland, the United States and New Zealand, including The Irish Press, Irish Travel, Standard, Word, and Writer’s Digest. Sometimes she writes under her own name, as well as her pen name Kayn or Kayen MacKay. As the wives of Italian officers do not traditionally work, the money she earns from this is kept for travel and other leisure activities. This money allows her to visit her family in Ireland in 1947 for the first time since 1932. After their retirement, she and her husband visit Ireland regularly, and travel around Italy.

McKenna applies for an Irish military pension in 1950/51 and 1970, receiving references in support of her claim from Gallagher. As she had not served in a military organisation, her claims are rejected. As an Irish War of Independence veteran, she is awarded free travel in 1972, which is later extended to her husband. In her later years, she becomes concerned about the inaccuracies in the history around the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil War. She gives two talks to Radio Éireann in 1951, speaking about her time with the Irish Bulletin. Copies of these recordings are now held by the Bureau of Military History. During her lifetime, extracts of her memoir are published in the Capuchin Annual and The Irish Times. She drafted and redrafted these memoirs from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. A version edited by her daughter and niece is published in 2014 as A Dáil girl’s revolutionary recollections.

McKenna dies on March 22, 1988, in Rome. She is buried with an Irish flag which she had kept with her. A large collection of her papers is held in the National Library of Ireland (NLI). In 2010, 2011 and 2016, some of her memorabilia is sold in Dublin.


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Death of Charlie Hurley, OC of the IRA’s 3rd Cork Brigade

Charles Hurley (Irish: Cathal Ó Muirthile), Officer Commanding of the 3rd Cork Brigade (West Cork) of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the Irish War of Independence (1919–21), is killed by British Army troops on March 19, 1921. 

Hurley is born in Baurleigh, County Cork, near the village of Kilbrittain, on March 20, 1893, and is educated in the national school and subsequently passes the civil service examinations at age fifteen. According to his brother James, he is one of seven siblings, “born and reared in a farm of 35 acres.”

In his adolescence, Hurley becomes a clerk working for the government. In 1915, he is offered a promotion and a transfer to Haulbowline Island but declines on the grounds that this entails enlisting in the Royal Navy, albeit in a purely administrative role. Returning to Cork, he becomes friends with Liam Deasy who introduces him to the Irish republican movement. In 1917, he takes a job at Castletownbere and it is there that he joins the Irish Volunteers in 1917. He is also a member of Sinn Féin, the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) and the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge).

In 1918, Hurley is sentenced to five years penal servitude for possession of arms and plans of the British military fortifications at Bere Island. However, he is released in 1919 following a hunger strike. In the same year, his brother Willie, also an IRA Volunteer, dies of typhoid fever. He first becomes vice-commandant of the Volunteers or IRA Bandon Battalion and then in August 1920, after the arrest and imprisonment of Tom Hales, he becomes commander of the Third Cork Brigade of the IRA. One of his most important decisions is to establish a full-time guerrilla unit or flying column, under Tom Barry.

The 3rd Cork Brigade (also known as the West Cork Brigade) goes on to be one of the most active IRA units during the guerrilla war against the British in 1919–21. According to Barry, Hurley leads an ambush of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) at Ahawadda in April 1920, killing three policemen, wounding one and taking their arms and ammunition. In July of that same year, he leads a successful attack on the Coastguard station at Howes Strand, capturing a large number of weapons and ammunition. Barry remarks that Hurley is “a remarkable man and a lovable personality” and “continually urged a fighting army policy.” 

Hurley is present at the Tooreen ambush in October 1920 and subsequently is part of an assassination attempt on a judge who gives “harsh sentences” to IRA members. From December 1920 until January 1921, he takes command of the 3rd Cork Brigade’s flying column while Barry is ill. He also tours IRA units to assess the impact of the decree of excommunication on the guerrilla movement issued by Catholic Bishop of Cork, Daniel Cohalan.

In February 1921, Hurley leads the disastrous Upton train ambush on February 15, 1921, an attack on a train carrying British troops. In the action, the attacking IRA party is heavily outnumbered and the firefight results in three IRA men and six civilians being killed. He is also badly wounded in the face and ankle. Barry writes of the aftermath of the ambush that “he (Hurley) mourned deeply for his dead comrades and for the dead civilians, whom he did not know.”

Hurley is killed in action by British troops just before the Crossbarry ambush on March 19, 1921. He is staying in a house with a pro-republican family, where he is recuperating from the serious wounds he had received at Upton a month earlier. When he realises that he is surrounded by the British forces, he flees the house, as Barry comments in his book, to reduce the danger to those in the house, and is shot dead by pursuing troops. Barry remarks that he “died in the manner in which we expected.” 

The British Army places Hurley’s body at the workhouse in Bandon. However, members of Cumann na mBan surreptitiously take his body and he is given a secret republican funeral in Clogagh. A local ballad exists that commemorates him. In addition, the Gaelic Athletic Association grounds in Bandon is named after him in 1971.


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The Pearse Street Ambush

The Pearse Street Ambush takes place in Dublin on March 14, 1921, during the Irish War of Independence. Dublin awakes to the news that six Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteers, captured in an ambush at Drumcondra two months earlier, have been hanged. The gates of Mountjoy Gaol are opened at 8:25 a.m. and news of the executions is read out to the distraught relatives of the dead. As many as 40,000 people gather outside and many mournfully say the Rosary for the executed men.

The Labour movement calls a half-day general strike in the city in protest at the hangings. The clandestine Republican government declares a day of national mourning. All public transport comes to a halt and republican activists make sure the strike is observed.

By the evening, the streets clear rapidly as the British-imposed curfew comes into effect at 9:00 p.m. each night. The city is patrolled by regular British troops and the much-feared paramilitary police, or Auxiliaries, as people scurry home and await IRA retaliation for the hangings. This is not long in coming.

Pearse Street is just south of the River Liffey, running from Ringsend, an old fishing port, to the city centre. Number 144 Pearse Street houses the company headquarters of the IRA’s Dublin Brigade 3rd Battalion at St. Andrews Catholic Hall. It has been used for this purpose since before the 1916 Easter Rising.

On the evening of March 14, Captain Peadar O’Meara sends the 3rd Battalion out to attack police or military targets. As many as thirty-four IRA men prowl the area, armed with the standard urban guerrilla arms of easily hidden handguns and grenades. One young volunteer, Sean Dolan, throws a grenade at a police station on nearby Merrion Square, which bounces back before it explodes, blowing off his own leg.

At around 8:00 p.m., with the curfew approaching, a company of Auxiliaries, based in Dublin Castle is sent to the area to investigate the explosion. It consists of one Rolls-Royce armoured car and two tenders holding about 16 men. Apparently, the Auxiliaries have some inside information as they made straight for the local IRA headquarters at 144 Pearse Street. One later testifies in court that “I had been notified there were a certain number of gunmen there.”

However, the IRA is waiting. As soon as the Auxiliaries approach the building, they are fired upon from three sides. What the newspapers describe as “hail of fire” tears into the Auxiliaries’ vehicles. Five of the eight Auxiliaries in the first tender are hit in the opening fusillade. Two of them are fatally injured, including the driver, an Irishman named O’Farrell, and an Auxiliary named L. Beard.

The IRA fighters, however, are seriously outgunned. The Rolls Royce armoured car is impervious to small arms fire (except its tyres, which are shot out) and the mounted Vickers heavy machine gun sprays the surrounding houses with bullets. The unwounded Auxiliaries also clamber out of their tenders and return fire at the gun flashes from street corners and rooftops.

Civilian passersby thow themselves to the ground to avoid the bullets but four are hit, by which side it is impossible to tell. The British military court of inquiry into the incident finds that the civilians had been killed by persons unknown, if by the IRA then they were “murdered,” if hit by Auxiliaries the shootings were “accidental.” This, aside from demonstrating the court’s bias, shows that no one is sure who had killed them.

Firing lasts for only five minutes but in that time seven people, including the two Auxiliaries, are killed or fatally wounded and at least six more are wounded. Eighteen-year-old Bernard O’Hanlon, originally from Dundalk, lay sprawled, dead, outside 145 Pearse Street, his British Bull Dog revolver under him which has five chambers, two of which contain expended rounds and three of which contain live rounds, indicating he had gotten off just two shots before being cut down.

Another IRA Volunteer, Leo Fitzgerald, is also killed outright. Two more guerrillas are wounded, one in the hip and one in the back. They, along with Sean Dolan, who had been wounded by his own grenade, are spirited away by sympathetic fire brigade members and members of Cumann na mBan and treated in nearby Mercer’s Hospital.

Three civilians lay dead on the street. One, Thomas Asquith, is a 68-year-old caretaker, another, David Kelly, is a prominent Sinn Féin member and head of the Sinn Féin Bank. His brother, Thomas Kelly, is a veteran Sinn Féin politician and a Member of Parliament since 1918. The third, Stephen Clarke, aged 22, is an ex-soldier and may have been the one who had tipped off the Auxiliaries about the whereabouts of the IRA meeting house. An internal IRA report notes that he was “under observation… as he was a tout [informant] for the enemy.”

Two IRA men are captured as they flee the scene. One, Thomas Traynor, a 40-year-old veteran of the Easter Rising, is carrying an automatic pistol, but claims to have had no part in the ambush itself. He had, he maintains, simply been asked to bring in the weapon to 144 Great Brunswick Street. The other is Joseph Donnelly, a youth of just 17 years of age.

As most of the IRA fighters get away through houses, over walls and into backstreets, the Auxiliaries ransack St. Andrew’s Catholic Hall at number 144 Pearse Street but find little of value. Regular British Army troops quickly arrive from nearby Beggars Bush Barracks and cordon off the area, but no further arrests are made. Desultory sniping carries on in the city for several hours into the night.

March 14, 1921, was bloody day in Dublin. Thirteen people had died violently in the city by the end of the day – six IRA Volunteers executed that morning, two more killed in action at Pearse Street, two Auxiliaries killed in action and three civilians in the crossfire. It is the worst day of political violence in the city since Bloody Sunday on November 21, 1920, when 31 had been killed.

(From: “The Pearse Street Ambush, Dublin, March 14, 1921” by John Dorney, The Irish Story, http://www.theirishstory.com, January 26, 2015 | Pictured: British Army troops keep crowds back from Mountjoy Prison during the executions, March 14 1921.)


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Death of Seán Cronin, Journalist & IRA Chief of Staff

Seán Gerard Cronin, journalist and former Irish Army officer and twice Chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), dies on March 9, 2011, in Baltimore, Maryland.

Cronin is born on August 29, 1922, in Dublin, the only son among three children of Con Cronin, a member of the IRA, and his wife Kate. After his father’s death, his mother works as a cook in a boarding school while the children are brought up by relatives in Ballinskelligs in the County Kerry Gaeltacht. Educated locally, he is deeply influenced by his Gaeltacht childhood; his later writings often refer to the hypocrisy of a state that romanticises the Gaeltacht while neglecting its social problems.

During World War II, Cronin’s sisters emigrate to England to train as nurses while he works as a labourer for Kerry County Council. In December 1941, he joins the Irish Army and is selected in 1943 for an officers’ training course, on which he forms a lifelong friendship with the future theatre director Alan Simpson. He is commissioned and remains in the army until 1948.

Shortly thereafter Cronin emigrates to New York City, where he finds work as a journalist writing for The Advocate, an Irish American newspaper. He is strongly influenced by interviewing 1916 veterans for The Advocate and by contact with left-wing Irish American associates of Michael Quill, who played leading roles in the foundation of the Transport Workers Union of America. He becomes active in the semi-secret separatist organisation Clan na Gael, and in autumn 1955 returns to Ireland with the aim of helping the IRA to prepare for another military campaign.

Cronin begins work as a sub-editor with the Evening Press and also contributes summaries of world affairs to The Irish Times.

Cronin establishes contact with the IRA, and his military experience leads to his rapid assignment to GHQ staff. He is initially placed in charge of training and instruction, composing a manual on guerrilla warfare and twelve lectures on battlefield training. He teaches new military techniques and new recruits, such as the future IRA Chief of Staff Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, find him deeply impressive.

Cronin becomes a leading advocate of an early IRA campaign against Northern Ireland and becomes the chief strategist for Operation Harvest, a campaign which sees the carrying out of a range of military operations from direct attacks on security installations to disruptive actions against infrastructure. He is arrested on January 8, 1957, near the border in County Cavan. He is imprisoned several times over the course of the campaign (1956–1962).

Most of the IRA and Sinn Féin leadership are interned by the Dublin government on July 6, 1957. Cronin, one of the few to escape, becomes IRA Chief of Staff. He also acts for a time as editor of the movement’s newspaper, United Irishman. He tries to secure weapons from various sources, leading an unsuccessful raid on a British Army base at Blandford Camp in Dorset on February 16, 1958, and through contacts with Spanish republican exiles in Paris. The Irish American community remains the IRA’s main source of external support.

Cronin is arrested on September 30, 1958, and interned, causing considerable disarray, as he had been running much of the campaign single-handed. When the internees are released in March 1959, he resumes his position as Chief of Staff after a factional dispute causes the resignations of Tomás Óg Mac Curtain and the former Chief of Staff Tony Magan. He continues to argue that a sustained guerrilla campaign might yet succeed, but in June 1960 is again arrested and imprisoned for six months.

In November 1960, the Irish Freedom Committee (IFC), a Clan na Gael splinter group, accuses Cronin of being a communist and a “Free State agent,” supposedly implicated in the 1944 execution of Charlie Kerins. The IRA supports Cronin, but he nevertheless decides to resign successively as Chief of Staff, as a member of the Army Council, and as an IRA volunteer, on the grounds that his presence endangers the American support necessary for the continuance of the campaign. He then secures a job as a journalist on the Irish Independent. He withdraws his resignation in November 1961 after the Irish government reinstates military tribunals to try suspected IRA men. He is subsequently sentenced to six months’ imprisonment by a military tribunal and is in prison when the border campaign ends on February 26, 1962. Released on amnesty on April 19, 1962, he finally resigns from the IRA the next day.

By February 1966, Cronin has returned to the United States, where he resides for the remainder of his life, with regular visits to Ireland. He works as a journalist on the Newark Evening News and the Dow Jones News Service and is the U.S. correspondent of The Irish Times from 1967 to 1991, becoming that paper’s first Washington, D.C. correspondent.

In the 1970s Cronin takes a degree at New York University, then teaches and studies for a doctorate at The New School for Social Research in New York under Hans Morgenthau. His dissertation forms the basis for his magnum opus, Irish nationalism: its roots and ideology (1980). Although limited by its colonial model and socialist-republican intellectual framework, this historically oriented account draws on his extensive research and personal contacts to some effect.

Cronin is the author of a dozen books and pamphlets, including a biography of republican Frank Ryan, Washington’s Irish Policy 1916-1986: independence, partition, neutrality (1987), an authoritative account of Irish-US relations, Our Own Red Blood: The Story of the 1916 Rising (1966), and a number of works on guerrilla strategy, including an early Sinn Féin pamphlet Resistance under the pseudonym of J. McGarrity.

After the death of his first wife in 1974, Cronin marries Reva Rubinstein, a toxicologist. In 1980 they move to Washington, D.C. He has no children by either marriage, though his second wife brings him a stepson. After several years of illness, he dies in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 9, 2011. He is survived by his second wife, Reva Rubenstein Cronin.


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Founding of Friends of Irish Freedom

The Friends of Irish Freedom, an Irish American nationalist organisation, is founded on March 4, 1916, at the third Irish Race Convention held in New York City (March 4-5, 1916). It is supported by the United Irish League, the Ancient Order of Hibernians and other leading Irish American organisations. Clan na Gael dominates the Executive, holding 15 of the 17 seats.

The Organisation’s aims are to “encourage and assist any movement that will tend to bring about the National Independence of Ireland.” Among the first members of the Executive Committee are Victor Herbert (President), Thomas Hughes Kelly (Treasurer) and John D. Moore (Secretary). An office is set up in Sweden and relations are established with Imperial Germany. The Friends of Irish Freedom support the 1916 Easter Rising and, in the months following, raise $350,000 through the Irish Relief Fund to assist dependents of many who fought in the Rising.

In 1917, the Executive Committee of the Friends of Irish Freedom circulates a petition calling for the independence of Ireland throughout the United States and secures several hundred thousand signatures. President Woodrow Wilson in turn directs Secret Service agents to examine the membership and funding of the organisation. In May 1918, the Friends of Irish Freedom organises the fourth Irish Race Convention during which Diarmuid Lynch becomes National Secretary holding the post until his return to Ireland in 1932.

By 1920, there is a Regular membership of 100,000 and 484 Associate Branches with an Associate membership of 175,000. During the Irish War of Independence, the Friends of Irish Freedom raise over $5,000,000 in Dáil loans for the newly declared Irish Republic through the promotion of Bond Certificates. Legal advisor to the organisation for the Bond Drive is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In October 1920, a rift develops between the Irish American leaders and Éamon de Valera which results in a split between the Friends of Irish Freedom in the United States and the Irish Republican Brotherhood in Ireland. Prior to his departure from the United States, de Valera founds a rival organisation — the American Association for the Recognition of the Irish Republic — to take over the activities of the Friends.

The public dispute between the Friends of Irish Freedom and Sinn Féin representatives damages the effectiveness and credibility of the Irish American organisation. While the Executive largely remains loyal to Daniel F. Cohalan, many rank-and-file members do not renew their subscriptions. By mid-1921 membership has fallen to 20,000 and is further reduced after the outbreak of Irish Civil War in 1922. By 1928, the Friends of Irish Freedom has virtually ceased to exist as a viable Irish American organisation.

The Friends of Irish Freedom is wound up in 1932 following extensive litigation concerning the funds raised for the Irish Republic which were claimed by de Valera. Most of the funds are returned to the original donors.

(Pictured: Éamon de Valera and Friends of Irish Freedom members Daniel Cohalan, John Goff and James Devoy)


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Death of Stephen Fuller, IRA Volunteer & Fianna Fáil Politician

Stephen Fuller, Fianna Fáil politician who serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Kerry North constituency from 1937 to 1943, dies on February 23, 1984, in Tralee, County Kerry.

Fuller is born on January 1, 1900, in Kilflynn, County Kerry. He is the son of Daniel Fuller and Ellie Quinlan. His family is from Fahavane, in the parish of Kilflynn.

Fuller serves in the Kilflynn Irish Republican Army (IRA) flying column during the Irish War of Independence. He is First Lieutenant in the Kerry No.1 Brigade, 2nd Battalion. He opposes the Anglo-Irish Treaty and continues to fight with the anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War. Military records from the 1930s show, in his own hand, that he is in communication with Dublin regarding confirmation of membership in July 1922 and therefore eligible for war pensions. He becomes the most senior Kilflynn member upon the death of Captain George O’Shea.

In 1923, Fuller is captured by Free State troops and imprisoned in Ballymullen Barracks in Tralee by the Dublin Guard who had landed in County Kerry shortly before. On March 6, 1923, five Free State soldiers are blown up by a booby-trapped bomb at Baranarigh Wood, Knocknagoshel, north Kerry, including long-standing colleagues of Major General Paddy Daly, GOC Kerry Command. Prisoners receive beatings after the killings and Daly orders that republican prisoners be used to remove mines.

On March 7, nine prisoners from Ballymullen Barracks, six from the jail and three from the workhouse, are chosen with a broad geographical provenance and no well-known connections. They are taken lying down in a lorry to Ballyseedy Cross. There they are secured by the hands and legs and to each other in a circle around a land mine. Fuller is among them. His Kilflynn parish comrade Tim Tuomey is initially stopped from praying until all prisoners are tied up. As he and other prisoners then say their prayers and goodbyes, Fuller continues to watch the retreating Dublin Guard soldiers, an act which he later says saved him. The mine is detonated, and he lands in a ditch, suffering burns and scars. He crosses the River Lee and hides in Ballyseedy woods. He is missed amongst the carnage as disabled survivors are bombed and shot dead with automatic fire. Most collected body parts are distributed between nine coffins that had been prepared. The explosions and gunfire are witnessed by Rita O’Donnell who lives nearby and who sees human remains spread about the next day. Similar reprisal killings by the Dublin Guard follow soon after Ballyseedy.

Fuller crawls away to the friendly home of the Currans nearby. They take him to the home of Charlie Daly the following day. His injuries are treated by a local doctor, Edmond Shanahan, who finds him in a dugout. He moves often in the coming months, including to the Burke and Boyle families, and stays in a dugout that had been prepared at the Herlihys for seven months.

A cover-up begins almost immediately. Paddy Daly’s communication to Dublin about returning the bodies to relatives differs significantly from Cumann na mBan statements, which Daly complains about as simple propaganda, and later that of Bill Bailey, a local who had joined the Dublin Guard, who tells Ernie O’Malley that the bodies were handed over in condemned coffins as a band played jolly music. Fuller is named amongst the dead in newspaper reports before it is realised that he had escaped. Daly then sends a communication to GHQ that Fuller is reported as having become “insane.” The Dublin Guard scours the countryside for Fuller. The official investigation into the killings is presided over by Daly himself, with Major General Eamon Price of GHQ and Colonel J. McGuinness of Kerry Command. It blames Irregulars for planting the explosives and exonerates the Irish Army soldiers, and this is read out in the Dáil by the Minister for Defence, Richard Mulcahy.

Contrary statements to the Irish Army’s submissions are effectively ignored. Lieutenant Niall Harrington of the Dublin Guard, describes the evidence to the court and the findings as “totally untrue,” explaining that the actions were devised and executed by officers of the Dublin Guard. He contacts Kevin O’Higgins, Minister for Justice and Vice-President, a family friend, to deplore the findings. O’Higgins speaks to Richard Mulcahy, who does nothing. In a separate incident, Free State Lieutenant W.McCarthy, who had been in charge of about twenty prisoners, says that five of them had been removed in the night. They were reportedly shot in the legs then blown up by, in his words, “…a Free State mine, laid by themselves.” He resigns in protest. A Garda Síochána report into the events is also dismissed and is not made public for over 80 years.

Fuller leaves the IRA after the Civil War and follows a career as a farmer in Kerry. He joins Fianna Fáil, the political party founded by Republican leader Éamon de Valera in 1926 after a split from Sinn Féin. He is elected to the 9th Dáil on his first attempt, representing Fianna Fáil at the 1937 Irish general election, as the last of three Fianna Fáil TDs to be elected to the four seat Kerry North constituency. He is re-elected to the 10th Dáil at the 1938 Irish general election, when Fianna Fáil again wins three out of four seats, but loses his seat at the 1943 Irish general election to the independent candidate Patrick Finucane. He returns to farming thereafter.

Fuller never once mentions the Ballyseedy incident from a political platform and states later that he bore no ill-will towards his captors or those who were involved in his attempted extrajudicial killing. He does not want the ill feeling passed on to the next generation. He speaks publicly about the events in 1980, a few years before his death, on Robert Kee‘s groundbreaking BBC series Ireland: A Television History.

Fuller dies in Edenburn Nursing Home, Tralee, on February 23, 1984. He is buried near the Republican plot in Kilflynn where colleagues O’Shea, Tuomey and Timothy ‘Aero’ Lyons are buried.

Fuller’s son Paudie establishes the Stephen Fuller Memorial Cup for dogs of all ages, contested annually on the family farm.

Fuller’s fame largely rests on one night at Ballyseedy. To trace him through the rural society from which he and his fellow Volunteers originated and in which his life was spent, however, gives a fuller understanding of the devastating effects of the conflicts of 1916–23 on a tightly knit rural and small-town society, dominated by extended families of farmers and their service-industry relatives, and of how that society remembered and forgot those traumas.

(Pictured: Stephen Fuller’s grave in Kilflynn, by St. Columba’s Heritage Centre)