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Tag Archives: Sinn Féin


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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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Birth of Pat Doherty, Sinn Féin Politician & Member of Parliament

Patrick Doherty, retired Sinn Féin politician and the abstentionist Member of Parliament (MP) for West Tyrone from 2001 to 2017, is born in Glasgow, Scotland, on July 18, 1945. He is a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for the West Tyrone Assembly constituency from June 1998 to June 2012. He serves as Vice President of Sinn Féin from 1988 to 2009, when Mary Lou McDonald becomes the party’s new Vice President.

Doherty is educated at St. Joseph’s College, Lochwinnoch, and is a site engineer who likes building stone walls. He is the brother of former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) member Hugh Doherty, known for his involvement in the Balcombe Street siege. According to The Times Guide to the House of Commons, he is married with three daughters and two sons.

Doherty’s parents are from County Donegal in the Republic of Ireland. He moves to Donegal in 1968, shortly before the Troubles break out across the Irish border in Northern Ireland. He is an abstentionist Sinn Féin Member of Parliament of the British parliament for West Tyrone from 2001 to 2017, as well as a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly from the 1998 Northern Ireland Assembly election until 2012. He also stands for election in the Republic of Ireland, in the constituency of Donegal North-East in 1989, 1996 (a by-election) and 1997, and also in the Connacht–Ulster constituency in the European Parliament elections in 1989 and 1994.

In May 2002, using parliamentary privilege, Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) MP David Burnside names Doherty as a member of the IRA Army Council.

Over a two-and-a-half-year period, Doherty spends £16,000 on printer cartridges, an amount that he admits is “probably excessive.”

In 2012, to some surprise, Doherty writes to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland in support of funding for the loyalist Castlederg Young Loyalist Flute Band. He praises the band for reaching out to “all sections of the community.” The band had sought support for its funding application from a community group who then, unbeknownst to the band, reached out to Doherty. A spokesman for the band, whose website includes sections on IRA atrocities, the controversial B Specials and lyrics to songs, including one glorifying Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) terrorist Brian Robinson, distances themselves from the application, claiming the band is unaware of Doherty’s support and does not want it. He adds that “The band harbours nothing but contempt for Irish republicanism and its attacks on their community.” Four of the band’s members are killed by the IRA.


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Death of Mary Hayden, Campaigner for Women’s Causes

Mary Teresa Hayden, Irish historian, Irish language activist and campaigner for women’s causes, dies at her residence in Rathmines, Dublin, on July 12, 1942.

Hayden is born on May 19, 1862, in Merrion Square, Dublin, the only daughter of Thomas Hayden, physician and later vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and Mary Anne Hayden (née Ryan). Mary Hayden is educated initially at the Dominican College, Eccles Street, Dublin, and then at Alexandra College at Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin. She attends the Royal University of Ireland (RUI) where she graduates with a BA in 1885 and an MA in 1887 in Modern Languages.

She meets the Robertson commission in 1901 on behalf of St. Mary’s Dominican convent, Eccles Street, Dublin, where, as well as presenting the results of a questionnaire survey of women graduates, compiles in conjunction with Agnes O’Farrelly and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, she argues for the right of women to receive education on the same terms as men and in the same colleges, and to be employed by the universities on identical conditions (which is not realised until the Irish Universities Act of 1908). Along with Sheehy-Skeffington, she is a key figure in the formation of the Irish Association of Women Graduates in 1902, which concerns itself with various questions regarding women graduates’ employment in government departments, hospitals, and schools, as well as attempting to influence public policy in relation to sex discrimination.

A campaigner for gender equality and noted as a public speaker, Hayden is a prominent member of the Dublin Women’s Suffrage Association. She is a member of the Gaelic League and friends with Patrick Pearse. However, she opposes violence and disapproves of the 1916 Easter Rising.

After the passage of the Irish Universities Act in 1908, Hayden is appointed a member of both the senate of the National University of Ireland (NUI) and the governing body of the new University College Dublin (UCD), the first woman to hold such positions. In November 1909 she is appointed a lecturer in history, and in July 1911 first professor of modern Irish history at UCD, a position she holds until her retirement in 1938.

In 1915, along with Mary Louise Gwynn, Hayden founds the Irish Catholic Women’s Suffrage Association, and is also active in the Irish Women’s Franchise League, which mix campaigning for the vote with a variety of intellectual pursuits. She also becomes involved in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She is more moderate a nationalist than contemporary feminists such as Constance Markievicz and Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington and supports the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) rather than Sinn Féin.

Hayden’s last major public campaign, at the age of 75, is in the lead-up to the referendum on the 1937 Constitution of Ireland, in opposition to articles 40, 41, and 45 concerning the status of women. Reversing her lifelong non-party-political stance, she helps to form the Women’s Social and Progressive League as a political party committed to opposing the constitution and any regressive consequences it would entail.

Hayden receives an honorary doctorate from the NUI in 1935, three years before her retirement. A dedicated cyclist and swimmer, she is fluent in Irish, Greek, and Hindustani, and after retirement devotes her efforts to improving the welfare of Dublin children through her newly formed social club. She dies on July 12, 1942, at her residence in Rathmines, Dublin. Her unpublished diaries are deposited in the NLI.

A biography of Hayden, Mary Hayden: Irish Historian and Feminist, by Joyce Padbury is published by Arlen House in 2020.


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Seán MacManus Elected Mayor of Sligo

Seán MacManus, Sinn Féin politician, is elected Mayor of Sligo on July 3, 2000. He is the national chairperson of the party from 1984 to 1990.

MacManus is born in 1950 near Blacklion, County Cavan, and moves to London in the 1960s to find work. There he meets and marries Helen McGovern, a native of Glenfarne, County Leitrim. In 1976, he returns to Ireland and settled in the Maugheraboy area of Sligo, County Sligo, so that their family of two boys can be educated in Ireland.

Still based in Maugheraboy, MacManus is involved in Irish Republican politics since the early 1970s and is secretary of the County Sligo Anti-H-Block Committee which campaigns in support of the republican prisoners hunger strikes of 1980/81. He becomes a member of the Sinn Féin Ard Comhairle (National Executive) in 1982 and remains there for over twenty years. He is elected as the first Sinn Féin National Chairperson from 1984 until 1990. After the Irish Republican Army (IRA) ceasefire in 1994 he is part of the first Sinn Féin delegation to meet with the British government in over seventy years. He is also involved in the protracted negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement.

First elected to Sligo Corporation (now Sligo Borough Council) in 1994, MacManus remains until its abolition in May 2014. He is also elected to Sligo County Council in 1999 and is re-elected in 2004, 2009 and 2014. He steps down from elected politics in February 2017 being replaced by his son, Chris MacManus.

On July 3, 2000, MacManus is elected Mayor of Sligo, the first Sinn Féin Mayor in the Republic of Ireland since the beginning of the Troubles in 1969. He is also elected mayor in 2003. Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams says the election of McManus is a sign of “Sinn Féin’s rise as an active campaigning alternative in politics in the 26 counties”.

MacManus has two sons. Chris MacManus, the youngest, is also an elected member of Sligo Borough Council (1999–2014) and Sligo County Council (2017–2020) and is an MEP since March 2020. His eldest son, Joseph MacManus, was an IRA volunteer who was killed in a firefight against an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) soldier in Belleek, County Fermanagh, in February 1992.


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Birth of Anthony McIntyre, Former IRA Volunteer, Writer & Historian

Anthony McIntyre, a former Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer, writer and historian, is born on June 27, 1957.

McIntyre is imprisoned for murder for 18 years in Long Kesh Detention Centre, spending four of those years on the dirty protest. Following his release from prison in 1992, he completes a PhD in political science at Queen’s University Belfast and leaves the republican movement in 1998 to work as a journalist and researcher. A collection of his journalism is published as a book in 2008, Good Friday: The Death of Irish Republicanism.

McIntyre is involved with the Boston College oral history project on the Troubles entitled the Belfast Project, conducting interviews with former Provisional IRA members who, like himself, had become disillusioned with the direction the republican movement had taken, such as Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price, and former Ulster loyalist paramilitaries such as David Ervine. The interviews are the basis for the book Voices from the Grave: Two Men’s War in Ireland by Ed Moloney.

In 2011, McIntyre becomes embroiled in controversy when transcripts of the interviews, held by Boston College, are subpoenaed by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in relation to an investigation of the 1972 abduction and killing of Jean McConville. In March 2014, the PSNI announces that it is seeking to question McIntyre over newly released Belfast Project recordings, specifically in reference to the alleged role of Gerry Adams in the kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville.

McIntyre is a prominent critic of modern-day Sinn Féin and its leadership. He has spoken at Republican Sinn Féin party events. He is a co-founder of The Blanket, a journal which casts a critical eye on the Northern Ireland peace process.


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Birth of Fra McCann, IRA Volunteer & Sinn Féin Politician

Fra McCann, Irish politician, is born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, on June 19, 1953. He becomes active in the Irish republican movement and is imprisoned in the 1970s for membership of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. He also takes part in the blanket protest while in prison. In 1987, he is elected to Belfast City Council in a by-election, representing Sinn Féin.

McCann grows up in the Falls Road area of West Belfast. He is educated at St. Comgalls Primary School on Divis Street and later at St. Peters Secondary School off the Whiterock Road.

McCann is interned on the prison ship HMS Maidstone from February 14 until March 14, 1972, when he is moved to Long Kesh Detention Centre.

McCann is released from Long Kesh on May 9, 1972, then rearrested in November 1972 and re-interned until December 1975. During this period of internment, he is sentenced to nine months for escaping from Long Kesh through a tunnel. During this escape, IRA volunteer Hugh Coney is murdered by British soldiers.

McCann is arrested again in November 1976 and imprisoned in Crumlin Road Gaol where he spends six months on remand before being sentenced to three years. He joins the blanket protest in Crumlin Road Gaol where he and his comrades are held in solitary confinement until August 1978 when they are moved to the H-Blocks in Long Kesh, joining hundreds more on the blanket protest. He is released on November 22, 1979.

Upon his release, McCann travels throughout Ireland with other ex-prisoner’s highlighting the inhumanity in the H-Blocks. He travels throughout the United States in 1980 during which time he is arrested and spends 17 days in prison in New York. In 1981, he travels to Canada where he helps form H-Block committees and raises awareness about the hunger strike.

On his return to Ireland McCann is elected to sit on the National H-Block Committee and speaks at many events in support of the hunger strike. In the aftermath of the hunger strike he helps reorganise Sinn Féin in the Falls area.

McCann is elected to Belfast City Council in 1987 and sits on the Strategic Policy and Resources Committee and the Parks and Leisure committee. He is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly representing Belfast West in 2003 and again in 2007, 2012 and 2018. While there he sits on the Finance and Personnel Committee and the Committee for Social Development.

In June 2006, McCann is charged with assault and disorderly behaviour following an incident in west Belfast. The incident occurs as the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) are attempting to arrest a teenager for attempted robbery. However, he claims heavy-handedness by the police and states, “I tried to put myself between one of the officers and the girl when the police officer radioed for assistance.” He is released on bail.

In October 2021, McCann announces that he would be stepping down as Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Belfast West and would not be contesting the next election.


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Death of Leonard McNally, Barrister, Playwright, United Irishman

Leonard McNally, an Irish barrister, playwright, lyricist, founding member of the United Irishmen and spy for the British Government within Irish republican circles, dies in Dublin on June 8, 1820.

McNally is born in Dublin in 1752, the son of a merchant and wine importer. He is raised by his mother with the support of his uncle. He is born into a Roman Catholic family, but at some point in the 1760s he converts to the Church of Ireland. He is passionate about theatre, entirely self-educated and initially becomes a merchant in Bordeaux like his father.

However, in 1774 McNally goes to London to study law at the Middle Temple but returns to Dublin to be called to the Irish bar in 1776. After returning to London in the late 1770s, he qualifies as a barrister in England as well, in 1783. He practises for a short time in London and, while there, supplements his income by writing plays and editing The Public Ledger.

Returning to Ireland, McNally developes a successful career as a barrister in Dublin. He develops an expertise in the law of evidence and, in 1802, publishes what becomes a much-used textbook, The Rules of Evidence on Pleas of the Crown. The text plays a crucial role in defining and publicising the beyond reasonable doubt standard for criminal trials.

Not long after returning to Ireland, McNally becomes involved in radical politics, having already in 1782 published a pamphlet in support of the Irish cause. He becomes Dublin’s leading radical lawyer of the day. In 1792, he represents James Napper Tandy, a radical member of the Irish Parliament, in a legal dispute over parliamentary privilege. In the early 1790s, he becomes a founder member of the United Irishmen, a clandestine society which soon develops into a revolutionary Irish republican organisation. He ranks high in its leadership and acts as the organisation’s chief lawyer, representing many United Irishmen in court. This includes defending Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet, the leaders of the 1798 and 1803 rebellions respectively, at their trials for treason. In 1793, he is wounded in a duel with Sir Jonah Barrington, who had insulted the United Irishmen. Barrington subsequently describes McNally as “a good-natured, hospitable, talented and dirty fellow.”

After McNally’s death in 1820, it emerges that he had for many years been an informant for the government, and one of the most successful British spies in Irish republican circles that there has ever been. In 1794, when a United Irishmen plot to seek aid from Revolutionary France is uncovered by the British government, McNally turns informer to save himself, although, subsequently, he also receives payment for his services. He is paid an annual pension in respect of his work as an informer of £300 a year, from 1794 until his death in 1820.

From 1794, McNally systematically informs on his United Irishmen colleagues, who often gather at his house for meetings. It is he that betrays Lord Edward FitzGerald, one of the leaders of the 1798 rebellion, as well as Robert Emmet in 1803. A significant factor in the failure of the 1798 rebellion is the excellent intelligence provided to the government by its agents. McNally is considered to be one of the most damaging informers.

The United Irishmen represented by McNally at their trials are invariably convicted and he is paid by the crown for passing the secrets of their defence to the prosecution. During the trial of Emmet, he provides details of the defence’s strategy to the crown and conducts his client’s case in a way that assists the prosecution. For example, three days before the trial he assures the authorities that Emmet “does not intend to call a single witness, nor to trouble any witness for the Crown with a cross-examination, unless they misrepresent facts… He will not controvert the charge by calling a single witness.” For his assistance to the prosecution in Emmet’s case, he is paid a bonus of £200, on top of his pension, half of which is paid five days before the trial.

After McNally’s death, his activities as a government agent become generally known when his heir attempts to continue to collect his pension of £300 per year. He is still remembered with opprobrium by Irish nationalists. In 1997, the Sinn Féin newspaper, An Phoblacht, in an article on McNally, describes him as “undoubtedly one of the most treacherous informers of Irish history.”

McNally is a successful dramatist and writes a number of well-constructed but derivative comedies, as well as comic operas. His first dramatic work is The Ruling Passion, a comic opera written in 1771, and he is known to have authored at least twelve plays between 1779 and 1796 as well as other comic operas. His works include The Apotheosis of Punch (1779), a satire on the Irish playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Tristram Shandy (1783), which is an adaptation of Laurence Sterne‘s novel, Robin Hood (1784), Fashionable Levities (1785), Richard Cœur de Lion (1786), and Critic Upon Critic (1788).

McNally also writes a number of songs and operettas for Covent Garden. One of his songs, The Lass of Richmond Hill, becomes very well-known and popular following its first public performance at Vauxhall Gardens in London in 1789. It is said to be a favourite of George III and popularises the romantic metaphor “a rose without a thorn,” a phrase which he used in the song.

Nothing is known of McNally’s first wife Mary O’Brien, other than that she dies in 1786. In London in 1787, he elopes with Frances I’Anson, as her father William I’Anson a solicitor, disapproves of McNally. Frances, and her family’s estate, Hill House in Richmond, North Yorkshire, is the subject of a song with lyrics by McNally and composed by James Hook, The Lass of Richmond Hill. In 1795, Frances dies during childbirth at age 29 and is survived by only one daughter. In early 1799, McNally marries his third wife, Louisa Edgeworth, the daughter of a clergyman from County Longford.

When McNally’s son, who has the same and professions, dies on February 13, 1820, it is widely reported to have been McNally. The son is buried in Donnybrook, Dublin, on February 17, 1820, and McNally sends a letter on March 6, 1820, to the Proprietor of Saunders’s Newsletter seeking damages for the severe injury caused by the circulation of his death. In June 1820, McNally is on his deathbed, and although he had been a Protestant for most of his adult life, he seeks absolution from a Roman Catholic priest. He dies and is also buried in Donnybrook on June 8, 1820.


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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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Prince Charles & the Duchess of Cornwall Visit Ireland

Britain‘s Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall arrive at Shannon Airport in Ireland on Tuesday, May 19, 2015, to start their historic four-day visit to Ireland. The Prince of Wales says he is excited by the prospect of his first visit to the Republic of Ireland in 13 years.

The couple are welcomed at NUI Galway by the Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) Joan Burton, among the guests are Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.The highlight of Tuesday’s engagements is the historic handshake between the Prince and Gerry Adams. This is the first time a member of the British royal family and the Sinn Féin President have formerly engaged. They shake hands and speak briefly at a reception in NUI Galway, where the prince makes the first of two scheduled speeches.

Charles and Camilla then go on to visit the Burren in County Clare, fulfilling one of Charles’ life-long goals, by exploring the karst landscape for almost an hour.

They conclude their first day by dining with the President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, and his wife Sabina, at Lough Cutra Castle in south County Galway. They dine on blanched Highgrove asparagus to start, followed by pan-seared halibut, with panna cotta and poached Highgrove rhubarb for dessert.

Their packed itinerary for Wednesday begins with a trip to Lissadell House with a civic reception and a viewing of the Niland Collection at The Model contemporary arts centre in Sligo. Mayor of Sligo, Seán MacManus, formerly of Sinn Féin, attends the reception. MacManus’ son was killed in a gun battle with security forces in Northern Ireland in 1992.

The prince then visits the Institute of Technology, Sligo, and the couple has lunch at Lissadell. They then visit the grave of W. B. Yeats and attend a service at St. Columba’s Church, in Drumcliff. The royal couple takes part in a tree-planting and unveil a plaque. The theme of this service and the tree-planting is peace and reconciliation.

The prince then visits Mullaghmore Harbour on Wednesday afternoon. On August 27, 1979, his great-uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, is killed in a bomb attack executed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Mountbatten holidayed every summer at Classiebawn Castle near the harbor. He had, along with family and friends, embarked on a lobster-potting and angling expedition when a bomb on board was detonated just a few hundred yards from the harbor. He died of his injuries, along with his grandson Nicholas Knatchbull (14), Paul Maxwell (15), from County Fermanagh, and Lady Brabourne (83), his eldest daughter’s mother-in-law.

Charles and Camilla conclude their Wednesday itinerary with a trip to the Sligo races.

On Thursday and Friday, Charles and Camilla travel to Northern Ireland. Their engagements include a reception and a concert featuring a selection of local performers at Hillsborough Castle. They make a trip to Mount Stewart House and gardens to mark the completion of a three-year restoration programme. They also visit the Corrymeela Community, Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation centre, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2015.

(From: “History is made as Prince Charles fulfills life-long dream in Ireland” by Cathy Hayes, IrishCentral, http://www.irishcentral.com, May 20, 2015 | Pictured: The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall at Mullaghmore pier on May 20, 2015)


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Birth of Thomas Johnson, Politician & Trade Unionist

Thomas Ryder Johnson, Irish Labour Party politician and trade unionist who serves as Leader of the Opposition from 1922 to 1927 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1917 to 1927, is born on May 17, 1872, in Liverpool, England. He serves as a Teachta Dála (TD) for Dublin County from 1922 to 1927. He is a Senator for the Labour Panel from 1928 to 1934.

Johnson works on the docks for an Irish fish merchant, spending much of his time in Dunmore East and Kinsale. It is this way that he picks up ideas about socialism and Irish nationalism, joining a Liverpool branch of the Independent Labour Party in 1893. In 1900 he starts work as a commercial traveller, then moves in 1903 with his family to Belfast where he becomes involved in trade union and labour politics.

In 1907 Johnson helps James Larkin organise a strike in the port, but has to watch in dismay as the strike, which begins with remarkable solidarity between labour, Orange, and nationalist supporters, collapses in sectarian rioting. At various times he is the president, treasurer and secretary of the Irish Trades Union Congress (ITUC) which is, at the time, also the Labour Party in Ireland, until officially founded in 1912 by James Connolly and James Larkin. Johnson becomes Vice-president of the ITUC in 1913, and President in 1915.

Johnson sympathizes with the Irish Volunteers, many of whom are sacked from their jobs, for illegal activities. During the Easter Rising, he notes in his diary that people in Ireland paid little heed to the fate of the defeated revolutionaries. He succeeds as leader of the Labour Party from 1917, when the party does not contest the 1918 Irish general election. When the British government tries to enforce conscription in Ireland in 1918, he leads a successful strike in conjunction with other members of the Irish anti-conscription movement.

Johnson is later elected a TD for Dublin County to the Third Dáil at the 1922 Irish general election and remains leader of the Labour Party until 1927. As such, he is Leader of the Opposition in the Dáil of the Irish Free State, as the anti-treaty faction of Sinn Féin refuses to recognise the Dáil as constituted. He issues a statement of support for the Government of the 4th Dáil when the Irish Army Mutiny threatens civilian control in March 1924.

Johnson is the only Leader of the Labour Party who serves as Leader of the Opposition in the Dáil. He loses his Dáil seat at the September 1927 Irish general election, and the following year he is elected to Seanad Éireann, where he serves until the Seanad’s abolition in 1936.

In 1896 he meets Marie Tregay, then a teacher in St. Multose’s National school, outside Kinsale. A native of Cornwall, she has advanced political views. They marry in 1898 in Liverpool. Their only son, Frederick Johnson, is born in 1899, and becomes a well-known actor. Johnson dies on January 17, 1963, at 49 Mount Prospect Avenue, Clontarf, Dublin.

Each summer, Labour Youth holds the “Tom Johnson Summer School” to host panel discussions, debates and workshops.